Dark Horses

by Susan Mihalic

  His lips skimmed it from my palm.

  “Your daddy sees you hand-feeding that horse, he’ll have your hide,” Eddie said. He had a leg wrap in one hand and a bottle of liniment in the other.

  “I always hand-feed him. Anyway, Daddy’s not here.”

  “He’s in the foaling barn. I always say you got more guts than brains.”

  “Thanks.”

  “It’s not a compliment,” Eddie said.

  I laughed. “How’s Sadie?”

  “Drugged up on muscle relaxants. She may lose the foal. We’ll know more in the next few hours.” Eddie continued on his way, turning toward the stud barn.

  As I groomed Jasper, I spoke softly to him. Daddy believed communication with horses should consist of commands and signals and the occasional soothing “Easy, boy,” or “Good girl,” because they couldn’t understand anything more, but I told Jasper everything. Almost.

  He was in good flesh despite the hard competition at Middleton. Some horses came off a three-day event up to thirty pounds lighter, but Daddy and Eddie took equine nutrition and hydration seriously.

  I took his bridle and hunt saddle from the tack room.

  “We’re going into the hills. What do you say? Good boy.”

  For an hour, I rode him up and down the hills that rose above rolling meadows carpeted with winter rye. From the crest of the hills, Rosemont looked like the toy farm I’d had when I was a kid. Our house sat at the top of a hill, Gertrude and Eddie’s farmhouse lay below it in the curve of the driveway, and beyond their place stood the employee apartments, built to match the character of the original structures. The pastures were dotted with horses. Fences, dark brown rails dipped in creosote, raced across the fields at right angles.

  Regardless of Mama’s attempts at manipulation and the trouble brewing between her and Daddy, I felt good. I was doing what I loved best in the place I loved most—and alone with Jasper, I had room to think about this afternoon: A boy had asked me on a date.

  “I can’t go,” I told Jasper. One ear swiveled toward me, indicating he was listening. What would a date with Will be like? What would we talk about? Would he kiss me, and would it be hard or soft, with tongue or without? Given his remark about Sass, he might expect more than kissing.

  My fantasy of pizza and a movie and a gentle good-night kiss—okay, with tongue—dissolved. He was a total burnout, and he knew nothing about horses. Ride on, for God’s sake.

  Jasper turned his head to look at me, and I became aware that I’d stopped riding. I was simply sitting there, stock-still, halfway up the hill.

  “You’re right,” I said. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not going on a date with anyone anytime soon.”

  Except the memory echoing in the back of my mind made my guts coil like I was the one colicking, not Sadie. Sunday night supper, Gertrude’s casserole, and Daddy.

  I did have a date. And it was tonight.

  * * *

  THE TEMPERATURE PLUMMETED in the night. I woke up shivering and clutching the quilts. A cold draft blew over me. When I’d gone to bed I’d left the windows open because my room had been stuffy. Now the wind was rising, and the thick, heavy drapes filled like sails.

  Reluctantly I left the bed, sucking air between my teeth when my bare feet touched the floorboards.

  As I pulled down my windows, blue-white lightning flashed and a bass crash of thunder made the windowpanes vibrate. The branches of the oak trees in the backyard and along the road to the barn waved, shedding leaves that whirled through the air.

  “Wild night.”

  I spun.

  Daddy stood in my doorway wearing jeans and a heavy jacket. “Get back in bed, darlin’.”

  He crossed the room, put one hand at the small of my back, and guided me to bed, where he held back the covers.

  “Lie down. I’ll tuck you in.”

  Was that what he was calling it now?

  He drew the quilts all the way to my chin and brushed my hair back from my face. My scalp tingled. His hand was cool. He smelled of horses.

  “Sadie’s okay, but we had to take the foal. Three months early… she didn’t have a chance. She was a pretty little roan, just like you.” He stroked my hair. “You know you’re the most important thing in the world to me, right?”

