Riding Barranca (10 page)

She admits that she might be getting out of the training business. “It's not the horses, but the people.” Was I one of those people? “I'm just not a people person,” she confesses. I understand, but we seem to get along pretty well. “It only takes one person to ruin your reputation,” she continues, talking about some horse owners that want her to do all the work, but who think they know how the work should be done.

Melinda warns me about letting just anyone ride him. “That could ruin him,” she says. “And it's important to warm him up and cool him down with at least fifteen minutes on either
end. You can't just cowboy out of the corral.” I wouldn't do that anyway.

Back in the yard, we transfer the leftover grain and hay into my truck. Peanut is easy to load. I approach her wild Indian mare, and Melinda says, “She won't let you touch her,” but I go ahead and pat her anyway. The mare stands nicely while I stroke her shoulder. Melinda is surprised. Maybe I'm more of an animal person, too.

Young Daphne

Nice to have complete trust in one's riding companion, and that is the case with my beautiful, blond niece, Daphne. She has ridden all of her life. One time, when I asked her how high she could jump, she responded, “I can jump just about anything.” She began riding with the Fairfax Hunt when she was ten, going at a full gallop for hours, jumping hedges and walls. But when Daphne turned twelve, a friend of her parents fell off during a hunt and was severely injured. Only then did
her parents make her stop. She switched gears and went into show jumping, taking fences that were sometimes as high as six feet. I wonder if her parents were aware of this, as they dropped her off at the barn in the morning and picked her up at night.

Getting out of the trailer, Tonka barges by me, knocking me down on the ground. Luckily it is unusually soft earth from all the rains and I'm not hurt, but I realize how I have to practice a more graceful and mannerly exit. I have to assert myself with him so that he knows who's boss.

This morning, we are riding down to the Sonoita Creek near Patagonia Lake. I am eager to see how the water is flowing after all the rain. The long desert slope down to the creek is covered with
ocotillo.
I tell Daphne how the tips of the long cactus wands will soon burst into a blazing red, but it might be another three weeks before the hillsides are painted with that sweep of color.

From this distance, it looks like some of the cottonwoods along the creek have begun to bud out, but we are still a couple of weeks away from high spring. Daphne keeps saying how beautiful it is here—certainly the opposite of New York City, and I am glad that she can give her mind a good airing out. Tonka is going extremely well, especially after we cross the water and head down the well-maintained trail. For the most part, the mesquite branches are at a safe distance from our arms and legs, but I point out some
cholla,
and warn Daphne to give it a wide berth.

I keep to the lead as it makes Tonka more relaxed. I am still having some difficulty with his choppy canter—if he gets in the wrong lead, it really feels scrambled, but if I start him off going up an ascent, he usually goes well, though he will never be as comfortable as Barranca.

We follow the cairns, little towering piles of stacked rocks that mark the way. Moving downstream, we realize that we are the only ones here, not another hiker or rider in sight. It always feels exciting to have this place to ourselves, especially as we enter the area where large bluffs form on either side of the creek—we almost feel like Indian scouts. Finally reaching the long, narrow cave, we tie up both horses, and settle down on the sandy banks of the creek to eat our sandwiches in the sun.

Heading home, Tonka gets into a beautiful fox trot. It's a pleasure to feel him moving forward so nicely. As we climb back up the path toward the trailer, we talk about family. Daphne just spent a couple of nights with my mother in Scottsdale, and Mom's Alzheimer's is getting worse.

Daphne reports that Mom's caregiver, Wanda, described a recent hallucination where Mom thought my brother and I were playing in her fireplace. She kept yelling at Georgie to
Stop It!
He was shaking and choking me and she couldn't get him to quit. This account sends a visceral shiver down through me. Could this be a memory of something that really happened, or was it simply a fabrication of her late-stage dementia?

Laura and Georgie

Certainly, growing up, I was not protected from my older brother. The message I received was that it was okay for him to attack me, that no one would look out for me, and that I had better learn how to run. If cries of complaint were taken to our mother-in-collusion, her only response was, “Don't be a tattletale.”

But my brother and I were also allies. When my parents were touring Europe, and our housekeeper, Margie, did something twisted, like make us eat raspberries crawling with ants, Georgie would jump up from the table and get on the antique, long-disconnected wall phone and pretend to call the operator, “Help, HELP!” At such moments I applauded him.

If my brother was jealous of me, and cut off my fine, blond hair, trying to make me “be a boy,” I do not blame him now, for his behavior was not curtailed. Our mother gave him permission through her neglect.

