“I’m all right,” the dog thought. “Not a scratch.”
“I’ll never be so foolish again,” Claire sobbed. “Don’t ever think I don’t love you. I do.” She smothered her face in the dog’s little belly.
“That’s better.” The dog stretched and yawned. They made their way to the Railroad Café without Claire much realizing where she was going, she was just headed in that direction, so that’s where they found themselves. It was pretty much European enough not to make much of a lap dog, or at least nobody said anything, for Claire made no move to hide little Floozie, who had lived after all. They took a window seat and looked out over the old-fashioned Long Island Railroad station. It was only now starting to fill up with commuters, early risers on their harried way to the city, everybody in a hurry at this hour, shooting worried glances at the enormous, plain-faced clock. One from the old days, that one.
The sun had broken through. There was a chipped, white-painted fence along the yard and delicate vines grew up it, cockleshells with purple morning glory. Claire was glad she’d chosen this spot after all. There were newspapers kept on wooden poles, like back in Munich. Outside, there was a pillared rain pagoda under which nobody stood. A blue-shadowed house in the crowded bright sunshine of the station. There were all sorts of people here. Israelis, Lebanese, Germans, Poles, Indians. Even a couple hometowners. Claire snuggled happily into her skin and Floozie into her. I’m done for now, Claire thought, but didn’t care. Telemann was on the radio. And so they sat there, doing nothing. Silently, Claire prayed that the teacher in the pre-K, the woman to whom she had entrusted her only child, would love her little fellow, her curly-dark-haired, chubby-wristed, overheated, red-cheeked boy, and be kind to him when her patience would wear thin. And whose patience wouldn’t wear thin with fourteen pre-schoolers all morning long?
Suddenly, Claire wanted to be home in her own kitchen. She could make herself pancakes, or even waffles. She remembered the old-fashioned waffle iron she’d found for three bucks at a yard sale. If she got home soon enough, she could make them all lunch. There was one heck of a raspberry bush still blooming in the yard. She laughed out loud, earning herself a couple of New York-style, world-weary but still wary looks from nearby tables. New Yorkers were so used to crazies they wouldn’t get up, they just wouldn’t make eye contact. Anyway, she laughed out loud, ignoring them. Who was she kidding, she was past the days of early-morning cafés with the workers. She had her own work to do. If she got home quickly enough, she could get some developing done in her makeshift lab down the cellar. She really would love to see how those houses turned out. She had an idea. Stefan and Carmela had given Anthony an expensive, beautiful set of watercolors last Christmas. She’d put it carefully away until he would appreciate it, and it had popped up when the family had moved. Something about coloring these houses in true combinations of subtle Victoriana intrigued her. If she gave herself some time, she might make some extra copies and give it a try. She’d originally given the paints to Dharma to distract her, and ever since, she’d had them on her mind. And she had four or five loads of laundry that ought to be done by now if she didn’t want the laundry room to overflow. Oh well. She threw the money down onto the table for her coffee and a tip. She wasn’t going to go and feel guilty; priorities had to be gotten straight here. Laundry could wait, couldn’t it, but the beauty of autumn in Richmond Hill could not. It wouldn’t have to, because she was here to screw it on straight, to record it as it was (or at least as she darn well saw it), wasn’t she? Then she could still be there for the kids when they got out of school. Wearily, but getting used, now, to Claire’s erratic mood swings, Floozie gave a philosophic hop into Claire’s big sack. After you’d been through what she had, your devotion wasn’t only grateful, it was ardent.
When they got back home, Johnny was just running out onto the street. “What are you doing up so early?” she greeted him. When he worked nights you seldom saw him before two. Never before noon.
He grabbed hold of her and whirled her around. “Oh, baby,” he laughed, “she’s running. We’ve got her running in the first race at Belmont!”
“Who? What?” Claire laughed along with him in bewilderment.
“Mail Call.”
“The horse?”
“Darlin’, it’s just a claiming race, but this is it. This could be it! If she wins this, if nobody claims her, next time she’d go on to an allowance race!”
