Leave Well Enough Alone (9 page)

“Always have to be a know-it-all,” Lisa broke in.

Dorothy closed her eyes. Maybe I’ll just quit before I’m fired, she thought.

“Dorothy!” called Mrs. Hoade from the stairwell. “Doro
thy
!”

Dorothy got up and went to the head of the stairs. One more thing, she decided, if I’ve done one more thing wrong I’m just going to up and leave and go home to Maureen. “Yes, Mrs. Hoade?”

“Dorothy, do you know how to get an apple pie out of its pan once it’s finished baking? Is it supposed to come out of the pan or stay in? Dinna’s gone home.” Mrs. Hoade sighed. “Would you please come help me take these dreadful pies out of these awful pans?”

“N
O, I DON’T WANT TO!
” Jenny clung to the fence rail. Dorothy held Texas’s reins and watched Baldy carefully. How was Baldy the genius going to accomplish this?

“Jenny,” said Baldy seriously, “you promised last week and the week before that you’d just sit in the saddle for one second. Now last week I let you get away with it. This week you have to do it. I promise. One second. No more.”

“No.”

“Trust me.”

“Everyone says one second. What they mean is one hour.”

“You know what?”

“What?” asked Jenny, her eyes beginning to brim with tears.

“This is a loaded water pistol, right?”

“Yeah?” asked Jenny guardedly.

“Okay. Now. If I put you in that saddle for more than one second, maybe two, ʼcause you’re heavy to lift, you can let me have it full in the face.”

“You mean squirt you?”

“Is it a deal?”

“Okay.”

Baldy lifted Jenny gently off the fence rail. “I’m counting!” Jenny shrieked.

“One and two and three!” said Baldy, and she placed Jenny exactly back where she’d been sitting after a second’s pause in Texas’s unmoving saddle. “Now. You know what you can do?”

“What?” asked Jenny looking at the pistol, which she hadn’t been able to use.

“You can squirt me anyway! I’m hot as blazes!” Baldy lay back on the soft earth and opened her mouth. Jenny giggled. She pulled the trigger. Baldy screamed.

God! thought Dorothy. I could never do that. It just isn’t in me to clown with kids. Jenny laughed, a nice solid child’s laugh at an unexpected delight. Dorothy had never heard such a carefree sound from Jenny before. The stream of water poured directly into Baldy’s open mouth, splashing her face a bit as she writhed on the ground. Pride, Dorothy reminded herself. I’ve always been told I’m so full of pride, and it’s true. Too proud to really play with lads. Too proud... Oh had Maureen laid it on with a trowel last night! “Mom says I’m supposed to call and check on you,” she announced and then tried to pack the allotted three minutes with questions about Dorothy’s time off and whether Dorothy could arrange to come home for a weekend. Somehow Maureen had wangled the truth out of her sister. “What do you mean she gives you a day off a week? What are you doing with it in the middle of nowhere?
Riding?
Riding horses? Two whole afternoons?”

Dorothy didn’t want to think about the conversation. She let Texas’s bridle go, as Baldy had hold of it now. Jenny had agreed to go around the back ring once, provided she was out of sight of Dorothy and Lisa. Dorothy got into Charley’s saddle. Charley was “her” bay gelding. She followed Lisa around the track in a slow trot. “Heels down,” she told Lisa. She’d learned a lot from Baldy in two short weeks.

Maureen had gone on to say, “You are first of all crazy. Second of all selfish and third of all proud!”

“Maureen,” Dorothy had replied, trying to put some understanding in her voice. “Maureen, please!”

“You’re crazy because you could fall off one of those animals and get killed or get paralyzed from the neck down and be in a wheelchair for the rest of your life. You’re selfish, because you could save up your days and give me a little help. And you’re proud, because all these rich people have turned your head. You’ll never be able to ride back home so what’s the good of learning how?”

“It’s just fun,” Dorothy had explained.

“Are you doing your summer reading? How many books have you finished?”

Dorothy had explained that her evenings had mostly been spent helping Mrs. Hoade organize her cookbook. Maureen had observed that this too was crazy. “Too proud to do a little cooking at home but not too proud to get her name into a book, isn’t that right?” Yes, that was right, but Dorothy hadn’t admitted it to Maureen. “And what about Mass? Are you going to confession and Mass?” Maureen wanted to know.

“Maureen,” Dorothy had answered, “three minutes are up.”

“I’m expecting you Labor Day weekend. Arthur and I are making plans.”

