Pure Hollywood

by Christine Schutt

  What names, if any, had others at the ranch assigned her?—Arden, Arden Fawn. Was she the fat lady, the dull lady, the shy lady—hair color as uncertain as her age? Arden had a pretty face, of this much she was certain, which made it all the sadder, the weight. She hoped for her horse’s sake she would soon reach the summit.

  There, Red said they could get off their horses and stretch their legs. But Arden had no intention of stretching her legs. If she got off her horse, she would never get on again. Besides, she could see just as well from on top of her horse, and her back wouldn’t hurt if Doc held still. The riding itself, walking, walking especially and however precariously, was easiest on her back. No loping, please! They rode up the mountain, slowly and close, and her thoughts were the same and body-centered until they all stopped at the summit. The sturdy banker loudly huffed off his horse and landed hard; his wife tiptoed lightly—all grace. And Arden?

  “You sure?” Red asked, ready to help.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “No, I’ll stay on.”

  So Red adjusted her saddle, pulled it more to his side, asked after Doc.

  “He’s a good boy,” Arden said and wondered was Red a good boy or did he fuck sheep? Arden liked to appall herself with her own appalling thoughts. She liked a little fright in the middle of small exchanges—the self-manufactured fright from thinking she was overheard. The dentist’s wife, who rode near and behind Red, asked him about the drought with an informed interest in its effects on the region’s wildlife.

  Arden regarded the dentist’s wife, talking about water tables. Maybe in some states this was called flirting but the pity of it: a late-life romance as brief as a paper match, a piff of heat but no flame really, a glow quickly extinguished.

  The dentist himself winked at Arden. “Not going to get off and stretch your legs?” he asked.

  “Never. I couldn’t. How would I get on again?”

  The dentist, smiling, said, “There’s lots of ways.”

  The dentist was a small man darkly outlined by his specialty, a dentist for expensive and serious procedures to do with reconstruction—think of the bright pan with its sharp slender instruments—she did and was afraid of what this dentist would do inside her mouth. His jeans looked new and his shirt was very white, unwrinkled, snap-buttons, western. She watched him move to a higher point and a different perspective.

  Oh, hell, strike the match of romance, who cares if it’s short? Why else had she come to the Double-D? Should she say the weather, the birdlife, the desert in bloom? No one had mentioned a drought. Scant birdlife this season, no color, but hovering just behind Arden was Mrs. Pall-Meyer. Mrs. Pall-Meyer, an imperious crone with a pointy face that jabbed, Mrs. Pall-Meyer stood for something, but for what? Oh, the obvious, death or the future.

  There, leaning against a rock and eating ranch granola was the little Asbach girl, rapt with her story’s unspooling. Her lips moved and she smiled to herself, frowned, pouted, then smiled again. Arden guessed she was ten or eleven, a cozy year, fifth grade, but what was her story about? What could she be saying?

  Movement now. The others in the group were getting on their horses again. Only Mrs. Pall-Meyer did not. She was protesting about her horse.

  “Want some help?” Red asked.

  “What do you think?” Mrs. Pall-Meyer, with one foot in Red’s hands, said, “I hate having to ride a dull horse.” She tipped a little trying to look at Red as she talked, unsteady, so that he lifted her until she swung her crooked body over the beast she dismissed as a plodder. She didn’t say thank you, just tocked in the saddle to make herself comfortable. It occurred to Arden that Mrs. Pall-Meyer might be drunk.

  Red took the lead and the party stayed together, the horses picked their way, butt-close, along a ledge. Steep, narrow, white, the ledge was dramatic and Arden held her breath. No one spoke; quiet but for the clocking noise of the horses, their gassy sighs and shivers. Stones popped and the trail noise sounded serious—just as in the cowboy movies: after the shoot-out comes the slow descent, hints of danger and exhaustion. The palomino stumbled and some of the ledge fell away.

  “We are going down, aren’t we?” Arden asked, anxious.

