by Jane Smiley
I will never understand how Rodney, who is just about the same size as I am, can throw me around like a basketball. But I said, “Thank you very much, Mr. Lemon. Your kindness is much appreciated.” Then he did laugh, and so did I, and Tater jogged off to the arena like he couldn’t wait.
Abby was already there, walking Blue on a loose rein, and Blue looked like he always does from a distance, very beautiful, pale gray with dapples, blue around the face and across the haunches, dark mane, dark tail. I saw that Abby was trying out our exercises, so I bent my elbows a bit and softened my fingers. Tater looked here and there, stopped, dropped a load of manure. Abby says that when a horse drops a load of manure, that means he is comfortable and relaxed. Tater ambled along. I sat deep, wiggled my shoulders a little, and took some good breaths. Tater sighed. I said, “Tater, don’t do anything bad, because Mom is watching.”
Tater’s ears flicked.
But Tater never does anything bad.
And then he did.
I was walking along, thinking about my elbows, warming up. Mom was at the far end of the arena, and we were heading in her direction. Tater seemed relaxed, and maybe he was too relaxed, because just as Mom turned around to watch me (I could see the smile on her face), a bunch of crows flew out of a tree next to the arena, and straight at me and Tater. Tater spooked and spun right out from under me, and there I was, sitting on the sand of the arena. Tater ran off, Abby turned Blue around, Mom shouted, “Oh no!” and the crows, three of them, flew over the roof of the barn. Tater is very short, or, as Abby’s dad would say, close to the ground. I stood up and brushed down my breeches. Just when I was thinking that nothing hurt, here came Tater, right over to me at a good trot. He stopped, stretched out his nose, and sniffed where I had my hand, feeling my lower back. It was like he was saying, “Are you all right? I am so sorry.” He moved one step closer and put his head down. I took the reins with one hand—at least they hadn’t flipped over his head, at least he hadn’t stepped on them—and I patted him with the other. I said, “I am fine. I bounce.”
I led Tater over to the mounting block, got on again, and started walking, just like nothing had happened. Mom still had her hand over her mouth, but I guess she had learned her lesson; she didn’t say a thing. After that, we rode longer than we usually do, the same as before, easy to the left, easy to the right, easy up to the trot, easy down to the walk, easy up to the canter, easy down to the halt, look left, look right—fifteen minutes on Tater, then fifteen minutes on Blue, another fifteen minutes on Tater, another fifteen minutes on Blue. I would never have thought that you would have to get used to riding Blue, because he is so smooth. In fact, I thought I was used to riding Blue, but yes, he is a horse and Tater is a pony, and once I was used to Tater, Blue took some adjusting, and vice versa. What I learned was that Tater isn’t uncomfortable, the way I thought he was a few weeks ago, he is just himself.
Himself, the pony who came over to see how I was after he dumped me. When it was time to get off, I gave him a kiss on the cheek, and I meant it. Abby got off, too, and ran up her stirrups. She said, just like she knew the answer, “You okay?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so. You rode like you were okay.”
“Thanks for not asking. I hate it when people ask you stuff all the time.” I think Mom overheard this, because she was standing in the doorway of the barn, with her hand on her watch. She turned away. When I walked out the door, Rodney met me with a paper napkin wrapped around something. He bowed and presented it to me. Inside were two things, not one, that looked like biscuits. I found Mom in the car. She just said, “You did well, sweetie. I can see why you like to ride,” and that was all. We ate the scones on the way home. They tasted much better than biscuits—sweet, not buttery.
When we got to Grandma and Grandpa’s, they had already had supper, and Joan Ariel had eaten a zwieback, some strained peas, some mashed peach, and a bit of meat loaf.
“Meat loaf!” said Mom. “She’s only ever had a little chicken.”
“She loved it,” said Grandma.
“She did,” said Grandpa. “She said ‘yummy.’ I think that was her first word.”
