“I like him. I liked him the first moment I saw him,” she said.
“And is your husband big and good-looking, Julia?” Darren asked.
“He certainly is,” said Christy, curiously.
Darren explained. “We’re doing research at the moment into why humans are attracted to certain kinds of horses. Early stages, but we’re certainly seeing parallels. Mitch is a good-looking, well-bred, charismatic horse, but he’s also fragile emotionally and not a leader. He needs someone to look after him.”
For the first time in a very long time, Julia had nothing to say so she clutched at a real straw, stuck it in her mouth, and chewed it in what she hoped was a very cool and cowboy-like manner. It tasted disgusting, so she spat it out.
Darren turned to Christy. Before she could speak, Lianne piped up.
“There’s no old nag in the field for you, Christy.”
She turned to Darren. This was her moment.
“Christy likes old ones. She’s married to my dad. He’s seventy-two. Right, Mom?”
Christy controlled the sudden urge to kick her.
“There isn’t a horse that leapt out at me, but if I had to choose, I’d go for that one.”
“Neo,” said Darren, looking into her eyes.
“Neo,” said Christy, looking away.
“Neo is older than the others. Twenty-four years old, in fact. He was a champion jumper in his day, but he’s still sound and useful in his senior years.”
Lianne put her hand over her mouth and sat down on a plastic barrel. The barrel wiggled vigorously beneath her.
“I like the mare. Sahara,” said Lucy. “I’m sure it’s because I respond to her feminine energy. At home I’m surrounded by males.”
Darren turned to Lianne.
“I guess that leaves me with that one. Captain. Though I would have chosen him anyway,” she simpered. “Tell me, Darren, what do I like in my horse?”
“I don’t believe there’s such a thing as a bad horse, but the other riders here find him feckless and headstrong.”
Lianne’s face fell. The others desperately wished that Darren could have lied, but he was not that sort of person.
“He wants to hang out with the boys, that’s all.”
Suddenly there was a piercing whinny from a small chestnut horse in the field abutting the outdoor arena. Captain neighed back and trotted toward him, the other horses lifting their heads to watch.
“That’s the new horse, Pilot,” said Darren, as Captain and Pilot stood nose to nose at the gate. “We’re introducing him to the herd.”
“Sweet!” said Lianne, but then Pilot, baring his yellow teeth and snorting, spun round and kicked his legs high into the air, crashing his hooves against the wood. Captain cantered back to the safety of the others.
At this point, Robyn appeared from behind the stables, backlit by the glowing afternoon sun, singing a song with a group of small children who trailed after her, adorable in little boots and hats. She was wearing a tight checked shirt over her jeans and had pulled down her ponytail, so her hair fell in long tendrils past her shoulders. Her face was serene and soft and pink, until she saw the other women staring at her, and it turned tense and taut and white.
“Robyn’s got good hair,” said Lucy.
“And her own tits,” said Julia. (Lianne folded her arms grumpily. Her tennis-ball tits had been stitched onto her skeletal chest when she was thirty.)
“Some men would find her very attractive,” concluded Christy. (Despite the wobbly bits beneath that denim, she thought.)
Such men included Darren, who galloped toward Robyn, asking if she would like to help him tack up the mechanical horse. Robyn smiled, slowly smoothing her hands down over her thighs, and nodded. (Lucy thought she had licked her lips, but Julia disagreed.) Darren picked a schooling whip that was lying on the gravel and the two walked off side by side, as he showed her how to tickle a horse’s withers.
“But she’s so fat!” said Lianne, outraged by this.
“She’s not fat,” said Julia. “She’s fabulously. . . . fecund.”
Lianne was devastated. Her dreams of a future with Darren on a ranch in Montana where they would wear matching Stetsons and breed horses and children were disappearing.
“Oh, what would I know? I’m never going to meet anyone. I can’t even pick a horse that’s interested in fucking.” Her voice trilled even higher than usual.
“Captain’s a gelding,” said Lucy, trying to be helpful.
