If Wishes Were Horses

by Barbara Morgenroth

  I said nothing for a moment. “I wish it wasn’t like this.”

  “Ditto.”

  “Can we go someplace this weekend?”

  “I have the farmer’s market in Santa Barbara on Saturday.”

  “Sunday then?”

  “Farmer’s market in the morning in Cadiz but after that I can be free. What do you want to do?”

  “Nothing. I just want to be with you. I’ll even come over and help you pick tomatoes.”

  “How about seeing a polo match up at the Santa Barbara Polo Club?”

  “That would be terrific.”

  “Usually there are some free tickets available to Country Day students. I’ll check on it.”

  We drove onto the school grounds and parked. Everyone was already mounted and a crowd was gathering to watch. As fast as possible, we got the horses off the trailer, tacked them and were heading in the right direction.

  I recognized Gia from across the field. Not so much her, but her horse. She hadn’t been around for the last practice sessions and I enjoyed her absence very much.

  Thom Anderson approached us on his pinto. “Hi, Mill. Hi, Cap. Coach Teague didn’t get here yet but he’s on his way.”

  “That’s perfect timing,” I said.

  “Hi, Mill,” Gia said urging her horse over to us. “I haven’t seen you in a couple weeks.”

  “Really?”

  “I’ve been so busy,” she said. “I can’t wait to tell you all about it. It’s so exciting. I got my first job.”

  “That is exciting,” Mill replied flatly.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked politely.

  Gia looked at me. “I’m going to play you!”

  Chapter 12

  “I’m sorry. The wind is in my ears,” I replied, trying not to stammer. “What are you going to be doing?”

  “My father is producing a television movie based on your father’s book and I’ve been cast as you!”

  For a moment, I thought I was going to start screaming. This time I was not going to keel over but my brain stopped working. There were no words and no thoughts.

  “Who’s going to play me?” Mill asked.

  Gia looked at him in surprise. “Why should you be in the movie?”

  “She’s riding my horse.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “I don’t let just anyone on my horse. Come on Cap, we’re late for practice. I’ll see you later, Gia, and give you some casting suggestions.”

  I urged Gee Whiz forward to catch up with Mill.

  “Thank you,” I said when I finally regained my ability to speak.

  “Are you going to be all right,” he asked.

  “It can’t get any worse, can it?”

  “The second most beautiful girl in the school is going to play you in a movie. What’s bad about that?” He cantered off to join his teammates.

  ***

  The phone started ringing again. My mother was going to be played by one of the actresses from The O.C. The local newspaper wanted to interview her. They wouldn’t come to interview her for the opening of the restaurant, but now they had to do a piece. For some reason, it had to be publicity, she said yes.

  Emma and I stood in the entrance to the kitchen and watched as the reporter asked what seemed to be an endless series of questions. My mother found a way to bring it back to the restaurant.

  “Greg must be a very generous man to provide well for two families.”

  “I have no idea but what little I received in the divorce settlement, helped me start this restaurant. Did you know I get all provisions locally? We’re locavores.”

  “What do you think of having your story told on television?”

  “I’m sure some people will be fascinated much in the same way I’m fascinated by heirloom vegetables. Did you know Soule Crocker has developed several new varieties of tomato? The Purple Blush is one of them. It’s one of our most popular in our Bagatelle salad.”

  I shook my head.

  “Does it still bother you that Gia is going to play you in the movie?”

  “Yes. I don’t want anyone playing me. How is that fair? Is it legal?”

  “Ask my mother.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. “Can I stop them from using me as a character?”

  “I think they’d just rename you. What they wind up doing is saying ‘based upon the book by Greg Rydell’. Then they can’t be sued.”

  “So it’ll happen whether I want it to or not?”

  “Probably.”

  “Don’t I at least deserve some money? I get nothing out of this,” I said.

  “What are you talking about?” Mill asked appearing at the back door.

  “He tells my story without my permission. He goes on national television shows, promotes this book and never asked me how I felt about it. Now he sells the film rights and makes a ton of money...” I looked to Emma for confirmation and she nodded. “I still get nothing but humiliation.”

  “What’s the humiliation?” Mill asked. “You’re here. He’s not here. You’re winning as far as I can tell.”

  “If it was not about me, I wouldn’t care.”

  “It’s not about you,” Mill replied. “It’s about him and his despicable lifestyle. You are blameless. You did nothing wrong.”

  “People will mock me.”

  “How?”

  “There’s the girl whose father is a bigamist and proud.”

  “I can only think of one person we know who would have done that and that’s Gia and she’s thrilled to be playing you. She’s not going to mock you. You’re her first real job.”

  “When I threw my coin into the fountain...”

  Mill groaned and made a face.

  “I got the wrong coin. I got someone else’s wish. Someone who wanted to be famous.”

  “Are you nuts?”

