Riding Shotgun (41 page)

Cig again rubbed her temples. She stopped and was quiet for a bit. “He didn’t give a damn about the rules. That was what made him so sexy, but it’s what made living with him hell I could never be with a man like that again no matter how exciting he was; but as a young woman, well—” She shrugged.

Grace sighed. “I should have known better but…” She trailed off then got a second wind. “I figured I’d get away with it or you’d overlook it. I never meant to hurt you. I wouldn’t hurt you for the world.”

“You did though.” Cig sat up straight. “And you know what, Grace? It doesn’t matter. People are tangled up with one another because of blood, love, money, wars. We can’t unhook ourselves. We’ve got lessons to learn and we learn them on one another. I suppose everybody rips somebody even if they don’t mean to do it. And I suppose my lesson is to let it go.”

Grace pondered this. “You’re talking Christian forgiveness.”

“Call it what you like. If we don’t learn to do it, I think we shrivel up into these little crisps of remembered wrongs,
people hanging on to their tragedies, their angers, because it’s all they have. Or they drink, take drugs, blot it out. I don’t want to live that way. You hurt me. You
know
you hurt me. Nothing much we can do about it now. Done is done.”

Grace stared at her sister. “Cig, you’re a good woman, but I don’t think I would have expected you to—”

“I had to grow up sometime, Grace—and so do you.”

“What
happened
to you in the woods on Saturday?” Grace knew Cig as well as Cig knew Grace.

“If I told you, you’d never believe me. You’d have me committed.”

“Try me.”

She dragged deeply on her cigarette. She wanted to unburden herself but she was afraid. She finally decided that given what she and her sister had been through, if she couldn’t talk to her she couldn’t talk to anybody. “Got lost in the fog. I mean, I didn’t know my butt from a banana. Fattail stayed right in front of me.”

“That devil,” Grace said, interrupting.

“He’s a familiar to Pan, I swear it. Every now and then something would loom out of the fog. Like a party at Paynie Tyler’s house.”

“Down in Tidewater?” Grace’s eyes widened.

“Except the cars were from the 1920s. And then I passed a Confederate sentry and, well, it sounds stark raving mad, but I rode back in time. All the way back to 1699. I canst tell you anything other than that, and that I believe I really was there. So put me away.” She threw up her hands.

Grace’s eyebrows knitted together. “That’s not looney enough to warrant incarceration. Odd, yes, but not completely nuts. Movie stars write books about past lives and grow even richer.”

“They’re
supposed
to be nuts.” Cig paused. “I learned a lot.”

“Obviously. It doesn’t matter if you were really there or not, does it? What matters is that something happened inside, something good.”

“That’s the truth.” Cig reached for her sister’s impeccably manicured hand. “Cut the crap. Leave will… or make it
work. You’re traveling in circles, and time runs out faster than we can ever realize. Do the decent thing and set him free if you aren’t going to love him. He can’t be happy, not really.”

“He doesn’t even notice.” Grace airily dismissed that thought.

“He does, too. Men aren’t as stupid as women like to think. They just go about these problems differently.”

“They retreat into work. They get ever so logical and controlling.”

“So?” Cig arched an eyebrow. “He’s not happy. You’re not happy. You don’t talk to one another.”

“Can’t.”

“Won’t.”

“He’s a block of wood.”

“That’s how he protects himself, and he learned it before he married you. If you can’t talk to him or he won’t talk to you then release him. You are never going to be happy living as you’re living. Taking that risk with Blackie ought to have told you that. So either work it out with will or set him free.”

“I’m scared.” Grace started to cry.

“Oh hell, Grace, what do you have to lose?”

Her head jerked up. “My house. My car. My social standing. I put in good time for that shit.”

“That’s what it is. Shit. You sold yourself cheap.”

“I don’t know if I’ve got the guts.”

“You do.”

“Men get vengeful when a woman leaves. If I could get him to leave I’d get a better deal. I could put a detective on him. Maybe he’s fooling around.” Grace was suddenly hopeful.

