Horse Heaven

by Jane Smiley

  “Tell them to let the horse do whatever he wants.”

  “Yeah.”

  “No, I mean that. Tell them to figure out what the horse wants to do, and let him do it. They charge as much as a boarding school in Switzerland, so they can treat the horse the same way those boarding schools treat the kids.”

  Dick smiled. He had a pretty smile, too. Rosalind would like that. She was drawn to pretty things.

  “I hear you, Al.” They shook hands again. Then Dick said, “Thanks for coming up.” And damn if he didn’t look like he meant it, so Al said, “Yeah. I’m glad I did.” And that was that. Everybody knew all the same stuff now, Al was sure of it. When all was said and done, there was something to be said for that.

  39 NO HORSES, FOR ONCE

  MARY LYNN AND SKIPPY lived in an architectural statement in Potomac, not, actually, very far in terms of distance from Deirdre and George’s venue, but too far to travel, Deirdre thought, without holding the invitation to the birthday party in your hand like a visa, ready for presentation at every checkpoint. George didn’t feel this, and he laughed when she used that word, “checkpoint,” as in “Do ya think this stoplight is the checkpoint, then?”

  On the way over in the car, George kept going on about the possibility of making contact with real or potential owners of racehorses who were looking for a way to redistribute some income. “They’re Democrats,” said Deirdre.

  “A difficulty, but not a fatal one. Democrats own racehorses.”

  “Cheap ones. They feel too guilty to spend several hundred thousand dollars on a horse.”

  “Not Skippy. I’m telling you, Cousin. They’re into animal welfare. You can work that around—”

  “You are going on and on about this, George. You know my views.”

  George’s chiseled lips went together in a line, denoting a rare state for him, actual vexation. Deirdre was momentarily intimidated, and looked out the window. He said, “I feel I am going to have to take you in hand, Cousin.”

  “Try it,” said Deirdre.

  “You are hiding your light under a bushel. There are horses you could do something with that could, pardon me for mentioning it, earn us a living. Earning a living by giving a poor beast a job is not a sin. Now, you see, this time last year you had a barn full of happy workers, but you weren’t satisfied with that, and although I have vowed never to delve into our common past in an effort to discover why you would find self-destruction appealing, darlin’, I am mighty tempted. The word ‘perversity’ comes into my mind.”

  There was the wreck, of course. Deirdre knew that this was in both their minds, but since they no longer drew the same conclusions from it, it had become an unmentionable. It was like they had come to an intersection together and then disagreed about which road to take. They had taken her road, but as they got farther down it, the discord got more serious. This was much like marriage, and one of the reasons she had avoided that condition. Also like marriage was that she knew what it would cost if she barked back, so, rather than turning toward him, she looked straight ahead and said, “Thank you for expressing your views,” and thirty seconds later he drove the car between the gateposts of Skippy and Mary Lynn’s architectural statement. Once inside, they sprang apart and headed for opposite ends of the house, which made Deirdre feel lonely as well as enraged.

  The architectural statement had several graduated degrees of inside and outside, with large plants and randomly set single walls confusing the issue. It wasn’t until she was a hundred feet away from the refreshment table that she was truly in the open, and not far beyond that, the landscape, or the garden-scape, began to contract again as it met what looked like the boundaries of the property. Elegant, indeed, and Deirdre had no objection to it per se, above and beyond her bottom-line objection to life in general. Och, she was a bitter woman, George was always telling her, and the marvelous mare and the wondrous filly that had been got from the marvelous mare this year were no longer enough to lighten her existence. The mare’s last foal, also a filly, had been sold at Saratoga this year for two hundred thousand dollars as a yearling, which was a good omen for next year. The sales were where conventional horsemen’s wisdom (it’s never too soon to sell a horse, for he could commit suicide the next day) and capitalism (the workers cannot afford to buy what they produce) intersected. Mere money, and a considerable amount of it, could very well flow into her account a year from now. But the wondrous filly would be trained by someone else, someone in southern California. “Cousin, you cannot be pleased,” George had said, and of course he was right.

