The Yonahlossee Riding Camp For Girls Part 19

I left and went to my cabin. I was alone, and even though I knew everyone else would be at the Hall, I was still grateful. Everything was in order, our nightgowns folded and tucked into drawers, our lotions and perfumes carefully capped and lined on our washstands, our beds made in the morning and then straightened by Docey after rest hour. There were personal effects: framed photographs, pictures from magazines, purple velvet jewelry boxes. Ghosts lived here, we haunted this cabin, we hadn't ever truly claimed it.

I felt tricked. I had liked his kindness, and now his kindness had disappeared, but I still wanted him. I wanted him more, if that was possible.

I didn't bother to pull the covers up. No one was here, no one would see that I hiked my skirt up over my waist, put my dirty shoes on the quilt, moved my hand so roughly that I was raw afterward. No one heard me. No one saw the smear of blood, no one asked why I stared so long out the window, what could I possibly be watching for that long? Nothing, nothing.

- When I sat at my dressing table I straddled my chair like I was riding. I was riding, even when I wasn't, a horse was always in my head. I spent at most two hours a day on a horse, the rest on the ground like a girl, but even so, when I walked on my own two feet my gait was vaguely, constantly unsettling, as if I were always stepping onto dry ground from a ship.

I was on a streak, I cleared every jump with an inch to spare. With two inches. Mr. Albrecht had me lead demonstrations for the other cla.s.ses. This is what it looks like. You are not a pretty rider, he told me once, you are not graceful but you are technically flawless.

I wanted to win. Leona was making it easy, to want to beat her. I saw now that her friendliness toward me coincided with my convalescence. And now that I was a threat, her only real threat, she ignored me when she saw me in the Castle. At the Hall last week I'd seen her giggling with Jettie. I'd smiled at Jettie but she'd turned her back, and Leona had looked over Jettie's shoulder for a long second, a.s.sessing me, until she'd whispered something else into Jettie's ear and Jettie's st.u.r.dy back was shaking from laughter. I'd looked down quickly and checked myself, but nothing seemed amiss; my cheeks burned and I'd turned to Eva, asked her a dumb question, and tried to look like I didn't care.

I realized that other girls probably wondered what was said about them all the time. But I had never before known the peculiar sensation of both wanting to know and then never wanting to know what someone else thought of you.

Being so close to Sissy had served me well; I was liked because she was liked, I absorbed some of her radiance and pa.s.sed it off as my own. Mostly, though, I was not well known.

At dinner, Molly had once teased me about being too solemn. When I had said something funny in the Hall, the group of girls Sissy and I were sitting with had laughed and looked a little stunned that I had a sense of humor. Now Mr. Holmes told me that I slinked. What else slinked? Animals, criminals.

Did Leona and Jettie make fun of how solemn I was? Did they think I was proud?

During practice Leona cut me off, twice. And then I did a strange thing: I trotted Naari directly in front of King, pa.s.sing them so closely King left a trail of spit on my boot. I polished it off later, still surprised.

It was unusual for two third-years to be the best. And it must have been doubly unusual that Leona had been the best last year, as a second-year. Besides me, Gates, and Leona, the rest of our cla.s.s were seniors. And though Gates was a very elegant rider, she was too fussy, too appraising on the back of a horse, to ever be excellent.

But now I wanted to be inserted into Yonahlossee history. I wanted to be admired, I wanted my photograph to hang on the wall outside Mr. Holmes's office. I wanted him to pa.s.s by me a dozen times a day, every time he came or went. I wanted people to see me and think I was pretty, yes, but that I was more than pretty: that I was good at something the way few people are good at anything in their entire lives.

Was it too much to want that? Was it too much to want him? Yes and yes. In the back of my mind, the nasty thought always lingered that I would be happier if I did not want so much.

{16}.

When are we going to Gainesville?" I asked Mother, as we were stripping my bed.

"I don't know-let's move a little faster, hmm?"

I tugged the sheets from Mother and threw them on the floor, adding them to the pile of dirty linens. "All right," I said, "can we go soon, do you think?"

Mother glanced at me, but seemed distracted.

"Maybe Georgie could come here?"

She unfurled a sheet, tucked it beneath her chin, and smoothed out wrinkles with her palm. All in one motion-she was so deft at these ch.o.r.es, she could fold a complicated blouse in a second, iron my father's shirt in under a minute. We hadn't seen Georgie's family in three weeks, nearly a month. I understood that there was a reason we had not seen each other in so long; Mother had made this reason clear to Sam. But I wanted to see my cousin. I wanted to see him badly.

"Why isn't Idella doing this?" I resented my mother's quick, able hands, scurrying over my bed, my private bed, tucking in corners and picking up invisible specks of lint, dust, something.

She ignored me. "There, all done."

"Is Father eating with us tonight?"

She turned from the curtains, which she had been shaking-particles of gleaming dust were suspended in the air.

"I don't know that, either."

"I guess n.o.body wants to see us."

She turned from the curtains. "What do you mean?"

"I'm lonely."

