It was only fifteen minutes, but Tate had imagined a last ride together, Laura on the bike behind her, the wind blowing their words away. She imagined stopping at the terminal, giving Laura a kiss in front of all the travelers, then roaring off into her own grief. But, of course, Laura had the rental car, and luggage that she had packed in the trunk the night before. Tate ended up riding beside her in silence. When they got to the rent-a-car kiosk, Laura asked, “How are you going to get home?” in a way that suggested she did not understand why Tate had come with her in the first place.
Tate knew she could not kiss her. Vita’s party had been a magical exception. In the world of Hertz rent-a-car agents and business travelers, Laura kept an arm’s length between them.
“The TriMet stops at the airport. I’ll take that back,” Tate said.
“Hop in,” the rental car agent said, gesturing to a large, gray van idling in the fire lane. “I’ll drive you up to the terminal.”
Tate sat first, and Laura sat on the opposite side of the van, staring ahead, motionless. When the van dropped them off at the terminal, Tate followed Laura as far as she could and still, ostensibly, be walking toward the train.
“What airline are you taking?” she asked.
“United.”
They were almost there. The line was short. Tate knew she had about forty seconds in which to preserve her dignity. Hug Laura, or at least touch her arm. Say, Thank you. Say, Call me if you’re going to be in town again. Then stride off. Vita would have a plan, something about leaving them wanting more. Something about getting the last word in. But Tate’s window of cool detachment closed with her on the wrong side. At Laura’s side. Tagging along like a spaniel.
At the front of the United line, Laura punched her flight number into the computer kiosk, then moved to the next open attendant without looking at Tate.
“Palm Springs. One way,” the man behind the counter confirmed. “One bag.”
He asked the usual questions about strangers with packages, flammable liquids, hazardous weapons.
“Who says yes?” Laura asked, curtly. “Who says, ‘Yes, I picked up a bomb from this guy in the parking garage’?”
“Ma’am, you’re not supposed to joke about it,” the clerk said. “Has your luggage been in your full control since you left home? Yes or no.”
“Yes.”
“And has anyone asked you to carry…”
“Of course not.”
“Have a nice flight then.”
Tate expected Laura to say something sharp, but Laura paused, then asked, “Are there still seats on that plane?”
“Two left, yes,” the clerk said.
Laura turned to Tate for the first time since they had entered the terminal.
“Come with me.”
Chapter 22
Tate saw Laura’s house long before they reached it. From the flats of Palm Springs, it had looked like a circular, gray pagoda perched on a cliff above town. She had noted it, half expecting Laura to look up, and say, And there is the house of John Travolta. Or George Bush’s cousin or Martha Stewart’s aunt. But Laura had said nothing, and Tate dismissed its distant wealth, until, after a steep, winding road, they pulled into a driveway, and Tate realized they were there.
The sun was even brighter on the hilltop. Tate stepped instinctively into the shadow of the house, shielding her eyes as she tried to look up at the eaves.
“This is your house?”
“It’s my family’s house,” Laura said, pressing a sequence of numbers into a lockbox disguised behind a sconce.
“It’s the one we saw from the road.”
Tate had never been in a house that one could see from a distance. Tate’s dwellings were visible from across the street…if you were paying attention.
“I guess so,” Laura said.
Tate paused in the doorway, awestruck. If she had tried to imagine a house so wealthy it could afford its own promontory, she would have pictured something garish or at least something bland: a faux French chateau or a ranch house on steroids. But the room Tate stepped into was as beautiful as the desert rock it rose from. Beyond the foyer spread a step-down living room four times the size of her apartment, its panoramic window revealing 180 degrees of valley glowing in the sunlight. The floor was stone tile. The furniture was upholstered in a palette of beige, and in one corner of the room rested a pile of what appeared to be boulders but were, in fact, pillows fashioned to look like giant river rocks. On one wall an enormous abstract swirled rose and gold, perfectly echoing the colors in the landscape below.
“It’s beautiful,” Tate said.
“Thank you.” Laura smiled. “I decorated it. Take a look around.”
When Tate came back from her exploration, Laura had changed into a new suit. She stood in the kitchen, a marble and brushed-steel extension of the living room, typing on her laptop with one hand and checking off items on a spreadsheet with the other. She looked up.
“Did you like it?”
“When do you have time to decorate?”
Laura held her place on the spreadsheet with a manicured finger.
“Years ago. My family used to come here for vacation.” The smile she gave Tate seemed to be half pride, half embarrassment. “No one ever comes here anymore, but I’m glad you could see it.”
For a moment, they stood looking at each other. Tate took in Laura’s suit. The skirt was shorter, the cut more feminine. She had changed into higher heels, curled the locks of hair that framed her face, and put on an opal necklace on a heavy, gold rope. She was lovely, but as Tate regarded her, she thought, It’s drag.
I see you, she thought.
Laura looked away.
“I have to go to work,” she said.
That night Laura returned late, laden with bags from which she drew boxes of steaming food.
“I didn’t know what you’d want, so I got something from each of my favorite restaurants.” She unloaded her sacks. “I’ve already eaten. I had to. Our buyer owns the least interesting steak house in town.”