  “Why are you, of all people, mocking me?”

  “Because that’s a ridiculous explanation for your life trajectory.”

  “Stranger things have happened.”

  “I doubt it. There’s no magic in the fountain. It’s a stupid story invented by two sisters who were driven from their family’s home instead of putting them in a mental institution where they belonged.”

  “Mill!” Emma said.

  “Read their story. They were both off the rails. Lost water. There was always a well there.”

  “You just hate that fountain because that’s where Mom and Dad decided to get married.”

  “And decided to get divorced,” Mill replied. “But that has nothing to do with this. She...” he pointed to me, angrily. “Is crazy if she believes you can get someone else’s wish.”

  “Thank you very much for letting me know how you feel about it.”

  “You’re welcome. I came here to say I’ve been invited to play polo at the Will Rogers Ranch. I was going to ask you if you wanted to groom for me, but I don’t particularly want to see you for twelve hours tomorrow.”

  I was stunned. “I didn’t know you could be that mean.”

  “If I was with you all day tomorrow, you would have wished you had stayed home.”

  “I hope you have a good time tomorrow. That seems to be what the men in my life do—find greener pastures.”

  “I knew you were waiting to find a way to compare me to your father.”

  “The wait’s over. For both of us.”

  Mill turned and left without saying another word.

  “You shouldn’t have,” Emma said. “Mill is nothing like your father.”

  “He’s a guy, isn’t he?”

  “That’s where the similarities start and end.”

  “He’s your brother, you’d have to defend him.”

  “No, I wouldn’t. If he was wrong, I would say so. And because I like you a lot, nearly as much as Mill does, I’ll tell you when you’re wrong, too.”

  “Thank you for your input but no thanks.”

  As I walked out the back door, I could s
ee Mill was already gone. I suspected that extended to my life as well.

  ***

  He didn’t call that evening. But I didn’t call him either. I didn’t know what to say. I was sure he wouldn’t have that problem.

  I felt awful.

  I held my birthday quarter in my hand. On the night of the coin toss the instant I looked at it closely, I knew it wasn’t mine. It was the right year but the wrong mint. Mine had been made in San Francisco. This one had been made in Denver.

  It had been a simple mistake to make. The mint mark was so small and in all the confusion, chanting, patchouli and water, I got it wrong.

  Far worse, was that I had gotten it all wrong with Mill. I said things I should never have said to him. Maybe I wanted to say them to my father he was just in the line of fire.

  I hoped that’s not the kind of person I was. Until this afternoon, I always thought I was nice. I didn’t go out of my way to be mean. I did everything possible for every horse I had, but this outburst was beyond what I could conceive myself capable of. It was unforgiveable. For me. I didn’t know if Mill ever could.

  There was a tap at my door.

  “Yup?”

  The door opened and my mother entered. “Shouldn’t you try to get some sleep?”

  “I’m not sleepy.”

  “I’m sorry your father is making life so difficult.”

  “I can’t blame him for everything.”

  “It will go away eventually.”

  “When the movie airs, it will start up again.”

  “Probably.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “I love my life now. Everything was always somehow off-kilter when I was married. I thought it was me, that I wasn’t trying hard enough.”

  “I thought I wasn’t.”

  “We were. He’s the one with all the problems. Some people look like they’re normal and they’re just not. I’m sorry for you that I didn’t realize that earlier but...”

  “When you’re in the middle of something, you lose your perspective.”

  My mother came over to the desk where I was sitting. “Yes. You’re a smart girl.” She kissed me. “Try to sleep. Don’t let him spoil another minute of your life.”

  I nodded and she left the room as I continued to flip the quarter between my fingers.

  Tomorrow I was going to go back to the fountain and find mine. I wanted it. Whether this one bore someone else’s wish or not, mine came from my grandmother who loved me and who I loved. That was, contrary to what Mill had said that morning, what made my coin unique in all the world.

  Chapter 13

  Emma and Soule came by the restaurant in the morning to drop off some vegetables. While my mother was praising the yellow and gold striations of the Beauty Queen tomatoes, I got Emma aside.

  “Have you seen Mill?”

  “He left before I got up this morning.”

  “Did you see him last night?”

  “Yeah, he was in a real state so I was smart enough not to try to talk to him.”

  “What should I do?”

  Emma shrugged. “What do you want to do? From everything you said yesterday, it didn’t sound like you really wanted to be in a relationship with anyone of the male persuasion.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “No, I mean it may have sounded like that but it’s not how I feel about Mill.”

  “He took the divorce a lot harder than I did. He’s like a horse who’s had a fall at a fence and from then on, you can’t convince him all fences are not the same fence and he’s safe.”

  “I wish I could undo it.”

  “Well, give him a lump of sugar and kiss him on the nose. That usually works pretty well.”

  I laughed.

  “Then get a big stick and if he won’t go forward, make it worse for him to back up.”

