The Last Summer of the Camperdowns (31 page)
If only she’d been listening.
“S
O, ALMOST TIME TO GO BACK TO SCHOOL. WHAT ARE YOUR
plans for the fall?” my mother asked me. “Please don’t say, ‘nothing.’ I don’t think I can stand it if you do.”
“I’m going to keep on working with Mary. I want to start competing in the spring.” I was sitting on the floor in the bathroom, Dorothy’s head in my lap, steam rising from my mother’s lavender-infused nightly bath.
“Well, I don’t know how you expect to make gains when you keep canceling your training sessions with Gin.” She extended her long neck and, resting her head just above the waterline, she lay back in the old claw-foot porcelain tub, the damp ends of her hair curling in the heat.
I rolled my eyes. “Mother, please. I’m going to go back. I’ve been concentrating on . . .”
“Harry Devlin,” she supplied.
“No. Cross-country. I’ll work on my dressage in the fall and winter.”
“Whatever you say, darling.” She closed her eyes and swished through the water with the tips of her fingers. “Are you looking forward to tomorrow?”
“I guess. It’ll be good to see the yearlings.”
“Uh-huh,” she agreed. “The horses never disappoint. The guest list, unfortunately, is another matter. Hand me the towel, will you, Riddle?”
I gently lifted Dorothy’s muzzle from my leg and stood up. I paused to consider the loose dog hair clinging to my pajamas before reaching for the large white towel hanging from a hook on the back of the door.
“Thanks,” she said, standing up in the tub, tall and slim and softly curving, skin flushed pink from the heat of the water and the room. I caught myself wishing that she and I had more in common than a surname. She stepped out of the tub and onto the mat, wrapping herself in the towel. Leaning over the sink, I looked into the mirror, but there was no reflection staring back at me. Using my forefinger, I reached out and wrote my name in the steamy fog clouding the glass.
“Let’s hope the weather cooperates,” she said. “There’s supposed to be a big storm brewing.”
“One of those scary ones?”
“Sounds like it. The winds pick up tonight. Tomorrow is going to be a little dicey. They’re calling for gale force winds by Sunday night.”
“Why did you have to tell me that?”
“The weather wasn’t designed with only your preferences in mind, Riddle.”
“Why do you and Camp have to turn everything into a sermon?”
“Just one more quality that I share with Jesus,” she said, patting her face dry with a hand towel. “Oh, by the way, Gin tells me that Harry is coming to the auction tomorrow,” she said with practiced nonchalance, as if she was wondering about the whereabouts of her slippers, instead of delivering news so momentous that at any moment I expected David Brinkley to make an unscheduled appearance in my parents’ en suite.
Silence prevailed as I contemplated the sheer wondrousness of her unexpected announcement. Harry was home? He and his father had gone to Ireland to visit family shortly after the funeral. I continued to stare into the mirror, as each letter of my name drooled down the glass, leaving a watery trail. My mother was staring at me, a knowing expression on her face. By saying nothing, I had said it all.
“He’s interested in one of the yearlings from the Sexsmith stable, or so Gin tells me.” Dropping her towel, she pulled a white cotton nightgown over her head. “Do you have any idea how much money that boy has to play with? Unbelievable.”
“I don’t care. That’s gross.”
“Spare me your uninformed teen ideology.” She stopped mid-insult. “Riddle, you know him. Do you think he gives a damn?”
“About the money?” It was so rare for my mother to recruit my opinion about anything that I was caught off guard, stumbling around in my head, trying to find my balance and respond.
She nodded, waiting for my answer.
“No,” I said. “I don’t think he cares about money at all.”
Groaning, she slipped an arm into the sleeve of her robe. “I suspected as much. Of course, he can afford to be indifferent. There is no God. Wait. I take that back, there is a God. There must be. The universe is just too perverse—there must be an idiosyncratic mind at the helm.”
“All you think about is money,” I complained, not for the first time.
