True Colors

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.”