Janice Macdonald - Along Came Zoe

After Brett went off to school, Zoe slipped on her gardening clogs and went outside to augment the soil in the flower beds. Physical work to shake the surly, disgruntled aftertaste that family matters tended to leave in her mouth. An hour or so later, she looked up to see a guy in bib overalls and a straw hat pulling down the steep driveway towing a horse trailer behind a battered white truck. By the time she reached him, he’d unloaded a tan-and-white Shetland pony from the trailer and was leading it toward her.

“Heard from the feed-store guy that you keep a few animals.” He patted the pony’s neck. “This one here’s looking for a home. Used to give kids rides in a petting zoo, but she’s getting along in years. Ready for retirement,” he said with a laugh. “Know exactly how she feels.”

“Hold on.” Zoe ran into the house, grabbed a carrot from the refrigerator bin and brought it back for the horse who accepted it eagerly. She watched it, chewing contentedly with big square teeth, orange goo oozing from the side of its mouth. Cute, she thought. Blond bangs like a schoolgirl’s hanging over big brown eyes.

“You already have four goats, a sheep, three dogs and a litter of feral cats that you need to get fixed,” the voice of reason pointed out.

Kenna, Brett’s black Lab, was at her side doing some exploratory sniffing around the horse’s hind-quarters. At the bottom of the property, she could hear the two other dogs—Domino, part wolf according to Brett, and Lucy, a big shepherd mix she’d rescued from the animal shelter—barking at the goats. Last weekend, she and Brett had spent three hours stringing up an electric fence around the goats’ pen. The dogs were curious more than anything, but they alarmed the goats, which Zoe didn’t think could be good for their milk or the cheese she eventually wanted to produce. All those stress hormones.

“Gentle, too.” The guy wanted her to make a decision. “Loves kids.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Zoe said. “Warn the neighbors.”

The guy gave her a look—the same look her sister Courtney always gave her when she figured Zoe had to be joking but she didn’t find it especially funny. The horse finished the carrot and Zoe extended her fingers for it to lick.

“Got into some poison ivy?” The guy gestured at tracks that ran down her left arm and bloomed into a red cluster on the back of her hand. A new crop had appeared in the aftermath of Janna’s dinner.

“Yeah.” She shrugged. Easier than explaining what it really was. Without thinking, she began to scratch and then caught herself. She studied the horse. She was bony, her sides caving with each breath, but her perky cream mane was curiously touching. As if the horse was doing her best to be cute. Zoe realized she was hooked.

“Don’t horses need a lot of grooming?” She gestured around at the overgrown lawn, the roses sprouting bright red hips, the vigorous crop of dandelions. Brett was supposed to keep the grass cut, but constantly getting after him to do it was sometimes more trouble than dragging out the mower herself. “I’ve got more than I can do just to keep up with all this.”

He shrugged. “Get someone to help, why don’t you?”

Zoe eyed him briefly. “Money?”

“Oh, that.” His teeth, when he grinned, were roughly the size and color of the pony’s. “Yeah, what’s it they say? A necessary evil.”

She stroked the pony’s nose. “What does she eat?”

“Alfalfa, Bermuda. Some feed. Nothing fancy.”

“Expensive?”

“Nah.”

“What d’you think, Kenna?” She scratched the dog’s neck. “Think your master will groom her? Feed her? Keep her pen clean?”

“She’s yours for fifty bucks,” the guy said. “And I’ll throw in a bale of alfalfa.”

“Thirty,” Zoe said, visualizing her checkbook balance.

“Done.”

Nothing like buying a cheap horse to make you feel better, she decided later as she raked straw across its pen. It was things like this, unexpected gifts almost, that confirmed her belief that even if marrying Denny McCann hadn’t been the smartest move she’d ever made, it was also no cause for regret.

The biggest reason, of course, was Brett, but, shortly after Brett was born, Denny had managed to convince her that buying three acres of undeveloped land in northern San Diego County would be a good business investment.

The plan at the time had been for Denny to build houses on the property, one for them and then three others that he’d sell. “We’ll be set financially, babe,” he’d gloated. “I won’t ever have to work again.”

Omit the words, “have to,” and the second part at least was true.

Back then though, blissed out by the joys of new motherhood, not to mention sleep deprivation, she’d been pretty much indifferent to the idea of buying property. If Denny thought he could make it work, then fine.

While the first house—their house—was being built, she and Denny and Brett had lived in a trailer. Before ground was broken for the second house—actually before Denny had completely finished their own house—he’d succumbed to the charms of a young bank teller.

Zoe had kicked him out. He hadn’t taken a whole lot of convincing and, in a fit of conscience or guilt, had signed over the property to her. “You’re going to have to make the payments though,” he’d told her.

But of course.

The house, a gray two-story wooden structure, vaguely ramshackle New England in style, with a long back deck and steeply sloping roof now seemed so completely hers she could hardly remember her ex-husband’s role in its inception. Kind of like his role in creating their son, really.

Three acres of land and she knew every inch of it, from the gully at the bottom of the property that sometimes flooded after a heavy winter rain, to the faint pale green sheen on the distant brown hills that appeared after the first rains of the year. By early spring her land turned as lush and verdant as Ireland, lasting until about June, when the green faded to gold.

She loved it in every season. Like right now, walking through the beds of tomato plants, the pungent smell of ripening fruit, the sun warm on her back, Kenna trailing at her heels on the off chance that some food might be involved.

“You are getting way too smart for your own good,” she said.

“Woof.”

“Sit.” The dog sat, almost quivering with anticipation, her eyes on Zoe’s hand as Zoe reached into a huge old mailbox on the potting table in the middle of the garden. Dog biscuits. Kenna’s tail was going crazy now, her front feet dancing a little jig. “We’re happy, huh Boofuls?” Zoe threw the biscuit and watched the dog carry it off. She always got a kick out of how furtive Kenna looked as she trotted off with the prize. Gotta hide this real good, she could imagine the dog thinking. Never know when someone might get a taste for Old Roy peanut-flavored dog biscuit.

Some of the branches of the plants were so heavy with tomatoes that they were touching the ground, and she decided now was as good a time as any to do a little cleanup. As she went into the garage for twine and nippers, the phone rang from inside the house.

“Hello,” she said, breathless from running to catch it.

The line went dead.

Zoe stared at the phone and felt her newly improved mood begin to slump. This had been happening a lot lately. Nothing there when she picked up the phone. Once a girl had asked for Brett.

“May I tell him who’s calling?”

“Oh, he’ll know.”

“Maybe I’d also like to know.”

Click.

Brett tell you about his girlfriend?

She and Brett seemed to be fighting over everything lately.

You want to end up like your father, Brett? Is that what you want?