“What did I tell you?”
I looked at him. This was not the way we played.
“Go get Sam,” I said.
“I told you not to try,” he said.
He put both hands on my shoulders, suddenly, and pressed me to the wall. I could hear Sasi rhythmically chomping hay.
I relaxed under Georgie’s grip; his face was so close to mine I could see the faint, scattered stubble of his shaved moustache. I hadn’t known he’d started shaving.
“Very bad, Thea,” he said, and smiled, and I smiled, too, and then he was gone, to get Sam.
—
I was restless, restless. I went to bed at the same time as Sam and Georgie and listened to them talk through our closed doors and then there was silence, and I was still awake. I felt the curve of my breast beneath my nightgown, the swollen tip, the smooth, smooth skin.
Usually I stayed in bed until sleep came, but tonight I wanted out. I stood outside the boys’ door and listened for snoring, signs of sleep.
The French doors that closed the living room from the lower landing were fragile, all glass panes and brass fittings, but I knew how to open them quietly. The Christmas tree rose to the ceiling and we’d had to trim the top in order to fit the angel: faceless, hairless, dressed in a luminescent gold gown. Idella’s cousin delivered our tree every year. I wrapped my blanket tighter around my shoulders, shivered.
Whenever I see a Christmas tree now, adorned with a mismatched collection of ornaments, I’m embarrassed for it. Mother’s tree was beautiful: purple and red glass orbs, handblown, because of this slightly irregular—you could see the place on each where the blower had folded over the hot glass, closing the globe. The ornaments were so thin they seemed almost liquid when the tree was lit.
Mother used candles to light the tree, dozens of them, held by special glass holders. It was dangerous but beautiful. The rage then was to use electric, colored lights, red and blue and orange and green—but Mother hated all that color, thought it vulgar.
Someone was on the landing, then walking down the stairs, then the seventh step groaned and I knew it was Georgie; we all knew to skip that step.
“Shh,” I said, as he came through, but he caught the sharp tongue of the lock with his hip. I drew in a quick breath: the door rattled, a hollow, familiar sound that was likely to wake Mother. If she found us, I knew she would think I had not been good. And my explanation—that I had done nothing, that Georgie had followed me downstairs—well, she would not believe me. I saw all this clearly as I watched Georgie walk past me, toward the front door, and I was chilled, then furious at my cousin.
“Stop,” I hissed, but Georgie was already half outside; he looked back at me and beckoned. I ran to the door, needing to reach it before Georgie closed it roughly.
“What are you doing?” I whispered, as I pulled the door almost closed behind me.
“I’m watching the moon,” he answered, in his normal tone.
“Watch it from inside.”
He shrugged, and turned to me: “No.” His voice was sluggish, sleepy. When he looked at me, his eyes were off center, distracted.
So I watched the moon, too, full and fat.
“How long are you going to stand here?” I asked.
“Why?”
“I’m cold.”
“You woke me,” he said. He seemed moody, this visit, spent more time in Sam’s room, alone. He said he was reading, but Georgie never read.
“How did I wake you?” I had been so quiet.
“I always know where you are, Thea,” he said.
“Only God always knows where I am,” I replied softly.
“Is He watching now?” Georgie asked, also softly. He took a step closer. Another one. And then he was an inch or two from my face, his breath milky and thick.
“Of course,” I said, but I had lost track of what we were talking about.
He touched my hair, and then let his hand fall to my neck.
We examined each other: my blanket had fallen from my shoulders, I was naked and cold underneath my white nightdress. My eyes were large from exhaustion. Georgie’s face was swollen with sleep, his features babyish. Sweet—he looked sweet. His hair had gotten even longer in Aunt Carrie’s absence, fallen forward over his eyes and lent him an air that was equal parts raffish and shy.
He put his face closer to mine and kissed me on the lips. Then he touched my cheek, and kissed me again, and parted my lips with his.
