Saddles & Secrets (An Ellen & Ned Book)

by Jane Smiley

  “I thought it was a Falcon.”

  “It is, but that’s a type of Ford.”

  That made me feel like a dope, so I didn’t ask any more questions. Dad ate both chicken legs and both wings and half the potatoes and even most of the spinach. There were no leftovers. I have maybe never seen him so happy in my life. He talked about all the people who come in looking because the dealer is right near the highway, and how great the repair shop is, completely up to date, and how he would be the one to take customers for test-drives, and how his new boss thought he was really good at explaining what was special about the cars. He said, “Believe me, cars are way more interesting than vacuum cleaners!” And they have nice names—Fairlane, Galaxie, Thunderbird, Country Squire, and, of course, Mustang.

  When we got to the dessert, which was Grandma’s lemon meringue pie, I said, “Are you going to miss driving all over the place?”

  And Dad said, “Nope. What’s going to happen is that I’m going to stop missing you and your mom and Joan Ariel. My customers can drive all over the place.” He grinned.

  I pushed the meringue part aside and ate the lemon part. It was delicious. But there were still things going on, because when I said, “So, we get to stay here,” Mom and Dad looked at each other, but before they could say anything, just like she had been ordered to do it, Joan Ariel made a face, and then there was a stink, and Mom jumped up to go change her diaper, and Dad got up to clear the table. Here is a thing that I do not understand—why don’t they tell you things? They act like if you are ten years old and in fifth grade, you can’t understand what is going on, but you do understand if you have a brain in your head. If our parents and grandparents and teachers and principals would eavesdrop on us the way we eavesdrop on them, they might be more willing to communicate. That was another word Melanie and Jimmy and I found in the dictionary.

  After dinner, when Dad was sitting in front of the TV, sort of half reading the paper and half looking at a show, and Mom was putting Joan Ariel to bed, I said, “Where were you last night?”

  “I was coming home from down south, and I stopped to talk about my new job at the dealership, but the boss had so many customers that he couldn’t talk to me until late.”

  “Why didn’t you call?”

  He looked me right in the eye.

  I said, “The phone was on the hook.”

  “I know.” He closed his newspaper and shook his head a little, then he said, “I should have called. I knew that. But I wanted to give you and your mom good news, and I waited too long, and then I was afraid to call, because I didn’t want to wake everyone up, especially Joan Ariel. I wasn’t thinking, and I’m sorry.” He took my hand and leaned forward. He said, “I really am sorry. I don’t always do what I tell you to do. So if you remember this, what you have to remember is that moms and dads make mistakes, too, and then they have to answer for them, just like kids. Can you remember that?”

  I nodded. I thought about the landing in the dark, peeping into Joan Ariel’s room, peeping into Mom’s room, looking out the window in the middle of the night, and how scared I was, but I decided not to tell him. Another type of secret—the one that is all yours and nobody else needs to know. Later that night, when I was lying in bed, I thought that I would really like to go back to being a kid like I used to be, when I didn’t know or care about anything except when my riding lesson was, what was for dinner, what was on my Christmas list, and whether Ann and Todd were acting stupid or not. Now it seems as though I care about so many things that they all couldn’t possibly work out.

  The next morning, when Dad and I were driving to my lesson, Dad said that for a few weeks, just to learn the ropes (“What ropes?” I thought), he was going to work Monday through Friday, like a regular job, but then he was going to start having to work on Saturday, which would mean my lesson would have to change, but he was sure we could work something out—maybe a Sunday lesson.

  I said, “Abby and her mom and dad go to church on Sunday.”

  “So does everyone, but…”

  “All day. I thought you knew that.”

  “I guess I forgot. Well, something will turn up.”

  I decided to believe him.

  We didn’t have that lesson I’d imagined, but we did have fun. When I got there, Sophia was on Onyx, and Abby was on Gee Whiz. Abby’s dad was leaning on the fence, watching them jump, tapping his foot, and humming. I stood beside him, and listened to his song, and when he turned to look at me, he did smile. I said, “After my lesson, will you teach me that song?”

