Mary Gaitskill - The Mare

She looked in my eyes and I said, “Yes.”

“And remember, look ahead of the jump, not at it.”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” she said. “Now. Through the wall. ”

When I was in kindergarten there was a series of books meant to teach kids how everything in the world was put together. At least I guess that was the point of them. In the one I remember, each cardboard page showed a picture of a farm animal — I think there was a farmer too — and each of the pages had three sections: instead of turning a whole page, you could turn them section by section and make a rooster with a pig’s body and farmer’s legs. That’s what it felt like trying to act normal around Paul with Velvet there. It felt that way even in the days before she came, like a hand was grabbing my midsection and turning me into a cow with cat legs, and something hairy and disgusting in the middle, and it kept happening, pictures flipping randomly. How could I even bring her into this shit-storm — but if I didn’t, when would she ride? “Listen,” said Kayla, “I’ve had to smile and put food on the table when I was so depressed I didn’t want to move. Ginger, that girl isn’t made of china and neither are you. You can handle it.” Paul said the same. “We can do this,” he said. “Even if we break up right after she leaves.” I said, “We can’t break up until after the event.” “Okay,” he said, “we won’t.”

Because I had not told him the event was off. Because as far as I was concerned, it wasn’t.

So we got up together and made eggs and bacon and orange juice; the picture split and got joined with the first time I made us bacon and eggs in that house. He had looked at the food and said, “Breakfast!” so softly, like it was the dearest thing, and that’s what it was to me too. But now that feeling had been divided into pieces and stuck together with the impossible present and something else down below it, something hard, misshapen and too big. I laid the dishes out, and through the chaos came the special feeling I had whenever Velvet was there and I made food for her. Well now here was the other side of that privilege, a tiny, tiny taste of what people mean when they say parenting is hard. I remembered my mother, our mother; the day after Dad left she made us pancakes, exhaustion and will mixed up in the sweet taste. It was maybe a year later that she sent Melinda to a mental hospital for running off with a married man when she was basically still a kid. When we were grown I confronted my mother about it and she said, “I didn’t know what else to do!” and I despised her. Well, now I didn’t know what to do either. So we ate and smiled and asked Velvet about the horses, and then she went to the barn, and I went upstairs to my laptop to look at sites about cheating spouses with lists like “5 Reasons You Should Take a Cheater Back” and “10 Reasons You Shouldn’t Take a Cheater Back.”

When we galloped, there was nothing but me and her. I felt the sky above me but I didn’t see anything but her ears and her neck and the ground flying toward me and Graylie’s butt and Pat’s butt on top. Graylie’s legs flew and he rose up over the fence, switched his tail, and came down. The fence flashed up at me and I remembered, sit back. Fiery Girl came up under me like nothing was even there. The fence disappeared. It was so beautiful-easy and at first I didn’t know why.

How do you respect yourself staying with a man who can’t or won’t value you?

Yes, it’s hard if you run a business together, but the cheater is the one who must change and prove love.

Don’t even touch him till he begs and pleads; make him vacuum and clean the toilet, make him call and text you constantly.

You won’t forgive yourself if you don’t at least try to move past it.

We’re all human.

You’ll save on therapy bills.

You didn’t make him do it.

You have a strong foundation together; don’t throw it away. You might never find anyone else.

“Ginger!” The door banged and she came up the stairs. Guiltily, I closed the cheaters window. She came into the room, rosy and exultant, lifting me up.

“What is it?” I said. “What?”

She said, “I saw the distance! I knew where it was, and I don’t even know how! I saw it for the first time and I jumped perfect and we were going fast! Ginger, I am going to be in the competition!”

I saw her ride for the first time. She’d spent the weekend practicing and she wanted us to come. She and Ginger were getting ready to go when she looked at me and said, “Could you come too?” The walk over was heartbreaking, me talking too much about how beautiful everything was and them not saying anything.

The horse surprised me at first — the way Velvet talked about it I expected it to be big and beautiful and it was not. It was built somehow a bit strangely, with a narrow chest that from the side was deep in breadth. But its muscles were fine and distinct under its glossy, moving skin and its steps were springy, like it had elastic ankles. Its head was overlarge, but there was something noble, senatorial, in its boniness and size. As Velvet rode it quietly around the arena, I guess warming it up, I began to see its personality and to understand; the horse was rippling with nerves, like its basic forward movement contained fierce motion in all directions, which Velvet controlled seemingly without effort. Ginger and I stood against the fence to watch and every time the horse passed us, it looked at me sideways like, Check it out — see what I can do! and I smiled to remember Velvet describing how it looked exactly that way. Once, the horse broke into a nervous jog, which Velvet smoothly corrected without so much as a glance at us.

A fat, tough-looking woman was in the ring too, giving a low running commentary that I couldn’t hear. She finally came over to us and said, “How do you like our star rider?” I realized I’d seen her a couple of times early in the morning driving horses in the road. I answered her, “Wonderful!” and Ginger looked at me coldly.

The woman registered the look and walked away without comment, back out to the middle of the ring. She gave Velvet an instruction I couldn’t hear and Velvet began to ride the horse harder; it picked up speed and ran with a loose, elegant gait, throwing its legs around, ambling with speed. Velvet sat up in the saddle and leaned forward; the horse put on more speed. The hair on my neck stood up. Ginger’s lips parted and her face glowed; her parted lips stayed quiet, her smile touching her eyes and cheeks only. I realized with a sharp sensation that she looked like she did when she first loved me.

Velvet flew over the first jump and the second, flowing like silk. I made an involuntary noise; Ginger laughed, tiny and delighted.

When she first loved me: her softness emerging as if from hiding, overjoyed to be out in the open, coming to me open-armed. Velvet took the third jump and the horse thundered past us, throwing off heat and breathing with fierce ease. I reached for my wife’s hand; she let me. Velvet rode past again, calm and delighted too, her face in an expression I’d never seen on her before, oblivious to everything but the animal beneath her.

Ginger let go of my hand. “She’s going to win,” she said. “She’s going to win.”

“You were right to do this,” I said. “It’s incredible.”

“I just want her to win,” said Ginger.

And I answered, “So do I.”

It was not only Spindletop that scared me from competing. Before I even went there I was having bad dreams where I fell in front of people and Fiery Girl fell too, and broke her leg. And there was something else; I don’t know what it was, but it made me turn away from competition thoughts fast like a horse turns from a sound or sight. And it was not only Pat’s words that changed my mind. When I was riding my horse in the field, there was no nightmare or daymare, nothing but her huge heart with thorns holding me up. Ginger and her strange eyes fell away. Dominic and Brianna’s girls were there but floating off the left side of me like a made-up island. When we went for the jump, all of them disappeared.