She sat down next to me; her breath smelled like coffee and the lavender toothpaste she used. She looked around my room, then finally spoke. "This house charms people. I've always thought that. It's so beautiful. It's so . . . lovely. You'll never live in a place like this again, Thea. You should love it."

"I do love it," I said.

"Someday you'll meet a man and fall in love and want to go where he goes," she said, as if she were reading aloud from a fairy tale, as if she were hardly listening to me, "and you'll have to make a new home for yourself."

"Mother!" I tugged at my hair. I hated when she did this, changed what you had said you wanted. I thought about my cousin's thick, st.u.r.dy hands. That was all I wanted. Not a husband. But she continued, trancelike.

"You will meet a husband, Thea." Mother stood, and I saw the crow's-feet that framed her eyes, the worry lines that creased her forehead. I said nothing. I gave her nothing.

"And you'll have to be careful to choose the right one. It will seem like fun and games, but it's not. Not at all."

"It was like that for you?" I asked. "Unfun?"

She smiled, and shook her head. "Unfun isn't a word, Thea. It was fine for me-look at the result."

She gestured around the room, grandly, and stopped at me, as if to say-You, you are what I got. Which I suppose I was.

- But then Georgie's family did come, the very next week. Mother told us over breakfast, as if it was nothing unusual. And perhaps it wasn't. The money Uncle George had borrowed had fixed whatever needed to be fixed, like a paste, like the hay I stuffed into a crack in the barn's wall.

Greetings were exchanged on the front porch-I was kissed, exclaimed over.

"Perfect weather," Mother p.r.o.nounced. It was perfect weather, the brief stretch of spring we would have before descending into the maddening heat of summer. But Mother thought it boring to talk about the weather. She was trying to be cheerful, I saw, trying to distract.

I kept my eyes trained away from Georgie as I spoke to my aunt and uncle.

The adults left us and then it was only the three of us, as it usually was. I smoothed my hands across my bottom to make sure I hadn't bled through, a movement so practiced it was unconscious. I wasn't menstruating right now, but I wasn't regular, as Mother put it, and so I could start any time, really. I wondered if other mothers kept such close track of their daughters' bodies.

"Let's go out back," Sam began, "I'll bring my tent, and Idella will pack us lunch, and . . ." While Sam was explaining his plan, I met Georgie's eyes for the first time. He met mine, I should say. I watched for a glimmer of something.

I felt almost insane with desire. Should I call it that? l.u.s.t. A specific yearning. I didn't know how this would be.

"Sam," Georgie said, taking his eyes away, "no. None of that for me today. I'm going to stay inside and work on homework."

Georgie's voice was cruelly casual. In an instant, I regretted everything; I wanted Georgie to be nice, I wanted Sam not to be hurt, I wanted it all the way it had been.

"Why?" Sam asked, crestfallen. He looked to me, then Georgie, like he was trying to put the pieces together. But I did not want to be a piece of this puzzle. I was furious at Georgie, suddenly. He should not goad Sam. He should not try to make him wonder.

We both waited for Georgie to speak. I did not want to say anything; speaking would mean choosing a side, and which side would I choose? I looked at Sam, his auburn hair cut just yesterday, by Mother. Then Georgie, who watched Sam calmly.

"Why?" Georgie said, mimicking Sam. My stomach turned, it truly did-a flip beneath my skin. "Because I don't want to pretend to camp. I don't want to pretend anything, today."

"Georgie!" I said, and they both looked at me, my brother and cousin. I shook my head. "Nothing. I'll go with you, Sam." I stood.

Sam shook his head. It was too late. "No," he said, "I'll go by myself."

"Thea," Georgie said, after Sam had gone inside, but I was so mad I felt sick with it.

"Why did you do that?" I asked. "Why?"

He began to answer, but I didn't want to hear. I slipped inside the house, quietly, in case the adults were near; I meant to follow Sam, but he had already disappeared. I could have found him if I'd wanted to, I knew all the likely places he had gone. But if he didn't want to be found, there was no point in looking.

- I sipped Mother's champagne while the adults visited. Uncle George had said it was four o'clock in the afternoon, c.o.c.ktail hour somewhere. Aunt Carrie's one sister was doing poorly; her other sister had responded to the death better than anyone had predicted. Wasn't it always a surprise, my mother said, how a person acted after he had lost someone.

"Where are the boys?" Uncle George asked.

"Out back, I think," I said, though I didn't know. They had both disappeared after this morning's squabble.

"Hunting," Father said. He looked at his gla.s.s, which he held with two hands, a child's grip.

"Maiming the defenseless and innocent," Uncle George said, and then dropped the gla.s.s decanter stopper he had been holding on the mahogany coffee table, the one that was particularly hard to keep unblemished. Its surface had been buffed and varnished until you could see a blurry reflection of yourself in the reddish wood. That hadn't been what Father had meant. He meant they were hunting animals for Sam's terrariums, not hunting animals to kill. But they were doing neither.

