Something True (10 page)

“You only had a term left,” Laura added.

“You did your research.”

The Sebring glided down a shady side street. Tate allowed herself just a minute to consider what it would be like to live in one of the stately houses, set behind sweeping maples, with a woman who loved her.

“What would I do with a BA in physics?” she asked finally.

“You'd been accepted into a graduate program. You had loans, and your second year you were going to get a teaching fellowship.”

Tate's surprise ran deeper.

“Nobody knows that. Not even Maggie.”

Especially not Maggie
, Tate thought.

“So why?” Laura drove on, her eyes on the road, but Tate felt her attention focused on her.

“I was never that good,” Tate said.

“You must have been good enough.”

“Maggie needed me.”

It was all in the past and, like the mansions, so far beyond her reach now that longing for it was like longing for a dream.

“To run the shop?” Laura asked.

“Lill left her,” Tate said. “It wasn't entirely my fault. I was one of many charity cases Maggie took in. Poor Mags. She was heartbroken, but more than that she finally realized how much Lill did for Out Coffee. Lill may go on about recalibrating the chakra, but she can balance a checkbook. She found fair-trade merchants they could actually afford. She hired employees who would actually show up. She fired people who stole. People came to the shop because they loved Maggie, but the shop survived because of Lill.”

“So when Lill left her,” Laura finished for her, “you dropped out of school and filled in? You took the place of her wife?”

“Not romantically.”

They had arrived at Laura's hotel. Laura turned into the underground parking garage and circled down a story. Then she parked, turning off the car but not getting out.

“In every other way?”

Vita teased Tate about saving Maggie's ass, about keeping Out Coffee afloat, but Laura's questions felt different. They felt inescapable.

“I help her because she helped me,” Tate said.

“You never wanted to finish your degree?”

“I like my job.”

“And that's enough?”

“You think everyone with a degree is happy?” Tate countered, even though she was certain that was not what Laura meant.

“I'm not saying. I'm asking.” Laura's gaze met Tate's. “Are you happy?”

Tate looked away and shrugged.

“My girlfriend dumped me for an oboist because she said she needed someone who understood her art. Then she took up with the biggest player in the Portland lesbian scene, who, I am sure, could not identify an oboe if it was up her ass. My coffee shop is being bought out, and the woman I think of as a mother is too old to work on her feet anyway. I haven't had sex in months except for one marvelous night with a woman who said it could never happen again.”

Laura reached for her purse as though she suddenly needed something, but once she had it, she just clasped it in her lap.

“I'd like to be in love,” Tate went on. “With someone who loved me back. I'd like to have enough money so that I didn't worry about my bike breaking down or cracking a filling. I'd like to be able to take care of Maggie, and maybe take in my own Krystal someday. But you know, it's summer. It's so beautiful out there.” She gestured up at the ceiling. “And tonight my friend Vita, who I've known since we were kids, who once tried to kill my family in a house fire because she cared so much about me, she is going to make risotto, and we're going to sit outside and eat and talk. And, yeah, I'll be happy.”

“Okay,” Laura said. It sounded like good-bye.

Tate got out of the car. She was a few steps away when she heard Laura open her door. She turned. Laura leaned one elbow on the roof of the car. Tate waited for her to speak, but she said nothing, so Tate asked, “How did you know I got into graduate school? No one knows that.”

“I asked my father's research analysts to run a background check on you.” There was a flash of that wry smile again.

Tate shook her head to hide her own grin.

“And what did they say when you told them you wanted to know all about some dyke barista in Portland, Oregon?” she asked.

“I told them I was looking into a business partnership.”

Out Coffee was quiet when Tate returned.

“It's your day off,” Maggie said. “You should relax. But how did it go?”

Krystal sat on a back counter, swinging her legs.

“How was the girl?” Krystal asked.

“Better,” Tate said, not meeting Krystal's eyes. She gave Maggie a brief rundown of the day's activities. “But I can't promise anything,” she finished. “Just because I took her around Portland doesn't mean she's sold on Out Coffee.”

“You're so good,” Maggie said. She ran her hands through her short, graying hair. “What would I do without you?”

