The $60,000 Dog: My Life With Animals (16 page)

We went to sleep scared, the memory inside me: Mr. K’s giant body falling down, shuddering the floor beneath my feet. In sleep, the whole earth shuddered and then I was above, seeing countries falling from the globe like so much scrap—there goes Europe, a jigsaw piece dropping through space. My sleep was fitful. Several times I woke with a thick thirst that could not be slaked. I fumbled for my canteen, drained the warm tin-tasting water to the last drop.

There are stories of shipwrecked sailors drinking the ocean and seeing stars and streamers before they die. If the water in the canteen had been salted, maybe that could account for the oddity of what happened next, could confirm it all as a hallucination stemming from stress. But that water wasn’t salted. It was pure, from the well drilled beyond bedrock two hundred and fifty feet down in the Maine ground.

So if it wasn’t the water, what else could explain what happened but could not have happened, and if the answer is
nothing
, then what am I left holding, in the end?

The first time I woke up it could not have been later than 10 p.m. My mouth was thick with this strange stubborn thirst and outside the bunk I saw the sky was swirled with stars, the constellations crazy, the farmhouse so dark it seemed nearly snuffed, only its chimney and edges visible here and there. It was as if its occupants had died or collapsed from the intensity of their emotions. The water dribbled down my throat, cooled some spot in me, and sleep came quick and true. The next time I awoke, I snapped out of sleep so fast I heard my own hurdling. I sat up. A bolt in my back.

I could tell we were in the thickest part of the night now, when time takes on texture, a black material plush and drenching both. Outside the bunk everything was submerged, except for the farmhouse, which was, now, completely, inappropriately ablaze, golden lights gushing from every chink and square, lights so glittery I had to keep blinking in order to bear them, and when I closed my eyes my lids lit up, and on those two silk screens I saw vortexes morph into millions of tiny tacks. I fell back asleep once again.

And when I woke for the third time (or was it the fourth; I am not quite sure) all the lights were once again doused, and the farmhouse was sitting hunched and quiet in a damp dawn at the barest beginning of any old day in late summer, the dawn so new that shapes had only recently asserted themselves, in pieces here and there, the fence visible, the barn not yet. And now all the windows in the house were open, gray, and, although there was no wind, although not a single tree stirred, although the meadows were settled and still, every curtain in every window of that house was blowing madly, Alice’s white sheers and Swiss polkas and laces. Classical music soared from some room I was sure I’d never seen, some room deep in the core of the home. Complicated crescendos came and went—cellos waltzing with violins vibrating with trombones deep and true. Then the brief beat of a pause—and then, just at the point when you were primed for the crashing of a complex orchestra—instead came the pure simple sound of a lone piccolo. I opened my screen, stuck my hand into the stagnant air while watching all the curtains twist, while listening to the light swift steps of that lone piccolo, and then sleep hit my head again in a swift blow, and I was down for what felt like hours but must have been just a second or so, because next when I next sat up the dawn was just as undecided, the house still hunched, the piccolo still playing. Only now I saw Dr. Fascal walking across the lawn, coming to inquire, it seemed, about Mr. K. She slowly, with immense exhaustion, climbed the porch steps, stood on the stoop at a time too early for a doctor to normally arrive, except this was maybe an emergency. Dr. Fascal tugged on the bell, which I’d never seen before—brand new—some fancy thing Alice must have bought during the twelve or so hours she’d left the farm, after the fight, the night, the clothes coming down. The brand-new bell was skirt-shaped silver, its clapper a girl’s lean legs melded at the entwined feet. Now Dr. Fascal pulled on the cord and the bell let out its peals clear and perfect in the dead-still dawn. The door opened.

I saw the door open. But whoever greeted the doctor stood where I could not see, and I only caught her shadow thrown down like a welcome mat. I saw Dr. Fascal shake her head back and forth, back and forth—bad news?—and then she knelt down, in the same exhausted way as she had walked. She set the big black bag she’d come with on the granite stoop, and then, unclasping it, she dumped its contents out and spread them around: mounds of lockets, big silver ones, blue and yellow ones, lockets of glass and gold and turquoise, all twinkling in her heap. “Here, for the horse,” Dr. Fascal said, gesturing to the jewelry, and then she walked away. From what seemed to be a second-story window came Rose’s voice, unmistakable. “Look up here,” Rose said. Then I was asleep because the next time I opened my eyes the day was definite and fully formed. The sky was not strange. The weather was perfect: 85 degrees.

