The Hazards of Good Breeding

by Jessica Shattuck

  On the road, he switches his flashlight on and shines it up into the canopy of leaves above him. Their dusky underbellies rustle like a mass of scurrying animals, alive in the wind. He shines the light ahead of him, illuminating a round spot of purplish pavement, a scattering of wet leaves and twigs, two fat orange slugs. The night is full of the gentle crackling sounds of summer: peeping crickets, rustling bushes, and the soft trickle of water in the ditch.

  Eliot walks a quarter of a mile down Memorial Road and then turns right on the narrow path that horses take from the stable to the road. It is darker and closer here in the woods and he can feel his heart speed up inside his rib cage. He has had this nervous, wound-up feeling for the last few days and it has only gotten more extreme as his plan nears completion. Yesterday, he realized the map he printed out from the Internet was missing. It doesn’t really matter, he has built the route into his papier-mâché project and memorized all its forks and turns already. But still, he doesn’t like the idea of it at large in the world.

  The other end of a twig he has stepped on scratches against a stone and Eliot jumps at the sound it makes. His brothers once told him a young girl was murdered in this wood a hundred years ago and that at night her spirit walks around in the patent-leather shoes she was wearing. He pictures the path as it is in the daylight to drive out this image. Pictures the light falling in moving pieces on the rotting leaves under his feet, the stretch of Memorial Road visible below them through the trees. He is almost at the place where he and Rosita would scrabble down the bank of the hill to sit on the flat rocks that jut out over the river here. How do you call this? he remembers Rosita asking of the furry moss here under the trees. How do you call this? of the bird’s nest at the top of the apple tree. Hearing her voice in his head is comforting—it makes Eliot feel brave navigating this darkness. Brave, Rosita’s voice pops into his mind suddenly, like your father. She had rested the vocabulary book on her knee for a moment with an unfamiliar, almost self-conscious expression on her face. Arrojado, she pronounced musingly. Eliot has never thought of his father as particularly brave.

  At the end of the path, the Sunny Gables Stable meadow appears, a bright moonlit plain punctuated by the dense black form of the stable at the far end. The manicured grass, neatly cornered field, and clean bright fences that inhabit this place by day have become an inky watercolor version of themselves—the absolute distinctions between wood and grass, sky and tree rendered insignificant.

  Crouching down slightly, Eliot starts across the meadow. Forester said there would be no one there after eight, but Eliot is not sure he truly believes him. He has paid Forester a good four months’ worth of allowance, which should be enough to ensure veracity, but Forester is not a boy who inspires trust. Better to be careful, which is why he is here in the first place: this is his trial run. He needs to be sure there is no night watchman, that he can find everything, that the key Forester handed him is the right one.

  When Eliot is twenty feet from the stable, he turns his flashlight off and skirts the perimeter, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. A complete loop reveals nothing but grass and air and darkness. At the door he can hear soft creaking, sighing sounds from inside, the almost imperceptible hum of animal breaths. He props his backpack against the wall and tries the keys in the rusty padlock. The first one doesn’t fit, but the second, with some fiddling, opens it. The heavy door swings open and the warm pungent smell of horses and soiled straw sweeps over him. It is almost completely black.

  Eliot turns on his flashlight and walks gingerly toward Blacksmith, who dips his head and nudges the half door. Seeing this is strangely affecting—Eliot has spent so little time with him since he was sold, but yet somehow the horse seems to recognize him, perking his ears forward and then back and then forward again, and then coming closer, nudging his velvety face against Eliot’s chest. Eliot digs into his pocket and pulls out an apple he has brought, holds it out for Blacksmith to flutter his big silly-looking lips around—blubberingly at first, and then with a sudden fierceness that pulls the whole fruit between his snapping teeth.

