The Horse Whisperer (46 page)

“Pity it’s not raining,” she whispered.

“Come and dance with me,” he said. And he took hold of her before anyone else could and steered her off.

The music was quick and they danced apart, only uncoupling their eyes when the intensity threatehed to overwhelm or betray them. To have her so close and yet so inaccessible was like some exquisite form of torture. After the second number, Frank tried to take her away but Tom made a joke of being the older brother and wouldn’t yield.

The next number was a slow ballad in which a woman sang about her lover on death row. At last they could get their hands on each other. The touch of her skin and the light press of her body through their clothes almost made him reel and he had for a moment to close his eyes. Somewhere, he knew, Diane would be watching but he didn’t care.

The dusty dance-floor was crammed. Annie looked about her at the faces and said quietly, “I need to talk to you. How can we get to talk?”

He felt like saying what is there to talk about? You’re going. That’s all there is to say. Instead he said, “The exercise pool. In twenty minutes. I’ll meet you.”

She only had time to nod, because the next moment Frank came up again and took her away from him.

   Grace’s head was spinning and it wasn’t just from the two glasses of punch she’d had. She had danced with almost everyone—Tom, Frank, Hank, Smoky, even dear sweet Joe—and the image she’d had of herself was thrilling. She could whirl, she could shimmy, she could
even jive. She didn’t once lose her balance. She could do anything. She wished Terri Carlson was here to see it. For the first time in her new life, perhaps even her whole life, she felt beautiful.

She needed to pee. There was a toilet at the side of the barn but when she got there she found a line of people waiting to use it. She decided no one would mind if she used one of the bathrooms indobrs—she was family enough and after all it was her party, kind of—so she headed for the porch.

She came through the screen door, instinctively keeping her hand on it so it didn’t slam. As she walked through the narrow L-shaped boot-room that led to the kitchen, she heard voices. Frank and Diane were having a row.

“You’ve just had too much to drink,” he said.

“Fuck you.”

“It’s none of our business, Diane.”

“She’s had her sights on him ever since she got here. Just take a look out there, she’s like a bitch in heat.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“God, you men are so dumb.”

There was an angry clatter of dishes. Grace had stopped in her tracks. Just as she decided she’d better go back to the barn and wait in line, she heard Frank’s footsteps heading for the open door to the boot-room. She knew she wouldn’t have time to leave before he saw her. And if he caught her sneaking out he’d know for sure she’d been eavesdropping. All she could do was head on in and bump into him as if she’d just come in.

As Frank appeared in front of her in the doorway, he stopped and turned back to Diane.

“Anyone’d think you were jealous or something.”

“Oh give me a break!”

“Well, you give him a break. He’s a grown man for Christsakes.”

“And she’s a married woman with a kid, for Christsakes!”

Frank turned and came into the boot-room, shaking his head. Grace stepped toward him.

“Hi,” she said brightly. He seemed a lot more than just startled but he recovered instantly and beambed.

“Hey, it’s the belle of the ball! Howya doing sweetheart?” He put his hands on her shoulders.

“Oh I’m having a great time. Thanks, for doing it and everything.”

“Grace it’s a real pleasure, believe me.” He gave her a little kiss on the forehead.

“Is it okay if I use the bathroom in here? Just that there’s a whole line of—”

“Course you can! You go right on in.”

When she went through into the kitchen there was no one there. She heard footsteps going upstairs. Sitting on the toilet, she wondered who it was they’d been arguing about and got a first uneasy inkling that perhaps she knew.

   Annie got there before him and walked slowly around to the far side of the pool. The air smelled of chlorine. The strike of her shoes on the concrete floor echoed in the caverning darkness. She leaned against the whitewashed block wall and felt its soothing cool on her back. A sliver of light was spilling in from the barn and she watched its reflection on the dead calm water of the pool. In the cither world outside, one country song ended and another, barely distinguishable, began.

