White Horses

by Alice Hoffman

  “Don’t hang up,” he urged as soon as she had said hello. “Please. Please, just don’t hang up.”

  “What are you doing there?” Teresa said to him. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “Don’t talk then,” Silver said. “Just listen—that’s all you have to do. Listen.”

  In the phone booth in Villa Lobo, a dragonfly whose wings were midnight blue was stuck to the glass. Half a mile away, in bed, in the trailer without windows, Joey slept, not knowing that Teresa had left the house to call Bergen, not knowing that chills now ran down her spine.

  “I’m getting married,” Teresa said. “I’m calling to ask Bergen to come to the wedding.” Silver turned to glare at Bergen, who stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room.

  “Give me some goddamned privacy,” Silver whispered to the detective.

  “I always thought that was my phone,” Bergen said, but he backed into the kitchen, away from Silver’s dirty looks.

  “I have a new life,” Teresa went on.

  “Oh, you do?” Silver said. “Are you telling me that you’re in love with this guy you’re all set to marry?”

  When she didn’t answer, Silver knew he hadn’t lost her yet. He relaxed a bit; he reached for a cigarette, lit it, and breathed in the smoke. More than fifty miles away, Teresa could hear a match lit, she could hear Silver inhale, she could imagine a room thick with blue smoke.

  “I know you don’t love him,” Silver said, and, even though he spoke softly, Bergen could hear him. From where Bergen stood, inches away from the kitchen doorway, Silver sounded like somebody’s lover, every word he said was edged with midnight, and feather pillows, kisses given in secret in the dark.

  “What difference does it make to you?” Teresa said.

  “Now, just listen to me,” Silver told her. “Lee’s gone. Do you hear me—I got rid of her.”

  In the phone booth, Teresa felt dizzy; she was surrounded by glass on three sides, a sheet of heavy rain on the fourth. She wished that she could hang up the phone, but Silver’s voice filled her with some sort of hope, every word he said brought her closer to floating through destiny with her eyes closed.

  “Now it’s really just you and me,” he told her.

  “Don’t act like you care about me,” Teresa said. “Remember that night you left me to go out to Lee in the kitchen? Remember all those times you told me not to touch you? Not to let anyone know?”

  “Okay,” Silver said. “I made some mistakes. Forget about them.”

  “I’m trying to,” Teresa told him. “I’m trying to forget you completely. That’s why I’m getting married. So don’t make any promises.”

  Teresa was fighting for distance; but she was lying, and nothing she said could make the lie convincing, not to Silver, not to herself. She still thought about him every night, every kiss she had ever received had been his, it was still impossible to think of living without him. As she held the phone close to her ear, as she listened to his breathing, a hundred miles away but still the one sound that could pierce her straight through the heart, Teresa tried to think of ashes instead of seduction. She thought of blue moons and midnights instead of the noonday heat of the reservoir, the impossible temperature of desire on that day when she first held him tight, when wildflowers and milkweed were pressed up against her bare spine and two hawk’s feathers dropped down from the sky, brushing against her bare toes before they settled in the grass.

  “Put Bergen on the phone,” Teresa told her brother. “I want him to come to my wedding and give me away.”

  Silver refused to call Bergen to the phone. Since the moment when Gregory had fallen into the gutter, with the tails of the black linen suit spread out behind him like wings, Silver had decided that he would find Teresa and take her to Mexico. There was no such thing as scandal any more, no need to think any further than a hotel room in Mexico where a woman with long dark hair waited upstairs for him.

  “No one’s giving you away,” Silver told Teresa. “You’re getting married to spite me. I’m asking you not to do that to me. Not now.”

  In the kitchen Bergen wondered if he might be dreaming, or if years spent listening at keyholes while tracking down corespondents in divorce cases had left him deaf to anything but strange, imagined conversations. He shook his head, but Silver’s words still echoed like black stones, like a lover’s promise.

  “We’re going to Mexico,” Silver whispered to his sister. “We have to. It’s too late not to. Gregory’s dead.”