  Mrs. Pall-Meyer snorted.

  Okay, the question was stupid but the riding was more rocking from side to side than moving forward. Lean back had been the instruction for going downhill, and dutifully Arden did—had—even though the small of her back ached and she was afraid of her horse.

  The old woman, suddenly seeming close, sneered, “He knows what he’s doing.”

  “I hope so.”

  “You’ve really no business on this ride.”

  “I don’t,” Arden said. “I don’t know,” she began but she didn’t want to turn around to address the old woman, riding last again. She was tearful enough as it was—her back ached—and to see Mrs. Pall-Meyer’s disdain would surely make her cry. She said no more and the repetitive sound of striking hooves stupefied her and when she woke the trail had begun to level off to a more inviting path, soft, quiet, broad. She kicked Doc into a bumpy trot that didn’t last long though it put more space between her and Mrs. Pall-Meyer, Mrs. Pall-Meyer now far behind until Red shouted out: “Mrs. Pall-Meyer!”

  Why did he?

  But Mrs. Pall-Meyer didn’t respond.

  “What can I …” from Red, inconclusive, and so through fluff adrift they rode in a meditative quiet. The banker had spread his life around miles ago. And Red wasn’t much of a talker. Now the stables were in sight. There was the pasture where the ranch horses socialized; there, the barn, the tackroom, the ring. The ranch, on a hill, Arden couldn’t see any part of, but the corral was miraculously close.

  She barely heard Red say “Shit!” before he jerked his horse around and rode full out to where Mrs. Pall-Meyer was turned upside down. Her foot, twisted, was caught in the stirrup; most of her lay on the ground. Her horse stood still, unmoved by crisis. What sound was this that Mrs. Pall-Meyer was making, but it was familiar.

  A small truck, its trunk down, banged alongside the fence, stopped at the gate, and another wrangler from another direction came out to herd Arden’s group into the corral. The banker frisked home, and the dentist’s wife and the dentist followed. The Asbachs, grandmother and granddaughter, were already dismounting. “Don’t look,” the grandmother was saying. Arden saw the fluid ten-year shape slide off her horse and canter on her own once her boots hit the ground. Turn away, little girl, turn away from the future, and she did.

  The Lady from Connecticut

  Nearly alone on the station platform, she is a heavy, heaving woman, encircled with luxe bags that scuff the pavement when she leans over and sighs. The reassuring blood rush to the head says she’s alive with the body’s store of surprises, the tics and pricks and stars bright as foil when she opens her eyes. Shadow movement in the parking lot, nothing more, a quiet beseeming a bedroom suburb. She pokes at her phone to call home, seeing not numbers so much as the all-purpose islanded kitchen, her own, something more than a kitchen: polished granite surfaces in speckled pheasant colors. Everything put away and out of sight. Clean, clean. A built-in table and banquette—slide in, slide over, but no one is at the table or in the kitchen. Muted news flickers on the flat screen: gaudy mayhem.

  The phone ceases to ring and she hears her bullshit message—the twinkly Thanks so much for calling!

  “Hey,” she says now. “It’s me.” She sways. “I thought you’d be here. I’m in Dart, a little tipsy.” She hears herself wheeze, and they must hear, too, if they hear her at all.

  Earlier tonight her friend had said, “Sweets. We’re lucky. We’ve money in our pockets, and the night is not at all cold but clear, fall, and fragrant!”

  Ah, who wouldn’t love her friend?

  “I should have married you, Bebe!” she had said, and not for the first time.

  “Shoulda, coulda,” was her answer—Bebe, happily divorced and in love with a younger woman.

  Why wait at Dart station? Why wa
it in the Plexiglas shed? Why sit on a cold metal seat with holes she can feel the cold through?

