by Amy Conner
“I’m here on a mission,” I tell her. “I need to find Ted.”
“Ted Clancy?” Bette asks, sounding puzzled. “Honey, he’s packing up and headed to Hot Springs this morning. Why d’you want Ted?”
I pause a moment, wondering if I should tell her why I’m looking for him, but then I remember there’s not going to be any more hiding from the truth. I say, “He’s the father. I thought he should know.”
With a gasp, Bette sits on the dinette seat, which responds with a loud creak of distressed plywood. “Oh, Annie.” Her eyes go round as one of her snickerdoodles. “Oh, Annie.” She gulps. “Does your husband think it’s his?”
“I haven’t told him yet,” I admit. “I wanted to let Ted know before I told anyone else. That way if Du shoots me, at least Ted will have heard it from the horse’s mouth.”
A silence falls after that. Finally, Bette asks, “Are you going to tell Starr? Are y’all speaking again?”
I make a disgusted noise. “I haven’t heard word one from her, not since that night I drove her down here and she repaid me by stealing my car and going back to Jackson the instant ‘Mr. Right’ called. So as you can imagine, I haven’t exactly been keeping up with that particular story, being a little distracted by current events. It’s like I’ve been living underground, so I guess Starr’s happy, as happy as anybody could be with that world-class shit head Bobby Shapley.”
Bette laughs. “Well, I hope you two get back together one day,” she said. “A girl needs her friends. You want some coffee? I just baked a batch of brownies.”
Shaking my head, I say, “Brownies, Bette, are one of the reasons I’m in the situation I’m in. Besides, I’ve given up coffee, wine, and cigarettes—at least until after the baby’s born.”
Bette laughs again, her big shoulders shaking. “Not those kind of brownies, sugar. These are plain fudge brownies.”
“You got any of those snickerdoodles?” I ask, feeling hopeful.
Later, I screw up my courage again and walk down the backstretch to find Ted. I find him supervising the grooms in Barn Nine, making sure that the horses’ traveling clothes—leg wraps, bell boots, poll caps, tail bandages, antisweat rugs, and light woolen blankets—are all in place. His wide-shouldered back to me, Ted seems to be explaining something to a young man holding onto the same big chestnut horse that’s still giving everyone the stink-eye.
“Make sure you load him first, in the front of the van,” Ted says. “He’s a bad shipper.” My heart leaps in my chest in apprehension when he turns away from the groom and notices my silhouette in the barn’s entrance. He shades his eyes against the afternoon’s bright, cold January sun and begins walking in my direction, his hand outstretched. A step more and then he stops, recognizing me. Ted drops his hand to his side.
“Annie.” His voice is flat, without emotion.
So much for that, I think sadly. Still, “Hey,” I say. “I’m glad I caught you before you left. Have you got a minute to take a walk with me?”
He seems to think this over, and then he nods, his expression wary. “Okay, I guess so.”
We walk in silence beside the barns for a bit before I find the nerve to open my mouth. “So, um, how’ve you been?” I ask, sounding inane.
Ted keeps walking, long strides I can barely keep up with. “Fine.” His voice is short.
“And how’re the horses doing?” I pant, practically trotting beside him. Ted is so remote, seems so indifferent, that I can’t think of how to bring the baby up. I know I have to tell him before he decides to quit this idiotic conversation and get back to loading the horse van. Instead of getting to the point, though, I babble on. “Has the weather been as cold down here as it’s been at home?”
Ted’s jaw tightens. He stops suddenly in the middle of the road, turning to look down at me. I’ve dressed carefully for this meeting, leaving my wedding ring and diamond studs in my jewelry box and the fur parka in the closet. I’d hoped that the old pair of jeans and a brand-new barn jacket would help me appear less Jackson and more backstretch, but the look in Ted’s eyes tells me I haven’t succeeded. The four-inch suede stilettos, already ruined from the mud and manure on the road between Bette’s trailer and Barn Nine, probably weren’t the most practical choice, but feeling at a disadvantage, I’d wanted to be as tall as possible for this meeting.
“What are you doing here?” Ted sounds impatient. “Why are you asking me questions about shit you don’t care about? The weather, Annie? For Christ’s sake.” He folds his arms across his chest and his gaze goes over my head, looking at nothing.