  She drifted into a copse of trees, went around a hedge, and was just about to admire some fruit trees espaliered against one of those random walls when she saw that she had found her hostess, but that the hostess was in the arms of someone not Skippy, someone not even of Skippy’s ethnic and racial classification. Mary Lynn did not see her, since her eyes had rolled well back in her head and she was pressed very tightly against her partner. Deirdre turned on her heel and fled.

  It was only when she had several of the random walls between herself and the kissing pair that she felt safe, but within moments, of course, Skippy, heretofore invisible, turned up right at her elbow. He said, “You’re here! I saw George. I was looking for you. Did you have trouble finding the place? It’s almost finished. It’s going to be in Architectural Digest. You have to meet the architect. Are we running anything in the next two weeks? I have to go to Seattle for business all the time. Have you ever thought of shipping a horse or two out there? I have this big case out there this coming year. We could—”

  “Hello, Skippy.”

  “Have you seen the—”

  What she was doing was herding him gently back toward the house. She didn’t think she was doing this for his sake. Possibly she was doing it for Mary Lynn’s sake, so that the woman could pass all the way through whatever ecstasy she was engaged in and into a more satisfied and contented frame of mind. Or, perhaps, she was doing it for herself, avoiding the occasion of discomfort. They arrived at the table. Skippy had been burbling for a number of minutes at this point, though Deirdre had lost track of his train of thought, and even of his subject matter. When he paused for her to reply, she said, “Have you had any of the refreshments, then?”

  “Not yet, I—”

  “Well, come on. Its a fine feast. I had to drag myself away from it.” And so she led him around the big table, filling a plate for him. And also keeping her eye out to the west, for a glimpse of Mary Lynn, though, the way the architect had set this place up, it looked like you had good cover everywhere. You could basically get from any spot on the property to any spot in the house without drawing fire.

  She was not alone with Skippy for more than half a minute before the opinion-makers had surrounded them.

  “He’s been doing this for years. I told Stephanopoulos—”

  “Stephanopoulos? I told Carville. I told him more than once. He never did listen to Stephanopoulos.”

  “He never did listen to Carville. I said to Jordan, time after time—”

  “Jordan! Come on! The only one he ever listened to was Web—”

  “Not for a moment, Jake. Not for a moment. He had a way of seeming to listen—I always thought he seemed to listen to me. I can’t tell you the number of times I had him in a corner in the Oval Office—”

  “How could you have him in a corner in the Oval Office—”

  “I used to want to shake him—”

  Skippy perked right up. Deirdre patted him on the shoulder and eased herself out of the group, not forgetting one more smoked-salmon mousse on endive leaf with baby shrimp perched on the curlicue.

  As she passed into the living room, which was decorated in cheerful blue-and-white chinoiserie with ornate yellow satin accents, she stopped to admire George in her anger. George did not look at her. He was standing in a group of his own, mostly women. She could hear laughter chiming over him, a waterfall of delight.

  She turned to look at the st
ack of presents. It was depressingly large. Deirdre felt sure that Mary Lynn would not welcome so many new items into her already (a glance around) well-packed domicile. But, then, Deirdre took a dim view of gifts, as a rule. She sighed and turned away, only to find herself standing face to face with himself, the man Mary Lynn had been kissing in the garden. He was a good-looking black man in a lovely gray suit and very fashionable glasses, small and oval. He smiled at her, though it did not seem with recognition. She smiled back, noticing her own sudden amazement that Mary Lynn, a woman who would have in Ireland been called plain as a bun, had been kissing such a man. She said, “Looking at the pile of gifts, then?”

  “Always a marvel.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, think of it this way. This is one woman. She already owns, maybe, ten thousand objects, depending upon how you categorize them. Here are another hundred, hundred and fifty, and most of them have more than one part. And Daniel, he has more objects than she does, so in this house alone there are twenty to thirty thousand objects. Now, there are two hundred and fifty million people in this country. Let’s say that each one has only three thousand objects, on average. Still, that’s houseroom for seven hundred fifty billion objects. That’s seven hundred fifty billion things that were made and distributed and sold.”

