If Wishes Were Horses

by Matlock, Curtiss Ann

  Her daughter began to move and kick with vigor that delighted and comforted Etta. The child growing inside her kept her hoping for a future. She returned to working on the nursery, which she had almost completed before Roy’s death. With Latrice’s instructions, she embroidered on squares to make a baby quilt and hung curtains Latrice made.

  Whenever going to the nursery or the guest room upstairs, Etta continued to hurry past the door of hers and Roy’s bedroom. She had not entered that room since the day of the funeral.

  “You haven’t seen Mr. Roy or heard him anymore, have you?” Latrice asked her.

  Etta said, “No . . . but I smell his cologne, that expensive stuff he ordered from New York.” She had found the actual bottle in the medicine cabinet and flushed the contents down the toilet, then had thrown the bottle away, but that had not seemed to help. Now, rubbing her shoulders, she said to Latrice, “It’s like he’s callin’ to me to help him.”

  Latrice nodded. “He always called to you. Just tell him that he’s dead.”

  “Well, I should imagine he knows he’s dead.”

  “You haven’t accepted it is all over yet, though,” Latrice replied.

  “All over? I don’t believe our past is ever all over. It just stays around to torment us.”

  “Only if you allow it,” Latrice said. “To let go of the past, you have to let go of anger and resentment. Time will work it out.”

  “Time doesn’t work it out,” Etta said. “It wears us out."

  “That solves a lot of problems, too,” was Latrice’s reply.

  Obie Lee worked on Etta’s old Ford, which had been her car before marrying Roy. It was registered in her name alone and free of debt, so no one was going to be able to take it from her. It occurred to Etta that she might end up driving away from this house in about the same condition she had arrived, with little or nothing except poor history.

  And good clothes, she reminded herself. For her entire marriage, she had been buying classic quality clothing which would see her through another decade. No matter if she lived in a shanty and drove a junker, she would be well dressed.

  “This car’s sixteen years old, Miz Etta, and it’s been sittin’ here all winter,” Obie told her. “It’s gonna take right much work. I may have to rebuild the whole engine. At the very least we’re talkin’ new fuel pump, distributor, and some wires. Likely a rebuild on the carburetor.”

  Etta couldn’t afford any of those things. Obie said he would scrounge around and see what he could pick up from junkers.

  “Thanks for tryin’, Obie. We’re gonna need a car.”

  She touched the dull fender and thought how she would be driving her baby away from this house in this car.

  “Obie, you know it looks like the farm will have to be sold.”

  “I know that, Miz Etta. I’m real sorry.”

  She peered up at him. “The land is all tied up with the mortgage at the bank, or I’d be able to just deed you your forty acres. It is yours by rights.”

  He removed his ball cap and wiped his sleeve over his graying hair. “I appreciate your generous sentiment, but I don’t really want that land, Miz Etta. If you and Miss Latrice move off, I’d just as soon go, too. I’m not really overly fond of that cotton field.” He gave a low chuckle with the last statement.

  Obie’s chuckles were such—dark eyes sparkled like stars—that Etta had to smile, too, although the next instant the heavy weight of dread fell back on her.

  “Where will you go, Obie?”

  He shrugged. “Oh, there’s possibilities all over. There’s a few who’ve wanted me to come work their farm over the years. I have considered off and on to go up to Okie City. My brother up there has a barbeque restaurant and has asked me several times to throw in with him.”

  After a minute he said, “You might consider movin’ up to Okie City, too, Miz Etta.” He looked a little hopeful.

  “I don’t know, Obie. I guess we could consider it. Latrice would prefer town livin’—if she could have the same modern kitchen,” she said with a small grin. She looked over at Little Gus in his corral. “I’m happier here, though, where I can have my horses and things. And I think it’ll be better for the baby, too.”

  She sighed. It seemed she was doing a lot of sighing lately, and she didn’t like it.

  “Have faith, Miz Etta,” Obie said, his dark eyes warm. “No matter what it looks like, the Lord has it in hand.”

