Goodbye, Clem. Tell Mom I said hey.
Time kept going; inching, lurching, slowing, but always moving. The year 2000 drained away in a blur of gray and empty days and endless nights. Noah had started kindergarten at five (too early, Vivi Ann thought; she should have held him back a year, would have if Dallas were here, but he wasn’t), and T-ball at six and soccer at seven. She missed all of his Saturday games; it was just one more thing to feel guilty about. Aurora always offered to come with her to the prison, but Vivi Ann refused the offer. She could only do it alone.
Then, finally, in the first week of September 2001, she got the call she’d been waiting for.
“Mr. Lovejoy would like to see you today.”
It was good news. Vivi Ann knew it. In all the years of Dallas’s imprisonment, never before had Roy asked Vivi Ann to come to his office for a meeting.
Thank you, God, Vivi Ann thought as she got ready that morning. That sentence cycled through her mind, gaining the speed of a downhill racer, until she could hardly think of anything else.
On her way out of town, she stopped at the school and picked up Noah. After all that they’d been through, he deserved to be there on the day they got the good news.
“I’m going to miss recess,” Noah said beside her. He was playing with a pair of plastic dinosaurs, making them fight on the front of his bumper seat.
“I know, but we’re going to get news about your daddy. We’ve been waiting so long for this. And I want you to remember this day, that you were here for it.”
“Oh.”
“Because I never gave up, Noah. That’s important, too, even though it was really hard.”
He made sound effects to go along with the dinosaurs’ epic battle.
Vivi Ann turned up the radio and kept driving. In Belfair, the town at the start of the Canal, she drove to Roy’s office, which was housed in an older home on a small lot beside the bank.
“We’re here,” she said, parking. Her heart was beating so fast she felt light-headed, but she didn’t take one of her pills, not even to calm down. After today, she’d never take one again. There would be no need, not once their family was together. Helping Noah out of his seat and taking him by the hand, she walked up the grass-veined cement path to the front door.
Inside, she smiled at the receptionist. “I’m Vivi Ann Raintree. I have a meeting with Roy.”
“That’s right,” the receptionist said. “Go on through that door. He’s expecting you.”
Roy sat at his desk, talking on the phone. Smiling at her entrance, motioning for her to sit down, he said something else into the phone and hung up.
Vivi Ann put Noah on the sofa behind her, told him to play quietly; then she took a seat opposite Roy’s desk.
“You made it over here in record time,” he said.
“I’ve been waiting years for this phone call, haven’t I? Haven’t we?”
“Oh,” Roy said, frowning. “I should have thought of that.”
“Though of what?”
“What you’d think.”
Vivi Ann felt herself tensing. “You called to tell me his federal appeal has been granted, right?”
“Technically it’s a writ of habeus corpus, but no, that’s not my news.”
Behind her, Noah’s voice grew louder, as did the clacking together of his dinosaurs, but Vivi Ann couldn’t hear much of anything over the sudden roar of white noise in her head. “What is your news?”
“I’m sorry, Vivi Ann. We were denied again.”
Slowly she closed her eyes. How could she have been so naïve? What was wrong with her? She knew better than to believe in hope. She took a deep breath, released it, and looked at him.
She knew she looked calm and composed, as if this new setback were just another bump in a bad stretch of road. She wouldn’t let herself fall apart until tonight. She’d had years of practice at waiting, pretending, hiding. “May I have a glass of water?”
“Sure. It’s right there.”
She got up, walked carefully to the pitcher of water set up on the sideboard. Pouring herself a glass, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a pair of pills, swallowing them before she turned around. “Does Dallas know?”
“Yesterday,” Roy said.
Vivi Ann sat down, hoping the numbness would come fast. She couldn’t stand what she was feeling. “What now? Who do we appeal to?”