  “You’re terrible,” I said and started laughing again.

  Emma shrugged. “Not every horse is for every rider.”

  I nodded.

  “Maybe you and Mill are not the right combination.”

  “No question about it,” I replied.

  “Then do you know what you’re going to do to fix it?”

  “Part of it I do.”

  ***

  That night after my mother came home from the restaurant and went to sleep, I got my flashlight and my wellington boots and got in the car. Then I drove to town. It was almost midnight and there was absolutely no one around. Unless it was a very special occasion, in Cadiz, as the joke went, they pulled in the sidewalks at 10 pm.

  I parked on the street, walked to the fountain and kicked off my shoes. Then I pulled on my boots and got into the fountain. In a general sense, I knew where I had thrown my quarter so that wasn’t a very large amount of space to cover. The fountain was illuminated by a number of lights so I could see pretty well and I started to sort through the coins with that hideous statue glaring at me.

  After an hour, the skin on my fingers was starting to prune up. I was wet from all the splashing and was starting to get cold. For the first time, I started to seriously doubt I would find my grandmother’s coin.

  “What are you doing?”

  I was so startled I dropped the flashlight. It floated to the surface of the water.

  “I’m trying to find my coin.”

  “Come on, Cappy, give it a rest.”

  “Mill, go home. Get Gee Whiz out of the trailer and go to bed. It’s been a long day for both of you.”

  “I’d rather stand here and watch you make a fool of yourself.”

  “I know you don’t mean that.”

  “How do you know?”

  I sighed. “Because I know you.”

  “And I know you. Tell me again what did you wish for?”

  “I wished for my family.”

  He started to pull off his boots. “And what did you get?”

  “My family’s in shambles in public. I got what might as well have been someone else’s wish. I know you don’t think there’s magic in this fountain.”

  “I do think there is.”

  “Good then. I got celebrity and notoriety and attention I never wanted. I got the reverse of what I want. Instead of something meaningful, I got the most shallow experiences of my life.”

  Mill stepped into the water. “Me?”

  “You? What about you?”

  “I’m one of the most shallow experiences of your life.”

  “No, Mill. No, that’s not what I meant at all.”

  “Stop living your life looking in the rearview mirror. Why can’t you see everything that’s happened in the past weeks as getting exactly what you asked for?”

  “In what conceivable way?”

  “You wished for a family. Here I am.”

  He was dirty from working with horses all day, tired from playing polo and driving all those miles, and completely, utterly gorgeous.

  “Do you mean it?”

  “Yes.”

  This was my future. “Did I ever miss that wish.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Remember what I said about not thinking clearly in a crisis?”

  “I remember and I saw it happening. Cappy, you’ll have your own family and you can avoid all the mistakes your parents made. Just like I’m going to learn by the mistakes my parents made.”

  “I made such an awful mistake yesterday, even if you can somehow forgive me, I can’t forgive myself. I said things to you I wanted to say to my father.”

  “I know that.”

  “But you were so angry with me.”

  “I was but Cap, you can’t afford to stay angry and expect anything positive to come next. We’re both going to make mistakes. That’s life. The question is do we stick it out or not.”

  “I vote yes.”

  “I vote yes, too. So can we forget about the quarter now?”

  “It was my grandmother’s.”

  “Does she still love you?”

  �
�Of course.”

  “What’s a piece of metal have to do with that?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing.”

  Mill took my hand and pulled me to him. Then he kissed me in front of that glaring hunk of marble.

  “My mother is interested in your father.”

  “And I’m very interested in her daughter.”

  “What if they got together?” I asked.

  “What if we did?”

  “I thought we were.”

  He kissed my hand.

  “We are, but how creepy is this? I’m kissing someone who might become my stepbrother.”

  “Hey,” Mill said. “That gives me an idea. I could write a book about it. I’ll be on all the talk shows and then someone will offer me a lot of money for the movie rights. But who will play me?”

  “Who’s got someone else’s wish now?”

  “It should be someone who is really good looking.”

  “And can ride like the wind.”

  “Yeah. I know. Me!” Mill grinned.

  “And who’s modest. Who will play me?”

  “Gia. She’ll have practice.”

  “She’s not getting anywhere near you. I’ve got news for you, cowboy. I’m the last girl you’re kissing.”

  “Ever?”

  “Yeah. Ever.” I nodded.

  “You’re a tough negotiator but I accept the offer. Kiss me again,” Mill paused as I got closer to him, “Sis.”

  I started to laugh.

  “You’re not supposed to laugh when I’m trying to kiss you.”

  That’s what our parents hadn’t known. They couldn’t find the humor in life or the joy in their relationships. But that’s exactly what I had found in Mill. He was going to make me laugh and I was going to love every minute of it.

  So I kissed him with a smile on my lips.

  *** The End ***

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