The Son (24 page)

J
ONAS WAS SUPPOSED
to meet her at Penn Station but was an hour late. In which time she stumbled in on a man, his pants down and his rear end very white, pushing up against a woman in a red bustle in the far stall of the ladies’ toilet. She rushed out but after five minutes realized she had no choice and went back into the same restroom, choosing the stall farthest from the man and his friend. Miraculously, her luggage was not stolen.
I hate it here,
was the first thing she said to Jonas, who got her luggage properly stowed and then took her to lunch. They walked among the tall buildings.
Don’t look up so much,
he said.
You don’t want to be a tourist.

But she couldn’t help it. Pictures didn’t capture the size of the buildings, which leaned ominously over the streets, ready to fall and crush her at any moment, if a taxicab didn’t get her first. The din of all the trucks and shouting people left her ears ringing and she had a rushing in her heart that didn’t go away until she was well north of the city, on the train to Greenfield, back among trees and pastures. There were a few stray cattle and sheep grazing in the distance, Holsteins and Jerseys,
at least I know about that,
she thought, it would be something to talk about with her new classmates.

T
HERE WERE NUMEROUS
things that appealed to her about Greenfield. The old stone buildings with their steeply pitched roofs and tall ivy walls, the sunlight like a gauze across the landscape—what passed for summer was like winter in Texas—the dense forests and rolling fields at the edge of the campus. She had not known there were so many shades of green, she had not known there was so much rain and moisture on earth. The campus was only forty years old, though it might have easily been four hundred, the way the vines had taken over the buildings and trees brushed the windows in the breeze. In the few moments she had to herself each day, it was hard not to feel like someone important, as if she were only steps away from being swept up by some prince, or prime minister’s son, who, she now knew, would be English instead of Spanish, though other times she wondered if she did not want to be swept up at all, if perhaps she would be a prime minister herself—it was not inconceivable, times were changing. She could see herself behind a great wooden desk, writing letters to her loyal citizenry.

She did not have much time alone. The days were rigidly ordered: wake-up bell followed by breakfast and chapel, followed by classes, lunch, classes, athletics, dinner, and study hall. Lights out at eleven 
P.M.
, a monitor stalking the halls to enforce it.

Her roommate, a small Jewish girl named Esther, cried herself to sleep every night and at the end of the first week, when Jeannie returned from dinner, Esther and all her things were gone. Her father had owned factories in Poland, but he had lost everything to the Germans; the tuition check had not cleared. Jeannie was moved into a nicer room. Her new roommate was a girl named Corkie, who was shy but pleasant, and, unlike Esther, seemed comfortable at their new school. She knew everyone, though Jeannie sensed that she did not have many friends. Corkie had shoulders as thick as a cedar chopper’s, and she was tall, and she went about everything with a kind of resignation: to her long face that would never be pretty, to the red bumps above her lip, to her split and frazzled hair. From the way she dressed—in drab, frumpy clothes—and the inattention she gave her appearance, Jeannie thought she must come from a very poor family, and so she went out of her way to be nice, bringing Corkie desserts she’d smuggled from the dining hall, as she had once carried the buckets of clabber to her father’s vaqueros.

That Monday, when asked at lunch who her new roommate was, she told them Corkie Halloran.

“Oh, you mean the Mighty Sappho?”

That was Topsy Babcock. She was small and pretty with pale blond hair and skin to match, a smile that turned on and off like a traffic switch. Sometimes the smile meant approval, other times disapproval—she was not a person you wanted to disappoint. The others at the table laughed at Corkie Halloran, and Jeannie laughed with them, though she did not know why.

“She was at Spence but they say she was spending a little too much time with one particular girl, if you know what I mean.”

“They should have sent her to St. Paul’s—she would have fit in perfectly!”

Everyone thought this was hilarious. Jeannie just nodded.

T
HE NEXT WEEKEND
Corkie invited several people to her parents’ house, which was only forty minutes from school. To Jeannie’s surprise, many of the people who had made fun of her at lunch went along: Topsy Babcock, Natalie Martin, Kiki Fell, and Bootsie Elliot. Jeannie expected some old jalopy, or perhaps a truck, but instead they were picked up by a uniformed driver in a seven-seat Packard.

