by Jane Smiley
After Leon hung up, he and Deedee smiled happily at one another for several minutes. Buddy seemed to play into their hands in every way these days. Even the close call they’d thought they had in the summer, when Leon tipped off that guy from the Racing Form and he told all those other guys and they showed up that day, turned out okay. Buddy blew his stack, but then he was so glad to get rid of Epic Steam he forgot about it. Leon said, “Next year, it could be us in the Breeders’ Cup, you know.”
Deedee took Leon’s hand tenderly in both of hers and told him she was pregnant.
HERMAN NEWMAN was sitting in front of the television, watching the Breeders’ Cup show and trying to learn something. There were all different kinds of races. The Classic had a purse, he read, of five million dollars and change. That was three million to the winner. That was something, Herman Newman thought. That was certainly something. Just then, the phone rang, and Sir Michael, out of the blue, asked him if he would like to sell Epic Steam to the Queen of England. Herman looked around for his wife, but she had gone out into the kitchen. What he wanted her to do was to take the phone and hear for herself what Sir Michael had to say, because he thought she would never believe this in a million years, but he just said he would think about it. That’s what he always said. He liked to work his way through the pros and cons on everything. After he hung up the phone, he sat at his desk, remembering his grandfather telling him how, one day when he was walking down the street in St. Petersburg in 1910, he saw his apartment explode in front of his very eyes. That night he hid out with his friend V. I. Lenin. As the horses on TV paraded to the post for the sprint, Herman wondered if this episode of family lore should have any bearing upon his decision whether or not to sell his horse to the Queen of England.
AL HADN’T ACTUALLY tried to find a parking space in Manhattan for several years. Driving around in the Mercedes, Third Avenue to Park, Fifty-fifth Street to Fifty-eighth, around and around, he couldn’t shake the notion that someone else could be, should be, finding this parking space for him. He resented that he had to find it himself and kept thinking that all he had to do was tell someone to find him a parking place, his partner, his accountant, his driver, his other partner, his secretary, Rosalind, and a parking space would be found. There were, of course, parking garages. There was a parking garage at his office building at Thirty-fourth Street and Sixth Avenue that he could go into for free, but he had standards. If he wanted a parking space in the Fifties, he wanted a parking space in the Fifties. Al realized that he was devolving. It was like watching something expensive, one of those Chinese vases Rosalind had put in their living room, fall off the shelf. You brushed past it and continued on your way, only to turn around and see it tip, tip more, launch itself into mid-air. That’s where he was, in mid-air, moments away from the inevitable fragmentation.
FARLEY WAS OUT on the track with the last set, and Joy was fussing around Mr. T.’s and the filly’s stalls. The TV was on in the office, and they were doing the intro to the Juvenile Fillies. She went into the office from time to time to see if the post parade had begun. It still amazed her that there were horses and people she had seen around this very track getting ready for that race, a race Farley himself had gotten ready for four years before, when the race was run also at Churchill Downs and he had had a good daughter of Kenmare named Kennett Square, who had run sixth.
Joy was not exactly an exercise rider and not exactly an assistant trainer. She didn’t exactly work for Farley and she didn’t exactly work for Mr. Tompkins, but she was happy in her job. She took care of Mr. T., of course, but she also took care of some other special cases. For example, after Joy pointed out to Farley that high-level dressage horses and fit open jumpers often got taken out twice a day rather than once, he set her to ponying two of the three-year-olds around the training track in the afternoon. He also used her riding skills. Horses who were out of balance and unsure of themselves got a little dressage work to develop their back muscles. So, including Mr. T., she was riding three or four horses a day, taking another one or two for hand walks. She talked to owners and their wives, she answered the phone, she went to sales with him, did some minor vet care. Just a week ago, on the first of the month, she had given up her own apartment and moved her things into his condo. She’d hardly noticed the change, except that there was more unnecessary stuff underfoot. Six months ago, when she wondered what love was, Joy didn’t realize that it would turn out to be easy and peaceful and friendly and interesting.
