by Lynne Hugo
“What do you mean, honey?” He knew enough to switch to the other side of her and use his free hand to reach out and take one of hers. She let him, and held on.
“Spice was in a stall.”
“Wasn’t when I checked on ’em. Is that bad?”
“Cal put him there. Cal took care of my horse. Well, Dad really, but Cal helped him. Been taking care of all the horses. He’s been taking care of Mom and Dad. I talked to him.”
“Did you shoot him?” He gave Jewel’s hand two quick squeezes.
“That’s not funny.”
He leaned over as they walked and gave her an awkward kiss on the cheek. “Sorry,” he whispered. “I meant it to be.”
“Anyway, no I didn’t shoot him. I might have thought about it, but the gun wasn’t right there handy, Mr. Smarty.”
“Has he messed up the horses?”
“No. They all look good. Really good, to be honest, not that I’d say that to him. He said Dad found a bee sting on Spice’s leg and put a cold pack on it, but it looked fine to me. His stall was clean, the cold pack was done right. All that stuff, you don’t know what I’m talking about, I know. But it was all okay.”
“I’ve been tellin’ you they’re all fine. Did he say he’s seen me?” Eddie said, thinking she’d expect the question.
“Never mentioned it. Probably too busy laying on the couch.”
“And your parents?”
“He said they’re fine, the agency people are coming.”
“Did you have a fight?”
“No.”
“So what are you upset about?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because I’m so unnecessary after all. They really don’t care that I’m gone. And then today, Cal. I never would have thought he’d take care of them, let alone the horses. I don’t get it. Nothing is what it seemed.”
Don’t step on a land mine, Eddie told himself. He just had to keep things going long enough for Cal to have the money to get himself gone. It couldn’t be that much longer. “Well,” he said, choosing words cautiously, “maybe sometimes things work out okay anyway?”
Hack had a moment of thinking his hearing was going. He could have sworn his wife had said, “Looks like you were right. She’s not comin’ back. It’s a mess.” He’d heard her say something was a mess plenty of times but never that he’d been right about anything.
They were lying in bed in the dark, not that darkness signaled anything to him, but he’d heard Louetta turn the light out. The soft swoosh of her oxygen machine was audible, so he knew it was on and the plastic tubes in her nostrils. He didn’t like to notice it, but Louetta was going downhill while he was stronger and happier than he’d been in a long time.
The thing was, he reasoned, it couldn’t be Jewel’s absence that was making Louetta worse. Eddie had taken her to every doctor appointment. There was food in the house, that thanks to Eddie, too. Carley made sure they got a good breakfast and lunch, and they had the Meals on Wheels for dinner. Cal, in his own way, was more help than Hack had expected. He did the laundry and helped Carley out when she gave him a list of what to do in the mornings. Eavesdropping, Hack heard how Carley kept the list short, her voice all business. Cal had stopped smoking around Louetta, like the doctor said. And he helped Louetta to the bathroom; it fell to him to clean her up sometimes, too. More often of late.
The kicker was, Hack himself was flourishing. Carley took him out to the barn every day now. He’d sit by the corral in Indian summer sun listening while she trained his beauties, doing what he said. They’d brush coats and curry and clean hooves together, Carley absorbing what he knew. Between the two of them, they’d taken care of Spice, and he was sound as ever, no vet needed after all, thank you very much. He hadn’t lost his touch. He was still good for something. Carley would make him go in for a nap; in some ways she was as bad as Jewel, acting like Queen of the Barn, but it was different. Like the old days, and he’d picked up strength from it. He didn’t want it to end.
“We’re doing okay, aren’t we?” he said to Louetta, not even seizing the opportunity to comment on how they’d better start praying since he’d never been right about a thing in his life, and, if he was, it must mean the End of Days and Second Coming was about two minutes away. Hack didn’t believe in that crap, but Louetta did, so he’d just have been saying it to annoy her. And he didn’t want to annoy her now. He wanted her to say yes.
“Hack, I’m thinking maybe I should call Jewel. Maybe I should tell her I’m sorry. I kept thinking she’d come around, y’know.”
