Growing Girls (26 page)

Alex came up to the round pen, saw me and Skippy. “You two look good together,” he said.

“Yeah, we do,” I said.

It didn’t take a lot more than that to convince me to climb on Skippy and see what would happen. I borrowed some of Sasha’s courage and Anna’s confidence. How strange to find this benefit of motherhood occurring so early. It was like having your kid turn into a lawyer or a doctor or a representative in pharmaceutical sales; you’re the mom so you get free stuff.

“Okay, Skip,” I said. “We’re gonna do this. And this time no more Mrs. Nice Guy.”

I climbed with some difficulty aboard. God, I’m old and creaky. God, my girls are young and supple. Skippy stood there, firm and solid, as I threw my leg over his back and then sat on him. Well, then. I had forgotten what his head looked like from this vantage point, his long ears like weeds in the breeze. “Good boy, Skip,” I said, even though I was thinking,
Good job, Mom
. Then I squeezed my legs together and Skippy did it: he walked forward. I pulled back on the reins and Skippy stopped. Well, then!

“I swear he didn’t do this six years ago when I tried!” I said to my little audience. “I
swear
! He’s a changed mule!”

“Golf cart,” Cindy said.

“Hey, girls!” I said. “Hey, look at me! How about me?” I thought Anna and Sasha would be thrilled to see their mom riding, but they were annoyingly more interested in their own achievements.

Alex was watching me. He was applauding, bless his heart. He knew how big a deal this was. And seeing Anna and Sasha going around with me. His whole family up there, having a happy horse life. I steered Skippy up to him, pulled back on the reins and stopped.

Alex stood there, all short and horseless. “You, my man,” I said. “You need to get yourself a horse.”

Alex didn’t want a racehorse, of course. No beginner wants to try to tackle a hot-blooded beast with an innate urge to run a million miles an hour around a track. But this was the horse we went to see after reading that online ad. And this is what we’re towing home. À Votre Santé. “Vortray.” Alex fell in love with him all on his own, really, with absolutely no help from me, but with the seal of approval from Cindy, who had agreed to come with us to look, and who had agreed to lend us her trailer, and who had said she herself wasn’t going to get another horse, no way, there was no way in hell, she already had eight horses—eight horses!—and she didn’t even have a house to live in yet, just a trailer, she really needed to go about building a house, and a life with Bob, and not spend her money or her energy or her commitment on another damn horse.

But the trailer she was lending us was a two-horse trailer. That was a fact.

Brego was huge, a mass of muscle and kindness. Cindy was in love with him, tearing herself away. The barn we had traveled to was somewhere deep in godforsaken West Virginia, a mysterious place of fog and temptation.

There were dozens of horses in the barn for sale, all of them rescued animals, and the longer we stayed and shopped, the more the prices kept dropping. The barn was overcrowded and fall was coming; soon the owners would have trouble affording feed.

I watched Alex whisper what appeared to be sweet nothings into Vortray’s ears. Tall and beefy and dopey, the horse wore a
look that exactly said, “I
so
don’t want to be a racehorse.” Perhaps Alex was talking to him as he would his patients on the couch:
“There, there. It’s okay. You shouldn’t have to pretend to be someone you’re not.”

Poor Vortray. According to his papers, his dad, Jenna’s Beach Boy, had run the fastest one-mile trot of any horse, ever. And here he was the son, only four years old, and already a failure. A disgrace to the family line. Stuck in some godforsaken barn in godforsaken West Virginia, up for sale and the price dropping fast.

It was easy to romanticize the situation. Alex knew Vortray’s story all too well: disgrace, failure, shame. Alex had disappointed his own dad, a mathematician famous in math circles. Alex was supposed to follow suit. Alex had little aptitude, even less interest in math. He chose to study religion, which his dad thought hogwash, and psychology, which his dad thought even worse. Alex came into adulthood knowing without a doubt that his dad thought him pathetic.

“I get you.”
That’s what I imagined Alex saying to that big horse.
“I completely get you.”
They looked good together. Vortray’s nose was big and curved, like that of a Jewish man aging gracefully. Alex was a Jewish man aging gracefully. Vortray had big lumbering shoulders and soft eyes and the disposition of a man who didn’t take himself too seriously. Alex was a man who didn’t take himself too seriously.