  “Okay.”

  “No, tell me you believe you’re the most important thing in my life.”

  “I believe you.” I did. He was telling the truth.

  He leaned over and kissed me the way I’d thought he would last night.

  “It’s late,” he said.

  It had been late before. Late didn’t stop him. Mama didn’t stop him. I couldn’t stop him.

  Sadie and her dead baby stopped him.

  “I’m beat. I’ve been working with that mare—” He glanced at my clock—“eighteen hours. I need some sleep. Love you, darlin’.”

  “Love you, too, Daddy.”

  He left, closing the door behind him.

  Lightning lit up my room again, and a clap of thunder made the house shake. I rubbed my mouth, trying to get rid of the feeling of his lips on mine. Not good enough. Once more, I braved the cold floor, went into my bathroom, and brushed my teeth and tongue until my mouth felt clean again.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING we were short-staffed because of the holiday, so I cleaned my three stalls and had done two more in the stud barn when Daddy sent me back to the house.

  The rain came down in cold glassy sheets that billowed in the heavy wind. Thunder rumbled steadily, punctuated by an occasional deafening crash, and the lightning looked as if it flashed underwater. Wet leaves lay thick on the ground, and small limbs had fallen.

  Despite rain-repellant pants and a hooded jacket, I was drenched by the time I reached the house. I left my wet boots and jacket on the screened porch off the kitchen and went inside in my socks. Water had gotten in my boots, and my feet were freezing.

  The kitchen was as hot and humid as a steam room, and caterers in white tunics swarmed everywhere. Mama was nowhere to be seen. She left the cooking to the professionals. These particular professionals showed up every Thanksgiving and every Christmas Eve, like distant relatives. The head chef, Albert, smiled at me.

  The doorway to the back stairs was blocked with a rolling rack that held catering paraphernalia. In the dining room, Gertrude and Daddy had inserted extensions into the table after supper last night. Place settings gleamed. Gertrude’s floral arrangements, lined up down the center of the table, were works of art. Putting them out had taken me all of five minutes.

  I thawed in the shower. Bits of hay that had found their way inside my clothes swirled down the drain.

  I dried my hair and started applying makeup. I’d learned a few things from makeup artists over the years, and I used a light hand.

  Without enthusiasm, I removed the protective plastic bag from my new dress. It was beautiful. I slipped into it. The hem fell about two inches above my knees, so it showed some leg but wasn’t too short. The problem was the neckline, which was nowhere near my neck. Held up only by a couple of skinny straps, it plunged between my breasts.

  I twisted my arms behind my back to zip up the bodice, but when the zipper was maybe three-quarters up, it caught the fabric. I contorted and stretched, but every position I tried was too awkward for me to work it free, and it was done up too far for me to wriggle out of the dress. If I tore it, Mama would accuse me of doing it on purpose—which wasn’t a bad idea, but the threat of another meltdown made me dismiss the temptation.

  I went down the hall to the master bedroom and knocked. “Mama, it’s me.”

  No response.

  “It’s me—Roan.”

  She opened the door. “I know your name.”

  Her makeup and hair were done, but her loosely belted blue wrapper was falling off her shoulders, and from the waist down it was more or less open, showing the stretch marks and the Cesarean scar. I’d been a big baby. Fumes of bourbon rolled off her breath. She ha
dn’t taken one nice, steadying drink. She was either drunk or in the process of getting that way.

  “Your father send you?”

  “My zipper’s stuck.” I followed her into the bedroom.

  She turned me around and tugged at the sides of the bodice, as if that would loosen the zipper.

  On her dressing table I spied a bottle of Maker’s Mark. Beside it, a glass was half-empty. So was the bottle, which could be good since her consumption would be limited or bad depending on how much she’d had. A Stonehenge of pill bottles was arranged around the bourbon. Perhaps she’d taken a miracle combination that would render her less antagonistic.

