The Ranch (24 page)

“I can't believe you did this,” she said to both of them, but even she would have had to admit that Zoe looked genuinely amazed to see her. It was obvious that she hadn't known either.

“It's not her fault,” Tanya said rapidly, as Tom began to take their bags off. “It's mine. Let me explain what happened.”

“Don't bother,” Mary Stuart said sharply. “I'm leaving.” Tom looked surprised and glanced at Tanya with a silent question. But she was too busy dealing with her friend to answer.

“That's not fair, Mary Stuart. Give it a chance, at least. We haven't been together in so long… I just thought…”

“Well, you shouldn't have. After the year I've just had, I don't understand how you could do this. It was a rotten thing to do, and you know it.” She was livid and there were tears in Tanya's eyes as she listened, realizing it had been selfish on her part. She had just wanted both of them to be with her. But she'd been worried about it since she'd done it. It had been twenty-two years, that was a long time for their old wounds to fester.

“I'm sorry, Mary Stuart,” Zoe said quietly. “I shouldn't have come anyway. I have a lot to do in San Francisco, and a small child at home. It makes more sense for me to leave. I shouldn't have come in the first place. I'll catch a flight out after dinner.” She spoke very calmly and very gently, but in the past two decades she had spent a lot of time dealing with very sick, very unhappy, often agitated, even demented people, and she was able to speak sensibly even when in the throes of her own emotions.

“You don't have to do that,” Mary Stuart said, trying to regain her composure, and suddenly feeling she'd been rude, but she had been so stunned to see her, and the moment had been so awkward. “I'll be perfectly happy to fly back to New York in the morning.” But she had to admit, it was a disappointment.

“You're both a couple of jerks,” Tanya said, near tears.

“I can't believe you can keep this bullshit going for more than twenty years. We're almost forty-five years old, for chrissake. Don't you have anything else to think about than to be pissed off at what happened when we were kids? Christ, I deal with so much shit every day, I can't even remember last week, let alone over twenty-one years ago. Give me a break, guys.” She stood watching them, and Mary Stuart and Zoe looked at each other, as Tom took their bags into the cabin. He was planning to stay at a hotel in Jackson Hole, and be on call in case Tanya wanted to go on any excursions. But he wondered now about what they were doing. “Can we at least go inside to discuss this?” Tanya asked, looking hurt and angry, and the three women moved inside, as Tom put the groceries in the kitchen, and then left them.

The three women were standing awkwardly in the living room, and Tanya was wondering what to do now. “Will you at least sit down? You're both making me very nervous,” she said, pacing the room, as Zoe looked at her. Unlike the other two, who were the same age, Zoe was almost a full year older, but they all looked terrific. “Look,” Tanya said as they sat down, “I probably shouldn't have done it, I apologize. It was a stupid, sophomoric thing to do, but I thought I could get the three of us back together. I've missed you. I don't have any other friends like you. Nobody else in this whole world cares about me, absolutely no one. I don't have a husband, I don't have kids, I don't even have stepkids anymore. All I have is you… and what I wanted was what we used to have… that's all… maybe it was crazy… but I wish you would at least try it.”

“We both love you,” Mary Stuart said calmly, trying to regain her composure. “Or at least I do, and I'm sure Zoe does too, or she wouldn't be here. We didn't just come here for the view and the cowboys,” Zoe smiled and nodded as she listened, “but we don't love each other, Tan. That's the problem. I think it would be a very hard two weeks if we all stayed here.” Zoe nodded again, and Tanya looked even more disappointed. She had expected some kind of reaction when they arrived, but she hadn't expected both of them to insist on leaving. She realized now that her idea had been really stupid. She would have been better off extending the invitation to either Mary Stuart or Zoe, and not undertaking such an ambitious reunion.

“What about just for tonight? We've been driving all day, and we're both tuckered out.” She spoke of herself and Mary Stuart, and turned to Zoe. “You've had two flights just to get here, and you look tired… you look good,” she corrected herself, “but you look bushed. We all are. After all, we're not kids anymore,” she teased, but neither of them smiled. They were both thinking about what to do now. “Why can't we just stay here for tonight, and then it's up to you what you want to do. I won't make a fuss, and if you're both pissed and tell me to get lost, and leave, it's my own fault. But then I'm leaving too. I'm not going to stay here alone for two weeks. It would be too depressing,” It was a beautiful place, and a real shame to waste the vacation.

Zoe was the first to speak up, and she looked at both women when she did it. “I'll stay tonight. You're right. It's a long trip back, and I'm not even sure there is a flight out tonight. This is not exactly Kennedy Airport.” She smiled at Tanya, and looked hesitantly at Mary Stuart. “Would that suit you, Stu?” She slipped easily into their old nicknames.

“I'm all right with that,” Mary Stuart said politely. “I'll go back to New York in the morning.”

