The Blessings of the Animals_A Novel

CHAPTER Forty

FEBRUARY BEGAN—A GRIM MONTH IN OHIO. ALONG WITH the bleak sky, endless rain, and Valentine’s Day decorations that taunted me came Ginger Avalon, with a six-horse trailer. My reprieve was over.
All the false alarms had made me hopeful. I’d fallen into the trap of thinking Moonshot wasn’t ever really leaving. My limbs filled with ice water when that trailer pulled into the drive.
Ginger had already picked up the two fillies from my parents and another of the foster horses. She was alone.
“You’re not driving all the way to Florida with a full trailer by yourself, are you?” I asked.
She laughed. “No. No way. I’ll have two staff members with me.”
“What are you going to do with him?” I asked. “He’s too old to race, right?”
She nodded as if the fact pained her. “My sister mismanaged his racing career in a big way, and now he’s gelded, to boot.” I saw in her expression what she thought of her sister’s stupidity. “But he’s so athletic. I expect he’ll have success on the show-jumping circuit.”
I tried to keep my face neutral. I didn’t tell Ginger my father called the riders on the jump circuit “cowboys,” and that he practically spat when he said it.
When Ginger clapped her hands on her jeans-clad thighs and said, “Well,” I realized I’d just been standing there, as if by freezing I could keep this moment from happening. I led her to the barn. My hands shook.
She did everything right—she didn’t hurry, she let him snuff her over, she fed him treats. I tried not to feel betrayed when he took them.
“You’ve brought him a long, long way,” she said to me, “and I thank you.”
“He’s brought me a long, long way,” I said, mortified at my tight, small voice.
“Would you ever sell him?” I blurted.
She cocked her head at me. “He’s expensive.”
“I know.”
She paused. “I know you’re attached to him. I don’t blame you a bit, but . . . he’s not for sale.”
I swallowed. “If you ever, ever change your mind, please remember me.”
“Of course.” She wrapped Moonshot’s legs for the journey, and as she led him from his paddock, he high-stepped and stretched at the unfamiliar sensation of the leg-wraps. Ginger laughed at him, but my laughter stuck in my throat.
I followed her on wooden legs as she led him to her huge, fancy trailer, where the other horses waited, munching their hay. She opened up the door for his stall—a step-up, not a ramp. I held back, standing by my broken St. Francis statue. His head had fallen off again. I picked it up and propped it back on his neck.
I stood up in time to see Moonshot balk. As Ginger tried to guide him into the trailer, he planted all four feet square. When she tapped his shoulder to urge him forward, he backed up. When she tugged on his lead rope, he reared.
Uh-oh.
I hated watching the struggle. He’d decided he was having nothing to do with it. She was horse-savvy and handled him with calm firmness, but he regressed before my eyes into the wild beast he’d been when he first arrived. He reared, he bucked, he about jerked Ginger’s arms from the sockets, he thrashed his head, he dragged her backward.
A childish part of me thought, She won’t be able to load him and she’ll say “never mind” and let me keep him. But I knew that was an impossible outcome. The battle was painful to watch.
He got as nasty as I’d ever seen him, and through it all Ginger never raised her voice or got mean. I had to admire her grace in the face of this tantrum. His fight went on for about ten hideous minutes before I watched Ginger use the tactic I’d seen my parents use on countless occasions and that always worked: when he pulled backward, she urged him to keep going backward. She tapped his chest and guided him backward all over my yard, all the way around the house. The idea was that if the horse insisted on pulling away, you made him move away from you until he was weary of it, until he was more than happy to take a step forward.
She backed him up, still speaking in a soothing, patient voice, far longer than I would’ve had the energy to keep it up.
When she backed him up to the trailer, then turned him toward his door, I could hardly believe that he still reared up and yanked her off balance rather than loading.
She paused a moment, panting. Then she backed him up some more. She walked him backward all the way down to the road and up the driveway.
When she brought him again to his trailer door, he wheeled around and kicked the side of the trailer, leaving hoofprints in the side. A horse inside whinnied.
She managed to keep hold of him, but I feared for a moment he’d drag her.
I hated this. I couldn’t stand a minute more of it.
“Ginger,” I said.
She hadn’t asked me to help her. Two people with a lead rope around his butt could probably get him on that trailer, but I admired that this wasn’t her style. I also knew that she was a smart woman—she knew I didn’t want him to leave, so she was probably not asking me to help out of respect for me. Unlike Binky asking me to carry his damn computer.