  “How did you manage to do this?” Her fingers were like icicles.

  The telephone rang.

  “Goddammit.” The wrapper swirled around her legs as she went to Daddy’s nightstand. “Gertrude is never here when I need her. I don’t know what we pay her for. Hello.” That last word was said into the handset with the breathless charm Mama could turn on and off like a light switch. She listened. “One second.” She extended the handset toward me. “For you.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Walt something.” She shook the phone at me. “Do you want to talk to him or not? I’m not your secretary.”

  I took the phone. “Hello.”

  “It’s not Walt something. It’s Will something,” Will Howard said. “You should replace that lady who’s not your secretary. She can’t get anything right.”

  Warmth rushed through me. “Happy Thanksgiving.” I turned my back to Mama so she could continue to work on my zipper. Also, I didn’t want her eyes scouring my face.

  “Was that your mom?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Is she still there?”

  She tugged at the zipper.

  “Yes. How did you get this number?”

  “Internet. I take it you don’t get a lot of calls.”

  “Some.” More like none.

  “You’ve got to get out more. Speaking of which, did you ask about going to a movie or for a run or something?”

  “I can’t.” Mama was literally breathing down my neck. “It isn’t possible.”

  “Anything’s possible.”

  “Not for me.”

  “I want you to know,” he said, “I’m not giving up.”

  A boy had never said anything like that to me before.

  “I mean, unless you want me to,” he said.

  My tongue knotted.

  “Do you want me to give up?”

  I found my voice. “No.”

  “Good.”

  Did I say goodbye now?

  “Did you get yelled at yesterday,” Will said, “or did your dad cool off?”

  I was supposed to keep talking. “He was fine.”

  “Kind of intense, isn’t he?”

  “Kind of.” If Mama weren’t monitoring every word, I might have found it easier to talk.

  Through the receiver came a shriek and a giggle in the background. “Is your family there?”

  “That’s Carrie. Steve and Amy aren’t here yet. Dinner was supposed to be at two, but Mom’s keeping everything warm. What about you?”

  “People should start arriving at three, but no one’s here yet, either.”

  “It’s almost three now.”

  The clock on Daddy’s nightstand confirmed that Mama had fifteen minutes to finish getting ready.

  “I’ll let you go,” Will said. “I hope you have a good holiday and this weather lets up so you can ride on.”

  He was deliberately saying “on” instead of “out,” like it was a joke we shared.

  “Thanks. Happy Thanksgiving.”

  I pressed the off button on the handset, relieved I’d survived the conversation without sounding like a complete social moron but wishing we could have talked longer.

  “There!” Mama said. My zipper shot upward. With cold hands on my shoulders, she turned me to face her. “That was a boy. You were flirting.”

  “I was not.”

  “I heard some of what he said. He asked you out. Walt who?”

  There was no reason not to tell her. She’d tattle to Daddy, trying to ingratiate herself to him, whether she had Will’s name right or not, and he’d figure it out.

  “Will.” I returned the handset to its base. “Not Walt. Will Howard. We have a class together. Daddy was late picking me up yesterday, so Will gave me a lift.”

  “And your father was okay with that?”

  “He didn’t know about it until we met him at the overlook. He brought me the rest of the way.”

  “What else doesn’t he know about?” Her wrapper floated behind her as she went into her closet.

  “Nothing. Nothing happened.”

  “It might be nice if you went out with a boy,” she said from the closet. “It doesn’t have to be a date. A group of you could go out.”

  I picked up one of the pill bottles. Below the alphabet-soup name of the drug, the label read, For anxiety. Must be working. Mama didn’t sound anxious. She sounded delusional.

  She came to the door of the closet. She had put on a high-necked, long-sleeved black sheath that skimmed her knees. “If you dated a boy your age, it might free up your father to see me in a new light.”

  I didn’t need to set Daddy free. It was the other way around. Besides, her affair wouldn’t go away as if it had never happened.