Claire tried not to feel annoyed. She smiled her broadest smile. She didn’t like him to see that it hurt her, the fact that he had never found it exciting enough to lose a little sleep for herself or the baby. Fact was, she’d never seen him this excited about anything. She didn’t want to be petty. She wasn’t going to be. Cheerful camaraderie bubbled from her eyes.
“Good luck, darling,” she sang. “Have fun!”
“Hey! Why don’t you come? Anthony’s in school. I’m only staying for the first race anyway. I’d get you back right after lunch. Your mom will be here to get them lunch, won’t she? And Zinnie’s here after school.”
“Oh, gee, Johnny, I just don’t know. I was just going to call my mom and tell her not to bother to come. I thought I would stay home and work in the darkroom.”
Johnny squinted at her, trying to understand.
“Honey, this is our big chance.” He held onto her arms and his voice had something else to it. Pleading?
She was jealous. Jealous and resentful. She’d always thought if they had some big chance it would be something the two of them would have planned together. This was unfamiliar territory for her. She wanted to react the right way, the fair way, but she felt like it had been sprung on her. He read her face.
“What?” he said. “You don’t do one thing for work in four years and all of a sudden just because I’ve got something going here that I really care about, that could really pull us out of the hole, you suddenly decide ‘work’ is so important it can’t wait a couple of hours?”
“No, it’s not like that,” she said, but it was like that, she could hear the edge in her voice as well as he could. She was grudging and he was ready for her with the injured resentment that sprang readily up despite his surface of happiness. She never could just go easy into his trip. Spontaneously. It always had to be something they’d planned. She’d planned. For someone as wild and with as much action in her past as he had had, she was really predictable and sedentary. She knew it. But she also knew that although he’d used money he’d made on his own, gambling, it was still a lot of money they could have used for something sensible. The mortgage. New windows. A new roof. Anthony’s school. It was his, but she couldn’t help wishing he’d consulted her. He never knew when to stop. He always thought the next windfall would take them over the top. Over the hill to the poorhouse, more likely.
They looked unhappily at each other. The dog moved uncomfortably in her bag. Johnny turned to go. “I’ll be back by three then,” he said, polite. Truce. Not peace, but he had to get the hell away. They smiled at each other, but when their eyes met, both pairs were hurt.
Claire let herself in with her key, let the dog in, and watched her scamper into the kitchen for a drink. Swamiji and Narayan were out somewhere; their mats were folded and still in the dining room. The whole house was still. Empty and still. Claire looked at the table from where Tree’s last letter had looked at her. It spoke to her like no reprimand she could make herself. She turned around and slammed the door shut. She ran down the path and caught Johnny in the street as he was turning the car around. He stopped short and rolled down the window.
“I was thinking,” she said, shrugging. “Maybe I want to make a little bet.”
“Get in here.” He clenched his teeth at her and pulled her hook, line, and sinker through the window.
When they got to the track it was already buzzing with activity. Relinquishing their car to a respectful fellow, they walked in the shiny, tall glass doors and entered into a world of clean mirrored surfaces and hot cigar smoke. They we
nt through the owner’s turnstile and took the escalator up to the second floor. Johnny threw a penny clear across the room at the wishing well against the downstairs wall, and they raised eyebrows at each other when they saw it go right in. They even imagined they heard it hit the water with a sure plunk. There weren’t too many women here, Claire realized as she looked around. Matter of fact, there weren’t any. She had to walk double time to keep up with Johnny. He headed over to the big board suspended from the ceiling. This was quite a place, Belmont. There were boutiques up here, fast-food concessions, even an umbrella-shaded French café. The computerized board buzzed and changed, whizzed information on and then off again. A giant movie screen reran races from the previous wins of the horses running today. Johnny had forgotten her. She could see why. This was an entirely other world. Here men could come and be away from their reality. Claire knew their tarnished hearts held secret dreams, maybe-this-time feelings, a chance again at failing no one. This was all going to be okay. Johnny’s horse would certainly lose, and that would be the end of this fiasco. They had no business owning a racehorse. No business at all.
