Flirting In Cars

by Alisa Kwitney

  She stroked the mare’s long brown nose. “You’re right, you know. Fandango is one nice horse, and it drives me crazy knowing her owner is just going to wind up breaking her leg on a foxhunt. She’s too much horse for some midlife crisis Wall Street type.” Moira came around and worked out a knot in the horse’s mane. “Not that I should be talking about somebody else’s midlife crisis. Bill keeps saying we need a new truck but I have half a mind to take your advice and get me a little red sports car. Isn’t that what you do with a midlife crisis? Buy a fast car and move someplace warm so you can drive around with the top down?”

  “If you’re serious, the Mazda MX-5 is affordable,” Mack said, “and they haven’t screwed it up yet, even if they did get rid of the pop-up headlights in ninety-eight. But don’t you have to be middle-aged to have a midlife crisis?”

  Moira snorted. “And what do you think I am, a teenager? I’m about to turn forty, little brother.”

  Shit. His sister, forty. She still wore her dark blond hair in a long braid down her back, but it was going gray at the temples, and her arms had begun to look scrawny rather than slender. “Well,” he said awkwardly, “that kind of blows my mind.”

  Moira bent to pick up the mare’s right hoof, resting it on her knee. “You and me both. Sometimes I think about the fact that if Bill and I ever wanted a child, we’d have to do something about it right away. And even then it might be too late.” She took the small metal hoof pick and dug out a large clump of something black and foul-smelling.

  Mack stared at his sister, unsure what to say. “You want a kid?” They never talked about stuff like this. Personally, Mack couldn’t imagine a worse candidate for fatherhood than Bill, who got grouchy every time the wind blew. But hell, who was he to judge?

  “Nah, probably not.” Moira looked uncomfortable, and Mack wondered if he should pry a little. But then his sister grinned lopsidedly and added, “I suppose raising one ornery brother was enough for me.”

  With a start, Mack realized that she had just turned nineteen the week before their parents died. Shoot, at nineteen he hadn’t known how to take care of himself, let alone anyone else. Which was why he’d joined the army—why most guys joined, if they were honest. It wasn’t for the money or the training or the adventure or patriotism. You joined the army because you had no fucking idea what to do with yourself, and you were hoping somebody else had a clue.

  But at nineteen, his sister had been grown up enough to take charge of him and set up a horse training and boarding business. He wondered if her jokes about midlife crisis meant something, whether she was regretting not having more of a wild youth. “Well,” he said awkwardly, “you don’t look middle-aged.”

  “I feel it, though,” she said, making a face as she straightened up. “I can’t say I’m looking forward to winter this year. Twelve horses is a lot to take care of on a morning that starts at nine below zero.”

  “Not much you can do about the weather. Unless you want to move south.”

  Moira didn’t say anything for a moment as she walked around to work on the mare’s back feet. “Mack, reason why I asked you about your plans…I got an offer on the farm.”

  “Yeah? Who is it this time?” From time to time, wealthy city folks came by, offering Moira ridiculously low sums for the whole operation. Like the fact that the main house was run-down and the fences needed mending meant that they didn’t read the real estate ads, same as anyone. Like they were too ignorant to know how property values had risen in Dutchess County.

  “A million and a half.”

  Mack whistled. “Who was it?”

  Moira came back around the stall. “Some group called Emerald Acres. I heard from Deanna down at the diner that they want to buy up all the land behind the post office.” She unhooked the horse’s cross ties and took hold of the lead rope. “Can you open that stall there?”

  Mack held the door open as his sister led the horse inside. “You interested?”

  Moira patted the horse’s neck. “I’m not sure. It’s a lot of money.” She closed the stall door. “So you’re not opposed to the idea of selling?”

  “I don’t know. Worth considering, at any rate. You know what they want with all that land?”

  Moira shrugged. “Another horse farm, maybe. A big one. Or maybe they’re wanting to subdivide, build a bunch of houses.”

