Private Life (42 page)

"On the way to Santa Barbara with Len. I have your screens."

"I thought you might." He peeked in the window, then said, "Andrew has been

warning me of their return." He didn't look disappointed.

"Show me a horse."

"My pleasure!" He was perfectly turned out, even in his horse-keeping clothes. He

waited as she parked the Franklin, and then two of the grooms took the artworks and

carried them away. He led her down the barn aisle. Grooms and trainers touched the bills

of their caps and dipped their heads to her in a friendly manner. There was no sign of the

crooked Australian. After she had appreciated how the horses arched their necks over the

tops of the stall doors and put their noses out for lumps of sugar, Pete had his own four

stripped of their blankets and led out for her appreciation. There were two bays, a

chestnut, and a gray.

"This one is by Fair Play, goes back to Bend Or on both sides. Dam's by

Tetratema, that's where he gets the gray color. This filly is by a nice French horse named

Rose Prince, dam's by Son-in-Law. That's a very prepotent sire. All ..."

She could make nothing of this patter, but it fell gloriously on the ear. When his

voice ceased, she said, "You sound very expert."

"That's the first step."

"How is it you acquired these horses but live in a stall?"

"Unpaid bills, darling. The owners' unpaid bills," said Pete. "Chestnut is my nicest

one, four wins already."

"Might I pet one of them?"

He pointed to the gray. "He's a friendly sort. I'm sure he would like it. Good

racehorses often bite, but he never does--more's the pity for my pocketbook."

She stepped up to the horse, and he pressed his nose into her outstretched palm

while she stroked along the roots of his mane. After a moment, she took off her glove.

His coat was dappled and fluffy, perfectly clean. She put her cheek against his neck and

took a deep breath.

Pete's stall quarters were neatly tricked out, with a cot and cases and trunks, and

prints hanging on the walls, and a curled-up whip with a long lash, and a mirror in a gilt

frame. She said, "You don't live here."

Pete

smiled.

She dared to say, "I am sure you live with some rich woman in Atherton. Maybe

she will like the screens."

Pete

laughed.

She was glad she had come. The fragrance of the horses and the neat piles of

horse clothing and equipment, the cold stables, the horses stamping and snorting--it was a

change. Then he took her elbow. "I need some breakfast. Would you care for a pot of tea,

madam? We can go to the canteen."

As they were making their way around puddles and piles of dirt, she said, "Pete,

you do seem at home."

"You're never old at a racetrack. There's always someone older than you, who's

been around since the Civil War and was actually there to see Kincsem run--or Eclipse,

for that matter."

"You seem young to me."

"I'm two years younger than that pig Lenin, and he's been dead for five years now.

So I'm old. In Russia, I would be dead. I'm older than you are."

"Then you must be old."

He said, "But see? Here you look especially elegant. I get on my pony named Ivan

Grozny, who is the sleepiest, sweetest thing in the world, and I ride out to watch the boys

train the horses and I feel very sprightly."

He didn't ask her about Andrew, and Margaret didn't say a word about him, either.

The canteen was a humble place, but it had eggs and toast and coffee and tea, and

it was another nice change to sit at a rickety table among all the men with their bits of

paper on which they were scribbling numbers or hotly comparing their bits with the bits

others were scribbling on. She saw that the men greeted Pete sociably, as if expecting a

witticism or a canny remark. After a bit, though, the canteen emptied out. She said, "Must

you leave, too?"

He shook his head. "Mine are finished for the day. If they would allow gambling

in California, you could see them run."

She nodded. Then, giddily emboldened by all these pleasures, she said, "Tell me

something about you that I can't imagine."

He smiled. "I wore dresses until I was three years old."

"That's what boys did in those days. Something else."

"How about this? When I first came to the States, I worked in vaudeville. As a

regurgitator."

"I don't believe that!"

"You see, there you go."

"What did you regurgitate?"

"I put out fires with sprays of regurgitated water." He was grinning. "Or I was

supposed to. I hadn't quite perfected my act when I first went on in Vacaville, and the

tube popped out from behind my ear. I got booed off the stage, and the theater manager

fired me. Then I tried to join a circus, doing some horse vaulting, but they said they had

Cossacks coming out of their ears, though most of the ones I saw were Mexicans or

Italians. Now you tell me something."

"Nothing I have to tell is interesting."

"If I don't know it, it's interesting."

"When I was eight, my older brother went down to the railyards with some

friends. They found a blasting cap and affixed it to a piece of iron they found, and then

one of the boys rubbed it against some bricks. It exploded and drove the length of iron

right into my brother's skull."

"That was a very unlucky thing."

"Yes, but unique. It seemed to me he couldn't possibly have died like that, so it

took me a very long time to believe that he had. I'd think of what happened and I would

start to laugh. I had two brothers and they both died as boys. But in Missouri after the

War Between the States, you didn't expect boys to live, somehow."

"I had an uncle gored by a bull. My mother's brother."

"I saw a hanging, they say. But I have never been able to recall it. I was five. I

recall earlier things, but of that I only remember fragments. Once I thought I remembered

the boy's name, Claghorne. Such an odd name. Now I have no idea if that was really his

name or not. He wore a red shirt. Maybe. My brother put me on his shoulders. Maybe!

You'd think I would remember such a thing."

"Have you heard of Sigmund Freud?"

She said, "No."

There was a pause while he went to the counter for more coffee. She closed her

eyes and made herself think of the hanging, but making herself think of it made it go

away. When he sat down again, he said, "What were you like as a girl?"

"Oh, I don't know. I was the third sister even though I'm the oldest. There's always

a beautiful sister and a smart sister, and then there's a sister that's not beautiful or smart."