Now the horses in the third set began to come back from the track. Joy ducked into the office and saw that the post parade was on. There was Silverbulletday, Mr. T.’s favorite in the Juvenile Fillies, but she herself favored Excellent Meeting. She didn’t have to see Farley come into the office, or hear him speak; as he entered, the office filled up with his gravity and she moved into his orbit automatically. He took her hand and said, “I’ve always liked Silverbulletday.” He was, she thought, where love was concentrated, where that thing, normally vaporous and thin and unstable, collected and solidified, and what small wandering object like herself would not be drawn right to it?
AFTER THE TURF RACE, Herman Newman decided not to sell his horse.
AT THE TRAINING FARM, it was dark when the head stableman came out of his house after watching the Classic. He was thinking that he wouldn’t have picked the winner but he would have bet the entry. He stretched and yawned. He could hear the thud of galloping hooves in the distance, as he had all day. He shook his head, uneasy.
AFTER NOT FINDING a parking place and returning home, then sitting in the garage in the Mercedes for some undefined length of time, Al went inside. Only a few lights were on, and Rosalind was not to be seen. Al didn’t really look for her, though he noticed that the box of doughnuts was gone, which was probably just as well. He closed himself in his home office and got on the phone with Aeroflot. He made a reservation to go to Moscow. It was time, he thought, to build a large factory for the manufacture of some heavy item not as yet determined but certain to be a lot of trouble for everyone.
JUST BEFORE GETTING into bed, Rosalind opened the envelope she had sealed first thing in the morning and read over her picks. She was seven for seven. If she had bet that pick six they had, she would have won more than thirty-four thousand dollars. She sat quietly for a moment, her hand idly scratching Eileen’s belly, and wondered about this disjuncture. How could she know nothing and everything at the same time? It felt impossible and yet paradoxical enough to be true. At this very moment, she knew nothing about what was to happen next, and yet it felt like something was already inside her, already completed, and the force field of ignorance between herself and it was very weak, only just strong enough to resist her. Actually, she supposed, everything you thought was about to happen was already finished. Sometimes you could remember it and most of the time you couldn’t. Maybe it was that idea that was allowing her right now to feel a measure of calm.
48 / EILEEN TAKES NOTE
IT MAY HAVE BEEN that Eileen, as a Jack Russell terrier, had her own agenda of desirable activities. It may have been that this agenda, in several of its particulars, did not exactly suit Alexander P. Maybrick, Eileen’s main rival, these days, for the attentions of Rosalind Maybrick, and it may have been that Alexander P. Maybrick’s opinion mattered not in the slightest to Eileen. Or, rather, Eileen did not care what Alexander P. Maybrick did and did not like, but, at sixteen pounds, she sometimes had to concede defeat. Alexander P. Maybrick was not all that hesitant to put Eileen outside and leave her there. Nor did Alexander P. Maybrick understand the nuances of meaning intended by the various locations of the fecal markers that Eileen left for him. There was a language there. Any Jack Russell—any dog, even—could have easily read that language, but Alexander P. Maybrick chose not to. Fine. And he had to bear the consequences. But, as with any miscommunication, the consequences redounded to both parties. Eileen kept trying to make her point, Alexander P. Maybrick kept trying to make his, and the result was that
Eileen was occasionally swatted, and more often than that had to perform a ritual submission, all form and no substance, but inconvenient nevertheless. More seriously, when Rosalind happened to be out, and happened not to have taken Eileen with her, Alexander P. Maybrick happened to put Eileen in her kennel, sometimes for considerable periods of time.