It’s time.
“I’m pregnant.”
Now that I’ve gone on and said it, I feel as though I’ve flung myself off the roof of the house and haven’t hit the ground yet. And Ted, he seems stunned as a lightening-blasted pine, his face pale.
“It’s mine,” he says softly after a long moment. He’s still not looking at me. “It’s mine. You wouldn’t have driven down here to see me unless I’m the father.” Ted runs his fingers through his dark hair and turns away.
“Damn,” I hear him whisper. “Damn and damn.”
“I brought you your jacket,” I say to his back, hopelessly. “I can go to the car and get it.” Please, please. Let him turn around. Let him look at me, at least. Please, let him turn around.
And then Ted turns around. He meets my eyes, smiles an uncertain smile, and that smile grows. Thank you, Lord, Ted smiles that great smile down at me and picks me up, my absurd stilettos leaving the dirt and dangling two feet off the ground. Face to face, he holds me, his eyes searching mine before he folds me close to him. “So, Annie not-from-here—what do we do next?” he says into my hair.
My arms around his neck, I rest my forehead on his shoulder and sigh in pure relief. “I have no earthly idea. I just wanted you to know. By the way, my last name is Banks.”
CHAPTER 18
It’s a Saturday morning in April, a good day on the backstretch.
Up here in Arkansas, springtime has finally come and there’s a sense that the trees are getting ready to pop into achingly green leaf any moment now. The flower beds in front of the grandstand are brilliant, with their banked azaleas and pansies, the rosebushes beginning to bud. Helen Wheels, Ted’s sassy little bay mare, won her race last night, and so he was whistling when he left after he kissed me good-bye this morning. The April sun is watery, as though it’s shining through a goldfish bowl that needs cleaning, but it’s a nice change from all the rain we’ve had recently. With any luck, the track should dry out and be fast for this afternoon’s card, meaning a good race for Triton and a big day for Ray and Stu, his owners. From the excited yelps coming from the distant hay barn, it seems Troy Smoot is engaged in rat removal—an activity that’s made him a popular little buzz saw of an exterminator in the barns and tack rooms.
And a few minutes ago, for the first time this morning I felt the baby kick.
I’m sitting on the steps of the trailer, wishing I didn’t have to do the laundry today, but if I don’t want these jeans to stand up and walk around by themselves, I need to load the Ford and drive into town to the Laundromat. Since my first trimester has passed and with it the god-awful morning sickness that left me leery of even the smell of food, my appetite has come back with a spectacular bang. Now I’ve got only a couple of pairs of jeans that fit my ever-increasing waistline. No more size zeros for me, but I refuse to go into maternity clothes: all those smocks and elastic panels are so damned dreary that I’m considering wearing Ted’s jeans until I outgrow them, too. This morning, one of his shirts—a gray plaid flannel that would have been a circus tent on me back in the days when I didn’t eat—is warm on my shoulders in the still-chilly air and smells of Ted’s cologne. I smile, thinking that my old saleswoman Dolly would swoon from the shock of it, seeing me dressed like trailer trash and sitting on the steps of a real trailer.
One of the grooms, Old Earl, distinguished from New Earl because he’s been working for Ted for t
en years, waves at me as he whizzes by on the golf cart with a bale of hay strapped onto the back of it. “Hi, Annie,” he calls. I smile and wave back. Yesterday Old Earl asked me when my foaling date was.
“Early August,” I said.
“Good,” Old Earl said, nodding his approval. “No racing in August.” If he and the other grooms actually get around to throwing me a baby shower like they’re threatening to, I’ll probably end up with a foal halter, a gift certificate to the feed store, and a heavy-duty pair of horse clippers instead of sterling teething rings, cups, and rattles. I’m not concerned since I know my mother and her friends will more than fill the breach.
For the weeks between New Year’s and Valentine’s Day, the day Troy Smoot and I moved to Hot Springs and into Ted’s trailer, I had to have many long, tearful conversations with my mother before she finally agreed that I needed to leave Jackson, to be with the father of my baby. Still, she’s determined to come wherever I am for the birth. It’s going to be her first grandchild, after all, and I need her with me.
