Horse Heaven (56 page)

A
L PUT HIS HANDS
behind his back, though he knew they were no longer a danger to him, and he held Rosalind’s gaze as long as she held his. When she turned away, he looked down. He knew she knew that all his force, whatever that was, had risen up against her, a thing he had thought impossible, and he knew that she knew that it had now converted, every last molecule, from anger to shame. He said, “I need some shoes,” and he stepped past her into the bedroom, and then into his closet.

“W
ELL, LET’S SEE
,” said Sam the vet. He was at Home Depot, in the plumbing department. The young man, say twenty-five, that he was talking to looked rather new on the job, willing but nervous. Sam sniffed and rubbed his cheek with his hand in that old-Vermonter way. “Yes,” said the young man.

“How about a nice four-inch PVC connector, about twelve inches long,
you know, for a septic connection.” Sam could see these out of the corner of his eye, and sure enough, the young man went over to the bin and pulled one out. “Oh, that’s good,” said Sam. “That one-and-a-half-inch joint there. Isn’t that it? Why don’t you measure that?”

The young man got out his tape measure and measured the diameter of the offshoot. He said, “That’s right, sir. One and a half inches.”

“Good. Here we go.” Sam pulled a length of vinyl sleeve out of the pocket of his coat and fitted it over the end of the pipe, folded it back, slipped it through, folded the other end back over the other end of the pipe. He said, “How does that look?” He held it up to the young man, who looked through it. “Fine, sir,” he said.

“Good,” said Sam. “Now, let’s see, we need a reducer for this part”—he pointed to the end of the offshoot—“and a screw-in valve. See, we have to be able to take the valve off and fill the outside of the sleeve with warm water, and then put the valve back on, and then, if it’s too tight, we have to be able to let off some of the pressure.”

“The pressure?”

“The pressure on the penis.”

“Oh.” The young man looked at him without moving, so Sam began looking through bins. He said, “You know, a valve like a valve for a bicycle tire.”

“Oh. Yes. Well, let’s see.” He turned his head, but Sam, who knew where they were because he’d done this before, walked over to a bin and picked one up. “Oh, yeah,” he said. He handed the young man the length of pipe, saying, “You hold this.” Then he began screwing the reducer and the valve into the offshoot. “There we go,” he said. “Now, you see, if you need to, you can just let a little bit of the water out, and it doesn’t hurt. All we need now is a nice tight cover for the end, so that none of the collection drips out.”

“The collection?”

“Right. But we want it soft, so that he can bump against it without hurting himself.”

“Who?”

Sam turned away with a smile, pretending not to hear this question. He found a cap for the pipe, and said, “Maybe I’ll just pad this. Got any foam rubber?”

“That would be in building supplies, sir.”

Sam took the PVC pipe out of the young man’s hands. “Well, thank you very much. I think the other things I need are probably in building supplies.” He turned away, slowly. Sometimes they didn’t ask.

But this fellow said, “Who’s going to bump against the end?” And then, “What is it?”

“What, this?” Now Sam was smiling.

The kid nodded.

“It’s an artificial vagina for a miniature horse.”

“A what?”

Sam made an effort to be loud and clear. “An ar-ti-fi-cial va-gi-na. Looks great. Thanks for your help.”

“Thank you for coming in, sir.”

The fact was, it wasn’t really the breeding season yet, but, Sam thought as he walked to his truck a few minutes later, nothing wrong with being prepared.

A
FTER
A
L WENT OUT
, getting into the Mercedes on his own and driving off to God knew where, Rosalind thought she should have said something. What she had done, turned and left the room, gone into the living room and then out into the dormant garden, was just the sort of thing that she would do. She had never been quick of wit, or quick to speak. She had always thought that giving people time to regain their composure was the absolutely best course in any crisis. And, then again, she hadn’t really been in the wrong for several decades, and so even apologizing, truly apologizing, was unfamiliar to her. It was only while she was out in the garden, after Al drove off, that she realized that an apology was appropriate. The trouble was that even in the garden, by herself, with Al miles away, it was hard to form the words. “I’m sorry” wasn’t so hard, but identifying what she was sorry for was. In fact, she was mostly sorry that she had made herself so unhappy, that things hadn’t worked out, that nothing had come of so much inner turmoil. Her betrayal of Al seemed rather a distant and manageable side-effect to the central drama, so to look him in the eye and apologize seemed rather insincere, an effect of fear rather than love. And she suddenly wished for someone to talk to about this, if only to register that at least she was being honest with herself, and recognizing her motives for what they were.