“I’ll have to see how long Mrs. Hoade wants me to stay. I’ll try.”

“Labor Day weekend, Dorothy.”

“Three minutes, Maureen!”

Dorothy posted up and down in Charley’s saddle. She loved the sound of so many squeaking leather parts. “Dorothy?” Lisa asked.

“Yes?”

“Can I squirt you with a water pistol if you get too hot?”

“No,” said Dorothy quickly.

Later that afternoon, when she and Baldy were exploring the countryside, on Charley and on Baldy’s horse, Gabriel, Dorothy admitted she felt miserable about the girls. That they disliked her and with reason. “I wish I had your humility and...and well, sense of humor,” she said lamely. Baldy thought that was extremely funny because humility and sense of humor had gotten her no place at all.

Baldy was eighteen or maybe nineteen, Dorothy wasn’t sure. She attended a junior college somewhere in New England, where, Baldy admitted, they didn’t make her do much studying. She was majoring in riding—Equestrian Studies it was called. She had Gabriel stabled there all the school year. She’d been giving riding lessons ever since she could remember, she’d told Dorothy. Not because she needed money but because she loved being with lads. All kids, any kids. Even Jenny and Lisa. Her one ambition was to ride for the U.S. Olympic team. She’d already taken two firsts in the McClay medal class at the Madison Square Garden Horse Show. She would send Dorothy a ticket for next year’s show, she said, and her parents would take them all out for dinner at Lüchow’s afterward, where they always went after the National Horse Show.

Baldy’s secret, Dorothy discovered very quickly, was that she could barely read at all. She could get through the instructions on a bottle of liniment all right, she could manage the comics and horse magazines, but books were impossible for her. Although the college she attended was quite lenient, all the more so because her father was a trustee, she was still expected to be somewhat educated. That was where Baldy needed Dorothy.

Mrs. Hoade didn’t mind at all when Baldy came over to sit by the pool, a book tucked meekly under her arm. Baldy and even the girls listened while Dorothy explained all the big words and fancy ideas in
Adventures in English Literature.
Neither did Mrs. Hoade mind Dorothy taking her weekly day off in halves. The girls during these afternoons were allowed to watch soap operas while their mother was down in the kitchen with Dinna.

“What I want to know, Baldy,” Dorothy asked as they urged their horses to trot over a soft pine-needle-covered trail, “is whether you had that water pistol in mind before the lesson today?”

Baldy shooed a fly away from Gabriel’s ears with her switch. “I keep it around the barn,” she said with a smile. “It always works. I keep one at my parents’ stable in Greenwich and up at school, ʼcause I give lessons to faculty kids there. Jenny’s not the first kid who’s been afraid to get into a saddle.”

“Somehow I just couldn’t let anybody squirt me in the face. Especially a nasty little brat,” said Dorothy sadly.

“They can’t help it. It’s always the parents’ fault.”

“I know. I can’t stand their father. Mrs. Hoade is nice but she’s got a lot on her mind. She’s writing a book and she’s worried about her baby. She goes down there evenings and lets me organize all her notes. You should see her notes.”

“I couldn’t organize notes for all the tea in China,” said Baldy. “What’s the matter with the baby?”

“Mongoloid.”

“Oh.”

“Drives him crazy. I think it also drives him crazy that he didn’t have a son. You know these men from families that go back to the Mayflower? They always have to have juniors and George Finky Uppersnouts the Fourth... Dorothy stopped herself. Baldy was shaking her finger in good humor.

“Isn’t that true of every man? Rich or poor?” she asked.

“I guess so. But they always have a fight when he goes down to the cottage on weekends when he’s home. Afterward they always have a fight. They turn up the record player very loud so the kids and I don’t hear.”

“I like George Finky Uppersnout the Fourth,” said Baldy. “I have a cousin whose name is John Adams Baldinger Mellon the Third.” She paused. “You know, I once taught a little boy, a retarded little boy everyone thought was useless, to ride. If you have a little patience with the girls they’ll come around. They’re already less obnoxious than they were.”