  He said, “Sure.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “ ‘Foggy, Foggy Dew.’ ”

  “Did they write it about this place?”

  He laughed. He said, “No, but they could have.”

  “Abby said that you sing sad songs when you are happy.”

  He pushed back his hat, then he said, “Maybe I do, but the sad songs have the most beautiful tunes.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Then we stood quietly and watched Onyx and Gee Whiz do their last courses. Gee Whiz knocked one rail over with his right hind foot; Onyx was clean. But I saw that Gee Whiz learned his lesson, because when he came back and did the jump again, he kicked out both hind feet, like he was saying, “I will never touch it again.”

  I said, “He’s smart.”

  Abby’s dad said, “Seems like it.”

  I went into the barn to find Tater. Rodney helped me this time, and when we were all tacked up, I went into the arena with Abby and Sophia. Now that I was sitting on Tater, I realized the jumps were really high—as high as Tater is, which is fourteen hands, which is 4'8". I was pretty amazed that Gee Whiz was jumping so high, even though Onyx does all the time. Abby seemed excited and calm at the same time—she was smiling a huge smile but riding along quietly, petting Gee Whiz a little on his neck. When she and Gee Whiz walked past me, he was on a loose rein with his head down, taking long, relaxed strides like he had never seen a racetrack in his life. I said, “Don’t make me jump these jumps, please.”

  Abby said, “When you’re ready, you’ll like it.” And I believed her, because she always tells the truth.

  Now Sophia came back into the ring, this time on Pie in the Sky, who is a very flashy chestnut with four white stockings and a blaze. He looks as big as Gee Whiz, though I don’t think he is, and as Abby left the arena on Gee Whiz, the horses passed each other and both of them flicked their ears backward, as if to say, “Watch out for me, buster!” I said to Tater, “What they don’t know is that you are the best one,” and I meant it. We ambled, sauntered, and moseyed around all of the jumps, and then we went up into a nice trot. Tater gave a few sighs, which meant he was comfortable, and as I trotted past Sophia, she said, “Is that pony always always good?”

  I said, “Yes.”

  “Don’t let him spoil you.”

  I said, “I’ll try not to.”

  She was smiling, so I suppose she was joking, but Sophia isn’t very good at making jokes. Tater and I kept walking and I was talking to us about something, maybe Dad’s new job and how there should be a two-person car called the Ford Tatermobile. I could just imagine it—a sweet little bubble buzzing down the road, mine would be yellow….

  Sophia circled around me and said, “Can I give you some advice?”

  Why not? Sophia wins more blue ribbons than anyone. I said, “Please do.” I thought it would be heels down, thumbs up, sit deep, stay with the motion, watch where you want to go. Even as I was wondering what her advice would be, I was doing these things. She said, “Don’t do the same thing over and over.” She circled me again.

  I said, “I thought that was how you got good at something.”

  She said, “Nope, that’s how you get bored with it.” Then she smiled again and rose into the biggest, l
ightest canter maybe I’ve ever seen, and flew off around the arena. Pie in the Sky’s white legs were flashing in the sunshine. I petted Tater and ran my hand through his mane. I said, “Maybe that goes for you, too, Tater boy.” And then, while I was watching her, Sophia looped Pie in the Sky to the right and jumped over the rolltop straight out of the arena and galloped down into the forest. I could hear the colonel bark, “Sophia!” and then he marched into the barn as if he had had just about enough, as my grandma would say. Abby stopped to watch from the gate, where she was coming in for my lesson. She said, “You won’t believe what she wants to do with that horse.”

  I said, “What?”

  “Take him foxhunting. There’s a hunt club up north somewhere. The colonel is—”

  “Fit to be tied,” I interrupted.

  She stared at me for a moment, then laughed. She said, “Yes. Exactly.”