I knew that we were kissing, but I had never seen anyone kiss like this. Father kissed Mother on her cheek in our presence. People in my books kissed, but this had never been described, how warm Georgie’s tongue was in my mouth, how strange and lovely it felt, in equal measures, as if the strangeness made it lovely.
I was not raised in a house where pleasure meant guilt. And this—Georgie’s tongue in my mouth, like a live thing, the face that I had known since birth so close now, closer than ever before: this was bliss.
{10}
The Holmes girls waited at my cabin door. “Hello,” they said, almost in chorus, and claimed my hands. They had stopped curtsying after the first week. Mr. Holmes stood with them, watching with an amused expression. His hands were in his pockets, and he inclined his head when I smiled at him. I hadn’t spoken to him since Thanksgiving, a few weeks before.
I noticed the other girls’ glances. Thea Atwell and the Holmes girls, plus Mr. Holmes.
Girls waved to him as we passed, girls I’d never spoken to: Roberta, Laura Bonnell, Hattie. Mr. Holmes acknowledged them with a dip of his head, but he didn’t take his hands from his pockets.
At the barn, I cross-tied Luther and Bright, and the girls curried in a frenzy, stopping only to knock their combs against the wall. Bright was an old, black pony, who had wise eyes: many, many children had sat on his back. I watched and pointed out missed spots. Mr. Holmes kept his distance from the horses, especially Luther, which was funny: ponies were notoriously mean, horses gentle. Everyone was eager today; Decca lifted Bright’s hoof and pointed to his tender frog, then showed her father how to dislodge the dirt with a pick. Bright’s forelock was tangled, and Rachel unknotted it gently.
After we’d tacked the horses, we led them to the ring where we rode; Mr. Holmes stood outside the ring and watched, in a pose all men seemed to adopt—his arms rested on the top rung of the fence; one leg hiked up to the middle board, his knee bent.
Mr. Holmes watched Decca work through her routine—the same routine I’d worked through when I was a young girl, which Mother had taught me—leaning into the ring like he owned it, like he wasn’t afraid of horses.
“Your legs are so strong, Decca,” he called out, and Decca nodded, pleased.
My father’s German friend, Mr. Buch, once told me I looked Turkish in profile. The comment had delighted me; I liked thinking I looked like someone from another place. I was careful not to let on, lest Sam think me vain. You were supposed to be pretty, you were supposed to be beautiful, but you were not supposed to care.
I wondered what Mr. Holmes thought of my profile, if he had ever seen a Turkish girl. Probably not.
“Change beats,” I called to Decca, who was mastering posting. “Good,” I called again.
We’d developed our own language; or, rather, the girls had become fluent in my tongue. No one had fallen yet, or even come close. I fell all the time, in my youth, and luckily never sustained more than a sprained ankle. But I fell because I was a daredevil, and no one watched me. The Holmes girls were always watched.
Later, after they had dismounted, Mr. Holmes praised them. “Good, girls,” he said, and though Decca and Sarabeth beamed up at him, Rachel wedged herself between Decca and her father and took his hand.
Decca looked outraged, but then Mr. Holmes held up his other hand.
“I have two,” Mr. Holmes said, and Decca accepted his hand, an
d I thought how different Sam and I had been from the Holmes girls, who competed with each other, who always, at least in my presence, tried to court their father’s attention, tried to walk a little bit ahead of the other sisters.
Later the girls stood in the barn’s wide corridor, Bright and Luther in cross ties, and curried away saddle marks. I stood in the tack room, where I could keep an eye on them, and cleaned, wiped the sweat off the bridles, the grass off the bits.
“Do the girls do that?” Mr. Holmes asked.
I jumped. “Pardon?”
“I apologize. I sneaked in.” He moved closer, examining my handiwork. “Do the girls do this usually?”
“They know how and Sarabeth does a good job, but Rachel and Decca are too small.”
“Too small to clean?”
“Too uncoordinated.”
