The Blessings of the Animals_A Novel

CHAPTER Eleven

HELEN

HELEN WENT INTO EMERGENCY MODE AT THE SOUND OF Cami’s voice. Her friend was about to crash, and she wanted to do all in her power to soften the landing.
Helen knew Cami would be better off for crashing. Knowing Cami the way she did, though, she expected Cami to fight it. That was just delaying the inevitable, but she knew better than to say that to Cami. Words like that may as well be a triple dog dare.
As she drove to the farm—after hitting the grocery for comfort food—she wished there was a way to make Cami believe how much better life would get. Because it would, Helen knew. She’d been in Cami’s shoes.
She should’ve told Cami that before now, but it wouldn’t have been valuable until this moment. Just like Cami waiting for the moment Helen needed to know about her former life of starvation. A few years ago, one of Holly’s best friends was battling an eating disorder and Helen told Cami, “I don’t get it. I want to smack this girl and say, ‘Just eat. How hard can it be?’ ”
Cami said, “Actually, it can be really hard.”
That was a turning point in their friendship. Helen remembered Cami saying, “Okay, when I tell people this I see the ‘oh, she’s crazy’ light go on in their eyes. Believe me, I know it’s crazy.” Helen thought Cami was so brave that day, advising her on how to help Holly’s friend, taking her chances that Helen wouldn’t think she was a freak. She’d given Helen a gift that day, dusting off a skeleton from her past—a fragile skeleton at that—and entrusting Helen with its care.
Helen had always wanted to give Cami something back. Tonight might be the night she could.
Of course Cami wasn’t in the house. Helen unloaded the groceries, then wandered down to the barn just in time to see the devil horse lurch toward the hay Cami’d just given him. Helen gasped at the obvious stagger. “Damn,” she said. “Lucifer is lame.”
Cami didn’t even turn around when she said, “You can’t call him that.”
Cami’s forearms dangled over the fence, so Helen checked out the wound from Saturday—the purple-and-green bruises, the actual teeth marks now nearly black.
Cami turned to her and Helen saw betrayal glittering in her friend’s eyes. “I felt sorry for Bobby,” Cami said. “I would’ve done anything for him. I feel like such an idiot.”
“Oh, sweetie. You’re no idiot.” Helen hugged her. She wanted to encourage Cami to keep talking, to keep letting it out, but before she could, Cami switched topics, as if afraid.
Cami gestured to the devil horse. “If one of us held his halter, the other could lift that leg.”
Helen saw that she was serious, then shook her head. “You’re insane. You never change,” she said, but didn’t try to argue. She just opened the gate when Cami handed her a lead rope. Helen would prefer not to be the one near the horse’s mouth, but knew Cami was the one with the skills necessary to diagnose that foot.
The horse ground his teeth as they approached, a hideous, skin-contracting sound. “It sounds like he’s sharpening them,” Helen joked.
“Tie his mouth shut,” Cami said. She was probably trying to joke, too, but Helen wasn’t sure if Cami was brave or crazy to risk another bite so soon. Helen wrapped the chain of the lead rope over the horse’s nose and pulled it tight, ready to apply painful pressure if needed.
Cami tried to pick up the hoof in question, but the devil horse resisted. Helen held his nose still while Cami leaned into his shoulder to sway him off balance. He finally gave in and lifted the hoof. Helen immediately felt the weight as he then leaned into the lead rope.
“I can feel the heat through the dirt packed in his hoof,” Cami said. “Shit. I can’t believe I didn’t bring a hoof pick!”
Helen felt like she held up the horse’s entire body weight as she watched Cami scrape out what dirt she could with her fingernails. “He might have an abscess,” Cami said. “Yep, I think right at the base of his frog.” Helen wondered, as she always did, why on earth that V-shaped mark on the bottom of a horse’s hoof was called a frog. She might’ve asked, but she didn’t want to do anything to prolong the torture of her arms straining to hold up the horse’s many pounds.
He groaned a low note that ended in a whimper.
When Cami released his leg and stepped away, Helen let go and shook out her arms.
Cami brushed the dirt off her hands. “Tomorrow we should do this again, ready with a hoof pick. We could soak him. While he’s like this, I might be able to clean him up.”
She reached in her jeans pocket and produced a sugar cube.
“Do you always have sugar in your pants?” Helen asked.
“Sugar, dog treats. You don’t want to know.”
Helen studied her friend’s drawn face while Cami stared at the horse before them. “When you’re ready,” Helen said, touching her shoulder. “I’ll tell you about some of the truths I found.”