And I filed for divorce, but Du’s contesting it like a man who’s been made a fool of, and I can hardly blame him. Sometimes, doing what’s right hurts innocent bystanders as badly as lying does, so Du’s forty-page rant of an Answer to my petition for a no-fault divorce means Ted and I won’t be married when the baby comes. I wish things were different, but I’ve had a lot of time to think it over and have come to the conclusion that I’ll have to live with it. Du needs this, I suppose, and besides, life’s been good to me. Soon, I’ll be rocking my own baby, and not by committee either. For the first time I’m responsible for someone else, responsible for their life.
There’s a crow’s nest in the top of the pine trees by the clubhouse, and every morning a nesting pair flies across the track to the barns to lay claim to the spilled horse feed. As I lie in the trailer next to Ted in the pale light before dawn, I wake to their cawing, to the mysterious language they speak to each other. I’m told that, like swans, they mate for life. This morning, one of the two is perched on top of the horse van, soaking up the sun just like I am.
“Ock,” it says, a bright eye gleaming.
“Ock yourself,” I reply.
I’d love to sit here until Ted comes back from the morning workouts, but it’s time to get the laundry loaded up. I stretch, get to my feet, and turn to go up the steps inside the trailer when there’s a crunch of gravel behind me, the sound of car tires pulling into the lot.
I pause on the steps to see if it’s Ray and Stu, Triton’s owners, because if it’s them I’ll need to go tell Ted so he can hustle on over for some serious owner stroking. It’s not them. The big white Mercedes with Mississippi plates plows to a stop in the middle of the parking lot like a ship running aground. The crow beats its black wings, taking lazy flight into the sun, and then a woman gets out of the car.
Starr.
We lock eyes, her waiting by the side of the Mercedes with the door open as though she might just jump back into it, me frozen below the metal steps of the trailer. Starr’s wearing a gorgeous Arctic fox vest, a cashmere turtleneck the color of her eyes, and a pair of twinkling diamond earrings the size of hubcaps. Even from here, I can tell she’s had the baby.
Without taking her eyes from mine, Starr reaches into the car and turns off the engine. “Annie,” she says in the sudden stillness. “I found you.”
“I didn’t know you were looking,” I say. “You sure weren’t last Thanksgiving.”
She smiles wryly. “Okay, so maybe I should have looked harder. I’m sorry.”
I nod slowly. “Maybe you should have, but it’s all right.” It’s not: we’re neither of us seven years old anymore, and sometimes it isn’t about sorry. I know that now.
Starr tosses her hair over her shoulder, that canary-diamond hair, and smiles her big, bright smile. “It wasn’t like you think,” she says, her voice coaxing. “I know everybody’s saying I married him for the money, but we’re in love. Really, really in love.”
“And your baby?” I ask, raising an eyebrow. “How’s Bobby working out as a daddy?”
Starr looks confused for a second, then comprehension smoothes her pretty, wrinkled forehead. “Oh, shoot. You don’t know! I didn’t marry Bobby Shapley, Annie. I married the Judge.”
My knees buckle, and sinking fast as a broken elevator, I have to sit my ass down on the metal treads of the trailer steps. “You what?” I ask in disbelief.
With a shrug, Starr walks around the Mercedes and says, “Can I have a sit, too?”
I move over, and carefully she lets herself down, sighing. Her fox vest smells of Giorgio, a fragrance I’ve never cared for. “I’m still not over havin’ the baby,” she says with a grimace. “Twenty-one hours of labor. Little Brittany was worth every second of it, though. Yep, I married Otto in Las Vegas last Thanksgiving morning. Of course Bobby wasn’t ever going to marry me, but after all, Brittany is Otto’s baby.”
I’m speechless, but somehow I’m able to take this in without my mouth falling open, at least. “You’re serious,” I finally manage. “You slept with the Judge when you were living with Bobby?” At this unlikely point, I don’t care too much about sounding holier-than-thou.
Starr sighs and gazes off into the distance. “It wasn’t for more than a couple of weeks. Bobby’d begun to have a . . . little problem,” she says delicately. “Me and Otto started up when he came over to the condo to talk to Bobby about getting shut of me, but Bobby wasn’t home because we’d had a fight. I was upset about that and, well, one thing led to another thing and somehow Otto and me ended up sleeping together. Afterward, he told me he’d never done anything like that before. Me, I was disgusted with myself so I told him we couldn’t ever do it again.
