Only Love Can Break Your Heart

by Ed Tarkington

  Around this time, the Old Man decided to launch a formal father-son bonding campaign by driving me to school. Unlike most private schools back then, Macon had a bus route that looped through the surrounding neighborhoods, which I rode home in the afternoons. Nevertheless, the Old Man insisted on dropping me off every morning when he wasn’t away on business. Sometimes he woke me an hour earlier so that we could “meet up” for breakfast at his favorite coffee shop, where I would consume a plate of sausage and hash browns while he sipped his coffee and lectured me on the art of manhood or told stories about growing up on the farm in Hampton Roads: bird and squirrel hunting with his brothers, fishing in the rivers and marshes, playing baseball in sandy fields, gathering with his family around the fireplace in the days of Saturday evening radio shows. We rarely mentioned Paul. Once, we did discuss the night I mistook Brad Culver for a ghost. I described Paul’s account of the life and death of Frank Cherry and asked the Old Man how much of that dubious history lesson was true.

  “I’m not sure Cherry was quite the scoundrel your brother made him out to be,” the Old Man said. “But otherwise, yes, that’s the way it happened.”

  “Why did you want that house?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Probably because the bastards didn’t want to sell it to me.”

  “Why wouldn’t they want you to have it?” I asked.

  “Some people have everything handed to them and let it all go to shit,” the Old Man said. “These people can’t stand to see a man who’s come from the bottom get ahead of them. They’ll take every chance they get to make him feel that he isn’t good enough. I’ve had to deal with people like that all of my life.”

  He sipped his coffee and glanced out the window with an air of satisfaction.

  “Did it make you mad that they sold the place to the Culvers?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he said. “But not at Brad Culver.”

  I thought of the look on the Old Man’s face that night when he pointed his gun at Culver’s head.

  “I don’t like him,” I said.

  “I’ll tell you a secret,” the Old Man said. “I’m about to do a big deal with Culver.”

  “You are?” I said.

  “A real biggie,” he said.

  “A contract for one of his businesses?”

  “Not a contract for a business. An investment. Venture capital,” he said. “The big leagues.”

  I wasn’t sure what he meant. I don’t think he knew exactly himself.

  “Is it some new kind of insurance?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “I’m selling the insurance business.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  What on earth would lead a man to sell off a profitable business he’d spent more than thirty years building up from nothing to start over from scratch at seventy-three? I suppose he was just too confident, too certain that this “venture capital” scheme was his last chance to make that big, once-in-a-lifetime payday—the one that would make him five times as rich as even the richest of those who had ever looked down their noses at him.

  “This is going to be the one, boy,” he said.

  He leaned forward, his eyes filled with an unnerving exhilaration. You could see through those eyes as if down a narrow tunnel to the past where stood a poor kid from the sticks listening to Huey Long’s “Every Man a King” speeches on the radio, gazing out beyond the peanut fields, dreaming. They were the eyes of the eternal optimist. They were also the eyes of a gambler who had just put his whole stake on a sure thing.

  6

  I OFTEN WONDERED WHAT Paul would have made of the transformation Twin Oaks underwent in the hands of Brad and Jane Culver. Even those big old trees seemed invigorated by the polished surfaces and the bursting fertility of the lawn and gardens beneath the canopy of their limbs. In the dell to the right of the house, hidden from view by a grove of poplar trees, stood a newly raised, air-conditioned stable for the Culvers’ horses. A high white picket fence enclosed the breadth of the property. Intentionally or not, this gleaming white border made clear the comparatively diminutive dimensions of the Old Man’s parcel of land.

  Around the time I started the eighth grade, Patricia, the Culvers’ daughter, returned home from England, where I imagined her life had consisted solely of cocktail parties, fox hunting, and polo matches. By the time she showed up in Spencerville for the first time, Patricia was in her late twenties but had yet to marry. She lived at Twin Oaks with her parents during the warm months of the year, when not traveling to competitions, and spent the winter on the equestrian circuit in Florida.

  The last night I saw Paul driving away from Twin Oaks, the Culvers had been away with Patricia in Europe, celebrating her graduation from some posh girls’ school in southern England—“at the edge of the Cotswolds,” Jane Culver had been heard to say. She must have known that the name Cotswolds sounded too regal and timeless for her Spencerville friends to suspect that it merely described a gathering of hills suited for putting sheep out to pasture, very similar to nearby Holcomb Falls or even to the land surrounding Twin Oaks.

  Patricia could hardly have been more different from her mother. Jane Culver had been born in Spencerville, into one of those First Families the Old Man had never been able to impress much. While she carried herself with a distinct air of highborn superiority, Mrs. Culver was thought of as gregarious and gracious, eager to befriend and be befriended. Thin and dainty, she never appeared outside Twin Oaks without looking as if her hair and makeup had been professionally styled. Patricia, on the other hand, appeared to eschew makeup completely and kept her hair pulled back in a utilitarian bun at the base of her scalp. She rarely appeared wearing anything but knee-high boots, riding pants, and a T-shirt or, if the weather was chilly or wet, a forest-green Barbour jacket. Her high cheekbones and small, piercing eyes seemed perpetually filled with boredom and distaste. She had a curvy, athletic build that struck me as being almost spitefully alluring, as if those breasts and hips had been designed for the purpose of attracting attention so that Patricia could then rebuff it with her particular brand of dry contempt.

