Kept Animals Page 20

  Wade wrapped the top of Chap’s tail, showing he’d at least been taught something about the process beforehand.

  Adler came with a twitch then, not speaking to Tomás, but just moving in, silently telling him to hand over Chap’s lead and step aside. He pinched the mare’s top lip and looped the chain around it, turning, the metal gripping her freshly clipped mouth, but the mare didn’t flinch. Even with Cosmo bellowing in the paddock outside now, his hooves scoring the walls.

  “He’s got skill there,” Gus said.

  “No,” Joy said. “He sedated her.”

  Gus looked the mare over again. “He’d have said something. Don’t you think?”

  Joy shook her head, rolling her eyes at him.

  The mare was relieving herself, her hind legs spread, her urine falling in a great gush to the rubberized floor. Her instincts were functioning well enough, anyway.

  “We’re ready,” Adler said, hollering toward the holding pen. Then he motioned for Wade, handing him Chap’s lead, showing him where to stand to keep ahold of her—her lead and her twitch.

  “Un-fucking-believable,” Joy said. “You’re not gonna say nothing?”

  “Tomás is nearby,” Gus said.

  And then Cosmo’s Waltz was coming in, a thunderstorm, changing the air around them, his neck coiled with rolling muscles.

  “He ain’t real,” Joy said.

  Joy hadn’t seen the videos Gus had watched, hadn’t understood how much horse he was. And yet Gus’s thoughts had also been reduced to windblown scraps: That horse. This foal. Hot damn. Adler gestured to Tomás to pull Chap’s tail aside and Tomás did, as Adler steered Cosmo to the back of her and everything beyond the stallion and the mare seemed arrested in time. Cosmo reared back and came down onto Chap, one of his front hooves on each of her shoulders. Tomás stepped back. Billy dropped her hobbled front leg to the ground, so she could bear the weight on top of her. There was some alarm in the round bowl of the mare’s eye now, wanting to know what stallion was on her. He hadn’t nuzzled her neck or put his head to her face, the way horses will in the wild. He hadn’t asked. He was thrusting into her. Joy grabbed hold of Gus’s wrist and Gus saw the stallion’s teeth were bared at the crest of the mare’s shoulders, with no neck leather on her, no one stopping him, the stallion still rocking over her, until, finally, he cried out. Wade jumped back, scared.

  “It’s all right,” Adler said, smiling. “Means he’s done.”

  Cosmo went rag doll limp on top of her. Adler clucked at him, and in his own sweet time Cosmo eased himself back down and off her again. Tomás looked at Gus and he felt the relief billowing between them. They’d done it. They’d bred Chap and there was a perfectly good chance of it taking. Sonja. He wanted Sonja to know.

  Adler started walking Cosmo toward the door they’d brought him from, passing Chaparral. And Wade released the twitch. Too soon. The mare craned her head and took a hank of the stallion’s salt-white tail in her teeth. Of course, the stallion spun around then, shaking Adler off like water from a wet dog’s coat. Free, the stallion reared back and his front hooves came down—shining silver: his shoes had been left on. One hoof striking the mare’s right eye, the other drawing a slanted line of flesh from her shoulder. Adler and Billy had their hands waving in the stallion’s face. Tomás had thrown an arm in front of Wade, protecting him, pushing him into the wall.

  “What the fuck,” Wade said, looking at Tomás’s hand on him. “Don’t touch me.”

  “Why the hell did you let her go?” Tomás said.

  “You left shoes on him!” Joy was hollering.

  They’d cornered the stallion. His nostrils blowing misty puffs that hung in the air then dissipated. The mare was furiously blinking, her eye flooding with blood.

  “She’s a piece-of-shit horse,” Wade said. “Fucking inbred piece-of-shit horse.”

  Gus hadn’t moved. Joy was tending to the mare and Gus was held fast to the bench, as if his steering wheel were still smashed against his chest.

  “I’ll get the vet,” Adler said.

  * * *

  VIVIAN DROPPED INTO the pleather booth and set her feet up on the table. She hadn’t just barged in, though Rory had her back pressed up against the counter like Vivian was a cat burglar come to take something (meow). “You got anything to drink? I’m parched.”