  Attend, and so she does and walks away from the station and toward town. She walks steadily enough, follows the yellow flares of the street trees in street light, walks on what she perceives as the upright side of the commercial street, past the jewelry store still golden despite the empty cases; past the rustic cafe with its washed floors and upended stools, past the gift store and the dry cleaner’s scrolled script—Trafalgar’s—white walls, white counter dramatically backdropped by a heavy black curtain behind which hang bagged clothes. The ceiling light is a chandelier. Who said Dart was dangerous?

  Between buildings in the back: a parking lot, plank fence, hedge, sometimes a Dumpster but the lots look swept. Commerce ceases, the sidewalk narrows, and leaf-fall, stomped to leaf-meal, dusts her shoes.

  An old sidewalk buckled and cracked in places; houses set back behind leathery rhododendrons—sullen and thuggish. She hates rhododendrons. Big-deal ugly cerise blossoms, they belong in the forest, not ringed around a house.

  Her hands are hot and hurt; the handles of the luxe bags cut into them.

  Carry on!

  She is fifty-six but strong, and ahead at the turn is Saint Francis Church, the turn she takes when she drives to the station, but car conflicts meant the party planner for Big D’s upcoming birthday drove her to the station this morning. She has not employed this planner before but has wandered through his parties, admiring his use of bent forks and burlap amid flats of fragile, fringy plants.

  But the flowers are the least of preparing for Big D’s party. The guests, the seating. Where to put Big D’s noisy nephew, a pontificating vegetarian who made everyone uncomfortable about food?

  Set down your burden, Saint Francis says, and so she does: she sets aside her luxe bags and rubs her sore hands. She sits on a bench in front of the church, satchel in lap, there to contemplate the tonsured saint, arms beseeching, palms upturned. But such shallow—shallow hands! What could he hold out to anyone or could anyone take hold of? Saint Francis of Assisi should have birds about his person, shouldn’t he? A rabbit somewhere, a squirrel, a fox?

  She misses having a dog, sweet Lucy, misses her son—misses his younger self who liked to walk with her, which is to say, enjoyed her company. Her company, what is it to be in her company?

  Once Bebe fell asleep while she was talking to her. Bebe shut her eyes just as she was telling her how eclipsed she felt by everyone. Am I so dull, so repetitious, so petty? she was asking this when Bebe’s eyes, she saw, were shut.

  “You’re angry,” Bebe said tonight and has said before, along with You can be mean, you can be judgmental. Early in the evening Bebe had told her to stop! Stop complaining! She had arrived angry and shopped out and sure she had bought the wrong tie and a shirt her husband would never wear but that was because he was so … Stop! You wonder why friends don’t want to see you?

  Oh, lady from the suburbs, after too much wine in the city, don’t cry!

  On the phone again, she clicks off when she hears herself saying … “No one is at home …”

  Not true! Donny might be plugged in somewhere in the house.

  And his father, Big D, most likely asleep on the couch, an open book across his chest, a fat hardback on some crisis the usual bullies brought about and then made money fixing.

  Big D has very large hands. His hands are so big, he could pulverize the plaster statue of Saint Francis with one of them. She puts her head through the harness of her satchel and moves to take up the luxe bags, but puts them aside again and sits back on the bench.

  When Big D was a boy—nine or ten?—he threw potatoes at his mother. While his older brother cheered him on, he pelted her in the back.

  Why didn’t you stop me, Mother?

  Oh, you were only trying to make your brother laugh.

  Jokes at the expense of someone else can make Big D laugh, too.

  In the picture of this scene, her mother-in-law stands stoutly at the sink dressed in rough linen. The woman’s hair is still brown and matches the brown of the sack she wears as a dress. She might be a potato!

  Oh, the statue of Saint Francis is pitiably featureless, and she scolds herself for self-pity. Stand up! Quit blubbering! Raise your arms! You’re alive! You’re well. Think of the war-ravaged poor rocking in a boat in the middle of a black sea, desperate: you’re not one of those.

  How dark and separate is the house next to the church behind its spiky hedge of arborvitae—who lives there?

