by Jenny Lee
Vronsky reached across the table, flipped Beatrice’s laptop around in one quick motion, and stared at the screen. “Impressive. I was positive you’d be on some gossip site checking out Kendall’s latest lip gloss release.”
“Kylie’s the makeup mogul, you numchuck. Kendall’s the model!” Though as she was saying this she realized her cousin was purposefully teasing her.
“‘So while God distinguishes himself as cause separate from effect, the metaphysical division between Cain and Abel (antediluvian/ postdiluvian) illustrates the effect preceding the cause for the reader…’” Vronsky recited. “My, my, my! There may be a brain under all those hair extensions, after all.” Vronsky closed the laptop and slid it back across the table. He knew he could only tease Bea so much before she’d go for the jugular. He needed her, and he knew she knew it.
“What’s happening with the party planning? Is she coming?” he asked. “I was thinking maybe you could have a slumber party and invite her to sleep over?”
“Yes, maybe if we were twelve years old.” Beatrice rolled her eyes at her younger cousin. She had never seen Vronsky desperate over a girl before. Normally she’d roast his nuts over an open flame for being so pussywhipped, but there was something about his ardor for Anna that she found rather sweet. This was the first time she’d ever seen him sweat someone like this. Bea was rarely surprised by people, but she wondered if perhaps Vronsky really was in love with Anna as he claimed. She had seen him infatuated with so many girls over the last two years, and there wasn’t a lion on the veld who could bring down a gazelle faster than him, but as soon as he made the kill he’d be off chasing the next piece of tail. She was so curious to find out if a similar fate would befall Anna.
“V, I’m handling it, okay?” she warned. “I heard she went to Boston last weekend, so she should be free this upcoming Saturday night. My Cambridge spies are keeping tabs on the OG to see if he’s coming to town first. It’s his half-sister’s birthday soon, so who knows when her sad little soiree will be. Last year she had an art critic come and give a lecture on Byzantine mosaics … at her birthday party! What dwanky boof plans that?!”
Vronsky listened to his cousin in silence, relaxing a little because it was clear she had everything under control. It wasn’t that he doubted her puppet-master skill set, but the suspense of it all was driving him mad. He hadn’t seen Anna for almost two weeks, and he already knew that she’d gone up to Boston for the weekend. He had been tempted to follow but decided that showing up on another train with her might make him look like a stalker. Also, Boston wasn’t a city he was too familiar with, and he didn’t want to deal with the headache of tracking her down. If he was being brutally honest with himself, he questioned his ability to stomach witnessing her with her boyfriend firsthand. “Beautiful Bea, have I told you how much I worship you and everything you’re doing for me lately?”
“I gotta finish my paper, so you need to run along.” She waved him off like a bothersome fly. “Go to the house if you want. Mommy’s having twenty people over for dinner, so there should be plenty for you to snack on.” She then added, “Though, if you’re looking for another kind of goodie … I believe you’ll find her at Staugas Farms finishing her riding lesson in half an hour.”
“Can I borrow one of the horses?”
“You’re going to ride?” Bea snorted. “Desperate, much?”
His eyes clouded over at her comment, and he frowned. His cousin was in rare form, so he wasn’t sure whether he should try to be serious or not. He had hoped to get her honest perspective, because he had been feeling so unlike himself lately. All these emotions were making him cagey. She was the only person he trusted to talk to about his real feelings, but even still, he was reticent to open up to her completely. While she was a master of manipulation and social climbing, she rarely if ever shared her innermost hopes and dreams, assuming she had any at all.
The only time she had ever bared her soul to him was three years ago when their families vacationed together in Bali. They had tried ayahuasca together, so it’s hard to know if that even counted. It hit her first, and he held her hair back while she threw up on the beach. Afterward, Beatrice started to cry and laugh at the same time, then she got up and stumbled into the warm waves. Vronsky, afraid for her safety, even though he was tripping his very own face off, managed to pull her back before she got too far out and before the naturally occurring hallucinogenic completely obliterated his concept of reality.
She started sobbing in his arms then and confessed she wasn’t supposed to be an only child. Her mother had had difficulties getting pregnant, so her parents had turned to IVF. After several tries her mother became pregnant with triplets but was aghast at the idea of having three babies simultaneously. Undergoing a risky procedure where one of the embryos would be extinguished, leaving only twins, she suffered a complication and two were lost, leaving Beatrice as the sole survivor.