  “Like, water?” Rory asked.

  “Um, no, like vodka.”

  Carmen was at the house with an army-size cleaning team, indiscriminately clearing out Everett’s debris, Windexing away the ghosts (worth a try anyway). Besides, it was Monday and Rory didn’t have to work and here, Vivian was figuring, they could hang out until whenever it was a bar shift ended. Vivian had thoughtfully waited, walking the bridge only after Mona’s Chrysler had pulled away. But there was a van parked at the end of the driveway, an old dry-cleaning van with a faded logo that had been painted over.

  “There isn’t a lot left,” Rory said, pulling the bottle of vodka from the freezer.

  “I’ll refill it, promise. Come on. Just one drink.”

  It was the first day that felt like fall, a crisp biting wind blowing off the ocean, tossing through the canyon pass, dancing leaves around. It seemed a betrayal of Charlie. The seasons carrying on without him. And now the longer Vivian sat in this house the colder she got. The walls were paper thin, the windows single pane, the floors without automatic heating coils (what an asshole she was). Rory was dropping ice cubes into her glass.

  Vivian went and pulled a crocheted blanket from the living room couch. “This okay? Just a little chilly in here.” She wanted to cry. It had been building all day long. A wind threw a branch against the kitchen window and Rory’s head snapped around to see it. “Are you nervous about me being here?” Vivian asked. “That your mom might come home early?”

  “No,” Rory said. “I mean, that was just the wind—” She held out the glass of vodka and Vivian drank it (cheap as paint thinner).

  “Even if your mom did walk in, wouldn’t she just lose her mind to see me sitting here? You taking my picture? Now, that would be an interview the tabloid magazines would pay for.”

  Rory wasn’t laughing. She was pouring a second glass of vodka (a plot twist!). She took a tentative sip and disgust rucked her face.

  “Are you okay?” Vivian asked.

  Rory nodded “Yeah, fine.”

  Vivian stepped closer until she was pressing up against Rory. She took her glass and ran it up the inside of Rory’s arm. Vivian often did this with just her fingers before she kissed her. Like opening the petals of a flower. But now Rory was turning away. “What’s wrong? Do you want me to go?”

  “No,” Rory said. “It’s not that—”

  “Well, spit it out.” Vivian stepped back.

  “This girl at school—she called me a homo. Rory homo.” She took a shaky sip.

  “You need ice,” Vivian said. “The colder it is, the easier it goes down.”

  “Am I a homo?” Rory asked.

  Vivian went to the freezer, which smelled of celery somehow, the walls thick with frost. “That girl’s an idiot,” she said, twisting the ice tray, cracking out the last two cubes. Rory was staring out the window, at the trees, contorted in the wind. “Hey,” Vivian said, dropping the ice into Rory’s glass. “You with me?”

  Rory drank. “That is better,” she said. She had been futzing with her camera when Vivian walked in and she’d abandoned it on the kitchen counter, the strap hanging precariously over the edge (easily snagged and dropped to the floor). She was looking at Vivian, expectantly, her lips still wet. Sometimes Rory was awkward when aiming at provocative, but Vivian kissed her. She kept kissing her, sliding her hand into the waistband of her jeans, waiting for that catch in her throat, the change in the color of her cheeks. Vivian wasn’t thinking of Teddy again. “Have you ever been with a boy?” she asked. How odd that she’d not thought to ask this before.

  Rory’s eyes snapped open. “A boy?”

  “Yeah,” Vivia
n said, stepping back. She picked up the bottle of vodka and topped off her glass.

  “Um, no,” Rory said, wiping strands of her hair out of her face. “I mean, not yet.”

  “You’re lucky,” Vivian said. “Boys are trouble. You never know what they’re thinking, not really, not beyond sex.” She was biting down on the last of her ice. “Besides, boys can get you pregnant, too. So there’s that.”

  “Right,” Rory said.

  “I got pregnant,” Vivian said. “Once. Have I told you that?” She hadn’t meant to; she’d never told anyone. But that pressure she’d been feeling all day, this brisk fall air that seemed to be taking Charlie further and further away from her, and now this, a nick in the hide of her.