She turned to me, out of breath. Both she and the horse trembled with exhaustion. Foamy sweat flecked Moonshot’s neck and chest.
“Bring him back to his paddock,” I said. “I’ll help you after you both take a breather.”
She didn’t speak, but she did as I asked.
I brought her a bottle of water and draped a cooling sheet over Moonshot so he wouldn’t get chilled in the wintry air. “I want to show you something,” I said. I pulled his tail to the side and began running my fingers through the thick hair. “This relaxes him. He loves this.”
Ginger’s eyes widened and her lips parted. “My . . . my father did that. He always did that with his horses.”
I invited her to take my place. She did, and Moonshot visibly softened his body language as she stroked his tail.
When she went to check on the other horses in the trailer, I leaned my forehead against Moonshot’s. “All right, my friend. Enough of this silliness. This is really happening, and we have to stop pretending.”
He ground his teeth, amplified through our touching skulls.
When Ginger returned, she said with forced cheer, “Okay. Round two.”
“I’ll lead him if you like.”
Her smile faltered. “But I need to be able to handle him without you around.”
“I think,” I said, “I think once he’s away from here, he’ll be different.”
She paused, then nodded. Moonshot did his absurd high-stepping again as I led him to the yard. When we got to the trailer, he followed me on. Just like that. I felt like Judas.
Ginger closed the door behind us. I took his lead rope and tied it to the ring in the wall. A giant pile of clover hay lay before him.
He turned his head and before I could blink, he took my forearm in his mouth. He didn’t bite, he didn’t exert any pressure—he just held my arm in his teeth. I stroked his forehead with my other hand, leaning forward to kiss that crescent moon. “I know,” I whispered. “We’re not the same as we were that day, are we?”
He released my arm and clipped me on the chin with his muzzle. “Ow!” I rubbed my chin.
I leaned my forehead against his again. “Go and be brilliant, my friend. Promise?”
He began to munch his hay.
After Ginger had hauled that horse trailer away, I sat down on the cold, damp gravel. I waited for them to come back. That couldn’t really have just happened, right? He couldn’t be gone. That would be like my lungs being gone. Or my blood.
Gerald hopped over to me, butted his head against my thigh, then leaped onto St. Francis’s head, which wobbled but stayed in place. He posed there like a tripod, his tail curling over the statue’s face, giving the saint an outrageous mustache.
Moonshot was gone. I made myself say it aloud. After I did, my arm ached with phantom pain from that old wound all day.
It ached for days, as if it had just happened.
GABRIELLA GAVE ME A CARD WITH THE DR. SEUSS QUOTE “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”
I called Dubey and left a message about what had happened. He showed up about two hours later—as I was clearing the straw out of Moonshot’s stall—to take me to dinner. “We’re going on a picnic,” he said.
I looked at the gray sky, at the clouds of our breath.
He watched me and smiled. “You’ll see. Come on.”
He drove us to the University of Dayton campus, where he unfolded a blanket in an enclosed, beautiful Gothic cloister. Once again, he unpacked wine, good cheese, fresh bread, grapes. The cloister was secluded, hushed, warm. Someone practiced piano—well—nearby, and the sound seemed to tiptoe to our alcove. We sat shoulder to shoulder, leaning against a stone wall, and whispered. As I told Dubey about the morning with Ginger and Moonshot, he took my hand.
Flutters. And comfort. A combination most welcome.
When I turned my head to look at him, he kissed me.
At long last, he kissed me.
It was well worth the wait.
“I was wondering when you were going to do that,” I whispered, teasing.
He smiled. “I like to take my time.”
AFTER A LINGERING PICNIC, PUNCTUATED BY BOUTS OF kissing, we went back to the farm and walked the pastures, holding hands. Max limped along beside us. I told Dubey about Bobby’s new wife.
Dubey actually stopped walking, looking at me in disbelief. “Does this guy never learn?”
“I know! I feel so disappointed watching him make the same mistake again. Especially after telling me he didn’t think he’d ever be with anyone again. I don’t think he’s spent a total of a week alone since he left me.”
Dubey shook his head, and we resumed walking.
“I feel like my time alone has given me a lot,” I said. “The distance helped me look at myself, look at my marriage. There’s a lot my marriage taught me.”
“My marriage taught me never again, that’s for sure.”
