“It is goodbye, baby.”
“No.”
“You were more than I ever hoped for. I want you to know that.”
A knock at the door sounded like gunfire in the quiet. Roy crossed the room, opened the door.
Aurora stood there, holding Noah, who pointed immediately at Dallas and said, “Dada.”
“Christ,” Dallas said softly.
Aurora brought Noah over and put him in Dallas’s arms. He clung to his son, pressing his lips to the silky black hair, breathing in deeply. “Tell him I loved him.”
“You tell him,” Vivi Ann said, dashing away tears with her sleeve. “We’ll visit you every Saturday until they let you out.”
Dallas kissed Noah’s pudgy cheek and then pulled Vivi Ann closer. For one heartbreakingly perfect moment, they were together, the three of them, like it was supposed to be, and then he drew back.
He placed Noah in Vivi Ann’s arms and said, “I won’t let him see me in prison. Never. If you bring him I won’t come out of my cell. I know what it’s like for a kid to have his old man behind bars.”
“But . . . how will he know you?”
“He won’t,” Dallas said, then he turned to Roy. “Tell them I’m ready to go now.”
Vivi Ann wanted to throw herself at him, to block his path and cling to his leg and beg him not to go, but she couldn’t make any part of her move. “Dallas,” she whispered, crying so hard now he was a blur of black and white, a sliver of movement against the wooden wall. She didn’t blink or breathe or wipe her eyes, afraid that at the smallest movement, he’d disappear. “I love you, Dallas,” she said.
“Love Dada,” Noah agreed, nodding and pointing.
At that, Dallas broke. She saw it as clearly as if an arm had simply been snapped off or his spine had cracked. “Get me out of here, Roy,” he said.
And then he was gone.
Every Saturday for the rest of the summer, Vivi Ann went to the prison to visit Dallas. The remainder of her time she spent working at the ranch. She went out of her way not to talk to her father; she left a list for him at the barn when she needed something done.
Now it was the final night of the county fair. For the past few days, she’d lost herself in the familiar routine. Her 4-H Club had brought twelve girls this year, ranging in age from eleven to fifteen. From the moment Vivi Ann pulled her truck and trailer into the shorn, grassy field behind the horse barns, she was in motion. It took a herculean effort to keep the girls—especially the younger ones—on schedule for their classes, so that each one was dressed, mounted, and on deck during the class before theirs. Vivi Ann was constantly running back and forth between the barn and the arena, with Noah in her arms or holding her hand, trying to keep up with her. There were mothers there, too, of course. Julie and Brooke and Trayna were just as busy, doing the girls’ hair, polishing their horses’ hooves, fixing gear that broke at the worst time. By Sunday night, everyone was dusty and exhausted and exhilarated.
Everyone except Vivi Ann. She was just dusty and exhausted.
Closing her eyes, she leaned back against the stall door behind her. All she had to look forward to now was going home, crawling into her empty bed. Every night for the whole summer, she’d rolled over in her sleep and reached for Dallas. She didn’t know which bothered her more—reaching for him or knowing that some night it would stop.
Sighing again, feeling older and more tired than should have been possible for a twenty-nine-year-old woman, she dragged her tack trunk over to the truck and put it in the bed.
She stood in the grassy field, empty of trucks now except for her own. She could see the sparkling lights of the midway from here, the giant glittering spool of the Ferris wheel against the black sky, and hear the distant, recognizable song of the calliope.
She used to love the fair. Now even the word fair mocked her. Everywhere she looked lately, she saw injustice. Nothing was fair; not really.
For all the years of her life, this had been a special weekend, a time of coming together for the Grey girls.
She and her sisters had always closed the fair together, turning this last night into a journey through their common past. They’d walked shoulder to shoulder down the midway, eating scones smothered in local marionberry jam and picking at pink clouds of cotton candy, and talking. They’d done that most of all.
. . . look, Aurora, that’s where you got your first kiss, remember?
. . . that quilt looks exactly like the one Mom made for the Bicentennial, doesn’t it?