Mr. Holmes nodded, and examined my handiwork. He smelled thick, like oil. I was an expert tack cleaner, the buckles on my bridles shone, the brow bands gleamed. He made a sound—a sigh?—and lowered himself carefully on top of a trunk. I massaged balm into the reins and waited for him to say something else. But neither of us spoke. I could see him out of the corner of my eye, and it seemed that he watched me, intently, and I began to enjoy our silence, which felt companionable but not completely neutral: we were both aware of each other.
Mother had taught me how to clean tack, how to make stiff leather supple, how to extend the life of all the equipment you needed for riding. I had always taken good care of my tack, taken pride in this task, which pleased Mother. I was her daughter, in so many ways. We both appreciated order.
Girls came in and out with their saddles. Leona came in, a saddle blanket damp with King’s sweat over her arm, and dipped her head in my direction. She had been warmer to me since our night ride, but almost imperceptibly: she caught my eye more often, tilted her head in a nod when we passed each other at the Castle; at the bathhouse she had even murmured something about how the night ride had done King good. After we had finished with the horses, Mr. Holmes escorted us back to the Square.
“I’ll be seeing you soon, I’m sure,” he said, and the girls also thanked me, a chorus behind him. It started to rain, lightly.
I waved.
“Such an opportunity,” he said, as I turned away, “for the girls to learn about horses.”
“The pleasure’s all mine.” I remembered my first day here, months ago, Father by my side, Mr. Holmes a stranger.
I wasn’t as good a teacher to the girls as Mother had been to me. She had always been able to anticipate what I would try next—how I would shift my weight in the saddle, how I would tug the right rein instead of the left—what Sasi would try next, and this prescience had made her an eerily good teacher. I saw that now. I wasn’t as good at predicting what these girls would do, but of course Mother had known me better than I knew the Holmes girls. Her prescience had extended beyond the ring: she knew when Sam had rushed through his arithmetic, when I had used a nice towel to clean up a mess. Mother knew everything. But she had not known about Georgie. It had all happened right under her pretty nose.
I turned from Masters—a charming cottage, really, covered with birch shingles—and joined the mass of girls also returning from the ring. Perhaps Mother had sent me here partly because she was angry at herself, for not realizing what was happening in her very own house. For not knowing me as well as she thought she had; for not stopping it.
Sissy ran up beside me, eager to hear about the headmaster watching me teach. I smiled at her, the crowd of girls milling around us. I was one of them. We would stop at our cabins first and change quickly, but we would not be given long enough to wash away the smell of horses.
—
On Christmas Eve I was the only girl left in Augusta House. Even Mary Abbott’s family had scraped together the money to bring her home. Mainly, the girls who stayed were scholarship girls. And then girls who made various excuses: their family was traveling this year; it was too long a trip for too short a time. I had made that excuse, exactly, and for me it seemed at least a little bit conceivable: Emathla, Florida, was very far away from the Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls.
The night bell had rung hours ago, but I couldn’t fall asleep. It hadn’t even been a question in my mind, whether or not I would return home for the holidays; of course I wouldn’t. We had sung carols at the Castle tonight, trimmed a giant tree. I had been spared an inquisition by the Holmes girls, because everyone who had not gone home sat together, at a large table; the Holmeses sat at the opposite end from me. Decca had found her way onto my lap by the end of the dinner, but she was too young to care why I had not left.
I heard something outside and thought it might be Boone again, not knowing Sissy had gone home. But of course it wouldn’t be him—he was surely home with his perfect family, exchanging perfect gifts.
Someone laughed, but the sound was eerie. It seemed to be coming from right outside my window.
I heard it again, the same laugh, high-pitched. It chilled me to the bone, one of Mother’s expressions. I peeked outside my window, very carefully. I saw the back of a girl, dressed in her white nightgown, without a coat, her hair wild. She turned and I recognized her squat profile: Jettie.
I bundled myself up and hurried outside, one of Sissy’s extra coats in my hand.