He didn’t get it. I let the topic drop. Back at the house I thanked him for cheering a very bleak day. Light snow had begun falling, and I wondered how far Ginger would drive tonight.
“February’s just bleak in general,” Dubey said, looking up at the snowflakes.
“We should make plans for Valentine’s Day,” I said. “So the day’s not so depressing.”
He nodded, still looking at the sky. “We could do that.”
“What sounds good?”
“We’ll see.” He kissed me and left me too flustered to care that he’d evaded me yet again.
ALTHOUGH WE WENT OUT TWO MORE TIMES AND EVEN MADE exquisite, unhurried love in his sister’s guest cottage (he did indeed like to take his time, much to my delight), he slipped away from any definite plans for the holiday until it was too late to get reservations anywhere decent.
He delivered flowers to the clinic on Valentine’s Day, though—not roses—along with a card that said, “Don’t let the bastards get you down!” I smiled. I mottled. I felt the flutter.
Maybe, I told myself, maybe he’s so commitment-phobic because his divorce was so awful. He’d been damaged, he had baggage. Didn’t we all?
“You don’t,” Aurora said. “You don’t seem to be carrying all that much baggage. Not like Bobby. Have you met this new wife yet?”
I hadn’t. Gabriella had. After meeting her stepmother for the first time, Gabriella had dubbed poor Lydia “the Christian pudding maker.”
“What the hell is Christian pudding?” I asked.
“No, not Christian pudding. She’s religious. And she makes pudding.” Apparently, Lydia was very fond of banana pudding—from a box—with peanuts and vanilla wafers, something I felt fairly certain was an abomination in Bobby’s eyes.
“Oh. One more thing,” Gabby said, her voice jumping too light, too innocent, sending up red flags along my spine. “She’s allergic to dogs.”
I let this sink in. “Don’t you dare,” I said.
“Dad asked if we’d take Zuzu.”
I closed my eyes.
“I said we would.”
And so it was the week I lost a horse, I gained a dog.
OLIVE HATED LYDIA. “SHE’S AGGRESSIVE. SHE FINISHES your sentences. I hate that. She bosses him around and he takes it. And she has a huge ass.”
“Oh, stop it. I bet she does not.”
“Honest to Christ. No lie. You could serve tea off her ass.”
I asked Gabriella about that later, waiting patiently until the topic of Lydia came up without my leading. “Olive said she had a really big—”
“Butt?” Gabriella volunteered. “It’s ginormous.”
I was intrigued by this big-butted, allergic, aggressive Christian pudding maker. If she hadn’t been drunk, then this took a bit of reckless daring I couldn’t help but admire. Taking on a wildly brooding man, probably an alcoholic, with an ex-wife, an angry teenage daughter, and a frosty clan of Italian women all crossing their arms over their considerable chests. She’d sense the whore Olive called her even if no one so much as breathed it aloud in her presence.
Surely they couldn’t really have known each other for only two days.
“NO, IT WAS TWO DAYS. THEY BOTH LIVE IN DAYTON, BUT they didn’t meet until Vegas,” Mimi said as I sat in her kitchen, making plans for Olive’s wedding shower. Since it looked as though Olive and Nick were really, truly getting married, in spite of their frequent arguments and shouting matches—and since I no longer had Moonshot to keep me occupied at home—I knew I’d better get down to it and do what a maid of honor was supposed to do.
I knew Mimi would take over, but I’d made peace with that, deciding to embrace it.
I vowed to treat interactions with Mimi like a dance, like when I’d had to dance with Big David in salsa class. He was clunky, bless his generous, good-sported heart, and when he said, “I’m an oaf,” I remembered thinking, That’s it. That’s the perfect word. But if I stayed open and present and really focused on following, we could pull it off. Maybe not graceful, maybe not beautiful, but what anyone could recognize as a dance.
I decided to let Mimi lead and to be the most gracious of followers.
Mimi made me a glass of espresso, and we planned the shower while she made some “gravy.” Mimi wanted me to host the shower at the farm. I tried to convince her to have it at her house, since most of the female relatives lived in Columbus, an hour’s drive away. “Plus, won’t that be weird for everyone?” I asked her. “Since Bobby doesn’t live there anymore?”
She stopped chopping an onion and pointed the knife at me. “You belong to this family, Camden. Even if you end up marrying that f*cking Indian, you belong to this family.”
A sincere laugh escaped me, its echo bouncing in the kitchen. Mimi looked startled.