  Not much was known about Patricia. People assumed she’d been sent to an English boarding school because that was just the sort of thing people like the Culvers did with their children. Supposedly she was a brilliant student who—with her parents’ encouragement—had turned down an acceptance to Cambridge or Oxford or both in order to pursue a berth on the Olympic equestrian team, but had been thwarted first by President Carter’s decision to boycott the Moscow Games and later by a mysterious back injury. Her mother had made attempts to connect her with people her age in Spencerville, but from what I gathered, Patricia left everyone she met with the impression that she’d prefer not to be bothered.

  Many days, Brad, Jane, and Patricia rode together, cantering along the edge of the field, their backs rigid and erect. Sometimes Patricia rode alone, her eyes fixed on the ground ahead of her, oblivious to everything else, including the boy walking along the other side of the fence, watching her.

  Not long before my fifteenth birthday, Patricia was joined by another woman about her age. Every afternoon for weeks I saw the two of them riding around the pasture together. One day, as I walked home after being dropped off at the end of the driveway after school, they rode past along the fence. As they came up beside me, the woman riding behind Patricia glanced down and back. When for a moment our eyes met, my mouth fell open. It was Leigh Bowman.

  I ran to the fence and cried out her name. Had she been alone, I think Leigh might have spurred the horse to a gallop and never looked back. Instead, together, Leigh and Patricia both turned and trotted their horses up to the fence where I stood.

  “Hi,” I said, gasping to catch my breath.

  “Hi, Rocky,” Leigh said.

  “How long have you been in town?” I asked.

  “Awhile,” she said.

  Of course she’d been back awhile. How had I not recognized her before? How many times had sh
e ridden that horse right across from Paul’s house, looking up at the window to the room in which she had spent so many careless hours?

  “I didn’t know,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “What for?” I asked.

  The plain falseness of her smile crushed me.

  “How do you two know each other?” Patricia Culver asked.

  I had never been formally introduced to Patricia Culver. My parents knew her from cocktail and dinner parties at Twin Oaks. “Horsey,” my mom called her. The Old Man referred to her as “the ice princess.”

  “His brother and I grew up together,” Leigh said.

  “I didn’t know you had a brother,” said Patricia Culver.

  This seemed a dubious claim, given the fact that every time she walked through the front door of her parents’ house, she stepped over the spot where her father had shot Paul in the leg.

  But maybe she didn’t know. She had been away at school then, after all. I understood why no one would have mentioned it. And yet, it was also possible that Patricia knew every detail and chose to behave as if she didn’t. With her pursed lips, her aquiline nose, and the haughty, elevated inflection of her speech, she struck me as precisely the sort of person who took private pleasure in making people squirm with discomfort.

  “We were sweethearts,” Leigh said. “In high school,” she added.

  “Charles would be very jealous if he knew your first love lived right next to Mummy and Daddy,” Patricia said.

  “Who is Charles?” I asked.

  “My brother,” she said. “I don’t think we’ve kept him a secret.”

  “Oh, right,” I said. “Charles.”

  Charles was Brad Culver’s son from a previous marriage. My parents had met him also and had socialized with him several times over the years at various events. He was older—forty, maybe. He lived in New York and traveled the world on some sort of business.

  “Would you like to tell him the big news or shall I?” Patricia said.

  “Big news?” I asked.

  Leigh shot Patricia an anxious look.

  “Charles and Leigh are engaged to be married,” Patricia said.

  Momentarily stunned, I gaped up at Leigh.

  “When’s the wedding?” I asked.

  “In October,” Leigh said.

  She glanced down and away. The bafflement on my face must have upset her—or maybe it was a glimmer of familiarity: the clothes; my lengthening, disheveled hair. I wasn’t much like Paul, I know. But we both had the Old Man’s eyes.

  “Would you like to come?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Very much.”

  “I’ll make sure to add your name to your parents’ invitation,” Leigh said.

  A discomfiting silence followed. I wanted Leigh to climb off that horse so that I could embrace her and once again take in the scent of cigarette smoke and strawberry shampoo. But that lustrous long hair was gone now, replaced by the kind of blow-dried, feathered bob hairstyle worn by women my mother’s age.

  “It’s good to see you, Rocky,” she said.

  “Nobody calls me that anymore,” I said.

  “I like it,” Patricia said. “I can’t believe this is the first time we’ve spoken. We’re neighbors after all. I hope we’ll see each other more often.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  “Good-bye, Rocky,” Leigh said.

  “Bye,” I replied.

  Together they turned and were off, riding the green wave of the grass up to the crest of the hill and disappearing into the dell below.

  THAT NIGHT AT dinner, I waited until the Old Man was on his second drink before I raised the subject.

  “You’re never going to guess who I saw this afternoon,” I said.

  “Who?” my mother asked.