  “Really?” Rory asked. “When?”

  “I was fourteen, going on fifteen.” She’d never even told Teddy and now here she was telling Rory. “My mom figured it out. I’d barely realized it myself when she put her hand on my stomach and tipped my chin up and said, ‘This is going away.’ Just like that.”

  Vivian was crying. Not sobbing, but the memory itself seemed slicked with tears, a family on the inside of a rain-splattered window. That scene in Caleb’s Honor, the role that got Daddy his supporting Oscar nomination, where the camera is on the outside of the house and all you can hear is the thunder but through the wobbly streaks of the rain-drenched windowpane you see him yelling at his teenage son (and the Oscar goes to … the rain machine).

  “My mom had been trying to get pregnant. Injecting herself with all these shots, throwing up half of everything she ate. And then there I was, knocked up, without even realizing. Do you have cigarettes? I’d actually smoke one.” And more to drink. There must be more.

  Rory was already in the living room, lifting and dropping cushions, digging in a handbag.

  “Here!” she shouted, coming back into the room, a half-crushed pack of Lucky Strikes in her hand.

  She shook one out, lit it, and handed it to Vivian. Rory seemed newly cautious, having glimpsed the wiring of Vivian, the internal explosives (boom!). “I shouldn’t have told you any of that,” Vivian said.

  “But you trust me,” Rory said.

  There was white wine, a half bottle left, in the door of the fridge. A metal twist cap. She drank all of it, standing in the light of the fridge, then, realizing what she really wanted, she turned to Rory. “Take my picture,” she said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Never more,” Vivian said.

  Rory removed her lens cap, adjusted the exposure. She lifted the camera to her eye.

  Vivian never needed direction from Rory. She never needed to be told how to pose. She tipped the wine bottle back, showing her profile, bending her knee. Always, Mommy had told her, bend one knee. Click. She turned toward Rory, one arm across the refrigerator’s open door, the wine bottle between her fingers, the blanket draped over her arms, the lit cigarette dangling from her mouth. She had no idea if any of Rory’s pictures had even turned out. She didn’t care. It wasn’t about the finished product, but about these moments, with this girl seeing her. This girl after all those leering men, hoping, scrambling to catch her in a moment of weakness, and now, even now, she got to feel strong. “My dad doesn’t know,” Vivian said, stepping toward Rory’s lens. “My mom made me promise. She said that Daddy didn’t need to know. I thought she was worried about bad press, about Bobby—”

  “Why Bobby?” Rory asked from behind the camera, shooting one after another.

  “He used to say I was Daddy’s best asset, that I kept people interested in us. Anyway, I thought she didn’t want Daddy knowing because he tells Bobby everything, but then she said she didn’t want Daddy thinking any less of me.” Vivian stopped, looking at the end of the cigarette. “Why do people do this?” She dropped the cigarette into the emptied wine bottle. “My mom got pregnant with Charlie a month after that.”

  “I’m sorry,” Rory said, putting the camera down.

  “About which part?” Vivian asked.

  “All of it,” Rory said.

  “Why’d you stop taking my picture?” Vivian asked, sniffling behind the blanket.

  “I thought you wanted me to.”

  Vivian shook her head. She turned and ran the water in the sink, lifting palmfuls to her face. Standing back up, the sun having dipped below the canyon wall, she could see herself in the window glass, her transparent self. Click. “I think I wanted Charlie even more than my mother did. I’d been alone with my parents for so long.” She turned back to Rory, what she could see of her. Click. “I held him the day he was born and he opened his eyes and they were these dark pools. Carmen says he was a new soul, that he’d never been here before. That he’ll come back. Do you believe in that?” Rory was nodding behind the body of the camera. “I was glad when we moved here. I wanted the quiet, to be home with my mom. With Charlie—” Someone was screaming. Somewhere behind Rory. Click. “There’s a woman,” Vivian said. She was running down the driveway from the house above.

  “Sonja,” Rory said.

  “Sonja?” Vivian knew the pitch of this scream, the look in this woman’s eyes. Someone was hurt.

  Then this Sonja was in the house, having swung through the screen door, panting, coming up short at the sight of Vivian there. “Dios mio,” Sonja said.

