Horse Play

by Bonnie Bryant

  Veronica diAngelo was rummaging around in Stevie’s cubby, in Lisa’s, and in Carole’s. Veronica removed the boots that each girl stored in her cubby. She took a bottle of something out of her pocket, opened it, smeared the contents on the soles of the three pairs of boots, and lined the boots up on the floor. Veronica glanced around to be certain nobody was watching—Stevie ducked back into the shadows for a second—then she sealed the little bottle, tucked it into her pocket, and tiptoed back out of the locker area, heading for the stalls.

  As soon as Stevie was sure Veronica was gone, she hurried over to their cubbies to see what Veronica had been up to. All she could see was that the three pairs of boots had been taken from the Saddle Club lockers and lined up neatly on the floor. Stevie reached to pick up her boots and suddenly everything was clear as a bell. Veronica had put glue on their boots. They’d be stuck to the wooden floor!

  Stevie tugged at all three pairs. It took quite a bit of force, but since she’d gotten there so soon after Veronica had left, the glue wasn’t completely set. Very carefully, she laid each boot on its side. She sprinkled some wood chips on the part of the floor where some of the glue remained. The little bits of glue on the bottom of each boot would dry harmlessly and wear off quickly when the girls walked around in them.

  That settled the matter of the boots and floor. But what about Veronica diAngelo?

  Stevie returned to the tack room, quickly finished cleaning Comanche’s saddle, returned it to its rack, and headed home. She had some phone calls to make!

  “YOU’RE WEARING A patch in the rug,” Colonel Hanson told his daughter. “And if you’re practicing marching, I could suggest a group that would welcome you. Want to start with a twenty-mile run on Saturday at six-thirty?”

  “Oh, Daddy!” Carole said. “I’m not ready for the Marines!”

  “You sure look like you are,” the colonel told her. “I can always tell—when your feet get working that hard, something’s on your mind. Was it the phone call from Stevie?”

  She had just gotten off the phone with Stevie, who had told her about the boots and the glue. She didn’t know what The Saddle Club could do to counteract Veronica’s idea of a practical joke. She flopped down in the chair facing her father. “Maybe you can help,” she said.

  “Maybe I can,” he said.

  “It’s about Veronica diAngelo,” she began.

  “Maybe I can’t,” the colonel said.

  “Well it can’t hurt for me to tell you about it,” Carole said.

  “Okay,” he agreed and then, as always, listened carefully. Carole told him about Veronica’s tricks. And when she told him about the latest one with the glue and the boots, the colonel completely astonished Carole by laughing.

  “Reminds me of something we did to our drill instructor,” he said, still chuckling about the memory. “He never did find out who did it.…”

  Carole regarded her father carefully while he continued laughing to himself. “Did you ever tell me this story?” she asked.

  “Don’t think so,” he said. “But I think it’s time you heard it.”

  She leaned forward in her chair and listened very carefully.

  “WHAT WAS THAT call, dear?” Mrs. Atwood asked Lisa as she hung up the phone.

  “It was Stevie,” she said returning to her job of setting the dinner table.

  “Is something wrong?” her mother asked solicitously.

  “Hmmmm, not really,” Lisa told her. “Actually, something is sort of wrong, but I think we now have a chance to solve it. In fact, a lot of things seem to be solving themselves these days.”

  “I know what you mean!” her mother said enthusiastically. “So why don’t you put candles on the table?”

  Candles? Candles were for special occasions, celebrations, birthdays. What was her mother celebrating? She certainly wouldn’t be celebrating Stevie’s phone call. But if her mother wanted to celebrate, that was okay. Lisa realized that she’d forgotten to tell her parents about the show on Friday, and so the candles would make it a sort of festive announcement. She opened the breakfront and removed the antique silver candelabra that had been a special wedding present to her parents. There were used candles in it when she took it off the shelf. If this were somebody’s birthday, Lisa would have put new candles in it, but just to tell about a drill demonstration, Lisa thought the half-used candles would do. She placed the candelabra carefully in the center of the dining room table.