"Oops," Uncle George murmured, and spilled a little whiskey onto the rug. Mother moved to help but he waved her away. He was quick with his napkin, blotted the spilled alcohol instead of rubbing it, which would smear the dyes.

"You do that well," I said.

"Thea," my father said sharply. I turned my face. I was not myself right now, and it was difficult to be kind to Uncle George, who looked so much like his son. I didn't think this was possible, but somewhere on the edge of my mind an idea lurked: Georgie would find Sam, tell him about us, and it would all end.

Uncle George laughed. "It's fine. I might as well help myself to another while I'm here," he said, and poured a neat gla.s.s.

We were all silent for a moment. My father stared into his drink. Mother watched the carpet; I knew she wanted nothing more in the world than to be able to properly clean it. I knew well the idea of self-preservation, from Sam and his animals. Georgie would not tell, because telling would mean something bad for him, too.

"Thea," Uncle George said, and my father's gla.s.s trembled when his brother spoke. "Thea, you're getting awfully pretty."

"Thank you."

"She looks exactly like her mother did at that age. She's the spitting image. Wouldn't you agree?"

My father glanced at me briefly, and shrugged. "No, I wouldn't know. I didn't know Elizabeth at that age, remember? Neither did you."

"She does," my mother said, and touched the end of my braid. I knew she was trying to distract my father, but I didn't want her to touch me. And besides, I didn't look like her. I wasn't ever going to be as pretty as she was. Which was fine-what had it gotten her? A house in the middle of nowhere. "My hair, mainly. She has Felix's forehead, more and more."

Father smiled, as if at a private joke.

"It's interesting," she continued, "to look at photographs and see how you change year to year."

"Is it?" Aunt Carrie asked. "I've always thought looking at pictures of myself was an exercise in vanity. And boring, besides." I looked at Aunt Carrie, shocked. I'd never heard her speak to my mother like this.

Mother furrowed her brow and pretended the rim of her champagne flute was the most interesting thing in the world. She was close to tears. Aunt Carrie stared intently at the fireplace, empty, swept clean, and the men did nothing.

My father broke the silence. "You are quite pretty, Thea," he said. "A smart, pretty girl."

"The whole world's at her feet," Uncle George said, his voice picking up again, eager to help his brother relieve the pall that had settled over the room.

"I'll bet you have twenty suitors by this time next year," Uncle George said. "Thirty."

"I don't think so," my father said humorously. "Not in my house."

"I don't want any suitors," I said.

"That will change," Aunt Carrie said. Her voice was strange. I wondered how much she'd had to drink.

"It will!" Uncle George said. "Of course."

I heard the distant slam of the screen door.

Sam came in first. He walked to the coffee table and took a handful of cheese biscuits, then flipped the tail of my braid, and the relief I felt-it felt like another chance.

"One at a time," Mother said, and Sam nodded but continued to stuff himself.

Georgie came in and met my eye and smiled, then sat next to Sam-at his feet, because there wasn't another chair-and they continued a conversation they'd begun elsewhere, chattering about a swimming hole in Gainesville. And then the adults began their own chatter, about nothing, about everything, and I was so grateful Georgie hadn't told, I wanted to weep.

But the quality of the adults' chatter was off; they sounded tense, distracted. I noticed that while Georgie was pretending to listen to my brother, his attention was elsewhere. He was watching the adults, very carefully. He caught me staring, and grinned in a way that chilled me. Something about the way he had turned his attention from them to me, as if we were connected.

I understood then that my family could never know my secret. Money, money where money did not belong, had almost ruined us. I understood that loving, where loving did not belong, would be much worse. No, they simply could not know. But that did not mean that I would stop.

- After I had lain on top of the covers for an hour, the rest of the house asleep, after I stopped feeling impatient and entered into desperation, my door opened, and Georgie motioned for me to follow. He was wearing his regular clothes, thoughtless, my brother would have noticed. The stairs were mercifully quiet. The remnants of a key lime tart had been moved from the dining room onto the kitchen table, a tacky, grotesque mess now.

He almost let the screen door slam, and I felt a flash of anger. I caught it and eased it shut.

A fog had come and made the outside world impenetrable. I slowed, walked more carefully; Georgie plowed ahead, almost disappeared into the white.

We were both barefoot, and as we walked blindly to the barn I was half afraid I'd step on something sharp. But not afraid enough to turn around and get my shoes, or to have paused as we left the house and slipped them on. Not afraid enough to make Georgie wait.

He dipped in and out of the fog, in flashes; I saw a hand, an elbow, then nothing at all. He was a stranger to me, that's how I could do this, behave like a girl who would shame her family so easily.

When I reached the barn, I went first to Sasi. Before my brain caught up with my heart, I thought he was missing. But then I saw that he was lying down, asleep, his k.n.o.bby, thin legs tucked carefully beneath him.

"Thea?"

I turned and put my finger to my lips, but Sasi was already hoisting himself up, ill.u.s.trating in a second how improbable a horse's body was, how dainty and inadequate his legs were.

"Why did you do that?" I asked.