In retrospect, I think the only one Mom managed to protect from scrutiny was our darling father. She took the fall for him. She became “Mean Margaret,” the black hole in our seemingly perfect, extended family, which allowed my father to maintain his pose in his nearly spotless, infallible armor. With her well-used rag, she'd wipe away all telltale signs of his misbehavior and get the dark, oily stain on herself.

For years, every summer, Mom threatened our father with divorce, telling him she would smear his name and misdeeds all over the paper. But then she tried to reason it all away—“This often happens to older men. I wouldn't mind so much if it was with a more attractive person.” But of course she felt betrayed. Meanwhile, we all basically turned our heads and blocked her out, immune to her outbursts, unless we were all having dinner upstairs in the carriage house apartment and she rode by on her electric golf cart, stopping down below to announce, “We haven't made love in twelve years! How do you like that?”

I think that if she had been married to a more masculine, dominant man, one who didn't encourage her dark side, she might have been a happier, more loving person. But no one was questioning our father's behavior any more than they were trying to understand hers.

I was the scapegoat, sacrificed on the altar of their misalliance. My presence kept her eyes off of other targets of warranted jealousy. While I knew that he loved our mother and the four of us immeasurably, what he kept locked in the closet of his brain was the most exciting thing!

For some reason it was easy for me to forgive my father. I was more connected to him. When he was recovering from his esophageal cancer operation, Mom left for Arizona, and I was called in to look after him.

When I arrived at Milwaukee's Columbia Hospital, he looked amazingly good, not like death warmed over, as I had expected. His color and humor were excellent. But he was distressed by the tube that ran into his nose and down his throat. He had an IV in his arm, but this nose tube was most disturbing, especially when he tried to talk. But talk he did, for a good two hours, until I realized that I had worn him out. The next day he had a sore throat.

Popi Rides Again

While I was there in the hospital room, Mom called from Scottsdale. It was hard to believe that she had left two days after his cancer surgery. But now I realized that my father had probably urged her to go, knowing that it would make things easier on them both. He was happy to talk to her long distance, and I overheard him telling her that he loved her. This made me feel good, just as it had when I was a little girl and he told me that he loved me very much, but that he loved my mother most. I wished she had believed that.

The last time Reverend Lee showed up at the hospital, Popi told him that he should just pray for him, he didn't need to visit, but here Reverend Lee was again. I found him to be a very likable young man. He seemed particularly open and nonjudgmental.

Popi said he believed that heaven was a spiritual longing common to all people, the idea more important than the fact. “I think heaven is probably on some cloud,” he continued, “but I'm not sure which one. I go to Church to support your mother, unless the horses need exercise. Am I damned?”

My father claimed to be an agnostic (not atheist). “I try to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, but I tend to believe that when a flower dies, its petals are simply blown away—that's the end of it.”

The next morning Popi was ready to get that damn tube out of his nose and throat. The nurse had promised him, and he was getting frantic about it. He had held on up to this point and it had tested his patience right up to the end, but now he threatened to pull it out himself if someone didn't come immediately and do it for him. I had rarely seen him so agitated.

I got on the phone, and a nurse rushed in. One simple yank and the deed was done. What a relief. He was so grateful. Popi
had not eaten any food for a week, receiving all of his nourishment through the tube that fed into his stomach.

When Reverend Lee arrived, I put a sign on the door—Do Not Disturb—and my father called the nurse's station and said, “No phone calls now. I'm receiving Extreme Unction!”

Reverend Lee read several blessings from the Book of Common Prayer. Then he took some holy oil and marked my father's forehead in the shape of the cross. He opened a silver pyx that he had hanging around his neck. Like a large locket, it opened to reveal the host, a little cross stamped into the middle of each wafer. He put one on my father's tongue and gave me one, too. Then, the three of us held hands and recited the Lord's Prayer. But I heard Popi stop, and I knew he was crying. They say that the Holy Spirit is present when there are heartfelt tears. By the end of the prayer, Popi joined in again, but he was still feeling weak and weepy.

“What do you think Christ meant by: My Father's house has many mansions…I'm going to prepare a place for you?” Then he started to cry again. I stood up and put my hand on his shoulder.

Reverend Lee responded, “I interpret that to mean that God has many rooms for many different kinds of people, space for all. It's my own personal belief that no one will be turned away from God's Love unless he out-and-out rejects God and His gifts.”

I believed that no one would be turned away from God's Love, period.

When I told my sister Cia about this, she thought our father might have been concerned about the quality of his residence on the other side—would it be up to snuff? Would there be a mansion on that side, too?