Mom didn’t say anything after that, except to thank them for watching her. Grandma sent some meat loaf and potatoes home with us, and they were good. But I didn’t say “yummy” out loud. I knew better, for once.
I did my homework and went to bed at nine-thirty, right when I was supposed to. To make myself fall asleep, I read the most boring book I could find on my shelves, Five Little Peppers and How They Grew. The story isn’t bad, but it puts you to sleep because it goes on and on and on. I read it. I even read some of the pages over and over just to make sure that they would put me to sleep. And they did. And I did have a dream, but it was about driving on a road and stopping and asking people where Pittsburgh was, and nobody knew.
I woke up at one point, opened my eyes, and closed them again. I even whispered “Ned!” a couple of times, but Ned never showed up. I had some nice thoughts about Tater, though.
At lunch on Thursday, I’d just sat down with Melanie and was pulling my peanut butter sandwich out of my bag when Jimmy Murphy walked over and stood there. I looked around. His usual friends were not staring at us, waiting to laugh, they were talking about something, maybe the World Series, because I think I heard the word “Gibson.” Jimmy said, “Hey.” When Melanie turned her head and stared at him, he pulled out a chair and eased himself into it. His sandwich was liverwurst. He said, “You going in the spelling bee?”
Melanie said, “I did last year.”
“What was your hardest word?”
“ ‘Derivative.’ ”
“What word won?”
“ ‘Loathe.’ ”
“What does that mean?”
I said, “Hate. There’s a more interesting word like that one. It’s ‘loath.’ I am loath to sit next to your liverwurst.”
They both gave me a laugh, then Jimmy said, “I want to go in the spelling bee.”
I said, “I didn’t know you could read.”
“I’m a good speller. I’ve gotten an A on every test.”
I have not gotten an A on every test. I focused on eating my sandwich, then peeling my orange, but of course I kept my ears open. Jimmy said to Melanie, “I think you could coach me.” Then he smiled.
Melanie said nothing for a long time, not like she was insulted or anything, but just like she was Melanie. After a while, she said, “I could do that. I don’t know when or where, though. I have dance in the afternoons three times a week, and I take diving lessons on Saturday.”
Jimmy looked a little amazed by this. No Murphy ever does anything after school except run around the neighborhood and hope to stay out of trouble. I said to Melanie, “We live just down the street from you. Jimmy lives across from me. You could walk home with us and we could think of words for Jimmy together. My favorite at the moment is ‘mosey.’ ”
Jimmy said, “M-o-s-e-y. That’s an easy one.”
“Yes, but it sounds just exactly like what you are doing when you are moseying.”
Melanie said, “Weird.”
Jimmy said, “W-e-i-r-d.”
And that was that. We decided to start that very day.
Which was why, at five-thirty, when the sun was going down, and Jimmy said that he would walk Melanie home from my house (she lives about four blocks away), I finally wondered for the first time why Dad wasn’t around. Sometimes he was late, but when he was, he always called, and I hadn’t heard the phone ring.
I went into the kitchen. Mom was giving Joan Ariel a bottle, and something in the oven smelled good. I said, “Where’s Dad?”
“I’m sure he’s just a little behind. He hasn’t called.”
And he didn’t call. And he didn’t come home. And we ate the short ribs and the baked potatoes
by ourselves at the table, and about an hour after dinner, Mom put what was left in the refrigerator with a piece of wax paper over it, and before I even asked her anything, she said, “I’m sure he’s just had another flat tire somewhere. But the phone is on the hook. I checked. Don’t worry!” But she said it in the way moms say that when they are worried.
