At first glance, yes, Ariel’s existence might look like something cobbled together—the different sorts of animals, of income, of cast-off furniture and furnishings and fittings, a life that looks haphazard. But it’s on her own terms, under her own control. This doesn’t make her life neat, but it’s a chaos that’s understood, a disorder that’s expected.
“It’s a farm, Mom. This is what it’s like.”
Even the chickens have a certain charm. Ariel likes how they wander around, oblivious, minding their own business, not asking anything of anyone, unobtrusive.
“But you’re not a farmer, Dear.”
“Well, Mom, I sort of am. I live on a farm, I earn farm income, I pay farm taxes.”
“But you don’t farm, do you?”
Ariel took a deep breath. She knew what was coming next:
“You don’t need to live like this …” Elaine swept her hand across the room, across the everything—the mismatched chairs, chipped-paint floorboards, dog-hairy rug, slopped-over water bowls, the lingering memory of a housepettish goat.
“Like this. What does that mean, Mom?”
“Don’t be coy. You know what I mean.”
Elaine was convinced that the ultimate luxury was having other people do everything for you; Ariel thought it was having the freedom to do things for yourself. Elaine was like Bucky, who believed that the more people doing the more for him, the better.
It had taken Ariel a long time to realize many things that now seem abundantly self-evident. That’s life, isn’t it? Realizing again and again how wrong you used to be.
“You have other choices.”
“Like what, Mom? Tell me, how should I choose to live instead of this? And who exactly should pay for those choices? And what in return would I need to sacrifice?”
Elaine made a dismissive noise.
“I mean, what else?”
This final jab—thrust in, twisted—was a sore point between them; the sorest. It wasn’t merely that Ariel disapproved of her mother’s overall lifestyle; that was Elaine’s own damn business. Ariel held her mother responsible, at least partially, for her own misfortunes. All throughout Ariel’s life, she’d watched Elaine acquiesce to so much, so consistently, with such feeble objections, as if her mom had internalized her dad’s opinions, his preferences, his demands. Elaine pre-acquiesced, is what she did. To everything. This was how Ariel was raised, to think that this was what it meant to be a woman, to be a wife. So that’s how Ariel had stumbled into her own marriage, without any idea of how to remain herself. She’d been taught not to.
This wasn’t totally fair, Ariel knew. But feelings don’t need to be fair to be genuine.
Ariel also knew that now was not the time to fight about this, nor about anything else, not when Elaine had just traveled a thousand miles to do her daughter this immense favor.
“Look Mom, I appreciate that you made a long trip.”
Elaine’s second husband had insisted on a move to South Carolina—year-round golf—and she’d been unable, or unwilling, to talk him out of it. Elaine had given in, as always. Of everything that Ariel resented about her mom—there was plenty—this was perhaps the ultimate: that Ariel might have internalized something malignant from her mother’s spinelessness, her unwillingness to tell men anything that they did not want to hear.
Ariel has a hard time overlooking the dislikable parts of people, which is most challenging with her mother. Yes, Elaine can be relied upon to send a Christmas present, to babysit without major incident. But Elaine is also the person who had let Ariel down the earliest, the most surprisingly, the most unforgivably. This was why Ariel had felt so alone in the world, for so long: She couldn’t expect unconditional support even from her own mother.
Then when Bucky too failed her in such an awful way, Ariel stopped letting anyone off the hook. And this had become the one thing she most wished she could change about herself: her intolerance of imperfection. She’d tried. She’d failed.
Instead she was trying to convince herself that it was possible to love people while also hating important things about them. This too was hard. But the alternative had been harder.
Ariel took a deep breath. “I don’t want to fight with you about how I live my life,” she said. “Can we just not?”
The dogs were watching the scene warily, tails at half-mast. They’d been on heightened alert as soon as Ariel retrieved her suitcase from the basement. The dogs know there’s nothing worse than Ariel’s luggage, which is what appears right before she leaves—and this time it might be forever, you never know when your mommy is just not going to come back, it would be so awful. Such a dreadful thing to have to worry about, whenever you see luggage.
Ariel leaned down and hugged the dogs, making it worse, adding to their anxiety; a little whimper escaped from Mallomar. Ariel recognizes that she’s selfish this way, with the animals she’s responsible for, who owe her unconditional love, which she’s determined to collect as much of as possible. This is maybe the only completely credible type of love; all other varieties are suspect, unreliable, temporary, with questionable motives, outcomes that are foregone, disappointing.
Recently she came to the realization that she preferred the company of children and dogs to grown-up humans. Vastly. It’s an uncomfortable thing to know about yourself, especially the dog part. Ariel forced herself to examine this, and realized that the things she loved about dogs—their unquestioning loyalty and unrestrained affection, their delight in play, in running around for the sheer joy of running around, their utter lack of self-awareness—these are all the best aspects of little children. The more her own child grew, the more she missed that innocence. Gone forever.
“Okay. But Ariel, why on earth do you now have a goat?”
*
Cyrus the neighbor had purchased Fletcher the goat to keep the company of Shadow the horse, who seemed to be depressed, but it turned out that the horse’s lethargy and lack of appetite were due not to ennui but to equine infectious anemia virus, and Shadow died just weeks after Fletcher arrived, and then Cyrus died a few months later, leaving the goat all alone, the mere thought of which made Ariel weep.
“Are you kidding? You’re asking me if you can adopt that moron’s goat?”
This was dead Cyrus’s ex-wife on the phone from Scottsdale. They’d divorced two decades ago, after their kids had left home, when they admitted that they hated each other.
“Yes, that’s what I’m asking.”
This was apparently the funniest thing the old woman had ever heard. “No,” she said, when she was finally able to bring the hilarity under control. “I want to travel six thousand miles round-trip to collect my ignoramus of an ex-husband’s orphaned goat to live with me. In my one-bedroom condo. In a retirement community.”
“I see. Then—”
“He’ll be my pickleball partner.”
“Okay, thanks. I’ll send the paperwork as soon as I can.”
“Paperwork? Are you insane?” Then she hung up on Ariel, who related the conversation to Cyrus’s estate lawyer Jerry, who wasn’t really an estate lawyer, and didn’t want to deal with this—not Cyrus’s estate, and definitely not Cyrus’s orphaned goat.