Something True (8 page)

T
he phone in Laura's hotel room rang as she walked in the door.

“Hello?” she answered tentatively.

“You sound like someone's stalking you.” It was her mother with a voice like sunshine, although it might just have been gin.

“How are you, Mom?”

“We just got out of a planning session. Inspirational. Just inspirational. Your father has some brilliant campaign advisors this time. That's what I want to talk to you about.”

“Now?”

“Oh, hon, are you tired? Are you all right?” The sunshine in her voice dimmed.

For a moment Laura considered an honest answer.

“I'm fine,” she said. “Just tired.”

“You work so hard.” Her mother was on the road almost as much as she was, but somehow the campaign travel never seemed to dampen her spirits or deflate her blond bouffant. “We're looking forward to having you home.”

Home?
Laura thought. The word seemed to have a permanent question mark attached to it.

“You know your father can hire a lot of talent, but he only has two daughters. He's only got one
you.
”

“Of course. I just have to finish up some things in Portland, then Palm Springs, then I'll be home.” Laura sat on the bed, slipped off her Jimmy Choos, and dropped them beside the end table. Her feet ached, and her Achilles tendons burned as they stretched back to their proper length.

“Oh, Laura.” Her mother's voice had returned to its original sunny sweetness. “You know Brenda would let you come home early.”

Laura rubbed her calf.

“I don't know. I haven't asked her.”

“No, love, she would. I talked to her.”

Of course she had. Laura sighed.

“She and Doug Vester are very excited about this campaign,” her mother said. “The whole Clark-Vester Group is behind us. And that job has you running ragged. You're in a different city every day and doing what? There are hundreds of people who can sell property.”

“I buy property.”

“I'm sorry. I'm just so excited about the prospects. Think about what your father can do for Alabama. You could be on a flight tomorrow, and then we'd all be together.”

Laura hesitated. There had been a time when nothing had felt quite as good as sitting around the “think tank” with her mother, father, sister, and brother. Before any of the children were married, before Stan Enfield could afford an army of advisors, when it was just “the fabulous five” as her father called them, sitting under the scattered light of the Waterford crystal, late at night, a bottle of gin half-empty on the table. Before them, between them, in the very air they breathed, there had been the dream of a better America. An America where everyone worked, where industries expanded, where investments grew. But most of all, Laura remembered being together.

“I'll be home soon,” she said.

“But why not now? Your father has built his whole campaign on the American family. What is it going to look like if you're not there? And there's that lovely house you bought in Montgomery.”

Home.

“That house still has the fake flowers the house stagers set up,” Laura said. “I barely remember what it looks like.” She knew she should not go down this path with her mother, not when everything was settled. She
was
going home. She
would
work on the campaign. It did not matter if 8420 Euclid Lane did not feel like the Platonic ideal of “home”; neither did a messy hotel room. But her interaction with Tate had left her angry and resentful, with nowhere to push her ire. “I don't even know if I own that house. Johnny bought it as an investment. I think he put my name on it to spread out the tax liability. I hadn't even seen it when he bought it.”

“It's a lovely house.”

“I don't remember.”

“That's my point exactly.” Her mother really was a politician's wife. “Your brother cares about you. We all do. And your job is making you a visitor in your own home, a nomad.”

Laura closed her eyes. Again, she saw Tate's muscular shoulders, bare in the moonlight. Again she traced the dark symbol inked into Tate's arm. She had never been that close to a tattoo, never touched one, had always imagined there would be something diseased about the skin, but it had been as smooth as Tate's whole body.

“Why won't you just come home now?” her mother urged.

And Laura knew that anything she could say in reply would be a lie.

B
ack at her apartment, Tate wanted nothing more than to throw herself onto the bed and pull the blankets over her head, but Rose was standing in the foyer, leaning on her cane. She was so small, she barely reached Tate's waist.

“What is it, Rose?” Tate sighed.

