Velvet
She was on the floor with her gown way up, reaching to pull a towel off the rack. “Mami!” I said. “Here!” And I got the towel for her, then went to run cold water on a cloth. I looked in the mirror—oh shit—I was dressed in my street clothes and makeup. But she just sat with the towel around her like she was cold, so I kneeled and put the cloth on her forehead; she looked at me with strange eyes. I said, “Mami?” and she had to puke again. I held her hair away from her face and remembered making rivers of puke in a blue rubber pail, how she held me. My ragged toy that somebody gave me, I would lean it out the window and pat its back and pretend it was puking, plah plah plah! What happened to that toy?
I stayed up with her all night. She saw my clothes and makeup; I saw her look and felt it. But she didn’t say anything, not that night or next day. She yelled like always. But not about that.
Paul
My sponsor advised me not to tell Ginger about Polly because it was over and unless there is some very good reason to do otherwise, you don’t tell the truth if it’s going to hurt the other person.
“But she asked me,” I said. “And—”
“And you told her no. It’s still no, right?”
“Yes, but then she asked why my face was flushed. She knows. It’s sitting there waiting to happen. She’s going to ask me again; if I keep saying no, it’ll start to sound more and more false. If I say yes, it makes it worse that I said no to start with.”
“Worse for her or for you?”
“Both of us. Listen, Ginger isn’t someone who cares about discretion or, or dignity. She cares about truth.”
He didn’t say anything for a minute. My sponsor is a manual laborer with a degree in philosophy. He’s been impotent for years because of a prostate operation. He can’t take Viagra because of his heart condition, but he’s recently been using a penis pump and it seems to be working for him. He cares about truth too. He also cares about dignity and discretion. Mostly, though, he wants things to work.
“Well,” he said, “I don’t think you need to throw the past in her face. But you could always ask her why she asked the question. If you really want to have the conversation.”
And so I did. And she told me. She said even Velvet noticed something.
Ginger
Like I didn’t already know there must be a reason that he’d suddenly become so kind and understanding of Velvet and me, that he’d stopped with the racial piety about how really, while I think I love her, it’s actually white guilt or something even more perverted and sick; it can’t possibly be what it looks like or feels like to me. Frankly, it was such a relief not to hear that shit anymore that I’d rather he shut up and “cheat” if it meant he could leave us alone or even actually show support and back me up like with the substitute. Cheat. What a stupid word, like you’re playing cards and your partner cheats and the whole deck has to rise up and attack you, both of you, him because he didn’t play right, and me because—why? Because I didn’t catch him? Because therefore I’m now “humiliated,” officially? Well, guess what? Here’s the good thing, the one good thing, the one good thing about being the girl on the side where the guy goes to act like he can’t with his main squeeze: you realize it doesn’t mean anything much except he feels like doing it with somebody else. The wife isn’t “humiliated” or unloved or anything. If that’s happening to anybody, it’s usually the other one. He says he’s not even seeing her anymore, but still here he is with his AA face on talking about amends and wanting to feel close again. All of it, the piety, the careful examining and blaming of himself for daring to want sex, of me for being—what? A guilty white person who must be doing something wrong? That attitude is so much more disgusting than his wanting strange pussy, not to mention his hard, fake self-righteous friends. Starting with that bitch he used to be married to.
Paul
She stared at me a long moment, then looked away. “I guess it’s normal,” she said.
“Normal?”
“My dad did it. Everybody makes a production out of it, but every time you turn around somebody’s doing it. It didn’t mean anything, right?”
Her sarcasm was cheap but sharp, and though I meant to humble myself, it made me mad. I said, “Actually, it did mean something. It meant that somebody was paying attention to me and holding me like she meant it.”
“Then why is it over?”
Because Polly ended it. “Because I wanted it to be you.”
She frowned like she heard the unsaid thing, then shook her head, almost twitched it, like she was shaking something from her ear.
“I want you,” I said.
Her chin quivered; as though to hide it, she raised her hand to her face. The gesture was piercing, and for a second I was sure she was crying—though I knew that Ginger has not cried since childhood. I moved closer to her. “Ginger,” I said. “I wanted you to know because—”
She raised her head and dropped her hand. “Velvet is coming this weekend,” she said. “I can’t cancel it. I didn’t let her come last time because she messed up at school. But she needs to practice for an event.” And she stood up, like to leave.
“Ginger,” I said. “Where are you?”
“Where I always am, right in front of you.”
“Listen,” I said. “I know what I did was cowardly and fucked-up. But I love you. Do you love me?”
She looked at me then and her eyes finally showed her. “Yes,” she said. “But I don’t feel it now.” And she left the room. I heard the front door open and softly close.
Ginger
I went to the park where we took Velvet those years ago and sat on a picnic table with my knees up and held close against myself. A short distance away there were little kids on the swings, their father pushing them, the mother getting something from the car, watching them as she closed the door with her hip, guardian care visible to me in her neck and jaw even though I could not make out her face. The light child-voices sounded so far away in the cold spring air.