“My mom is a selfish murderer!” she cried. “It’s like a part of me is missing. I should have had two sisters, but no, she couldn’t ruin her fucking figure, so she killed them in the womb!” Then she turned to Vronsky and, in all seriousness, said, “While I watched!”
Vronsky wasn’t sure if Beatrice remembered confessing this to him, because they never spoke of it again. To be honest, he hadn’t remembered it when he woke up twenty-four hours later in a stranger’s hammock two miles from the beach house they were renting. But when the memories of that night came back to him on the flight home, it was her inconsolable sadness that hit him like a flash flood.
She had cried for a long time as they lay on the beach looking at the stars. Eventually Beatrice announced in a pitiful voice that she, too, was a murderer because she had already had two abortions. “I hate condoms. Can’t stand the smell of them,” she said. “Oh my god, that makes me a selfish spoiled brat just like my mom! Do you think I’d be different if I had sisters, Vronsky? Do you think I’d be … happy?”
“They missed out on not having you for family,” he told her. “I know I’d be lost without you.” Beatrice was like a sister to him.
Vronsky thought of this sentiment as he grabbed his helmet off the table. He walked around Beatrice’s seat and gave her a warm and loving hug from behind. “I adore you, Bea, I hope you know that.” Beatrice tensed up at his touch, but then relaxed into her cousin’s embrace.
“Back atcha, handsome; you’re my favorite person in the world,” she murmured, not taking her eyes off her computer screen. “I’ll text you when I talk to your bae tomorrow. If you see her tonight, don’t mention the party, okay?”
Vronsky gave her a wink as he walked off, but Beatrice didn’t see. She was already busy on thesaurus.com, trying to figure out the minimum number of words she’d have to change to make the stolen paper her very own.
XVI
Vronsky pulled up to a four-way stop on his way to the stables where Anna took her riding lessons. Across from him a blue 2010 Mercedes wagon yielded at the stop sign, and he waved it ahead, despite his right of way. Bikers made other drivers nervous, and his mother warned him that his first accident, even if it was tiny, would be the last time he ever sat on a motorcycle. (Most mothers have jurisdiction over their children until they hit eighteen or so, but rich kids whose families have teams of lawyers to draft their trust funds can get all sort of pesky provisions slapped on their freedom, if they’re not careful.) So Vronsky kept his daredevil nature in check when riding in the city.
As the station wagon made a right turn in front of him, Vronsky revved the engine of his red Ducati Monster, lost in thought. It was now his turn to make a left onto the road leading to Staugas Farms, where Anna stabled her horses. There were no other cars waiting, so he idled for a moment, unsure of what to do.
You’re going to look like a total swimfan showing up at a horse farm on a ten-thousand-dollar motorcycle. Everyone knows her there and you can’t show up expecting no one will notice. What are you gonna say if you run into her? “Hi there. I just
stopped by because I missed your face”? Don’t do this. Don’t be this guy. You hate this guy. You’re the guy who hooks up with this guy’s girlfriend. You’re the guy who sleeps with this guy’s girlfriend and then his sister.
You’re also the guy … who needs to be where she is …
Vronsky gunned the engine and turned left. It was as if the hands of fate punched the throttle, willing him toward his destination. Two minutes later he pulled into Staugas Farms and parked his bike between two Range Rovers. When he took off his helmet, he ran both hands through his hair a few times, took a deep breath, and headed to the stables.
It had been five years since he had ridden a horse and being back around them made Vronsky realize he didn’t miss it one bit. There were only two things that had ever appealed to him about riding: the nobility and magnificence of the horses, and the attraction he felt toward the girls who rode them. He found everything else abhorrent. He hated the smell, didn’t like the mud, and it turned out he didn’t like the look he got from the extremely tall stable hand when he asked if Anna K. was back from her lesson.
“Who wants to know?” He sneered. “I’m not allowed to just give information out about our clientele to any pretty boy who walks in off the street.” The guy spoke with an exaggerated slang that sounded false to Vronsky. On further glance, Vronsky was pretty sure the guy in front of him wasn’t that much older than himself, even though he towered over him and had the facial hair of someone much older.