“Just go. Don’t do that. We’re talking about the inside of your life and you’re hanging on to the outside. The outside isn’t making you happy.”

Grace wiped her eyes. “I’m a superficial slut, you know.” She half-laughed. “Hell, I’ll have to give up my membership at the country club.”

“No, you won’t. That’ll be a negotiating point in the divorce.
Grace, stop stalling. You know what I’m talking about.”

“You want to know something really bizarre?” Grace’s eyes filled again. “And it’s ironic that you would mention Frances. I think I loved her, Cig. She couldn’t give me social standing. She couldn’t solve my problems and say, ‘Honey, don’t you worry about a thing.’ You know, like men do. She could only give me herself. It frightened me so bad, I mean, just think about it.”

“Doesn’t frighten me.”

“It’s not the lesbian part of it.” Grace raised her voice. “It’s being with someone and not making a deal. Life with men is a deal.”

“It doesn’t have to be. That’s how we were raised but it doesn’t have to be that way. You know—I’ll cook, honey, and you take out the garbage. We’re raised to look at men as cash cows, beasts of burden.”

“Yeah, I guess we are.”

“Frances could only be what she was, a person in love with you. At least, I guess she was in love with you.”

“Yeah. But her fear of being found out would have shot that relationship down in flames eventually. And I don’t think Mother would have thrown me a bouquet either. So I was scared, too. God, I’ve been
stupid.”
Grace got up and grabbed the Kleenex box off the shelf over the desk and rejoined Cig. “I really did sell myself short.”

“We both did. I didn’t think I had a right to happiness. Oh, I did when I first got married, but then when things went wrong I figured I was being punished for something. I deserved pain. It would make me a better person. I don’t think it did. It shut me down is what it did.”

“We both shut down, didn’t we?” Grace blew her nose. “I was the party girl, you were the virtuous wife, but neither one of us was true.” She stopped herself and blurted out, “You know, Cig, sex is like a drug, just like cocaine and bourbon.”

“I’ll have to try it sometime,” Cig dryly replied.

“It’s not worth it. I would give anything to feel love and lust instead of lust and a vague pull of attraction.”

“You did for Blackie.”

“Up to a point, but I saw what he did to you. I knew his pattern. I wasn’t going to really let myself go. Kinda like a canter instead of a flat-out go-for-broke run. I want that feeling I have when we’re on a scorching scent and I drop the reins on Kodiak. Oh, fly like the wind.” Her eyes shone. “I feel so alive. I want to feel that with another human being.”

“You have to give up the golden calf first.”

Grace, like a drunk suddenly sober, folded her hands together. “I know. Now that it’s out in the open I can’t hide it anymore.”

“Well, I can’t either.”

Wistfully Grace asked, “Do you think there’s someone out there, someone
real?
”

“Yes—you. You’re the real person. Once you get square with yourself you’ll find someone else who’s solid.”

“If will throws me out can I stay here?”

“Of course, you can.”

“That is, if Harleyetta doesn’t take the spare bedroom first.” Grace grinned.

“She’ll wind up with one of her AA buddies. And that’s probably a good idea, too. Just think, you only have to deal with divorce, she’s got to deal with divorce and alcoholism.”

“I never thought of that.” Grace paused. “But I’ve been so self-centered I haven’t thought about what other people are going through. I kinda hate myself.”

“Don’t.”

They sat, looking out the window together as the kids came back with the boarders from the trail ride.

“Cig, do you really believe you rode back in time?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“What was it like?”

“That’s a long story for a winter’s night, but I’ll tell you one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I think for the most part they were better people than we are. There was a lot of love in those long-ago hearts.”

As Cig accompanied Grace back down to the stable, she noticed Harleyetta’s black Saab turbo pulling into the driveway. After parking next to Roberta’s car, Harleyetta got out and walked into the barn. Cig flinched. She was in no mood to deal with Harley’s marital problems. Glacial fatigue was setting in after all that drama with Grace.

Laura called from the center aisle, “Aunt Grace, Kodiak just threw a shoe. You better come have a look.”

