Horsekeeping (18 page)

We found him in the driveway, a wreck: his face was flushed, creased and drawn all at once, and his eyes receded red and watery. In a croaking whisper that grated my ears, he cried through his story.

“George, what are you doing here? I thought you were in the hospital.”

“I walked. I'm looking for my car.”

Ross had taken Ursula to his motel in George's car since his was inaccessibly down the closed road. The alternate route spared Ursula a last view of her burning house. She never did return, refusing adamantly even to scavenge important keepsakes. In my mind's eye she looked even more desiccated, almost transparent against the backdrop of a motel room. With all physical evidence of her life erased, she floated, an unan-chored ghost. George, however, stood solid and desperate.

“You
walked
? From where?”

“The hospital.”

“What? Why didn't you call me? I told you I'd come get you!”

The hospital is at least fifteen miles away. I was also shocked they would let him leave in the condition he appeared to be in.

“I only have hundred dollar bills. They wouldn't give me change and wouldn't let me use the phone,” he whimpered.

“Did they release you? Are you okay?

Silence.

I intuited he had snuck out.

“They were so mean in there. So I walked home in my bare feet and shorts.”

He was still crying, and his voice deteriorated. But he needed to talk. “You walked bare-footed?”

Incredulous, Maria and I looked at each other and down at his feet, in shoes.

“I got these from the garage just now. . . . But I couldn't believe it. No one would pick me up,” he complained, outraged. “I tried to get a cup of coffee in the gas station, but they locked the door and wouldn't let me in.”

George was in shock and paranoid to boot. So I tried a little humor with the truth.

“George, no offense, but you look like a mass murderer even now. With no shoes or shirt, how could they guess you were a victim of a fire? You look like you've been on a three-day bender.”

He laughed through his tears.

“I wouldn't have picked you up, and I know you.”

He laughed a little harder and coughed.

“Why don't you come in and have something to eat. And I don't think smoking is a good idea.”

We all looked at the lit cigarette he cupped in his hand. He had told me he quit last year. I witnessed him get heavier and then thinner again, so I figured he had relapsed.

“No, no, I can't eat, and I have to go next door to see what's happening.”

“Are you sure? Do you need some money?

“I got plenty of money.” He pulled out a stack of hundred dollar bills.

“Well, let me give you something smaller, so you can get a cup of coffee when you want one.”

He took my proffered twenties with gratitude. “I lost all my money in the fire. This is all I was able to grab.”

“What do you mean? Don't you keep your money in the bank?” I asked with the sinking feeling that he would be exactly the person to stash cash around the house.

“I used to hide some money in my bedroom, but they say not to keep it there, so I had most of it in the hallway. The fire was bad there.” He started to cry again.

There was nothing to say.

We stared at the ground.

He shuffled down the road.

It was a pearl of a day with the same cornflower blue cloudless sky that back-dropped the Twin Towers assault: oblivious nature rubbing its overbearing resilience into the wounds of our puny disasters, or so it seemed. But, like an astringent treatment in the midst of tragedy, quotidian life ticked on, then and now. All morning
that
11th day I watched the towers burn from our uptown, thirty-seventh floor apartment. At mid-day my dog still needed to be walked despite tragedy. As Velvet and I headed south on 1st Avenue, our regular route, the day still shone brilliantly, and my dog sniffed the same tree-protecting pachysandra beds, peeling hydrants and rusted signposts, and peed and shat on the curb. “Go hurry up, Velvet, go hurry up,” I urged as usual. Like every other day, I collected her waste in a blue plastic bag and tossed it in the nearest trash bin.

“Good girl, Velvie,
good
girl.”

If not for the flow of dusty, dazed people shuffling almost exclusively north positioning me against the current like a spawning salmon and the black grey smoke ballooning eastward across the distant southern skyline, I would simply have taken the day for granted: a lovely late summer boon.
This
beautiful day, July 11th, Ursula's home, and all she had, was gone, but my horse was on his way nonetheless.

