Something True (19 page)

“Our father…” her brother added.

“…is going to be president of the United States of America!” Natalie crowed.

“He's being considered for a presidential nomination,” the brother said. “Nat is getting ahead of herself, but it's true. Some very influential people have been mentioning his name. They like our campaign. They say we're ‘untarnished.'”

“We?” Laura asked.

Say it
, Tate urged.
Just tell them. It's that simple.

“The Enfield campaign. All of us together,” her mother said with treacly sweetness.

The brother was clearly trying to play it cool, but Tate could hear the excitement in his voice. “So we thought we'd fly up, pay you a visit, and talk to you about working on the campaign. There's going to be a press conference tomorrow.”

“You've been out of the loop,” her mother added. “Your father would like to strategize with you before the conference.”

“I'll have to think about it,” Laura said.

“What could possibly be more exciting than campaigning for the president of the United States of America?” her mother asked.

Lesbian sex
, Tate thought.
Love. Everything!
But she had already sunk to the floor, her knees tucked under her chin, her arms wrapped around her legs like a child. She knew the answer.

“Of course,” Laura said, her voice flat. “It's wonderful. Let's go downstairs, and you can brief me. Who's going to be at the press conference?”

L
aura had been sitting in the living room listening to political strategy for over an hour, all the while trying to devise her own strategy to get her family out of the house and Tate out of the bedroom closet. So far she had not been able to budge her family. She had not even gotten a word in edgewise. It was all polling stats, issue treatments, and the aesthetics of campaign materials. It was still early in the morning—too early for a drink, which was too bad because the desire to strangle someone was growing with each thinly veiled reference to Laura's fictional accountant.

Natalie dropped another one, and John said, “You know Natalie is right. You've got to establish some sort of stable, monogamous relationship.”

“I don't see why you can't get married,” her mother added. “You're a lovely young lady.”

Laura rose and walked toward the window.

“No one here is young,” she said, more to the landscape than to her family.

“Speak for yourself,” Natalie said.

“Natalie, you were born old.” Laura scanned the desert below. Miles of unadulterated rock, scrub brush, and rattlesnakes surrounded the house. And something else. A figure moving in the distance. A woman making her way from rock to rock, the early sun casting a long shadow at her feet.

Tate.

Overhead, a hawk circled on the hot air currents. Beyond her, Palm Springs spread itself out like a distant mirage. As Laura watched, Tate paused, looked up at the sky, and then set off again, heading downhill, toward the highway, toward the city. It occurred to Laura, she had never seen anything more elegant, more resolute. In that silhouette was everything John Wayne was meant to be all wrapped up in the body of a lean, muscular woman. She almost stopped her brother in midsentence to show him. That's what he wanted for his campaign flyers. That integrity. That grace.

“I have to go,” Laura said.

“Where?” her mother asked.

“Out.”

“What's going on?” John called after her.

“We were talking to you,” Natalie said.

Laura ignored them. She slipped on the most practical pair of shoes she could find in the front hall closet. Then she ran into the desert, calling for Tate.

She did not get far. She had drawn a map of Tate's trajectory in her mind, but when she reached the desert she wasn't sure. Every time she headed in one direction she thought maybe Tate had gone another way. She listened. Every sound could have been Tate's distant footsteps. Every sound could have been the breeze blowing against the spruce trees. Laura scrambled down to a lookout point where she knew she could see the valley, but there was no sign of anyone.

“Tate!” Her voice echoed off the rocks. No one answered.

Finally, sweaty and past tears, she trudged back to the family tribunal that awaited her. Someone had poured a round of mint juleps.

“What was that about?” her mother asked as she entered the living room.

She was aware of her disheveled hair, her red face, and her family's cool reserve. She turned. They all sipped their drinks in unison. It was cultish.

“How do you do that?” Laura asked.

“What?” her mother and Natalie said together.

Except for her long, red hair and freckles her sister was a carbon copy of their mother.

Laura wandered into the kitchen, surveyed the mint julep fixings, and poured a shot of rum in a glass. She took a swig, feeling the liquor burn her throat.

“It was a woman,” Laura blurted out. “I was here with a woman.”

Laura thought she could hear the houndstooth rustle as her mother and sister stiffened simultaneously.

“The accountant?” John asked. “It's a small thing. Just be more careful. We don't want any impression of impropriety. You know once Dad is nominated, we're going to be in the tabloids. There's just no way around it, and they don't care if it's true.”

“It is true!” Laura slammed her glass down on the counter.

“I know you were just here with a female accountant, but the tabloids can make anything into a scandal,” John said, as if explaining a simple lesson to a dim student.

She knew what he meant, and she knew why he was explaining it again. She understood his deliberate tone.
Don't. Tell. Anyone.
That's what he was saying. He remembered their conversation on the rock, so many years ago. He knew why she traveled, why she had no real home, why there was no warmth in her life or her face or her heart. He knew, and he had no pity.