Harleyetta, bent over Kodiak’s left hind hoof, grunted when Grace and Cig arrived. She put the hoof down.

“Hi,” Grace said.

“Hi.” A cool tone crept into Harleyetta’s voice. “How you doing, Cig?” She warmed.

“Worn out but okay.”

Grace bent over, picked up the hoof. “Hey,” she admonished Kodiak, who thought it would be sweet revenge to lean on his mistress. He twisted his big head, looked her up and down then looked away.

“He’s got your number, Aunt Grace.” Laura giggled.

“My number is I pay his grocery bill. Isn’t that right, you big brute?”

Kodiak sighed, not looking back again. Humans could be so very rude sometimes.

“It’s not too bad, but a little hoof wall did come off.” Laura handed Grace the shoe, twisted like an iron pretzel

“How could he do this to me, right before the hunter pace?”

“Sheer meanness.” Cig leaned against the wall.

Roberta moseyed over. Not that she had much to suggest as Roberta was a novice, not a horsewoman, but she was curious. “Will he be lame?”

“No.” Grace put the hoof down. “I just want to get a shoe on that as soon as possible because I can’t miss any practice time and neither can he,” she said to Laura as Hunter walked into the barn from the other direction. “Call Nick Nichols, do you mind?”

“No.”

“Ask him if he’ll make a special trip. He’s the best, and I don’t want anyone else fooling around with Kodiak.”

“Already did.” Hunter joined them.

“You should have left a note on the board.” Laura pouted.

“Chill out. I just did it. Like two seconds ago before I threw hay out to the field boarders. I was coming in to tell you.”

“Oh.”

“Thank you, Hunter. Will Nick be coming on out?”

“Oh, sure.” Hunter climbed the ladder to the hayloft.

“Don’t throw down hay yet. I want to brush out Go To in his stall. He’ll be a pig.”

Hunter hunkered down, peering over the edge of the hayloft. “Only for you will I alter my schedule, run with military precision. And if you’ll lend me ten dollar.” He emphasized the singular,
dollar
.

Instantly suspicious, Laura growled, “You spent your money already?”

Cig jumped in, too. “Hunter, this better be good.”

“I lost my physics book and had to buy a new one, no kidding.”

“Bullshit, Hunter. You took out Beryl Smith for lunch, I heard about it.” Laura spoiled for a fight. She needed money, too, and she was mad he’d gotten extra from their mother.

“I didn’t take her out. I went over to the No Name Café for one whole minute after school, and she was there. I really did lose my physics book. Go look in the truck. There’s a brand new book. I thought you liked Beryl Smith?”

“Bow-head,” came the tart reply.

Grace held up her hand as if asking a question. “What in the world is a bow-head?”

Hunter slid down the ladder, his heels on the outside.

Laura explained. “A girl, usually blond, who wears bows at the back of her head. Prep you to death. Of course at Christmas they wear red-and-green bows. Just Hunter’s type.”

“Jealous.” Hunter sailed by, picked up a bucket and filled it with water. “I know they’re not yours, you like jockettes.”

“I like girls with brains.”

“That’s quite enough.” Cig glared. She wasn’t ready for lesbian banter.

Harleyetta and Roberta observed this exchange with fascination.

Grace patted Kodiak on the rear, took him out of the crossties, and led him back to his stall.

Harleyetta followed as Roberta returned to Reebok, whose mind was concentrating solely on the fact that it was close to feeding time.

“So who are you doing the hunter pace with?” Harleyetta asked Grace.

“Agnes Clark and Carol Easter.”

“Good team.” Harleyetta sucked on a piece of straw. “Binky and I were going out with Bill Dominquez but now I don’t know if Binky will do it. He’s being a prime grade one asshole. Well, I’ll see if Jack Eicher will ride in it if he can get off work.”

“Guess you heard Binky wrecked your Harley,” Grace bluntly replied.

“I heard. I can’t remember what I ever saw in him. There must have been something good about him. What was it?”