“No, you're not,” Tanya said bluntly, “you promised you'd spend a week with me in L.A.” She was starting to look annoyed. She thought Mary Stuart was being unreasonable, but she knew just how deep the old wounds went.

“I'll fly back tomorrow,” Zoe said matter-of-factly, and Tanya decided to quit while they were ahead. They were spending the night, it was a start, and maybe a miracle would happen before morning.

“What bedrooms do you all want?” Tanya asked, taking off her hat, and tossing it on a hat rack. The rooms had every possible thing they could have wanted. Coatracks, boot jacks, gloves in case the mornings were chilly. There were rain ponchos in the closet in case there was a storm. Everything was comfortable and luxurious and well thought out. Even Tanya had never seen any place like it. “I love this place,” she said with a cautious smile, and this time the other two joined her. In spite of their amazement at being together again, they all had to agree that the ranch was fabulous, and their cabin even better.

“Do they just do this for you, Tan?” Zoe asked, “or does everyone get this kind of treatment?” She doubted everyone did, she had never seen so many thoughtful little touches, including every magazine they could possibly have wanted.

“Supposedly, every cabin is like this,” she said, helping herself to a root beer. “They called my secretary the week before we left to ask what I like to eat and drink and read, what kind of soap I like, how many pillows and towels, what videos, if I needed a fax in the room, or additional phone lines. I told them one phone was fine, but I had them put in a fax, and three VCR's, and I guessed at the foods and drinks you like. If there's anything you want, just tell them.”

“This place is amazing,” Mary Stuart concurred as she went to look at all the bedrooms, and on her way back she almost ran into Zoe.

“How've you been, Stu?” Zoe asked solicitously, and the look in her eyes startled Mary Stuart. There was a lot of sorrow and pain there.

“I've been fine,” Mary Stuart said softly, wanting to ask her about her own life for the past twenty years. But she knew about the clinic from Tanya.

“I'm sorry about your son,” Zoe said, and instinctively touched her arm. “Tanya told me… it's so unfair… I deal with it all the time, and it's never right, but especially at his age. I'm really sorry.”

“Thanks, Zoe,” she said, her eyes filled with tears as she turned away from her. She didn't want Zoe to see it, but Zoe had sensed it, and she moved away so as not to offend her.

“Have we figured out what bedrooms yet?” Tanya came back into the room and she saw that Mary Stuart had been crying, and she wondered if they'd been fighting, but neither of them looked angry, and then she suspected it was about Todd, and when she raised an eyebrow Zoe nodded.

In the end, they all selected rooms. The slightly larger one had a sunken bathtub and a Jacuzzi, and Zoe and Mary Stuart both insisted that Tanya have it, although she would have given it up to either one of them. And when she agreed to use it, she told them to use the Jacuzzi anytime, but they both pointed out they'd be leaving in the morning. And Tanya almost told them she thought they were both disgustingly stubborn, but she didn't say it. She just went to her own room to change for dinner, and the others did the same a moment later.

Zoe called home from her room, and everything was fine. Jade was eating dinner when she called, and Inge said everything was going smoothly and she put Jade on the phone, and she didn't even cry when she heard her mother. She thought of paging Sam, just to see how things were, but she decided not to. He would be paged by plenty of her patients, so she didn't.

And shortly before seven o'clock they all met in the living room. Tanya was wearing skin-tight black suede pants, and a beaded cowboy shirt, with her blond hair loosely tied in a black ribbon behind her. And she was wearing tall, black suede cowboy boots that she had bought for the occasion. Zoe was wearing jeans, a soft, pale blue sweater and hiking boots, and Mary Stuart was wearing gray slacks, a beige sweater, and Chanel loafers. They were all as they had always been, surprisingly compatible, and yet totally different. There was a kind of mesh between them that, even now, with the rift between two of them, was still more powerful than they were. And Tanya knew that if they'd been honest with each other, they would have admitted that they felt it. She did, she felt drawn to both of them, as though there was an invisible cord around them pulling them closer. When she came back into the living room, Mary Stuart was asking Zoe about her clinic, and she was talking animatedly about it, while Mary Stuart listened in fascination.

“What an enormous undertaking,” Mary Stuart said admiringly, but as they left for the dining room, they both fell silent, as though they had each remembered they weren't supposed to be speaking to each other. But once they were at the dinner table, the conversation got under way again. Tanya talked at length about her next concert tour, and the movie she was about to close a deal on, and they were both excited for her. It was obvious that they were both genuinely fond of her and wanted to protect her. They had been put at a table in the corner of the room, and although they all saw heads turn, no one came to ask for autographs, or to speak to them, except eventually the head of the ranch, Charlotte Collins, who stopped at the table to make them feel welcome.