  “Call an ambulance,” Rory said. Then she was gone.

  * * *

  THE WOUND ABOVE Chap’s eye was down to the bone. The vet had Chap on her side, sedated, and had stanched the bleeding. The wound to her shoulder wasn’t as deep, but the hair was likely to grow back white, an untrue suggestion about her temperament and care to any future judge. Tomás applied the ointment. Joy was at the mare’s neck, ready to pin her still if she started to toss against the vet’s suturing. Gus had fallen back against the stall wall. He’d tried to squat down and help, only to end up with his head in his hands. They weren’t going to be able to transport her, not today, not with this tranquilizer in her system and this trauma. The vet kept shaking his head. “Please quit doing that,” Gus finally said. “You’re giving me heart palpitations, for crying out loud.”

  The vet laughed. Gus hadn’t meant to amuse him. “Now, now,” the vet said. “I’ve seen worse.” He was a pear-shaped man with a set of bifocals at the end of his nose and a pair of sunglasses hanging from a beaded chain against his chest. “Cosmo hasn’t stood for a mare in months. Only natural he’d be as worked up as he was.”

  “So might you have recommended removing his shoes?” Joy demanded.

  The vet looked over his glasses at her; he’d never call out his meal ticket.

  “Course,” Joy said, and spat into the shavings.

  The drugs had Chap’s eye rolled back, revealing the milky gray beneath the iris. The stall they’d laid her out in was breathtakingly big. A running water system in the trough, a polished copper grain dispenser, and rubber matting even here, beneath the shavings.

  “Wasn’t Cosmo who started the trouble anyway,” Wade said.

  When Adler had gone for the vet, Wade had followed after him, a meek shadow, but here he was again, renewed, his head held up like a rooster’s.

  “That how you remember it?” Gus said.

  “The bandage here is gonna limit her sight, of course,” the vet said, as if trying to distract from the tension. Dust motes hovered in the shafts of light, equally useless.

  “Was you,” Joy said, not taking her eyes off the mare’s head. “Letting go the twitch.”

  “Has she ever worn blinders?” The vet tried again. Tomás shook his head, no. He would know. “Well, some horses travel best with blinders, but if you can give her a week’s rest before you hit the road again—”

  “He can,” Wade said.

  Gus turned to Wade. “I can, can I? Were you fixing to move in here?”

  “Well, then,” the vet went on. “The bandage and the sutures can be removed in three weeks’ time. I’ll trust you have someone decent in Los Angeles who can do this.” He said Los Angeles l
ike he was ordering in a foreign restaurant.

  “Not really,” Wade said. “But our barn will be hiring a staff vet soon enough.”

  “Our barn?” Gus was tired of whatever this was. He leaned into his cane and shifted his shoulder against the wall, fixing to get up.

  Joy stood then, too, and Tomás scooted around the other side of the mare, knowing someone had to stay ready to pin her.

  Wade threw his hair back from his face. “Change of plans. Adler’s got a horse going west and he’s putting Journey on that trailer, so you don’t have to hurry back. You can let Chap rest, visit with your sister.”

  Gus looked back at Tomás. He had his head down, staying focused with the vet, but he was listening, that much was clear. “Such a nice offer,” Gus said. “Kind of you and Adler to make that plan so quick.”

  “Well, actually, Dad bought me and Tomás flights days ago. I’ve learned enough on this trip, at Heritage anyway. Plenty of ideas to bring back for Leaning Rock. Who knows, maybe my dad will let you stay on—”

  “Let me?” Gus asked.

  “Did I forget to tell you?” Wade said. “Tomás, you didn’t mention it?”

  The mare was waking up. Tomás was stroking her neck. “Easy now,” the vet said.

  “Out with it, kid,” Joy said.

  Wade snorted at her. Gus felt his hands go tight.

  “My dad’s made an offer on Leaning Rock and—”

  “Carlotta isn’t selling,” Gus said. He could feel the turn of the earth under his feet.

  “No,” Wade said. “I guess she’s not. But with power of attorney—”

  “Bella,” Gus said. “Of course.” Bella and Robin … You know things will never be the same again… . Robin had said that and he hadn’t heard.