“Well, let me tell you something, darling: money, elite social status and the power they confer are every bit as wonderful as they’re cracked up to be.”
“Is Michael coming home, too?”
“That’s the scuttlebutt,” she said, leaning over the sink, her face inches from the mirror as she began to apply moisturizer to her forehead, her chin, her cheeks.
“That should make you happy.”
“Don’t bait me, Riddle. You don’t know what you’re talking about, for one thing.” She stood up straight and picked up a hairbrush. “The truth is, I’m not that thrilled about his return, especially with the election only a couple of months away.”
“Why? I don’t think he’s thinking about the campaign anymore, or about Camp. Not since they found Charlie.”
“You’re probably right.”
Had I heard correctly? There was something unnerving about hearing my mother make such an agreeable remark. She began to brush her hair with more force than necessary.
“I don’t know. In my experience, neither Michael nor Camp can be counted on to perform according to expectations, and they’re both used to getting their way. They both have a lot to lose—they’re like two countries poised to detonate nuclear weapons against each other.”
“Isn’t that what’s supposed to keep us safe?”
“Ostensibly. In the hands of moderates, yes. When it comes right down to it, Camp and Michael would think nothing of blowing up the whole world in support of their points of view, and to hell with everyone else. I’ll be glad to get this damnable election behind us, that’s all.”
I
WALKED AMONG A SERIES
of white tents erected on Gin’s front lawn, passing dozens of long tables draped with white linen set amidst the silk rustle of elegant, formal, late summer gardens. Hundreds of people wandered among the tents and the tables and the gardens as individual horses were showcased to almost ecclesiastical effect, their coats gleaming under the shifting sun and cloud, their manes and tails aloft in the wind, their high spirits kicking up dust as they cantered into the paddocks, the auction in full swing.
Live music played as each horse was led by halter into the paddock by a uniformed attendant, who first posed and then released animals so otherworldly beautiful they looked as if Hans Christian Andersen had imagined them.
It was the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, the opening day of Gin’s celebrated annual garden party, by coveted invitation only. Guests had flown in from around the world—some of them people Gin knew personally, others people Gin only knew about and wanted to know personally—and were congratulating him on the horses, on the beauty of the setting, extolling the excitement of the hunt to come. Everyone was preparing for a lavish lunch up at the house, exquisitely prepared to accommodate riders and buyers and socialites alike, all of whom were making note of every detail of every moment to recall on command for their curious associates, inquisitive colleagues, jealous friends.
I scanned the crowd, searching for Harry. I can still see him, as if he were a painting. He was sitting on the top rung of the paddock fence, despite Gin’s orders to the contrary. He was wearing faded blue jeans and a dark T-shirt. Beat-up running shoes. Everything about his posture was casual. His looks were so pure and unadulterated, I swear I could hear a nightingale singing.
The way he looked, how he dressed, the way he talked, the way he thought, the way he carried himself—I loved all of it, his honesty, his confidence. He smiled and I wanted to reach out and polish his luster. Every time I saw him, I found something new to admire. He raised his arm over his head and waved when he saw me.
“Hoffa,” he hollered. “Over here!”
“Harry!” I broke into a run and reached him just as Gula—no attendant’s uniform for him—led a magnificent horse into the ring. His sudden appearance stopped me in my tracks.
“Jesus,” Harry said, pointing. “Gin finally got his Gypsy mare.”
The crowd was oohing and aahing over the new arrival, a piebald with blue eyes and a mane like a veil that hung to her knees, her tail dragging along the ground like a wedding train. Gin, taking up his position in the center of it all, the rich man’s version of a circus ringmaster, talked about who she was, what she was, what he intended to do with her, as Gula put her through her paces.
“Got to give him credit,” Harry said. “He did it. Wow. She is fantastic, isn’t she?”
I nodded, though I don’t think my full attention was on the mare.
“How are you, Harry?”
“I’m okay. I’m all right,” he said a little evasively.