“I was here with my
lover
!” Laura said.

For a moment, the sunlight coming through the window froze to amber and everyone sat motionless. Laura had the uncanny feeling that if she stood up and walked out, the family would remain petrified, like an installation at a wax museum.
First Family on the Eve of Ruin
, the artist would title it.

Unfortunately, they had not been reduced to figurines. Natalie broke the silence.

“You can't do this to us.” It wasn't a plea. It was a statement.

Then everyone was talking at once, everyone except Laura. She sat rigid on the couch, her hands clutching her empty glass. It was ten minutes before they quieted down. Then John stood, the alpha male presiding over his women.

“I'm going to sit here.” He motioned to Laura's sofa.

“Fine.”

He sat and waited a beat.

“Do you love America?” John asked finally.

A month ago, she would have given a knee-jerk yes. Of course, she loved America. Now, she thought of Maggie standing behind the counter of Out Coffee. She thought of Krystal with her pink ponytails, sheltered by the only people who would take her in, dreaming of a father in prison. She thought of Tate, with her stern face and endless loyalty. She thought of this network of work and love and sacrifice, where the small pleasures had to be enough because often that was all there was. America. She did love it, and it had nothing to do with the Stan Enfield campaign.

“You value AMERICA,” John continued, pronouncing
America
in all caps. “You have a responsibility to bring your gifts to the service of AMERICA.”

“Don't talk to me,” Laura said. She knew the buzzwords:
value
,
future
,
accountability
. “I don't give a shit about your America.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Laura saw her mother open her mouth to protest, but John stopped her with a glance. He was planning a new approach. He leaned back, throwing an arm across the sofa behind her.

“Ah, Laura!” he said cheerfully. “We should come out here more often, spend more time together. We used to do that. Remember?”

“We miss you,” Natalie said with so much venom, Laura was certain rattlesnakes dropped dead in the rocks around the house just at the sound of it.

“Everyone makes mistakes,” John added. “We're all human. And we can be that here, with family, but outside of this house we have a duty, a responsibility just as much as any soldier. We have an obligation to be role models to AMERICA.”

“And I can't be a role model if I sleep with women?” Laura asked bitterly.

“It's confusing.” John shrugged. “People don't know what to think.”

“And Dad needs the conservative Baptist vote, which means no gays.” Laura knew the statistics.

“You were happy when you were married.”

John squeezed her shoulders, and Laura flinched.

“I've never been happy.” She did not know how true it was until she heard the razor edge in her own voice. “Not until I met her.”

“Maybe you could help us find a way to reach the moderate liberal,” John continued. “Maybe you could campaign around some social issues. Maybe there will even be a time when you could ‘come out' if that is something you really decide you want to do. But not now. We are standing on the edge of a cliff, and we can either soar with the eagles or fall.”

Laura thought of Tate, standing beneath the hawk and the sky. Laura had never seen anyone be so cool in her entire life, and there was nothing she could say to her family that would make them understand the pathos of a gay Portland barista walking through the desert. Going home.

“We are going back to Alabama tomorrow,” John added.

In her family's mind it was already settled. Laura would fly back to Alabama on a private jet. She would hardly need to call Brenda to give her notice. The Clark-Vester Group and the Enfields had a long-standing relationship, which was, Laura knew when she was being honest, the only reason she had ever been hired.

“No,” Laura said and hurried out of the room before her family could see her cry. “I'm going back to Portland.”

T
ate watched Palm Springs shrink beneath the wing of her plane and felt nothing. She knew on some level that her heart was breaking. She could barely remember the steep descent from the bluff to the highway below. It was just a blur of heat and dust and shifting gravel. She patted the pocket of her jacket. At least she had her keys, her wallet, and her own jacket, even if the rest of her clothes belonged to brother Enfield.

“Hard day?” the man in the seat beside her asked, looking askance at her dusty clothes.

“Yep.”

The pilot announced cruising altitude and Tate fell into a deep, suffocating sleep. When she woke, they had landed. On the TriMet home she watched her own reflection in the window. She could see why the man on the plane had looked at her uncomfortably. It wasn't the dirt on her jeans. It was the look in her eyes.
I'm too old for this
, Tate thought.

Tate returned home and threw herself on the futon. She considered calling Laura. Then she replayed the conversation she had heard through the door of Laura's closet. A presidential nomination. An accountant. Laura's voice taking on the same tone it had had at their meeting in Beaverton.
Let's go downstairs and you can brief me. Who's at the press conference?
Anyway, she had left her cell phone in Palm Springs. It was probably for the best.

She did not want to stare at the four walls of her studio apartment and think about Laura. She went downstairs. After several failed attempts, she got the engine of her ancient Harley to turn over and headed to Vita's.

At least she could tell Vita the story. Perhaps in the retelling, some part of it would become comic or at least remarkable. Perhaps, true to form, Vita would retell the story to each of her roommates, and by the end of the night Tate would have been locked in a basement, rescued by FBI agents, then chased through the desert amid a rain of bullets.

