Horse Heaven

by Jane Smiley

  “Look, Dick, I’m moving the horse to another trainer.”

  “Rosalind—”

  He stared at her and she stared at him, and a lot of information passed between them, but she wanted to tell him why, anyway, so she said, “The horse is not getting through to you.”

  And he said, “No. I see what you mean. I’m not getting through to the horse, either. Who are you going to send him to?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose I’ll have a vision.”

  “I suppose you will.”

  A bit later he walked her to her car.

  THAT EVENING, she conjured up a fellow at a party. He came in the door, handed over his coat, and made a beeline for her, where she was standing by the smoked whitefish pâté. She could tell that he didn’t even know why he wanted to talk to her, but he introduced himself anyway, Sir Michael Ordway. She said, “You look like a horse person of some sort, a horse agent, maybe?”

  He laughed at what he thought was a coincidence. “Have you horses, then?”

  “A few. Only one at the track right now.”

  “You know, that’s so intriguing, really, because I know of a horse, fine animal—”

  “I’m not looking to buy a horse.”

  His face fell, then brightened again. “Oddly enough, I have a very dear friend whose name I am not at liberty to divulge, who is always in the market for—”

  “I don’t want to sell any of my stock, either.”

  “It would be quite a coup, and quite profitable for you—”

  “Sir Michael, here’s what I would like. I would like for you to do something utterly disinterested and benevolent, for which there would be no payment of any kind, and possibly even no credit given. Nothing at all but a thank you.”

  Sir Michael stared at her, looked away toward the far corner of the room, then gave her a cheery smile. He said, “That would be an interesting change. What would it be?”

  “I need a good trainer.”

  “Who’s your present trainer?”

  “Dick Winterson.”

  “Ah. Brilliant. His father trained in England quite a bit. Why not stick with him? He’s won a lot.”

  “His plan for the horse and the horse’s plan for himself are too different.”

  “And, of course, he has that Epic Steam horse now. There’s an animal that fills your agenda.”

  “That, too.” Rosalind took a sip of her champagne.

  “I have lots of friends.”

  “I would like you to disregard that fact.”

  “Build up my credit in heaven rather than here on earth, as it were.”

  “I think we understand each other perfectly.”

  “May I call you?”

  WHEN AL CALLED from Lithuania late that night, he began at once. His feet were killing him, and there were these pains shooting from his knee to his groin, they weren’t constant, but he would be walking along and all of a sudden, bam, he was nearly doubled over, and you couldn’t get a good cup of coffee in this country, even though the hotel was supposed to be the best, European standards, ha, the hot water ran out before you were even wet and the roads, he had a headache from the moment he woke up in the morning, it must be the ventilation—

  “Al.”

  Maybe he should have brought those other shoes he had. He could never decide what shoes to pack. He hated to fucking pack, anyway. Why had he gotten into a line of work where he had to actually leave his house and go to these godforsaken—

  “Al.”

  And the heating. It was all steam-radiator heat, and it dried your sinuses right up. He’d brought along the whole medicine chest she’d sent, the Sudafed and the chlorine, what was that stuff, but it was so dry inside, your brain felt like a shriveling walnut rattling around in—

  “Al, would you like to call me back later when you have something more fun to talk about?”

  “What?”

  “You’re complaining.”

  “Well, of course I’m complaining.”

  “I can’t do anything about it.”

  “I just want a sympathetic ear.”

  “What for?”

  There was a long cellular pause, then, “Well, I don’t know.”

  “What do you really want?”

  “A laugh, I guess.”

  Rosalind reflected that she had never given anyone an actual laugh.

  There was an even longer cellular pause. Al sighed, no doubt beginning to meditate again on his complaints.

  Rosalind closed her eyes, her mind a blank. How could this be so hard, giving Al what he wanted? She gave everyone else what they wanted. Having nothing to lose, she opened her mouth: “You know, my dad knew this guy back when I was a girl. A guy who lived in Milwaukee. He heard that if he went into chicken farming the government would give him fifteen hundred free chickens, so he got himself a little plot of land, and called the Department of Agriculture, and asked for his chickens. He was really determined to make a go of this, so when the chickens arrived he and his wife spent days digging the holes about a foot apart, planting the chickens. They watered them a couple of times, fertilized them, everything. But it didn’t matter, the chickens didn’t come up.”

  Al was silent.

  “So they called up the office for chickens again, told them the chickens had died, and asked for another fifteen hundred chickens. The chicken guy quizzed them—had they fed the chickens, watered them? Oh, yes, of course they had. Well, he said, try giving them more of each. So the chickens arrived, they planted them again, but this time they watered them every day and dug the fertilizer right into the soil. Still no go. Not a chicken came up. So they called the office again, and this time they said they’d send a man out to analyze their operation. Fair enough—they’d done everything they knew how to do.”

  Al cleared his throat.

  “So the guy comes out, and they show him the chicken field, and he walked around. They see him dig up a chicken or two, shake his head. He’s there for the whole morning. Finally, he comes in, and he says, ‘Well, I’m going to authorize fifteen hundred more chickens, but this time, be sure and plant them farther apart.’ ”

  Al laughed.

