Mary Gaitskill - The Mare

I listened to Lydia talking about me like I was a telenovela that she cried over and got mad at. I got my own family to consider. I thought about walking with Ginger in warm dark full of smells and fireflies past houses with decorations in their yards and sounds of children in them. I rubbed the Ginger-doll key chain with my thumb, down its sharp nose, checked coat, one leg and back. Now Ginger would know it wasn’t just me talking. An adult had told her and she would have to believe.

Later that night I tried to call Velvet’s house. Mrs. Vargas answered, spoke angry-normal Spanish, then sad-brightly said, “Okay?” It was the first English word she’d ever said to me. It was also the first time I’d heard any sadness in her voice. Or brightness.

I called Lydia. She said as soon as she walked in, the mother started crying and thanking her, and that Velvet did nothing but curse and yell. She said, “I told her, if you talked to me that way, I’d hit you too.”

When I got Velvet on the phone, she said, “She acts so nice in front of everybody else! I am so sick of her bullshit!”

Paul said, “And you want them to move up here? Really?”

When I went back up there it was night and there were white Christmas lights in all the little trees on the main street of the town. But the next day it was rainy and cold with mud. I went to the barn. Horses stood outside, wet and streaked with mud, bony like dinosaurs, their heads like dinosaur birds with wings. Inside, they felt angry and bored. Fiery Girl felt worse. Fiery Girl would not even talk to me. She stood away from me like she didn’t know me. I said, Hey, don’t you remember when I brought you out? And she didn’t look.

I walked through the barn to the office and I saw two more horses were gone: Rocki’s stall didn’t have his name on it anymore, or Officer Murphy’s. Their toys and ribbons were gone too. I looked for Pat, but I didn’t find her; this girl I didn’t know told me she wasn’t there but that Beverly was schooling a horse in the indoor ring. I went there and saw she had the horse on long lines, and a whip in her hand, and she was talking in her hard voice. “When I say whoa, I mean whoa! I don’t mean let’s talk it over, I mean you stop and no backing up, no nothin’! No! Don’t move, don’t think it!” But the horse did back up and Beverly whipped it and it ran and she dropped the lines and laughed. It ran around her and then it ran at her, but she raised up the whip and it ran in a circle on the outside of the ring while she followed it from the inside, shaking the whip at it. “You think running is a good option? Now it’s my option. This is my option!” She struck at the air, again and again.

The horse’s coat was dark with sweat and its eyes were scared.

“Whoa!” said Beverly. The horse stopped, trembling and panting. “That’s right, whoa! Good girl!” She went to the horse and touched it. “Look at this poor thing, she’s scared to death. It’s okay, sweet pea. That’s nice, that’s nice, that’s a pretty girl. Thank you. I’m gonna thank you.” She looked at me. “Always remember to say thank you. Always remember your manners.”

I left, but I did not go back to the house. I walked around the block, breathing hard. It felt like I was in an ocean looking at lights on a shore a long way away.

The next day Gare told me that before I came, Heather’s horse, Totally, kicked this girl Jessie and broke her ribs. I said, “Why?”

Gare went, “I don’t know, maybe because Jessie’s a bitch? I didn’t see it. I heard Jessie came up behind Totally too fast while Heather was giving the horse a hard time about something. I was like, way to go, Totally.”

I thought, If I was a horse, I’d kick too. I’d kick whenever I could and even trample.

On the phone I said, “Listen. I want to invite your mom and brother up along with you around Christmas. I’m acting in a play and I think it would be fun if you all came to see it. It’s a children’s theater.”

“Why are you acting in a theater for children?”

“Because it’s fun. Do you think you would want to act in it if you could?”

“I dunno.”

“Could you ask your mom if she’d like to come?”

She didn’t answer. I felt her like she was next to me breathing.

I said, “I’m thinking if she had a chance to look around up here, it might make her think about coming here to live.”

I felt her, but I didn’t know what she felt.

“Just a minute,” she said. I heard her talking to her mother, her mother answering back. They talked awhile. There was no anger or cursing. Velvet came back.

“She says yes.”

I picked them up at the station because Ginger was getting ready for the show. They were standing there like a bundle, outwardly ragged but powerfully linked inside: the woman holding the boy close to her, the boy tensely looking down with his fist by his mouth, Velvet trying to pull his jacket down and pants up so his butt-crack didn’t show. The platform was crowded with people walking quickly past them, but the mother looked straight ahead as though she were alone.

When I got closer, I saw why. She looked exhausted, too tired to smile, though her eyes saw me with pleased relief. She took my outstretched hand, but when Velvet came to hug me, Mrs. Vargas snapped at her and pointed at the little boy’s feet; his shoe was untied and though he looked at least seven years old, Velvet knelt to tie it.

I took them straight to get dinner before the play. It was a big casual place with pictures of the owner’s pit bulls on the wall; as we waited to be seated, Mrs. Vargas stood with her arms across her chest and viewed it harshly with her brow pulled down like a cap. She and Velvet exchanged hard/entreating words. We were seated; Mrs. Vargas sat with an incredibly erect posture and snapped her napkin open on her lap. I conferred with the boy and decided we should both get burgers. Velvet got mac and cheese. Mrs. Vargas ordered the chicken by pointing at the menu imperiously.

The boy and I talked about the dogs on the wall; he wanted to know if maybe they’d come out and walk around. His voice was sweeter than I’d heard before. He said he liked fighting dogs. Velvet and her mother fought in a low furious mumble. Her mother glanced at me with a laughing string of words meant to link us as adults. Dante said, “This man’s dog where I live acted bad and the man made the dog scream.” I said that was wrong; the boy looked rebuked and confused.

When the chicken came, Mrs. Vargas took one bite and grimaced. “She says it’s disgusting,” said Velvet. Mrs. Vargas made them take it back and cook it some more, and even then, she cut it in two and put the bigger part on Velvet’s plate. Velvet said she was too full, but she made the girl eat it, all of it, hectoring her the whole time. When I took out my wallet to pay, she cut her eyes at my money, seeing just how much this lousy meal was.

We walked to the theater in silence. I thought I saw Mrs. Vargas looking approvingly at the Christmas lights. I saw she’d put lipstick on. The boy’s shoe came untied again and she made Velvet stop to tie it. I asked, “Don’t you know how to tie your shoes, young man?” He said, “She does it for me. I’m only seven.” I said, “A seven-year-old man needs to tie his own shoes, and before you go home, I’m going to teach you.”

The boy looked down. Mrs. Vargas gave me a sharp look, and I thought, She understands. But we were at the ticket booth by then, and there were people with their radiant children. Her sharpness deserted her; she put her hand on the boy’s shoulder. The boy frankly looked the other kids up and down; Velvet led the way upstairs; she looked back and smiled at me. There was a burst of happy voices and then children running up and down a hallway in half costume, rosy families getting out of their coats, a vibrant little girl handing out programs amid papier-mâché castles and trees with brown trunks and balls of green sitting atop them. A girl recognized Velvet and spoke to her. Mrs. Vargas sank back into herself.