She pulled off her heels and tossed them under the kitchen table with a disregard that Tate had not managed for anything in the house. It had taken Tate half an hour to work up the courage to sit on the sofa and another hour before she took one of the books off the shelf in the library.
“How was your day?” Laura asked.
Tate pulled her into an embrace.
“I missed you,” she said, surprised by her own candor.
“I missed you too.” Laura relaxed into her arms.
“And after about an hour, I worked up the courage to sit on your furniture.”
Laura drew back to give her a quizzical look.
“It’s not that stuffy, is it?”
“It’s not stuffy at all. It’s just beautiful. You own your own cliff. I’ve never been anywhere like this.”
“I don’t own it. My family owns it, or some conglomerate. Someone who needs a tax credit owns it. I don’t know anymore. Someone knows,” she said, leaning her head on Tate’s shoulder.
“How can you not know who owns your house?”
“My family is very rich.” She pronounced each word carefully, as if reciting an embarrassing truth. “When you are that rich, you have people to keep track of things like that.”
“Things like mansions?”
“And endowments. Companies.”
Tate closed her eyes and kissed Laura’s forehead. This will never work, she thought.
“I don’t own anything,” she said. “By now Vita’s probably stolen my bike. What’s left after that isn’t even worth a renter’s insurance policy.”
Laura was silent for a minute, and Tate wondered if she had broken some unspoken code of the wealthy, a promise not to admit there was anyone living beneath the mansion. But when Laura spoke, she said, “You have things that are worth more than this house.” She leaned up and kissed Tate again. “After dinner, I want to show you something.”
Tate was almost too
happy to eat, and the few bites she placed in her mouth were so satisfying she wondered how she had ever needed more than a morsel to sustain her. When she was done, Laura led her into one of the bedrooms, where she tossed Tate a cashmere sweater from the closet, as though cashmere sweaters were something one kept in supply for guests, like Dixie cups and washcloths.
“It gets cold,” she said.
Laura herself changed into a pair of jeans, a tweed blazer, and riding boots.
Then they headed out into the night.
“Where are we going?” Tate asked.
“My favorite place. You know I love this house, but I love it because it’s here, in the desert. I want you to see the desert for yourself.” Laura reached for Tate’s hand and led her away from the circular driveway into the desert. Tate kept looking back. The house seemed to grow larger, not smaller, as they moved away, perhaps because it took a hundred meters before Tate could see the building in its entirety. The first story seemed to rise, organically, from the rock beneath it. Then there was a sloping roof and a smaller story with a lower ceiling, and then, on top of that, a kind of observatory that was all windows.
“That’s a bedroom,” Laura said. “We’ll sleep there tonight. It’s gorgeous in the morning.” She squeezed Tate’s hand. “Watch your step.”
They walked for another ten minutes, Laura maneuvering easily through the rocks and sage, Tate watching the ground beneath her boots. Finally, Laura stopped.
“Here,” she said.
Beneath their feet was a large, flat stone, worn clear of dirt, as though they stood on the bones of the earth.
“Sit,” Laura said, lowering herself onto the rock.
Tate sat down beside her, draping her arm around Laura’s shoulders.
“I used to come here with my brother. I haven’t been back in almost ten years,” Laura mused. She touched the rock with the flat of her hand.
Tate copied her gesture. The air was cool, but the rock held the heat of the day. Below them, Tate could see the lights of Palm Springs, casting an orange glow, but not enough to hide the stars overhead. Laura leaned against her.
“We used to have fun,” Laura said, “even during the first couple of campaigns. We were still shocked that it was us. It felt like this adventure that we knew would end. I remember my brother and I used to sit here and drink my father’s whiskey and talk about how crazy it was that people actually trusted our dad to run the country.” Laura gave a sharp laugh that sounded like crystal breaking.
Even sitting on a rock in the desert, Laura’s posture was upright.
“My mother was the first one to seriously think my father might be in politics for the rest of his life. She raised my little sister, Natalie, to think of us as a political family. Then one day it was the family business, and we were all politicians. The perfect Enfield family.”
Tate massaged Laura’s neck.
“I told my brother how I felt about girls once,” Laura said. “We were drinking, but I remember. I was still in high school. He was home on a vacation from college. I felt so close to him, so I told him. He hugged me, and he told me he thought it must be hard. Then he told me to be careful. He knew what was coming. He saw it. He said, ‘When you get a little older, you’ll see there are some things you can’t do and still win.’ Now he won’t even admit that we came up here to drink underage.”
“How scandalous,” Tate said gently.
“That’s what public office does to you. It makes your whole life into one snapshot. If there is anything that doesn’t fit, it has to be erased. It doesn’t even matter if it happened when you were a kid or a hundred years ago or if it happened to your cousin’s ex-boyfriend. Life becomes this big ledger, and everything counts against you.”
Laura looked up quickly, and she didn’t say it. But Tate read the words in Laura’s eyes: You count against me.
In the distance a night bird let out a single, mournful call. Beyond that, somewhere in the canyon, a coyote warbled to its mates, and they answered in unison. Laura did not move.