  Lisa stood back to admire her work. She straightened out her father’s napkin. Her mother’s water glass was on the wrong side. Lisa switched that. She carefully centered the salt and pepper in front of her own place. She checked again. It looked perfect.

  “Okay, come see,” she invited her mother. Mrs. Atwood emerged from the kitchen and studied her daughter’s work.

  “Nice, very nice,” she said. “But do put new candles in the candelabra, won’t you?”

  Mrs. Atwood disappeared back into the kitchen to stir her sauce.

  Something was definitely up.

  “GLUE! SHE WAS putting glue on our boots! Can you believe it?”

  Stevie was sitting at her own dinner table a few blocks away from Lisa’s. She was surrounded by her three brothers and her parents. On her plate was a piece of meat which she had attacked furiously with her knife.

  “Are we subtituting minute steak for Veronica diAngelo?” Chad teased her.

  Stevie looked down at the mess. “Don’t I wish!” she said. “Now I have to find a way to get even. Any suggestions?”

  “Water bombs!” Michael, her little brother, piped up.

  “Nah, Veronica would know who’d done it right away,” Alex, Stevie’s twin, said. “Try something else. How about itching powder in her boots?”

  “Nah, put it in her breeches!” Chad, her fourteen-year-old brother, suggested.

  “Great idea!” Stevie said. “But what’s itching powder?”

  “Beats me,” Alex said.

  “I dunno,” Chad said. “I just read about it somewhere.”

  “You could cut her riding pants into shreds,” Michael said.

  “It would take too long. Someone would see us,” Stevie told him.

  “How about you just snub her?”

  “Yeah, the old silent treatment!” Chad said. “That works every time.”

  “We’ve been giving this girl the old silent treatment for years. She’s never noticed. That’s her problem.”

  “Well there must be something.…” Alex said.

  “Yeah, something,” Michael echoed.

  “Really mean …” Chad said, thinking out loud.

  “Really,” said Stevie.

  Nobody spoke for a few minutes while Stevie and her brothers worked on the problem, which they saw as a joint challenge.

  “Isn’t it nice to see our childen working on a project together with such enthusiasm?” Mr. Lake remarked sweetly.

  “Yes, and such kindness,” Mrs. Lake said.

  Stevie looked up from her shredded meat and glanced at her parents surreptitously. For a second, she thought she saw them smiling.

  “You wouldn’t be smiling if you’d had to buy me a new pair of boots,” she reminded them.

  “You’re right,” her father said. “There must be some way to get back at her!”

  Then the kids began laughing with their parents.

  • • •

  “HERE’S TO THE future,” Mr. Atwood said. He lifted his wineglass. Mrs. Atwood held hers up, as well. Lisa took her milk and tapped both of her parents’ glasses.

  “I’m glad you mentioned that,” Lisa said, after she sipped some milk. “There’s something about the future, I mean the near future, that I forgot to tell you. The Saddle Club is putting on a show at Pine Hollow. We’re going to be doing a demonstration of all the drill things we’ve been working on. And, even better than that, Max’s former student Dorothy DeSoto will be doing a demonstration for all of us, too. She’s just fabulous! You know she’s a world-class rid
er?”

  “How exciting, dear,” Mrs. Atwood said. Lisa didn’t think she sounded very excited, though.

  “Yes, it is exciting,” Lisa said. “It’s on Friday at six. Then we’re going to have a sleepover at Carole’s.”

  “I’m glad you’re going to Carole’s,” Mrs. Atwood said, surprising Lisa. “I won’t be able to pick you up to bring you home.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t have to bring me home,” Lisa said. “As long as you’re at the show, that’s what’s important.”

  “I’m sorry, dear. I can’t be there,” Mrs. Atwood said.

  “You can’t! Why not?”

  “Well, because I’m going to be working that afternoon.”

  “Huh?” was all Lisa could say, in total confusion.

  “Yes, dear, working,” her mother told her. A giant smile of pride crossed the woman’s face. “I’ve got a job. And from now on, you and your father—and your brother when he gets home from camp—are just going to have to stop relying on me to do everything in the house. You are all going to pitch in from now on. Hear?”