“But you did,” I say dryly.
Starr smiles a half-smile. “You know how those Shapley men are.”
“Don’t I just,” I say. “They don’t let go of anything, not ever, not until they’re done with it.” I don’t need to tell her about my own encounter with the Judge, about his dreadful proposition by the boxwoods at the country club.
Starr looks at her hands, at the enormous diamond solitaire on her wedding finger. “Oh, yeah, they’re both tigers in the sack, honey—another family thing, I guess. Remember how I said you can’t misunderestimate the power of great sex?”
“It’ll make your best intentions into orphan dogs,” I say. “How could I forget?”
“Anyhow, after a couple of weeks of sneaking around, I told Otto we had to cut it off. He said okay, but he wouldn’t believe the baby was his, not back last fall, not until Bobby told him that night before Thanksgiving how Brittany couldn’t be his kid ’cause Bobby hadn’t touched me in weeks. That’s when Otto called and told me to get back to Jackson lickety-split so we could get married straight off. ‘No child of mine is going to be born illegitimate,’ he said.”
Starr turns those pale eyes to mine, a tentative smile hovering on her lips. “You want to see Brittany? She’s only a month old, looking like a three-week-old kitten she was, what with being born so early. My little Pisces.”
“Sure.” Actually, I’m dying to see her daughter.
Starr hops off the steps and hurries across the gravel to the Mercedes, opens the back door, and unsnaps a tiny, sleeping baby from a stupendously luxe car seat that looks as though it was made for royalty. Knowing the Judge’s deep pockets, perhaps it was.
“Isn’t she the most precious-est girl? Mommy’s little sweetheart,” Starr coos as she comes back across the gravel holding the pink-wrapped bundle. I get up to go see.
“If she’s lucky, she’ll look like you,” I say, “and not her daddy.” I stroke the seashell fist, and Brittany curls her exquisite little hand around my fingertip. I melt. “She’s beautiful,” I say simply. “It’s good to see her. How did you find me?”
“Bette helped,” Starr says. “Otto said we could come on up here for the racing and maybe I’d see you. Your mother told me I should do it.”
Remembering my mother’s story, the one she didn’t tell me until it was almost too late, I can understand why. She and Starr are kindred souls. Of a sort.
“Ted’s going to be glad that it’s all worked out for you,” I say. At least, I think he will. He’s the most compassionate man I’ve ever known, but he’s not exactly Starr’s biggest fan.
“It’s so great you’re with Ted,” Starr says. “He’s one of the good guys, never hitting on me or anything, just acting like a friend whenever I needed one. I think I still owe him fifty dollars. Anyways, I wanted to ask you to be Brittany’s godmother. Say yes, Annie. Please? You can stay with us.” Starr rocks the baby in her arms and looks at me, her pale eyes begging mine for approval. “Otto and me, we got a big old, brand-new French Provincial house with a ton of bedrooms, and the bathrooms have all got Jacuzzi tubs and cultured marble. Please say you’ll come. Those Ladies’ Leaguers have to act nice now that I’m Mrs. Otto Shapley, but they’re never not gonna call me trash behind my back, no matter they’re sweet as pie to my face. I need me a friend for when Brittany gets baptized, there’ll be so many high-muckety-mucks hanging around, guzzling champagne, and whispering mean stuff when they think Otto won’t hear.”
I think it over. Godmother? Then, reflecting on the Judge as this precious child’s daddy, I decide she’s going to need all the support she can get. So I say yes, Starr throws an arm around my neck, and I’m enveloped in a cloud of Giorgio. The baby wakes up, her eyes the color of star sapphires. My godchild to be.
“I just love you, Annie Banks!”
Disentangling myself, I tell Starr my own news, how perhaps one day our daughters will play with Barbies in the backyard, stand up against second-grade injustice, and vanquish bullies together.
“Jesus take the wheel,” Starr breathes, her eyes wide with surprise. Then we both cry a little, but even though I’m tempted, I don’t tell her about the rosebushes and their secret, about the many heartbreaking years I tried to have a child, because that’s something between me, Troy Smoot, and my mother.