Cheating. Of course I know why they call it that. I hate it, but I know. So much of what happens between people is comparable to a game. There is a deep, soft core that everyone longs for, too deep for games or even words. But to get to that, you have to play and play well. And I did not know how. Art, society, relationships, simple conversation—I couldn’t understand how to do any of it. I don’t know why; I don’t know what was wrong with me. I tried, and when I was young and good-looking it could at least sometimes seem like my failure was actually an interesting artistic version of some special game. But now the truth is so plain that even Velvet’s illiterate mother can see it. It’s clear even to her—somehow especially to her—that I couldn’t even do the thing every woman on the planet knows how to do. I can see her contempt, the question in her eyes: What is wrong with her? How did she even get a husband? And still, it was her child, the lovely girl that she doesn’t even want, the child I finally loved, who somehow allowed me a way in, who made me feel what everyone else felt; finally I could join, be part of the play—except everybody thought that was wrong too, that somehow I still wasn’t doing it right.
Everybody including my husband. I got up off the table and my movement caught the eye of the mother at the swing set. She waved at me and I realized I knew her; she was the aunt of one of the Cocoon Theater kids. I waved back at her and she came toward me.
Please God, I thought. Not now. I resisted the urge to put my hands over my face. She kept coming. But what is doing it right? What in hell can I do that’s right?
“Hey,” she said, smiling. “Weren’t you in the Christmas Carol a couple of years back?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I was.”
“I thought so! You were really good!”
“Thank you,” I said. “It was a lot of fun.”
Great, something I did right—act in a play for children.
Velvet
My mom said about Ginger once that she had a crazy eye and I always thought, No, she
just looks sad a lot. But now her eyes shined like a animal in the dark and I didn’t know their expression.
I said to her, “You’re different.”
She was making me cucumbers with white vinegar, and when I said that she stopped and said, “How?”
“Your voice is different, everything is different. You say things like it’s in a book with quotes on it. Even to Paul.”
For a second she looked like herself, and I missed her. Then she went back to the salad. “Something happened,” she said. “But I can’t talk about it.”
“Why can’t you talk about it?”
“You’re too young. But don’t worry, it was nothing horrific. It’ll be okay.”
I went to see the horses and it was okay because it needed to be. I didn’t want to think about whatever was wrong with Ginger. I couldn’t stop thinking about Dominic, but for once I felt like, he says I’m from someplace else and he can’t be there—and he’s right. He can’t be here. Here is like coming back to my country, and not sneaking in like a illegal. Fiery Girl was back too; her stall had a sign on it, but instead of “Do Not Touch,” it had her name carved on it and inside it was cleaned. She was not wearing the cribbing strap even if she sometimes bit her stall, and when I came with the halter she put her head down like YES.
Pat took Graylie and we went out by the paddock. I saw Sugar and Nova running together, and all the others bucking, clowning, and talking loud at each other with their heads and backs and legs. Fiery Girl raised her head and called to them and somebody called back. She got turned out with the other horses because she learned how to be with Chloe and Nut; now she could go out with everybody but Totally Crushed and Diamond Chip—she still fought them. I could feel her shivering toward the other horses inside herself, but I pulled down on the lead and she lowered her head, sending softness and obedience to me. The air had new smells and sounds, and the horses said it with all the muscles of their backs and legs: Spring, spring, spring!
We mounted and went out down the path where I’d run with her bareback; my legs remembered and it felt like she did too, like under me she bunched and sighed. I remembered how the orchard was all rotting fruit flying past my face; now the trees were getting buds, and there was a feeling of something about to happen in the ground and even the air. The path was first big enough for the horses to walk side by side, but Fiery Girl walked faster than Graylie and when the path narrowed, we led the way. We had to stay on the path because of holes where the horses could break their ankles, or maybe snakes.
When the path got wide again Pat said, “We’ve missed you the last few weeks.”
I said, “Me too.”
“You know you have to keep up your practice if you want to compete.”
I said, “I know. I’m sorry.” I could feel her expecting me to say more. But I couldn’t tell her now. Now didn’t have anything to do with all that.
“You know, if you don’t want to compete, that’s your business. But if you don’t, I hope it’s not because you think you can’t.”
My heart went quiet in my chest. Still, I couldn’t speak.
“When I used to compete—I liked to win, I liked the applause, I liked the prizes and trophies. I especially liked to beat certain people, that’s the truth. But what felt best was the reason I won, when I did. It was because of my bond with my horse. Because under pressure, I could put my mind and my body together with his, and I could feel it, like he would go through the wall for me if I asked him to and he knew I meant it. And I would go through the wall with him. And everybody could see. You know what I mean?”
“Yes.”
“I think you do. I know you do. I know you can. But it’s one thing to do it out here. It’s another thing to do it in front of people, with other riders who’re all doing the same. It’s powerful, more real. Even if you don’t win. If you don’t try it, you’ll never know.”
