Sacred (24 page)

Where were my parents? My mother, I was fairly sure, must be holed up in her room again. Daddy had taken away her bottle of sedatives about a week ago, and Mom hadn’t said anything, but not three days after that a new bottle was in its place. It seemed that her only trips out of the house were to see the doctor or to fill a prescription at the pharmacy.

I peered out the kitchen window into the dusk of the garden. There he was, sitting on the bench near the koi pond, stirring the water with a stick.

With the sun down, the air was cold enough to make me shiver. I wrapped my arms around my waist and trampled across a bed of fallen leaves to sit beside my father.

He looked over at me and smiled. His eyes were red.

“There’s my girl,” he said, patting my knee. “Have a good day?”

“Mmm-hmm.” I wasn’t sure what to say, where to put my hands. “How about you, Daddy?” I asked at last.

“Oh, fine, fine.” His eyes seemed unfocused as they looked across the darkening yard. “Another day, another dollar. Well, another day, anyway.” His laugh sounded forced.

“Why don’t you come inside? I’m making some soup.”

“Are you? That’s nice, Scarlett. Soup sounds good. What kind?”

“Chicken.”

“Your mother’s favorite,” he murmured. Another long moment passed, and then he turned to look at me again, more focused this time, as if he was really seeing me.

“You look better, Scarlett. Stronger.”

“Thanks, Daddy. I’m trying.”

“Well, that’s all we can ask, isn’t it? That we try?”

The question seemed rhetorical, but there was an edge to it too, and I had the feeling he was thinking about Mom.

“Come on.” I stood up and pulled on his arm. He rose reluctantly and followed me toward the house.

“Chicken soup, eh? Did you put in any noodles?”

“Rice.”

“Your mom’s favorite. Good girl, Scarlett. Good girl.”

Daddy and I ate at the table, and I helped him finish his crossword puzzle from the day before. Then he kissed me on the head and told me again—for the fifth time—how good the soup had been.

That was generous of him. It wasn’t great soup, but it
wasn’t terrible, either. I headed to my room to get ready for the next day, and Daddy ladled up a bowl of soup to take in to Mom.

In my room, I looked at the small stack of books on my desk. There was
Jewish Mysticism
, the book Will had lent me that day in the library;
A Guide to the Sefirot
, the slim golden-lettered volume Martin had given me over the weekend; and my copy of
The Importance of Being Earnest
.

I picked up the play and began flipping through it, reading through the scenes that my character, Cecily Cardew, did not appear in. The whole play was absurd, which was its charm. It was about two handsome young men and two young ladies, all privileged, and the creative web of lies spun by the men in order to have the freedom to carouse away from home.

I came across a line Algernon, Will’s character, speaks to his friend Jack in the first act: “Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven’t got the remotest idea of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.”

I felt that familiar twinge that went along with considering death, especially in conjunction with relations, but I pushed it aside to focus on the words. How ironic that Will, who seemed to esteem his father so highly, would be speaking this awful line!

Of course, much of the play’s appeal lay in its irony. And it turns out that Jack, Algernon’s friend, is actually his brother. How wonderful it would be if my own brother were to surprise me right now by knocking on my bedroom door and poking his head in as he always used to do, his gangly frame seeming half a size too large to fit through.

I pushed the book away. Then I reached into the burlap shopping bag and pulled out the long blue dress. I rested my cheek on its cool, smooth fabric before pulling a hanger from the closet and hanging the dress from the frame of my mirror.

It had been a long day and I was tired. But before I went to sleep I wanted to do one more thing. I pulled open the top drawer of my bureau and fished around in the back of it, my fingers closing around a small velvet box.

I opened it, and there it was—the blown-glass unicorn. I set it gently on the window frame, where the light would shine on it in the morning. It wasn’t out of harm’s way anymore, but stuck in a box, shoved in a drawer, was no life for my unicorn.

FOURTEEN

S
ix o’clock Saturday morning found me climbing into the familiar cab of Alice’s truck. I scrambled into my seat, handing Alice a ceramic mug of steaming coffee to hold for me while I arranged the rest of my stuff—my backpack, my sweatshirt, my water bottle, my cream-cheese bagel—at my feet and on my lap. Then I gestured for Alice to return my coffee mug.

“Since when do you drink coffee?” Alice smirked, amused.

“Since I discovered half-and-half,” I admitted. “I’m a little bit addicted.”

“Umm … it may be the caffeine in the coffee that you’re addicted to.”

I took a hot sip of the coffee and shook my head. “Nope. Definitely the half-and-half.”

“Well, whatever it is,” Alice said, looking at me admiringly, “it must be good for you. You’re looking pretty great, Scarlett.”

I smiled. “Tonight’s the dance,” I admitted, “and Will is my date. That makes me
feel
pretty great.”

“Ah,” said Alice. Her voice was full of knowledge. “I remember that feeling.”

Alice was happily married, but she sounded nostalgic.

“Don’t you still feel that way?” I asked. “About Howard?”

Alice smiled. We’d turned off the main road and dust plumed up around us. “I love Howard,” she said. “And don’t get me wrong, we’re great together. Beautiful kids, strong communication, we both love garlic. But there’s something about the first date … if it’s with the right guy, it can be magic.”

She was looking at the road, but I had the sense that she was seeing something else entirely.

