by Liza Palmer
“Sure . . . sure,” I say, keeping stride while trying not to notice that he’s probably going at half his normal pace. We run past a more upscale neighborhood just on the outskirts of the town square. We pass several houses that have their own signs boasting a North Star Stallion in their midst. My breathing steadies and I begin to enjoy the syncopation of our steps. Within ten minutes there are no houses. I’m reminded of how isolated all of these little Texas towns are. They were built around the corresponding railroad stations of old.
“How was your first last meal?” Cal asks, looking straight ahead.
“It was weird,” I say, looking at the low white fences, the high grass, and the grazing cattle just beyond.
“What did he order?” Cal asks. Is his pace getting a bit faster?
“Fried chicken, okra, potato salad, a chess pie, and some Blue Bell ice cream,” I say, my mouth watering even now.
“Chess pie?”
“It’s old fashioned. Basically a pecan pie without the pecans.”
“That seems kinda pointless. This way now,” Cal says, merging left onto another road.
“It’s good. Real sweet, though,” I say, noticing that this new road is turning into a hill. I’m going to kill this kid.
“He was a bad guy, you know. Real bad,” Cal says, looking around to check my reaction.
“Yeah, I heard,” I say, not wanting to remember it.
“I’d think cooking for someone who deserved to die would be better than cooking for someone who didn’t, though, you know? Like someone who was innocent?”
“Yeah, I guess,” I say. I think of those damn Starburst. I push the nightmarish thought out of my mind as quickly as I can.
“Not that you like cooking for either.”
“I do, actually,” I say. I can feel a line of sweat run down my neck and along my spine. My legs are starting to burn. The hill is getting steeper. Cal’s pace is unchanged.
“You enjoy it?”
“I mean, I don’t like the whole death row aspect, but I don’t know. Cooking in that kitchen feels like home to me,” I say, too tired to lie.
“That’s weird, Aunt Queenie,” Cal says, laughing.
“I know. Trust me, I know,” I say, leaning forward just a bit as the hill gets steeper still.
We climb the hill. Although we don’t speak, my labored breathing is loud enough to be a tad distracting. Cal keeps checking on me. Past plots of land each surrounded by low, vertical, white fences with barns in the distance. Cattle meander along, not bothering to look up at us. As we make another left, I begin to orient myself. I know this land. I know where we are. I turn my head and see Paragon Ranch just up over the rise. Nothing but land behind the metal gate that arches over the one road in.
When I was in school we all got to take a field trip to the Paragon Ranch. As we walked through the well-tended landscape, the stables, and into the main ring where they train the horses, I remember thinking how beautiful it all was. Felix Coburn sitting tall on the most gorgeous horse I’d ever seen, his Stetson bigger than all outdoors. Arabella Coburn, small, but fierce, controlling those horses (and the cowboys) as she leaned against the bars of the ring. I looked up to her. She was everything my mother wasn’t. Strong. Loyal. Proud. People respected her. Feared her.
When I saw her again, I remember the look on her face after Everett asked if he could take me to the Saturday dance. She was at the school and I remember thinking that if I could just talk to her she’d like me. I walked up to her, and the teacher she was speaking to called me by name. As Everett came up behind me, she snatched him close, as if to protect him from infection. They left quickly. The hallway emptied out. I was eleven. I was understandably crushed.
I know what she did was wrong. I was an eleven-year-old kid and she was an adult. She was obviously misguided. But knowing it and acting on it are two very different things. Leaving North Star allowed me to live in a vacuum. I could create endless monologues about Arabella Coburn and tell an imaginary Laurel exactly what I thought of her as I showered and got ready for a day in some faceless kitchen in some new city. I could yell into the night sky that Felix didn’t know me and how dare he tell Everett I’d ruin him. It was my own private bubble where I could kick and scream and these ghosts couldn’t hurt me. They existed in an abstract snow globe that would collect dust on the sill until I was ready to shake ’em up again.
But now that I’m back, I realize how vulnerable I feel. How that eleven-year-old kid is never far away. From me or Merry Carole.