Cami looked at her with bloodshot, hollow eyes. “Truths?” She frowned. “About what?”
“About divorce.”
Cami blinked. Oh, sweetie, your eyes. You need sleep.
“You were divorced?” Cami asked.
Helen nodded. A million emotions flashed over Cami’s face. Pissed she didn’t know this, disbelieving, skeptical, then . . . baffled, Helen thought.
“Hank’s not your first husband?”
Helen laughed. “Nope. And he’s not my second husband either.”
“Whoa, wait. You were divorced twice?”
That wasn’t really fair of her, but she laughed again. “No, no, no. Married once, divorced once. Hank and I aren’t married.”
Cami’s mouth hung open. “H-how did I not know this?” she finally mustered.
“Please don’t take it personally that I never told you.” Helen loved this woman. They’d vacationed together, with Hank, Bobby, and the girls. Cami had every right to feel confused and a little miffed. “It’s not the sort of thing that just comes up, you know? When I first met you, I wasn’t going to say, ‘Hi, I’m Helen, and I had a husband before Hank,’ any more than you were going to say, ‘Hi. I’m Cami. I used to be anorexic, but I’ve been fine now for decades.’ ”
When Helen took Cami by the shoulders, everything under Cami’s skin jangled. Maybe it was too early to tell her anything. “I’ve been where you are,” Helen said, as gently as she could. “My husband left me in a way very similar to what Bobby did. Don’t go holding your breath that Bobby is going to figure it out and be able to explain his insanity to you. Because you know what? Skip hasn’t really gotten his act together yet, and that was, like, almost twenty years ago.”
Helen saw the flicker of disbelief and curiosity at Skip. But Cami didn’t ask.
“Do you still see him? Skip?” Cami said it as if to try out the name.
“I kinda have to on occasion. He’s the father of my only child.”
“He’s Holly’s father?” Her voice was so shrill, the devil horse snorted.
Helen tried hard not to laugh, but, really, Cami acted like Helen had just told her she had a hidden third arm or could fly. “Hank’s acted more like her father. Holly adores him, but she was four when I met Hank.”
Cami kept staring at her, which was getting a little creepy. She said, “You know, I heard you sometimes refer to ‘Holly’s dad,’ but I’d always assumed it was just a silly semantic trick you played when you were pissed at Holly or Hank.”
“Look, I’m telling you now because I think it’s important for you to know that I’ve been where you are. And it gets better.”
Cami shook her head. “I thought you were one who got it right.” She sounded so sad.
“I did get it right . . . eventually.” Did she ever. She’d struck gold with Hank. “Don’t get all swept up in that ‘we failed’ bullshit. I swear, one day I’m going to write a book about my good divorce. My divorce made four lives happier, maybe five if you wanna count Skip’s new wife.”
Cami looked at her as if every word she’d said was bullshit, but when she spoke she didn’t contradict anything; she just asked, “Why aren’t you guys married?”
Helen hated that question. “You know, no one ever asks, ‘Why are you married?’ of married couples, so why am I always expected to have some brilliant answer? Most married people have no damn clue why they’re married.” Helen shrugged and admitted, “I’m afraid of the marriage jinx.” Before Cami could ask, she explained, “Skippy and I were great until we got married and then it turned into a disaster. I see it happen day in and day out in my line of work. I want Hank to be with me because he chooses to be, not because he has to.” She pulled her ponytail out of its band and redid it. Hank chose to be with her, and every single day she counted that as a monumental, joyous blessing. “That may sound stupid, but it’s the honest-to-God truth.”
“It doesn’t sound stupid,” Cami said. “The only thing that sounds stupid is—”
She didn’t finish. Helen knew she wanted to say, The only thing that sounds stupid is your ex-husband’s name. But she didn’t. She would, Helen knew. A whinny interrupted them. The devil horse shook a mouthful of hay, doing this crazy head toss that rattled his teeth.
“He needs a name,” Cami said, and it took Helen a moment to realize Cami had jumped topics again, back to the horse.
“He has a name,” Helen reminded her. “I just haven’t had any luck getting his papers. His owners are real a*sholes. They’re fighting to get him back. Him and all the others we took.”
Cami shot Helen a look. “Please. They’re not getting him back.” She leaned on the fence again. “I need to call him something. Something to do with that crescent moon on his face.”
“Well, getting him handleable is a moonshot, that’s for sure.”
“Moonshot?”
“It means getting to the moon, you know, a snowball’s chance in hell. So, see? There’s still the devil connection.”
“Moonshot. I like it. That’s what we’ll call you, beautiful.”