“Okay.” Johnny took her hand and she lurched after him. “Now we go downstairs to the owner’s circle.”
You could tell he said these words with tremendous satisfaction. Though he pretended this was all old hat, she could tell he was getting the greatest kick out of it. All sorts of guys were coming up to him to wish him good luck. He accepted their respect as his due, did Johnny. As he did her presence. He ignored her, but she knew that he knew she was there. She affected a stance she considered wifely, yet still in the running. Shoulders back, spine straight, then one saucy angle of her slender right knee. Were she alone she suspected she would still warrant a couple of motivated once-overs. To test this premise, she left Johnny standing and gazing at the board and headed across the great football field of a hall for the distant ladies’ room. Yes, away from her husband, her child, her whole life, she could still pick up grungy wolf leers. Sadly, she admitted, this pleased her, and gave her some perverse intergalactic relevance. She returned to her husband revitalized, a new woman. It was so silly, but there it was. These men looked like a bunch of lowlifes to Claire, but then her standards had been honed and jaded by the plasticine world of advertising and the weariness of overseas. She hardly glanced. And so she missed the sharp, indulgent silhouette of Mr. Kinkaid beside the observation fence.
Outside, sumptuous trees and bushes surrounded the paddock. They walked through a turnstile where a fellow stamped their hands for identification and then they headed down the mucky horse path to the prestigious, picturesque owner’s circle. Here were the fellows with the suits and ties, the big owners: they wore navy-blue jackets, maroon ties, and flannel trousers. Here were the broads. Two to a customer. Flashy, high-spirited women in makeup and big earrings, their hair pulled back in imitation of the wives of these guys they’d overseen at some luncheon, somewhere, once. Or in photographs on their sugar daddy’s desk one day he was ravenous enough to let her up past his disapproving, respectable secretary. These owner fellows’ wives didn’t usually come to the weeklies. One demure young woman and her children went to sit genteelly under the tree on the white wrought-iron bench over the wide circle of grass. Her blond little girl ran in the shady periphery of the generous landmark, the hundred-and-sixty-year-old white pine tree. Her velvet sash streamed regally to and fro behind her.
The women stood and preened as the crowd took their places behind the fence on the observation stairs. Each owner went over to stand by his horse as the trainers brought them out. Then the jockeys arrived. Well. A shiver of anticipation fluttered through the crowd when out they came in their flippy colors, these miniature men in exactly the right place. They were magical, full of expertise and athlete’s grace. There was something almost mystical about them, delicate and sure, riding their great, nervous steeds. They warranted respect, there was no denying that. Suddenly, Johnny’s horse Mail Call was walked into the stall, and the trainer and the groom got her dressed. Her colors were powder blue and cream. She was number seven, this glorious beast. Claire’s excited heart beat more quickly.
“Johnny! She’s magnificent!”
The horse’s ears perked forward to catch Claire’s admiring words. Her flanks quivered with that fine-tuned nervousness that separates thoroughbred racehorses from any other living creature in the world.
“Ah, she likes you, lassie,” Wiggins said to her. He was the horse’s half owner as well as her trainer, and he rubbed the chestnut’s beautiful hind soothingly. An awful lot of his dreams lay on this pound of luscious horseflesh here.
“You know how to talk to a lady, Mrs. Benedetto,” he said. “She feels that, y’know.”
“Claire. Please call me Claire.”
“Fine, fine, here comes Michael, our jockey.” He introduced Claire to the quick-eyed man who was to ride Mail Call. Claire liked him immediately.
“He just happens to be the best damn jockey in the country,” Johnny boasted as they walked shyly into the owner’s circle and the horses rode around to give everybody in the paddock a good look at them.
“How did you get him, then?” Claire asked.
Offended, Johnny made a face. “Hey. What do I look like?”
“No,” Claire rushed to assure him, “I mean, how did we get so lucky? He’s so, I don’t know, magical.”
Johnny smiled happily. “Yeah. Well, to tell you the truth,” he admitted, “he kinda owed a favor.”
“Gee. He’s wonderful.”
“Yeah. They don’t come any better.”
“And your horse, Johnny—”
“Our horse, toots.”
