Mary Gaitskill - The Mare

She said, “Just because my father—!”

And I took off my house slipper and slapped her face good. She started crying and I said, “You think that hurts, llorona? Wait till he hits you.”

She said, “ He wouldn’t hit me,” and I hit her again. Because I knew it. I was right. If I push her enough, she always lets the truth out. She can’t hold anything back.

The next weekend she was supposed to come, she didn’t show. I waited at Penn Station for half an hour before calling her at home. Her mother yelled into the phone; it was somehow comforting, like she was yelling on my behalf. Her brother came on and said Velvet was asleep. He said she’d been out late and a social worker was coming. I asked him why a social worker was coming. He said, “I don’t know, she’s from the school. She comes when my sister does something bad.” “Like what?” I asked. But I guess something interesting must’ve happened on the TV because he didn’t answer me. I said, “Can you go wake your sister up?” and he said, “Okay.”

I waited on the phone for almost ten minutes. I was about to hang up when a tornado of screaming voices came up behind the cartoon noise. I waited, thinking that Velvet was coming. The screaming went on. The cartoons got louder. I hung up. It was nearly winter and my toes and hands were cold. I went into Penn Station to get a hot chocolate and walked around drinking it. I stared at the jumbled food nooks and windows filled with cheap shit: crazy-print panty hose, boxes of chenille gloves and hats, teddy bears, glass roses, Empire State knickknacks, magazines crammed with exhausting opinions and worthless pictures it cost thousands of dollars to take. Pretzels. Pizza. Squashed sandwiches and big, biliously iced cookies. Lights buzzing, music pumping, people yelling orders and wiping surfaces; so much honest effort put into so much ugliness, everyone worn out by it but still doing their job to push it out the chute. All of it probably overrun by rats at night. A crazy guy pointed at me and laughed.

What was I going to tell Paul?

I called her again. She picked up the phone and said she was sorry. “I’m sorry too,” I said. “I spent time and money to come all this way for nothing and you can’t even come to the phone?”

She was silent.

“You know what, we don’t have to talk about it,” I said. “I’m too angry to talk.” I hung up.

I would tell him she texted and canceled because she was sick, and that I didn’t get the text until I was already halfway into the city.

The next time I came, Pat was mad at me too. She said she made time for me that weekend and that Fiery Girl was expecting to see me. She said, “You ever read something called The Little Prince ?”

“No.” Really, I was supposed to read it last year in school, but I didn’t.

“Okay. In that book it says once you tame something, you are responsible for it. You tamed that horse, you understand?”

We walked to the barn. The ground was cold mud in hard, frowning shapes. The long grass was smeared with dry mud and the garden was nothing but dirt and dead plants bent over and broken, with bits of green trying to live.

I felt the hardness of it even more than I felt my horse. Fiery Girl was warm under me and she snorted peacefully. But she would still not jump. She wasn’t afraid — that wasn’t why. It was because she could feel I had no jump in me. All I could feel was the cold hardness and stillness of the ground.

At least Pat wasn’t mad at me for that.

Mrs. Vargas’s friend called and asked for me. Mrs. Vargas was in the room, I could hear her, but it was her friend who spoke English on the phone. She said, Silvia wants you to know Velvet’s report card had an A on it. They wrote a note on it saying she’s done better than ever, even though she didn’t come enough. She says because of that, please have her for Christmas. She’s getting into trouble here and Silvia knows she’ll be safe with you.

It was the first time she’d ever said please. It was the first time I’d heard her first name.

The day before Christmas, the family met us at Penn Station and we went to eat at the same diner we’d gone to before. Ginger gave the boy a Hot Wheels car and his mom a gift card from Macy’s. Mrs. Vargas presented us with candles.

“Ahh,” said the boy, “the tradition continues!” He said it in English; he also said it sarcastically. He was much sharper this year.

I sat across from him and, while his mother and sister triangled with my wife, he and I talked about horror movies and cartoons. I asked him what he thought he’d be when he grew up and he didn’t miss a beat. He said, “I’ll be a statue of the suffering of hell.”

“I don’t think they make statues like that, Dante.” Though of course, they do.

“Then I’ll make it myself,” he said. “I’ll make it out of the junkyard.”

I said, “That’s great,” and he burped, which made his mom slap his head.

It wasn’t until much later that it occurred to me he was referring to the kind of elaborate graveyard statue you see in horror movies. That he was saying, basically, I’m going to grow up to be dead.

The tree was still beautiful and they still had my favorite striped glass ball. But I kept thinking of that night we went to the party and Paul disappeared with that red-haired woman. I didn’t know if everything was the same with them or if they were pretending, and so nothing seemed the same to me. So I pretended and waited until I could walk to the barn. Even that wasn’t the same since Fiery Girl wasn’t there anymore, but still I walked over in the cold, steam coming out my mouth like I was a horse. Half the sky was full of white clouds; the other half was black with a lot of stars. There was ice in the paddock where I first rode.

It ain’t what it was with Shawn. You know that.

The horses moved and breathed when they heard me, but I didn’t hear them talk. I realized I hadn’t heard them talk for a long time. Maybe because I wasn’t a kid anymore? I went to Joker because I hadn’t seen him since the day me and Fiery Girl rode past. He was glad to see me but too nervous to pet; he kept moving around and then he sneezed in my eye. It made me almost laugh, but I wanted to touch somebody, so I looked for Reesa, my first horse. She was lying down and I wanted to curl up against her, even though it’s not safe. But I couldn’t because she got up when I opened her stall. She looked at me with such soft eyes and stood quiet and let me get warm on her. I remembered how it felt that first time. I felt love for her. I rubbed her and scratched her back where she liked it and looked out her window at the night. It started snowing.

You know I have love for you. You love me?

It was late when he finally came. The kids, Rochelle and Jason, were asleep. He came in looking angry, then I realized, no, scared. Something happened, but he wouldn’t say what it was, said I shouldn’t know. He kept walking around. He said they wouldn’t come here because nobody knew about here. They’d go to Brianna’s place; he needed to stay with me. Did I know when Kristal would come back? I didn’t know exactly, but I knew it would be late, he could stay until then. Jason heard us, I guess, because he came in the room holding his little three-year-old dick and looking sleepy-bug-eyed at Dominic until I kissed him and put him back in bed. When I came back in the living room, Dominic had calmed himself down. He sat close to me on the couch, but he didn’t look at me; he texted. I could smell him, and the smell of him scared me and I didn’t know why. I tried to bring back the warm feeling of when he crouched down with his legs open, but this was not like that. His sideways face was hard, and his hands didn’t care about anything but texting. He worked his phone. I didn’t move, but still I went toward him in waves, hurting to touch him. He closed the phone and put it on the table. He looked at me; he started to talk, then he stopped. His eyes saw my feeling, and I let him see it all the way. He said he had to do something and he picked up his phone again. He opened it and stared at it. He put it down and looked at me. He touched my face with his hand. I had words I couldn’t say, but he heard and answered by kissing my mouth — quick, like he meant to move away. But he didn’t. For a second he pulled back and I felt him soft, waiting like a horse, waiting for me to tell him which way to move. Like a horse, he heard my answer before I knew I gave it, and we kissed for real, and he made these noises, little noises that said Please, please let me close, please let me inside, and because the noises were so baby, I touched the back of his head like to protect him. Next thing I knew, he kneeled and pushed my legs apart, and put his hands and head on my breast. I pulled my shirt up and he touched them and kissed them. It felt so good I got scared and my body trembled. He rose up and kissed my face and said, “Don’t be scared. I ain’t gonna hurt you, boo. We ain’t gonna do it all, I can’t, I’m with Brianna.”