And on we run.
This entire plateau belongs to Paragon. I look from the metal gate to over the rolling hills. The view is spectacular. The wheat-colored landscape stretches on forever. As I stare down the main road, I see Everett ever so slowly ambling along as the mist crawls and hovers over the very hills his family owns. I’d recognize him anywhere. His cowboy hat sits low as he walks along with—I crane my neck. It’s Arrow, Everett’s dog.
When Everett was eighteen his family’s chocolate Labrador had a litter of puppies. Arrow was the runt. Everett took to him immediately. He always did have a habit of choosing the underdog. They became inseparable. When Everett drove through town in that old truck of his, Arrow was always right up in the front seat, sitting tall with his face out the window trying to catch the wind. When we shipped off to college, Arrow had to stay with the Coburns . . . and he was a nightmare. All heart and no brains. He spent his days attacking drapes and getting himself locked in closets, eating kitty litter, and making himself sick when he lapped up a bottle of the best bourbon Felix had mistakenly left on the counter. Everett always defended that dog. When he finally came home after college, he and Arrow took up right where they’d left off.
“Hold up a sec?” I wheeze to Cal. I stop and clutch my side.
“You all right?” Cal asks, beeping off his stopwatch.
“Yeah, just a stitch,” I say. Cal nods and runs over to the long, white, vertical fence. He begins doing push-ups.
I stare at the slowly ambling pair. Arrow must be thirteen or fourteen by now. He looks frail. I watch as Everett slows his pace, waiting for the now barrel-bodied dog to catch up. I can hear Everett talking to the dog; I can’t make out any words from as far away as I am, but the tone is easy and loving. This is how he spends his mornings? Everett stops altogether as Arrow, in his ornery way to the last, has decided to lie down right where he is. Everett just shakes his head, laughing, and bends down to him, caressing his muzzle and petting him. In time, he helps Arrow back up by lifting the dog’s haunches, steadying him as he struggles to get his footing. The unlikely pair walk on, out of sight.
“You ready?” I ask, wiping away tears that I’ll blame on the glaring sun.
“Yeah. You okay?” Cal says, fiddling with his stopwatch again.
“Sure . . . sure,” I say, tearing myself away from the point on the horizon where Everett and Arrow are.
I gather myself, take a deep breath, and run and run and run. I need to flush the grief I feel for what Everett and I had. That sweetness I just saw with Arrow was what I always loved about him. It’s not as if I understood in the beginning what it meant to fall in love with someone. I knew love didn’t mean that things were going to work out or that it made people nice. Love, to me, even at a young age, was complicated. I knew it didn’t stop people from leaving or from hurting you. Love seemed to give people a free pass to treat you poorly. How many times had I heard the words “I love you” right before someone did something terrible?
When that feeling bubbled up inside me about Everett, I didn’t automatically default to love. It was different, purer. In the beginning, we didn’t put any barriers or rules on it, we just knew that there was something there. An understanding that we were the same in ways we couldn’t comprehend. There was a safety in knowing that.
It wasn’t until I grew up a bit that I realized real love is more about the beauty of the everyday. It’s not an accident that every love story seems to end with the coup
le walking off into the sunset together. I think about Everett and Arrow walking the Paragon land every morning and how I had no idea he did that. I know things about Everett only the most intimate connections yield and yet I have no idea how he spends his mornings.
I catch up to Cal as we finally begin to go down the hill. Our footfalls are syncopated as we begin our descent.
“So you’re going to stay then? In North Star?” Cal asks, not looking at me. I stumble a bit, my feet tangling as I absorb what he’s asked and what it took to ask it. I right myself quickly.
“I’ve definitely thought about it, but I don’t know, sweetheart. I don’t know,” I say, seeing Everett still heavy on my mind. Cal picks up the pace down the hill.
“I want you to,” Cal says, looking back at me now with those ice blue eyes. He gives a curt nod and looks away quickly.