“That’s not HELPFUL!” roared Lianne, and Lucy knew she hadn’t been.
“They promised me I’d learn something I didn’t know. Fuck and double fuck!!”
A couple of the adorable children turned and stared.
“Nice,” muttered Julia.
“There are children around, Lianne,” hissed Christy, unable to control herself any longer.
“Oh, that’s right, Christy, remind me that I’m childless.”
“By choice! You have six embryos on Eighty-third Street.”
“I don’t want an embryo!”
“What?”
“YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND! How could you? When have you EVER not got what you wanted?”
If Lianne had hung round for a moment, she might have got an answer from Christy that surprised her, but she stormed off across the yard toward a wheelbarrow with various metal implements leaning against it.
Julia watched nervously, hoping Lianne was looking where she was going, as all the scene needed now was for someone to have a comedy collision with a pitchfork so it could end.
She turned round and glanced at Lucy. Lucy raised an eyebrow. Christy saw this and felt humiliated. She tried to lighten the tone and nudged Julia theatrically.
“What we need in this herd is a dominant mare. Julia, pin your ears back and bite her for me.”
“Don’t say that, Christy. Actually, I feel a bit sorry for Lianne.” Christy shriveled a little inside at the reprimand. Julia was right, of course—Lianne was just being Lianne. It was Christy who was awkward and discombobulated. She always found being near Lianne a trial, but she hated to have such uncomfortable and unattractive feelings put out there for general analysis. And although she felt confident that ever-loyal Julia would soon be making jokes about the events of the day, it was unsettling having Lucy there, who said little, apart from the odd wry aside that had Julia giggling, and watched everything.
“This horse course was a terrible idea. I want to go back.”
Julia shook her head.
“It’ll be fine. This is all about taking us out of our comfort zones, remember?”
“I’ll call Vaughn’s driver. I’ll leave you my car.” (Christy was discovering that being out of her comfort zone made her regress.)
“No, you won’t, Christy. We’re all here because of you. Stop pouting. . . .”
“Why is everyone so mean to me?”
THWHACK!
Christy’s tantrum was abruptly halted by a stinging slap to the back of her left calf. She spun round to see Lucy shaking her palm and grinning sheepishly.
“Horsefly. On your leg. Very nasty if you don’t get to them in time.”
Christy gave a little gasp but said nothing. Julia was pushing the wheelbarrow toward the stables as if to illustrate the point that shoveling shit was preferable to listening to it.
Lucy sighed and stared out at the far hills. She hoped she could spend a great deal of time with the mechanical horse; otherwise, this was sure to be a very long weekend. She was glad she had brought two bottles of red wine. And delighted she had remembered to choose screw tops.
• • •
LIANNE SULKED FOR THE evening in her yurt. This was not just because of her emotional distress, but also because there was no nondairy option at dinner and she had never spent a night in a bedroom that didn’t
have en suite facilities. With a quivering lip, she asked Christy to respect her personal space, and so Christy had to forget all about hers and sleep on the floor with Lucy, Julia, and Robyn.
Robyn had spent the day with a broad smile on her face, basking in the attentions of Darren and avoiding any avoidable contact with the others. She curled on her side in the corner, texted her children good night, and looked forward to more sleep. Unfortunately for her, Christy was in no mood to rest.
She was reading Madame Bovary with her book group and started a conversation with Julia and Lucy about the travails of nineteenth-century women, dying of corsets and boredom.
“Some chance,” muttered Robyn, tucking her knees up against her chest.
Christy looked over at her. After the coldness and friction with Lianne, she was feeling positively warm and fuzzy toward Robyn.
“Are you reading anything at the moment, Robyn?”
Robyn nodded. “Little Women, with my daughter, Madison.”
Lucy grinned.
“I love Little Women. Every girl wants to be Jo March, don’t they?”
“Yes,” said Julia and Christy.
Robyn shook her head. “Not me. I’d rather be Amy. She knows what she wants, and she gets it.”