Hack felt his way through the rumpled sheet between them on the double bed—Cal hadn’t straightened up or made their bed this morning, though Carley had told him to—and found Louetta’s arm, then her hand. He was buying time to think. He’d heard some of the goings-on a couple of nights earlier when Cal and Eddie had both gotten drunk and Carley had fixed their Meals on Wheels and helped them to bed early. His hearing was a lot sharper than Louetta’s, who’d been paying attention to the television anyway. But he’d picked up this much: Jewel had come, evidently while he and Louetta were both napping, when Carley took Red out on the trail. He’d gleaned that Jewel didn’t have a clue that Carley was here. And would shit a whole house worth of bricks if she knew.
“Notice how much more Cal is doing, though?” Hack said. “I mean, I think this is doing him good. If you call Jewel and ask her to come back, you’ll have to make Cal go.” It was a calculated gamble. He couldn’t believe she’d put herself in reverse. Old cars have rusty gears. Beside, how would Louetta feel if she heard Jewel had come to see the horses and not even checked in on her own parents? No, it was best to keep his peace.
Hack worried something really was wrong with Louetta when he defended Cal and she didn’t immediately challenge his motive. She didn’t even realize that they’d switched positions. It wasn’t that Hack didn’t miss Jewel or didn’t want her back. He did, for sure. Cal was no replacement. But he didn’t want to lose what he had now, being out with the horses every day. And just between him and Carley, he’d started her quietly looking for a two year old he could buy. His granddaughter could become a fine trainer with him out there working with her.
Hack squeezed Louetta’s hand. “You doin’ okay? Feelin’ decent, I mean?”
“Breathin’s tight. I guess I just called it wrong with Jewel. Don’t recognize myself anymore. Used to care—you know how Jewel kept this place. Clean, spit polish. Carley’s doin’ fine with the meals, but the house is dirty. I guess that’s Cal’s job, the way they got it set up, but, thing is, I’d a thought that would make me crazy. Dirty floors, dirty dishes, junk left around. I don’t much care. Now why’s that? Just called it wrong with Jewel. Called a lot of things wrong, maybe.”
There had been a time when Hack would have crowed, done a victory dance, and considered his entire life worthwhile to have heard those words from his wife. Now he didn’t want to hear them at all.
“It’ll work out,” he said. “Just like you said at the beginning, it’ll work out in time. I was the one wrong.”
Louetta didn’t say any more, but Hack took comfort in her silence. He lay awake a long time after she’d gone to sleep, his hand folded lightly over hers, listening to the whir of her oxygen, which, if his hearing hadn’t been so acute, would have drowned out the crickets. He wished he’d thought to ask Carley exactly what phase the moon was in; he liked to know if the room had the silvery sheen it did when it was full or nearly so. He tried to settle himself by remembering: how the horses looked in starry pasture, the night music of the insects and plashes of pond life, the enormity of the harvest moon that had risen the night he’d named the new foal Moonglow. This was the most disconcerting conversation he’d had with his wife in years, to say nothing of the most intimate. She hadn’t pulled her hand away as they spoke nor did he move his now but kept hers in his like something found.
In bed tonight, I am edgy as the squirrels that are Copper’s nemeses, their wary eyes darting side t
o side as they anticipate his release from the back door and beat his arrival at the birdfeeder they are raiding by a timely leap onto the lowest maple branch.
“Maybe you’re thinking about going back, the Eldercare job I mean? Sounds like it sorta worked out okay, talking to Cal. Didn’t it, sweetheart?” Eddie says, rubbing my arm, then my shoulder, and sneaking his way down to my breast. This after he said he was so exhausted when I wanted to take Copper for a walk. There’s almost a pleading tone in his voice, but I can’t tell whether he’s hoping I’ll try to get my job back or I’ll make love with him, something he’s never too tired for.
“You don’t understand. I can’t …”
“Why?”