  “She could take Onyx.”

  “That would be too easy for Sophia.”

  “Is foxhunting scary?”

  “I’ve never done it, so I don’t really know.”

  “Has Tater done it?”

  “Maybe. He’s done a lot of things.”

  Then, while I was having my lesson and sitting deep and following instructions, I also couldn’t help half thinking about what I could do—go on the trail, yes, down to the cove, and along the ocean, and then around and around in an ever-widening circle, looking at everything as I went by it, trotting here, cantering there, walking slowly down a street, and Tater would be turning his head and flicking his ears, but because he is Tater and has already been a lot of places, he would behave himself. It was a nice thought, and every time we followed one of Abby’s instructions, it made me feel like if I just did this thing she was telling me to do, I had something to look forward to, and then when I did do that thing, it turned out I had had something to look forward to, because that thing she had told me to do was fun, even if it was only coming down to a nice square halt. The reason it was fun was that I could feel Tater right there with me, so smooth and willing, graceful and easygoing. And as I was feeling this, I realized that Tater maybe didn’t have much to say, but yes, he was communicating with me, and he was letting me communicate with him.

  I did my turns and my transitions and my halts. Abby put the jumps down to 2'6", and we did three different courses—one more or less a figure eight, one more or less two times around the arena with a loop over the coop in the middle, and one more or less a set of four loops. They weren’t perfect—or rather, the first one and the last one weren’t perfect, though the middle one was, and I said so and Abby agreed with me—but it was like I knew every step Tater was going to make half a moment before he made it, and somehow that was better than being perfect all the time. I wouldn’t have minded if the lesson had gone on all day, but I did feel that Tater was getting tired, so after the third course, I brought him down to the walk, and Abby said, “Do you want to try it again?”

  And I said, “Doesn’t he have to do another lesson?”

  “Yes, after lunch, but he’s in good condition, so I don’t think—”

  “No. He’s done fine. I don’t want to wear him out.”

  Abby said, like she wasn’t even thinking, “Well, you’re the boss.”

  I said, “Not all the time. But you can say so whenever you like.”

  We wandered around the arena on a loose rein, and this is the exercise I tried—just looking right or left and shifting my weight in that direction, and sure enough, Tater turned wherever I was looking. After my lesson, I gave him the apple and wished I had about ten of them.

  When I came out of the barn, Abby’s dad was sitting on the mounting block. He started singing the song, and I listened, but it didn’t make any sense to me. I understood the words, or most of the words—“When I was a bachelor, I lived all alone. I worked at the weaver’s trade.” But then it went on about the girl he marries, and how he keeps her “from the foggy, foggy dew.” And then they get married, and then she hides from the foggy, foggy dew, and then it must be that she dies, and then his son reminds him of her, and “of the many, many times that I held her in my arms, just to keep her from the foggy, foggy dew.”

  I said, “What is the foggy, foggy dew?”

  Abby’s dad said, “I have no idea.”

  “And you sing it anyway?”

  And he sang it again. I closed my eyes and listened as carefully as I could, even hummed along a little bit, and when we stopped, I sang about half of it. It took me two tries to learn it, and when I was singing it, with my eyes closed, here came Abby’s dad, very softly, on the last verse, harmonizing: “He reminds me of the wintertime, part of the summer, too….” When we got to the end, my eyes popped open, and he was smiling. He said, “You don’t have to understand something for it to be beautiful. Sometimes the most beautiful things are things that you don’t understand.”

  I said, “Who taught you to sing?”

  “Everyone in my family.”

  And then we sang the song again, because you have to practice, and afterward, I said, “That sounded really good. We did a good job.” He patted me on the shoulder, and Abby and Dad came up to us. They didn’t clap, but they were smiling, and I think that was better than clapping.

  We said good-bye. On the way home, I said to Dad, “Can you teach me to sing?”