  “Maybe. And you heard they want to buy up all the land?”

  His sister looked at him. “You thinking they might be willing to pay even more?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. But it is a lot of land.” Behind the post office, there was a large, empty tract of land, some of it farmers’ fields used for grazing beef cattle, some of it empty. There was a side road that had some small houses on it, and the town beach and lake, which had been closed last summer because of pollution from the recent onslaught of Canada geese. Tourists liked to go there to take pictures of Amimi Mountain, which loomed up behind the post office and over the town lake. Teenagers liked to hike up the mountain, them climb up the fire tower and carve their names in the window frame. Carving your name meant you’d done it, of course. Mack’s name was up there, along with Tara Healey’s, summer of ’92. His first time, right before he joined up.

  Of course, Amimi Mountain was also a prime location for doing drugs and jumping to your death. His classmate Jason Lane had done both, also in ’92.

  Mack ran his hand over his jaw. “So, what would you do if you sold the place, Moira? Train horses for somebody else?” He tried not to think about what he would do. Rent a room in somebody else’s house. Buy a double-wide.

  Moira picked up a bridle from a hook and ran her fingers over the bit. “Maybe move on down to Virginia, get something small there. Or try Saratoga. Make a change.” She turned to him. “You’d get a share, too, you know.”

  Mack shook his head. “This place ain’t mine. You’ve done all the work.”

  “Still. They were your parents, too.”

  “Well”—Mack looked at his sister—“it’s your call.”

  “Guess so.” She gave him a rueful smile. “Know what? I was half hoping you’d tell me I was crazy, that it was wrong to even think about selling.”

  “Okay, if it makes you feel better.” He gave his sister’s arm a friendly squeeze. “You’re crazy.”

  That night, in bed, Mack read another poem from the book he still hadn’t returned to his driving student. This one was by T. S. Eliot, and it contained a phrase that made him put the book down and stare at the ceiling.

  What did it mean, “what is kept must be adulterated”? He knew what “adulterated” meant with regards to gasoline: It meant someone had diluted the purity of the grade by adding something like diesel. “What is kept”—that must mean passion, the passion that isn’t lost, watered down, corrupted. Mack thought about how he used to love cars—taking them apart, putting them together, figuring out how to get just the right amount of oversteer so the back of the car gives a satisfactory, cop-chase-style fishtail.

  Before his sister had gotten him thinking about sports cars, he hadn’t thought much about cars lately. They were just a means to an end, a way of getting from point A to point B. It hadn’t occurred to him to head on over to Lakeville to see who was racing at Lime Rock. Hell, he hadn’t even dropped by the old garage where he’d spent the better part of his adolescence.

  Why didn’t he love cars anymore? Moira still loved horses. The boys he’d hung out with, now men, still followed NASCAR like it was a religion. Why was he different? Had he changed in the army? Changed in some fundamental way, not the usual change of getting older and just caring less about everything?

  Mack folded his arms behind his head and it came to him what Adam would have said: Man, stop thinking about it. You don’t want to wind up some potbellied wannabe, farting around in an old muscle car for two months in the summer at five miles an hour so as not to screw up the vintage engine.

  Which, now that he thought about it, was what the poem seemed to be sa
ying. What is kept must be adulterated. Mack skipped to the end of the page: “Tenants of the house, thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.” He closed his eyes, wondering who the poet was talking to.

  Mack fell asleep with the lights on, and for the first time in six months he had a dream about Adam. They were both wearing civilian clothes, and they were standing in a club with a disco ball that might have been a high school auditorium. And Adam was being goofy, screwing around with some dumb dance, and all the kids were watching him like he was crazy. Mack was clapping, laughing so hard he thought he’d bust a gut. Then Adam came up to him, looking exactly like Adam, big and barrel-chested with a full head of dark curly hair, more Italian-than Jewish-looking. In the dream, he held out his arms. “So, how about it?”

