It’s hard to say, whether or not Otto had planned Callie’s interruption. Maybe Callie had a sixth sense about conflict. Mother said she’d known women like her who had.
“You’re just in time,” Otto said. “Get in here and join us for a sandwich.”
“Too late,” Callie said. “I just fixed dinner. The boys were out hunting early this morning. They came home hungry for bacon and eggs.”
Callie had a chest full of groceries, a bag in one arm and a bridle over the other. As she walked into the living room, she stooped over the pullout, unloading her goods on the floor and taking His Helene’s face in her hands.
“You look good, Mama,” Callie said kissing the old woman on the cheek. “You’ve still got some summer in your face.”
If Callie was surprised to see us, she didn’t let on. She adjusted her breast in her bra where it had fallen out of its cup as she came into the room.
“Callie,” she said to Mother shaking her hand.
“Sure,” Mother said. “Jean’s mentioned you some.”
“Has she?” Callie said smiling faintly in my direction and shaking the hair out of her face.
She sat in the chair next to Otto. Her bangs scattered across her forehead where the wind had taken them and stuck to her temples where the sweat had gathered under her helmet. The sun was out and the ride was short. She’d ridden over on her husband’s ’cycle.
Looking at Callie unmoored a buzzing in the back of my throat. She wore all the places she’d been on her body. Bracelets of amber and turquoise. The holes where her ears had been pierced. The way she smelled of bing-cherry and almond. As she draped her jacket over the back of Otto’s chair revealing her shoulders and her small tan frame, I was reminded of the evergreen Father carried out of the house after Christmas. If you shook the trunk too hard in the house, Father said, you’d forever be finding a needle underfoot come spring.
For his part, Otto seemed less timid in front of Mother with Callie in the room.
“That’s a lovely bridal,” Mother said, motioning toward the straps of leather which hung over the back of Callie’s chair.
“Thanks, darlin’,” Callie said, fingering the free end of one of the straps. “It’s my old show bridal.”
“You brought me home quite a few ribbons in that one, Kiddo,” Otto said, resting his hand on the bend of her knee after she was seated and giving it a shake.
“Everyone falls into their luck sometime,” Callie said.
“We surely do,” Mother said smiling at Birdie and I as though we too had won her something.
“From what I remember, luck had little to do with it,” Otto said.
“I heard Father say you were a champion once,” Birdie chimed in.
“Did you now,” Callie laughed. “Well, I suspect your father has an unusual memory then.”
There was a pause. Nobody spoke. Mother stirred her coffee.
“Maybe sometime,” she said to Callie. “You could give me a lesson.”
“Sure, baby,” Callie said.
“Anyways,” Mother said. “I don’t see how you can control an animal in that.”
“How do you mean?” Callie said leaning into the table and casting her gaze up at Mother. Her breasts hung on the place mat within her shirt. The two women met eyes. Otto covered the tuna.
Mother did a strange thing then. She took her arms up over her head as though she were applying the horse’s tack to her own face. She took her thumb and her forefinger and placed them at the corners of her mouth and pulled. Her teeth were sharp and yellow in the corners from tea.
“There’s no bit,” she said releasing her hands.
“It’s an old hackamore,” Callie said. “This colt’s mouth shy. The minute you put the bit between his teeth he loses his confidence. For a horse like him, it’s all about how you guide him with your weight. They say it lengthens his stride and increases his stamina.”
“Ain’t nothing wrong with that,” Otto said to Mother patting the length of Callie’s thigh. “Ain’t nothing wrong about that at all.”
Otto got up to clear, leaning on the back of Callie’s chair for balance as he reached for our plates.
“No,” Mother replied. “I don’t suspect there is.” She shifted as though the seat had grown harder beneath her.
“Come sit with your Mother awhile,” she said to me. “Make some room in my lap why don’t you.”
Callie got up to do the dishes. I got up to help, feeling Mother’s bony parts where they cut into me.
“You don’t look at people like that,” Mother said quietly as I rose.
“Like what?” I said.
“The way,” Mother said. “You were looking at him. The old man. It’s not done at your age. It’s unsightly.”
Mother excused herself to the bathroom. Callie ran the water in the sink. Birdie clamored over to the counter next to her to rinse the fish off her hands. I scrubbed a little under Birdie’s nails with the pad.
“His Helene used to wash mine just the same,” Callie said nodding to where the water ran over Birdie’s fist.
“‘Don’t shine your light too hard in the backs of anyone’s eyes unless you want to see your own reflection,’ His Helene always said.”
“Mother’s just testing you is all,” I said.
“A woman doesn’t trust her own kind,” she said. “No matter how much I helped with the business, His Helene was always making sure I wasn’t leaving the barn with any of her bills. When you’re riding it’s different. Everyone falls away from themselves just watching. They look at the horse and wonder who leads who around. All the while, all you care about is going clean and staying the course.”
Otto came over with a pile of dishes. He stacked them on the drain board next to the sink pausing for a moment to lean over Callie’s shoulder, pressing himself into the curve of her where she was bent over the sink.
“I’ll take care of these,” he said.
Callie raised her head and looked out the window sliding the long rubber gloves down her arms and hanging them over the faucet. She turned towards Otto such that the side of her body was pressed against his chest.
“I’ll be out training,” she said.
“Alright then,” he said.
It was hard to say what they were to each other. It was even harder to say what they weren’t. The way their bodies locked and moved.
“Go easy on your old man,” Callie said to me from between the grip of Otto’s arms where he’d rested them on the counter.
She left through the back. Otto followed her into the breezeway. They paused in front of the door. He said something that made her chuckle. The way she tossed her hair off her shoulders, you could see the tension in her neck. You could see how sad she looked. Otto closed the door behind her and stood for a minute, watching her cross the lawn toward the barn.
Otto turned and looked at me across the kitchen. He seemed not to recognize me. The afternoon light was thick and golden. It cast a warmth through the window onto the backs of the flies such that, in the uproar of their exchange, they appeared nearly glowing.
I imagined Otto fingering Callie’s hairpin where it sat on his wife’s dresser, turning it over in his hand and inspecting it for evidence that it too had escaped a great plummeting to the earth. “You’ve gone wiggly,” he would tell himself.
By the time Mother came back to the table, there was swelling around her eyes. I could tell she’d cried a little in the bathroom. She often did that since her return.
“I just put on some coffee,” Otto said.
“We’d better not,” Mother said. “We’ve left Mother alone too long.”
When we got home the Bottom Feeder was quiet. The lamp in the living room was off. Shadows crept around the furniture where the light had grown thin and lazy.
“I’ll go down and check on her,” Mother said.