Kiki said: “You’re the one who got stuck with that Jewish girl, aren’t you?” She was the dark-haired version of Topsy, though her hair was cut just below her ears, almost as short as a boy’s, and it was said she’d had a surgery to make her nose smaller. Since arriving at Greenfield Jeannie had spent more and more time in front of the mirror at bedtime, inspecting herself. Her nose had straightened considerably but her eyes had no character, they were the color of fog or rain. Her chin was pointy, her forehead high, and the scar across her eyebrow—which she had always been proud of because it was like the scars her brothers had—made her look like a man. It was a deep scar, you could not miss it.

“McCullough . . .” Topsy was saying. “That’s Jewish, isn’t it?”

The other girls tittered, except Corkie, who looked out the window.

“I don’t think so.”

“I’m kidding. Of course it’s not.”

Jeannie was quiet the rest of the drive. There were very few houses. The roads were small and winding and yet they were paved. There were tall hedgerows, red barns, the ubiquitous stone walls. Everything was in shadow, the sun came weakly through the trees and the sky felt small and closed in. There was a chill in the air, though it was only September.

Topsy and Kiki and Bootsie had gone to primary school together; the others seemed to know each other in the same ways, she guessed, that she knew the children of the Midkiffs and Reynoldses. The second silent girl in the car, Natalie, had long chestnut hair and a large chest that she slouched to conceal. She made a point of looking out the window, not making eye contact with Jeannie, though, like everyone else, she smiled at whatever Topsy said.

It was a relief when the car turned into a stone gate and made its way up a long driveway with big trees on both sides. There were acres of grass, she had never seen so much green healthy grass in her life; she tried to calculate the number of head you could support here (an acre per head? It seemed possible) but knew better than to say this out loud.

At the top of the hill the house appeared. She began to feel embarrassed. It was not any larger than the Colonel’s house, but it was more grand, with arches and pillars and towers, dark granite, marble statuary, a look of weathering as if it had been standing since the time of kings.

“What does your father do?”

The girls all looked at her. Corkie gave her a look as well and she knew she’d made some sort of mistake. But it was too late. Corkie said: “He goes to his firm in New York and he plays racquets at the club and he rides and shoots a lot. And he works on his novel.”

“What kind of firm is it?”

“You know . . .” Corkie shrugged.

Bootsie Clark said: “Poppy’s father rides and shoots as well, I imagine.” Poppy was what the others had decided to call Jeannie. “He’s a cowboy. Isn’t that right?”

“Cowboys are hired men.”

“So what does your father call himself?”

“A cattleman.” She was about to add,
but that’s not where our money comes from,
when the other girls cut in:

“Does he go on those epic rides, then? Up to Kansas?”

“Those ended in the eighteen hundreds.”

“That’s too bad,” said Bootsie. “They looked very exciting.”

She was not sure if it was worse to respond or to let it drop. “They didn’t really drive them like in the pictures. They had to walk them or they’d lose all their weight.”

“How does Corkie’s house look?” said Natalie, changing the subject. “I guess yours must be bigger.”

“Not really.”

“Of course it is. We hear everything is bigger in Texas.”

She shrugged. “It’s not as nice as this, though. It’s not nearly as green.”

“How many acres do you have?”

It was a rude question—the last thing you would ask someone in Texas—but she knew she had to answer. “Three hundred ninety-six sections.”

“That’s not so much,” said Topsy.

“She said sections, not acres.”

“How much is a section?”

“They don’t even call them acres. An acre is too small.”

“How much is a section,” Kiki asked, for the second time.

“Six hundred forty acres.”

For some reason this caused all the girls, with the exception of Corkie, to break into hysterical laughter. Corkie was watching the driver, waiting for him to open the door.

“Are you going to be a cattlewoman as well?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What are you going to be, then?”

“She’s going to be someone’s wife,” said Corkie. “Just like the rest of us.”