  “Yes, I hear,” Lisa said meekly. “But what kind of job is it that you can’t come to my show?”

  “It wasn’t my idea,” Mrs. Atwood began. “It was Aunt Maude’s. It was because of all that time we spent at the mall, especially when we were buying those riding pants for you—”

  Lisa groaned to herself. Her mother had the most roundabout way of answering a question of anybody she’d ever known.

  “You mean you’re going to be selling riding pants?” she asked her mother.

  “Oh, no dear. Modeling them! Well, riding pants or whatever is necessary at the mall. See, there’s a local modeling agency that all the stores in the mall use. When one of the stores wants a model for whatever purpose, well, they just call the agency. At Maude’s suggestion, I registered with the agency. My first job is, in fact, modeling clothes for working women Friday evening. I just can’t be at your show, too.”

  “But we’ve worked so hard!”

  “You certainly have, dear. Remember, I got to see some of the practices and now I’m really glad that I did. It’s too bad I can’t be there. But I can’t. Frankly, I’m a little disappointed that you can’t come to my first fashion show. But at least your father’s promised to be there.”

  Lisa stared at her mother in disbelief. Was this really the woman who baked cookies nonstop, who insisted on driving her daughter to places she didn’t need to be driven, who wanted to remodel rooms that looked just fine? And now that Lisa really wanted her to be there, she was going to be too busy?

  Lisa was about to tell her mother just what she thought of this when her father joined in on the conversation.

  “Isn’t it wonderful, Lisa?” he began. At that moment, Lisa didn’t think it was exactly wonderful, but she listened. “Your mother’s been doing so much for us all these years—remember, hon, we were just talking about it the other day, weren’t we?” he asked pointedly. Lisa recalled their talk by the barbecue grill. Was this the “idea” he had hinted at? Mr. Atwood continued, “—and now she gets to do something she’s always wanted to do. Your mom’s a beautiful woman. Not a lot of women her age can still wear their college clothes! The agency was thrilled when she walked in the door. We’re going to have to make some sacrifices around here, but it seems like very little compared to the benefits of having your mother do something that will mean so much to her.”

  Lisa decided she’d have to do some thinking before she did any more talking. She just smiled and nodded and finished eating her supper quickly.

  It seemed that, in fact, a lot of questions were being answered these days. For instance, now she knew why her mother had wanted to put new candles into the candelabra. But there were new questions, too, like how come her mother’s work had to interfere with something as important as the drill demo? It just didn’t seem fair. After all, Lisa thought, couldn’t she have gotten a job the week after the show?

  “WE COULD TRY gluing her boots to the floor,” Stevie said. She pulled a stalk of green hay out of the ground and began chewing on it methodically.

  She was sitting on the top of a knoll overlooking one of the stable’s paddocks, where the foal, Samson, and his mother, Delilah, were taking in the morning sunshine. Lisa and Carole were sitting with her, cross-legged in a circle. It was supposed to be a Saddle Club meeting, except at that moment, each girl was concerned only with her own problem.

  “Look, after we do the pinwheel, I think we should go back and do the cloverleaf again. Our demo just isn’t long enough. It needs more—even if more means repetition. Don’t you think?”

  Carole held her riding crop in her right hand. Idly, she slapped it against her left hand while she stared off into the distance.

  “I just can’t believe my mother isn’t going to be there. My mother has been shadowing me for months—and now that I want her, she won’t be there! Can you believe it?”

  Lisa put her elbow on her knee and rested her chin on the palm of her hand.

  The words each girl had spoken hung in the air.

  “Carole,” Stevie said plaintively. “You’re not listening! How are we going to get back at Veronica?!”

  “Oh,” Carole said, almost surprised. “That’s easy. We can switch boots on her.” Lisa and Stevie looked at Carole, confused. Carole shrugged and then continued. “Well, it was Dad’s idea. They did something like this to their sergeant. See, Lisa, the jodhpur boots you were wearing last spring are exactly like Veronica’s, aren’t they?”