It seemed impossible that it was only last night that
they’d stood there in the creek house kitchen with no one to trouble them or keep them apart. She wished that she’d said then what she was going to tell him now. She hadn’t trusted herself to find the right words. This morning when she’d woken in his arms, she had been no less sure, even in that same bed which only a week ago she’d shared with her husband. Her only shame was that she felt none. Still however, something had restrained her from telling him; and now she wondered if it was the fear of how he would react.

It wasn’t that she doubted for one moment his love. How could she? There was just something about him, some sad foreshadowing that was almost fatalistic. She had seen it today, in his desperate intent that she should understand what he had done to Pilgrim.

There was a brief flooding of light now at the end of the passageway to the barn. He stopped and scanned for her in the darkness. She stepped toward him and at the sound he saw her and came to meet her. Annie ran the last few separating steps as if suddenly he might be snatched away. She felt in his embrace the same shuddering release of what all evening she had tried herself to contain. Their breathing was as one, their mouths, their blood as if pulsed through interlacing veins by the same heart.

When at last she could speak, she stood in the safety of his arms and told him that she was going to leave Robert. She spoke with such calm as she could muster, her cheek pressed to his chest, fearful perhaps of what she might see in his eyes were she to look. She said she knew how terrible the pain would be for all of them. Unlike the pain of losing Tom however, it was a pain she could at least imagine.

He listened in silence, holding her to him and stroking her face and hair. But when she had finished, still he
didn’t speak and Annie felt the first cold finger of dread steal upon her. She lifted her head, daring at last to look at him, and saw he was too filled with emotion yet to speak. He looked away across the pool. Outside the music thumped on. He looked back at her and gave a small shake of his head.

“Oh Annie.”

“What? Tell me.”

“You can’t do that.”

“I can. I’ll go back and tell him.”

“And Grace? You think you can tell Grace?”

She peered at him, searching his eyes. Why was he doing this? She’d hoped for validation and he’d proffered only doubt, thrusting at her immediately the one issue she’d dared not confront. And now Annie realized that in her deliberation she’d resorted to that old selfshielding habit of hers and rationalized it: of course children were upset by these things, she’d told herself, it was inevitable; but if it was done in a civilized, sensitive way there need be no lasting trauma; neither parent was lost, only some obsolete geography. In theory Annie knew this to be so; more than that, the divorces of several friends had proven it possible. Applied here and now, to them and Grace, it was of course nonsense.

He said, “After what she’s suffered—”

“You think I don’t know!”

“Of course you do. What I was going to say is that because of that, because you know, you’ll never let yourself do this, even if now you think you can.”

She felt tears coming and knew she couldn’t stop them.

“I have no choice.” It was uttered in a small cry that echoed around the bare walls like a lament.

He said, “That’s what you said about Pilgrim, but you were wrong.”

“The only other choice is losing you!” He nodded. “That’s not a choice, can’t you see? Could you choose to lose me?”

“No,” he said simply. “But I don’t have to.”

“Remember what you said about Pilgrim? You said he went to the brink and saw what was beyond and then chose to accept it.”

“But if what you see there is pain and suffering, then only a fool would choose to accept it.”

“But for us it wouldn’t be pain and suffering.”

He shook his head. Annie felt a rush of anger now. At him for uttering what she knew in her heart to be right and at herself for the sobs now racking her body.

“You don’t want me,” she said and hated herself at once for her maudlin self-pity, then even more for the triumph she felt as his’ eyes welled with tears.

“Oh Annie. You’ll never know how much I want you.”

She cried in his arms and lost all sense of time and place. She told him she couldn’t live without him and saw no portent when he told her this was true for him but not for her. He said that in time she would assess these days not with regret but as some gift of nature that had left all their lives the better.

When she could cry no more, she washed her face in the cool water of the pool and he found a towel and helped her mop the mascara that had swum from her eyes. They waited, saying little more, while the blotching faded from her cheeks. Then separately, when all seemed safe, they left.