“I’m a friend of hers,” Vronsky said. He now fully regretted not going straight ahead at the four-way stop when he’d had the chance. “From the city.”
“Oh, am I supposed to be impressed? You coming to the country from the big bad city?”
Now Vronsky knew the guy was taking the piss out of him, and he wasn’t amused by it. “Look, dude, my Uncle is Richard D. on Pear Lane. He plays golf with Mr. Staugas. Like every week.”
“Ohhhhhh, well I guess that makes your uncle the fag on Pear Lane I’ve heard so much about.”
Vronsky moved fast, his fist cocked and ready to pound on the homophobic guy who dared besmirch his uncle’s good name, but the dude easily ducked the blow. He doubled over and bellowed with laughter. Confused by the familiar sound, Vronsky turned to find the guy smiling and holding his arms out wide.
“Damn, bruh! I punk’d you good, son. You shoulda seen your face. I’m surprised smoke didn’t come out of your nose like that cartoon dragon you loved so much. What was his name, again? Toothy?”
“Toothless,” Vronsky corrected him. He shook his head in wonderment. He was so focused on his quest to see Anna, he hadn’t recognized Murf, one of his old teammates from when he played Little League in Greenwich. “What the fuck, Murf! The last time I saw you, you were the size of Kevin Hart but now you’re as tall as Draymond Green!”
“Yeah, I grew. But I’m only six-three, my boy Green is six-seven.”
The two boys embraced in a good old-fashioned bro-hug.
“Sorry I didn’t recognize you,” Vronsky said, feeling a bit humiliated that he had name-dropped his uncle like a d-bag. “It’s been a long time.”
“Too long, City Boy,” Murf replied. “Let’s go catch up over a cold one, aight? And before you tell me you can’t ’cause you gotta ‘hashtag: go see about a girl,’ Anna left five minutes before your goldilocks ass darkened my stable door.”
Ten minutes later the two were sitting on bales of hay drinking ice-cold tall boys like Wild West cowboys. Murf and the other Staugas Farms workers hid a big cooler filled with beers for when they needed a break from “the rich twatches we work for,” as Murf so eloquently put it. Murf tipped an imaginary cowboy hat at Vronsky. “When I say rich twatches, know that I ain’t talking about your boo, Anna. She’s not like the others. She’s everyone’s favorite. Hell, I’ve got kin in Buffalo where it’s cold as a witch’s tit in winter and I’m pretty sure she’d melt the whole damn town in January with that smile of hers.”
Vronsky raised his can in agreement. As much as he was dying to talk about her, he knew he needed to be careful with what he said about Anna and who he said it to.
“Aww man, you catchin’ feelings for her? ’Cause you know she couldn’t be more taken. Spill the tea.”
“There’s no tea to spill,” Vronsky said. “I’ve just taken a number to get in line, so I can admire her along with everyone else here.” Vronsky grabbed a beer for himself and tossed another to his friend, who caught it one handed. Murf had been picked for all-stars when they played together and Vronsky had not—well, not until Murf got him on the team by telling the coach he wouldn’t play unless his friend did, too. Vronsky smiled at the memory. “Hey, by any chance does Anna drive an old blue Benz wagon?”
“Yep, that’s her. Everyone else shows up in this dusty-ass place in brand-new, perfectly washed limited edition Range Rovers, but she shows up in that. Normally she’s got those humongous dogs that look like bears in the back, but I didn’t see them today. Why do you ask?”
Vronsky drank his beer and shook his head. “No reason.” So that was her, at the four-way stop before he got here. She was right there in front of him and he didn’t even know it. I wonder if she knew it was me on the motorcycle? He hoped not, because if she did know and didn’t come back, that might mean he was right about being a fool to come here.
“Okay, if you say there’s no reason, then I guess there’s not one. But I gotta tell ya, it’s pretty whack, you showing up out of the blue when I’ve never seen your ugly mug around here before, and I’ve worked here for years now. Now that I’m thinking about it, Anna and I started coming to Staugas Farms the same week. Of course, she was here to ride five-hundred-thousand-dollar thoroughbreds while I was being paid minimum wage to pick up their shit.”