  For a minute Teresa’s heart seemed to stop; she imagined Gregory circling around Silver until he had ignited, so transfixed by Silver that he had caught fire, every bit of him burning, from the red tattoo on his arms to the dark eyes that reflected nothing but waiting, all gone in an instant.

  “He can’t be dead,” Teresa said.

  “Well, he is,” Silver said. “He’s dead as anybody ever is, and if I don’t get out of here they might just come looking for me.”

  “You killed him,” Teresa said. She was amazed by the sorrow that she felt: a man had managed to die in a city miles away, and Teresa held on to the phone receiver so tightly that her hands turned white, just as if she hadn’t a drop of blood beneath her skin.

  “I didn’t kill him,” Silver assured her; he imagined that it was the mention of death that forced accusations into her voice, rather than the man himself. “He’s just dead, that’s all. And they’ll say that I did it—they’ll come after me.”

  In the phone booth in Villa Lobo, Teresa felt weak, she was all at once horribly lonely, as if Gregory, a convict she barely knew, had been her one true friend.

  “Maybe you’re wrong,” Teresa said. “Maybe he’s still alive.”

  Silver’s voice was soft, he didn’t want the detective in the other room to overhear, but nothing could hide his urgency.

  “Forget about Gregory. Just forget about everything but me.”

  Silver didn’t need to whisper—Bergen was no longer eavesdropping, he didn’t have the heart to hear any more. Bobby came over, dragging his leash in his mouth, but Bergen ignored the dog; he was thinking about Teresa, remembering a girl with long braids and sneakers, a girl with eyes as dark as planets, bottomless as a well. Bergen didn’t hear Silver ask for Teresa’s address, he didn’t hear a drawer in the bureau open and close as Silver searched for a pad of white paper. He was wondering if there was something he could have done, years ago, if he should have insisted that he move into the house on Divisadero Street rather than stay in the Lamplighter Motel, insisted that Dina take back all of the stories she had told Teresa, carefully unknotting the imagined men she called Arias from the boy who sat at the kitchen table with a scowl on his face. He wondered what sort of detective he might be if he had never seen the deception that was going on right in front of him; and he felt old, there in the kitchen, too old to do any more than wish that Teresa had learned a little bit about deception by this time. He wished that Teresa felt as certain as he did that an Aria couldn’t help but evaporate in bright sunlight, an Aria was nothing more than a bundle of twigs tied together with hope and thrown on top of a riderless horse. In spite of himself, Bergen heard the scratch of a pen on paper as Silver wrote down Teresa’s address in Villa Lobo, he could sense Silver’s desire and the certainty of his own fate just as surely as if an ancient secret had finally been let loose, as if a cloud of roses had begun to fill up the apartment on Dolores Street, and there was nothing the old detective could do but breathe in the scent and shudder beneath the bare lightbulb that hung from the ceiling by a wire.

  It didn’t take long for Joey to realize that something had gone wrong. He was used to Teresa’s silences, her long sleeping spells, her nightmares, an occasional fear of the dark. But now Teresa was so restless that she paced back and forth along the length of the trailer, she chewed her fingernails, she refused to eat, she complained that all of their wedding plans were made in haste, she doubted his love, and slowly it became clear to Joey that nothi
ng he did could possibly be right.

  One morning she stood on the mattress of their bed and opened the window above it; beyond the glass were the wooden boards Joey had nailed up in the late fall.

  “We need some light in here,” Teresa said. “I can’t stand how dark it is all the time.”

  Joey went over to the window, edged Teresa aside, then slammed it shut once more. “Without these boards up, any storm we get is going to tear this place apart.”

  Teresa sat down on the bed and sulked. “I don’t care,” she said.

  “I thought you liked this trailer,” Joey said.

  “I hate it,” Teresa told him fiercely. She looked around at the cheap furniture, at the lumpy mattress and the unwashed dishes in the sink, and she grew dizzy. “I can’t live here,” Teresa said. She jumped from the bed and continued to pace, as if her feet were on fire.