And Joan Ariel, always a good baby, would not go to sleep. Mom put her down and picked her up and walked her around and put her down and picked her up and walked her around. She rocked her downstairs in the rocking chair, took her outside for some fresh air. Finally, she went into her own room and shut the door and just let her cry in her crib. I was supposed to do my homework, and there was a lot of it because Jimmy and Melanie and I had spent so long looking in the dictionary and coming up with words (“aggravation,” “lunacy,” “portion,” “receive,” “senate,” “stentorian”) that I hadn’t done any right after school. I looked at the division problems. I looked at the reading assignment. I opened the social studies book. I spelled the words aloud in the list for the spelling test. But that was all. Finally, I got up and went to the window. I opened it and smelled what there was to smell, but most of the flowers were gone now. I tried to listen for the waves down the hill, and I tried to see an owl somewhere. There were a few sounds of trucks and cars going by, and someone on the street who I couldn’t see shouted, “Hey! Frank! Wait up!”
Three times, I heard a car coming up the hill, but I never heard it slow down or turn into our driveway. I never saw brightness from the headlights flow into the backyard and then go away. Dad didn’t drive in. I looked out the window as long as I could, then I got too sleepy to even get to my bed, so I curled up on the floor and fell asleep, but of course the floor is very hard, so I woke up in the dead of night. Everything was quiet, including Joan Ariel. I got up off the floor and tiptoed to my door, opened it very carefully, and tiptoed out onto the landing. Joan Ariel’s door was open. She was lying on her stomach, sleeping. Mom’s door was open. I peeped in. Mom was sleeping, too. On her back. Dad wasn’t there. I stood on the landing for what seemed like a long time, looking down the staircase. I made up a story about how Dad was down there, asleep in the recliner, because he was so tired from a long day, and he had watched the late movie, and after that there was something called the late late movie, and he watched that, too. I coughed twice to see if I might wake him up, and then I listened for snoring, even though Dad doesn’t snore very often, but everything was very very quiet, not even a single car coming up the street. I went into my room, took off my clothes, hung them up carefully to pass the time, and finally, I went to bed.
And he wasn’t at breakfast. Mom gave me a written homework excuse—she said I was “under the weather” but that I didn’t have a fever. Mr. Nathan, who is way nicer than Miss Cranfield was, told me I could make it up over the weekend, and when we went out for recess, I sat around talking instead of jumping rope because I thought that I should do my best to look under the weather (which was, by the way, damp and chilly and made you not want to do anything). But I did not say anything about my dad. That is a third type of secret—one that is yours, but one that you do not want to tell, even though other people might want to know. I thought that if Ruthie were still at our school, I might have told her, but she was gone.
It was Friday. I should have been looking forward to my lesson the next day, but the only thing I could think about was how I would get there, since Dad was always the one to drive me, and that led me to think about how if I couldn’t get there, and we couldn’t afford the lessons, then maybe that was the end of my lessons, and that led me to think about how I might never see Ned or Tater, or Tater or Ned (who was first? I didn’t know anymore), or for that matter Abby, ever again, and then I thought something had happened to Dad, which seemed impossible at first and then not so impossible, and then I stopped thinking about it, but in order to stop thinking about it, I had to not look forward to my lesson, and so I didn’t. I looked forward to doing a lot of homework over the weekend.
When the school bell rang, everyone jumped up and ran out—I usually did, too, but now I acted like I was feeling under the weather, and I was the last out the door, so that Mr. Nathan patted me on the shoulder and said, “Hope you feel better, Ellen.” When I got to the front door, I saw Melanie’s mom pull up in their blue station wagon, then I saw Todd do a chin-up on the fence that runs around the playground, jump down, and walk down the street that leads to the market. I thought about going to the market. If I’d had a quarter in my pocket, I would have gone with him, and bought some licorice and some Dots, anything to not go home. I saw Jimmy Murphy catch up with him, and after a minute, they started poking each other and laughing, and Jimmy swiped Todd’s Giants cap. I sort of liked that, because it meant there was still a little of the old Jimmy left—just enough to make you believe the new Jimmy wasn’t a robot the Murphys had decided to trade the original Jimmy in for. Some sixth-grade girls did a few cartwheels, and then I had to start walking, because it was almost three-thirty, and pretty soon the teachers would be coming along, asking me what was wrong and what I was doing. I went out the gate, crossed the street, and after all, I walked past our house. No car in the driveway. Mom wasn’t on the porch or looking out the window, so I kept walking, down to the bottom of our street, and then I stood on the corner for a long time. Down the street, there was one tree in the way, but if I looked hard enough, I could just see the edge of the bay against the sky. I was not looking forward to one single thing in the whole world, not a riding lesson, not reading a book, not dinner, not seeing Joan Ariel, not buying anything at the department store. Even the house on the corner that I was standing beside, the prettiest house on our block, looked ugly. And then here came Mom, up the hill from the next block over, pushing the baby carriage, and she said, “What are you doing?”