Back inside, I briefed my weary parents and realized the time. I had completely forgotten about Bandi's arrival. Though my heart was not in
it, I was glad for the diversion. Mom, Dad and I pulled up to the barns at Riga Meadow just as Bobbi drove in with Bandi trailered behind her pick-up. She was excited because he travelled with no trouble—always a relief with such unpredictable and unwieldy cargo. Bobbi had shared many examples of the mishaps her horses managed while standing in a metal box behind her truck, many miles from help and home.

Though Bandi should have been the man of the moment, I first inquired after Bobbi's husband who I last glimpsed re-equipping to get back to the fire fight.

“How's Chip?”

“Oh, he hasn't come home yet.”

It was 11:00 a.m. I tried to fill Bobbi in on the fire as I reached in to pat Bandi, but she was preoccupied with my new horse. Fumbling the trailer door latch, she carried on, unconcerned about the event her husband and I had shared, habituated, I figured, to sleeping through his midnight emergencies.

“Here's your boy,” she said cheerily. “He did just fine on the ride.”

Indeed. Serene as a yogi he stood munching away at some hay in a string bag tied at mouth level. She backed him out and down the ramp slowly and he shone reddish brown in the sunlight. Despite my sleep-deprived funk, I remembered the camera, and Mom snapped a few photos. I had a new male, or half-male, in my life, my first eunuch I suppose, and joy eclipsed my exhaustion. A beautiful horse, my very own: our future partnership of show ribbons and glorious trail rides streamed out before us. Over the next hour we settled him into his new quarters, and in the physicality of the tasks I forgot about Ursula and the fire, indulging the moment.

Late in the afternoon I felt smoked over from the fire and lack of sleep. With plenty of the day still to go I retrieved my kids from camp. Elliot had a Little League game at 6:00 p.m. across the state line in Miller-ton, New York. Excited that his Pop (my dad) would see him play, we settled in for a hot, slow-paced time. Baseball played by ten-year-olds is like watching paint dry. These kids pitch overhand, hard, but with dicey
accuracy. Satisfying hits are rare, and stealing home on wild pitches is common. Singles regularly score as home runs based on overthrows that roll to the back fences. Elliot's good eye ensures that he walks a lot—even though all the parents yell “swing away” just to get some action going.

Halfway through the game, small-talking to some of the parents in the bleachers, I relaxed while a bored Jane balanced and banged along the metal bleachers. I let my mother bear the burden of watchful care and took advantage of the respite, figuring the roar of the crowd would alert me to any developments on the field. The crack of a bat alerted me to see Elliot drop the ball thrown to him at third base for an out. He scrambled after it and made a decent throw to home plate to get the same runner, but it was too late: a run scored.

“Roxanne, Elliot's hurt.”

I looked back to third. Elliot was down on his knees, flapping his hands furiously in front of his face. I raced over, hearing “bloody nose” spoken by parents as I passed.
Thank God
, I thought to myself,
only a bloody nose
. By the time I got there, he was crying, almost hysterically, and covered in blood. I knelt and took over the coach's hold on the bridge of Elliot's nose with one hand as I held a rapidly soaking tissue to his nostrils with the other.

“Put your face forward Ellie, so you don't swallow the blood,” I counseled, falsely calm. The old custom of tilting the head back thankfully has been debunked—I still remember that disgusting feeling of blood pouring down my own kid throat.

“Elliot, don't worry, honey. I've had plenty of bloody noses and they look a lot worse than they are,” I soothed.

I waited several seconds and lifted the wad of tissue a centimeter away from his nose, talking all the while. The blood gushed forth. I replaced my hand. Helpfully, people were gathering up tissue and towel reinforcements.

“If you calm down, it will stop sooner,” I told him, fighting to maintain my own composure.

Though I have run many alarming nosebleeds that eventually ceased on their own, one did send me to the hospital where I endured an unpleasant gauze packing and eventual cauterization. Although rarely life threatening, so much blood from the head invariably begs the question “will it stop?” And this was my beloved child, scared stiff and hemorrhaging. I felt panic circling rationality in my brain.

“But it's not stopping!”