“I’m not,” I said. “I’m not marrying that f*cking Indian.”
“Oh. Well. Whatever you do, you’re Gabriella’s mother, and you belong to this family.”
I took it. Just follow. Just follow. “Thank you,” I said.
She continued chopping, then asked, almost shyly, “What happened to the Indian?”
I looked out her window at the gray mounds of snow melting in the rain. “It just . . . it just didn’t work out. I’m not looking to replace my marriage quite so quickly.”
“Don’t take too long about it or you’ll wind up old and alone like me.”
I bit my lip. Just follow. “Old and alone sure beats lonely with the wrong guy.”
Her expression made it clear that she thought I was nuts. F*cking nuts, if she’d said it aloud.
DUBEY CONTACTED COLLEEN JEWELL ABOUT ANOTHER salsa class—he said that was just the thing I needed to distract me from missing Moonshot. He called the Davids, Hank and Helen, Nick and Olive, and Aurora, inviting them back. He asked me to be his partner again. “So, I didn’t scare you off?” I joked. “Trying to pin you down for a Valentine’s date?”
“I don’t think there’s much of anything you could do to scare me off,” he said.
Again, the flutter.
“So,” I said, “am I allowed to say I’m dating you?”
“You’re allowed to say whatever you want.”
“But are you okay with that?”
“I’m okay with what we’re doing. More than okay.” That made me happy. But then he said, “I don’t think we need to call it anything in particular.”
ONE DAY I GOT AN E-MAIL FROM GINGER AVALON. JUST seeing it sent me into a frenzy—had she changed her mind? Was she willing to sell him? Oh, shit, where would I get that kind of money? But the e-mail was to let me know Moonshot was doing well, to thank me for sharing the secret of his tail, and to include two photos of him jumping incredible heights. God, he was gorgeous. I was pleased to see it was Ginger herself on his back, looking like a child atop his magnificent size. She had good form, and Moonshot had his ears forward, clearly enjoying himself.
It took a prayer in my barn lot and a long walk with Muriel to truly accept that Moonshot was gone, that he wasn’t coming back.
IT NEVER OCCURRED TO ME, UNTIL THE SHOWER, THAT Bobby’s Whore—as the Binardi women called her—would be at the shower. Thank God Olive called me the night before. “Look, Mom and I thought, as a peace offering within the family, we should invite her. We never thought she’d say yes! Why the hell would she say yes?”
“Of course she’d say yes!” I snapped. “Why wouldn’t she want to be part of the family?”
“I’m so, so, sorry,” Olive said. “I owe you big-time.”
I looked out the window at Luna and Biscuit grazing side by side. “Stop worrying,” I said. “This is your day. None of this is your problem, and it’s going to be fine.” Sometimes you have to say what the other person needs to hear even if every word of it is untrue.
This woman. This Lydia. She was now a part of my daughter’s life. And I would do anything to make life easier for my daughter. That’s what I told myself. This wasn’t about Mimi, or even Olive, anymore. This was about Gabriella.
THE MARCH MORNING OF THE SHOWER WAS CHILLY BUT blindingly sunny. When Mimi first widened her eyes at the kitchen, it took me a moment to recognize that it was new to her. I had trouble remembering it before my new colors, including the turquoise Gabby had coined “hope blue.”
I’d missed the aunts and cousins, which surprised me.
Max was calm in a crowd, but Zuzu was underfoot and excitable. I cringed when she left a glob of drool on mean Aunt Jen’s leg but couldn’t help but smile when Jen didn’t notice. Gabby caught my eye and said, “I’ll watch Zuzu, Mom.”
As I got everyone situated with drinks, they all were warm and welcoming to me.
Then Lydia arrived.
The shift was subtle, but it was there. I felt outside myself, looking on, as the family threw their love and attention her way and I became the hired help.
This is for Gabriella. Just follow. Just follow.
Lydia, by the way, was not what I’d expected. What had I expected? A young bombshell, like Zayna, but with a giant butt? Lydia was older and shorter than me. The only feature I envied was her curly hair. The red curls were streaked through with white, though, and the effect brought to mind a strawberry roan horse. She was wide in the hips but by no means “ginormous.” I almost caught myself saying aloud, Her ass is not that big.
She walked in with Olive, and a hush fell over the room before I called out, “The guest of honor!” and prompted everyone to applaud.