  Rosalind laughed.

  Al said, “So, uh, Rosalind. What have you been doing today?”

  57 / THE RETURN OF THE DEMON

  WHAT IT FELT LIKE, as far as Joy was concerned, was forgetting one life and remembering the other. What she forgot was something about her day. She remembered getting up in the morning, going with Farley to the track, grooming, riding, doing things for horses, going with Farley to the cafeteria, gossiping with other trainers, getting horses ready, going in races; you name it, she remembered almost all of it. What she didn’t remember was how she had done it, what it had felt like, what gave her that energy and then made her want to expend it. What she remembered was what she had known before committing her most recent big mistake—she had known that a small room, limited contact with others, and a heavy schedule of routine work enabled her to pursue her goal, which was to live in a small room, have limited contact with others, and pursue a heavy schedule of routine work. Her most recent big mistake had been to think she could move outside those parameters. But it was not that she missed the ranch (What was there to miss? Nothing in retrospect or prospect looked more or less appealing than anything else), rather it was generally considered better to function than not to function, and so it probably was. She was not functioning. It was not good.

  She heard Farley’s steps come into the room. Since the onset of her recent depressive episode, she didn’t get up at all. Sometimes she did put her head out from under the covers. She did that now. She said, “What day is this?”

  “Saturday.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “Eleven days.”

  “Are you hankering after signs of progress?”

  “Trying not to.”

  “Is this affecting your expressed love for me?”

  “I don’t think of this as y
ou.”

  “What if this is the real me?”

  “I choose not to believe that.”

  “You know, my father told me a story when I was a kid about a hog he saw at a fair one time. It weighed twelve hundred pounds, and couldn’t get up on its trotters any longer. His dad told him that it never slept or woke up. It always just existed in a sort of semi-awake twilight zone. Does that sound appealing to you?”

  “No.”

  “It does to me.”

  “What’s appealing about it?”

  “No movement.”

  He sat down on the bed, smoothed the hair out of her face, and took her hand in his. Then he put his other hand on her elbow, and began moving her arm up and down, back and forth, while stroking it gently. He was smiling at her. She let him do it. He set her arm down. It tingled nicely. She said, “You have to go to the track. Tell me about it.”

  He ran down the list of horses and what they were doing today. Froney’s Sis was not on it. Froney’s Sis had gone back to the ranch. Her departure for the ranch had coincided with the onset of this thing that had happened to her. That looked like cause and effect, yes, but it wasn’t. This thing that had happened to her had no cause, never had. Elizabeth said that it could not be accounted for with reference to this lifetime, that she had another lifetime or two that she was experiencing simultaneously with this one. Events in the other lifetime(s) were resulting in feelings in this lifetime. Perhaps in her other lifetime, right now, she was very ill. Perhaps, Joy suggested, she was dead. When Joy told her mother Elizabeth’s theory, she did not dismiss it out of hand, which surprised Joy, for her mother was a fervid believer in psychotherapeutic drugs. Sometimes Joy thought that if she could just get them all going at once—Farley manipulating her body, Elizabeth investigating her past life experiences, her mother altering her brain chemistry, Plato putting her into her proper socio-economic and cultural context, and Mr. T conceptualizing her inner being—then that would be enough to hoist her over the edge and back onto the plane of well-being. She said, “You really have to go.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you have infinite patience?”

  “I have enough for right now, and that’s all I need.”

  After he left, she recollected that he did have infinite patience. Look how he had been with Froney’s Sis.

  That thought was enough to start the crying again.

  ———

  SHE WOULD BE crying again, thought Farley as he pulled onto the 210. Three weeks ago he would have said that he had come to a remarkable place for him, a place that he valued. It was more than the fact that he was with a woman most of his waking and sleeping hours with whom he felt comfortable and had no conflict. It was more than the fact that when she leaned into him, and touched him, he wanted to pull her closer and closer. It was more than the fact that their conversation was an unceasing duet, harmonious and measured, sometimes resting, sometimes quickening, a song of many movements. It was more than the fact that he exerted no effort to be good with her, but felt patience and kindness and warmth drawn out of him without fear (he would like to have been always what he was with her now). Around Christmas he had thought about this a good bit, that, looking back, conflicting desires and expectations, mounting disappointments and misunderstandings had compromised every relationship he had ever had, a sack of junk tied to his foot that he had dragged forward with every step. But this he did not have with Joy. They were too grateful for there to be resentments. Even now that this thing had happened to her, he was still grateful—grateful for her nearness, grateful for her soft voice, grateful for the sight of her face, grateful for her willingness to let him wrestle with her depression for her, by touching her, bathing her, moving her this way and that. He was grateful to her that she had given herself up to him, let him take care of her and express love to her rather than isolating herself and going apart. But still.

  As he pulled off the 210 at Baldwin, he flinched away from that thought.

  But then, as he went into the horsemen’s gate, and looked at his watch (it was seven exactly), he made himself look at that thought.

  How long?