“Thanks to you,” said Dorothy. She wished she could find a way to tell Baldy just how much the summer had improved since their riding lessons had begun. The sessions “cracking books,” as Dorothy put it, were pleasant and flattering as well. She had assured Baldy that she had only a freshman-in-high-school education, but Baldy had pronounced it to be better than anyone’s at Butler Junior College. She loved to listen to Dorothy read “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” or “Miniver Cheevy.” Even the girls now asked Dorothy to read them
Just So Stories
before bedtime. Baldy said she had hope now of passing her next term, a requirement her father had laid down if she was to continue stabling Gabriel at school. All Dorothy had to do was read Sister Elizabeth’s favorite poetry in Sister Elizabeth’s favorite dramatic voices and explain to Baldy Sister Elizabeth’s opinions of what was good and what was bad. She did not mention Sister Elizabeth, however, and Baldy thought Dorothy was a genius.

Horses were Baldy’s favorite topic of discussion. She said Dorothy was a “natural horsewoman” and she flooded her ears with the facts of horse shows, training, births, deaths, and ailments.

They came to a clearing in the woods and stopped for a moment to look over the farms in the valley.

“Closest thing I’ve ever seen to English downs,” Baldy said, patting Gabriel’s sweating neck.

“Yes,” said Dorothy, having no idea what an English down looked like.

“Too bad about that tractor. What a racket it makes. They should plow with horses,” Baldy said, pointing to a distant yellow tractor.

Again Dorothy agreed. She did not mention to Baldy that farmers had to use tractors to make their farms efficient. Certainly anyone who’d had a basic American history course knew that. Most farmers had to struggle to keep alive.

“If horses ruled the world, instead of people,” Baldy insisted with sudden vigor, “things would be a whole lot better. We probably wouldn’t have any wars.”

“Probably not,” said Dorothy. There was something in Baldy’s attitude about horses and tractors that had nothing to do with basic history courses. It had more to do with not realizing that people had to work to live. Dorothy felt a small shiver at the base of her spine.

“What’s the matter?” Baldy asked suddenly.

Dorothy inhaled deeply. “Let’s go,” she said looking at the watch Mrs. Hoade had lent her. “We only have an hour. I have to get back by five. Mrs. Hoade’s doing a bread recipe with Dinna. She wants to take my picture punching down the dough.”

“Fine,” said Baldy. “We’re not really far from your place, as a matter of fact. I can drop you off and take Charley back on a lead line.”

“No, I left my sweater at your stable.”

“Okay, we’ll go a new way. There’s a graveyard I wanted to show you just up here, and a covered bridge. Tree-covered, that is.” They began to trot again. “What’s the matter?” Baldy repeated.

“Oh, nothing.”

“Come on.”

“Well, I was thinking about a party the Hoades had last weekend. I got to spend about an hour and a half at it. I was supposed to help Dinna serve, but I couldn’t stand it so I talked to people. You know I told you, Baldy, that my dad was chief of police?”

“Yes?”

“Well, he isn’t. He’s just a...a cop with a beat. Do you know I come from a really poor family compared to you or the Hoades? All that stuff I told you about my family having a big old castle on the Irish sea is a lie. My grandfather was never a nobleman put to death by the English. My mother is not related to James Joyce and we don’t live in Hyde Park, New York. We live in Newburgh. In case you haven’t heard of it, it’s a crummy little town on the Hudson River.”

Baldy pulled Gabriel up short next to Dorothy. “Why did you tell me that...all that then?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” said Dorothy. She nudged Charley on and didn’t look at Baldy. “I guess I just wanted to tell you it was all a pack of lies. I wish it were true, but none of it is.” She ducked as a leafy branch nearly hit her in the face.

“Up here,” said Baldy. “Go to your right.”

Clear, limpid water, hardly stirring, formed a pool under a wooden bridge. Ancient weeping willows dangled their lower branches into it, the leaves mirrored perfectly in the late afternoon light. Other branches woven and twined around each other made an arch at the end of the bridge. Both girls had to lay their heads on their horses’ necks, not to get swiped by it. “This always reminds me of
Black Beauty
, crossing this bridge,” said Baldy. “It’s probably the only book I ever finished.”

“Oh, come on, Baldy,” said Dorothy, feeling a little cheered again.

“Maybe
King of the Wind
and a Nancy Drew or two,” Baldy amended. “Anyway, Black Beauty wouldn’t cross a bridge because he knew it had rotten wood in it. Horses know all kinds of things,” she added mysteriously. “Horses have powers unknown to man. That’s why I like them so much better than people. There’s the graveyard I told you about. I’ve never had the nerve to stop. Shall we look?”

“Sure,” Dorothy agreed. “It’s a funny place for a graveyard and it’s so tiny!”

“It’s a private one, a family one. There’s lots in this part of the country.” Baldy dismounted. “Let’s see what the names are.”