I said, “What are you doing?”
She pretended that I wasn’t being sassy. She said, “I was at the market, picking up a chicken. I left you a note.”
“Can we afford a chicken?”
Mom stared at me and then said, “I shouldn’t have said what I said the other day. I was just a little stressed. Yes, we can afford a chicken.” We started up our street, which is steep. Joan Ariel was under her blanket, sleeping. After a couple of steps, Mom said, “This is what I learned from the Depression. I mean, I was five in 1932, so maybe I was too young to understand much, but I did understand that even when times were bad, there was always a way to make do. Somebody would think of something, even if it was just how to put some corn in the beans to make them taste better. Even if it was just telling a joke. Your grandma says I’m always expecting the worst. I am sorry for that.”
Now we were standing in our driveway, our empty driveway. I waved my arm. I said, “But he didn’t come home.”
Mom looked around, then said, “Oh my, yes he did. He got home about ten this morning. I forgot that you didn’t know.”
“Where was he?”
“I think I have to let him tell you. But don’t worry.”
“Can I go to my riding lesson tomorrow?”
“Of course. Now I’d better get this chicken into the oven.” She lifted Joan Ariel out of the carriage very gently. I held out my arms and took her. She didn’t wake up. Mom pushed the carriage up the steps, then came back for Joan Ariel. We carried the groceries and my books into the house. Mom laid Joan Ariel in the playpen, and still she didn’t wake up. In fact, she snored two tiny little snores. It was amazing how normal everything seemed.
Friday! At last, moment by moment, I began to think about my lesson. First I would tack up Tater, then I would go to the mounting block, and Abby would be at the mounting block, getting on Blue, and then we would walk here and there around the grounds of the stables, bending our elbows, sitting deep, looking up, loose rein, light rein. Then we would go into the arena, and the jumps would be exactly right, and we would do two courses, A
bby going first to the right, me going first to the left. Then we would take a long walk through the forest to the cove, and I would pretend that Velvet and The Pie were with us, and when we got to the cove, we would walk, then trot, back and forth where the sand was wet and hard, then we would amble, mosey, meander, back up the trail. I could picture it all perfectly right between Tater’s ears. I went into the kitchen and found an apple, which I took upstairs and put with my jodhpurs, just to make sure that I would not forget it.
At six o’clock, when we usually eat, I went downstairs (and yes, I had begun on my makeup homework). The table was not set, though Joan Ariel was sitting in her high chair staring at the piece of zwieback on the tray and touching it first with one finger and then with the other. Whenever it moved, she giggled. I said, “How long does a chicken take?”
“It’s resting. Anyway, we’re going to be eating later from now on. Six-thirty instead of six, so be sure you have an extra cookie when you get home from school. You want a little something?”
“Why are we eating later?”
“Well, your dad has to drive at least half an hour every day back and forth to his new job, and that’s if there’s no traffic. So we have to practice being flexible.”
“Where is his new job?”
“Didn’t I say? I’m sorry. I hardly slept a wink last night.” She kissed me on the forehead. And then she said the name of the town we pass through on our way to Abby’s ranch.
Dad’s new job, which he told us all about when he got home, is at a car dealer. They also sell trucks—in fact, it sounds like they sell anything that moves, except horses. It is a big dealership, the same brand as our car.
I said, “What brand is our car?”
“Ford.”