True to its original calling the door to the Church was never locked, and Tate let herself in when she arrived.

“Hello?” she called as she climbed the stairs.

The living room/sanctuary was dark, the air was heavy with incense. Melissa Etheridge blared from a crackling speaker. For a moment, she thought she had stumbled on a performance-art installation by one of the roommates.

“I'm sorry,” she called out. “Is Vita here?”

It was only then that she noticed the figure slumped across the kitchen counter, her head near the speaker, a bottle in one hand.

“Vita?”

On the speaker, Melissa Etheridge wailed.

Vita straightened, slightly, and took a swig off the bottle. Southern Comfort, Tate noted. Vita's mascara had run. Her hair had deflated while still maintaining a certain rat's nest quality.

“What does it all mean? Life!” Vita pounded the bottle on the counter. “Nothing. That's what it means.”

It actually would have made a fairly good performance piece if it had been staged. It was a modern rendition of
No Exit.

“What's wrong?” Tate asked, hovering in the doorway because a quick exit felt like the most attractive course of action at that moment.

“She left me.” Vita's words slurred, and she swayed on her stool. “Cairo left me.”

There was no exit this time. Melissa soared to a crescendo. Vita turned up the volume until the music was so loud Tate thought it would recalibrate her heartbeat. The song ended and began again. Tate crossed the room and turned off the music. Melissa Etheridge playing on repeat was never a good sign.

“I'm sorry, Vita.”

Vita turned, bottle in hand.

“Where the fuck have you been? I called you and you didn't call me back.” She was drunk. “How could you, Tate. You're supposed to be my best friend.” Vita took another gulp of Southern Comfort and looked at the bottle. “You're my only real friend.”

“How can you drink that stuff?” Tate said wearily.

“I don't see why you care, since you never call me.” Vita rested her head on her arms, staring across the countertop at a bowl of shriveled oranges. “Where were you?”

Tate had half a mind to pull up a stool, take a swig of the Southern Comfort, turn Melissa Etheridge back on, and tell Vita exactly where she had been and why she was back. But that wouldn't help either of them.

“I lost my phone.”

She pulled the bottle from Vita's rubbery grasp and poured the rest of the brown liquor into the sink, filling the air with its cough syrup smell.

“That's mine,” Vita whined.

“You've had enough.”

“You don't get to lose your phone,” Vita said, draping even more of her body across the counter. Tate put her hand on Vita's back.

“What happened?”

“Life is shit. That's what happened. She said she wasn't ready to make a commitment. She said she didn't want to
limit
herself to the experiences she could have with one person.”

Tate looked down at Vita. Only the look of abject misery on Vita's face kept Tate from reminding Vita that she had used the same line on every woman she had ever dated. How many brokenhearted girls had cornered Tate outside the Mirage, begging her to intervene on their behalf? She did a quick tally: at least seven.

“Say something,” Vita said, looking up.

And there was the rugby player. She made eight. The white girl with dreadlocks, the drag king, the stripper, the woman from Austria.

“What do I do?” Vita said.

Tate stopped counting.

“I don't understand. How she could just leave? What do I do? You've been dumped a hundred times. You must know.”

“Thanks.”

“But you
have to
know! Why am I so unhappy? What do I
do
?”

Why are we so unhappy?
Tate thought. She patted the Aqua-Net disaster that was Vita's hair.

“
You
never do anything.” Vita answered her own question. “You just go quiet and sit around looking stoic with those goddamn cheekbones. Why did we break up, Tate? You and me, why?”

“Because we were sixteen, and you set my porch on fire.”

“I did it for you.” Vita reached for Tate's face. “You're so pretty. You know I love you.”

Tate took a step back.

“I love you too, Vita. And you're drunk.”

“How do I get her back?”

“You don't. You cry. You watch
L Word
reruns. You say you're going to go vegan and stop drinking, but you don't actually do it. That's what you do when you get dumped. Because people don't come back.”

In the back of her mind, Tate thought she must still be in shock. It was the only way she could deliver the words without weeping.

“Of course they do,” Vita said.

“In movies.” Tate sighed. She didn't know what else to say or how much. There had to be some sort of inverse relationship between alcohol and talk therapy. The more one drank, the less point there was in processing details. “Do you remember the rugby player you dated?”

“Yeah.”

“And the biology major from PSU, and the woman with multiple personalities? Did you ever think about going back to them?”

“No.” Vita's eyes were wide.

Tate heard her own voice as if from a great distance, a gentle friend delivering the news directly because delay would only cause more pain.

“Did you know that they all asked me what they could do to win you back? Do you know what I told them?”

Vita waited.

“I told them there was nothing they could do.”

There is nothing I can do.

“But I love her.”

But I love her.

“I know you do,” Tate said quietly.
But it doesn't matter.