“I didn’t know you liked horses,” Vronsky said, hoping to change the subject.
“I didn’t. Still don’t. Well, some of ’em are cool,” Murf admitted. “I got this job because that’s where the judge sent me after I got caught shoplifting. Second offense. It was either this or juvie, and the judge was a friend of Mr. Staugas’s and asked if he had any work for a wayward kid. He said yes and set me straight. He even fostered me when my mom went to rehab. Now this stinky mudhole feels like home. Funny how that happens, right?”
Something clicked in Vronsky’s head when Murf said it. It was like this little wheel in his head had been spinning and spinning, around and around, making him crazy. But Murf nailed the essence of what he was feeling. Home. The reason he needed to be near Anna was because something about her felt like home. “Murf, she’s killing me.” Vronsky spoke the words so softly he wondered if he had even said them out loud at all. “I’ve never felt this way about any girl before. I rode a motorcycle here for chrissakes. To a horse farm. What’s happening to me?”
“I know I’ve got a big mouth, but I’m not a bad listener when you catch me in the right mood.” Murf moved around a few bales so he could put his feet up.
Vronsky started talking, and Murf listened. It didn’t matter that the two boys hadn’t seen each other for half their lifetimes, or that they came from opposite worlds, Vronsky from the one percent and Murf from the poor part of Greenwich that no one even knew existed. For an entire season on the Greenwich Blue Jays they were inseparable: they shared the same team bench, shared a double-cheese pepperoni pizza after every game, cracked jokes, told secrets, and developed a friendship that could bridge any superficial gap between wealth and status. And this meant something to both of them, so it wasn’t such a stretch that they could share this here together again.
XVII
When Anna pulled into the stately circular driveway at the front of her house, her stomach slipped into a knot at the sight of Eleanor’s custom-hued, baby-blue Mini Cooper blocking the view of the garden. She racked her brain wondering if she had forgotten plans to meet her. She was admittedly distracted these days, so it was possible something had slipped her mind. She checked her iPhone calendar and was reliev
ed to find nothing. Since missing Eleanor’s tea party after her all-nighter at 1 OAK, Anna hadn’t seen much of her boyfriend’s younger half-sister. Anna knew that Eleanor told people Anna was her best friend, but Anna had never once referred to Eleanor in that way, for the simple reason it wasn’t true.
What was true was that Anna spent way more time with Eleanor than she preferred, but as Alexander’s father’s daughter from his second wife they were together for every family occasion. So when Alexander was still at Brunswick (the brother school to Greenwich Academy) Eleanor would somehow always try to tag along, never thinking to ask if she was intruding. And now when Alexander came home once a month for the weekend to see Anna, it was oftentimes hard to find time alone together. Alexander stayed at his dad’s house when he came home, and Eleanor seemed to always be there.
On those weekends, if Anna’s father was working in the city or out of town and her mother had decided to stay in the city for the night, Anna would sometimes spend the night there. Her father frowned on Anna spending the night at her boyfriend’s house, one of the many things he was strict about. Her mother tended to look the other way, which was mainly because she held Alexander in such high regard. When Alexander was invited to vacation with them, they had to sleep in separate bedrooms, which meant if Steven was along, the two boys bunked up. Because of this, there was no way Anna would let her boyfriend sleep over at her parents’ house for fear of getting caught. On the weekends Anna went to Boston, her father expected her to stay at his company’s corporate apartment in Copley Plaza, but she never did. And thankfully, her father never asked, nor did he seem to check up on her the way she knew he checked up on Steven.
“Finally, you’re home! I’ve been waiting forevs,” Eleanor called out as soon as Anna walked through the front door. Eleanor was sitting in the formal living room and stayed put because she wasn’t a fan of Gemma and Jon Snow. Whenever Eleanor came over, Anna had to bar them from whatever room Eleanor and she were in, which drove Anna crazy, because the dogs simply didn’t understand why. Eleanor claimed she was slightly allergic, but it wasn’t true. She found their drool gross and unsanitary, and since she was borderline OCD, it was just easier for Anna to keep them separated when Eleanor did a “pop-by,” which was Eleanor-speak for an unwanted intrusion. Anna loathed Eleanor’s pop-bys. Why couldn’t she just announce her intention beforehand by text like every other teenager in the world?