“Jettie,” I whispered, “why are you out here?” I handed her the coat but she shook her head. Her eyes were glassy, and she held up an amber-colored bottle.
“I’m very warm already,” she said. “I don’t need a coat.”
I put my finger on my lips.
“Why?” she asked, even more loudly. “What could happen?”
I placed Sissy’s coat around her shoulders and took the bottle away. She was moving too slowly to stop me.
“If Mrs. Holmes saw you,” I said, “she’d have a fit.”
Jettie smiled. “I’d just get Henny to save me. She’s Mrs. Holmes’s favorite. They’re cut from the same cloth. May I have my bottle back, please?”
I sat down next to her. “As long as you keep your coat on,” I said.
“It’s a deal.” She took a swig from the bottle, like a man. “Thea Atwell. You were big news when you came. Katherine Hayes told everyone there was some trouble with a boy.” Jettie looked me up and down, frankly. I pulled my coat more tightly around me. “But nobody cares about you anymore. That’s the way of the world.”
“You’re drunk,” I said.
“You’re right.” She laughed her odd laugh. “I know why you’re not home, but do you know why I’m not home? I’ll tell you,” she continued. “If you can keep a secret.”
“I can,” I said cautiously. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know Jettie’s secrets.
“My father lost his job. So now I have to marry. And I don’t want to.” Her voice had turned fierce. “That’s the last thing in the world I want. But Mother says I have to. And Henny says I’m selfish. What do you think?” She brought her face very close to mine—I noticed a faint scar on her temple.
“The boy you’re going to marry, is he nice?”
“He’s not a boy,” she said. “He’s a man. He’s old. Rich. Tobacco rich. And he’s nice enough, but I don’t like them. Men. There’s something wrong with me. I’d prefer being alone.”
She looked like she might cry. I took the bottle from her and tilted it to my lips. I almost spit, the taste was so strong.
“I’ll tell you something else.” She began to cry then, in earnest. “I don’t want to leave,” she said. “I don’t want to go away from her. From here. I don’t understand. It’s not as if we’re starving. We aren’t Appalachians.” Her gaze drifted off to the distance.
Yonahlossee, an island of rich girls in the middle of the poorest. I thought of Docey, her family. We had put together a box of Christmas food for the Mill Girls: ham, pie, potatoes. Mrs. Holmes had said i
t would be delivered in time for Christmas dinner.
“Thea,” Jettie murmured, “life is so hard once you grow up.”
“Maybe it’s better,” I said, finally.
“What?”
“Not to like boys. Men. They’re nothing but trouble.”
She looked at me for a long second. “Don’t be a fool, Thea.”
I smiled, then poured the rest of the bottle onto the ground while Jettie watched. More liquor would only make her sadder. She rose then, and walked unsteadily away. She looked like a pony: short and sturdy.
“Remember,” she called. “It’s a secret.”
I traced my lips with my finger, mimed throwing away a key.
—
I woke the next morning and the world was white.
I slipped on my boots and stepped outside without my coat into a foot of snow.
“Hello,” someone called, and I saw Mr. Holmes, walking across the Square, carrying a wrench.
I waved and crossed my arms. I should have dressed before coming out here. My hands were chapped. I needed gloves, but did not want to write and ask Mother.
“Merry Christmas,” he said. “One of the pipes burst.” He brandished his wrench. “There’s no water in the Castle, and our handyman is home for the holiday.” He stopped when he reached me, a single line of footprints behind him.
“I’ve never seen snow before,” I said—“not like this.”
“No?” He looked around, at the expanse of white, white everywhere, on the roofs, on the trees, on the mountains. “I love the cold,” he said.
He was wearing an old coat, the top button missing. “I suppose it makes you miss home,” I said.
“You remembered.” He looked pleased. “Yes, it reminds me of Boston.”
“I’ve only ever known heat. But this,” I said, “this is beautiful.” And Sam was not here to see it.
The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls Page 15