R
ESIDUAL, BACK AT WORK
, put in a lightning three furlongs for Leon and Deedee. They agreed afterwards that they had this filly figured out. With Deedee sitting right there, Leon called the owner and told her how marvelously the filly was doing, how healthy and happy she looked, how Buddy was on vacation. The owner was
very
friendly, thanked Leon for keeping her in the picture, and said in a whispery voice, “In some ways, dear, I wish you were her trainer. Buddy is a genius, of course, but you’re the one she likes.” Leon pretended to ignore this, and said only, “I know Buddy is a little lax about
communicating, Mrs. Warren, but he means well. He just has so many horses and owners.”

After Leon hung up, he and Deedee smiled happily at one another for several minutes. Buddy seemed to play into their hands in every way these days. Even the close call they’d thought they had in the summer, when Leon tipped off that guy from the
Racing Form
and he told all those other guys and they showed up
that day
, turned out okay. Buddy blew his stack, but then he was so glad to get rid of Epic Steam he forgot about it. Leon said, “Next year, it could be us in the Breeders’ Cup, you know.”

Deedee took Leon’s hand tenderly in both of hers and told him she was pregnant.

H
ERMAN
N
EWMAN
was sitting in front of the television, watching the Breeders’ Cup show and trying to learn something. There were all different kinds of races. The Classic had a purse, he read, of five million dollars and change. That was three million to the winner. That was something, Herman Newman thought. That was certainly something. Just then, the phone rang, and Sir Michael, out of the blue, asked him if he would like to sell Epic Steam to the Queen of England. Herman looked around for his wife, but she had gone out into the kitchen. What he wanted her to do was to take the phone and hear for herself what Sir Michael had to say, because he thought she would never believe this in a million years, but he just said he would think about it. That’s what he always said. He liked to work his way through the pros and cons on everything. After he hung up the phone, he sat at his desk, remembering his grandfather telling him how, one day when he was walking down the street in St. Petersburg in 1910, he saw his apartment explode in front of his very eyes. That night he hid out with his friend V. I. Lenin. As the horses on TV paraded to the post for the sprint, Herman wondered if this episode of family lore should have any bearing upon his decision whether or not to sell his horse to the Queen of England.

A
L HADN’T ACTUALLY
tried to find a parking space in Manhattan for several years. Driving around in the Mercedes, Third Avenue to Park, Fifty-fifth Street to Fifty-eighth, around and around, he couldn’t shake the notion that someone else could be,
should be
, finding this parking space for him. He resented that he had to find it himself and kept thinking that all he had to do was tell someone to find him a parking place, his partner, his accountant, his driver, his other partner, his secretary, Rosalind, and a parking space would be
found. There were, of course, parking garages. There was a parking garage at his office building at Thirty-fourth Street and Sixth Avenue that he could go into for free, but he had standards. If he wanted a parking space in the Fifties, he wanted a parking space in the Fifties. Al realized that he was devolving. It was like watching something expensive, one of those Chinese vases Rosalind had put in their living room, fall off the shelf. You brushed past it and continued on your way, only to turn around and see it tip, tip more, launch itself into mid-air. That’s where he was, in mid-air, moments away from the inevitable fragmentation.

F
ARLEY WAS OUT
on the track with the last set, and Joy was fussing around Mr. T.’s and the filly’s stalls. The TV was on in the office, and they were doing the intro to the Juvenile Fillies. She went into the office from time to time to see if the post parade had begun. It still amazed her that there were horses and people she had seen around this very track getting ready for that race, a race Farley himself had gotten ready for four years before, when the race was run also at Churchill Downs and he had had a good daughter of Kenmare named Kennett Square, who had run sixth.