August 21, Jill in a box. Alice served biscuits and eggs for breakfast. Around her neck, dangling by her breasts, was a small golden locket I’d never seen before.

“Where’d you get that necklace?” I asked.

Alice looked down, palmed the piece of jewelry, studied it thoughtfully. I saw a thousand things cross her face then. She looked up at me, her brow all furrowed. “Lauren,” she said, “I honestly forget.”

Hank appeared in the breakfast room then wearing his breaking-to-bridle-clothes.

“Hank,” Alice said, “where’d I get this necklace?” She held it out to him.

Hank came over close. He traced its shape with his thick forefinger. “Guess I must’ve given it to you,” he said.

“You
guess?
” Alice said.

And then Rose came in,
Just passing through, does anyone have some thread?

“Hey Rose, Rose,” Hank said. “Slow down a sec. Where’d Ma get this necklace?”

And then Rose went close to her parents, closer than we’d ever seen those three be, and for a second they were all there together, studying this heart, and then another second went by, and they didn’t seem to be studying the heart anymore. They seemed to be just standing near one another, feeling what that felt like now, and maybe remembering what it had once felt like at some point in their past. Alice pressed her lips with her two fingers and shook her head fast. “Ma,” Rose said, softly. She put her hand on her mother’s shoulder, and Hank put his hand over Rose’s hand, and there they were for a little while, on Alice’s shoulder. We were watching, forks poised in mid-air, knowing we were seeing a special spell. Alice nodded, her eyes squeezed shut. “Thank you, Rose,” she said. “No words,” I think I heard Rose whisper. Alice nodded again, and then we saw her back out, into the kitchen, her slow steps on the stair treads above our heads. Rose and Hank turned towards us, cleared their throats.

Hank touched the brim of his big cowboy hat. Rose had a bridle slung over her shoulder.
Jill’s turn.
“You and me, kid,” Hank said to Rose, his voice thin and almost hopeful. This was, it seemed to me, the one activity they shared together. “We’ve got some work to do,” Hank said.

“No.” Rose said. She took a long look at Hank and then she said, simply—

“Dad.”

It seemed like an hour passed between the word
Dad
and what Hank did next, and who knows, maybe that’s true.

Hank nodded then, once, decisively. “Okay, Rose,” he said, as though he understood, and clearly he did. He took off his big broad-brimmed hat, hung it on a hook in the breakfast room, and then went out the door. And that was the last I ever saw of him close up, Hank hanging his hat on that hook and walking down the still damp steps one morning at the end of August. I’d be there four more days.

And Rose. Well, Rose, for the first time that whole summer, she ate breakfast with us. She pulled out a chair, laid the breaking bridle on the table. And that’s when I saw that this was different than the other breaking bits; it was not studded. This bit was dainty, two silver tines linked with a rubber
0
in the middle, a teething ring. “Pass me the jam,” Rose said to no one, and Jenny passed the jam. “You know the expression there’s more than one way to skin a cat?” Rose said. We nodded. “Well,” said Rose. “That’s not true, is it? There is really only
one
way to skin a cat, if one was ever so inclined, but when it comes to most other things, I’d say you usually have several options.”

Now, Rose pulled the lid off the jam jar, held it up, sniffed. “Apricot,” she announced. She slathered that baby bit with the apricot jam and then, once it was totally tacky, she sprinkled it with sugar, the grains visibly white, and bright, in the golden gel. And then she brought us all down to the barn, holding the bridle out well in front of her.

Jill, the filly, was already there, sleepy in her stall. Rose didn’t halter her or cross tie her or anything. Instead she entered the stall, still holding the bridle, closing the door behind her, and turning then to face us, her face and the filly’s side by side. “Long time ago,” Rose said, “people had their ways of doing things and those ways change except when we don’t want them to. My daddy taught me one way to break a horse, but I learned others from those hippie horse girls I never much liked.” Rose laughed. “I can’t say who’s right and who’s wrong in terms of making a trustworthy horse,” she said. “We’ve always done things one way at our farm here, and no horse here has ever hurt or even thrown a girl so …,” Rose trailed off. “That’s
significant
,” she said and nodded crisply, and the filly nodded crisply too and we laughed.