  “We don’t have to live here forever,” Joey said. He had never really thought of living anywhere else, but it seemed wise to try to pacify her. “We can move to a house. To a cottage near the river. I know about one for rent.”

  “You don’t know anything,” Teresa told him. “My brother’s coming up here, did you know that?”

  “I thought both your brothers were missing,” Joey said. “I thought some old man was coming up here to give you away.”

  “Reuben’s the one who’s missing,” Teresa said impatiently. “Silver’s the one who’s coming here.”

  “That’s fine with me.” Joey shrugged. “I don’t give a damn who comes to the ceremony with us.” He went to the closet, took out a pair of jeans and a sweater and dressed. “It’s freezing,” he said. “How could you even think about opening the window?”

  Teresa was standing in the middle of the trailer. “I hope you understand that he’s not driving all the way to give me away or anything like that.”

  “Ah,” Joey drawled. “He doesn’t approve.”

  “This is serious,” Teresa said. “He just killed somebody.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Teresa said, afraid that anything she said would somehow betray both Silver and herself.

  Joey went to her and turned Teresa toward him so that they stood face to face.

  “What did he do?”

  “He killed somebody,” Teresa whispered. “And now he doesn’t want me to marry you.”

  “I don’t care what he wants,” Joey said. “I don’t care who he killed. He’s not going to stop us from getting married.”

  Teresa shook her head; all along the walls of the trailer she saw Angel Gregory, and his eyes were even sadder than those of the red dog he wore on his skin.

  “You don’t know Silver,” she told Joey.

  “How can he stop us?” Joey asked. “We’re in love.”

  Teresa went to the door and grabbed the rain slicker that hung on a wooden hook, then opened the door and ran outside. The rain was light, but it had fallen for days and the yard of the trailer camp was thick with mud.

  “Are you crazy?” Joey called after Teresa, but by the time he had pulled on his boots and grabbed his denim jacket, Teresa had already taken a hammer from the toolshed. She had brought a milk box over to the window and was standing on it as she wrenched the nails out of the wooden boards over the window.

  “Cut it out,” Joey told her.

  Teresa had managed to get the first board off; it fell with a thud onto the wet ground and sank in a pool of rainwater.

  “Stop it,” Joey said. “You’re going to hurt yourself,” he warned, but Teresa didn’t listen, she pulled at the nails in the second board with all her might. When Joey reached up and pulled her off the milk box Teresa’s hammer was embedded in the wood and the second board was dragged down with her with so much force that the half-uncovered window behind it shattered. Glass fell inward and covered the bed, slivers fell over the mattress, a jagged edge lined the windowpane, and some of the largest shards of glass fell outward, toward them, and scattered in the mud like the seeds of dangerous flowers.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Joey demanded.

  “Don’t you understand?” Teresa told him. “I’m worried!”

  Joey pulled her close and rested his chin on the top of her head; beads of rainwater had caught between the strands of her hair, they were enormous and clear, like a halo of diamonds.

  “You don’t have to worry about me,” Joey said, and it took him only a few seconds to realize that her silence and the way her arms were limp at her sides rather than holding him, meant that it was not his welfare she was concerned with. Joey moved away from her then. “Or are you worried about your brother?” he asked. “Are you worried that he won’t think I’m good enough?”

  Teresa looked down at the ground; it seemed the ground wouldn’t stay still, the mud seemed to be moving, as if Teresa stood upon a dark ocean.

  “Talk to me!” Joey shouted. “If you don’t want to marry me, tell me.”

  Beneath the yellow rain slicker Teresa was shivering. Even Joey could see it; her hands shook, she looked much too frail to be standing out there in the rain, soaked to the skin, ankle deep in mud when it was only a few days before her wedding. Joey couldn’t help himself; he went back to her, he put his arms around her, he kissed her and apologized.