“I’ve done everything I can on his case, pled every argument, filed every motion, sought every appeal. I’m not a public defender anymore—you know that. I’ve been doing all this pro bono, but there’s nothing more I can do. You could get another lawyer, say I was incompetent, and hell, maybe I was. I would help you in that if you wanted.” He sighed. “I don’t know, Vivi. I just know we’re done now. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t say that.” She heard the shrill desperation in her voice, the sharp edge of anger, and tried to soften it with a smile. “I’ve been hearing that for years, from everyone. I’m tired of it. We need you, Roy, to prove his innocence.”
Roy glanced away.
In that furtive look, Vivi Ann saw something. “Roy? What is it?”
“Nothing. I just . . . had a heart-to-heart with Dallas this week. Finally.”
“You know he’s innocent, right, Roy? You’ve said it to me a million times.”
“I really can’t comment on that anymore.”
Now she was afraid. Was Roy implying that Dallas had confessed to him? She got to her feet and stood there, looking down at him. “I can’t take this shit, Roy. Please. Don’t screw with my head.”
He looked up slowly, his eyes sad. “Talk to Dallas, Vivi Ann. I’ve made arrangements for you at the prison for tomorrow.”
“That’s it? That’s what you have for me after all these years?”
“I’m sorry.”
She spun away and went to Noah, grabbing his hand and dragging him out of the office and down the steps and into the truck.
All the way home, she replayed it in her head, trying to change it, soften it. At Aurora’s house, she shoved Noah at her sister, saying, “I can’t deal with him tonight.”
She heard Aurora calling out to her, telling her to come back, but she didn’t care. Fear was like a great black beast standing in her peripheral vision and she was desperate to get away, to get numb.
When she finally got home, she slammed the door shut behind her and went straight to the medicine cabinet. She took too many pills—who cared? anything to numb the pain—and washed them down with tequila.
Crawling into bed, she pulled the covers up and tried not to think about Dallas or Noah or the future. If she thought about any of it, she’d fall apart. And so she lay there, woozy, cottony, staring out the window at the ranch until night fell; after that, she stared at nothing until she was part of it and she couldn’t feel anything at all.
The next morning, feeling like a piece of old, dried-out leather, she climbed out of bed, took a scalding-hot shower, and went to the prison.
“Vivi Ann Raintree to see Dallas Raintree,” she said formally, although by now she was known around here.
The woman at the desk—it was Stephanie today—smiled. “Your lawyer scheduled a contact visit today.”
“Really? No one told me that.”
Normally she would have been thrilled at the idea of a contact visit. In all the years she’d been coming here, she’d only had a few. But now she knew why it had been scheduled. It was Roy’s parting gift to her, a signal that the end had come.
She went down to the metal detector. Once she was through it, a big man in uniform said brusquely, “This way.” He stamped her hand and gave her an identification tag to wear around her neck.
She followed him down a wide, gray hallway. Doors opened and closed automatically, swinging wide slowly and clicking shut with a loud thud behind them. The noise seemed to grow closer and louder with each new open door, until Vivi Ann was in the prison itself, the part where the prisoners were housed.
At
last, the guard led her into a room at the end of the last hallway. It was small, without windows or cubicles. A uniformed guard stood in the corner opposite the door. He took note of her arrival but didn’t move or nod.
In the center of the room was a large wooden table, scarred and scratched from years of use. Several molded plastic chairs were pushed up to it. She went to the table, sat down, and scooted close, waiting. On the wall, the minutes ticked past.
Finally, the door in the back of the room buzzed and swung open. The guard turned slightly to face the door.
Dallas hobbled into the room; his wrist and ankle cuffs were linked to chains cuffed together around his waist.
She got to her feet, waiting, unable to believe they were this close again after all these years.
He shuffled over and she took him in her arms, holding him tightly, feeling how thin and bony they’d both grown.
“That’s enough,” the guard said. “Take your seats.”
Vivi Ann reluctantly let him go. He hobbled back to the opposite side of the table and sat down.