“But in the end, the more tricks a trainer has in her grab bag, the better off she’ll be. I learned the sticky-bit trick …” She cast her eyes upward, counted to herself. “… Eight years ago?” Rose said. “Eight years already?” Her brow furrowed. She swiped her eyes, and then inspected her hand for streaks. “I’m forty years old,” Rose said. “That’s right. 1974. So I’ll be nearing seventy when the year 2000 comes. And when you’re forty …,” Rose said, looking at me and Em, the youngest. “When you two girls are forty, I’ll be …” And we could see her counting down the years until a stunned, slapped look came across her face. She stopped speaking.

And when she started again, here’s what she had to say: “Horses live a long, long time. Some can go forty years. But because they only need four hours of sleep
a week
, they get a lot of living in. Way more than we do.” Now, Rose tickled Jill beneath her pruny chin. “Right, little girl?” Rose said.

And Jill, well Jill stepped forward,
towards
her taming. Rose held Jill’s jaw with one hand and with the other she slipped that sugared bit right between the horse’s lips. We saw the bit move back until it snapped into its spot, and Jill’s eyes went bright with surprise. “Taste buds all over the back of a horse’s tongue,” Rose explained. “Good girl,” Rose said. Then she turned towards us, shrugged.

“That’s it,” Rose finally said. “No drama now,” she said. “Show’s over.”

“That’s
it
?” Jenny said. “Jill’s broken?”

Rose turned back towards Jill, who was savoring the sweetness. “She doesn’t look broken to me,” Rose said. She smiled. “We’ll leave her for a little while. She’ll get used to the gear. We’ll work with her—over time. We can make it easier,” Rose said. “Sure, we can be kinder. I know I—” And then she stopped.

I raised my hand.

“Slater,” Rose said.

“Why haven’t you been?” I said. And then added, quickly, “Kinder?”

Rose sighed, rolled her eyes. “You know, Slater,” she said. “Do you gotta push every single goddamn limit you see? It gets tiring.”

“Sorry,” I said. I didn’t know exactly what she meant.

“Okay, girls,” Rose said. Her voice took on its familiar, authoritarian, irritable, regal tone. “Slater has one of her typical
profound
and
provocative
questions, and as your camp counselor and equestrian trainer, I’m gonna answer it. But listen to me, girls ’cause I’m gonna say this once and only once, and if you forget it, don’t waste my time running to me when you should have listened up from the start instead of daydreaming about boys and bubblegum and god knows what else you think about in those adolescent eggheads of yours. You hear?” Rose said.

We heard.

Jill was still tasting her tameness.

“I said I’m gonna say it to you once, right now, and never again, so don’t ask me to repeat myself, don’t make me waste my breath, ’cause I don’t have much breath left, according to my most recent calculations, so I’m saying this once, not twice, not thrice, just once and only once am I going to say I’m goddamn sorry.”

We stood there, letting the words linger.

Rose herself seemed surprised by her last three words, her head cocked, as though, like us, listening to the linger. And then: “Would you all
stop
with your gawking and
get to work!
” Rose bellowed, and so we did. We scattered fast.

I’m sure it was the sugar. I could tell a long story about this, but I shouldn’t now. Now the day is done, and that bugle is playing, like it did every evening at Flat Rock Farm, us twelve girls and the family standing in a ring around their flagpole while “Taps” played on their tape recorder set in the kitchen window. Day is done. Gone the sun. Strange, isn’t it, that every evening the sun just slips away, soft as a slipper falling from a woman’s foot. You can’t ever hear it crash. Because it doesn’t.

And last night—speed ahead thirty years now, Rose seventysomething and I know not where—last night I was lying in bed next to the daughter that is mine, helping her find her way to sleep. Sleep is not easy for Clara. My son plunges in with glee, the same way some kids plunge into pools. But Clara, well, she is like me, picking her way carefully down a set of stone stairs, slippery, the granite treads emerald with old moss and damp.

And so I lie next to my daughter, this growing girl, this girl growing away from me; night after night she lets me lie close—for how much longer?—me, hoping to ease that passage, trying to give her what I was not able to get, and we talk. I so
treasure
this time. Every night. I treasure. The darkness loosens our lips. Lying together, side by side, I think it makes us less afraid of the bit we both know is lodged in all of life. She’s learned that one without me. Tell me, who is totally free? And who is not hurt by what holds them?