  Etta gazed for a long moment into the dark, dirty engine. “It’s hard to believe that sometimes, isn’t it?” She lifted her eyes to Obie. “I mean, sometimes it sure doesn’t look like God has anything in hand, considerin’ all the mess we get ourselves into.”

  Obie grinned again, sad sparks in his eyes now. “That’s true.” Then he paused, the carburetor piece in his greasy hand, and said, “But very often you gotta take all the wrong roads, in order to learn the right one. Our lives are school, and we have lessons to learn. Don’t mean the Lord ain’t right there with us, givin’ a guiding hand. I’ve sure made my share of mistakes, but I’ve always thought two things: that the right place to look is at God, and you only gotta live one day at a time.” He seemed suddenly embarrassed at his speech, and looked away.

  Etta said, “You are right, Obie. It’s just hard to remember to do sometimes.” She laid a hand on his arm. “Thanks so much.”

  “Somethin’ will turn up that will be just right for you and the baby and Miss Latrice,” he said. “Right now all you gotta do is hold on and wait.”

  “Well, if it’s right for us, then it will be right for you, too, Obie.”

  “Likely so,” he said and turned back to the car. The hand that worked the wrench inside the greasy engine was bony and gnarled. When he shifted and stretched for better leverage he did so stiffly. He was not young.

  Etta turned away and looked out across the corrals, now empty and desolate, except for Little Gus. Wishes welled up inside her. But if wishes were horses they’d all ride, and right then there was only one horse, and he was a pretty scrubby fellow who was barely green broke.

  She thought of Obie’s words: Look at God and take one day at a time. She supposed she wasn’t in a position to do anything else.

  * * * *

  The morning Roy’s Aunt Alice showed up, she didn’t bother to telephone first. She came in surprise attack was how Etta thought of it. She rang the doorbell, and back in the kitchen Latrice said, “That’s Miz Alice Boatwright’s ring.”

  “Alice’s ring?” Etta was washing fresh spinach.

  “It rings like her sayin’, ‘Get your butt in here on the double.’”

  This was not a great surprise. Alice had been telephoning, and Latrice had been putting her off. It was only a matter of time before Alice reached her limit. In fact, Etta and Latrice were both surprised that Alice had been thwarted this long. Alice Boatwright wasn’t one to be thwarted.

  Frowning, Etta said, “Go tell her I’m on my deathbed with cholera.”

  Latrice raised an eyebrow. “You can either let Miz Alice come chasin’ you down and catch you on the run, or you can face her and put her on the run.”

  “I don’t know as God Himself can put Alice on the run,” Etta muttered as she dried her hands with a towel.

  She walked through to the front door, straightened her back, and gathered herself, wishing she wore something other than overalls; it was very difficult to face Alice in baggy, worn overalls.

  Then she opened the door and said with all graciousness, “Why, hello, Alice, won’t you come in?”

  Alice was a member of the Richards family of St. Louis, as had been Roy’s mother. She had married a little beneath herself when she had married Edward Boatwright, but the tradeoff had been that Edward was of the family that owned a bank and ruled a county. As Alice’s branch of the Richards had come down in the past fifty years, marrying Edward was a smart thing. Rather than be a small, obscure fish in an enormous pond, Alice had succeeded in making herself an important fish in a tiny pond,
and she liked it very well.

  Although Latrice maintained every person had a heart, she conceded about Alice: “If there’s any charity in the woman, it’s well hid by power and spite.”

  Etta agreed, except when it came to Roy. Etta thought Alice had felt something at least close to love for Roy, even if her feelings had still carried the heavy mark of control.

  The day after Etta and Roy had returned from their honeymoon, Alice had stormed over to the house and screamed at Roy, “What in the hell’s the matter with you? If you wanted her, you could have just had her . . . you didn’t have to marry her, for godsakes. A man marries a woman like Corinne Salyer, not some poor trash like Etta Kreger. You’re just gonna piss your life away after all, aren’t you?”

  Alice had not been deterred one iota by Etta’s hearing all this. When alone with family, Alice got as crude and down and dirty as she wished.