My work with Traveler was coming along. I hadn’t taken him out on the trail; that was a long way off most likely, but in the arena I had him pretty well in hand. He was learning both basic Western and English commands, and based on the way he moved, I thought he might have the makings of an excellent jumper.

His gaits were smooth and rhythmic—for an Arabian. He had the characteristic rabbit-bounce in his trot, but he was turning into a nice little horse. Not so little, really, and as we worked more and more often—three times a week now—he was starting to pack on muscle.

Today I set out some trot poles in the arena, set evenly apart, about every six feet. I couldn’t wait to see how he handled them. I hadn’t told Alice yet, but I had high hopes that he might be an even better jumper than Delilah. After
tacking up Traveler, I led him by hand into the arena to give him a chance to get a good look at the poles before I climbed on.

He entered the arena naturally enough, but when I took him past the red-and-white striped poles, his nostrils flared in alarm and he shifted quickly to the side.

“It’s okay,” I soothed, keeping him tight on my right side and stroking his neck as I talked. “It’s just a few sticks of wood. Nothing to worry about.”

Apparently Traveler didn’t agree, because the next turn past the poles was no better—his hooves crossed hastily to avoid stepping over the poles, and I could see the whites of his eyes.

It didn’t improve. For close to an hour I trudged through the arena’s sand, leading the obstinate, scared horse again and again past the striped poles. Most horses get less spooked the more times you expose them to something they find scary, but Traveler seemed to be wired differently; his response got worse and worse, until I was yanking on the bridle with uncharacteristic harshness as he dug his hooves in the sand, rearing up and striking out with his front hooves when I tried to force him over the poles.

I felt my frustration mounting. I was as obstinate as Traveler as I tried to convince him that the poles were not terrible horizontal monsters waiting to terrorize and destroy him. But he wasn’t buying it.

Alice, who had been watching us for some time, called from her vantage point on the rail, “Why don’t you try again another day?”

I didn’t want to try again another day. I wanted the damned horse to walk over the poles! It didn’t seem too much to ask, but no matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, Traveler refused.

Finally, I noticed that his withers were trembling and a fine, white foam had gathered in the corners of his mouth. All the urgency that had been mounting in me seemed to disappear. It hit me—this horse was really, truly scared. He wasn’t trying to make my life difficult; he was terrified.

My posture changed; the shoulders I’d been tensely holding relaxed, the grim set of my mouth gentled, and I loosened my grip on the reins. “It’s okay,” I whispered, turning Traveler’s back on the poles and leaning my forehead against his. “We’ll get it another time.”

The horse seemed to sense that our struggle was over, and he strained forward toward the gate to get out of the arena, away from the terrible poles.

I walked him to the cross-ties and untacked him. I hadn’t even climbed on his back, but suddenly I didn’t want to—not today. Suddenly, the day that had seemed so full of promise felt like a lie, and though I had been so excited just an hour ago about my date with Will, somehow I felt different about that, too … as if some of the luster had rubbed off already, even though the experience lay in front of me, not in my past, and I wondered if this was a taste of how Alice felt all the time, if this was what life was like in the grown-up world, full of disappointment and worn-out experience.

Lily came to pick me up from the stable at two o’clock. She’d decided it would be fun to get ready for the dance together at her place. She pulled her father’s black Range Rover into the lot and swung her legs down from its high driver’s seat. She was wearing black leather boots with some of those ridiculous jodhpurs tucked into them—the ones that have the enormous, ballooning hips—and wore an argyle sweater of course.

I laughed out loud when I saw her, and I felt the shadow that had been lingering over my head all morning begin to dissipate.

“Hello, dahling,” Lily called to me. “Are you ready to be transformed from that dusty, dirty workaday girl into the belle of the ball?”

“Hi, Lily. Did you put that whole outfit together just to drive out here and get me, or do you actually intend to do some riding?”

“It’s just for looks. Everything I do is just for looks. Come on,” she said, grabbing my backpack. “Let’s go.”

Back at Lily’s house, I found that she had transformed her room into a salon. She must have seriously raided her mom’s beauty supplies; top-of-the-line curlers, brushes, powders, and creams lined the top of her long dresser. Our dresses, white and blue, hung side by side on the front of her closet door; Lily had swung by my place while I’d been at the stable.

“First,” Lily commanded, “a bath. You smell like horse. I’ll get snacks.” She clapped her hands twice, clearly enjoying bossing me around.

I didn’t argue. A bath sounded pretty good.

Lily had one of those great tubs, oversized, with curved sides and a high back. I sighed as I poured myself into it and got lost among the bubbles.

In my dream, I was back on the beach. Again, the sand was warm beneath my body, the sun warm above my head. And again, the sand shifted, and I began to sink.

This time, though, I wasn’t shot through with panic. I knew Will would come for me, would reach down into the sand and grab my hand and pull me to the surface and save me.

So I lay still as the waves of sand broke over my fingers and toes, as the press of it grew heavy against my chest, as my hair tangled and was threaded through with sand.

And he did not come.

And he did not come.

And the granules of sand invaded my ears, and my eyes, and my nose and mouth, and there was no air for me to breathe, nowhere for me to go, nothing for me to do.

I couldn’t believe he wasn’t coming for me. The sadness of this realization weighed heavier than the sand. It wasn’t until the highest points of my face—my nose and chin—were lost beneath the press of the sand that my eyes opened in the bath. Tears streaked down my cheeks and mixed with the lavender-scented bubbles, and as I stood from the bath, my limbs felt heavy and leaden.