  Blacksmith is a beautiful, delicately constructed black thoroughbred. He used to belong to Eliot’s mother, who is an accomplished equestrian and would ride him in amateur competitions and steeplechases. When she was first “away” at Maclean’s, Blacksmith became Eliot’s responsibility. He brushed and groomed the horse himself and rode him at least twice a week. But while Eliot has his mother’s slight build, light bones, and natural affinity for the saddle, he lacks the passion to be a true equestrian. He likes Blacksmith’s hugeness and patience—the way he holds his sturdy hoof up to be scraped with a pick. He likes the solid, muscular bulk of him, and his generous obedience. But he has never liked all the rigid fussiness of riding as a sport, the jumping and posting and keeping his hands down and wrists straight and winning silly garish-colored ribbons. He was not crushed when his father sold Blacksmith to Anne Kittridge.

  But now, watching the horse chew the apple almost shyly, standing back a few paces in his stall, Eliot feels a pang of sorrow that this beautiful creature no longer belongs to his mother. That now he belongs, really, to Forester. When Eliot was little, Faith read him countless horse stories—The Black Stallion, My Friend Flicka, even the ancient Blaze series she had read as a girl. The stories themselves were boring to Eliot; there was something overwhelmingly tragic, but at the same time tedious about the trials and tribulations of the animal kingdom. But Eliot loved the smooth, gentle tones his mother’s voice took on when reading them. Reading these tales of mute suffering and ultimate, costly triumph, she became wise and competent and even-keeled, a woman who could be counted on not to lose her head.

  Blacksmith has not seen Faith for almost two years now. Watching him, Eliot wonders if he misses her. Certainly if he were Blaze, or the Black, or even Flicka, he would be getting thin with worry and plotting ways to escape and track his mistress down. But he does not look that smart to Eliot. He looks soulful, perplexed sometimes, inquisitive even, but not really intelligent.

  “Hold on a minute,” Eliot says, gathering his backpack up. The jarring sound of his voice makes him more aware of the silence and darkness he is surrounded by. Be right back, he thinks, but this time he doesn’t say it out loud.

  The tack room is even darker than the main part of the stable, but Eliot does not want to turn on the overhead light. His flashlight passes over stacks of saddles piled high on posts along the far wall, and at the front, a desk messy with paperwork, candy bar wrappers, and little bowls of paper clips, thumbtacks, and bottle caps. There is something spooky about its untidiness—the chair pushed back as if someone has just risen from it, the feeling of interrupted activity. It is as if he has walked in on the ghost of the day.

  He hurries to the back of the room according to Forester’s instructions and looks for the Kittridges’ saddle on the third post where Forester has assured him it will be, finds it, and lifts it off. It is surprisingly heavy. He carries this back to Blacksmith’s stall and approaches him slowly. “Good boy,” he murmurs, patting the hot flank and then awkwardly throwing the saddle up over him, straightening it, fumbling under his stomach with the buckles. It is important to have tried all this, that he know how to get into the stable, find the equipment, and get Blacksmith ready. Blacksmith is a little tense, but patient. He lets Eliot feed him the bit and bows enough to let him loop the halter over his ears, and Eliot feels a swell of gratitude to this great big, considerate creature who could just as easily kick him aside, or rear his head upward and refuse to be mounted by a boy who, for all intents and purposes, abandoned him to Forester. He rests one hand on Blacksmith’s shoulder and presses his forehead against the smooth short hair just below his mane. Beneath this he can feel the powerful beating of his heart.

  When Eliot has let himself back out of the stable into the night, he feels almost nauseous with the excitement of anticipation. It is nearly impossible to fasten the padlock with his jumpy fingers; when he h
as finally managed to jam the metal prong into the body of the lock, turn the key, and extract it, he breaks into a run.

  The wind is damp against his face and whistles softly in his ears. Under his feet the ground is springy and uneven. He spreads his arms and hands and the air separates around them with the soft solidity of Jell-O. He is aware of the faint trace of webbing between his fingers, the remnant of a time before America, before Sir Percival, before human beings could stand up. As he runs he imagines himself underwater, a vague shadow rising toward the surface, defining himself slowly but surely against the particles he is surrounded by.