For a dog whose ancestors were grasped by their tails and dropped into fox burrows, sometimes collapsing fox burrows deep underground, time in a kennel was no hardship, and was even a respite from having to maintain control over household events all day and all night, but it was the principle of being kenneled that offended Eileen, which was why, after some particular enormities of this sort (where was Rosalind, anyway?), she took the opportunity presented by Alexander P. Maybrick’s open closet door, and went in and defecated and urinated upon some of his shoes. The ones most strongly carrying his scent were to be preferred, for a statement was required, and, as a Jack Russell terrier, Eileen never shrank from making a statement. Eileen finished with the shoes and went out of the closet. But then she bethought herself and went back in. The corner of Alexander P. Maybrick’s bathrobe was dangling on the floor. Eileen took the opportunity to continue her statement, and give it one last little flourish. Then she left the bedroom and went into the kitchen, where, as luck would have it, the door to the outside had been left slightly ajar. She pushed it open and went out.
The day was only beginning, and Eileen was full of energy. The first thing she did was to make her daily attempt to solve the conundrum of the mole. There was a burrow at the back of the yard with four entrances. A mole, Eileen knew, went in and out of this burrow all day long, all night long. He had four ways in, four ways out. When he moved around inside that burrow, as he often did, Eileen could hear him mocking her, but she couldn’t figure out how to foil him. Birds on branches, she often could and had come down upon and killed. Rats, mice—no problem. But that mole. With regard to the mole, Eileen felt her lack of another Jack Russell companion and teammate very keenly. The mole problem would not admit of a solution by a single Jack Russell. It was all very well to scrape dirt into the entrances or to try to dig up the whole burrow, but both courses had proved futile. All she could do in the end was to attend to and appreciate the scratchings and scrapings of the mole within and hope that something would happen that would afford her an opportunity. Which was just what she was doing when the longest of the black vehicles rolled around the driveway and disgorged the beloved Rosalind right before her eyes. Eileen ran up to her screaming, and Rosalind laughed, bent down, and picked her up.
“Oh, my darling little one!” she exclaimed. “How are you? Were you good while I was in Singapore? I’m so sorry I couldn’t take you! And I was gone a whole two weeks!” She held Eileen against her chest and nuzzled her face, then stroked her ears. This was wonderful treatment, and convinced Eileen that she was the preferred one after all. In the end, of course, it was the uncertainty that hurt. Had she been sure once and for all either way, up or down, she might not have been forced to act against Al as she did, but when he was up she had to put him down, and when he was down she had to make sure he knew it.
Rosalind carried Eileen into the house. She spoke to that woman, Delilah, who was always around, but whom Eileen considered unworthy of her attention, mostly because she knew that Delilah considered her—Eileen!—unworthy of attention. That woman, Delilah, said, “Mr. Maybrick has gone to Moscow for three weeks, ma’am, on sudden business.”
“Oh. Yes. Well,” said Rosalind. Then she carried Eileen into the bedroom and set her on the bed. Eileen jumped down immediately. Rosalind sat down on the bed. She said, “No, Eileen, come here, sweetheart.” Eileen did so. Rosalind picked her up again and fondled her face and ears again. Eileen licked Rosalind on the chin, then struggled politely, just to show Rosalind that, though she was extremely happy to see her, the day was advancing and there was much to be done. But Rosalind didn’t let go. She kicked off her shoes and lay back on the bed, with Eileen in the crook of her arm, so that Eileen’s back leg was cocked under the weight of Rosalind’s body. Eileen struggled again, this time more assertively, and finally she broke away and jumped off the bed. As it happened, just then a squirrel ran by outside the French doors, and so Eileen had to race to the door and bark vigorously and put her feet up on the glass and then, when the squirrel paused and sat up a few feet from her and made those squirrel faces that they were always making if they dared, Eileen had to leap into the air against the door an uncountable number of times (Eileen could count to five, so she probably leapt six or seven times). By now she was yodeling at the top of her lungs, because you never knew how clearly those outside could hear you if you were inside. This was also a signal to Rosalind to do the right thing and let her out, but Rosalind only lay on the bed quietly and said in a low voice, “It’s all right, Eileen. Settle down.” Eileen, of course, settled down, because that low voice was suspicious and worrisome, so she gave up on the squirrel and jumped back up onto the bed and licked Rosalind on the face. Rosalind didn’t respond, so Eileen licked her right in the mouth, which, in her experience, always stirred them up pretty good, but Rosalind only pushed Eileen’s head away, and gently, too. No spitting, no gagging.