T
HAT AFTERNOON, THEY
went riding. Below the main house was a stable with twenty or so horses, an immense corral that they called an arena, and a large pasture. It was all set in a manicured wood but she did not ask where the property ended. There were men in the shadows, cutting branches and loading them into a cart.

She was wearing jodhpurs and knee-high boots borrowed from Corkie’s younger sister. She felt ridiculous, but everyone else was dressed the same way. She presumed they were going for a long ride, four or five hours, and she wished she had eaten more at lunch.

“I imagine you must have horses,” said Natalie.

“Yes,” she said. “Do you?”

“There isn’t really enough room for them in Tuxedo Park.” She shrugged.

“There’s room for Jews, though,” said Topsy.

“Topsy and Natalie were neighbors with the girl you roomed with.”

“Her father bought a house there ten years ago,” said Topsy, “but they wouldn’t admit him to the club, so his family couldn’t so much as dip a finger in the lake. If they ever heard them splashing around down there, someone would call the police.”

“Tell her about the wedding.”

“They had a wedding last summer, and all the kids in Tuxedo Park went and turned the signs around, so none of the guests could find their house. Completely ruined the ceremony.” She smiled. “The problem is when people think that just because they have money . . .”

Jeannie nodded. The horses were brought out. They were sorrels, smaller chested and longer legged than cow horses.

“I had them put my sister’s saddle on this one,” said Corkie. She handed the reins over. “You’re about her height.” The saddle was simple, without a pommel or high cantle, and when Jeannie climbed up, the stirrups felt short and awkward, as if they had been set for a child.

The horse was tall and long legged, near sixteen hands; it looked like a fast horse but it did not look nearly as fast as it really was. It was so much more powerful than a cow horse that it felt closer to an automobile. With a cow horse (quarter horse, these girls called it) there was a negotiation, there were times you let the animal have its way, but this horse was both fast and anxious to please; giving it its head just confused it, like letting go of the steering wheel of a car. It seemed—like everything else in these girls’ lives—to have been created just to serve them.

She found she barely needed the reins; the horse responded if she even tensed her legs; he was so responsive, in fact, that he was difficult to ride at first. She wondered if she was a sloppier rider than she thought. She was uncomfortable in the saddle and when they hit a gallop she had a hard time maintaining her seat. They were going fast down a groomed path and there were a series of hurdles ahead; Corkie went over the first one and Jeannie got a bad feeling but followed anyway. There was nothing to worry about. The horse cleared the gate without any input from her at all.

After an hour the rest of the girls were tired and decided to return to the stables. She put her heels in and brushed through a small gap between Topsy and Bootsie, hoping to spook them, then passed Corkie as well. The horse was enjoying itself, so she did a hot lap of the corral (
arena,
she corrected herself), which was nearly a half mile in circumference. It was a good horse; it did not want to stop and she was overcome with sadness, for the life it lived in this corral and these few miles of manicured trail, ridden by these girls who spent longer getting dressed than they did in the saddle. A pointless existence.

By the time she’d cooled the animal down and walked back to the stable, the other girls were waiting and their horses were already being curried by the groom and his children.

Bootsie was saying: “She does ride like a cowboy, doesn’t she?”

“Does it feel strange, not having a handle to hold?”

“You don’t touch the saddle horn,” said Jeannie. She knew she’d looked awkward at first, but she thought she’d recovered well. It was plain she was a better rider than any of them, perhaps even Corkie. It was equally plain that none of them would admit it. Or they would find some way to turn it into an insult. She had an impulse to get back on the horse, gallop into the woods, and begin her long journey back to Texas. Certainly no harder than anything the Colonel had done. Her father would pay for the horse.

“Then why is it there?” said Bootsie, still talking about the saddle horn.

“It’s for holding your tools. Tying your rope to and such.”

“Well, you looked uncomfortable. I’m sure you’ll get used to it.”

“I’m a better rider than all of you,” she said. She felt her face get hot; she had been pressed into saying something she wasn’t sure of. “Except Corkie,” she added.