  “Makes you never want to shop again.”

  “I already never want to shop again. How about you?”

  “I shop only for horses, and then only so I may thank the Lord when I haven’t bought any.”

  “What kind of horses?”

  “Racehorses.”

  “You must be—”

  “I’m their trainer.”

  “You should meet—”

  And then she came through the door into the room, and put her arm through the man’s arm. He said, “This is just the very one I was mentioning. But I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name?”

  The most beautiful woman she had ever seen smiled at her and Deirdre said, “It’s Deirdre. Deirdre Donohue.” Then she held out her hand, almost graciously, and said, “You have horses? Are you a friend of Mary Lynn’s?”

  “No. I just came along with Norman. I kind of date his brother. Norman’s with Microsoft. Skippy and Norman are working on that case together. I’m Tiffany Morse.”

  To cover her rapidly evaporating savoir faire, Deirdre said to Norman, “So which present is yours?”

  Norman pointed out an elaborately wrapped cubical box.

  “What’s in it?”

  “Software.” He grinned mischievously, and Deirdre found herself saying, “So how is it that you were kissing the birthday girl in the garden a bit ago?”

  “Oh, Norman,” said Tiffany, wearily.

  But Norman didn’t miss a beat. His smile didn’t dim or harden, but grew truly, Deirdre thought, happy. “Ah, well,” he said. “I do believe that Mary Lynn is my girl.”

  “Oh, Norman,” said Tiffany again. And she shook her head. Then she turned to Deirdre and said, “Every single person at this party is talking about Clinton.” Then Tiffany put her hand on Deirdre’s elbow in a very natural manner, and turned her away from the presents. She said, “Let’s go outside and talk horses.” Deirdre glanced at Norman. Tiffany said, “We don’t need Norman. All he wants to talk about is Mary Lynn. I came along just to have a look at her, really. Good-bye, Norman. Go eat something so I can gossip about you.”

  Norman dutifully turned around and went out into the dining room.

  “He had her eyes rolling back in her head. I do believe they were breathing quite heavily.”

  Tiffany glanced at the ceiling, then said, “Myself, I don’t understand Norman and Ho Ho at all. Or, actually, anyone in their family. They are not like anyone I ever grew up with.”

  “Ho Ho?”

  “Norman’s brother. He’s a rap singer, and sort of like my boyfriend, except he has this CD that’s bombing, and so he’s going to quit the music business and go to cooking school. His hobby is making sausages now.”

  “He’s going from rap singing to making sausages?”

  “And he gave me the horses the other day. His accountant told him he probably won’t need the tax write-off any longer if he goes into the restaurant business. Probably not the entourage, either, so they’re all looking for something else to do.”

  “Is Norman serious about Mary Lynn?”

  “He loves her commanding manner. What is she, forty-five? He’s only thirty-two.”

  “She does have a commanding manner indeed.”

  “He had this girlfriend in Seattle who was an officer on an aircraft carrier. She was just the same way, his stepmother told me. I never knew her. I’ve just known Ho Ho for about eight months.”

  By now they were sitting on a sofa. Deirdre could think of nothing to say, so it was easy to ask the one question she had perhaps asked more than any other over the years. “How many horses do you have?” Tiffany’s presence more or less put her right out of her fucking mind.

  “Two running. I just got a yearling at Saratoga. Red Ransom.”

  Deirdre sighed.

  “I wish I were a trainer,” said Tiffany. “I go out to the track every day.”

  “Och, that’s not a promising wish, darlin’.”