He slid back in his chair, putting his feet forward. His hair was really long now, almost past the curl of his shoulder.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out the latest picture of Noah, handing it to him. In it, their son was sitting in a big western saddle on Renegade, waving to the camera. “You should see your son ride. He’s going to be as good with horses as you are.”
Dallas took the photograph in a trembling hand. “We’re not good for each other, Vivi.”
“Don’t say that. Please.”
“I tried to be good enough for you.”
She swallowed hard. “What did you tell Roy?”
“It doesn’t matter anymore.” He was so still it was almost as if he wasn’t breathing, which made no sense because she was gasping like a sprinter, unable to catch her breath.
“You know what I loved most about you, Vivi? Y’never asked if I killed her. Never.”
She went to him, pulled him into her arms, and kissed him, wanting to feel him, touch him, but all she tasted were her tears. “Don’t you try to tell me you did it, Dallas. I won’t believe you. And don’t you dare give up. We’re in this together. We have to keep fighting—”
“Back away,” the guard said, moving toward them.
Through the blur of her tears, Vivi Ann could see that Dallas was smiling. It was the same sexy, easy, come-hither smile he’d given her all that time ago at the Outlaw Tavern on the night they’d met. “You should have married Luke.”
“Don’t,” she said, but it was barely a whisper, that plea.
The guard opened the door and led Dallas out.
And when she looked down, she saw the photograph of Noah still on the table, and she knew he had given up.
Saturday after Saturday, as September turned into October, and then into November, Vivi Ann went to the prison and signed in. She sat in a cubicle, alone, watching the minutes of her life tick away.
Dallas never came out to see her again. Her weekly letters were returned unopened. In December, six years to the day after his arrest, he sent a postcard that read: Give Noah my truck and tell him the truth.
The truth.
She didn’t even know what that meant. Which truth? That his parents had loved each other, or that it had ruined all of them, that love? Or did he mean to imply, as Roy had, that he had confessed to Cat’s murder (she would never tell her son that, and she wouldn’t believe it, either). She didn’t know. All she knew was that she was past falling apart these days. It had been bad going to prison to see him all those years. Now not seeing him was worse. She’d thought until today that it couldn’t get worse.
Then the mail had come. When she saw the big manila envelope from the prison, she tore into it, thinking, Thank God.
Petition for Dissolution of Marriage.
Nothing had ever hurt like that, not even losing Mom or Clem. Nothing.
She’d gone straight to the medicine cabinet for her pills and took too many, washing them down with tequila. Then she crawled into bed and closed her eyes, praying to God that she didn’t dream . . .
“Mommy. Is it time yet?”
“Mommy?”
She lifted her heavy head from the pillow.
Noah stood beside her bed. “We gotta go to Sam’s house, remember?”
“Huh?”
His face pursed into a frown that was becoming familiar. “The party starts at three o’clock. All the other moms know that.”
“Oh . . .” She shoved at the covers and stumbled out of bed. Moving slowly—her head was pounding and her body felt as if it had been stuffed with cotton—she tried to take a shower, but her hands were so numb she couldn’t turn the faucet on. Instead, she ran her fingers through her lank, dirty hair and made a sloppy ponytail. Dressing seemed to take forever; her focus was off and her fingers were trembling and her balance was shot. Finally, though, she got herself into a pair of old gray sweats, cowboy boots, and a flannel shirt. “Less go, little man,” she said, trying to smile, thinking that maybe she’d slurred the words.
“Where’s the present?”
“Huh?”
“It’s his birthday, Mom.”
“Oh. Yeah.” She walked unsteadily around the house, wishing this fog in her head would go away. She found a nearly new halter on the kitchen counter (what the hell was it doing there?) and wrapped it up in the comics section from last weekend’s newspaper. “There. He got a new horse, right?”
“That’s a dumb present.”
“It’s this or nothin’.”
He sighed. “Fine.”