“We have document in the mail. Pawel says don't trouble you. Busy girl, you have so much to do, but I tried and I tried. My English is not so good. My eyes!” She pressed a hand to her heart. “So old. I will be eight-four. Eighty-four! You know when I was sixty, my sisters all say I look twenty. I bake cookies. Come in. One minute.”

Reluctantly, Tate followed Rose into her apartment. Once again, she took in the profusion of decorative plates that lined every exposed wall, commemorating American presidents, pop stars of the 1950s, and members of the British royal family. Why a Hungarian couple would want the “Elvis Through the Ages” plate set was a mystery to Tate. Luckily, the document—a letter from the landlord explaining that he would be checking on the water heater—was not. Tate translated, ate her cookie, and excused herself under a rain of protests from Pawel and Rose.

“You are so busy. Busy girl. You don't eat enough. So thin.”

In her own apartment, Tate surveyed the contents of her refrigerator: kale, soy milk, and cheese curds. What was she thinking? She slammed the door.

On her phone, Vita had texted:
soooo?

No
, she wrote back. Then she shut off the phone and booted up her laptop.

Laura Enfield
, she typed into the search bar. She felt like a spy, a bad spy who had already lost the war and was now trying to learn a few things about the victor. Her ship sunk, her troops captured; it wasn't even damage control at this point. It was just the wrong thing to do at the end of an awful day. She kept searching.

Several dozen entries came up. She typed in
Alabama
. The findings diminished. Laura C. Enfield of the Clark-Vester Group. She looked at the company portrait of Laura grinning out at the camera, her hair fluffed up like a prom queen, her eyes empty. Tate scanned the results again. The next link took her to a news article.

Republican senator Stan Enfield appeared at a symposium on affordable housing along with his daughter, commercial real estate development consultant Laura Enfield
.

In the foreground of the photo, a cheerful barrel-shaped man shook hands with an old woman. In the background, Laura sat at a table, deep in conversation with a young black man, her face concerned, her pen poised over a notebook.

“I get it,” Tate said staring at her computer. Of course, the girl she fell for would be the closeted daughter of a Southern politician. Of course, Laura's father worked in “policy.” Of course. But it was over now.

Tomorrow was her day off. She would walk up to the Mount Tabor Community Garden and climb the steps she had built with her own hands, eat the fruit she had grown, and watch, from afar, the city that she loved.

Tate had been working in her garden for about an hour when she spotted Vita's familiar silhouette moving between rows of green beans.

“How do you get up here every day?” Vita asked when she arrived at Tate's plot.

Tate surveyed Vita's outfit: high heels, slashes of neon, a lot of vinyl. It was too much to take first thing in the morning. She held her fingers to imitate a viewfinder.

“You look like Stevie Nicks.” She pretended to take a picture.

“You're dirty,” Vita said. She really did look like Stevie Nicks. Stevie Nicks circa 1995. A bit too old for the outfit. Not quite pretty enough for the makeup. “Why aren't you answering your phone so I could talk you into going to Dots and buying me jalapeno cheese fries?”

“I'm gardening.”

Vita surveyed the small pile of weeds Tate had collected beside her Sunny Jubilee tomatoes. She pointed to Tate's boot.

“You're stepping on one.”

It was true. A stalk had bent over, heavy with tomatoes. The fruit now squished out around Tate's boot. Tate kicked the plant out of the way.

“So, do you want to buy me jalapeno cheese fries, or what?”

“Now?” Tate checked her watch. It was barely ten.

“Ha! I worked until three last night, so in my world, it's like ten p.m.”

“And that does not make me want cheese fries,” Tate said.

Vita squatted down beside Tate, an impressive feat given her spike-heeled boots.

“You're sulking,” she said.

“I'm weeding,” Tate said.

“It's
that woman
.”

“That's what Maggie calls her. ‘That woman.'”

“Walk with me,” Vita said. “I can't sit here smelling compost all morning.”