  Lisa tried to picture the low brown leather boots and then realized that they were, in fact, the same style and brand as Veronica had been wearing.

  “Well, you’ve outgown them. They’re a size six. Veronica’s are a seven. We’ll just switch your old boots for her new ones. They look the same. She won’t know what happened, but her feet will be killing her!”

  “Wonderful!” Stevie said, grinning widely. “It’s just perfect. She won’t even suspect.”

  “Right, and I never even bothered to take those old ones home. They’re still in the back of my cubby.”

  “I’ll make the switch when Veronica’s doing her chores,” Stevie volunteered.

  “You mean getting Red to do her chores,” Carole corrected her.

  “Isn’t it funny? She spends more time getting somebody else to do her work than it would take her to do it herself,” Lisa remarked. “Being lazy is really hard work!”

  “And this time, Veronica’s laziness is going to pay off—for us,” Stevie said. There was a wicked gleam in her eye. She held her hand up. “High fifteen!” she declared. The girls slapped their hands together.

  “One problem down, two to go,” Carole said. “We’ve just got to add something to our demo to make it longer. We’ve been working so hard, but it’s still only about five minutes long.”

  “Oh, I already solved that,” Stevie said. “Comanche and I have worked out a surprise for you.”

  “What is it?” Carole asked. She was more than a little suspicious.

  “You’ll see,” Stevie said mysteriously. The stalk of hay was clenched in her teeth. She grabbed it with the tips of her right fingers and thumb and tapped at it with her pinkie as if it were a cigar and she were flicking off the ash. The motion was strangely familiar to Carole.

  When Stevie’s eyebrows began bobbing up and down suggestively, Carole recognized her Groucho Marx imitation. “Am I going to like this?” she asked.

  “You bet your life!” Stevie said. And that was all she would say.

  “But—what about me?” Lisa asked. “You each solved one another’s problems. Who’s going to solve mine?”

  “What’s your problem?” Stevie asked her.

  “My mother and father can’t come this afternoon. My mother’s gone and gotten a job as a model at the shopping mall. She’s not going to be home at all any more! Probably ever!”

  Stevie looked at Lisa carefully before she spoke. “Sounds to me like your
mother’s solved your problem for you. Weren’t you just complaining that she was always hanging around and doing things that didn’t need to be done?”

  “Well, yeah,” Lisa said. “But this one needs to be done. Your parents are going to be at the show, aren’t they?”

  “Mom, yes, Dad, no, and two out of three brothers, yes,” Stevie said, checking off her family members on her fingers.

  Lisa looked to Carole.

  “Sure, Dad will be here—along with one of my old instructors from the stables on the base.”

  “See?” Lisa said. “I’m practically being abandoned!”

  Stevie and Carole looked at one another. “You want to go first?” Carole asked Stevie.

  “Lisa, I’ve got two working parents, too,” Stevie began. “Sometimes they’re around, sometimes I’m on my own. Sometimes it’s good; sometimes it’s a pain. But they are almost never in my hair the way your mother has been. She probably tagged around after you because she didn’t have enough to do. It doesn’t seem so wonderful now, but you’ll get used to it. It’ll be more good than bad and when you’ve got something really important—”

  “Like our show today?” Lisa challenged.

  “Yes, like our show today,” Stevie repeated. “Then you’ll learn that if you give both parents some warning, usually one can be there.”

  “But neither of them can be here today!” Lisa pouted.

  “Because you didn’t tell them in time, did you?” Carole said sensibly.

  “Why do you always have to be right?” Lisa asked Carole, only half teasing.

  “Because I’m your friend,” Carole answered. “And besides that, here’s the good news. My old instructor, Major Madison, is bringing a video camera. Your parents will get to see the show after all.”

  “It’s not quite the same, is it?” Lisa asked Stevie.

  “True, but it’s better than nothing. Right?”

  “Okay,” Lisa conceded. “I guess the pluses will outweigh the minuses.”

  “Well, that settles it,” Stevie said matter-of-factly. “Carole solved my problem, I solved hers, and we both solved Lisa’s. Everything’s solved—club meeting is over!”