  CAROLINE HAS BEEN to the bathroom twice already since the wedding reception started, but the hall looks different this time. Is it the planters along the wall that have moved? Or the silly little Louis XIV sofa with its splayed toes and bristly purple velvet that is different? Only once Caroline is faced with Mr. Holden’s flaccid penis does she realize she has opened the door to the men’s room. And she doesn’t even feel drunk, really.

  In the women’s room, Caroline dabs on some lipstick, a dark mauvey shade she picked out last spring. But once it’s on, it feels vulgar, as if she has painted over, rather than on her lips. As if she is wearing a mask. She stares at herself in the mirror and lets her face go slack, relaxing all the little muscles that keep it halfway to an expression. The face that stares back at her looks terribly sad.

  Hello, she thinks, shaping the full word in her mind—the h, the e, the double l, the o. Hello. It sounds formal and absurd, but the face in front of her remains frighteningly impassive. Does one normally have to tell oneself to laugh? Caroline blinks. There is an unfamiliar freckle on the line of her jaw and a faint premonition of two wrinkles between her brows. She can see exactly what she will look like when she is old.

  She has spent most of the night talking to Stephan, not quite so much about what he will expect of her as his production liaison as about everyone at the wedding: where the Chatman children go to school and how John Hollsworth smashed his own son’s car up driving home after the Murtins’ Christmas party last year, and the time the Wallers were robbed by their handyman last summer. And about her family: about the time her brothers thought it would be funny to steal a goat from Drumlin Farm and let it loose in their lacrosse coach’s house, where it promptly chewed up a family heirloom, about how Jack Jr. thought Bulgaria, Lithuania, and Romania were in South America until he was eighteen, and about her father’s diorama-building. She feels a twinge of guilt thinking about this—not because the dioramas are secret or anything, but because Stephan seemed so very interested in them, he must have seen this as some appalling act of wasp-hood. She even—here is the real twinge of guilt—mentioned the time her mother signed up for a year’s worth of vitamins and a set of breathing crystals, which she actually thinks is very sad and not that funny. Particularly because of its proximity to her nervous breakdown. Which Caroline did not mention. Which, for that matter, Caroline never mentions. Drinking has made her loose-lipped. And talking to Stephan seems to have trotted all the old family skeletons out of the closet.

  There is a shriek of laughter from outside the bathroom door and the sound of someone practically throwing herself against it. Caroline rearranges her features into a half smile and slips out as a gaggle of bridesmaids enter.

  In the hall, the lights are dim, brownish, and almost institutional. Someone is sitting hunched over on the little spindly-legged sofa now, head resting on his upturned palms. Caroline almost walks past, but then—it’s Rock sitting there with his head in his hands.

  “Rock,” Caroline exclaims. “What are you doing?”

  “What?” His face, on lifting, looks tired and somehow unfamiliar. “Oh. Waiting.”

  “Ugh,” Caroline says, sinking down next to him. “I have to get out of here.” She lets her shoes fall off, wiggles her toes appreciatively. Her feet feel swollen from standing around all night. “Maybe I should go work on one of those cannery ships in Alaska.”

  “Sure—who really needs fingers?”

  “Mm. That’s not very encouraging.” There is the sound of Jenny Banks’s laughter coming out of the bathroom. “Who’re you waiting for?”

  “Jimmy Sorrens—I told him I’d give him a ride. He’s chatting up some girl over there.” Rock gestures at the corner where a tall, good-looking guy from Rock’s class at Quilton is leaning over a pretty little redhead who looks no older than sixteen. He has the pendant hanging around her neck in his hand and seems, from the girl’s giddy laughter, to be saying something funny about it. “Isn’t she a little young for him?”

  “No such thing for Jimmy.”

  Caroline rests her head against the back of the sofa and looks up at the ceiling. There is a delicate brown water stain in the corner, shaped like a butterfly. It has an ancient, out-of-place look here in the newly renovated foyer. “Do you ever think about what you’ll be like when you’re old?”

  “Oh, probably mean-spirited and deaf and wearing leaky Depends that make my grandchildren not want to hug me.”

