by Leigh Himes
At the end of the basement hallway was another flight of servants’ stairs. As I climbed them and emerged outside, I saw Aubyn and Gloria slowly making their way up the hill in the distance. Two of Aubyn’s three wolfhounds trotted ahead of them.
As I started after them, my heels sinking with each step, I watched my daughter and her aunt intently. With her niece, Aubyn seemed more relaxed, almost jovial. At one point, they both climbed and jumped over a low stone wall, Aubyn seeing Gloria over safely and then hopping over with a laugh. Then they both disappeared over the hill.
I picked up my pace, curious to see where they were headed and where this vast estate ended. After awkwardly managing the same low wall, I saw a gray stone barn, a stable, a fenced pasture, and several pebbled paths leading in different directions. And dotting the hillside were what they must have come for—sheep.
Gloria ran toward them with a little squeal of joy. I gasped as she threw her arms around the largest one, which stood motionless as she snuggled into its yellow-beige neck. Aubyn watched her and smiled, then began to feed a lamb something from her pocket. A Canadian goose took off from a shallow pond and the dogs ran after it. The scene was bucolic and beautiful, as if that hallway had transported us magically—like a Narnia wardrobe—from suburban Philadelphia to the English countryside.
“Gloria forgot her jacket,” I called as I got within earshot. Aubyn looked up and eyed my clumsy, heel-sinking approach with cynical amusement. Finally reaching Gloria, I helped her put on her jacket.
Just then two chestnut mares emerged from a patch of trees and came trotting over. Gloria ran toward the smaller one and I limped after her, ready to throw myself between her and the beast if necessary.
“Careful, love bug,” I told her, wary of the animals’ long legs and heavy hooves.
But Gloria reached up and rubbed the horse’s neck with ease. I relaxed.
“She’s just waiting for Gloria, whenever you say the word,” said Aubyn, wiping her hands on her khaki-colored riding pants and walking over.
“Waiting?”
“You told me you didn’t want Gloria riding yet.”
“Right. I guess you think she’s ready?”
“She’s been ready. Even though she’s small, she can do it. Petal will know who’s boss.”
Wow, I thought. Someone in the van Holt family who actually understands my daughter. I was about to speak when Gloria interrupted.
“Mommy, please, please, please…” She hopped up and down. “I can do it. I know I can.”
Both Aubyn and Gloria looked at me with matching blue eyes, wide with anticipation. How could I say no? But I also wasn’t sure. Gloria might have inherited a love of equines from her aunt, but she was only five. And so small.
“Not just yet, GloWorm,” I told her.
Gloria’s smile faded and she ran off toward the dogs in a huff. Aubyn looked away, her face taut with anger.
“Of course,” she said under her breath.
“Excuse me?”
She lifted her head. “Do you really think I’d let her do something dangerous? You’re only saying ‘no’ because I bought her the horse.”
I was so tired of these van Holts dictating what was best for my children. I stared at her and told her, “You’re not her mother. I am.”
“Yeah, you’re mother of the year.”
She said it under her breath, but I caught it. My heartbeat doubled up and my face burned.
“What did you say?” I hissed.
“Nothing.”
“How dare you? You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know enough. You and your liquid lunches and your spending sprees and your constant complaining. My brother deserves better.”
Her words hung in the air, then reached like little fog hands to choke me. I gasped for breath as the quiet evening turned into a hurricane in my head.
“You van Holts,” I seethed. “You think you know everything, don’t you?”
“All I know is that you were supposed to be different,” she sneered. “But you’re just like all the rest.”
Then, again under her breath: “You’re just like my mother.”
The freight train in my head drowned out all sound. I stomped over to her, about to do I don’t know what, when I slipped on the sloping wet grass, landing on my side with a painful thud, then rolling a few yards down the hill. I tried getting up, but the slick grass became slicker with each attempt and several sheep trotted over, their black faces and feet nudging me all over.