Emotion chokes my throat. My breathing grows more and more shallow as he turns to see my reaction once more. I offer an ineffective smile and a nod, knowing if I stay it means that snow globe might as well be shattered. We run on in silence.
Cal and I get to the bottom of the hill and begin running through town. He smiles back at me, but then looks away. I smile, trying to breathe deep, deep, deeper.
We arrive home and the heat seems to have followed us down that hill. We eat and shower. There may have been a quick tantrum in there (by me) about having to go to church. When I get out of the shower, I find a bright orange short-sleeved sundress and some wedge-heeled sandals waiting for me on my bed.
“I assume you have undergarments,” Merry Carole says, leaning in my doorway.
“It’d suit you for me to go commando under this thing, right?” I say, toweling off my hair.
“Please don’t embarrass me, Queen Elizabeth,” Merry Carole says. She’s dressed in a demure outfit. Somber colors, high neckline, and hem past the knee. Her hair is high, yet reverent. Her makeup is respectful, with its more natural shades and pinkish-hued lip gloss.
“I’ll try.”
Merry Carole closes the door after herself and I put on the orange sundress as if it’s a costume laid out for me by the wardrobe department. Today, Queen Elizabeth Wake, you’ll be playing the part of a respectable townsperson who is not an utter failure.
Merry Carole, Cal, and I walk into the town square in our Sunday best.
The town church sits in the exact center of North Star. The Texas Hill Country is known for its beautiful painted churches, which were built by the early Czech and German settlers. Our church is not one of the famed painted churches, but it is beautiful. Its white steeple rises high into the big sky, and the church looks just like you’d want a small-town church to look. The reverent North Star citizens stream in through the large wooden doors. I see all the familiar faces. Fawn and Pete. Dee and her brood. Shawn looks happy as he carries his youngest into the church. Whitney and Wes, their two kids, follow behind. As we near the church, I smooth my dress down, clearing my throat. It’s gone dry all of a sudden. My legs are tired and sore from this morning’s insanity, but I’m happy I went. Maybe just nuts enough to go again, if Cal will have me.
We walk through the big wooden doors, past the ushers, and down the main aisle of the church. Huge beams stretch and web their way across the barnlike ceiling. The simple design of the church and the pews is a nod to German engineering. Clean lines and function over form. Merry Carole stops and motions for Cal and me to go into the pew first. We oblige. I smooth my skirt again and sit on the hard wooden pew next to an older couple who smile at me as I settle in. I smile back and begin to scan the church, telling myself the entire time that I’m not looking for Everett.
Merry Carole’s body is controlled and tight next to me. She’s making eye contact with everyone and no one at the same time. Her posture is perfect and she keeps pressing her lips tightly together, smoothing her lip gloss from one to the other. When she’s not doing this, her eyes are scanning the church as she anxiously bites the inside of her cheek. As I watch the circus that is Merry Carole’s feelings, I see Everett, Arabella, and Felix Coburn settle into the pew just beyond Merry Carole’s. They greet Florrie, her husband, and their brood as Gray smiles and charms his way through the bevy of adoring single ladies who’ve gathered around him. I lean forward in the pew just enough so that Everett can get a perfect bead on me. He does. He’s caught completely off guard once again. I can see him see me, not really believe it’s me, process that it is, and then look instantaneously drained. I remember this morning and seeing him unguarded as he walked along with Arrow. How beautiful it was to see him unencumbered with the weight of our relationship. I lean back in my chair, completely comfortable with using my fifteen-year-old nephew as a buffer.
The music, the pomp and circumstance, the ladies’ fans, and the spoken and repeated words echo through the church as I stand, sit, and kneel in front of God and everybody. I catch glimpses of Everett during the service, but still force myself to seem unaffected. In the quiet of the church, I let myself relax and get swept away in it all.
As we file out of the church, Merry Carole guides us over to the edge of the front lawn. Cal and I oblige, but I wonder why we don’t just go straight home. As I’m just about to ask, I see Reed Blanchard walk by with his two little girls dressed in their Sunday best. Reed and Merry Carole share what can only be described as a longing gaze.
