Yet just around that corner, there was a port with many of the country’s worst sins written on it, and you couldn’t walk a block without bumping into living, thriving injustice. Charleston’s charming gentility was a beautifully painted mask on hundreds of years of pain, its safety a facade.
Speaking of places that were not home, exactly—when she opened the door of the home she shared, marginally, with Tara, the wall of humidity off that same port surrendered to an assault from the air-conditioning.
Tara’s Single House was a showcase. Always full of light, but rarely noise, it was the perfect set piece for the lesbian debutante daughter of one of Charleston’s oldest families to entertain. Tara wore perfect Southern gentility like armor in battle, wielding her manners and the legacy of her family’s power as weapons in her crusade to radically change South Carolina’s criminal justice system. This house was her command center.
There was a place inside for Miriam’s purse, jacket, shoes. There wasn’t a place for her art, but she had the warehouse. Miriam had never had a home that reflected her or made space for her. She caught herself, sometimes, dreaming of vibrant walls and kitschy clutter, but asking for it felt beyond her. She’d been too well trained as a child not to intrude.
Miriam dropped her keys in a hammered silver bowl on a carved teak stool in the foyer, listening to them echo. Her foot connected with something heavy, wheeling it away. She looked down, dazed, to find her carry-on. She’d left it there earlier today, arriving home from the airport before heading straight to the warehouse to get work done. It made the house feel like an Airbnb she was checking out of.At least I won’t have to unpack, she thought a little hysterically.
At the end of the polished wood hallway, a blonde bob peeked out of a doorway.
“Babe! I’ll be off this conference call in five minutes. I have dinner being delivered any moment.” Tara didn’t yell, just projected her honey drawl down the hallway, by force of will. Her hair swung, shiny, back into her office.
Miriam pulled her own dark curls into a messy bun. Unlike Tara’s willowy frame, Miriam was very short, just over five feet, although the halo of her curls gave her the appearance of another three inches or so. She usually wore it long and big and untamed. With her small, pointy face and very large features, she resembled nothing so much as an illustration of a Lost Boy. She felt lost, now, as she sank down into a chaise longue, set adrift by the idea of returning to Carrigan’s. By the loss of Cass’s existence, somewhere, in the world.
She was ordering a Lyft to the airport when Tara sat down next to her, bumping her with a shoulder. “Hey, you.”
“Hey, you, back.” Miriam tried to move her mouth into a semblance of a smile.
“There should be barbecue on our doorstep any second,” Tara began, looking at her phone and not noticing Miriam’s mood. “I made sure there’s no hidden pork in yours. I’m almost done with trial prep for the day.”
“Tara,” Miriam interrupted, “I have to go to New York. Today. My great-aunt Cass died.”
Tara slowed, softened. “Oh, Miriam. Oh my gosh.” Miriam found herself being pulled into a hug. “Do I know who your great-aunt Cass was?” Tara asked, puzzled.
Miriam almost choked on a sob of surprise. She’d never told Tara about Carrigan’s. Of course she hadn’t.
Carrigan’s was the thing that had most hurt to give up when she’d cut ties with her family. The place closest to her heart. She never talked about it now, if she could help it, and Tara had met her in the time After. And if Miriam never talked about Carrigan’s, she never talked about Cass, because CasswasCarrigan’s.
Besides, she and Tara didn’t have a relationship built on sharing their deepest secrets. Tara had needed an interesting wife as an accessory to throw garden parties, and Miriam had needed a place to land with someone safe. Tara was often thought of, by Charleston’s old guard, as a bit of an icy bitch, partly because she challenged them and partly because she was prickly as hell. Miriam helped her project a softer public image, and Tara took care of Miriam’s needs even as her prickliness kept Miriam comfortably at a distance, where she preferred to be.
They were friends, lovers, and co-conspirators, but they were not in love. They had a pact: Miriam helped Tara create a faultless life, and Tara gave Miriam stability to build her career.
Neither their souls nor their pasts were a part of their arrangement. Miriam would never have agreed to marry Tara if she’d thought there was any danger of falling in love with her.
“I’ve mentioned Cass,” she insisted nonetheless, crossing her arms. “She owns a Christmas tree farm in the Adirondacks. My cousin Hannah works there? My family spent our vacations there when I was a child, and Cass was very important to me. Carrigan’s was very important to me, once.”
“I’m sure if you had mentioned that to me,” Tara bristled, “I would have remembered.”
“Maybe?” But Miriam knew she was unfairly picking a fight. Tara never forgot anything.
Tara hummed. “Well, we were supposed to be at a party for my firm, but we can make it up. The firm will understand that you were pulled out of town for a family funeral. Although for a great-aunt you haven’t seen in ten years, perhaps you could send a floral arrangement?” Tara was slowing her Southern cadence down even further, in that way she did when she wanted to give the listener time to change their answer.
Tara was very effective in front of a jury.
“I need to go be with my family. I need to go home to Carrigan’s,” Miriam told her.
Tara stared back. “Miriam. One: Carrigan’s is not home, it is a place you spent vacations. I’ve never even heard of it until today. Two: You are estranged from your family. Three: You’re Jewish, and Carrigan’s is, apparently, aChristmastree farm.”
Tara always argued in numbered lists, without giving anyone breathing room, so that by the time she got to point five, you’d forgotten what point one was. It was a great lawyer trick, but a less charming girlfriend trick.
Miriam took a deep breath, though a tsunami of grief threatened to swallow her. She stuffed it down, as she’d done with all her feelings for so long now, and tried to be fair to Tara.
Tara wasn’t fixating on law firm dinners for nothing. She’d built her criminal defense practice to ensure fair trials for those victimized by the very systems her family had upheld for generations. But to reform those power structures from within, she needed to maintain access to them. To keep herself from being ostracized, especially as a lesbian, she was always skating a fine line. She skated it beautifully, gracefully, from years of practice—but with enormous effort.
Miriam couldn’t be mad at Tara for panicking a little, even if her grief wanted someone to lash out at.
She jumped off the couch and wiped away tears.