Aubyn walked over and tried to shoo the sheep away. As she got closer, I saw that she was smirking, biting her lip to keep from laughing. Her derision fueled my rage. All the stress and worry and angst of the past week—hell, the past decade—came together into a little ball of fury in my gut. I looked at her glossy hair and cold eyes and they reminded me of my old boss Charlotte. I did something I had wanted to do for a long time, to both of them.
She extended her hand to help me up, but I grabbed it and pulled her down hard. She landed beside me in the wet grass in surprise, a high-pitched yelp stark against the low grunts of the farm animals. I felt her hand hit my chest with a thump as she pushed me. I pushed her back, then pushed her facedown in the mud.
We tussled in the grass like little boys in the schoolyard, rolling even farther down the hill into a muddy puddle. The herd followed us and with their hooves and fur all around us, we had to separate from each other or be trampled. We then made comical attempts to stand, slipping and falling on the mud like sled dogs on ice.
By the time we were upright, dripping and disgusting, Gloria had run down between us, her hot pink jacket stark against the green grass and darkening sky.
Oblivious to what had just happened, or not caring, she asked again about the horse.
Neither Aubyn nor I spoke as we tried to sneak back into the house unnoticed. Our clothes and hair were peppered with mud and grass, our faces flushed with anger and exertion. We tiptoed across the black-and-white tile and almost made it to the stairs. But Gloria ran ahead of us into the library and announced, “Mommy and Auntie Aubyn had a fight!”
I guess she had seen it. I really was mother of the year.
One after the other, Alex, Mirabelle, a wobbly Sam, and a wobblier Collier came rushing into the hall.
“What happened?” asked Alex, confused.
“Girls, what took you so—” added Mirabelle, stopping mid-sentence when she saw us.
Only Collier seemed amused, asking, “Is that sheep shit I smell?”
Aubyn and I stood there like naughty schoolchildren, me in a disheveled dress and ruined heels in hand, my sister-in-law with springy, wild hair over dirty velvet. Sam toddled over, but I didn’t dare pick him up.
“We slipped in the mud,” I said.
“The grass was wet,” added Aubyn.
Mirabelle cut her off before we could continue our truth stretching.
“Now what am I supposed to do?” she said, her eyes flashing with anger. “Dinner has already been plated.”
“Give us five minutes to change,” Aubyn said. “Abbey can borrow something of mine.”
Aubyn took a step up the stairs but stopped when Mirabelle began again: “Honestly, Aubyn. You and your animals. I swear you do this on purpose.”
“You think I fell on purpose? Thank you for your concern, Mother.”
I felt relief, and both surprised and grateful that Mirabelle was focusing her ire on Aubyn, not me. Still, I barely breathed, hoping not to attract attention.
“What if Kipper were here?” continued Mirabelle. “What would he think?”
“I can assure you he wouldn’t care,” said Aubyn defiantly.
“You think he wants a wife who smells like a barnyard all the time?”
Maybe he does, I thought. From what I could see at the Ballantine Ball, Aubyn had her fiancé pretty well trained—a russet-haired spaniel nipping at his mistress’s black patent heels.
“It’s just so disappointing,�
�� continued Mirabelle, woundingly. “As usual.”
My eyes flew wide with disbelief. The words weren’t directed at me, but I felt the blow. I hoped Aubyn would throw a verbal counterpunch, as I certainly knew she was able, but her tone turned quiet, demure.
“I was just taking Gloria to see the sheep,” she whispered. Her face was that of a little girl who had been scolded.
My anger turned to pity. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. My mother and I had certainly had our disagreements, but I always knew that no matter what, she was proud of me. That she always considered me her greatest achievement, never a “disappointment.”
Against my better judgment, I moved out of the shadow of the stairs and spoke up: “It was my fault. I was wearing these silly shoes and Aubyn was just trying to help me up. You know what a klutz I’ve been lately.”
Mirabelle’s withering gaze turned to me. But before she had a chance to speak, I blurted, “Don’t hold dinner. We’ll be back in five minutes,” then pushed Aubyn the rest of the way up the stairs.