“You would be fine, Maggie,” Tate said, trying not to notice the inexplicable pile of official-looking papers stuck in between two of the espresso machines.

“Hey, if you don't need me,” Tate said, “I'm going back out to my garden for a while.”

“Can I go?” Krystal asked, bounding off the counter.

Maggie looked around. The shop was quiet.

“For an hour,” she said reluctantly. “Be back here to help me close.”

As soon as Tate and Krystal arrived at the community garden, Krystal leapt off Tate's motorcycle and continued to bounce in circles around her.

“Did you have fun with the girl? With Hillary Clinton?” Krystal asked.

Tate shrugged.

“Did you kiss her? K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” Krystal spelled out. She was practically singing.

“No.”

“Are you going to?”

“No,” Tate said, swallowing hard. “Why are you all wound up?”

“I told you!”

Tate was relieved that Krystal did not seem inclined to press her for more details from her afternoon with Laura. Then she remembered the letter from Krystal's father.

“Come on, let's weed something,” Tate said.

She headed toward her garden plot with Krystal on her heels.

“Don't you want to know what he said?”

Tate gazed up at the network of straw paths, railroad ties, and orderly vegetable plots.

“Oh, Krystal,” she said.

They reached the plot with the kiwi tree. Tate dug around in a plastic bin and retrieved two pairs of muddy gloves. She handed one to Krystal and pointed out the weeds in between rows of chard. Then she knelt down and began carefully extricating them.

“He said he wants to come stay with me for a little while when he gets out,” Krystal continued, beaming. “He just needs me to help him pull together $2,000, and then he's going to get a place of his own in The Dalles.”

Tate looked up at her and sat back on her heels.

“You don't have a place for him to stay,” Tate said gently. “You live with Maggie.”

“He is going to get his CDL. You know he can make sixty dollars an hour driving with a CDL, and I'm going to move to The Dalles with him,” Krystal said, her voice growing shriller. She took a breath and turned away. “He wants me to move there with him.”

Tate let out a deep sigh. Maggie was no good at these conversations about Frank Jackson. She invariably resorted to rhetoric about female solidarity and the “family we choose.” But Tate didn't know what to offer instead.

“You know my mom kicked me out when I was a little younger than you,” she said.

“Yeah. I know.”

Tate patted the earth beside her, and Krystal sat down heavily. Tate looked at her, her pink hair escaping its ponytails, her Barbie-doll makeup at odds with the dirt furrows around her.

“Krystal, you know that people aren't always who we want them to be.” Tate saw Laura leaning on the roof of her car in the parking garage, so elegant, so untouchable in her white ascot. “You have to make a distinction between what you want and what's really going to happen.”

Krystal flopped onto her back and stared up at the sky. “That one looks like a dog eating a cheeseburger,” she said, pointing to a cloud above their heads. She said nothing for a long time.

Tate pulled a few weeds, glancing at Krystal as she did. She knew she could get this part right: silence. Maggie and Lill loved to talk. They were always talking to Krystal about the future and feminism and self-reliance. Tate lifted a clod of dirt to her nose and inhaled its rich, dark fragrance.

“Don't you think we have to believe in people?” Krystal asked eventually. “You know? Give them a second chance.”

Of course Tate did. Her whole life was a second chance.

“Just be careful.” Tate wanted to press the words into Krystal's forehead like a sacred seal.
Dream
, she wanted to say,
hope, play, but remember the minute he gets out of prison your real life starts.
“He could hurt you. I know you don't want to hear that. I know you don't think it will happen. But he could. He's hurt other girls. That's what he does.”

“They say the woman was a drug dealer,” Krystal said.

“That doesn't change what he did,” Tate said, brushing the dirt off her gloves.

She expected Krystal to protest, but she just stared up at the sky.

“You're always careful,” Krystal said finally.

Tate pulled off her gloves and ruffled Krystal's ponytails.

“Yep,” she said and rose and walked into the shade of the kiwi tree. “And that's why I'm still alive.” Just the rustle of leaves and the faint scent of fruit made her think of Laura and their kiss beneath the arbor. Her body filled with a longing that rested heavy in her heart.

“But Tate,” Krystal called plaintively, “I love him.”