“It will soon, I promise. Look it's slowing up.”

I inched the towel away, but it still geysered. I lied and told Elliot it ebbed some. I glimpsed the head coach looking worried as he worked away on Elliot's redder than orange glove with some wet wipes. He needed an occupation, and his busyness distracted Elliot. My son's shirt streaked red down the front. He held his dripping hands out
a la
Frankenstein while blood pooled on the grass. My stomach lurched and a buzzing sounded behind my eyes.
No, don't wilt now.
I lowered my head to steady my blood pressure and pass the nausea. It was eight o'clock at night, and I had been up since one, working on an hour and a half of sleep. I bolstered myself, breathed deep, and re-adjusted my squeeze lower down on his nostrils. My faintness faded as the coaches and parents recounted how the ball flew off the tip of Elliot's glove, clonking his nose before rolling away.

“How about that, El? You made the play after you were hurt.”

“But I didn't make the out.”

“But it was a good throw.”

Another three minutes passed, with intermittent checking. Just as I suggested a trip to the emergency room, the red tide receded. The game had resumed earlier, but the coaches suggested we sit on the bench for a while to be sure he was okay and then take him home.

Elliot perked up once the blood stopped and watched another of his friends get clocked in the back by a pitch.

“I have to go see if Jason's alright,” he shouted, and took off toward home plate.

Soon, he had trotted back to me begging permission to hit. I questioned the coaches, who shrugged their shoulders and nodded, and though every bone in my aching body urged retreat, I waved him on: “Go.” I aligned my decision with the folk wisdom of falling off a horse—if you don't get right back on you may never ride again. Elliot is a thinker like me, so I worried he would over-ruminate given time and inaction. He loved baseball. Playing rather than fretting was probably best, as long as his nose didn't unclot. I watched him approach the plate. He bent to it without any trepidation and whacked a double, hitting in a run that turned out to be the winner.
Alright, Elliot,
I exclaimed under my breath. Later in the game, he climbed the mound. He had never pitched before, except with Scott in the backyard. He performed more than credibly, and I beamed proud rays toward my warrior son. What a day.

At the following week's game, Elliot did end up at the emergency room. He took a solid hit in the kidney with a forty mile an hour late throw as he righted himself from a successful slide into home plate. Though he tried to shake it off, the pain escalated rendering him doubled over and howling. He is not particularly sensitive to pain, and doesn't dramatize, so after conferring with a doc parent, we sped off to Sharon Hospital for an x-ray. By the time we arrived, poor Elliot's writhing and begging for help prompted some pretty quick action in the ER. A morphine drip worked wonders. All tests proved negative, and he woke up right as rain the next morning. We figured a muscle spasm was to blame, since anything else would have left him sore at the very least.

It was torture witnessing Elliot in severe pain begging for relief I was unable to supply. I morphed into a panicked animal, screaming at people who couldn't possibly move quickly enough. This time, thankfully, I had Scott with me and more sleep. But between Elliot's two injuries, I had earned some grey hairs and was reminded how draining parenting can be. Do I have the energy to squeeze in new projects like horses and a farm and the danger they entailed? The hazards of baseball, let alone his winter sport of ice hockey, seemed enough excitement.

As for Ursula's house, it was a complete loss, with the exception of George's more recently added, unfinished apartment above the garage, though even that was smoked and wet. The fire department camped out two more days to keep watch. The source possibly sparked from the forty-year-old attic fan that Ursula swore was turned off. We put George up at The White Hart for a few weeks since his remaining section lacked electricity and water. I took the kids to the site to show them what fire can do, and the charred remains surrounding the hole that was the basement made us cringe for Ursula. Very little could be salvaged, and in the humid summer heat, mold soon crept lava-thick across it all. George informed us of the nightly rat troops, and our own sightings around our house prompted a call to our vermin buster, Jim, who put down poison, and to the county sanitarian to speed up the inevitable demolition. But bureaucracy moves at a glacial pace. Even though she had more than adequate insurance and a helpful agent, Ursula inched through the necessary decisions.