Mary Gaitskill - The Mare

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The story of a Dominican girl, the white woman who introduces her to riding, and the horse who changes everything for her. Velveteen Vargas is eleven years old, a Fresh Air Fund kid from Brooklyn. Her host family is a couple in upstate New York: Ginger, a failed artist on the fringe of Alcoholics Anonymous, and Paul, an academic who wonders what it will mean to “make a difference” in such a contrived situation.
illuminates the couple’s changing relationship with Velvet over the course of several years, as well as Velvet’s powerful encounter with the horses at the stable down the road, as Gaitskill weaves together Velvet’s vital inner-city community and the privileged country world of Ginger and Paul.

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I said, “Thank you.” And ordered a Cosmopolitan.

Velvet

I said, “But you don’t drink,” and she said, “I’m trusting you. Don’t tell anyone, all right?” I said I wouldn’t, but I didn’t like it because right away she wasn’t the same. Her eyes were different and she laughed like there was something wrong with her, like she was out of breath. But the steak was good and it was big. Also it was fun to watch her eat fried octopus.

Then she wanted to go for a drive and I said, “You will get in a lot of trouble if you get caught driving drunk with me.” She said, “There won’t be trouble. I only had one.” She turned down a tiny white road with black sky but also something glowing at the end of it. I felt like I used to when she read that book to me, like we were in a place I could only be with her; a place where nobody hit or yelled at anybody. Then Republicans didn’t matter anymore and the drink didn’t either. “Can we play music?” I said.

She put on this tape of old music by a group called the Shangri-Las. She said it was the name of a place where people didn’t get old, and there was a story about people getting lost there. Life was so perfect there that it made them crazy, so they couldn’t stay even though one of them fell in love. They tried to go back over mountains, but a huge snowstorm came and the Shangri-La woman who came with them turned old and died in front of her boyfriend while he cried. I asked if that’s what they were singing about, and she said no, it was just the name of the group. We were quiet for a while and I tried to like the music, even though it was corny. We drove into fog and everything got weird-beautiful: the red taillights on parked cars and numbers flashing on mailboxes, and sometimes deer-eyes. Ginger started singing, really soft. Her drunk voice was embarrassing, little and pinchy like a funny bone. But still, my neck tingled like when my mom did my hair. I said, “Can we drive a long time? Can we get a little bit lost?” And she laughed and said, “Honey, we already are a little bit lost.” I said, “Really?” She reached out and took my hand. “No,” she said. “Not really. Because we’re together.”

Ginger

I tucked her in like she was still a little girl and then walked around straightening the house and whispering, “Mistake, mistake, mistake.” I poured myself a large glass of water, slowly drank it, then brushed my teeth. I got into bed. My heart raced; my brain filled with clashing words and silent, hectic music. Yes, the drink was a mistake, but a healing one. Our beautiful time in the car; a moment of forgiveness; a way to the in-between place. The drink helped me to get there.

I sat up. The in-between place. It was my term for the tenderness that sometimes happened between me and Michael, usually when we were trying to get out the door in the morning in time for work; a time when our exhausted eyes would acknowledge the stupidity and nastiness of the night before, but would still say wordlessly, “It was not really that. No. It only seemed like that. Really, it was this.”

I got up and drank some more water, leaned over the sink absorbing it, then made myself throw it up.

Paul

I thought Ginger would know, would sense it when I got back. I flew into Manhattan and took the train in a daze of Polly, hip-deep in the feeling of her, the way she never stopped looking me in the eyes.

But then there was Ginger at the station and the meadow just outside; the cows as we drove by, tearing hay from the broken feed cart, working their jaws. And there too was Polly; my wanting to turn her over to see her that way, but thinking it might be just the one time, and not being able to give up the look in her eyes. The feeling was so intense, I thought Ginger would read my mind, thought she would say something.

And she did. She said, “Velvet told me her mother beat her. She said she knocked her down and kicked her.”

“I’m not surprised.” I was ashamed at the lack of feeling in my voice. But I had no room for more feeling. “Did you call social services?”

“No. She doesn’t want me to.”

“Then why is she telling you?”

“I don’t know.”

I said, “Ginger” and thought, Polly.

“I think it’s because she wants me to invite her to come stay with us.”

“That’s out of the question and you know it. She knows it.”

“If it wasn’t for you, I’m not sure it would be out of the question. We don’t know what her mother thinks.”

“Did you say that to her ?”

“No,” she said. “I didn’t.”

“You know, we did this because we were thinking about adopting a child. We can do it. We can adopt a child who can really be ours.”

“I don’t want a child. I want her.”

“You can’t have her.”

“If I can’t have her completely, I’ll have what I can.”

It was what Polly said to me. I know I can’t have you completely, but—

“Is this a Democrat county or Republican?”

“Republican. Dutchess County’s voted Republican for the last thirty years. Why?”

She smiled and told me.

I wanted to say, Please. You know what you’re like. You gravitate toward pain. If you want to get hurt, use a grown-up, not a little girl. But it wasn’t fair, and anyway, how could I talk that way now?

Velvet

The last week of school I got the sea horse from Strawberry. Alicia told me she had something for me, and I almost said fuck you but she said, “It’s from Strawberry.” I saw she had a real letter with pink script on it. She handed me the envelope and watched me open it; a picture cut from a magazine fell out. It was a glass sea horse cut with scissors, and there was a folded note in her handwriting that said, “I told you I would think of you when I saw one and I did. Friends 4 Life.” And then “Strawberry” in pink script with a heart.

I didn’t want to smile, but I did; I looked at Alicia and she was looking back like she used to. She said Strawberry e-mailed her but hardly ever, and that when she got an e-mail asking for her house address, Alicia didn’t even know why until she got the card for me. We walked down the hall like in elementary school. She asked me if I wanted to go to a party. I asked, whose party and she named a girl I knew was friends with Brianna. I said, “She helped spread lies about me.” Alicia said, “What, you mean the picture?” And her voice was like a animal about to eat something. I stopped walking and said, “You know that wasn’t me.” She put her eyes down. I thought it meant she was sorry. She said, “I do know. Brianna knows too.” She looked up and said, “So will you come to the party?” And then, “Dominic gonna be there.”

Ginger

She called me and told me her mother was going to die. “What? How? What happened?” She has a disease, sobbed the girl, in her stomach. The doctor said she’ll die and she couldn’t even tell Dante because her mother made her promise not to. Because Dante would be scared.

She was calling from school, from the social worker’s office. I asked to speak to the social worker, but it turned out she had no idea what was going on. She’d called Mrs. Vargas at work and was waiting to hear back. She said she’d let me know when she did.

“What are we going to do?” cried Velvet. “Ginger?”

“I’ll do anything I can to help, baby.”

I hung up and walked from the kitchen to the dining room to the living room and back, over and over. Maybe we could take Velvet and her brother could get into foster care here so they could see each other. Maybe it would be better to keep them together in foster care but up here so Velvet could stay with us on the weekends and ride horses. Maybe we could become foster parents and they could both live with us. Maybe I could divorce Paul and become a foster mother.

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