  “I doubt it. I have a voice like a squawking parrot. Your mom wouldn’t even let me sing you a lullaby when you were a baby. Haven’t you noticed I don’t sing with the radio when we’re driving?”

  And I hadn’t noticed, but now I realized it was true. I said, “That’s too bad.”

  “Well, I love music, though. I’ll get out my trumpet and play a few things, and you can decide if you can stand it or not.”

  And that’s what we did after lunch—Dad got out his trumpet and played three songs, and I could stand it, but I’m not sure about the neighbors, because the trumpet is very loud.

  The next day, Sunday, was very pleasant—warm and bright—and Dad decided it was a perfect day to take Joan Ariel for her first butterfly walk. One interesting thing about our town is that every year a certain kind of butterfly migrates here from Canada and stays for the winter. Grandpa says that the butterflies, which are called monarchs and are very big—orange and black and beautiful—come here for the pines and the eucalyptuses. They cluster in big groups. Once a year, we walk through the trees and look at them. We do projects about them in school, too. Our town is famous for them, and it is interesting that just as the people don’t mind the butterflies, the butterflies don’t mind the people.

  Dad was walking along next to Mom, who was pushing the carriage. Dad had Joan Ariel on his shoulder, and I was walking behind them. When Joan Ariel would look at me, I would make a face until she laughed, and then I would be quiet so that she could look around and maybe see the butterflies. I was thinking about all the things I’d learned the day before, just turning them over in my mind, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t eavesdrop, and what I heard was Mom saying, “I am so going to miss this.”

  Dad said, “Why are you going to miss it? We can come here anytime we want to.”

  “It isn’t the same.”

  So now it was time to interrupt. I jumped around in front of them and stood there. Mom stopped, Dad stopped. I said, “What isn’t the same?”

  Mom knew exactly what I was talking about, but she didn’t say anything. Some people who were also walking stepped around us. They must have been from out of town, because they smiled and said, “Lovely place!”

  After that, Dad said, “You didn’t tell her?”

  I said, “Do you mean me?”

  Mom nodded.

  “Well, tell me.”

  Mom said, “Why don’t we wait till we get home?”

  I said, “Why don’t we not wait? I thought everything was s
ettled, and there was going to be a happy ending.”

  Dad said, “That’s only in books.”

  “What’s the sad ending, then?”

  Mom walked away from the path, pushing the carriage. I watched her. Dad switched Joan Ariel to his other shoulder, and then she burped a tiny little burp. Dad said, “Okay. Well, you can decide whether it’s a sad ending or not.”

  “What is it?”

  “We sold our house because we need the money, and we’re going to move right before Christmas.”

  “Our house? Aunt Johanna’s house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are we moving to Pittsburgh after all?”

  “No! Forget about Pittsburgh!”

  And so I shut up, because even I know that I have to shut up once in a while and make my best effort to be patient. So we kept walking among the butterflies, and pretty soon, Mom came back with the carriage, and when she got back, she kissed Joan Ariel first and me second, and by that time, Joan Ariel had fallen asleep, so Dad laid her in the carriage and we walked home, not down the big street and past the stores, but the long way around. Because it was a nice day—no fog and no wind, maybe one of the last really nice days of the year—lots of people were out walking, and of course lots of them knew Mom and Dad, so they said hi and stopped and chatted, and it took us a long time to get home. I wondered who was going to give me the bad news. Mom busied herself with Joan Ariel; Dad mowed our tiny little lawn and then took a shower; and here came Grandma with her casserole pot in her hands. She took it inside and put it in the oven, then went out and sat down in one of the chairs on the front porch, patted the chair next to hers, and said, “Ellen. Come sit beside me for a moment.”

  I did. And I said nothing. I was listening to myself, and I know that I was not talking.

  “Well, it’s a little sad, but it’s for the best, after all.”

  Silence.

  “Your grandpa’s all for it.”

  Silence.

  “We don’t want to make too big a deal out of it.”

  Silence.