  “Leigh Bowman.”

  The Old Man removed his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose.

  “And guess what else,” I said. “She’s getting married. To the Culvers’ son.”

  “How did you hear this news?” the Old Man asked.

  “She told me herself,” I said. “Well, Patricia told me, but still.”

  “Patricia Culver?” my mother asked. “How do you know her?”

  “Did you hear me?” I said. “Leigh Bowman is getting married!”

  The two of them looked at each other and then back at me with dour faces, as if I’d caught them in some terrible lie.

  “How long have you known?” I asked.

  “Awhile,” my mother replied.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It never came up,” said the Old Man.

  He picked up his knife and fork and cut into his chicken as if we were discussing the weather. I felt like flinging my dinner plate against the wall.

  “May I be excused?” I asked.

  My mother nodded.

  “Take your plate to the sink,” the Old Man said.

  Upstairs, in Paul’s room, I threw myself onto the bed and buried my face in the bedcovers, wailing all my pent-up rage and confusion into the pillowcases. When I turned over to breathe the cool air, I looked up to find Neil Young staring down at me, strumming his guitar, eyes hidden in shadow, face serene and detached. Tell me why, he seemed to say. Tell me why, tell me why.

  A FEW DAYS later, I watched Twin Oaks from my bedroom window until I saw Patricia emerge from the front door and stroll alone down the path that led to the stable. I went outside, hopped the fence, and strode over the hill and down into the dell. As I drew closer, I noticed Patricia leaning against the frame of the open stable door with her arms crossed.

  “Hello there, Rocky,” she said. “Richard, I mean.”

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Leigh won’t be coming today, I’m afraid. She’s visiting Charles in New York.”

  “Actually,” I said, “I came to see you.”

  She stopped and made her measure of me.

  “Whatever for?” she said.

  “I was wondering if you needed any help around here.”

  “What sort of help?”

  I gestured to the stalls.

  “Cleaning up,” I said. “Mowing. That sort of thing.”

  Patricia looked over her shoulder and then back at me.

  “It’s very dirty work,” she said.

  “I do all the yard work for my old man,” I said.

  “Yes, I’ve noticed you working outside before,” she said. “Well, as a matter of fact, Daddy has been looking for a part-time hand around the stable and the fields.”

  “Then I’m your man,” I said.

  Patricia stifled a giggle.

  “Is something funny?” I asked.

  “Not at all,” she said, resuming her air of cultivated civility. “As you say, you seem right for the job. What would you want to be paid?”

  “My old man pays me five an hour,” I said.

  “That sounds reasonable.”

  “I can get started now.”

  “All right,” she said. “Come along, then.”

  She led me into the stable. There were six stalls—three on each side. The Culvers kept three horses: Reggie, Patricia’s competition thoroughbred; Velma, Brad Culver’s chestnut mare; and Oberon, Jane Culver’s sorrel gelding. A tack room lay just inside the door to the right. At the far end was the feed room; on the wall opposite were a rack of tools, a closet for cleaning supplies, and a hook holding a long hose connected to a pipe with a pump handle. At the entrance where we stood, opposite the tack room, a narrow two-flight staircase led up to the hayloft.

  Patricia removed two brushes and combs from the closet.

  “Have you used a currycomb before?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Here,” she said.

  She handed me the comb and demonstrated how to use it to raise the grime and dirt from beneath the coat of the horse, running along the spine and flank and withers.

  “There,” she said. “Now, let’s see you do it.”
/>   Velma eyed me with what seemed like a mixture of suspicion and distaste. I ran the comb across her flank, taking a step back at the end of the stroke.

  “You’re afraid, aren’t you?” she said.

  “No,” I lied.

  “You are,” she said, smiling at my discomfort.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Velma,” she said. “She can sense it.”

  “I guess she doesn’t like me,” I said.

  “Give her time, Rocky,” Patricia answered. “She’ll warm up.”

  She never did, exactly, nor did the others. I didn’t care much for them either, though I grew to admire them—especially Reggie, with his magnificent, rippling physique and the shine of his chestnut coat, which I learned to polish to perfection. All the same, I preferred working in the stables while the horses were out in the paddock or being ridden by Patricia and her parents or, once or twice a week, Leigh. It must have been the peasant blood in me. I didn’t enjoy shoveling dung per se, but I took pleasure in the cleaning of a stall and the proper preparation of clean bedding. I liked looking back after sweeping out and rinsing down the floors to see a neat, well-appointed space. For a boy who had always thought of himself as a bit cosseted, I took considerable pride in breaking a sweat and being paid for manual labor.

  My main purpose in coming to the barn to ask for a job had been to wedge myself back into Leigh’s life—to be where I could see her and where she would have to see me, forcing her to remember things she was clearly hoping to put behind her. As I spent more time around Patricia, however, she began to eclipse my interest in Leigh. I often watched Patricia in the ring, working Reggie through the complex motions of their routine. It was like listening to a torch song performed in a foreign tongue—not being able to understand a word, but nevertheless entranced, and quite certain that the words I wasn’t comprehending meant something rich and sensual.