She was a remarkable woman with a wide smile and piercing blue eyes, who seemed to see all, and kept her hand in every pie, and in every room, and on every person. She knew exactly what every one of her employees was doing at the time, and what each guest needed at that precise moment. And somehow, she managed to coordinate the two to the nth degree. Tanya was enormously impressed by the entire operation, as were the others, and they said so.

“Well, we hope you'll enjoy your stay with us. It's very important to us,” she said, and looked as though she meant it. And neither Zoe nor Mary Stuart had the courage to ask her about planes or tell her they were leaving in the morning.

“I'll ask at the desk after breakfast,” Mary Stuart said, after Charlotte Collins moved on. There would be plenty of time then, and she could always fly to L.A. and spend a night at the Beverly Wilshire. Or to Denver. And Zoe's route was fairly simple. She would just go home the same way she had come there.

“I don't want to talk about this now,” Tanya said sternly. “I want both of you to think about what you're doing. Do you really have so many friends that you can afford to lose someone you've known for half your life?” But what had blown them apart had been pretty brutal and Tanya knew it. She just didn't want it to go on forever. After twenty-one years, they had a right to end it. They all needed each other too badly to let go and walk away forever.

They talked about other things after that, Alyssa for a while, and Jade, but not Todd. And neither Mary Stuart nor Tanya talked about their husbands. They talked about trips and music and friends, books they cared about and Zoe's clinic, and then they started reminiscing about college. The people they had hated most, the funny ones, the ones they'd heard about in recent years, the dorks, the nerds, the drips, the tarts, and the heroes. A number of people they knew in school in the early years had died in Vietnam just before the peace was signed. It had been particularly cruel to lose friends in the final hours, but it had happened. And others had died since then. Several members of their class had died of cancer, and Zoe seemed to know that. She knew it through the medical community or through friends, or maybe because she lived in San Francisco, and a lot of their classmates had never left there. It had been a short, easy jump from Berkeley to the city. And through it ail none of them ever mentioned Ellie. They were still talking about other friends as they walked back to the cabin, and it was only when they were back in their living room that Tanya said it. She knew Ellie was on all their minds, and it would be easier if someone just said it. So she did.

“You know, it's amazing, after ail these years, I still miss her.” There was a long pause, and then Mary Stuart nodded.

“So do I,” she admitted in a soft voice. In some ways Ellie had been the heart and soul of the group. She had always been the gentlest of them all, and yet she had often been the life of the party. She was a funny, zany girl, who would do almost anything for a laugh, including walking into a party with nothing but white paint on. She had done that once, and now and then she wore a lamp shade to chapel. She did crazy, silly things, and she always made them laugh, and then she made them cry. It had broken everyone's heart when she died, particularly Mary Stuart's. They had been best friends and roommates. And they were all sitting there thinking about her, when Zoe broke the silence.

“I wish I'd known then what I know now,” she said gently to Mary Stuart, as Tanya watched them. “I had no right to say the things I did to you. I can't believe how young and stupid I was. I've often thought about it. I almost wrote you a letter once, when my first patient committed suicide. It was like God's vengeance for my having been so cruel and so outrageous to you. It was as if he were trying to teach me everything I hadn't learned with Ellie, that it was no one's fault, that we couldn't have stopped her if we tried, oh, we might have for a while. But not in the end, not if that was really what she wanted. I was so damn ignorant when I was young, I kept thinking that one of us should have seen it, that you should have because you were closest to her. I couldn't understand why you didn't know that she'd been taking pills and drinking. She must have been doing it for months, I think, and I guess she'd gotten away with it. But she really didn't want to. Ellie got exactly what she wanted.” But as Mary Stuart listened to Zoe's words, she started crying. It was like listening to her talk about Todd, but Zoe didn't know that. And Tanya put a gentle arm around her. “I should have written you the letter, Stu,” Zoe said with tears in her own eyes. “I never forgave myself for what I said to you, I guess you didn't either. I don't blame you,” she said sadly. It had blown them all apart. Zoe had been vicious with her, she had raged at her for days, and even at the funeral, she had refused to sit beside her. She had blamed Mary Stuart completely for not being able to stop her, and Mary Stuart had been overwhelmed by the accusations, and she had believed her. It had taken years to overcome her sense of having failed to save her friend's life. It was almost as though she had killed her. And then it had all come back to her with Todd. It was as though the horror had never ended. Only this time it was worse, and now it was Bill blaming her, and not Zoe. “I'm so sorry,” Zoe said as she walked across the room and sat beside her. “I've wanted to say that to you all night. Even if we both leave tomorrow morning, especially if we do, I can't live with myself unless I tell you how wrong I was, and how stupid. You were right to hate me for all these years and I'm really sorry.” She was crying when she said it. It was important to her now to confess her sins and make peace with the people she had injured. And in Zoe's life, there weren't many.