“I just want to get some stuff done around here.” Tate cast around for something that needed doing.

“Give it up. You should just buy that shit at the store like everyone else. Come on. Do you think I just
happened
to be walking through the urban farmstead? I'm going to cheer you up whether you like it or not.”

Tate pulled off her gloves and tossed them in a basket hidden in the kiwi arbor.

“Come on, babe.” Vita linked her arm through Tate's. “It cannot possibly be as bad as you think.”

Together they walked through the garden, Tate pausing to haul Vita over the hay bales, Vita mincing along in black pleather boots.

The community garden bordered Mount Tabor Park, and soon they were walking through the paths that crisscrossed the wooded hillside. Eventually, they rounded a bend in the trail and the trees thinned. To their right they could look down on the Hawthorne district. To their left, the Mount Tabor reservoir stood behind its wrought iron fence.

“So? You going to tell me about ‘that woman'?” Vita sat down on a bench, looking up at Tate through glittery, fake eyelashes.

Tate picked up a pebble and tossed it into the water, sending ripples that reached the farthest edge of the pool. She waited until every trace of the pebble had disappeared, then said, “How long have you been going out with Cairo?”

“Three glorious weeks.”

“Do you love her?”

“I do.” Vita folded her arms over her chest. “I think she's the one.”

Tate took a seat beside her friend. “You
do
realize how many times you've said that, right?”

“Yes.” Vita drew the word out. “But this is different.”

“Do you realize how many times you've said
that
?”

“Yes,” Vita drawled again. “But this time it really is different.”

Tate plucked a sprig of boxwood from the hedge behind her. She held it to her nose. It smelled of travel, of truck stops, of something lonely.

“I know,” Vita added. “You can know after three hours.”

“Do you really think that's true? Or is that just something we tell ourselves later?”

Vita paused. “Do you love that girl?”

Tate rested her elbows on her knees, her chin on her folded hands, and released a sigh that told the whole sad story.

Only it didn't.

“Well?” Vita asked.

Tate told her about her night, about Dayton and Craig, and her failed attempt at promoting Out Coffee, the passion with which Laura spoke to her, and the venom with which Laura decried her life in Portland.

“She thinks I'm a loser,” Tate said.

“You never did love that job,” Vita said.

“I like my job.”

“You're only doing it to save Maggie's ass, and you know it.”

Tate began to protest, but Vita stopped her.

“That's what? Nine years of saving Maggie's ass? Weren't you supposed to go back to college in there somewhere?”

“Maybe I am a loser.”

The punch to her arm came hard and fast.

“Ow!”

“If that's how you want to think…fine,” Vita said. “You're her bit of rough stuff. You're just some dumb working-class dyke. Why don't you strap on, get some grease under your fingernails, and put on a hard hat? Just show up at her doorstep, drop your pants, and say, ‘Come to Daddy, Princess.' Carpe fucking diem. That's what I say.”

Tate needed all the advice she could get; she readily admitted that. And she got plenty. But like other things that came in bulk for free it wasn't particularly high quality. She was just gearing up to tell Vita why it was all a lot more complicated than “carpe fucking diem” when her phone rang.

“Where are you?” It was Krystal.

“At the park, with Vita.”

“Guess what.” Krystal did not wait for Tate to guess. “I got a letter from my father today. He said he might get out. He says they might give him something called ‘compassionate release.' Isn't that, like, the most awesome thing ever?”

“Oh, Krystal.” Tate sighed. “Every time he writes to you he thinks he's getting out.”

“But that's not why I called.” Krystal dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I called because Hillary Clinton is here.”

Vita mouthed,
Is it her?

“Laura?” Tate's eyes met Vita's.

“Yeah, I told her you were working today so she wouldn't think you came in
just
to see her, so you can be, like, ‘Oh, I didn't know you were going to be here.' You know, so you can act all cool and butch and stuff. But you gotta get in here fast. Maggie just started showing her those vagina collages. You know the one where the rubber centipede is getting eaten by the purple vagina? Remember it?”