Out of the corner of my eye as we turned on the first landing, I saw Mirabelle sigh, throw up her hands, and then turn and march toward the smell of roasting meat.
Upstairs, in Aubyn’s Wedgwood blue bedroom, I stood beside the tall, pineapple-topped four-poster bed as she disappeared into a closet. It was neat and tidy, but there were enough shoes, books, and power cords lying around to tell me she still lived here full-time. There were also enough red and blue ribbons and gleaming silver cups to indicate horseback riding wasn’t Aubyn’s hobby, but her vocation. I thought it odd that this dazzling array of silver plate was hidden in her room and not displayed downstairs alongside Alex’s lacrosse trophies and law school diploma. Even the giant cup marked “USEF National Dressage Championships: First Place,” so big Sam could have bathed in it, was on the floor, half-filled with leather gloves and headbands.
Aubyn returned from the closet and handed me a blouse and some black capris.
“You can change in there,” she said, pointing to the bathroom. I took the clothes and walked past her.
“Wait a minute,” she said with a gasp.
“What?”
“Don’t move!” she said. “You have something in your hair. Some, uh, poop. From the sheep.”
“Aaaaah!” I whined, flipping my hair back and forth as if a bee were attacking me.
“Stop! You’ll get it everywhere.” She pushed me toward the bathroom. “Just go in there and I’ll help you.”
At her mercy, I obeyed. She draped a towel around my shoulders and instructed me to lean over the wide oval sink. She then began to rinse the offending substance from my blonde strands with her bare hands.
A few minutes later, as if she had been working up the courage, she said, “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For stepping in down there.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Honestly, I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“Neither did I.” We both laughed.
“Reminded me of the time you told Mirabelle I was with you when really I was out with, well… you know.”
No, I didn’t. But I was certainly intrigued. Me covering for an illicit tryst of Aubyn’s? Did we used to be closer? Seemed unlikely we were ever best friends, but perhaps there was a time when we weren’t pushing each other down into the mud, either literally or figuratively.
“Aubyn?”
“Yes?”
“If you really think Gloria can handle that horse, I’m all right with her riding. As long as she wears a helmet. And you stay with her every second. And no hills. Or jumps.”
“Really? Are you sure?”
In the mirror, I saw her smile. She looked so much like Alex.
“I promise I won’t take my eyes off her. I would never let anything happen to that little girl.”
“I know.”
Now it was her turn for apologies. “I’m sorry about what I said earlier about Alex. It’s just that…” Her voice trailed off.
“Just what?”
She hesitated, mistrust warring with something else—hope?—in her eyes. I leaned back down over the sink and told her, “Go on. I want to know. Please.”
“It’s just that, in the beginning, you were so different from the girls he used to bring home. You lived in the city and you had your own job, your own money. You saw Green Day at the Tower. And the first time you came to dinner here, you wore jeans.”
I knew she meant it as a compliment, but I cringed inside. Mirabelle must have been aghast.
“Well, that proves it. I can’t be all bad.” I said it as a joke, though inside I was dead serious and hoping she’d keep talking. My neck hurt but I didn’t dare move.
Her voice turned quiet, pensive. “Alex would have never taken that DA job if it weren’t for you. And he never would have gone to New Orleans. It still cracks me up to think about the day you guys told Mother you were moving down there.”
In the mirror, I saw her stand up straighter and imitate Mirabelle, complete with raised eyebrows and hand clutching heart: “‘My son is going to live in the Lower Ninth Ward and work pro bono? I won’t have it!’ I swear, she almost spontaneously combusted.”
She laughed, but then her tone turned more somber: “Seeing him get away from her, if only for a little while, made me feel like I could do it too. Maybe if Dad hadn’t gotten worse…” She gave a sad shrug, suddenly looking older than her years.
Then, almost to herself, she added, “I have to give it to her, though. Now everything is back just the way she wants it.”
In the mirror, our bodies were motionless for a moment, her words hitting home: for me, the realization that Mirabelle’s pull was stronger than I thought, and for her, another reminder of how unhappy she was.