I lie in the dark trying to find words. In the end it’s easier to make love, because what can I tell him? I don’t understand. And what does Eddie care about understanding? Being is enough for him, an utterly concrete, tactile being in the world while I want inside and outside to match, words and feeling, appearance and reality. And none of it does right now, which has me, as I said, edgy as the squirrels. So I take refuge in Eddie’s world, trying to disappear for a night into a sheer physical experience that might blot out why, if, how, maybe, all those, until I can find sleep.
“Wow,” he says afterward. “Who unleashed you, tiger?”
“Let me sleep,” I murmur, trying to go under. “I don’t want to talk.”
“Who are you, and what have you done with my wife?” he says, propped on an elbow, the way I usually am, while my back is turned, the way his usually is.
I’ve tried to just breathe for a few days, live as if anxiety weren’t a mouse eating holes in the drywall of my mind. Deflecting Eddie’s questions about what I intend to do, telling him “nothing” for the time being, I go to the office, put in overtime while it’s available, pick up Rocky at football practice while Eddie takes Carley to and from rehab. She seems remote as the stars and spends the evenings in her room. Eddie says she’s okay, it’s just that Rocky and Chassie get on her nerves downstairs with their bickering. Every night I want to spend time with her, but when I knock on her door, she says she’s tired and doesn’t want to talk. I worry that Roland’s on her mind. He’s still in jail. I check the Internet every day at work to make sure, my guilty pleasure. If Carley knew, she’d hate me for it, but it was the right thing to do. She must think he’s moved on. I hope she hates him for it. Rehab is working, because she’s sober and looking more and more healthy. Why do I feel as if I’ve lost her?
Mama and Daddy are obviously doing all right with the agency, which I should be glad about, but instead it is painful proud flesh on me, like something the vet will have to debride and excise.
I have to go back. I tell myself it’s the horses, that I need to reassure myself that Spice is really all right. And that’s almost as true as it is that I just long to put my arms around his neck, love and talk to each horse in turn, and relax into the comfort of their acceptance. Maybe I can find a way to ride, just get up bareback this time, while I see how it goes. But maybe there’s a way to just see Mama and Daddy, too, away from Cal. This is the longest we’ve ever been apart. I think about it, and then my angry side sparks. No, dammit. I took care of them. They should have cared about me.
Twice I start to tell Eddie I’m going to go over again, but both times I let the moment pass. I could go on Saturday, but instead I put in for a half day of vacation on Friday afternoon. I’ll make sure my work is done so no one has to cover something that’s mine to do.
The sun is at one-thirty on a brilliant blue October day when I leave the office, a bit later than I’d hoped. I worked through lunch, finished payroll, and changed in the bathroom. The air is clean as washed sheets, and the uneasiness I’ve not shaken dissipates a bit in the glory of the day. Stop being such a worrywart, I tell myself. Mrs. Bladen, my fourth-grade teacher, told me that once, not that I knew what a worrywart was, and she didn’t explain it.
I get all the way to our road before I decide not to hide the car but not to pull in the driveway, either. A compromise: I’ll just park farther on down the road and walk back, then up the driveway to the barn. That way the car won’t make noise and invite attention. If this works and Cal leaves me alone, maybe I can go back to taking care of the horses. Really, they all should start supplemental hay now. The grass is dying. Daddy can’t see to know the condition of the pasture, and Cal doesn’t know about these things, no matter what he says.
I park and for no reason check myself in the rearview mirror. Big-eyed and pale. My bangs are down to my eyebrows now, and the sides, sort of hang like they don’t know what else to do. But it’s better than it was. I take a rubber band out of the ashtray and pull the back into a ponytail and bobby pin the sides. Breathe deep. Breathe again. And again.
Scarcely past the mailbox, my sneakers start onto the weedy gravel at the end of the driveway, a sound like they’re eating cold cereal, and I’m watching the back door warily, feeling guilty and scared and defiant all at once. What I’m on the lookout for is Cal. What I see, though, as I come up the small rise in the land is movement in the paddock behind the barn. I quicken my pace to get where I can see beyond the fence. Spice is in a slow jog on a lunge line. Cal? He knows how to lunge a horse? Cal’s hair isn’t that long, and he wouldn’t be in that bright-red shirt that confuses me with its familiarity.