“You could go over there,” I say, after Cal has excused himself to catch up with some of his friends.
“I just can’t, but I will go see if I can find Fawn and Dee. I’ll be right back,” Merry Carole says, and walks over to where Fawn and Pete are speaking with some other people Merry Carole knows I’d have no interest in spending time with. She falls quickly into conversation. I can see her exchange looks with Reed. It’s heartbreaking. Their entire body language is a sigh.
“I didn’t expect to see you here.”
Everett.
“You keep forgetting who my sister is,” I say. He laughs and it actually pains me. He’s in his Sunday best, hair combed, clean shaven. A far cry from what he wore this morning.
“How are you?”
“I’m good,” I say, meaning it.
“Good. I saw you up at Paragon this morning,” Everett says.
“I went running with Cal.”
“I was wondering why he was a little late today. Now I know.”
“I wasn’t that slow.”
A moment passes.
“Did you know everyone knew about us? Like everyone?” I blurt out, the sun hitting my eyes as I look up at him. The question comes from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. I’m just as shocked as Everett.
“What?”
“Yeah. Piggy Peggy enlightened me in the Homestead the other day. Told me they all knew, Laurel . . . everyone,” I say, my voice robotic and calm.
“She did what?” Everett’s eyes flare and his entire body stiffens.
“Yeah, she laid it all out for me. It was actually a pretty stirring tale of how I ruined the great Everett Coburn. Or at least that’s what people say,” I say, placing my hand over my eyes to shield them from the sun.
“Right. Peggy can never just say something on her own. God forbid she has an original thought.”
“That’s what I told her.”
Everett is quiet.
“Queenie, I’m sorry,” Everett finally says.
“I know. Me, too,” I say. The truth. I stare over to where Merry Carole and Cal are standing with Fawn and Dee. Everett stops me.
“Do you want to talk about it? We could meet up later.”
“We’ve been talking about this for going on twenty years, I just—”
“I waited for years for you to come back. I can’t believe we’re already over,” he says. It’s not a mournful statement, Everett’s pissed.
“We never started,” I say.
“Queenie—”
I interrupt him. “No. Enough. Enough. I saw you walking with Arrow this morning and never knew you did that. I
pride myself on thinking I know everything about you, but the fact of the matter is, I don’t. I know what a mistress knows. I’ve never even been inside your house.”
“You can come over tonight.”
“I just—after Cal and I ran this morning, I was brushing my teeth and there was this moth just circling, circling, circling the light. She just kept pounding herself against it over and over. Senseless. No thought for her own safety or mortality. She was dying—she was killing herself. So I turned around and shut off the light. And just like that, she flew away.”
“And in your mind you’re the moth in this scenario,” Everett says.
“Of course,” I say.
“Of course,” Everett repeats, with a bitter laugh. He continues, “Let me tell you what happens when you turn off that light. The moth waits. In darkness. With nothing to live for. And when the light returns, he can’t wait to hurl himself at it once more regardless of imminent death. It’s worth it.”
“How dare you,” I say, tears welling in my eyes.
“How dare I what?” Everett’s brow is furrowed and confused as he leans in closer.
“How dare you act like I had any choice in us being apart,” I say, wiping away a rogue tear. I continue, “Look around. These are your people, Everett. Not mine. No one stopped you in the Homestead, warning you about ruining poor Queenie Wake. No one ever casts you as the bad guy.”
“You remember when I grew my hair out? In . . . what was it?”
“Eleventh grade,” I say. We both smile.
“I got such a talking-to about that hair that I finally had to cut it. ‘No son of mine is going to be walking around this town looking like a roughneck.’ ”
“You never told me that.”
“Sometimes it’s just as hard always being cast as the good guy.”
“I’ve never thought about it like that.”
“You think it’s hard being a Wake, try being a Coburn.”
“I would love nothing more than to pick right back up where we left off, but we can’t. Piggy Peggy was right.”
“Piggy Peggy is an idiot,” Everett says, his eyes flaring.