  The way to think about it, said Barney, his regular vet, the only person he had really confided in, was that she was on stall rest. Thirty days of stall rest. Thirty days of stall rest was something you had to make provision for, but nothing terrifying. “And,” said Barney, “thirty days of stall rest does wonders.”

  He found his spot and parked.

  He thought it was interesting that, having finally moved his barn permanently to Santa Anita, he now did not know, no one knew, what was going to happen to Santa Anita’s backside. It was only now that he had become fond of the place. What he had once seen as ramshackle inconvenience he now saw as homely charm. As he walked to his barn, he looked around, studiously avoiding the next question, but of course, when he got there, the question presented itself. There it was, his narrow, intelligent white face hanging over the stall door, undoubtedly looking for Joy. Farley walked up and gave Mr. T. the one permitted pat on the cheek before the horse turned away. Oliver spied him at once and came over. Farley said, “How’d it go with the first set?”

  Oliver told him.

  “What else?”

  Oliver ran down the vet list.

  “What else?”

  “Somerville called again. He said you never called him back yesterday.”

  “I didn’t.”

  They exchanged a look that Farley understood perfectly. Oliver was imploring him. Two of the biggest owners on the West Coast had offered him three horses each, two three-year-olds and four two-year-olds. The three-year-olds were ready. The two-year-olds would be ready in about three weeks or so. He had not yet said no. But he had not yet said yes. The fact was, he had no stalls, and he couldn’t get any more, at least for right now. The barns at Santa Anita were smaller than those at Hollywood Park. Everything was more crowded. Oliver wanted him to move some horses to Hollywood Park, and put him, Oliver, in charge of them, but Farley didn’t like the footing there. He didn’t want to train there. A stall could open up, though, the stall behind them, Mr. T.’s stall.

  Mr. T. did nothing now that the filly had gone back to the ranch, and he did not have the prospect of doing anything. In ten starts, the filly had had one win, one second, and one third. She had earned twenty-one thousand dollars. She had been unsound off and on. The fact was, she wasn’t a racehorse and she wasn’t coming back. Mr. T didn’t quite have the temperament for a pony horse. He didn’t like male horses to be inside his personal space and he was well mannered but not in the least phlegmatic, the way a pony horse needed to be to be utterly reliable. And his experiences over the last six months, galloping, running, breaking from the gate from time to time, had accelerated his aging process. He was stiffer, crankier, harder to ride. He had no usefulness as a horse at the track, and the track wasn’t a good place for him to be now. No grass, no friends, no turnout, nothing to do. Time to go home; he still belonged to Mr. Tompkins, and Mr. Tompkins, of course, would make a place for him somewhere. Except, of course, how would Farley, how could Farley, possibly break this news to Joy? Right now, on day eleven of her thirty days of stall rest? His friend Barney the vet said he couldn’t. Her mother said he couldn’t. His own conscience said he couldn’t. A friend of his who had gotten through a serious depression said that he couldn’t even tell her he was moving the horse somewhere like the L.A. Equestrian Center, which wasn’t all that far away, because for Joy the thought of the horse in a new place, having to adjust, be lonely, be away from familiar surroundings, be by himself, be among strangers—Did Farley get the picture? Farley did certainly get the picture.

  So, in addition to “How long?,” there was “What will it take?”

  Oliver said, “You should at least call him. He seemed a little annoyed.”

  And then there was this, his own revisitation of old demons. “I will,” he said, “after this set.” And here they came, eight horses and ei
ght grooms and eight riders converging, allowing him to put it off.

  But this was his greatest temptation, the thing he had that matched Joy, the thing that had done him in before. Of course he could call Somerville; his cellular was hanging from his belt. And in some remote way, he wanted those horses in his barn, all six of them. There were two Salt Lakes, a Vice Regent, an A.P. Indy, a Strawberry Road, and, of all things, a Sadler’s Wells filly Somerville had bought in Ireland. He had cheap horses he could send to Hollywood Park, horses who would do fine in spite of the footing. And Oliver could handle it. If he called Somerville right now, and then after him the other guy, Maraniss, they would be setting things up for this by the time the fourth set was finished training. If he didn’t call, the horses would go to Frankel or Hofmans or Mandella—there was no shortage of good trainers in southern California, and Somerville and Maraniss had used most of them.

  No one was around him. He could put his hand on his phone and make the calls.

  He should at least say no. To fail to call at all was openly rude, and owners, all owners, even those not routinely accustomed to being fawned over, recognized rudeness.

  He had done himself in like this before; toward the end of his marriage, he had simply stopped using the phone entirely for about two months. He did not answer, he did not call, and he allowed his message machines, at home, at the barn, to fill up until anyone calling him just got endless ringing. The foundation mare had been more than angry, more than frustrated. She had been confirmed in the knowledge she had had all along that he could not be understood, reached, appealed to rationally. Was he willing to destroy everything, she said, their family, his career, the last lingering shreds of feeling between the two of them, his own self-respect? Somehow yes was the answer. Actually, it was something of a miracle. You could explode your life into unrecognizable fragments just by not answering the phone and not returning calls. Two months in Bali, two months on the moon would have done a far less thorough job than he had done by not answering the phone.