  Mack shrugged. “Yeah, why not?” There was a sappy song playing in the background, and he joined Adam in a mock tango, goofing, first Adam leading, then him having a go, both swooping each other around, the expressions of outrage all around them hilarious to see. Despite the disco ball and the multicolored lights, the mood had been more silly than romantic, but even so, waking up, Mack felt guilty at how happy he’d been, dancing in his dead friend’s arms.

  Seven

  I t was somebody else’s wet dream of a country house: a lovely little gray Colonial with a pleasingly laid-out garden, complete with three sweetly gnarled apple trees and a breathtaking view of a mountain. Inside, the house had wide, wood-planked floors, open fireplaces, and low, beamed ceilings. Okay, so there was a bit of seventies linoleum on the kitchen floor, and some really horrible floral curtains in the living room. Remove those, and you had the kind of house that children’s book artists drew, along with happy badgers in calico dresses and bonnets.

  Zoë hated it. And it didn’t take her long to realize that she hated it. By the time the Israeli movers arrived (they’d gotten lost on the unmarked side roads) she suspected that she disliked her new home. The head of the crew, a wiry redhead, scratched his chin when he saw the place. “You’re really going to live here? There’s no town.” Zoë realized that there was no word in Hebrew for the country. There were words for town and village, and for various kinds of farms, and there were words for nature and forest and desert, but there was not one word that expressed that you were living in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to look at but trees.

  “Americans,” said Dudu. “They like a lot of space.” When the movers left for the city, two hours later, they looked relieved. Zoë felt like asking them to take her back with them. Still, she thought, the house was pretty. The whole area was pretty. She and Maya spent half an hour watching the sun set behind the big mountain to their west, the clouds turning an improbable cotton-candy pink, then a watercolor violet before sliding artfully into darkness. Maybe, Zoë thought, she’d grow to love it here. And it was only a year’s rental, and a year wasn’t so long, unless you were under the age of twelve or incarcerated.

  By the middle of her first week, however, Zoë could categorically say that she hated her new home.

  She hated the fact that there was so much of it, that she and her daughter could be in the same house and not be able to hear each other. She hated the fact there were no neighbors visible, in case some Manson-style gang decided to drop by for some ritual slaughter. And didn’t that kind of thing always happen in quaint little towns with charming cottages and deceptively friendly villagers?

  Zoë had never considered herself the superstitious sort, but something about the country made her uneasy. The house was over one hundred and fifty years old, and there were peculiar cold drafts that seemed to waft in out of nowhere. The washing machine and dryer were located in a basement that looked like a medieval dungeon, complete with dank stone walls and an uneven dirt floor. Zoë wondered if someone might be buried under the mound beside the boiler. When the house was quiet, she could hear odd creakings and rattlings coming from rooms she knew were unoccupied. There were things scurrying around inside the walls.

  These, Zoë assumed, had a prosaic explanation—she must have an infestation of mice or squirrels. This did not make her feel any better. She wondered if the fact that she had a cat would convince the local rodent population to move out. Probably not: there were scarier things than fat Claudius out there.

  Once Maya went to sleep, Zoë felt trapped and utterly alone. Nobody had come to install the satellite yet so they didn’t have television, and logging on to the internet with the old phone lines took so long that both Zoë and her computer kept falling asleep. More upsetting still, Zoë hadn’t read a newspaper for four days. She had no idea what was happening in the wider world, her world had shrunk to this house and this moment in time, and when she sat down to work on her article, “Behind the Veil,” she found herself writing, “Like the women of Saudi Arabia, I find myself isolated, stuck at home, unable to drive to a shop without assistance.”

  Of course, Zoë added mentally, the women of the Arabian Peninsula are the victims of a repressive regime, while I am just a prisoner of my own incompetence. So actually, not such a great comparison.

  Shutting down her laptop, Zoë looked out her bedroom window, the darkness outside so complete that all she could see was the reflection of her own pale, unhappy face, and wondered how she would make it through the winter. Even though she knew she was only two hours from Manhattan, it felt as though she had moved to Alaska, or the far side of the moon.