. . . Speaking of the Bicentennial, whatever happened to my Bobby Sherman watch? I know one of you witches stole it . . .
She knew her sisters were down there, going their separate ways for the first time. For months, Winona had been trying to reconcile with Vivi Ann, but she ignored every pathetic attempt. Vivi Ann couldn’t look at Winona without wanting to smack her in the face.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out the Xanax Richard had prescribed for her. The little pills had become her best friend lately. Popping one into her mouth, she swallowed dryly and then went to the barn, where Noah lay sleeping in a portable crib. She scooped him up, held him a little too tightly, and carried him over to the truck.
At home, she put him to bed and took a long, hot bath. As was usual lately, she let herself cry in the bathtub, and when it was done, and she’d dried off, she was okay again, able to keep walking, breathing, living. Believing. That was the hardest part of all, the believing that his appeal would be granted and all this would be over. Every time the phone rang, she caught her breath, thinking: It’s happened. And every day, when the call didn’t come, she popped another pill and kept moving. Slowly, perhaps, but she moved, and in this cabin, where memories of Dallas were everywhere, each forward step was a triumph.
She crawled into their bed, took two sleeping pills, and waited for the sweet relief of sleep.
It seemed that she’d just closed her eyes when the phone rang.
She clawed out from the oozy comfort of sleep and reached sideways, feeling for the phone. By the time she found it, she was sitting up. “Hello?” she answered.
“Vivi Ann? It’s Roy.”
She was instantly alert. Glancing at the clock, she noticed that it was 8:40 in the morning. She’d overslept again. The first lesson of the morning started in twenty minutes. “Hey, Roy. What happened?”
“The appellate court affirmed his conviction.”
The words hit her so hard she couldn’t breathe. “Oh, no . . .”
“Don’t lose hope yet. I’ll file a petition for rehearing and a petition for review with the Washington State Supreme Court.”
Vivi Ann struggled to believe in that, but hope had become a slippery thing, hard to hold on to.
“And . . . uh . . . don’t bother going to the prison on Saturday.”
“Why not?”
Roy paused. “When Dallas got the news about the decision, he went a little nuts. They’ve got him in solitary for a month.”
“Did he hurt anyone?”
Roy paused again, and in the silence, the answer came loud and clear.
“It’s killing him,” she said. And me, too.
“It won’t help him to start fights.”
Vivi Ann heard Roy’s words, but all she could think about were her visits to the prison, sitting across the plastic glass from Dallas, who was dressed in his orange felon’s jumpsuit, and the things he’d told her. The way his cell door popped open automatically four times a day, with a buzzing, clicking sound, for meals and one hour of exercise; the way it felt to look out from the yard and see grass through razor wire; the way the prisoners congregated by color and how you had to stay with your own kind but he was half of two groups and belonged in neither; the way “the girls”—guys dressed in as close to drag as their jumpsuits would allow—trolled for takers while bullies looked for victims; and the way it felt to believe you’d never see the stars again, never ride a horse at night, or hold your son.
“Wil
l anything help, Roy?” she asked, hearing Noah’s voice come through the baby monitor. As always, he called out for his daddy. She closed her eyes in pain. She couldn’t help wondering if one day Noah would forget about his father and go on without him. Or would he always remember, and always keep reaching out for a man who wouldn’t be there?
“Don’t give up yet,” Roy said.
“I won’t.”
She couldn’t imagine a moment when that would be possible. As much as believing in hope hurt, not believing would hurt even more.
Vivi Ann hardly noticed the changing of the seasons. As the golden summer of 1996 slid slowly into a cold and rainy autumn, she struggled to act like her old self. To keep moving forward. Aurora showed up on an almost daily basis to make sure that she was rarely alone, but even her sister couldn’t help. Vivi Ann felt as if she were trapped in a cold bubble, suspended. Every day she woke up depressed, alone, but she rose anyway and went about her daily chores. She gave lessons and trained horses and hired a new ranch hand. Thoughts of Dallas came and went, hurting both on arrival and departure; she gritted her teeth and didn’t slow down. Every night when she finally crawled into bed, she prayed that tomorrow she’d get good news about his appeal.
