Alice Hoffman - Here On Earth

The other morning, when she woke at five, Gwen could not get dressed and rummage through the refrigerator for Tarot’s treat, then run down the road at her usual hour. Hollis was in the hallway. She knew he was there before she leaned up on her elbows in order to peer out the door of the sewing room where she sleeps. She smelled fire, and that’s the way he smells. Later, when Gwen went into the kitchen she noticed the scent of fire on her mother as well. Still, she didn’t say a word. She simply went about her business, despite the lump in her throat. Sure, her mother wants to pretend nothing has happened; she wants to have everyone over for a little tea and cookies and act as if Hollis wasn’t in their kitchen before dawn with his hands all over her. To hell with that, in Gwen’s opinion. To hell with her.

Anyway, maybe Gwen’s wrong in her assessment. Maybe her vision was cloudy and they were simply talking; they’ve known each other forever, after all. Still, whenever Gwen sees Hollis-which, thank goodness, is hardly ever-she always turns away and acts as though she’s unaware of his presence. Even if she’s standing in his field, with a horse that legally belongs to him, she turns the other way.

Mind your own business, that’s what she tells herself when she starts to wonder about her mother and Hollis. Go forward. Concentrate on your own life. That’s what she tells herself, but it isn’t working. She wonders if what she feels for Hollis is hate. It’s not solely on behalf of her poor, unsuspecting father that she feels this; it’s the way Hollis has treated Hank. He’s horrible to Hank, he bosses him around as though Hank were his servant, and Hank doesn’t even seem to notice. That’s what’s so awful. He looks up to Hollis. He thinks the world of him.

The first time Gwen went to Hank’s room, on an afternoon when Hollis had gone to Boston on business, she burst into tears. The room was so neat and tidy and devoid of possessions. It was as if Hank were a boarder, someone merely passing through, when in fact this has been his room for thirteen years. The wool blanket on his bed was threadbare and the paint on the walls was peeling. Gwen sat at the foot of the bed and wept. Hank thought it was something he’d done or said and he kept apologizing, which only made her cry more. There was such loneliness in that room, in the cracks along the ceiling and the bare walls, that Gwen was all the more aware of how lonely she herself has always been.

The strangest thing is that now that she’s really, truly in love with someone, they haven’t had sex. They kiss, they touch each other, but it’s not the right time to do anything more, they both feel that. This is a backward universe she’s in; all that she wouldn’t have understood before makes sense to her now. She doesn’t want her mother in on this, it’s too private, too perfect, and she’s certainly not going to sit and politely sip a cup of tea in the parlor while her mother interrogates Hank about what his favorite subject is at school, or whatever question parents think most reveals a boy’s character.

It is, after all, Gwen’s last day of freedom; she’s scheduled to attend classes at the high school starting tomorrow. And so this afternoon she has trekked over to the library, where Mrs. Miller teaches her how to use the microfilm so she can look Tarot up in old newspapers. The library in Jenkintown is a wonderful place built out of local brownstone. There are two reading rooms, furnished with old leather couches and well-worn chairs. It may not be the Boston Public Library, or the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library that her father takes her to, but so far Gwen has discovered six books about horse racing and Tarot is in two of them. Back then, his full name was Blue Moon’s Tarot’s Deck of Fortune, called after the Blue Moon farm in Virginia, where he was sired. There is his photograph as he heads for the finish at Belmont. There he is in the colors of Guardian Farm-blue and white-in the winners’ circle at Saratoga.

“You like racehorses?” some old man asks Gwen as she pages through the books. It’s Jimmy Parrish, who ran the stable at Guardian and worked at Pimlico when he was a boy.

“I guess I do,” Gwen admits.

Jimmy Parrish sits down across from her and begins to talk about his good old days. He’s so excited Gwen smiles and lets him ramble on as she looks at photographs from great races of the past. She’s not really listening until he starts to talk about Guardian Farm. If he remembers correctly, the families of the two men who were killed filed suit against Mr. Cooper, which pretty much finished the stable and wiped out the family financially. One of the men had been a jockey, the other a trainer from Louisiana, both men who knew their horses. Accidents happen, of course, but with Tarot situations always seemed premeditated. People thought the entire family was crazy when a few months after the out-of-court settlements they saw Belinda Cooper, God rest her soul, riding that racehorse as if he were nothing more dangerous than a Shetland pony.

That is when Gwen closes her book. Dust rises up from between the pages in a little gray cloud. “That’s my name too,” she tells Jimmy. “Cooper.”

When he realizes this girl is Richard Cooper’s daughter, Jimmy throws his arms around her as if she were a long-lost granddaughter. “I can’t believe it’s you,” he cries. He actually becomes so loud and teary that the librarian, Enid Miller, comes over and informs him if he doesn’t quiet down he’ll have to leave, which is what Gwen and Jimmy Parrish decide to do.

“So who was Belinda to me?” Gwen asks when she and Jimmy are leaving the library. Gwen has her arms filled with books she’s checked out. As they go down the stone steps of the library, she keeps her elbow out, in case Jimmy Parrish should slip on the wet leaves and need something to hold on to.

“She was your aunt. Your father’s older sister. Dead nearly twelve years. And her son, who she named Cooper, has been gone for at least five. Your grandparents-the mother and father of Belinda and your dad-died in a terrible accident at the devil’s comer. That’s the turn where Route 22 meets up with Guardian Farm.”

“Kind of a dying family,” Gwen says.

“You’re the last of them,” Jimmy Parrish says. “No more Coopers but you.”

“Yikes,” Gwen says. “Does that make me unlucky?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Jimmy Parrish is kind enough to tell her. “And then, of course, there’s your mother’s side of the family.”

They have reached the Bluebird Coffee Shop. Gwen holds the door open for Jimmy, who is completely thrilled to have found a live one who is not only listening to him but actually appears interested.

“There’s your mother’s brother, Alan.”

“I’ve heard about him.” Gwen remembers the Judge mentioning an Alan.

“He just went to pot after his wife died.”

“She died too?”

They sit down at the counter and Jimmy takes a look at the specials board, even though the specials are always the same at the Bluebird: crab cakes with mustard sauce, BLT on rye, corn chowder.

“I’ll have a cup of your chowder,” he informs their waitress, Alison Hartwig, whose mother will serve Gwen lunch tomorrow in the school cafeteria.

“So what’s with Alan?” Gwen asks after she orders a vanilla Diet Coke.

“He’s a wreck, plain and simple. No one ever sees him, and his boy, Hank, is being raised over at the Farm. I think I’ll have a coffee too,” Jimmy calls to Alison Hartwig. “Black.”

Gwen rolls all this information around in her mind. Why has no one told her this before? This means that Hank is not simply some relative. He’s her first cousin; an embarrassing, odd fact. Is it a crime to fall in love with him? Will people look at them and whisper?