Splendor (24 page)

I laughed. Tears ran down my cheeks, but I ignored them. “Yeah,” I said. “It never bothered Lily to be looked at. One time she said”—and I laughed again at the memory—“she said she
liked
being objectified.”

Dad snorted a little. “Not a statement the feminists would be real proud of.”

“But she
was
a feminist!” I said. “She was all for girl power. For strength. She just didn’t mind if people liked to look at her boobs while she was conquering the world.”

Suddenly I felt hungrier than I had in a long while, and I stabbed another glorified pill bug, dragging it through the garlic sauce before popping it into my mouth.

“So,” Dad said, “where do you think Lily would want you to go to school?”

“Probably LA,” I said. “Santa Barbara
is
known for being a party school, but it’s not as cosmopolitan as LA.”

“What about Davis?”

“Oh, Lily
definitely
wouldn’t approve,” I said. “A small-town farm school? No way.”

“Well, no matter what you choose,” Dad said, “I know Lily would be proud of you. So would Ronny. And
we’re
proud of you—your mother and I.”

He smiled at me in that sweet sad way of his. I thought about what I’d seen in the winter—him and Alice kissing. I thought about Will’s assertion that you can never see inside another’s heart. And I thought about the Sefirot, how loving-kindness was juxtaposed with judgment.

The point was to strike a balance. To not lean too far to one side or the other. I looked into my father’s eyes, and I saw love there, reflected back at me. And I knew I wasn’t going to bust my dad and Alice. I couldn’t know what was in his heart, or hers. Or my mother’s or Alice’s husband’s, for that matter. I couldn’t understand all the nuances of what had transpired between them. I couldn’t ferret out all their reasons and all the stories that might have led my dad and Alice to that kiss by the koi pond.

What was more, I didn’t
want
to know all those things. It wasn’t my business. And I didn’t want to judge Dad and Alice. I just wanted to love them.

So it was with a wonderful feeling of openness that I reached across the table and touched his hand. “I’m proud of you too, Daddy,” I said. “Really proud.”

For my eighteenth birthday, I was showered with gifts. My mom insisted that I spend the weekend with her in LA, shopping. It was actually not terrible. Her new, purple-wall-embracing self actually had pretty good taste. Not as great as Lily’s, but still. Better than nothing.

My dad gave me an IOU for transporting Delilah and her foal off the island. It would be a while before she and her baby—who would be born in less than a month, the bolero-wearing vet said Delilah was “almost ripe”—would be ready to go anywhere with me.

I’d already settled on UC Davis; it had a good premed program, and farmland all around meant that I’d be able to find a place to board Delilah and her foal for a reasonable price. There was no way I’d be able to afford to keep them in LA or Santa Barbara.

Alice gave me a new pair of riding chaps—I’d had mine since freshman year, and they were way too short. These were beautiful—dark brown, soft, supple, so great.

Martin sent me a bouquet of eighteen roses, all different colors, with a note—

Scarlett,

Eighteen is as magic a number as exists. It represents chai—life itself. May life be full of beauty and bounty for you in the coming year. Did you know that in Hebrew thought, the names we give our children are more than just something to call them by? A name is part of the defining essence of a person. Therefore, one’s name can be a source of great power. It can even influence who that person may become. Your name, my dear, is Scarlett—Red. And for us, red is the color of life. The color of power. You were well named. Mazel tov, and happy, happy birthday.

—Martin

I read the note three times, each time feeling as if a portion of weight was lifted from me. I liked what Martin said, very much. Gunner had said that he and I were linked—Gunn and Scar, both related to pain, to injury, maybe even to death.

I could see it his way, if I wanted to. But I didn’t. I was scarred; who wasn’t? But I didn’t need to be
defined
by those scars. I was more than the sum of the pain I had suffered. Scarlett.

For the first time, I loved my name. The flowers were lovely, but the real gift was Martin’s words.

The last present was from Will. It came wrapped in a flat package, plain brown paper tied around with twine. He’d addressed the package in his careful script. I pulled back the paper and set it aside.

Inside was a thin cardboard box. I opened it and gently shook out its contents. There was a painting, and with it a folded note.

I would have read the note first, but the picture arrested me. Will had painted me astride Delilah. Her face was in the foreground, broad and red with round dark eyes. He’d drawn me with my hair down, the way he liked it. I was smiling and bright-eyed; the sun exploded in light behind me. In the far distance was a line of blue-green—the ocean.

His note read,
No matter what, Scarlett, I love you.
That was all.

The day after my birthday, I visited Lily’s house. It had been too long since I’d been there. I had checked in with her brothers a few times, when I saw them in the grade school yard adjacent to the high school’s. They seemed okay; I watched them laughing and playing with their friends, and they didn’t seem all that different from before.

Henry had developed this habit, though, where he sort of tapped his hand against his thigh, quick short slaps, three in a row. I watched him for a while and saw him do it four different times.