She knew that people were worried about her. She could see it in their sideways glances, hear it in the way they whispered as she passed. Once, their gossip and concern would have mattered to her. No more. In the eleven months since Dallas’s arrest, she’d learned a little something about optimism. It was an acidlike emotion, eating through everything. To believe in hope meant she had to hang on to that alone. There was no room inside of her to care about anything else.
On this cold, brown late November evening, she gave her last lesson at four o’clock, fed the horses, and returned to her cabin.
There, she found Noah on the rug in front of the fireplace, playing with a pair of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures.
He looked up at her, grinning gummily. “Mommy,” he said, opening his arms.
Vivi Ann felt a spasm of guilt. The truth (which she’d told no one and never would) was that the sight of her son’s face was almost more than she could bear these days. That was why she paid this thirteen-year-old girl to watch him during the afternoons. Every time Vivi Ann looked at Noah, she wanted to cry.
“How was he?” she said, reaching into her pocket for some cash.
“Great. He loves Tigger.”
How could Vivi Ann not have known that? “Great.”
Through the living room window, headlights shone, illuminating everything for a moment.
“My mom’s here. See you Monday after school?”
“You bet.” Vivi Ann watched her leave and then stared down at her son. At almost three and a half, he was the spitting image of his father, right down to the long black hair. Vivi Ann hadn’t been able to cut it. “Hey, little man,” she said.
He got up and toddled toward her, talking nonstop. She scooped him into her arms and carried him into the bathroom, where she opened the medicine cabinet. Taking a Xanax, she waited to feel better. Soon, the sharpness of her pain would dull.
Talking to Noah about nothing, she took him into the kitchen and made dinner. When it was finished, she bathed him and read him stories until he fell asleep in her arms.
When she’d put him to bed, she returned to her empty, silent living room and sat there alone, staring down at the diamond ring on her finger.
“Tomorrow will be better,” she said aloud, trying to take comfort in that. “The court will probably give us their answer. Maybe it’s in the mail right now.”
A knock at the door startled her. She had been so deep in her thoughts—dreams, actually—she hadn’t heard anyone drive up. Before she could even stand, the door opened, and Aurora stood there, backlit by the glow from her headlights.
“Enough,” Aurora said, closing the door behind her.
“Enough what?”
“Get dressed. We’re dropping Noah off with Richard and we’re going to the Outlaw.”
Aurora crossed the room, sat down beside Vivi Ann. Gone were the shoulder pads and glitter of the early nineties; in their stead, Aurora had moved on to the Meg Ryan sweetly frumpy look of baggy pants and T-shirts. Cropped hair, now dyed reddish brown, framed her small face and gave her a pixie-like look. “You can’t keep going on like this. It’s killing you, Vivi. You’re just tranquilizing yourself to get through the days.”
“And your point?”
“My point is that you have to get back on the horse. Or at least the barstool. I won’t take no for an answer, and you know what a bitch I can be.”
Vivi Ann didn’t want to go to the Outlaw, where all her old friends would stare at her sadly and try too hard to be friendly. They all thought she should have let Dallas go by now, “moved on,” and it bothered them that she hadn’t. Fashion and music and television shows continued to change, but not Vivi Ann. Her life had paused. Still, the thought of another night spent alone, staring at nothing and remembering too much, didn’t sound so good, either.
“If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for me,” Aurora said, her smile melting a little. “Richard is hardly talking to me these days. It’s like . . . I don’t know. I’m going a little crazy. I need to laugh,” she said quietly. “And I know you do, too.”
Vivi Ann saw the truth Aurora was hiding, or hadn’t faced. Her sister’s brown eyes were dark with the sorrow that came from a crumbling marriage.
There was plenty of sorrow to go around these days, it seemed.
“We could stop off at Winona’s house, maybe see—”
“No,” Vivi Ann said. All her life she’d been a forgiving person, but not on this. She didn’t see how she could ever forgive Winona for turning her back on them when they needed her most. “But I’ll go.”