“We better get going,” she said, remembering dinner.
“Are you sure you got it all? I can’t be in the same room with your mother with you-know-what in my hair.”
“You’re fine, I swear,” she said. “Besides, she can’t smell anything over that horrible perfume she soaks herself in.”
We looked at each other again and cracked up.
I changed into the borrowed clothes; then we marched downstairs, falling in line, one behind the other, like soldiers.
Back downstairs, the meal was under way, with Collier holding court at the head, in the middle of a rambling story. Aubyn and I took seats on either side of him, while Alex and Gloria flanked Mirabelle at the opposite end, and Sam split the difference between Alex and me. The table was so large I had to strain to reach my son, who was strapped into a carved wooden high chair with a wicker seat, a tiny white tablecloth over the tray. I pulled the contraption closer to me, scooped some bright green peas into his mouth, then tried to catch up to the conversation.
“I said to him,” Collier boomed, “I want that filly for twenty grand, not a penny more! She had the most beautiful natural gait I have ever seen, but she’d also ruptured her left tendon at some point. And they knew it, and they knew I knew it.” I noticed that Collier’s tone and demeanor, fueled by alcohol, had coarsened.
He took another big sip of his drink and put it down with a thump. It hit harder than he expected, sloshing golden brown liquid onto the white tablecloth. He continued, eyes on Alex: “But I got her for twenty grand. Wrote the check and took her home. Your old man might not know much, but he knows horses!”
Alex was silent, his face downcast, so Aubyn responded. “Yes, Father. You know horses.”
Collier rattled his now empty glass to get the attention of a passing server. The woman put down the soup tureen she was carrying and went to take the glass—but froze as Mirabelle shot her a warning look. Collier cleared his throat and rattled his ice again. The poor woman stood there, afraid to move, caught in the cross fire of the van Holts’ opposing glares—Collier’s sodden, Mirabelle’s stern.
Alex finally spoke. “Don’t you think you’ve had enough, Dad?”
; “What?” Collier’s head snapped around. “What did you say, boy?”
Alex waved the server away, then attempted to reason with his father: “It’s just that you’re monopolizing the conversation.”
“Don’t start with me,” he slurred. “This is still my house. My great-grandfather built it, goddammit.”
“Calm down, Collier,” Mirabelle interjected. “And watch your language.” She nodded toward the kids.
Collier’s watery gaze slid from Alex to his wife. His voice rose an octave as he addressed her with mock solicitousness: “I don’t need to watch my language in my own home, darling.” After a brief pause to peer into his empty glass with longing, he continued, his tone antagonizing: “If my son has something to say, let him say it to me. You’re always jumping in to fight his battles.”
“Hush,” she hissed. “I do no such thing.”
“Ha! It’s a wonder he ever learned to tie his own shoes.”
I stopped chewing, not wanting to miss a word. This was getting good.
“Christ, I remember when he was eight and he begged and begged you to let him play Little League. But no, baseball wouldn’t do. He had to do crew or lacrosse or some such bullshit.”
“I said watch your language,” shouted Mirabelle, her voice uncharacteristically loud and shrill.
Collier leaned back in his chair with a grin, enjoying watching his wife lose her cool.
“Shit, the only thing the boy has ever done without your approval is marry this one.” He jerked his head in my direction.
“Dad!” shouted Alex. The old man jumped from the sound, and, in an instant, his expression changed from preening to remorseful. He looked at me. “Abbey, I’m sorry…,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean that.”
Of course, I had already guessed I probably wasn’t Mirabelle’s first choice for Alex. She would have chosen someone born from a better bloodline, educated at boarding schools, clothed in one hundred percent cotton, and able to navigate awkward situations like these with ease. But even so, it stung.
Normally, I would make a joke or offer a snappy retort, but after a week with the van Holts, I knew what was expected. I acted like I didn’t hear the remark and pretended to wipe invisible peas from Sam’s mouth.