I waited until the focus was somewhere else and introduced myself to her. “I’m Camden,” I said, holding out a hand.
She shook my hand. “Thank you,” she said, and I swallowed the urge to ask, For what?
“It’s nice to meet you,” I said.
She cocked her head and looked at me with narrowed eyes that said, You do not mean that.
I laughed, caught. So did she. And there it was, I liked her. A little.
Whenever anyone needed anything, Mimi called, “Camden? Fran needs a drink.” “Camden? Louisa needs more ice.” “Camden? Are there more lemon bars? The platter is empty.”
“Jesus, do you want me to slap her?” Olive asked, getting her aunt Louisa more ice. Olive turned to Lydia and said, “She’s in rare form today,” referring to her mother.
When Olive left the room, I said to Lydia, “Nothing rare about it,” and we laughed.
Helen and Aurora helped me wait on everyone, and we were surprised when Lydia pitched in, too. Lydia shot me a worried look when Mimi told her to sit next to her. Helen and Aurora were at Olive’s table. I’d been delegated to a table with deaf Aunt Lucy and mean Aunt Jen.
Before I’d finished my lunch, Mimi snapped her fingers to get my attention (“What are you, a dog?” Aurora huffed later) and held out her empty plate to me. “You should clear plates, doll, and get coffee going.” This is for Gabby. Just follow. I pictured myself escaping to the barn later, to comb Moonshot’s tail. I felt socked in the gut to remember Moonshot is gone.
After lunch, as we arranged ourselves for the torturous Opening of the Gifts, Mimi passed out a little blank book and instructed every guest to write some “marriage advice” for Olive.
Olive called me to sit next to her. I had to record who had given her which present. The gifts were endless, the ritual tedious. Gabriella took Zuzu upstairs. Helen and Aurora made up some reason to busy themselves in the kitchen. I envied them.
When the advice book made its way to me, I welcomed the distraction, flipping through the book for entertainment. But the “advice” was so sad. Page after page of “Hide the checkbook,” “Keep your own account,” “No checkbook, no sex,” and bullshit like that. “Don’t give in early or you’ll give in forever.” “Be the boss.” “Get your way, but make it seem like it’s his idea.” I looked at the women’s faces before me. Did they believe that? This was the marriage advice they’d offer their niece, their cousin, their daughter?
I wrote, “Always be honest, kind, and generous with each other. Never take each other for granted. Go to bed with the promise ‘More fun tomorrow.’ ”
I held up the book, “Anyone still need to write advice?”
Aunt Jen smirked. “You have marriage advice? Consider the source, Olive.”
There was a slight inhalation from the group, but Olive made that smoke-ring mouth and said, “I’d treasure anything my best friend has to offer me. Consider the source? She made it eighteen years with my piece-of-shit brother, so I think she knows a little something!”
Jen and Olive exchanged profanity. Mimi yelled at them both. Gabby came downstairs to see what was going on. Zuzu barked at the skirmish. Helen stood in the kitchen doorway, her mouth agape as if she were watching the Jerry Springer Show. Old Lucy shouted, “What did she say?”
Mimi said, “You’ve had too much goddamn wine in the middle of the afternoon! I knew we shouldn’t have wine. Have some f*cking manners, for Christ’s sake!”
Lydia stood up and said, in a surprisingly deep, authoritative voice, “Ladies. Come on. Let’s remember what this occasion is for. This is Olive’s day. Let’s end on a nicer note.”
Everyone glared at her but stopped shouting. In the silence, the donkey brayed down in the barn. Several women jumped and clutched their hearts. “What the hell is that?” Mimi asked.
When Luna brayed again and Zuzu howled in response, a laugh rumbled up from deep in my belly. I couldn’t stop. It was that same kind of laughter that possesses you in church or in school—the harder you try to stop, the more helpless you are. I shook with it as the party broke up.
The women formed a procession to kiss Olive’s cheeks. Jen left first and waited in her car for the other women she’d driven with. Muriel clambered onto the hood of the car. Jen kept honking to try to get the goat off, but it made everyone inside think she was trying to hurry everyone up. Mimi went outside and shouted at her.
In the kitchen, Lydia whispered, “Oh, my God.”
I wiped my eyes, took a deep breath, and got my giggling under control enough to say, “Welcome to the Binardi family.”
“It’s like The Sopranos without all the guns.”
That did it. Laughter took me again. Gabriella joined me. “You haven’t seen the guns?” we asked.