She got up and went into her (their) room, and found a pretty, out-of-date Laura Ashley dress with a ruffled collar and flounced skirt. Not bothering with makeup, she anchored her hair off her face with a headband and slipped into her caramel-colored cowboy boots. At the last minute, she put a pill in her pocket. Just in case.
Then she got Noah out of bed and went into the living room. “I’ll follow you,” she said to Aurora. “The car seat is in the truck.”
Noah squirmed and cried when she put him in his car seat.
“It’s okay, little man. You’re just going to go visit boring Uncle Richard. Don’t worry—you’ll fall right asleep.”
She followed Aurora to her house, dropped Noah off, and walked with her sister down First Street.
Vivi Ann tried to keep talking, but as they turned on Shore Drive, she felt her stomach tightening up. Memories came at her.
“I don’t know if I want to do this,” she said as they approached the tavern.
You wanna dance?
“But you will.” Aurora took her hand and led her inside.
The usual weekend night crowd was here, playing music and pool, line dancing, laughing, and talking. Vivi Ann could feel them looking at her, whispering.
“They haven’t seen you here in almost a year. That’s all it is,” Aurora said.
Vivi Ann nodded, smiling as naturally as possible. Holding her head high, she walked straight to her old barstool.
“Tequila straight shot,” said Bud, sliding it across the bar to her. “On the house.”
“Thanks.” Vivi Ann downed the drink and ordered another, drinking it as quickly. She scanned the crowd, seeing Butchie and Erik in the corner with their wives, and Julie and Kent John in the back playing pool. Winona was on the dance floor with Ken Otter, the dentist who’d recently divorced his wife.
“I hear they just started dating,” Aurora said, following Vivi Ann’s gaze.
“Lucky him,” Vivi Ann said bitterly.
The band finished one song and started another. It took Vivi Ann only a note or two to recognize it: “Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys.”
Vivi Ann ordered another straight sho
t and drank it down, but it didn’t help to get rid of this titanic sense of loss.
And then she saw Winona coming her way.
“I gotta go,” she muttered.
“Don’t—” Aurora said, reaching for her.
Vivi Ann pulled free and ran stumbling through the crowd. Outside, she could breathe again, but that wasn’t good enough. She needed to be gone from here, away from this place where he was everywhere.
She ran back to Aurora’s house and went straight to her truck, leaving Noah asleep in Aurora’s safe, memoryless house. At Water’s Edge, she hit the brake so hard she lurched forward, smacked her breasts into the steering wheel when she parked.
To the left lay her cabin and the bed she’d shared with Dallas.
To the right lay the house where she’d grown up, and inside was her father, once her safe place and idol; now, nothing. Without him and her whole family, she felt lost, but there was no help for that. He and Winona had made their choice a year ago when they turned their backs on Dallas.
Dallas.
Vivi Ann made a little sound, a thin moan of pain. Stumbling forward, she went into the barn, down the aisle to Clem’s stall. Flipping the latch, she pushed the heavy wooden door open.
“Hey, Clem,” she said, stepping into the darkness and closing the stall door behind her.
Nickering softly, Clem limped over to her, nudged her with her graying, velvety muzzle.
“I haven’t spent the night with you since Mom died, have I, girl?”
Clem nickered again, rubbing her nose along Vivi Ann’s thigh.
And just like that, at her horse’s touch, Vivi Ann fell apart. Everything she’d been trying to hold in came pouring out. She slid down the stall wall and slumped in the cedar shavings, bowing her head to her knees.
Winona was at the stuffed grizzly bear’s outstretched paw when she saw Vivi Ann glance at her, see her coming, and run out of the Outlaw. She paused just a moment, stumbled as disappointment washed through her.
All of this was so unlike Vivi Ann. They’d always fought and made up and gone on; sisterhood was like that, a quilt made up of all the scraps, good and bad. Sighing, she walked over to Aurora, who stood there alone, staring at the open door, sipping her strawberry margarita.