And I’d seen Jack around town a bit—taking the boys to get ice cream, picking up milk at the store, things like that. He had seemed glad to see me, hugging me each time we met. Maybe he was a little thinner than before; I couldn’t be sure.

But I hadn’t really seen Laura. She called me on my birthday and asked me to come by the house sometime soon. She had something to give me, she said.

I went over after school on the last day of April. It was a glorious day, over eighty degrees, the kind of weather that makes you happy in spite of yourself. When I got to the house, I wasn’t really sure what to do; usually I’d go in through the kitchen door, in the back, just sort of knocking and calling “hello” as I opened it.

But now that Lily wouldn’t be there to answer, this felt weird. Standing formally on the front porch and ringing the bell would be equally awkward, so I settled for knocking on the kitchen door and waiting for someone to answer it.

Laura did.

Everyone grieves in their own way. There’s no right or wrong way to mourn. That’s what the books and the websites say. But I think they’re wrong.

Her eyes had the same shadow of pain that had been in my mother’s and my father’s and my own eyes, too. Maybe there’s some part in all of us, some connected part of us, maybe that thing that Martin would name God, or that Carl Jung, this guy we learned about in psychology class, called the collective unconscious. Maybe that’s the part that recognizes grief in others, because that part in all of us knows its story, knows its sting.

After Ronny died, I’d thought that people looked at me differently because my brother’s death meant that their sons, brothers, and husbands had an additional level of protection from harm. Like tragedy could strike in only so many places at once. But now I wondered if maybe they had been looking at me with wordless empathy, coming from a place of infinite connection rather than separation. Maybe if I had turned toward them rather than away, and inward, I could have found comfort in that connection to other people.

I thought this now as Laura let me into the kitchen, as I looked at the dividing line in her hair: below a certain point, her curls were caramel-colored; above that line, and to the root, they were laced with gray.

That line marked Lily’s death.

I thought these things, but I didn’t say them. “Hi, Laura,” I said. “It’s good to see you. I’m so sorry I haven’t visited more.”

“It’s okay, honey, I understand.” We hugged for a long time, and with my eyes closed, I could almost imagine that the curls that touched my cheek were Lily’s.

When we parted, I noticed a necklace she was wearing, one I’d never seen before. It was a colored stone, dark reddish pink, set simply in a four-pronged bracket, on a chain.

“That’s pretty,” I said.

Laura’s hand came up to the stone in a gesture that seemed well practiced, as if it were a habit of hers to touch the pendant.

“Don’t think I’m crazy,” she said. “Jack does.”

“What?”

She sat at the kitchen table. Her hand stayed on the stone. “I couldn’t stand the thought of letting her go.”

I knew how she felt; I didn’t want to let Lily go, either. But what choice did we have? She was gone. We were here.

“This necklace is made from Lily,” Laura said. Her expression was raw, open, and defiant, too, as if daring me to say anything negative.

But I didn’t even understand what she meant.

My confusion must have showed because Laura clarified. “We had Lily cremated,” she said. “And I chose to have some of her remains made into this stone.”

I’d never heard of anything like this. But I thought for a minute—diamonds come from carbon. People are made of carbon.

“There’s a business that does that?” I asked. “Makes gemstones out of people?”

Laura smiled grimly. “Honey, if you have the money, there’s a business for everything.”

“Can I touch it?”

Laura nodded, but she didn’t unclasp the necklace. Instead she leaned across so I could reach it. The stone felt smooth, hard, cool. Just like it looked. Lily had been none of those things, in life. She had been soft. She had been warm. She had been uneven and mercurial and brightly alive.

“I had one made for Jasper and Henry, and Jack, too. The boys keep theirs in their room. Probably mixed in with their building toys.” She smiled, a little. “Jack doesn’t carry his, but I’ve caught him looking at it a few times. And…” She stood up and opened a drawer in the little built-in desk in the corner, pulling out a box. “I had this made for you.”

I opened the box. It was latched with a tiny lever that swung open easily. Inside was a ring, yellow gold, with the same reddish-pink stone that Laura wore, only slightly smaller.

I lifted it from the box and slid it onto the ring finger of my right hand. It fit perfectly.

Laura smiled. “That would make Lily so happy,” she said, “knowing that she can go everywhere with you.”

“Thank you, Laura.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Laura?” I asked. “Can I ask you something?”

She nodded.

“Are you going to be all right?”

She laughed, humorless. “I’ll
live,
if that’s what you mean.”

I shook my head. It wasn’t. “Because, Laura, my mom wasn’t okay after Ronny. Not for a long time. And even though I needed her, she couldn’t see it. I don’t want that for the boys. Or for you, either.”

She was listening, and I grew bolder, telling her what I wish someone had said to my mother, speaking for Lily’s brothers in the way I wish someone had spoken for me. “Henry’s doing this weird tapping thing on his leg, Laura. Have you noticed?”

Slowly, she shook her head.

“I think the ring is beautiful, and your necklace, too. But so are your boys. Don’t go away, okay, Laura? Your boys need you.”