It was a hard thing to forget.

“I'll be there in ten.”

Tate wanted to be angry at Laura. She was angry. And hurt. It was just that the tableau before her was so perfect. Maggie had retrieved all the Vagina Denta collages and arranged them on a long table by the front window of Out Coffee. She was holding one up and lecturing Laura, her fingers in the vagina's toothy mouth. She looked like some stern, butch art teacher.

“This captures the universal female experience of penetration,” Maggie was saying.

Behind Maggie, Krystal was shaking her head and mouthing the words,
It doesn't.

Meanwhile, Laura sat in white slacks, blouse, and blazer, her head tilted.

“It's very unique,” she was saying. “I do like the purple.”

“Purple represents the menstrual blood and the body starved of oxygen.”

The rubber centipede dangled out of the vagina's mouth.

“It's…vivid,” Laura said.

Catching sight of Tate, Laura rose. Tate took in her cream-colored heels, the curve of her thigh, the low-cut V of her blouse. Around her neck Laura wore a white ascot with a pale, nautical pattern printed on it or, more likely, woven in gold. No one Tate had ever known wore an ascot with anchors.

The perfect politician
, Tate thought, and anger surged up in her chest, flushing her cheeks. Laura had wanted her. She had felt her desire like the crackle around high-tension wires. And it wasn't just sexual. There had been tenderness in the way Laura begged her to keep the necklace and sadness in Laura's eyes when Tate refused. That was what made Tate angry. It wasn't even the accusation about working in a coffee shop; it was that she was sure Laura felt the same attraction she did, and yet it wasn't enough.

“Ready?” Tate said brusquely.

Laura's face said
You are my savior
.

“It's art,” Tate said, as though Laura had voiced an opinion to the contrary. “It's progressive.”

“I'll watch the counter,” Krystal called after them. “Like, all night. Don't worry about anything. Don't even come back tonight. Maggie and I will close up.”

“She's very helpful,” Laura said, putting her key in the rented Sebring parked out front.

Tate ignored the comment. “Not traveling with your minions today?” she asked.

“They're doing some market research.”

“So they can ruin some other small business.”

“Thank you for meeting me,” Laura said.

“I didn't think you'd come back.”

“Well, I did.” Laura slid into the driver's seat. “You still want to show me around?”

Not really.
Tate took her place in the passenger seat. She considered her options.

“We'll start with the velvet painting museum. I think the exhibit is naked black women. You'll have to get it vetted by the senator first. Make sure no one sees you going in.”

It was a challenge.

“You did your research,” Laura said, starting up the car without looking at Tate.

“
My father is in ‘policy,'
” Tate said, echoing Laura's evasion of the night before. “Of course he is.”

“Which way?” Laura said.

Her hands were tight on the steering wheel as she followed Tate's directions. When they reached the small museum, Laura marched in and began at one end of the room as though she was getting paid for spending exactly 1.3 minutes looking at each painting. As it turned out, this month's exhibit was lonesome cowboys.

Tate followed behind her wearily. At the fourteenth cowboy she stopped.

From the front desk, the curator called out, “That's a really interesting one. Look how the lasso could also be a noose dropping over his head. It's subtle.”

“Nothing about velvet cowboys is subtle,” Laura said dryly.

“You don't have to do this,” Tate shot back.

“I said I'd give you a week. I'm giving you a week.”

It was ridiculous, dragging some senator's daughter to the velvet painting museum because she thought…what? This would win her over? She could hear Vita:
You want to bed her, and you want to go into business with her, and the best you can come up with is velvet cowboys?

“Look, Laura.” Tate touched her elbow lightly, but Laura did not turn. “This is a waste of your time and mine. You work for a big company. They're going to do what they're going to do. You're right. Out Coffee is in trouble. Maggie is so far in debt she can't see out. I'm done with the heroics. You can go back to your hotel and get back to your real life.”