They smiled at each other and walked the gracious owner’s walk behind the rainbow-colored pack, down the tunnel to the track. This was really quite something. She was so glad she hadn’t missed this, given it up for petty and small silly stuff. This here, as Johnny would say, was big time. He had already warned her that there are no cameras at the track. It was bad luck, they said. Plenty of cultures believed the soul of the subject was stolen a little every time he or she was photographed. Claire had worked with enough deeply emotionally wrought models to accept this as a possibility. She didn’t mind not having her camera at all. As a matter of fact, she rather enjoyed not having it. This was indeed another world, and she could see how Johnny could get so wrapped up in it. A crisp wind blew them along and the sky was a cheerful cool blue.
They went upstairs to the windows to place their bets. Uniformed guards let them out the windowed walls to the owner’s boxes.
“Hiya, Johnny.” The guard smacked him on the back familiarly.
“Hey, Al, what’s up?”
They made their way down through the rows of green boxes.
“Johnny.” Claire pulled his sleeve and pointed out the wire suspended across the track. “Is this the finish line?”
“Yeah.”
“Couldn’t we go down there?”
“Hell. This here’s the owner’s box. Don’t you want to see the race from up here? Feel the prestige?”
Claire looked out across the bleachers. Far away across the racetrack the horses were being lined up at the start. She looked longingly down at the wire so close to the track.
Johnny watched her face. “C’mon,” he said. “You wanna smell the horses, right?”
Without her answering, they flew back out past the guard, down the chrome escalator, across the opened bridge to down in front. The steward climbed to his perch and signaled the race to begin.
Claire and Johnny stood right there at the wire. His knuckles were white against his program.
“It’s just a race, Johnny.” She leaned against him. “It doesn’t indicate your destiny, you know.”
If he heard her, he didn’t let on. To a gambler, the moment is truth.
“And they’re off!” came the cry.
“Where is she? Where is she?” Claire called out to no one. On the board, the numbers came up. In
first place, four. Second place, two; third place, six; fourth place, five. Then it changed. First place, six; second place, four; third place, five; fourth place, one. Two was out. Where was Mail Call? “And it’s Cherry Pie on the rail. Magdalaina in the front and they did the first quarter in twenty-three and four. They’re in the back stretch, they’re turning for home.”
When Claire’s heart had already given up and Johnny’s face had frozen into congenial, resigned, heartbroken good sportedness, from way in the back came the words—the sweetest words to any hopeful’s heart—“and it’s Mail Call on the outside.” Then, wonder of wonders, there she was on the board. She was fourth. Thank God. Claire caught her breath. It was one thing to lose. It was another to lose like a bum. At least they were on the board once, only wait a minute, she was over the hump and she was up now in line with the six and the four. She could hear Johnny screaming, loud. “Come on seven! Come on seven!” They were all in a row. It was the six, the four, and the seven. “Come on, seven!” That was her voice shouting, she realized. She could feel the surge of men pressing up around her to the wire. They were coming down the stretch. Everyone around her was shouting orders over this way and that. She could see the blue and cream of Mail Call and the blood pounded in her ears. She was screaming. Her arm was up in the air and she was on that horse’s back. “Come on seven!” She was sure that horse could hear her. She was up on the fence. There was hollering everywhere. “They’re at the eight pole,” shouted the loudspeaker. The horses were up neck and neck. It was seven. She could feel the front legs of the horse flying over the track. “And it’s seven,” the loudspeaker cracked and rolled overhead. It was wild. She was hugging some fellow and Johnny was hugging some fellow. Then everything turned to a blur. It happened so fast. Johnny was dragging her over the fence to go stand in the winner’s circle for a picture. Claire stood there between Johnny and Tony, dazed and bedraggled and laughing. Mail Call, ears up and sweating and snorting, basked in the glory and the jockey’s caresses of praise. Johnny, upside-down with glee, put both palms to his head and gave thanks, holy Christ, to the ghost of his mother in heaven. Big Canadian geese flew in formation, like birds in a movie, right over their heads.
Foxglove Page 16