When Alex finally climbed onto Vortray’s back, and rode him calmly around the ring, I told him, I said, “You look good together.”

“Go, Daddy!” Anna said.

“Dat!” Sasha screamed. “Can I try next?”

Cindy said we should take him. Cindy said let’s get out of here. Cindy was tapping her foot.

Alex took out his checkbook. The owners had already offered to sell Vortray for nearly half of their asking price. Then they told Cindy they would throw in Brego for free.

“Free,” Cindy said.

“He needs a good home and we think you’re it,” the woman said.

“Free,” Cindy said. “You’re offering to
just give
me this beautiful horse.”

The woman shrugged.

“Bob,” she said then.
“Bob!”

“We can’t do it,” he said. “You know we can’t.”

She looked at Alex. Alex is a sucker for doe eyes. He had long since learned how to become blind to mine. But Cindy’s, well, these were all new.

“We’ll take Brego and keep him at our place,” Alex said to me. “And Cindy can ride him when she comes over. What do you think?”

“Of course,” I said.
Of course?
Two more horses—and gigantic ones, at that.
Of course?

“Two horses!” Anna shouted. “I knew it! I knew we were going to get two horses!” She exploded into cartwheels. She needed a pen. And some paper. She needed to know how to spell “Vortray” and “Brego.”

Now, I’ve heard about this horse phenomenon. I’ve heard it from Cindy and how she became a woman with eight horses and no house. Our farrier has fifteen horses and no time. Our
vet has ten horses and no more room. Something happens to horse people. A gorging. An inability to say no. A welcoming spirit that has you imagining yourself throwing your arms around all the world’s horses:
Come, my children, come
. I don’t know exactly. But it was happening to us.

We walked Vortray and Brego to the trailer. My God, they were big. They were just… so damn big.

“You don’t think they’re too big?” I said to Alex.

“Well, they are … big,” he said. We seemed to have trouble saying much else. We were in some sort of trance?

Poor Skippy, I thought. Oh, my poor little mule. Back home he was in charge of the herd, the master of all things, the one who decided who should have the most to eat (him) and the most to drink (him) and the coolest spot in the shade for snoozing (him). These two big galoots were sure to change the happy little society that was our farm.

“‘God is a comedian,’” Alex is saying, quoting Voltaire. “‘God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.’” The Voltaire kick is on account of the fact that he doesn’t like the name Vortray, so maybe he should rename his horse Voltaire. He has decided that this is too pretentious, but he has not stopped quoting Voltaire.

We are sick of Voltaire. We are sick of each other. I can’t move. It has taken us four hours to get here, to the intersection of Wilson Road and our driveway. The horses have grown. In my mind they turned first into giraffes and then elephants and soon enough into woolly mammoths.

I can’t believe we’re doing this. I can’t believe no one is saying, “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

I can’t move. Anna is snoring. Sasha’s head is so hot. My left leg is numb from some pinched nerve and this entire extended cab smells like salami due to the fact that Sasha did not, apparently, eat her sandwich but rather rolled it up and stuffed it in the cup holder just out of my reach.

“Well, we made it,” Alex says as we pull into the driveway, inch down the hill. He’s all cheerful. He’s all high on horse acquisition. He’s wondering what the heck is going on as the truck sputters, chugs, sputters, stops dead. Right in the middle of the driveway. We are about one hundred yards from the house, and we are out of gas.

God is a comedian.

“This, I cannot deal with,” Alex says, throwing the door open. “I’m leaving the truck here until morning.”

“Please, let us out,” Cindy says.

Alex and Cindy and Bob hop out and leave me trapped back here with the snoozing lumps. I hear the clunking and “hep! hepping!” of horses being unloaded from the trailer and the horses finally emerge, remarkably calm, both of them seeming to have survived this trip better than any of us.
Big. Oh, my God. Big horses
. Will they even fit? Will they trample the trees and will their feet put giant cracks in the earth causing mass flooding?

Cindy and Alex and Bob usher the horses into the back field. Within seconds those monsters charge, disappearing up the hill and into the fog that promises to lift, a curtain to some kind of strange tomorrow.

nothing surprises
me anymore