  For her part, Etta had been shocked. She had not known that a woman of Alice’s proper social standing would know any swearwords, much less be screaming them like a crazed shrew. Actually, Etta had not personally known any women of Alice’s social standing. But she had seen them in the movies and had observed them entering shops on the street. She had saved up for a month and had her hair done in a swank salon among the “better people,” and they had all appeared exactly like Margaret from Father Knows Best: tranquil, genteel, and perfect ladies.

  Thus Etta had been astonished and then crushed, not only by Alice’s words but by the way Alice looked at her as if she were garbage in the street.

  “Be nice to her,” Roy told Etta later. “She’ll come around eventually.” Then he added how beautiful and sweet Etta was, so Aunt Alice couldn’t help but fall in love with her as he had.

  He had made Etta believe it could happen, and she had been as nice to Alice as a person could possibly be. She had studied books and articles on etiquette and style until she could have been presented at a Southern League meeting. She had read Town and Country and the Saturday Evening Post from cover to cover each month and looked up definitions and pronunciations of difficult words she came across, all in an effort to improve so Alice would not only like her but love her.

  Her efforts had been in vain, of course. Alice did not intend to ever accept her. Alice considered it as a mark of her standing in society to disdain Etta. Once she had come to accept this, Etta had ceased to be hurt or manipulated by it.

  Still, she had always done best with Alice when she had had sufficient time to prepare to face her. Gazing at the older woman now, Etta had the sinking feeling that she was not sufficiently prepared.

  Petite and straight as a rod, Alice stepped into the foyer and eyed Etta from head to toe. “Latrice said you’ve been so sick as to take to your bed. It appears to me you’ve been farmin’.”

  “Are you so hard up for people to criticize, Alice, that you had to come all the way out here and start on me?” She was rather pleased with her comment, and with Alice’s frown.

  “I’ve come for my sister’s things,” Alice said. “When Cynthia died, poor Roy wasn’t ready to let go of her things. I haven’t said anything, because he’s needed these pieces of his mother around him. Now, however, by rights they are mine, and I’d like to get them before they get lost from family.”

  “What things are you talkin’ about?”

  “Well, the mantel clock, for one.” She strode to the mantel and gestured at the clock. “It was our mother’s clock, and Cynthia said expressly right before her death that I was to have it, but Roy just couldn’t part with it. And that lamp over there—it’s from our family home . . . and there are several quilts that our aunt made for each of us when we were newly married.”

  Etta gazed at her a moment, then said, “Suppose you go around and pick out what you want.”

  Alice went to the door and beckoned to her maid to bring some boxes. Etta had not seen the maid, nor had she seen that the backseat of Alice’s car was filled with boxes.

  She felt a small flicker of alarm. She had thought she had done the right thing; she did not want Alice to go around claiming Etta had stolen what rightfully belonged to her.

  Alice put the mantel clock into a box. After that she picked up not only the red glass lamp, but the small marbletopped curio table upon which the lamp had sat.

  “The lamp has always sat on this table,” she said.

  Then she went into the den and took two prints of fox and hound hunts and then the large print of two Victorian girls from the living room wall. “I gave these to Cynthia myself,” she said.

  Having warmed up on those few items, Alice moved about the living room and then up the stairs to the linen closet, snatching up articles as swiftly as a challenger in one of those grocery store sweepstakes. At the linen closet, she laid claim not only to the before-mentioned quilts but to an Irish lace spread as well. “I gave this to Cynthia on her fortieth birthday,” Alice said.

  Etta watched with a growing amazement and dismay, realizing she had once again foolishly underestimated the woman. She watched as Alice strode into the dining room, where she retrieved the blown-glass miniature dog and horse and cat, and several vases, as well as a set of twelve crystal glasses.

  But when Alice went to lay claim to the silver tea and coffee service, Etta said, “No. You can’t have this.”

  “This set was my sister’s. She bought it in St. Louis. We were there together on a trip.”

  “It belongs now to Roy’s child, his mother’s grandchild.”

  Alice’s gaze drifted to Etta’s belly. “I see. All right, but I must insist on taking the silverware. It has our family initial.” She took up the polished chest of silver.