Now Eileen rocked back on her haunches and regarded Rosalind. Rosalind wasn’t sleeping, or getting ready to sleep. Her eyes were open and her body was not relaxed, and the breaths she was taking were not even, relaxed sleep breaths, the sort that meant that Eileen could crawl under the covers and press up against Rosalind’s warm belly, something she had missed over the last few weeks. The fact was, Eileen did not know what was going on. She regarded Rosalind for another moment or two, then she felt the urge to bark at her, but she could not, so she spun a few circles. All that happened was that Rosalind’s hand went up and came down on Eileen’s back. A minute or two later, that unworthy human came shuffling in and said, “You all right, Mrs. Maybrick? Can I get you anything?”
Rosalind sat up suddenly, and Eileen jumped off the bed. The Unworthy One said, “Hush, you mutt!” but Eileen kept barking full-bore until she heard Rosalind say, “I’m just tired. It’s okay, Delilah. I’m okay.” She stood up.
The Unworthy One said, “I’ll bring you a cup of tea, Mrs. Maybrick.”
“Thank you, Delilah.”
Eileen went out of the room and into the kitchen for a drink of water. She sat alertly at the feet of the Unworthy One while the woman made the tea, and listened to the woman mutter, “She didn’t know that he was going away, you can count on that, my friend. Absolutely! Things are going on around here, my friend, just ask Delilah. I’ve seen it. Just ask me!” Then she followed the woman back to the bedroom. Rosalind was now wearing different clothes, and boots. She said, much more perkily, Eileen thought, “Well, I can’t sleep. Delilah, would you have John bring the Mercedes around in ten minutes? I’ll drive it myself.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Thank you.”
And then, in no time, they were enthroned there in the Mercedes, with Rosalind driving and Eileen lying on her back beside her, having her belly scratched up and down, down and up, with the sky passing above them through the windshield. Start, stop, this way, that way. This, Eileen thought, was a whole lot better than the kennel, and if Rosalind planned to do this forever and ever without end, Eileen was for it.
After a long time, Eileen woke up from a doze to catch sight of Rosalind handing something out the open window, and to hear her say, “Thank you, Harvey,” and then they turned and stopped, and Rosalind looked down at her and said, “Here we are.” Eileen knew perfectly well where they were. The diverse and delicious perfumes of the place were unmistakable. They were at the racetrack.
Rosalind opened her door and Eileen was out there. Rosalind paused to put on her coat, and Eileen got pretty far away from her before she realized that she had lost her head, and paused to wait. No, she ran back. Running was better than waiting. And leaping in the air was better than running. She heard Rosalin
d laugh, ha ha ha, so she leapt in the air again.
But they went to the usual place after all. Eileen had been all over the backside of the racetrack. In her experience, there wasn’t a more interesting place in the world than the backside of a racetrack. Racetrack vermin were fat and had self-confidence. They tended to preen themselves and to not take Eileen quite as seriously as she knew she deserved to be taken. Also, in Eileen’s experience, just being a Jack Russell terrier was a bonus at the racetrack. You never got petted and made much of and admired quite so much anywhere in the world as you did at the racetrack if you were a Jack Russell terrier. All in all, it was a heavenly place for Eileen, but the good stuff was not where they usually went. Dick Dick Dick, which was what Eileen called the guy, because that’s what Rosalind had called him when she and Eileen were first with him, kept no animals except horses, not even cats.
Rosalind opened the door to Dick Dick Dick’s office, and he looked up and said, “Oh, hi!”
Rosalind said, “I just got back from Singapore.”
“Really! How was it?”
“It was fine. I’m opening a gallery now. It was Al’s idea. I’ve been working on it since the summer, really.”
“Where is it?”
“Madison and Seventy-fourth.”
“Hmm.”
“Good location.”
“I’m sure it will do great.”