“Carley!” My voice is a frog-croak of shock and anger, and she doesn’t hear me the first time.
I don’t know how she misses my approach except that she is so focused on Spice, her eyes on him as intently as if she were deciphering a code. “Carley!”
She startles out of her concentration, jerking on the line, and then, seeing me, is frightened. “Whoa, whoa, boy,” she calls to Spice, who reacts to her by breaking gait and bucking once. “Whoa, off that front leg. Settle down, atta boy.” Spice trots a few more steps, then walks. “Whoa, good boy, steady,” Carley repeats.
“What the hell is going on here?” I climb the fence and head into the corral toward her, intending to take the line away from her.
“Let me handle it, Mom. Just let me alone. I know what I’m doing.”
“You’re supposed to be at rehab. Why are you here? I’m taking you back right now.” I head right at her, holding out my hand for the line.
Carley slides it behind her back. “I’m taking care of Spice. When’s the last time you took care of him?”
“This isn’t your concern. How’d you get here?”
“What do you mean it’s not my concern? Stay back!” She raises her voice but not enough to bother Spice, I notice. She reels him partway toward her, then, walking to meet him, caresses his head and neck before using the line as a lead rope to walk him in big slow circles around the paddock. She gets around the paddock six or seven times.
While she does, I cool myself down enough to realize what’s happened.
“Carley,” I say, as evenly as possible. “Roland got out, didn’t he? He brought you here so you and he could score with Cal. Where is he?”
She opens the gate from the paddock into the front pasture, removes my horse’s halter, and turns him out. I let her, though my heart had been set on working him myself. I’m not prepared for the rage on her face when she turns around.
“You fucking think you know everything. You know nothing. Nothing.” Little drops of spit fly off one of the words and arc into the sunlight.
“I know that you need to be back in rehab. They’ll help. We’ll talk to Annie.” I’m pedaling my voice down to soft, calm, slow, even kind. Maybe she’s high. I don’t want to make the kind of mistakes I’ve made before with verbal fireworks, no matter that I’m calculating how to get a restraining order against Roland, and furious I didn’t check the goddamn Internet before I left work today. Who posted bail? His family are all deadbeats.
“Oh my God. You’re the one who’s reality-impaired. You want to blame Roland? When you went behind my back and put him in jail? Who do you think’s been taking care of
things here while you’ve been doing your little sit down strike? Talk about drugging yourself.” Her arms fly up. “Uh-uh, you’re not the only one who can go behind peoples’ backs, Ma. Maybe you better talk to your precious Eddie and his new best friend, Cal. Find out from Eddie how I get here every day. Find out how the Eldercare agency thinks you’re still working here.”
I stand stunned in the middle of the corral. Her torrent runs on over me while I drown, disbelieving.
Cal’s voice penetrates the noise in my head. “Carley! Carley!” The back storm door bangs against the house. “Oh shit. Jewel! You here? You better get inside. I called the ambulance. Ma’s … I think she might be dead.”
In Beauty School
EDDIE KNEW SOMETHING WAS off almost as soon as his truck raised the dust in his in-laws’ driveway. For one thing, the barn doors were closed, and none of the horses were in sight; normally at least one was in the corral, and Carley was still messing with it even though she knew damn well he’d be in a hurry. Now the place almost looked shuttered, like its eyes were closed, and it gave him the creeps. He put the truck in park and went in the back door without calling out his presence.
It didn’t matter. As soon as he was in the kitchen he knew they’d been busted. Someone had scrubbed the room down like it hadn’t been since … oh shit. How the hell had he missed her car? Jewel must have parked on down the road, past the mailbox, to hide it. Eddie stood at the open door, his hand still on it, as the meaning of the moment grew in his mind. She would never understand, never.
The sound of the vacuum cleaner started up, coming from the living room. He could probably make it out of there undetected. Too late. Carley rounded the corner and came into the kitchen.
“Eddie! I tried to call you. Why didn’t you answer your cell? Oh my god, Grandma, she’s … Grandma’s dead. Mom’s here. She’s in the other room.”
