C. Morgan - The Sport of Kings

“Is that what your father told you?”

“He said he wants you to come back home right now.”

There was silence on the line.

“When are you coming home?”

“Well,” her mother said, and sighed. “I think I’ll come out to the farm tomorrow.”

“Why can’t you come right now?”

“I’ll come tomorrow, darling.”

But her mother didn’t come the next day. She came the day after that, and she arrived wearing a dress Henrietta had never seen before, her hair cut in a glassy blonde bob, and with a pained twinge the girl struggled with a strange, phantom sensation that Judith had been gone not three days but three years. She was altered like a heap of coins melted down and newly minted into a foreign currency. When they hugged, her mother’s arms were painfully thin, but maybe they had always been so? Henrietta heard a kissing sound above her head but did not feel the press of lips anywhere.

Her mother said, “You look good, Henrietta.” Even her voice was music playing in another room. “Why don’t we go out to the porch?”

“Where’s Daddy? I want him to come too.” Henrietta managed to turn herself halfway around, looking wildly behind her without letting go of her mother.

“I’m not really sure.” That old, barely suppressed irritation was audible.

“Daddy!” she called out into the house, and she felt her mother flinch as the word came echoing back.

“Henrietta!” Judith snapped, and then softer: “Your father’s not here right now.”

“Where is he?”

“He didn’t want to be here for this.”

Now it was Henrietta’s turn to be silent. She stared mutely at her mother, and where the older woman expected to see confusion, there was only a dark kind of withholding, which was new. The girl let go of the hem of her mother’s jacket, which she had wrenched up into the sweaty heart of her fist. Judith smoothed it down and Henrietta saw her manicure was the color of a ripe raspberry. She used to bite her nails, but that was different now too.

“Let’s go out to the porch,” Judith said. “I always hated the inside of this house.”

“Well, I like it.”

“You don’t even know what you like yet,” her mother said. “This house is like living in another time. And not a good one.”

They went out and they sat on the porch swing, but Henrietta’s legs were not long enough to reach the wood planks, so she was forced into a lulling motion by her mother. She clung to the chain for balance but it was rusted. It left visceral stains on her palm.

For a long time Judith just swung them in silence and her face appeared undisturbed, as if she were alone in the world with her thoughts, as if she never had any intention to speak at all.

“Well, I don’t have an apartment in Lexington is the first thing,” she finally began.

“Then Daddy lied.” Henrietta stared straight ahead at the road and the Millers’ property, her face devoid of feeling.

“Let’s do this nice and easy, Henrietta,” Judith said.

“Where’s your apartment?”

“Well, I don’t have an apartment, not exactly. The thing is I’ve met someone. Someone I really love and who really loves me.”

“Daddy loves you,” Henrietta said abruptly against the swift and sudden closing of her throat.

“Daddy loves you ,” said Judith while looking down at her shoes, her yellow heels. She turned a foot this way and that, as if admiring the motions of her own ankles, but her face was downcast and carved close at the cheek. “Listen, Henrietta, I could be angry and, believe me, I have every right to be, but … frankly, I’m too young to waste all my good years. I’m not going to sit around here the way your grandmother did, waiting for death to end my awful marriage. God, that poor woman. I’m sure she went slowly insane here. We’re trained from childhood to behave like dogs who sit and stay and wait for scraps.” She looked up suddenly. “Everyone has to find a way to be happy. When I was a girl, I always, always wanted to get married. I was so naïve I thought that if a man married you, then that actually meant he loved you, not just that he wanted something from your body. The reality is you never really know a man until he marries you and thinks he’s got you trapped. Then you find out if you really are his prize, or just his prize heifer.”

She sighed. “What’s funny is I used to model wedding dresses. I mean, for God’s sake — that was my niche! I was only high fashion when I starved myself, but I couldn’t keep that up. But I actually liked catalog work. I thought it was fun. And now, I mean, look at me. My stomach is ruined. I’ve just finally woken up, and I want nothing more than happiness. I don’t care if it comes in an imperfect package. I don’t care where I have to go to find it. It just … Henrietta, it has nothing to do with you.”

“Nothing to do with me,” the girl echoed flatly.

“Nothing at all. I promise.” Judith sighed and looked out over the sloping lawn and the frontage road. Softly, she said, “I was really so happy when I was a little girl. There has to be a way back, there has to be. Or else what’s the point of all this … of life?” She sighed again. “The truth is men aren’t interested in your happiness; they’ll make you think that’s the case, they’ll treat you really great for a while and make all sorts of promises and give you all their attention, but they all reach a point where they can’t pretend anymore. They’re just selfish animals, and in the end, animals can’t hide their nature.”

“But you’re happy here with me,” insisted Henrietta, her words reaching out with both hands.

Her mother fished around in her pocketbook and removed a black book with blank pages. “Look. I bought you a journal. Since I won’t be here for you to tell them to, you can record all your most precious thoughts here.” She set the book on Henrietta’s knees and smiled sadly. “I know this probably isn’t … adequate, but … God, there’s really no good option here.” She smiled sadly.

“You’re smiling,” Henrietta pressed, ignoring the book.

“I’m smiling, sweetheart, because the man I’ve met is really wonderful,” Judith said. “He actually loves me for who I am, not for what I can give him, not for how I look on his arm. He’s involved in horses too, so he and your father have a lot in common. And he has sons. See? You’ll have brothers now like you’ve always wanted. The only thing is … he lives most of the year in a town called Donaueschingen.”

Henrietta looked at her blankly.

“It’s in Germany,” her mother said.

Still there was no response.

“That’s across the ocean. Do you know where Germany is?”

Henrietta knew the DNA of a bacterium contained hundreds of millions of nucleotides; that horses and humans had the humerus, radius, ulna, carpals, metacarpals, and phalanges in common; that Mendel’s pea plants held all the secrets of genetics; she knew where Germany was. But instead of answering, she looked out across the road where only two days prior, she and Mrs. Miller had led the cows back into the pasture. That pleasure was already beginning to rot, and there was no way to reconstitute it into joy, not even through memory. She would have to find a new pleasure altogether.

Watching a dawning realization on her daughter’s face, Judith reached over to grasp her hand, but Henrietta jumped up from the swing, not slapping away her mother’s hands as they reached toward her and not casting a hateful glance over her shoulder, just leaving with the black notebook clutched to her chest. She let the front screen door slam behind her as she went into the house, going nowhere in particular, but very quickly.