He ground his teeth, the horrendous noise as if he chewed on rocks.
“I guess that’s his opinion of that,” Helen said, laughing. She stopped laughing, though, looking at her friend’s haggard face. “You need to slow down. That’s today’s piece of advice, okay?” She put a hand on Cami’s back. “You must sleep. You look like a madwoman, my friend. Get your cute doctor friend to write you a prescription for something.”
“I want to sleep,” she said, and Helen heard the gravel deep in her throat. “But my heart races. My brain races. My arm hurts. I—” She stopped, then said with a bit of brightness, “Cute doctor friend is coming to town next week. I’ll see what he says.”
“I lied,” Helen said. “I have another piece of advice for today. Are you listening? Post-breakup sex may seem like a good idea at the time, but it really just confuses a lot of the issues.”
“What? You think I’m going to sleep with Vijay?”
“Hello? Who wouldn’t want to sleep with Vijay? Plus, I’ve seen you two together.”
“The last time you saw us together we were both married!”
“Mmm hmm. And now you’re both not.”
Cami stared at Moonshot but then turned with a genuine smile and said, teasing, “Hmm. That thought gives me an appetite. I feel hungry.”
Helen laughed. “Good. Indulge whatever craving you have. What are you hungry for?”
Cami said, as suggestively as she could, “Curry.”
Helen pushed her. “Seriously. What do you want?” Let’s see if I know you like I think I do.
Cami slumped her shoulders. “What I really want is the grilled calamari at Tanti Baci.”
“Crap. Okay, what other cravings do you have?”
She thought a moment. “Pizza,” she said. “Or ice cream.”
“Or both,” Helen encouraged. “I brought both.”
And, good for Cami, she did eat both, along with copious amounts of wine, while they were stretched out in front of the fireplace. Max and Gingersnap curled up with them, but that new three-legged cat sulked on the back of the couch.
Cami told her about the budget conversation with Bobby. Helen listened, thinking how much Bobby had in common with Skippy. He’d left while Helen was frying pork chops, so to this day, that sizzling could bring her back to that hideous moment. Holly had had the chicken pox, and they’d just put down their blind, arthritic fourteen-year-old Labrador that very day. That’s when Skippy decided to skip. His timing was golden. The pork chops burned in the skillet, the smoke alarm went off, and the house stank for days.
Helen leaned back on the pillows and said, “They break your heart, don’t they? They’re so pathetic. Skippy was the same way.”
Cami sat up and said, “Tell me his name wasn’t really Skippy!”
Helen laughed. “Finally! Of course it wasn’t. His name was Stephen. But when we were splitting up, he was being such a baby, just a total ass. Doing things like taking the ice cube trays out of the house because they were his before we were married and hiding the remote to the TV. I was so tired of being angry, you know? It was taking up all my energy and time, being pissed at him. And I decided one day, after I’d come home to find that he’d taken the shower curtain away because he was the one who picked it out so therefore it was ‘his,’ that he was behaving like a child, so I should give him a child’s name. When he did crappy things like send my mail back—because I’d stopped using his name, so he’d mark it ‘unknown’—I could just shake my head and say, ‘Oh, that Skippy.’ It’s hard to be mad at a Skippy, you know? Stephen I could be mad at. Murderous raging take-a-hatchet-to-his-car mad. Skippy was absurd and easier to take.”
“You are a genius. That’s brilliant. So, what’s a baby name for Bobby? Butthead?”
Helen laughed but shook her head. “You wouldn’t call a child butthead.”
“Boo-boo?”
“That’s better. Not it, but better.”
“Binky.”
“Perfect.”
“Binky.” Cami tested it. “Did I tell you that big, stupid, clueless Binky asked me to help him carry his computer out of our house?”
Helen choked on her wine. “Tell me that you didn’t.”
“Hell, no. I should’ve though. I should’ve picked it up and heaved it down the stairs.”
“Attagirl.” Good, good for you. The anger was good. The anger would help.
“F*cking Binky.”
Helen burst out laughing. “He asked you to help him carry his computer? Really? Like, oh, by the way, I don’t want to be married to you anymore, but, hey, could ya help me carry my stuff out of the home we shared?” Helen laughed so hard, the wine burned in her nose and she had to wipe tears from under her eyes. Cami laughed, too. “That is such a Binky thing to do!” Helen said.
For a split second, Helen saw the laughter leave Cami. She watched her friend remember. Watched the sorrow and exhaustion tug down her face. Go ahead and feel it, my friend, Helen wanted to plead. Let it take you. Get it out now.
But then damn Mimi had to call and postpone the crash further.