Mary Gaitskill - The Mare

We spoke about other things, and almost got off the phone. Then I felt bad for my attitude, so I apologized.

“No, it’s okay,” she said. “And partly I was okay mentioning it because when I met the girl, she seemed nice. Not just nice, interesting. Which is what Edie’s always said, but Edie can be…romantic about people.”

“Edie’s very perceptive.”

“I know, and I trust her in general. It’s just that Joanne’s heard gossip about Velvet that wasn’t so nice.”

“She did ?”

“Well, she knows horse people, so yeah. Apparently some friend of a friend had talked about being afraid of Velvet, said she glared at people and—”

“Afraid of Velvet ?”

“Well, there was some story about her getting kicked out of a barn because she caused a trainer to get trampled, even something about her being in a gang.”

“That sounds like teenage BS!” But then I recalled that Velvet had somehow abruptly stopped going to that barn.

“Well, I thought so, yeah. Edie’s said nothing but good things about her, and like I said, Joanne had a good impression of her, and the trainer at Spindletop was struck with her talent. So…”

I thanked her for telling me about Joan’s offer, quietly guessing that one, the conversation had been a chance to feel me out about the gossip and two, she’d really enjoyed the idea of Ginger’s cluelessly taking up with a menace.

“And you know what? If it’s awkward, I can just have Joan call Ginger.”

“No, Becca, it’s okay. I’ll tell her it came from you.”

“And just so that you know that I know that you know — I’m not the only ice queen at the party. That woman has a thousand-yard stare that could stop a truck. She does not make it easy.”

I wished I could say I didn’t know what she meant. But I did. Which I did not share with Ginger when I brought it up that night.

“Becca,” she said. “Becca? Becca, who insulted me to my face about Velvet, now wants to get involved? Get involved with sending Velvet to a place that’s better than the place I’ve found for her and now to some ridiculous—”

“Ginger, you didn’t find the place, it was just next door. It’s not a reflection on you.”

“You don’t understand how I feel? That she’s trying to—”

“I do! My first impulse was to question her. But I think she essentially means well.”

“I don’t.”

“Ginger, give her a break! I know she’s been unpleasant. But I was technically still married to her when I met you. You’re younger, you’re better-looking, and you’re living in the same town. And it’s only been six years.”

“That’s exactly why I don’t think she means well.” We carried our dinner into the living room to eat while we watched a TV show about a likable gangster.

“Whatever she means, it’s an opportunity for Velvet. If Velvet wants it.”

She didn’t say anything.

“And if it really bothers you, we don’t have to bring it up.”

We stared at the TV; the gangster was in the middle of an argument with his daughter in the family car. Ginger stared at it as if absorbed and then out of the blue said, “I have a question for you. Are you having an affair?” She turned from the TV to look directly at me.

“No,” I said. It was the truth.

She turned back toward the television. The gangster had left his daughter sitting in the car so he could follow somebody into a gas station bathroom and kill him. She looked at me again and said, “So fucking predictable.”

I felt my face go hot. “What do you mean?”

“Becca. The main thing she has over me is that she’s a mother and now that I have something a tiny bit like what she has, she wants to come in and show me up. What a fucking bitch.”

“So you don’t want Velvet to have this opportunity.”

She looked at me angrily. “Of course I want her to have it! If she even wants it. I just wish you were more—” She stopped, and her expression changed. Then she said, “You’re blushing.”

I didn’t think she would want to go, especially because it turned out that Joanne wasn’t even riding on the day that we could go. It would be two girls she didn’t know. But she did want to. She had to think a minute before she said yes, and she didn’t smile when she said it. But I could feel she really did want to go. I respected her for it. Whatever had made her uncomfortable about Spindletop, she wanted another look at it.

So I made her a sandwich the night before and we got up at five a.m. and drove through the in-between time of dark and light, no cars on the road, just us. She was tired and quiet, but I felt her sensitivity to the in-between time. I remembered when my mom made me go to camp with this organization called Camp Fire Girls; I hated it, and she said I had to go anyway because it would “build character.” I thought that was the stupidest thing, and I didn’t even believe she meant it, I thought it must’ve been what somebody else told her. But this, the drive at dawn to an unknown situation — it felt like that. Character building.

I knew it was going to be weird when they put this thing like a giant clothespin on this horse’s face. It didn’t seem like there was a lot for me to do. There was that blond girl who watched my lesson — her name was Lexy — and this other one, Lorrie, going around in tall black boots and little jackets, doing everything really fast, and it seemed like I didn’t do anything fast enough. Finally they let me take over grooming Lorrie’s horse, Spectacular, while she did something else, but before I was done, Jeanne walked past and said, “Look at his ears! He can’t go out in public like that!” I said, “What’s bad about his ears?” and she said, “They’re hairy.” And she brought a electric shaver and tried to take the hair off his ears, but he wouldn’t let her. So she asked somebody to bring her “the twitch”—that was the giant clothespin that pinched his mouth and nose so hard you could see his teeth. She used the twitch to pull his face where she wanted it and ran the razor and he didn’t say nothin’, or even move.

“It looks like it hurts,” I said.

“It’s a distraction,” she said. “It’s releasing endorphins so really it feels good.”

Then they told me to put the saddles and pads and everything in the compartments of the trailers, but when Lexy came out, she looked at it and made a face and did it different. They got the horses in the van, Spectacular and Lexy’s thoroughbred, Alpha, who did not want to go. These two Mexican men had to lock arms under Alpha’s ass and shove him in like that.

On the drive back I thought about the broken-off conversation with Paul, how he’d blushed and I did not press him because after all he had said no, he was not having an affair. And Becca, I thought about her too. The next time we saw each other, how would we talk about EQUAL? If Paul was having an affair, how would she look at me then? How would I look at her?

We drove there slow on curved roads with trees and bushes growing almost into the road; it was light but darkish anyway because of wet mist coming up. It took almost an hour to get there, and it seemed like the whole time Lorrie and Lexy talked about their boots, Lorrie said some boots called Tuff Riders had a knockoff that looked just like Parlantis, but Lexy didn’t believe it, she would never buy Tuff Riders. Jeanne tried to talk to me about Brooklyn, where she used to live, but it was hard to pay attention because I didn’t know any of the places she talked about. We turned onto a road with just one big gray building on it and then nothing, like somebody tore a hole in the trees to make it that way. It was the place. It wasn’t twice the size of Spindletop, it was five times the size of Spindletop, and we were just in the parking lot, which was full of cars and trailers and big curtained places for horses, and horses being walked, and also people speeding around in tiny carts.