“Interesting,” said Lucy. Christy looked up. She knew Lucy had caught this habit from Julia, who said “interesting” as punctuation. Lucy, meanwhile, had suddenly thought of a game that would while away half an hour and stop the conversation from veering into dangerous territory.
“Okay,” she said. “So in Gone with the Wind, who would you rather be? Scarlett or Miss Melly.”
“Scarlett,” said Christy and Julia.
“I love Melly,” said Lucy. “She’s so brave and good, and she shoots the soldier in her bare feet.”
“I like Belle Watling,” announced Robyn. “She has sex with Rhett, he pays her for it, and she never has to make a dress out of curtains.”
They all laughed. To their surprise, Robyn laughed, too, and she looked ten years younger.
“What do you do, Robyn?” said Lucy.
Robyn looked at them.
“I’m office manager of a budget bed shop on Thirty-ninth and Ninth.”
And the laughter was gone. Just like that. Robyn supposed this was because the others did not know how to bond with someone who had a job like that, a regular, nine-to-five, mostly tedious job that you did for the money because you didn’t have a choice.
“Right,” said Julia.
“I’m responsible for accounts, personnel, stock control, and special offers. We’re doing a top-of-the-range memory foam for eight hundred bucks this month. We deliver free of charge to the whole of greater Manhattan.”
“That sounds like bloody hard work to me,” said Lucy.
“My husband’s a writer. His name’s Ryan Anthony James,” Robyn said proudly.
It was a non sequitur, but they all relaxed.
“Oh, what has he published?” said Julia.
“Residua and Fragments. One hundred and seventy pages. Experimental short stories.”
There was a pause as Julia, Christy, and Lucy waited for Robyn to continue.
She didn’t.
“I should buy it,” said Christy, kindly.
“It’s out of print.”
(At this point in the same conversation Ryan would always say, “It’s what happened to Richard Yates for years. The fate of the serious artist.” But Robyn could never quite bring herself to quote him.)
“Ryan works in a gallery downtown, and he writes at night and on the weekends.”
“Good for him,” said Julia.
Another pause.
“What do you mean?” said Robyn.
“Maybe he needs to be around people some of the time? Being alone with your own head all the time can drive you crazy. Look at me.”
Julia had meant this to be an amusing, throwaway line, but Christy and Lucy didn’t laugh, and Julia immediately regretted having said it. At least she knew that they would not comment. But she had forgotten about Robyn, whom Christy thought hated them all.
“Is that why you left your husband?” Robyn said.
Lucy glanced at Christy, appalled. The conversation had positively careered into dangerous territory, but as neither of them knew Robyn well enough to admonish her in any way other than “Mind your own damn business,” they didn’t, and Julia was hung out to dry.
“It’s one of the reasons, yes. I went a bit nuts,” she said carefully, uncharacteristically choosing understatement of tone and word. “And that was not good for me. Or my family. So I left.”
Julia looked very sad, and Lucy reached over and squeezed her arm. But Robyn hadn’t finished.
“Didn’t you miss your children?”
“Of course I did.”
Julia’s eyes filled with tears, but not because of the casual cruelty of the comment. She had always known that people assumed she hadn’t missed her children. The pain came from the memory of how much she had, and how close exhaustion and overwork had brought her to an appalling decision that might have ruined her life.
“Let’s get some sleep,” ordered Lucy.
Robyn put her headphones in her ears, selected John Mayer on her iPod, and closed her eyes, aware she had transgressed but unsure exactly how. Honestly, she thought, it was impossible to fathom the rules of these women, who from a distance looked so unbreakable but close up were utterly neurotic.
“I’m sorry,” mouthed Christy to Julia.
“This is ALL YOUR FAULT,” mouthed Julia back, shaking her finger in silent, exaggerated fury. She attempted to mime “I am out of my comfort zone” but gave up at “zone” and pulled her blanket over her head.