Joy was not exactly an exercise rider and not exactly an assistant trainer. She didn’t exactly work for Farley and she didn’t exactly work for Mr. Tompkins, but she was happy in her job. She took care of Mr. T., of course, but she also took care of some other special cases. For example, after Joy pointed out to Farley that high-level dressage horses and fit open jumpers often got taken out twice a day rather than once, he set her to ponying two of the three-year-olds around the training track in the afternoon. He also used her riding skills. Horses who were out of balance and unsure of themselves got a little dressage work to develop their back muscles. So, including Mr. T., she was riding three or four horses a day, taking another one or two for hand walks. She talked to owners and their wives, she answered the phone, she went to sales with him, did some minor vet care. Just a week ago, on the first of the month, she had given up her own apartment and moved her things into his condo. She’d hardly noticed the change, except that there was more unnecessary stuff underfoot. Six months ago, when she wondered what love was, Joy didn’t realize that it would turn out to be easy and peaceful and friendly and interesting.

Now the horses in the third set began to come back from the track. Joy ducked into the office and saw that the post parade was on. There was Silverbulletday, Mr. T.’s favorite in the Juvenile Fillies, but she herself favored Excellent Meeting. She didn’t have to see Farley come into the office, or hear him speak; as he entered, the office filled up with his gravity and she moved into his
orbit automatically. He took her hand and said, “I’ve always liked Silverbulletday.” He was, she thought, where love was concentrated, where that thing, normally vaporous and thin and unstable, collected and solidified, and what small wandering object like herself would not be drawn right to it?

A
FTER THE TURF RACE
, Herman Newman decided not to sell his horse.

A
T THE TRAINING FARM
, it was dark when the head stableman came out of his house after watching the Classic. He was thinking that he wouldn’t have picked the winner but he would have bet the entry. He stretched and yawned. He could hear the thud of galloping hooves in the distance, as he had all day. He shook his head, uneasy.

A
FTER NOT FINDING
a parking place and returning home, then sitting in the garage in the Mercedes for some undefined length of time, Al went inside. Only a few lights were on, and Rosalind was not to be seen. Al didn’t really look for her, though he noticed that the box of doughnuts was gone, which was probably just as well. He closed himself in his home office and got on the phone with Aeroflot. He made a reservation to go to Moscow. It was time, he thought, to build a large factory for the manufacture of some heavy item not as yet determined but certain to be a lot of trouble for everyone.

J
UST BEFORE GETTING
into bed, Rosalind opened the envelope she had sealed first thing in the morning and read over her picks. She was seven for seven. If she had bet that pick six they had, she would have won more than thirty-four thousand dollars. She sat quietly for a moment, her hand idly scratching Eileen’s belly, and wondered about this disjuncture. How could she know nothing and everything at the same time? It felt impossible and yet paradoxical enough to be true. At this very moment, she knew nothing about what was to happen next, and yet it felt like something was already inside her, already completed, and the force field of ignorance between herself and it was very weak, only just strong enough to resist her. Actually, she supposed, everything you thought was about to happen was already finished. Sometimes you could remember it and most of the time you couldn’t. Maybe it was that idea that was allowing her right now to feel a measure of calm.

I
T MAY HAVE BEEN
that Eileen, as a Jack Russell terrier, had her own agenda of desirable activities. It may have been that this agenda, in several of its particulars, did not exactly suit Alexander P. Maybrick, Eileen’s main rival, these days, for the attentions of Rosalind Maybrick, and it may have been that Alexander P. Maybrick’s opinion mattered not in the slightest to Eileen. Or, rather, Eileen did not
care
what Alexander P. Maybrick did and did not like, but, at sixteen pounds, she sometimes had to concede defeat. Alexander P. Maybrick was not all that hesitant to put Eileen outside and leave her there. Nor did Alexander P. Maybrick understand the nuances of meaning intended by the various locations of the fecal markers that Eileen left for him. There was a language there. Any Jack Russell—any dog, even—could have easily read that language, but Alexander P. Maybrick chose not to. Fine. And he had to bear the consequences. But, as with any miscommunication, the consequences redounded to both parties. Eileen kept trying to make her point, Alexander P. Maybrick kept trying to make his, and the result was that Eileen was occasionally swatted, and more often than that had to perform a ritual submission, all form and no substance, but inconvenient nevertheless. More seriously, when Rosalind happened to be out, and happened not to have taken Eileen with her, Alexander P. Maybrick happened to put Eileen in her kennel, sometimes for considerable periods of time.