W
hen she entered her room, Laura went straight to her laptop and opened her e-mail. Work was her refuge. Her father had taught her that. There was no problem in life that could not be solved by work. In work, grief melted away. Disappointment became fuel for accomplishment. Questions crystallized into answers. But as she stared at the in-box, the names swam in front of her eyes.
Who are these people?
She closed the lid. The sunlight outside was fading from gold to blue and the first twinkle of city lights sparkled outside her hotel window.

She tried not to think of Tate. Tate dropping the diamond on the sidewalk. Tate striding away, her back upright, her head bowed. Tate in her tiny walk-in closet of an apartment. Somewhere Tate would be sharing a meal with her childhood best friend, sitting outside, watching the sky fade.

Laura felt restless. Her clothes were too tight. The air conditioner was too loud. She poured herself a glass of wine from the minibar, but the cheap merlot in a plastic glass just reminded her of everything she was missing. She flopped down on the bed and closed her eyes.
What am I doing?
It was the kind of question she had always thought welfare recipients should ask, or women with nine children, or old men who still worked at gas stations. Tate should be asking this question, but it was Laura, staring up at the textured plaster on the ceiling, who asked.
What am I doing?

Without thinking, she slipped her hand under the hem of her skirt and pressed her clit through the fabric of her pantyhose, her body shaper, and her underwear. She relaxed into the pressure. Was that what she was doing with Tate? Just fulfilling a biological need? If that was the case she should be able to refuse, to put it out of her mind, but she couldn't.

She rarely masturbated. It embarrassed her. The weak orgasm she sometimes achieved and more often did not was not worth the vague feeling that she was doing something she should have given up at age four. But now she felt like someone deviled by an itch she could not reach. Her hands moved as if of their own accord, stripping layers of spandex and nylon until she could touch her bare flesh.

Her thoughts took her back to Tate's bed. To her surprise, it was not the memory of what Tate had done to her that aroused her the most—although she tried to touch herself as Tate had touched her, one finger inside her body, her other hand rubbing her clit—it was the thought of touching Tate. She remembered her own fingers exploring Tate's sex, how Tate's hips had thrust against her hand, how wet she had become. Tate's face had been so stern, so reserved, and her body so open. Her desire had made her seem vulnerable, and Laura had longed to protect her and pleasure her all at the same moment.

Now she imagined parting Tate's legs, pressing her lips into that delicate place. She imagined what it would be like to draw Tate's sex into her mouth. It was something she had never done with a woman, and in more lucid moments she worried that when she finally had the chance—allowed herself the chance—she would do it wrong and make a mess of the whole thing. But those fears were far from her mind. Now her own body swelled at the thought of kissing Tate.

Laura moved her fingers, imagining her tongue tracing the same pattern around Tate's clit. Each stroke made her shudder, each stroke made her body contract. The whole center of her body, from the tip of her clit to the deep mysterious recess of her womb, was on fire. But there was no relief. She rubbed harder, but the lubrication from her body made her slippery. The touch would not stay where she needed it. Her hand slipped too quickly away. And when she pressed down hard on her clit the promise of release seemed to slip back behind her flesh where she could not reach it.

She thought of Tate pulling her on top of her, holding her hips in her hands and rocking their bodies together.
Don't think about it. Just enjoy it.
But Tate was on the other side of the river. After what felt like hours, Laura stopped. Her body was as hot and tight as ever, only now she felt sore from the frantic rubbing, and the city lights made her feel exposed. She was thirteen stories up, but the sky outside was dark and she was practically onstage.

She was too frustrated to cry, but she let out a short sob as she thought of how easy it would be to call Tate. She knew instinctively that Tate would appear; she would not ask why. She would arrive at the hotel room door like a shy, noble suitor, her motorcycle helmet in hand, her face filled with concern. And Laura knew she could fall into Tate's arms and that Tate would hold her and kiss her. She could say anything to Tate.
I want you. I need you. I can't come. Please touch me.
Words she had never even imagined speaking. She knew she would be able to tell Tate everything.

Only she couldn't. She wiped her hand on the blanket. She couldn't tell Tate anything because there was no one—absolutely no one—in her life whom she could tell
about
Tate.