  And now she was resorting to clichés. She wasn’t even being witty with the self-pity.

  Maya, on the other hand, seemed to be adjusting well to the change. She was still trying to decide between the small bedroom with the view of the mountain or the larger bedroom, which looked out over the forest behind the house. Even though she had only been there two days, Maya already said that she liked her new teacher. She was a little worried about making friends, but she loved the fact that the school had horseback riding as a required after-school activity in the fall and spring.

  Zoë knew she should be happy that her daughter was enjoying school. And she was happy for Maya. It had been worth all the stress and discomfort of dislocation just to see Maya bouncing off the school bus that first day. “The teacher asked if anyone hadn’t understood what she’d just explained, Mom, and everyone, I mean every single kid, raised their hand!”

  For the first time in years, Maya did not feel that there was something wrong with her, and she spoke about school with an enthusiasm that made Zoë’s eyes sting with tears. But after the morning rush of finding clothes and fixing breakfast and making sure that Maya had her backpack before she got on the yellow school bus, Zoë found that the big house rang with silence, and that her happiness was tinged with something flat and sad. It was pathetic. She’d never had a problem with Maya’s going off to school in the city, but then, in the city, Maya hadn’t been gone from seven in the morning to five-thirty in the afternoon.

  Of course, back in Manhattan, it wouldn’t have been quite so awful to have Maya go off to school for more than ten hours a day. In the city, Zoë had possessed a circle of friends, the comfortable background presence of like-minded strangers, and a choice selection of foreign films and documentaries, as well as a host of unusual little museums and boutiques, all a short subway ride away. Not that she’d even needed to try that hard to entertain herself: in Manhattan, just walking around the corner to pick up some Greek yogurt and Afghani flat bread could be an adventure.

  And this was the thing Zoë hated most about the country: there was nowhere to walk. The lying bitch of a real estate agent had claimed that the rental property was within walking or biking distance of the village, and theoretically, this was true. But what the woman had neglected to say was that the five-mile walk would have to take place along Route 82. Granted, there wasn’t much traffic on Route 82, but when a car did go by, it was going ninety miles an hour.

  Which meant that Zoë didn’t just feel as though she were stranded in the middle of nowhere. She actually was stranded. And rapidly running out of her cit
y-bought supplies.

  As Zoë contemplated the last of the Zabar’s goat cheese tortellini, her phone rang. Bronwyn, she thought happily. “I was just going to call you,” she said.

  “For the new year? That’s nice,” said her mother, “but it’s better if you wait for me to call you.”

  Oh, God, Zoë had forgotten about the High Holy Days. “Shana Tova, Ema.”

  “You know that tomorrow is Yom Kippur, right?”

  “Of course.” Zoë glanced at the Mackinley School calendar and realized that there was no mention of the holiest day of the Jewish year. That must have been why it had slipped her mind. In Manhattan, all the schools closed on the important Jewish holidays. Should I keep Maya home, Zoë wondered. She’s already missed a month of classes.

  Her mother gave a long sigh. “Of course you know it’s Yom Kippur. I don’t suppose there’s a synagogue out there in the wilderness?”

  “I’m sure there’s one around somewhere.”

  “But you’re fasting?”

  “I may have to,” said Zoë. She still hadn’t worked out exactly how to get to the little town supermarket. On Monday, she’d left four messages with Betty’s Friendly Taxi Service, but Betty, who sounded extremely old on her answering machine, had yet to return her calls. Zoë knew there was some sort of loop bus that took migrant workers to their jobs, but she hadn’t figured out how to access its schedule. It was ridiculous that she, who did research for a profession, couldn’t figure out how to get into town to shop. The problem was, she usually started out by canvassing people on the street, and here there weren’t any.

  “Listen,” her mother said, “your father’s coming back soon, so I don’t have long. How’s Maya? She’s happy in this new school? Are there Jews there?”