  She has not always lived in Connecticut.

  Once, she knew the lucky girl’s life in Maryland. The fields and fences, mown meadow, stubble and stalk, she would like to be back on the footpath to the house on the hill in a rural route setting, a gentleman’s farm with a barn and horses cared for by loving staff. Jessup—she misses him. Once gardens simply happened and she, slender, was photographed in them.

  House light through the trees but steadily darker along what turns into the stony ledge of road beside genuinely old stone walls where once she used to walk with Lucy, sweet dog.

  Why haven’t they turned the ledge into a broader path for dog owners—or runners, for that matter, walkers? There are no walkers, that’s why—or very few. She might right this imbalance. She might take up walking to the station on the days, like today, when she works in the city.

  She steps into the ditch before a car passes but its lights catch parts of her.

  She is impossible to miss with these impressive bags and the color of her coat. But her bags! She put them down. She put them down on the bench at Saint Francis Church and never took them up again but walked past them when she left the churchyard. She must not have cared—she doesn’t care. Expensive clothes for Big D’s big birthday. Sixty.

  Is this gift to be returned, I wonder? Is this one for UPS? Big D is well-known to ask of all her gifts as he unwraps them—actually asks of gifts given him by anyone. Big D does not reserve his scorn for her alone.

  One for the truck; back on the truck; a doozy for the truck, I’m afraid; load her up; a return, yes, sir, a return—all Big D terms pelted like potatoes, meant to be funny, wasn’t, was never oh … don’t get lost in never-never land.

  Once upon a time Big D was Don to her and never wrong.

  Once upon a time … she bought him a green cashmere sweater (he looks good in green) but this green didn’t work, and he returned the sweater and came home horrified at how much she had spent on him—but also seeming happy about it. A few weeks later he bought the same sweater on sale in wheat.

  She prays her bags fall into needy hands. Do your best, Saint Francis. Besides talking to animals, what else did Saint Francis do? Why is he a saint in the first place? What part of us can he protect?

  What a shitty spiritual education she has had, she’s simply brushed past churches all of her life, knows a crèche when she sees one.

  Across the road and ahead, the pillowy landscape of the golf course and the secular life in light: the River Club badged in deep blue, gold, and white. She owns a lot of RC highball glasses because the River Club is a big part of Big D’s life. She can turn anything into a joke with big at the front.

  At this hour the road is not much traveled; its residents, living far apart and withdrawn into their woods and behind their fences, are abed.

  Cars pass, several in a row, from a party, perhaps, following each other home—sober drivers, she hopes, soberer than she, yet she moves back in the ditch, which isn’t a ditch so much as a broad rut filled with fallen leaves and broken branches, fieldstone and mist rising over a landscape pieced as quaintly as a quilt, and the lady from Connecticut, a loose stitch in it.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to Diane Williams, great writer, friend, and editor of NOON, a literary annual in which most of these stories first appeared. Thank you to Wyatt Prunty for inviting me to his inspiring summer camp, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, where many of these stories first were read. Than
k you to Elisabeth Schmitz for her constancy and belief in these stories. Her editorial attentions, along with editor Katie Raissian’s notes, greatly improved the collection. A writer’s thrill: to be read closely and understood, thank you both for giving the book unity. Thank you to my agent, Gail Hochman, for persevering on my behalf despite hardly Hollywood returns, and to Abby Weintraub, great friend, thank you for another book jacket touched with mystery.

  Thank you to my sons, Nicholas and Will Schutt, and to their wives, Bethany LaVoo Schutt and Tania Biancalani, for the ease of mind given a parent when she knows her children are happy. Stay happy. To Maya and Imogen, the grandest of granddaughters, you make me dotty, thank you very much. And for love, and most everything else expressive of it, thank you to my remarkable husband, David Kersey, master gardener and master teacher, the saint who makes this writing life possible. How does it feel to be adored?