• • •
THE AWKWARDNESS BETWEEN Christy and Lucy had disappeared by now. Christy was grateful that Lucy conformed to her national stereotype and her upper lip was stiff. Lucy had decided to pretend that all the emotional outbursts of the day had never happened. She thought it was the only polite thing to do. So when Christy, on the second bottle, attempted to apologize for her stepdaughter, Lucy stopped the conversation, calling Lianne a “poor dear” and adding, “It must be difficult for you, Christy,” while pouring her another plastic cup of red wine. But it was also Lucy, who knew what it was to be desperate and afraid, reliant on prescription medication, and feeling that life had no purpose, who said she was going to the bathroom, but in fact crept over to check on Lianne just before midnight.
Lucy showed Lianne the photo Richard had sent her of Max and Robbie in their Spider-Man pajamas. She talked about the games they played and what they liked to eat and how they were so similar, and yet so different. And Lianne, who had known so little genuine affection in her life, held Lucy’s hand and told her she must be a really good mother. Lucy shook her head. She told Lianne she had spent many months of her sons’ childhoods self-obsessed and depressed, but she had realized recently that, as she was the only mother they had, she would have to do better for them. She missed them and would be lost without them. She was hopelessly codependent, and it was simply love.
Lianne looked up at her, her wide green eyes staring above the sleeping bag like a baby owl. “It must make your life feel real, doesn’t it? To have a little person that you made. When you wake up, you hear them breathing. You can reach over and hold their tiny hands. Do you know what I mean?”
Lucy nodded, and this seemed to soothe Lianne, who yawned and wriggled down as Lucy stroked her hair and tucked her in.
Lucy walked out into the night and looked up to see the stars scattered across the black sky exactly as if she were in a planetarium. In the fields beyond, the horses stood, sleeping like statues, the occasional soft snort reverberating. She heard Robyn’s distinctive snoring, Julia and Christy chortling together, and knew that peace in the herd had been restored, and she
was glad. She shifted her weight onto one foot. She could stand apart from the others and observe from a distance.
For it was Lucy who was the dominant mare. This was her third revelation.
• • •
LUCY, JULIA, AND CHRISTY awoke to find Robyn’s bed empty and no note. They were relieved, although it occurred to them all individually that Robyn had chosen flight over fight, sneaking off in the middle of the night, because she couldn’t stand being around them, and that was not a feeling they were used to. When they told Lianne, she seemed disappointed.
“I quite liked Robyn,” she said airily. “It’s nice to hang out with a normal person once in a while.” And with that she breezed off to corner Darren in the tack room.
“Lianne’s wrong about that,” said Lucy. “Robyn’s many things, but normal isn’t one of them.”
“That’s an awful thing to say about her,” said Christy, but Lucy and Julia just laughed at the pot and blackness of this comment.
“You know what I mean,” Lucy replied. “There’s a lot lurking beneath that shirtdress and espadrilles.”
Julia nodded. “Yeah,” she said emphatically, “and I don’t want to know what it is.”
The women spent the morning with a session each on the mechanical horse, learning stable management and enjoying a sedate hack through the surrounding countryside. These activities passed without incident, but there was a feeling that the Real Work had not yet been done, and they all felt a sense of anticipation.
Darren was not the expert in EAL. That role was taken by Ava, a capable, no-nonsense middle-aged woman with a sharp gray haircut and a military bearing. The combination of this and her therapy-speak was somewhat disconcerting, as if you heard a four-star general order a soldier into a minefield and then ask, “And what is going on for you right now?”
Ava announced briskly that the afternoon’s exercise was all about teamwork. Julia’s heart sank. She was preoccupied. “Didn’t you miss your children?” was still ringing round her head like church bells at Christmas, and she hated teamwork almost as much as she hated unsolicited insights. (In the first ten minutes Ava had suggested that Lucy seemed like a person “used to doing her own thing.” Julia and Christy already knew that. Lucy was the type of English person whose response to any dictatorial behavior was to nod laconically and continue digging straight down beneath the stove to escape through a tunnel called Tom, Dick, or Harry.)
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