  “I’m crazy,” he said. “It’s me—it’s my fault.” He picked her up and carried her into the house, and when he felt her arms tighten around his neck he was sure he’d been forgiven for being so cruel. “We don’t have to talk about your brother,” he told her once they were back inside and he had closed the door behind them. “We’re getting married and that’s all there is to it, and if he thinks he’s going to stop it he’ll find a lock on the gate out front and it’ll be too late, because we’re getting married whether he likes it or not.”

  And later that night, after Joey had swept up all the glass and reboarded the window, after he had undressed and gotten into bed, Teresa waited up in the armchair until his breathing was even and she knew he had begun to dream. She was certain now that she couldn’t marry him, that the only reason she had ever agreed to his proposal was that she had believed that Silver would never dare run away with her. But now, after all these years, now that Silver was finally driving up to take her away, Teresa didn’t know what to do. When she got the backpack from the closet she was clumsy, her fingers were unreliable, her heart had a panicky rhythm. She filled the backpack with cans of food, put on a pair of hiking boots, and slipped on the yellow rain slicker. If she stayed, if she was forced to stand out in the yard of the trailer camp in between Joey and Silver, she might not have the courage to tell Joey how sure she was that she couldn’t marry him; she might not have the courage to walk across that yard arm in arm with Silver as Joey stared after them, as Silver opened the door and Teresa got into the front seat. But when she left the trailer at midnight, careful to open the door not more than a crack so that the wind and the scent of the river wouldn’t drift over to the bed and wake Joey, Teresa felt that Silver would find her anyway. She was not escaping from Silver that night, she only wanted to get out of the dark trailer, out under the moon, under the rain that had begun to fall harder and harder.

  Teresa waited on the porch while Atlas struggled to fit through the door; once the dog was outside, and he saw the sheet of rain in front of him, he turned to go back inside, but Teresa closed the front door, walked down the porch steps, and signaled for the collie to follow her. And so he followed her across the yard of the camp, past the gate and then a mile down the River Road. And then, because Teresa thought she might have heard a car, she bolted like a deer, past a clearing and into the wood, and Atlas had no choice but to follow her when, beneath a starless sky, Teresa began to walk toward the river.

  That night there was a storm that was one of the worst the county had ever seen; more drownings took place in a few hours than had been reported in more than five years. It was a night when fish gulped for air, and frogs drifted out to the open sea, and huge
tree trunks floated downstream with the swiftness of Chinese sailboats. Wild strawberries were covered by four feet of water, jays perched on the very top branches of eucalyptus trees, spiders wove webs out of water and air. By morning the rowboats had once again been pulled out of sheds to search for missing persons and collect cats and dogs stranded on ridgetops. Road crews prepared for more flooding with heavy sandbags, the bridges and roads that were washed away were slowly repaired.

  Silver had been forced off the highway by the storm; he had spent the night alone in a motel in San Rafael, and when he set out in the morning for Villa Lobo the sky was clear, the sun was as bright as it would be in the courtyard of a Mexican hotel where the walls were painted white, and waiters served wine and pineapple that had been cut into chunks and dipped in honey. Silver took his time driving; there was no need to risk speed traps and encounters with the state police, there was no need to hurry, he was certain that Teresa was waiting for him—she might already have packed her bags, might have said goodbye to a man she had never loved, might already be waiting at her front door.

  When Silver reached the bridge that crossed over the river and led to Villa Lobo he was flagged down, and for a moment he nearly turned around, he almost floored the Camaro and roared off back to the highway. As soon as he saw the red flag he imagined that he had left fingerprints behind, in Gregory’s apartment, in the folds of the black linen suit, or that Gregory had not really been quite dead when Silver had left him in the street, and had managed to cough out Silver’s name and license plate number before he was taken to the morgue. But there weren’t any patrol cars waiting for Silver, and the flagman was only part of the road crew repairing the bridge, and instead of turning around Silver pulled over, the last in a line of cars waiting to cross over to the other side. The river had risen so high that even there, on the high River Road, muddy water splashed around the Camaro’s tires. Silver turned off the engine and he watched the river, and he couldn’t help but smile when he thought about Teresa, when he imagined her sitting out on the front porch of the trailer, waiting and watching the road for a sign of his car.