“Of course, they’re all tremendously happy, and they have nothing to hide,” she said. “That’s the party line. The only thing that will make them happier is having me back in Alabama so the whole family can campaign together.”
“But you’re not going, are you?”
“Of course I am.”
“Why?”
“What political family doesn’t have a skeleton in the closet?” Laura’s smile was flirtatious and sad at the same time.
“That’s not a reason.”
“I love them,” Laura said, staring into the distance as if reading a distant teleprompter. “You chose your family. You picked the people you care about. Not everyone gets to do that.”
Tate wanted to say Yes, pick me, but she hesitated. It was true, she had picked Vita. Maggie had picked her. Lill had picked Maggie. Krystal had shown up like a baby floating down the river in a bulrush basket, but they had fished her in, tethered her to the shore, made her their own. They were all bound together by love and choice and commitments they had made both consciously and unconsciously. It was better than the family Laura described. It was certainly better than Debby-Lynn and Jared and Tommy Spaeth. Still, like so many wholesome things—vegan food, rebuilt laptops, organic lettuce—the reality paled compared to the ideal.
“What are you thinking?” Laura asked.
“I don’t know what to do about Maggie.” It was a relief to finally say it. “She’s old. She can’t work at a coffee shop forever. She doesn’t have a lot of other skills. She doesn’t have any savings or a partner. She has a hundred people who love her and would put her up for a month, but that’s not the same thing. And I don’t make enough money to support her even if I did take over the shop.”
Tate lay back on the warm stone. Laura lay beside her and took her hand.
“Has it ever occurred to you that she’s not your responsibility?” Laura asked.
Tate stared up at the stars.
“How can she not be?”
“Soon she’ll get Social Security and Medicare, and there are rental subsidies available for elders. She could sell her house.”
“It would kill her to sell, plus she wouldn’t get anything. I don’t even understand her mortgages. She’s paid on that house for twenty years, but she says she doesn’t have any equity.”
“She probably got a third or fourth mortgage.”
“Shit.” Tate closed her eyes. There was so much she needed to do, so many things she had to figure out, and she did not want to be anywhere but there on the warm rock, beside Laura.
“I can help you,” Laura said. “We could look at her paperwork together and figure out the best plan of action. It sounds like she’s not always been that responsible.” She spoke tentatively. “That’s not your fault.”
Tate said nothing, waiting for her thoughts to pass on to other topics, but they didn’t, and finally she said, “She took me in when no one else would.” Tate sat up. “And because of that her partner left her, and because of that her business went south, and because of that she probably can’t raise the money to win over your board and convince them to let her stay. And all of that has something to do with the fact that I was sixteen, and no one in the world loved me—except for Vita—and Maggie didn’t even know me, and she just took me in.”
Tate’s voice cracked, but she wasn’t sure if the tears were for Maggie’s generosity or for the enormity of her own debt. She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand, hoping Laura had not noticed, but Laura had already sat up and wrapped her arms around her.
“How is it not my fault?” Tate asked, pressing her face against Laura’s neck. “If I go follow some crazy dream that doesn’t involve her, I’m selling out everything.”
“You’re not,” Laura whispered.
“But she is my responsibility.”
“No, Tate. She isn’t. She just isn’t.”
When they returned, Laura led Tate up to the room on the very top of
the house. Standing inside it was like standing on the top of the world. They were surrounded on all sides by windows and skylights; their privacy was the vast expanse of cliff and sky that separated them from the next living person.
Laura slipped her hands under Tate’s shirt and lifted it over her head.
“I want to see you naked. I want to taste you.”
The eager hush in her voice aroused Tate almost as much as her touch. She let Laura strip her of her clothing, watched as Laura cast her own clothes aside. At first Laura’s movements were clumsy with haste. Her kiss was rough, her breathing labored. But after Laura had come once, riding her sex against Tate’s thigh, she grew languid and her movements slowed.
Gently, she pushed Tate’s legs apart, kissing her way down Tate’s thigh and then nuzzling the soft, dark hair above Tate’s sex. She opened Tate with her fingers and exhaled a breath against Tate’s open sex. Tate shivered.
“Can you feel that?” Laura asked.
“Yes.” Tate’s voice was rough.
Laura directed her breath against Tate’s clit.
“And that?”
Tate nodded. Her body stretched with anticipation. She had not come yet, and she was on fire with yearning, but unlike the nights she had spent with Abigail, there was no anxiety in the straining of her hips.
“Look at the stars,” Laura said.
Directly above her, a skylight revealed a sweep of the Milky Way, visible above the glow of the distant city.
“You’re beautiful,” Laura whispered.
Then she lapped the whole surface of Tate’s sex with the flat of her tongue, starting with the tip of her tongue inside, and enveloping the folds of her labia and her swollen clit.
Tate cried out at the sudden pleasure and pressed herself against Laura’s tongue.
“Oh, yes! God!”
Then her words were lost in delight. She felt like every star had landed on her skin, shimmering and electric. When she came, she laughed because the happiness in her heart and the pleasure in her body had blended into one feeling, one expression, as though the whole galaxy laughed with her. Laura laughed too as she mounted Tate again and rode out another orgasm.
Something True Page 17