“Are you happy to be home?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” he said, pausing to reconsider when he noticed the devastation on my face. “What the hell? Sure I am.”
Gula was leaving the ring, leading away Gin’s newest acquisition, when he noticed Harry and me. He stopped and performed his customary, brief half bow in salutation. Harry laughed and waved. “Son of a bitch,” he said, loud enough so I could hear him.
“How is Hanzi?” I asked him.
“He’s great,” Harry said, patting my knee. “We did good, Hoffa.” I stared down at his hand. The beautiful strains of the cello and the violin, the music of the birds from the branches on the trees—was it my imagination or had the whole world exploded into song?
A growing crowd of gaily chattering onlookers was gathering around the paddock in anticipation of Boomslang’s imminent moment in the sun, Gin leading the troops, my mother next to him as he sidled over.
“So what do you think, Greer? Riddle? You too, Harry. Aren’t they fantastic? Oh my, I could look at them forever. If God were to strike me dead right here and now, I could die happy.” Gin was so ecstatic he was trilling, filling the summer air with his own perverse twittering.
“How many times must I say it?” my mother demanded impatiently. “They’re beautiful. There never has been nor will there ever be two horses such as these two horses. Are you happy?”
“These two horses will make my place in the history books. They will make me immortal.”
“Now, there’s a terrifying thought,” my mother said. “I wasn’t planning to do any hunting, but you’ve put me in the mood to murder something.”
An appreciative murmur that quickly developed into a loud round of whooping and applause heralded Boomslang’s arrival in the ring, where his halter was removed and he was allowed to move freely around the fenced-in arena. “No explanations needed,” Gin said theatrically, as Boomslang pawed the ground and surged dramatically forward like a directed explosion of smoke and spark.
Harry hopped down from the fence and was standing next to me when Boomslang ran toward us and stared at Harry, who reached in and rubbed his ears until he took off again at a canter. Churning and spinning, he abruptly stopped, stood up on his hind legs, dropped down again on all fours as the crowd clapped, and then he lashed out with his rear hooves, violently kicking the middle rung of the fence, smashing it into several pieces, large and small, and knocking an onlooker to the ground with a dull thud.
Harry was up and over the paddock fence trying to calm the unruly stallion as the shaken but uninjured observer dusted himself off. Boomslang, obviously agitated by the noise and the people, by the events of the day, shook his head and scraped the ground with his hoof. He swung his rear legs around and kicked the air as Harry neatly swerved out of his way.
Reaching into his jacket pocket for a lump of sugar—Harry was always carrying around treats for horses—he held his open palm out to Boomslang, who considered for a moment before accepting. Harry, talking to him all the while, took his forelock and mane in his hand and led him to Gula, who was making his way toward them with halter and lunge rein as the crowd broke into long, spontaneous applause.
Needing no excuse, I loped over to Harry, who was standing just outside the paddock next to Gin and a large group of people that included my mother. They were making a big fuss over him for his intervention. Gula asked me if I would hold on to the Gypsy mare while he took Boomslang back to the stable. Not knowing what else to do, I nodded as the others, Harry and Gin and my mother, drifted off toward the house so that Harry could get cleaned up and changed. He was covered in dust and dirt and clay and his shirt had got torn on a nail protruding from the fence. “You can borrow something of mine,” Gin said as Harry politely demurred. “Anything you’d like. Please, I insist.”
Harry never looked more horrified than he did that day at the prospect of wearing one of Gin’s outfits.
Momentarily alone with Gula, I studiously avoided his eyes by looking down at the ground. I could feel him looking at me.
“Aren’t you going to ask her name?” he said when he transferred custody of Gin’s new horse to me. “Oma,” he said, as she fixed her pale blue eyes on me.
He smiled, and then he reached out and stroked my cheek with his fingers. I froze. For some reason, not clear to me, I intrigued him. I know that I did. Tightening my hold on the lead rope, I got out of there as fast as I could, Oma trotting alongside me.