  Tiffany said, “I know what you’re going to say. My trainer says it all the time. Do I know how long it took him to get where he is, into the middle class? Do I know how many times there wasn’t enough money in his business account to pay for hay, or to make his mortgage payment, or to pay his kids’ school fees? Do I know how many owners stiffed him over the years, how many horses popped a splint before a big race or threw a shoe during the race or bumped the jockey over the rail coming out of the gate? Some just die—pulmonary embolism or something more mysterious. Now they’re running, now they’re dead. Do I know how hard it is to find grooms who can groom, exercise guys who can ride, owners who can shut up and listen, horses who can relax? When I used to tell him all about it, he would yell at me in English. Now he yells at me in Spanish. He thinks I should stick with Norman’s family. They love me. But I don’t want to go to school. All of them go to school like it’s heaven. You know, when Ho Ho decided to get out of the music business, he still had enough money, even after the horses and the entourage, to just open a restaurant, and a good one, and to hire a great chef, and everything. But in his family, the thing is, you never buy it. You learn it. There isn’t even any discussion about it. When you can’t think what to do next, you enroll.” She sighed.

  “You didn’t like school, then. Me neither. Those nuns had me in such a box. The baby Jesus on one side, the Virgin Mary on the other, maths goadin’ me from behind and Shakespeare screamin’ at me from the front.”

  “I love the way you talk.”

  “Do ya now. Well, in America, you can say anything you please in an Irish accent, and they love it. My cousin George can babble one inanity after another, and they cluster about him, nodding like peonies.”

  “You want to hear how I talk?”

  “I do.”

  “Girl! What you know about this party—” and then there was something eloquent and completely incomprehensible to Deirdre. Tiffany went on, “Ho Ho loves me to talk like that, or he did. He would write it all down. I never saw a horse before I was with Ho Ho. But now that’s all I think about.” Deirdre felt herself smiling and smiling, but she covered up in the habitual way, saying, “What, class are they running?”

  “Well, I told Dagoberto that, even though Ho Ho was taking care of things and at that point those kinds of expenses were nothing to him, the horse had to support itself, so he got me some good claimers, and we do that, trading around and mostly trading up. But, you know, two horses aren’t enough for me to think about. I want to think about twenty horses or thirty horses. I don’t want to go out there and just watch my horses work. Now I go out there every day, and Dagoberto has other owners to see and other things he has to do, and he thinks I know enough already. Dagoberto has kept my stable in the
black since day one, but I’m bored with that now.”

  “Well, training isn’t boring. But horses are tragic beasts, especially good horses, especially good Thoroughbreds. I used to ride jumpers, ya know. You can have a good jumper of any breed or no breed. Lots of warmbloods are good jumpers. Jumping isn’t all that hard on them, contrary to appearances. They can get around the jumps before they know they’re working, if they’re not afraid. But racing, now, there’s always a moment in a race when a horse has to decide to press on. A Thoroughbred is likelier than not to press on. That’s what we ask of them. But, I ask myself, at what cost? We rely on them not to consider the cost, but to press on anyway. That’s heart, you know. They have great hearts. But it’s their downfall, that they don’t feel the cost until they’ve paid it. Every day, especially when I have a horse running, I wake up and I say to myself, Can I ask this horse, this day, to pay that cost if he has to? I don’t know what I would do for a living if I didn’t do this thing, but—” She sensed someone behind her and turned around. Tiffany turned around, too. It was George. He smiled at Tiffany but not at her. She said, “Och. I thought you were occupied, Cousin.”

  Tiffany regarded him, and Deirdre took the opportunity to regard her. Talk about beauty. Nor was it merely how she was shaped, or her pretty mannerisms or her delicious style (she had on an amethyst linen sundress and a necklace of gold suns with jolly faces etched into them; perfect cornrows sculpted the shape of her head, then fell to her shoulders with a tinkle of gold glass beads). It was that beauty was a continuous flow within the boundaries so delicately defined by her skin. You could almost follow it with your eyes, eddying here, surging there, as she said to George, “Do you train horses, too?”

  “With Deirdre. Have you some horses, then?”

  “I have two. Three, with the yearling.”

  George caught Deirdre’s eye, then said, “And a Democrat, then?”