  Etta reached out for the chest, too, saying, “The initial stands for Rivers. Carterroy bought this for Cynthia right after Robert’s death. Roy told me so.”

  “Cynthia picked it out herself. I helped her,” Alice said, tugging the chest from Etta.

  “But you didn’t buy it,” Etta said, tugging it back. “And your name is not Rivers.”

  Alice’s eyes blazed, then her mouth formed a bitter line, and Etta found herself, a woman pregnant going on seven months, in a grappling match with a petite silver-haired matron for possession of a chest of silverware.

  “You little tramp,” Alice said. “Roy may have married you, but you never were a Rivers.”

  “My child is Roy’s child,” Etta said.

  “And are we certain of that?” Alice said.

  The comment caused Etta to jerk hard on the case, using her belly as leverage. Alice held on, too, like a little bulldog. Gazing into Alice’s glittering eyes, Etta realized that the fight was not really over the silverware. It was over something much larger, something she could not name but which she knew was very important.

  * * * *

  Johnny turned his truck into the Rivers drive and slowed, looking at the real-estate sale sign. He’d heard tell how things were. The word was, though, that the bank wouldn’t throw a woman and a new baby out of their home, at least not for a few months. Johnny figured he could use those few months. He felt he might be a little crazy, but there was a strong urge inside him that told him to come on to this place. The corrals were good, and there was a barn with a room. At the present, Johnny had horses, and he needed a room. He eased forward, mindful of the filly in the bed and the two horses tied to the back, and headed down the lane toward the house.

  A black Cadillac sat out front, doors open, a thin young woman in a tan cloth coat sticking a box into it. Johnny tipped his hat to her and said howdy out the window, but she just sort of stared at him. He parked to the side nearer the barn and walked back to the front door. The woman in the tan coat was gone, the front door stood open. He naturally went inside. Hearing voices and noise, he walked through to the dining room, stepping carefully with his boots and spurs over the shiny flooring.

  He came to a stop in the dining-room entry, right behind the woman in the tan coat, and beheld the sight of Mrs. Rivers, her and her belly in
faded overalls, going round and round with a small, silver-haired woman in a skirt and sweater and pearls. Johnny recognized the elegant silver-haired woman from the funeral. The two women were having a tussle over a case.

  As soon as they both saw him and the woman in the tan coat, who was shrinking backward into Johnny, they stopped, eyes wide. The silver-haired woman let go of the wooden case, which came as a surprise to Mrs. Rivers, whose eyes sprang wider as she stumbled backward. She lost her hold on the case, and it fell to the floor, opened, and spewed forth shiny forks and knives and spoons like it was upchucking, while Mrs. Rivers took hold of the buffet to keep from falling.

  Johnny didn’t know what to do. He just stood there feeling awkward.

  The silver-haired woman in the pearls lifted her chin. “I’m certainly not going to fight you for any of this,” she said and stalked off past Johnny like a stiff breeze, causing the woman in the tan coat to turn and follow as if by a tow line.

  Mrs. Rivers mumbled something like, “You could have fooled me,” and then Johnny saw her sliding from the buffet and downward to the floor. Before he could move, she’d gone right down to her knees amid the strewn silverware.

  Alarmed that she was fainting, he started toward her. At that same moment the kitchen door swung open, and Miss Latrice burst onto the scene.

  His gaze suddenly lighting on Mrs. Rivers’s belly, Johnny stopped short, consumed by uncertainty. “Are you all right, ma’am?”

  She nodded. “Just out of breath. Anger and resentment take a lot out of person.”

  Johnny didn’t know what to say to that. He was relieved to see she wasn’t fainting.

  Miss Latrice hardly looked at Mrs. Rivers; she knelt and started fervently raking in the silverware, grumbling in a low voice, “Why in the world would you let that woman have free rein in the first place? I thought I had taught you better sense.”

  “It seemed the thing to do at the time,” Mrs. Rivers said, and she was sort of chuckling, which just seemed to make Miss Latrice look madder.