“Where does he live?” I said.
“Someplace sunny. Near the beach,” she said.
“Sounds illuminating,” I said.
“It wasn’t,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I figured if I couldn’t feel anything for a man like that then maybe I couldn’t feel for anything new,” she said.
“We’re not new either,” I said.
“I know,” she said.
Mother got up and walked over toward the mirror over the dresser. She’d hung it there so she could see the length of herself. Father had marked the wall with a ruler while I’d helped her find the correct height. The mirror was part of a set Granny Olga had given her. The wood was fine but the glass was damaged in places. When you looked in it on a cloudy day you lost pieces of yourself, as though bits of your body had drifted away. Mother turned now in front of it, examining herself from both sides.
“I may be old,” she said cupping her breast in her hand for a moment, giving her chest more shape. “But I’m not blind for feeling.”
She looked so young in the light.
19
Margaret sat on the wooden stool in our kitchen the next morning as Mother brewed her tea. The two women had quickly resumed their habit.
“Friday night this town belongs to the bikers,” Margaret said as I yawned and slipped into the kitchen to poke around for something to eat. “They stop for subs at Harry’s on their way up the interstate.”
Mother laughed. “If I find you sitting out Friday nights on the terrace in the center of town hitting on the musicians and widowers, I’ll be disappointed,” she said.
“Not at all,” Margaret said. “We could use a new scene.”
“Speak for yourself,” Mother said. “I still have my engagements.”
“Bring them along,” Margaret said. “I hear there’s pinball in the back.”
“You’re terrible,” Mother said.
“Sure,” Margaret said. “You depend on me for it.”
“I spent my marriage preparing to be a lover,” Margaret continued.
“By the time I got around to applying myself, the opportunity had disappeared.”
“So find a new opportunity,” Mother said. “It’s all in the description.”
“Sure,” Margaret said. “I’d try on any description which didn’t involve organizing my day around when the plants in the window get thirsty and the bird feeder needs seed. Not that I mind. It’s my thrill really. All that time with no one to bother me. Sometimes I find myself standing in the bathroom wondering what season it is.”
“I do the same for different reasons,” Mother said.
“I bet you do,” Margaret said.
“It’s terrible,” Mother said. “This drought.”
“It won’t let up,” Margaret said. “Lately I wake up in the night feeling like I drank a shaker of pepper.”
“It must be the change,” Mother said. “My mother was forever with it. I remember her sitting out on the porch one summer with a cloth around her neck. She put a fan in the window so that it blew out over the rocker where she sat. She said she needed to adjust the air in the room. One night I came home to find her asleep outside in the rocker, her nightie pulled up around her waist.”
“That’s a thirst of another kind altogether,” Margaret laughed.
The Separatists had adjourned for the summer. Several of the women were on vacation. In lieu of their meetings, Margaret had taken to spending Sunday mornings on our portico training Mother in the ways of meditation. Together they sat cross-legged on the carpet in front of the window that looked out over our road and free associated among the throw pillows. Margaret kept a flask on her. Every now and again she doused her coffee with a liquor that smelled like anise and holly.
After a period of silence, the woman free associated while watching out the window for any cars that might pass. Mother referred to these mornings as her unloadings. To me, free association seemed akin to the acts of youthful poetics that unveiled themselves at sleepovers or the late night parties I imagined Fender and his brothers having at the butte. The more you improvised, the less committed you were to the necessity of yourself.
That morning after their session, Margaret made a motion toward the barn.
“Let’s take that horse of yours out,” she said.
“Sure,” I said.
“Good,” she said. “I’ve often wondered how he went.”
I went upstairs to get dressed. When I came down Mother was buttoning Margaret into one of her slickers. On Margaret the slicker appeared boxy and childish. There was a jauntiness to the shape of the coat Margaret’s body couldn’t support. It was odd to see Mother bother over another woman. The way her hands moved over the buttons, it was as though she were caring for a child. When she was done, she smoothed Margaret’s braid over her shoulder.
“There,” Mother said, running her hands down the front of Margaret’s coat to smooth the portions where it had wrinkled.
Margaret blushed. Her eyes creased oddly around the corners.
Mother’s touch had a way of lighting up things to which she couldn’t always respond.
“Give me time to get dressed,” Margaret said, embarrassed.
The barn was quiet at that hour. Margaret had brought her old Leica. The camera hung from a leather strap, which she slung over her shoulder. As the Sheik and I entered the pasture, Margaret was bent over the water trough trying to capture an oak leaf where it had fallen onto the surface of the water.
“Tender little floater, isn’t it,” she said as we pulled up next to her. I let The Sheik have his head and graze a little in the yard.
“Once,” I said. “I found a bird in there. Father said it had flown into the window of the barn.”
“Birds do that,” Margaret said. “Sometimes they loose their sense of direction and fly into the glare. Nature is brutal. It’s our circumstance. Sometimes all you can do is turn your head and look the other way.”
“Sure,” I said.
I turned to look toward Mother. She was sitting on the fencepost near the gate. She waved when she saw me look over.
“Giddy up,” she said, motioning Margaret into the saddle.
“Well,” Margaret said. “Let’s get a few rounds out of these oxers before the old man comes out here and starts directing us.”
I cupped my hands and gave Margaret a leg up. The Sheik came to attention as she swung into the saddle hitching her shirt up around her legs.
I stood in the middle of the ring and observed how the Sheik moved under her. Margaret rode with a stiff confidence. There was a dictation to the way she posted. Her rhythm worked less in communion with the speed of the flesh beneath her and more in line with the order of her thoughts. There was a grim set to her elbow, which she kept locked close to her waist. Her eyes she trained on the horizon. She seemed hardly to rise out of the saddle as the jumps passed under her.
There was a nervous tentativeness to their whole program. Even the Sheik buried his head and bore into the jumps as though he hardly cared whether he lifted his chest or crashed into them. Afterwards he cantered off in a short, clipped stride. The only thrill was watching Margaret’s skirt flare up behind her when the Sheik took a jump too high.
After a few rounds, Wilson came out of the RV and sat on the rail next to Mother to watch. He’d had a bath. His hair, a thin sweep of white, which he often wore combed over his forehead slicked close to his face, fluttered in the breeze. Wilson had developed a cough. During the day, Otto made him wear a medical mask in the house, which Wilson strapped over the thick part of his face in order not to spread his germs. His Helene’s immunity was low from the transfusions.