  She dropped a pair of tall black heels on the floor and stepped into them, and the frowsy drunk disappeared. She was stunning, tall, impossibly slender. No wonder she’d expected a successful career.

  “Well?” she said.

  “You look pretty, Mama.”

  “I wasn’t asking for a compliment. Do you want to go out with this boy?”

  “I don’t think so. He has some problems.”

  “So do you,” she said.

  “So do you. What about Mr. Dashwood?”

  The veneer she’d slapped on our lives warped and splintered.

  She walked over to her dressing table and spritzed on perfume. “Did you tell your father?”

  “I didn’t, but someone will.”

  She sat down at the table and pressed her palm to her forehead, scrunching her fingers in her hair. Her eyes were closed, and she was deep-breathing like she was about to go into the arena. “This isn’t what I wanted.”

  The floorboard down the hall creaked. Mama straightened up, smoothed her hair, and began reapplying her lipstick, her face blank as a mannequin’s.

  Daddy, in soaked jodhpurs, a heavy sweater, and socks, blew into the bedroom. “God, I’m ready for a hot shower.” His eyes rested on me. “Darlin’, you’re a knockout.”

  Mama had succeeded in buying me a dress he appreciated, but she didn’t look happy about it.

  “Isn’t Mama beautiful?” I said.

  For a moment, all three of us looked in the mirror. My mother’s imperfections were hidden, and if my father had ever felt anything for her—anything resembling love or even compassion—he’d say yes, she was beautiful.

  Mama’s pursed lips and half-lowered eyelids might have been caused by his lack of response, or they might have been caused by the way I’d set her up and knocked her down again, even though that hadn’t been my intention.

  “Roan,” she said, “had a phone call from a boy.”

  I knew she’d tell.

  “Oh?” Daddy said.

  “Will Howard. I left my sweater in his truck. He’ll bring it to school Monday.”

  Plausible. Yesterday’s hostage exchange had been quick.

  “All right.” Daddy went into the bathroom, turned on the taps in the shower, and raised his voice over the running water. “But you’re too young to be getting calls from boys. No more phone calls. Tell him that.”

  The shower door opened and closed.

  I looked at Mama. “Happy?”

  “Not since you were born,” she said, and strangely, there was no malice in her words, only truth.

  * * * />
  SHORTLY AFTER WE went downstairs, the phone began ringing with calls from guests stranded by accidents blocking the interstate, flooded surface roads, and downed trees and light poles. They might have to turn around and go home, but they would make it if they could.

  After the third call, Daddy brought the handset from his study into the living room, where a fire crackled in the fireplace and we were playing cards at the coffee table. We were normal. That was the impression guests were supposed to have when they arrived and saw the interrupted game, like we had a family game night or something. It made me melancholy, glimpsing the way we might have been and weren’t.

  “Uno.” Mama placed her next-to-last card in the discard pile. It was a Draw Four card.

  I drew the cards. I was accumulating quite a handful.

  The phone rang again, and Daddy glanced at the caller ID and then at me.

  Oh, no, not Will again.

  “Hello.” Daddy was still looking at me. “Speaking.”

  As much as I might—perhaps—like Will, it would be totally controlling of him to ignore what I’d said and go behind my back to talk to my parents.

  “May I ask you to hold a moment?” Daddy was being polite. Not Will, then. He wasn’t completely drug-addled.

  “I need to take this in my study,” Daddy said to Mama and me, and he crossed the entrance hall and pulled the heavy rosewood-paneled pocket doors closed.

  “It’s his turn.” Mama placed her single card facedown on the table.

  I put my cards down, too. Mama opened the doors of the armoire and turned on the TV. She brought the remote back with her and flipped through the channels.

  It was black as night outside. The rain washed in sideways, and water ran down the windowpanes flanking the front door. The covered porch offered no protection.

  I got up and stirred the fire and added a small log.