  Caroline rolls her head in Rock’s direction and looks up at his face, which from this angle, looks once again less familiar—a little weary, older, and sharper. She can see the stubble along his jaw line. “No, you won’t,” she says, brushing a piece of lint off his tuxedo jacket. “You’ll be cool.”

  “Ready to roll?” Jimmy Sorrens’s shadow falls over them and Caroline sits back upright, straightening her dress.

  “Right,” Rock says, getting to his feet.

  “You’re looking awfully lovely, Miss Dunlap,” Jimmy says.

  Caroline smiles politely and slips her feet back into her shoes.

  “See you, Carol,” Rock says softly, touching the top of her head as they turn to go.

  Caroline stares after them. “No way,” she can hear Jimmy say, “not without the works.” It has a sinister ring to it. In a moment there is the turning over of an engine, the squeal of a car spinning around the curve of the drive and out onto the street. The redhead has been joined by two cronies—equally young, although not as pretty, little cousins of the Krasdales. “. . . for my number, silly,” the redhead is saying in a tizzy of excitement, her little freckled cheeks all flushed. Poor kid—she’s really in for it. Caroline was hospitalized once, when she was that age, for the poison ivy she caught while being mauled by her own generation’s equivalent of Jimmy Sorrens, who happened to be the BCD swim instructor the summer she was a junior counselor at the day camp. At the time, it seemed fair enough—the price you paid for making out with a twenty-six-year-old dreamboat. In retrospect she remembers him as having breath that smelled like baby shit and a yellow Speedo swimsuit.

  Remembering this, Caroline feels older than she is and sorry for her former self. She considers crossing the room and telling the girls to watch out, telling them not to be too impressed by the likes of Jimmy Sorrens. But they would probably just think she was some sort of crazy spinster with a religious agenda. She pulls herself up off the little sofa and walks unsteadily back down the hall, feeling her body weave and bob above her feet.

  Back in the tent, the band is packing up long coils of electrical wire and the empty parquet dance floor shines like a bald spot. White linen napkins are scattered on the grass and over the seats of chairs and the remaining guests are huddled in small vicious-looking groups around the bar, or intimate drunken conversations at the edges of the tent. It is nearly two A.M., after all. How can she possibly have stayed this late? She wasn’t even on the A list, wasn’t even supposed to be here in the first place.

  And how will she get home now? She should have asked Rock for a ride. Her father is certainly long gone, although she does not remember saying good-bye. Maybe the Forlinghams will give her a ride if she can find them—the Holdens are no longer an option now that she has gaped at Frank’s penis. And Anne Radley left in the middle of the dinner. Which leaves her stranded.

  “Dunstable,” a voice says. Adam Lowell’s hand snakes around her waist fro
m behind. He is a master of stupid nicknames. Caroline can’t think of one person under the age of thirty whom she has heard Adam address by his or her real name within the last four years.

  “Wanna get out of here?” he says, holding her arm out and moving his hips as if they are doing the cha-cha front to back. It makes Caroline feel like an ungainly rag doll.

  “Adam,” she says, moving out of his grasp. “I’ve got to get to bed.”

  “But the night is young! Bee Bee Menders is having people over to her sister’s house, all the old gang—it’ll be a blast.” Adam is the kind of person who insists on boxing the past into a neater, cheerier version of itself in which groups of awkward, surly adolescents thrown together on country club swim teams and neighborhood Christmas parties become a “gang” and gatherings hosted by Bee Bee Menders become a “blast.” Adam drives a black BMW he got from his grandfather for his twenty-first birthday, and which was, at one point during college, spray-painted with the words COME OUT YOU FAGG with two g’s. Caroline knows this only through Rock, who thinks the two g’s are hysterical—a true expression of Middlebury College’s paranoiac isolation from the real world.

  “Not for me,” Caroline says, moving away. “I’ve got to get to bed.”

  “Sweet Car-o-line,” Adam begins singing—something he is not alone in feeling the need to do at least once every two hours he is in her presence.

  “Oh, Adam, come on—could you just give me a ride home?” Caroline asks.