I didn’t answer her and she didn’t try to make me. We just rode quiet, feeling her words. The only time I talked was when I asked her about this covered-box shape up in some trees; she told me it was a blind for hunters left over from hunting season. That they would hide in there and shoot.
We stopped when we came to the fence where I fell off before. Pat dismounted and walked Graylie to the fence and tied him. The fence was wood posts with torn-up rails stuck through holes in the posts. Pat took one end of the top rail and pushed it out the hole so it came down on the ground. Fiery Girl moved like a five-year-old that needs to pee, wanting to eat grass, talk to Graylie, run, something. I had to pull her back, turn her in a circle, sit her firm. Pat took the second rail down and said now we were gonna gallop to the jump. Gallop not like in the arena, but all the way. Fiery Girl’s back legs moved all over, like she knew something was different, then we cantered away from the fence. When we found a place to stop Pat asked me, “Have you seen racing on television?” “At your house once,” I said. “Okay, it’s not gonna be like that. You want to be more grounded in your stirrups, not forward like the jockeys on TV. You do want to lean forward in the gallop. You want to get off her back and kick her forward—but just before the jump? Sit deep in the saddle with your shoulders over your center, but I mean just before. Got it?”
She looked in my eyes and I said, “Yes.”
“And remember, look ahead of the jump, not at it.”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” she said. “Now. Through the wall.”
Ginger
When I was in kindergarten there was a series of books meant to teach kids how everything in the world was put together. At least I guess that was the point of them. In the one I remember, each cardboard page showed a picture of a farm animal—I think there was a farmer too—and each of the pages had three sections: instead of turning a whole page, you could turn them section by section and make a rooster with a pig’s body and farmer’s legs. That’s what it felt like trying to act normal around Paul with Velvet there. It felt that way even in the days before she came, like a hand was grabbing my midsection and turning me into a cow with cat legs, and something hairy and disgusting in the middle, and it kept happening, pictures flipping randomly. How could I even bring her into this shit-storm—but if I didn’t, when would she ride? “Listen,” said Kayla, “I’ve had to smile and put food on the table when I was so depressed I didn’t want to move. Ginger, that girl isn’t made of china and neither are you. You can handle it.” Paul said the same. “We can do this,” he said. “Even if we break up right after she leaves.” I said, “We can’t break up until after the event.” “Okay,” he said, “we won’t.”
Because I had not told him the event was off. Because as far as I was concerned, it wasn’t.
So we got up together and made eggs and bacon and orange juice; the picture split and got joined with the first time I made us bacon and eggs in that house. He had looked at the food and said, “Breakfast!” so softly, like it was the dearest thing, and that’s what it was to me too. But now that feeling had been divided into pieces and stuck together with the impossible present and something else down below it, something hard, misshapen and too big. I laid the dishes out, and through the chaos came the special feeling I had whenever Velvet was there and I made food for her. Well now here was the other side of that privilege, a tiny, tiny taste of what people mean when they say parenting is hard. I remembered my mother, our mother; the day after Dad left she made us pancakes, exhaustion and will mixed up in the sweet taste. It was maybe a year later that she sent Melinda to a mental hospital for running off with a married man when she was basically still a kid. When we were grown I confronted my mother about it and she said, “I didn’t know what else to do!” and I despised her. Well, now I didn’t know what to do either. So we ate and smiled and asked Velvet about the horses, and then she went to the barn, and I went upstairs to my laptop to look at sites about cheating spouses with lists like “5 Reasons You Should Take a Cheater Back” and “10 Reasons You Shouldn’t Take a Cheater Back.”
Velvet
When we galloped, there was nothing but me and her. I felt the sky above me but I didn’t see anything but her ears and her neck and the ground flying toward me and Graylie’s butt and Pat’s butt on top. Graylie’s legs flew and he rose up over the fence, switched his tail, and came down. The fence flashed up at me and I remembered, sit back. Fiery Girl came up under me like nothing was even there. The fence disappeared. It was so beautiful-easy and at first I didn’t know why.
Ginger
How do you respect yourself staying with a man who can’t or won’t value you?
Yes, it’s hard if you run a business together, but the cheater is the one who must change and prove love.
Don’t even touch him till he begs and pleads; make him vacuum and clean the toilet, make him call and text you constantly.
You won’t forgive yourself if you don’t at least try to move past it.
We’re all human.
You’ll save on therapy bills.
You didn’t make him do it.
You have a strong foundation together; don’t throw it away. You might never find anyone else.
“Ginger!” The door banged and she came up the stairs. Guiltily, I closed the cheaters window. She came into the room, rosy and exultant, lifting me up.
“What is it?” I said. “What?”
She said, “I saw the distance! I knew where it was, and I don’t even know how! I saw it for the first time and I jumped perfect and we were going fast! Ginger, I am going to be in the competition!”
The Mare Page 30