A
NNIE FELT LIKE SOME, MUDBOUND CREATURE VIEWING
the world from the bottom of a pond. It was the first time she had taken a sleeping pill in months. They were the ones airline pilots were rumored to use, which was supposed to make you confident about the pills, not doubtful of the pilots. It was true that in the past, when she’d taken them regularly, the after-effects seemed minimal. This morning they lay draped over her brain like a thick, dulling blanket she was powerless to shrug, though sufficiently translucent for her to remember why she’d taken the pill and be grateful that she had.

Grace had come up to her soon after she and Tom came out of the barn and said bluntly that she wanted to go. She looked pale and troubled, but when Annie asked what was wrong she said nothing was, she was just tired. She didn’t seem to want to look her in the eyes. On the way back up to the creek house, after they’d said their good-nights, Annie tried to chat about the party but barely got a sentence in reply. She asked her again if she was alright and Grace said she felt tired and a little sick.

“From the punch?”

“I don’t know.”

“How many glasses did you have?”

“I don’t know! It’s no big deal, don’t go on about it.”

She went straight up to bed and when Annie went in to kiss her good-night she just muttered and stayed facing the wall. Just as she used to when they first got here. Annie had gone straight to her sleeping pills.

She reached for her watch now and had to force her muffled brain to focus on it. It was coming up to eight o’clock. She remembered Frank, as they left last night, asking if they’d be coming to church this morning and because it seemed appropriate, somehow punishingly final, she’d said yes. She hauled her reluctant body out of bed and along to the bathroom. Grace’s door was slightly ajar. Annie decided to have a bath, then take in a glass of juice and wake her.

She lay in the steaming water and tried to hold on to the last lacing of the sleeping pill. Through it she could feel already a cold geometry of pain configuring within her. These are the shapes which now inhabit you, she told herself, and to whose points and lines and angles you must become accustomed.

She dressed and went to the kitchen to get Grace’s juice. It was eight-thirty. Since her drowsiness had gone she’d sought distraction in compiling mental lists of what needed to be done on this last day at the Double Divide. They had to pack; clean the house up; get the oil and tires checked; get some food and drink for the journey; settle up with the Bookers . . .

As she came to the top of the stairs, she saw Grace’s door hadn’t moved. She tapped on it as she went in. The drapes were still closed and she went across and drew them a little apart. It was a beautiful morning.

Then she turned to the bed and saw it was empty.

It was Joe who first discovered Pilgrim was missing too. By then they’d searched every cobwebbed corner of every outbuilding on the ranch and found no trace of her. They split up and combed both sides of the creek, the twins hollering her name over and over and getting no reply but birdsong. Then Joe came yelling from down by the corrals, saying the horse was gone and they all ran to the barn and found the saddle and bridle were gone too.

“She’ll be okay,” Diane said. “She’s just taken him for a ride somewhere.” Tom saw the fear in Annie’s eyes. They both already knew it was something more.

“She done anything like this before?” he said.

“Never.”

“How was she when she went to bed?”

“Quiet. She said she felt a little sick. Something seemed to have upset her.”

Annie looked so scared and frail, Tom wanted to hold her and comfort her, which would have looked only natural, but under Diane’s gaze he didn’t dare and it was Frank who did it instead.

“Diane’s right,” Frank said. “She’ll be okay.”

Annie was still looking at Tom. “Is Pilgrim safe enough for her to take out? She’s only ridden him the once.”

“He’ll be alright,” Tom said. It wasn’t quite a lie; the real issue was whether Grace would be. And that depended on the state she was in. “I’ll go with Frank and we’ll see if we can find her.”

Joe said he wanted to come too but Tom told him no and sent him off with the twins to get Rimrock and their dad’s horse ready while he and Frank went to change out of their church clothes.

Tom was first out. Annie left Diane in the kitchen and followed him out over the porch to walk beside him to
the barn. They only had the time it took to get there for the two of them to talk.

“I think Grace knows.” She spoke low, looking straight ahead. She was trying hard to keep control. Tom nodded gravely.

“I reckon so.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t ever be sorry Annie. Ever.”