Mary Gaitskill - The Mare

She came back and said, “What kind of competition you want to be in?” I put my phone away, but I was too messed-up to explain and it came out all wrong — she never heard of the Fresh Air Fund, so she didn’t understand about the horses, like where I went to ride them. I could see her thinking, This girl lying or loco, because I didn’t make sense, and I was smiling so stupidly even though at the same time I was afraid, because what if he was pranking me or if it wasn’t even him but Brianna, or somebody else. What if they were all gonna be pranking me?

Then we stepped out of the building and my heart was wiped clean; my mom was there on the sidewalk. She didn’t see me. She was talking to people who obviously could not understand anything she said. She looked small and scared and I was going to call out when Gaby said, “Hola, Mami!” and the people stood back. “Beg pardon, Mami,” said Gaby. “I asked your daughter to help me carry some groceries home and she was good enough to take them all the way up the stairs for me.”

This lady who cared about right and wrong lied for me and I am pretty sure my mom knew it; she usually does. But because it was in front of people, she had to accept it, and then when we walked away, she couldn’t switch out of accepting it. She didn’t say anything to me all the way home except “While you were helping the Haitian, our dinner got cold,” but not even mad. And I wasn’t mad either. She had come to find me, down the street she was scared of.

And also, my phone was texting. I could feel it on my leg.

It was rare to see her alone; I don’t think it had ever happened before. She was sitting at a table with a cup of coffee and writing in one of those decorative blank books they sell; without her usual prow-like outer focus, she appeared almost gentle. Until I said, “Becca, hello,” and she looked up, immediately going haughty and retracted, eyes not quite meeting mine.

“Can I join you?” I asked.

“Actually, I’m waiting for someone.”

“Oh. I just wanted to say thanks for the invitation to Spindletop. Very nice place.”

“Actually, it was Joan who—”

“Yeah, I know, but I’m just saying it was nice. Although it didn’t go all that well for her there.”

“Oh, here’s Laura!” Her expression went from discomfort to warm and welcoming as she tracked her friend’s pleased scarf-flapping, cute-little-bell-on-the-door-ringing entry.

“Oh, hi, Ginger,” said Laura. “Do you mind?”

Meaning, Get out of my way; you’re blocking my seat. And I did mind.

“How are you?” gushed Becca as Laura squeezed past me.

“I’m not sure why it didn’t go well,” I said. “But she seemed pretty upset when she came back.”

“What are we talking about?” Laura asked Becca.

“Velvet,” I said.

“Who?”

“You know, the girl from the culture I know nothing about, but who I’m messing with anyway.”

They stared at me. A middle-aged waitress with stalwart eyes came dragging a bad foot in an Ace bandage. “Are we two or three?” she asked.

They answered together: “Two!”

“Two it is,” said the waitress and left with the extra laminated menu she’d brought just in case.

“Ginger—” said Becca.

“I’m going,” I said. “And by the way, I wasn’t kidding. You did say that, Laura, that I was messing with somebody else’s kid.”

“I don’t remember.”

“I’m sure you don’t. And I’m sure, Becca, that you don’t remember saying to me that I’m playing—”

“This is inappropriate,” said Laura.

I flushed. “ Inappropriate ? Well, I don’t think it was appropriate to tell me I’m messing with a child I love when you don’t know anything about it. Or to tell me I’m ‘playing at being a parent.’ ”

From the look on Becca’s face, she did remember.

“I understand why you don’t like me, and I’m sorry. But you had no right to talk that way to me. You don’t know me.”

“If you don’t like the way we talk, then don’t force your company on us and needlessly make a scene,” said Laura.

“A scene? This is your idea of a scene ?” My laugh was empty, and I reddened at the sound of it. “You really are an awful woman — both of you.” And I left red-faced and trembling, but also glad, glad that I finally said something, even if it was weak. That at least I didn’t just let them treat me like shit again.

But I guess I didn’t look glad because when I got home and Paul saw me he said, “Ginger, what’s wrong?” and he even sounded like he cared.

“Nothing’s wrong,” I said. “I just told Becca and Laura they’ve been total bitches to me and that it’s ‘inappropriate,’ to use their repulsive language.”

For a second he looked scared — that was good — but then he put his head in his hand and shook it, like this was just too idiotic to comment on. And I slapped him. I slapped the shit out of him. One, for politely looking the other way while Becca insulted me for years; two, for undermining my relationship with Velvet; three, for being an asshole generally; and four — ooh, let’s not forget — for cheating. When I stopped, I expected him to start with AA crap, and that made me start looking around for something besides my hand — but he didn’t. He stood there holding his face and looking at me like he’d just woken up.

I looked back thinking: Finally the glass is broken. Thank you, Michael. Thank you and fuck you.

He texted me that he wanted to see me. He wanted to see me away from Brooklyn so nobody would know. He said just one last time, because it should not end with that disrespect or an apology on text. I said, “How do I even know it’s you?” Right away he typed back, “Wherefore art thou?” He said meet him at Riverbank Park up near Washington Heights. He said “plz.”

So he picked a time after school, but I didn’t go to school. I took the train into Manhattan and went to Penn Station, where I always met Ginger. I bought a Krispy Kreme donut and a soda and stood eating it because to sit you had to show your ticket to a guard who was keeping homeless people out. I looked at the covers of magazines and at the people like me and the people like Ginger walking past each other. I could walk down the stairs and ride through a tunnel to get to my mare and to the house with the blue and white diamond floor.

Instead I paid my last money to see a movie with J. Lo in it, except she got pregnant in like the first five minutes and then died and it was all about white people. I wondered if maybe it was luck to see a movie where a pregnant girl died and then she was just gone. I knew that was evil to think, but what a weird thing in a movie. Then I don’t remember what else I did until I came off the subway at 145th Street. He said to text him so he could wait there for me and he did. He looked nervous and embarrassed. I was not embarrassed and I was not nervous.

We went to a place by the water. The same water I saw out the train window when I went to see Ginger. He said, “I come here by myself to think.”

I said, “It’s nice.”

We sat on a bench. It was still cold, so not many people were out. The water was blinking and bright in flipped-up pieces. We looked at it and he said, “So you gonna be in a competition on the horse?”

The way he looked at me in front of Brianna’s girls. His voice saying Awesome sarcastically. “No,” I said. “I’m not.”

He looked at me quick and then away. “Why not?”

“My mom won’t let me,” I said.

“Oh.”

I said, “So why—” at the same time he said, “You know—” Then he said, “I didn’t mean what I said in front a them.”