"You kept out of trouble, then."

"Oh

yes."

"So few do."

Now it was her turn to laugh. "But that's why I loved Dora so from the first time I

saw her. She was always scouting for mischief, and she always dressed for it. When I

first met her, she had a bicycle and a very strange costume, with pantaloons, but it was

the newest thing."

"The first time I saw her, she had the shortest skirt in the restaurant, and you

could almost see the swell of her calf. That was very daring then."

"I miss Dora."

"But she is returning! She should be here in a month."

This was news to Margaret. She sipped her tea in confusion. Pete said, "I haven't

seen the painting."

"Mr. Kimura's painting?"

"I thought it would be good. He was very intent."

"It is good. But I put it away. I can't hang it."

His eyebrow lifted. "Andrew?"

"No, no. No! All the coots were slaughtered. Parents, chicks, all of them."

"Oh," said Pete.

"Did everyone expect that besides me? Is that why everyone was always saying

what common birds they were?"

He leaned forward and looked her intently in the face. He said, "Tell me

something about you that I don't know."

Tears sprang into her eyes. He said, "Tell me." He took her hand between his.

She said, "But you know it! Dora must have told you. Twenty years ago, my baby

died," and in a moment she was really weeping, in spite of all the years and all the layers

of "all for the best in the end." He did not grow restless in his chair. And he did not

speak. He had seen a lot worse; wasn't that the first thing you knew about him? But he

didn't mention any of those things, either. He waited for her to take her hands away from

her face, and then he handed her his pink handkerchief. He said, "It was Kiku who told

me."

Margaret steadied her breath, then said, "Oh yes. She came and held the baby. I

never knew why."

"Well, she did tell me that, too."

Margaret waited. It was surprising how even now she couldn't ask the question.

But Pete didn't need to be asked. He said, "She had some herbs with her, to offer you. But

when she held the baby, she saw--"

"That nothing would do any good." But she was no longer weeping--she was

again used to Alexander's fate.

Pete nodded. He looked like the soul of kindness. She blew her nose. She said,

"But the coots were also coots. I hated the way the last three babies staggered about

together, looking for bits to eat. I hated how doomed they were."

"Of course you did," said Pete. That was all, but it was enough, she thought.

They drank the last bit of tea. It was getting colder and windier outside, and she

began to think she should get home. He walked her to the Franklin. He held the door. She

got in and put down the window. Her gloved hand was on the door as he closed it, and he

took it in his and kissed it. Then he bowed slightly and turned away. She pressed the

starter with her foot, but she didn't drive off at once. She sat there until he disappeared

through the gate, and even after that.

When she got home, she took out the picture. What she saw this time were the

two curves--the steep rise of the hillside beyond the pond, and the answering flat line of

the far edge of the pond itself. Beneath these two large shapes, almost lost among the

waving grasses, were the cluster of coots in the right foreground, and the gay, foolhardy

chick, swimming quickly (as demonstrated by the rivulets around him) to the left. His

figure drew the eye, of course, and wasn't the eye that was drawn her eye, but also the eye

of the hawk, unseen, floating on an air current high above? She thought it was a

wonderful but terrible picture, like the picture of the snake, and she put it back in the

closet.

When Andrew inquired after Pete, she said that he seemed to be prospering.

Andrew was gratified at the success of his scheme for her welfare, and suggested,

"Perhaps, my dear, you need a biweekly outing, if not all the way to the racetrack, then to

some other place of recreation."

DORA finally came late in the winter, and what a winter it had been. The stock

market had crashed, and the Bells had lost a lot of money. Margaret heard about it in

every letter from Beatrice, who was in a panic, because Robert's partner had killed

himself, and the reasons why were still locked in the books ("the second set," wrote

Elizabeth, which could not be found). Andrew had lost some money, too, but not much.

He was still planning to pay cash for the large Italianate house they were buying as a

result of his retirement and his enforced move from the island to Vallejo. If he hadn't had

so much work to do with Len, he would have liked to deliver her to the Palace Hotel

himself, and welcome Dora back to the West Coast personally. As it was, he inspected

and approved her outfit before she left the house and said that he would meet the

dinnertime ferry just to hear all about Dora's recent adventures.

Dora maintained that the Crash would not affect her; her new paper (the
New York

Herald Tribune
, much more fashionable than the
Examiner)
was actually beginning to

turn a profit, and her editor was so intimidating that the publisher didn't dare defy him.

She was on a cross-country tour, interviewing victims of the Crash, high and low.

Talking about the Crash took precedence in their conversation, as in every conversation

Margaret had had in four months.

Dora said, "All the experts say this will be nothing truly fearsome."

"Do you believe them?"

"No."

"Why

not?"

"Because the ones with the money don't have it anymore. It's gone, and they know

it's gone. They don't believe the experts, even though they hired them."

"But Andrew says the stock market is going up again."

Dora

shrugged.

"What is it like in Europe?"

"Well"--she shook her head--"Italy, of course, is terrifying--more so every day.

England is okay, but you know they'll never recover from the Great War. I'm sure, if a

real depression hits, they will blame the Americans somehow."

"What about France?"

Dora smiled. "You know France. It's nice there. When things start to go bad, for at

least a while France freezes in place. You can go about your pleasures and say to yourself

that disaster is coming, but this is a lovely peach and there are beautiful cows out in the

field, and let's go find a two-room apartment in Biarritz and sit this out. Darling, I wonder

and I wonder where I want to be for the next few years, and I can't come up with an

answer. I just let the paper send me about, and count the places I don't want to be."