They went outside, into a falling rain, and headed for the truck.
It took her too long to strap him into his bumper seat, and by the time she finished, she was soaking wet. Her shaking fingers were so slick she had trouble grasping the wheel.
Rain pummeled them, turned the windshield into a river. The wipers could barely keep up.
She hit the gas. Driving through town, she tried to focus only on the road in front of her; it was impossible to see. The world looked watery and bleak, insubstantial, like the last time she’d gone to the prison to see Dallas . . . when she’d kissed him and begged him not to give up on her, on them . . . she’d come out into the rain on that day, too, had—
“Mommy!”
She blinked and tried to focus. She was in the wrong lane; a car was coming at her fast, its horn honking.
Swerving hard, she felt the truck lurch sideways and careen over the sidewalk. She slammed on the brakes but it was too late, or too hard. The truck skidded through the wet grass and crashed into a tree.
She hit her head on the steering wheel so hard that for a second she didn’t know where she was. The taste of blood filled her mouth.
Then she heard Noah’s screaming.
It seemed to come at her from far away, that high-pitched, hysterical sound. Somewhere deep inside, she reacted to that scream, wept for it, but her head was so fuzzy that she couldn’t make sense of it all.
“Mommy!”
With shaking hands, she undid her seat belt and unhooked his bumper seat. Noah launched himself into her arms, sobbing against her neck.
Slowly, slowly, she began to feel him in her arms, to realize what had just happened. She clung to him, breathing in his little boy scent. For so long, she’d held back from Noah, been afraid of him, but now her love for him came rushing back like water through a storm drain, almost drowning her. “Oh, my God,” she cried. “I’m so sorry . . .”
He looked up at her, sniffling, his eyes dark with tears. “Are you okay, Mommy?”
“I will be, Noah. I promise you.”
Vivi Ann put the truck in reverse and backed away from the scarred and dented tree trunk. The truck’s engine idled too fast, revved when she hit the gas, but it backed up, dropped down from the curb.
Her whole body was shaking as she drove; still, she tried to hide that from her son, who was back to playing with his dinosaurs
as if nothing had happened. But he’d remember this; she was sadly certain of it.
She drove to the party and dropped him off, holding him so tightly he squirmed to be free.
“I love you, Noah,” she said, wondering how long it had been since she’d let herself say those three words.
“Love you, too, Mommy.”
Straightening slowly, she watched him walk up to the front door. In another life—the one she’d once imagined for herself—she would have walked up with him, held his hand the whole way, and then joined in with the other mothers inside, organizing games and handing out cupcakes.
Now she stood here, alone and separated from her own life.
It had to stop.
She went back to the dented, smoking truck and climbed into the driver’s seat.
What a joke that was: her in the driver’s seat. She’d been a passenger for years, but what was she going to do? What could she do? The answers seemed too big to grasp, too far away to see clearly.
The only thing she knew for sure was that she needed help. She couldn’t handle being alone anymore.
And Winona’s house was across the street.
She got out of the truck and walked to her sister’s property line, standing at the closed white picket fence. Rain pelted her, blurred her vision, but it couldn’t obscure the sudden knowledge of what needed to be done. Noah deserved more from her.
Finally, with a heavy sigh, she walked up to Winona’s front door.
“Winona? Your sister, Vivi Ann, is here to see you.”
Winona had been waiting for that sentence so long that when it finally came, she stood upright immediately, almost forgetting to tell Lisa to send her in.
She stood there, uncertain, hopeful, afraid, trying to think of what to say. Then Vivi Ann opened the door and walked in, and Winona was so taken aback that she couldn’t say anything at all.
Vivi Ann wasn’t just crying; she was sobbing. Great, gulping tears that shook her shoulders and ravaged her pale, drawn face.
Winona went to her, opening her arms instinctively.
Vivi Ann shrank away, stumbled over to the couch, and collapsed onto it.