Mary Gaitskill - The Mare

“Then why’d you say it?”

“I told you I couldn’t be with you. I know I shouldn’t’ve let nothin’ happen, but—” He sat forward with his arms on his legs. The water pushed and pulled, bright and dark like eyes. People went past. A lady smiled.

“But what?” I said finally.

“I had feelings for you.”

Had. “Then why you—”

“Because feelings by themself ain’t what matters.”

“You had feelings for me but it don’t matter ?”

“That ain’t what I said!” He got up and I did too. He walked to the water and came back. He came close and I thought he would touch me; I could feel he wanted to. “Just, if you feel one way and what’s right is the other way, you gotta do what’s right, even if—”

“You made me come all the way out here to say that shit?”

He sat down. “To say I’m sorry. I ain’t gonna be able to say it no other time.”

I knew what he meant. That he would see me on the street and act like he didn’t know me. Even if he had feelings. I said, “You a asshole. You say you love me just so you could get away from the police and—” Get your dick sucked; even to think it made me feel like shit. My face flashed hot, and I looked down to hide it.

“You know that ain’t true. You know it. I wouldn’t be here if that was true. I wouldn’t never have come to see you and told you about Brianna. I wouldn’t never showed you—”

And he took his Romeo picture out of his pocket. My body shut off; my face went cold. I snatched the picture and tore it in two. His face fell and he stood up. “It don’t matter,” he said. “I was gonna give it to you anyway.”

“I don’t want it.”

I didn’t feel wind, but the torn picture was moving anyway. He said, “A’ight, then.” And stood up and walked away. I covered my heart with my hands, like it might cry out. And maybe it did because all of a sudden he stopped. He turned around and came close enough for me to hear him. He said, “You don’t have to worry about Brianna’s girls. They ain’t gonna bother you.” He went to go again but then turned back again and said, “And also I’m sorry you ain’t gonna be in the competition. ’Cause I think you’d win.” Then he turned around and left for good. I watched him until he was all the way gone. Then I picked up the pieces of his picture and kissed it and held it to me.

“Never again will a disaster of this nature be handled in the terrible and disgraceful way that it was handled.”

I sat in the dark watching last years’s footage of John McCain talking outside a church in New Orleans. Fast forward to now: there’s still crap from broken houses on the sidewalks, and signs for mold removal on telephone poles. What will Obama do?

Paul was cooking in the kitchen, making pasta with the swordfish from last night. I was drinking wine, but he didn’t dare say anything. The night I slapped him we did it for the first time in months; he was not going to say anything. Yet.

The phone rang and I got up slowly. Last year, of course, the house defied the president, preventing the administration from cutting federal spending for the poor. Halfway up the stairs, I heard Velvet’s voice come on the machine; the poor, my poor, my poor kid. I thought of her friend, the cruel child in the see-through shirt — Strawberry — stranded on her roof with rising water all around. When I got upstairs, her voice was saying something about her mother changing her mind; I grabbed the phone.

“Changed her mind about what?”

“About the competition. She says I can do it.”

“That’s so great,” I said. “Why did she change her mind?”

“Ah dunno. She’s just like that sometimes…”

“You don’t sound happy.”

“I am.”

For a strange and active moment I felt my house close around me — water pipes and wires and slow-speaking wood with insects living in it, wallpaper and rugs and furniture, emotions and odors, the air beating with thoughts — and all of it, all of me so far away from the girl on the other end of the phone, even though she had slept and ate and cried here.

Downstairs Paul went, “Ginger?”

“ You don’t sound happy,” she said, and I felt it coming from her side too: her apartment, her family, her friends, the street outside — the things she never told me but that I could feel in the warm electronic phone dark where the voice is tactile and subtle as an animal.

“I am really happy that you’re going to do it,” I said. “Your mom needs to sign the permission though, like now.”

“You can send it, she’ll sign.”

“That’s great. Is she going to come?”

“Ginger, dinner’s ready.”

She said yes, in the smiling voice she used for lying, and I believed it for the same reason she told it; because believing made the good thing real for a second.

On the weekend before the competition, Pat talked to me about what it would be like, the busy parking lot, the horse traffic, the trailers. I didn’t tell her I already knew what it would be like, and that I was sending pictures of parking lots and people on carts to my horse every time I put her away for the night.

“You’ve got an advantage because this mare does know how to compete, and she’s probably got a taste for it. But you’ve got a disadvantage too, because her form of competition was racing, not show jumping. You have to keep hold of her, keep her steady and following your instruction so she doesn’t just decide to start racing. Use her impulse for speed, but control it. And remember, she’s sensitive. Loud noises, unexpected movement, anything unexpected could spook her — keep on top of it, keep her steady, take care of her. You’re also sensitive, and this will be new to you. You can’t spook. You’ve got to be in charge, and give her confidence and comfort, all the way.”

Confidence and comfort; she said those words like they were deep, and for me they were. All weekend, when I groomed my mare and tacked her, I would think those words, through my hands to her. And when we were done and I would wash her, I would also think the words that Gaby said to me: He respected your precious body. She had said that about Dominic, but I didn’t think about him. I thought your precious body through my hands to the mare. For confidence and comfort.

I thought those words too when I lay on my couch the night before I went upstate for the competition, but they only helped me fall half asleep; all this other mind-noise kept coming up underneath the words and then real noise from outside. I wanted confidence and comfort and I could not find it. How would I give it to my mare? I tried to talk to my grandfather, but he didn’t answer. I listened to the noise from outside: music, cars, and voices — and all of a sudden I remembered something Cookie said forever ago. He said, “I ain’t havin’ a good time. But I am havin’ a time!” That made me smile, and for some reason I finally got calm.

But I only slept two hours, then got up crazy awake, still thinking about Cookie. I went and got my horseshoe from a long time ago; I took it outside and put it under where Cookie’s name was written. I put it where nobody would see it and take it, behind the bars of this boarded-up window. I don’t know why but it seemed like good luck to do that. When I came back inside my mom looked at me like she knew something was going on, but she didn’t know what. I never told her what day the event was and she never saw the paper come because I got it from the box and signed her name and sent it back. But I usually never ask for a doobie wrap to go upstate and I don’t usually pack my best silky top with gold rings holding the sides together. She knew something and so she picked a fight — like I come out of the bathroom wearing my silky top and she’s, “You want to flash your body even up in that sleepy little town? I think those girls there hate you too.” All during breakfast and then while I packed my bag she was looking and knowing but not knowing what was up, and going, “How does somebody so scrawny also have a muffin top?” or “You know, I’m going to let you wear that so you’ll see for yourself how they laugh at you.”