Laura looked down at the table, the crown of her head exposed to me fully, the demarcation in her hair color so obvious from where I was sitting.

Finally she looked up. There was something in her eyes, something I had seen in Lily’s. “I’m not going anywhere,” she said.

B
y early May, Delilah’s belly was as round and hard as a huge, ripe apple. She moved slowly now, like her hips were loose in their sockets. Her coat shimmered golden red and her eyes were brightly peaceful.

On the seventh of May, I spent the afternoon switching out the wood shavings in her stall with straw. Shavings could irritate her or the foal after birth; straw was less dusty, Alice told me, and the traditional bedding for a foaling mare.

Delilah wandered loose in the arena while I worked, hauling wheelbarrows of shavings from the barn and over to the far end of the field. She watched me disinterestedly, her long tail flicking the occasional fly.

When the stall was finally empty, I sprayed down the thick black rubber mats that lined it and left it open to dry out.

It was a fine day. I didn’t mind just waiting around for the sun to dry Delilah’s stall; I was in no hurry to go anywhere. So I sat on the arena’s railing and watched my mare enjoy the sun.

She didn’t do much of anything, just wandered around a little, sometimes closing her eyes as if to feel the sun’s rays more fully. A couple of times she came over to me, as if she was just checking in, saying hi.

Dr. Rhonda had been out to the island just before my birthday to do one final checkup. She gave Delilah a tetanus booster, a routine procedure for mares about to foal.

She had been just as intense as always, with that single-minded focus that I admired about her. And her hands were gentle with my mare. I watched her examining Delilah, the way she listened with her stethoscope to Delilah’s belly, the way she moved around the horse, exuding an air of confidence.

That was how I wanted to be, I decided, around my patients, one day. Of course, mine would have two legs rather than four.

“So, off to UC Davis, eh?” Dr. Rhonda seemed pleased by my decision. She told me she’d loved living up there while she was in vet school, though it had taken her a while to get used to the heat. “You’re sure you wouldn’t be happier as a vet, though?”

“I want to work in neuroscience.”

“Horses have brains too, you know.” She was reaching under Delilah, checking behind the swell of her belly. “Your mare’s starting to udder up,” she said. “I think she’ll be delivering sooner rather than later.”

“Really?”

“Mm-hmm.” Dr. Rhonda didn’t look at me, or Delilah. She stared off into the distance as if not to distract herself from what she was feeling. “Right around the middle of May, I’d guess.”

And here we were, edging closer to her predicted date of delivery. I’d taken to almost obsessively watching Delilah for signs of impending labor. But as far as I could tell, she looked pretty much the same. Except bigger.

Alice came out of the office and wandered over to the arena, resting her arms on the rail where I sat. For a few minutes we just watched Delilah together.

“That’s a beautiful mare, Scarlett,” she said.

“Yeah,” I answered. “I’m really going to miss her in the fall.”

UC Davis wasn’t all that far from home, not compared with some schools, but it was far enough to prohibit regular weekend visits.

“It won’t be forever,” Alice said.

“I know. And when I go back my sophomore year, I’ll take Delilah and the baby with me.”

She nodded. “I’ll keep an eye on her when you go away. The foal, too. I’ll make sure everyone here is taken care of.”

“My father, too.”

Alice looked up at me sharply, but I didn’t let my face reveal anything.

“Take care of him, will you, Alice? I don’t like to think of him all alone.”

Slowly, she nodded. Alice was more perceptive than Dad, but she didn’t push me. “I’ll take care of him,” she promised.

Delilah came back around and rested her chin on my knee. I stroked her sun-warmed cheek.

Alice’s keen eye roamed over Delilah. She looked at her udder. “You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if your foal came in the next few days. You see this?” She ducked into the arena and reached behind Delilah’s belly. I looked where she was pointing. The tips of Delilah’s teats looked waxy.

“She’s getting ready to feed a foal.”

I started to get excited. “Did you hear that, Delilah?” I said. “You’re going to be a mama soon!”

She snorted at me, like I wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know.

When Delilah’s stall was dry, Alice helped me haul in four bales of straw. I clipped the twine with wire cutters and the bales burst open, their sweet fragrance filling the air. Using a pitchfork, I spread the straw evenly in the stall, and by the time I was done my whole body itched from the work. Little pieces of straw floated from my hair; I fished more than a few others from the back of my shirt. I sneezed.

The next day when I went out to the stable, I took my sleeping bag with me. I got there in the late afternoon. I’d read that mares—especially maiden mares, those that hadn’t foaled before—are most likely to give birth between eleven at night and four in the morning. And I didn’t want Delilah to be alone when her time came.

Alice just smiled and shook her head when she saw me unloading the back of the Volvo. But she didn’t try to dissuade me. “You’re just like I was, when I was your age,” is all she said.

I spent that night in front of Delilah’s stall. It was cold, but the stars were bright above my head. A few times I heard Delilah rustling around, but nothing happened. Mostly I just lay on the ground and stared up into the sky.

One good thing about living on an island is that the sky gets really, really dark at night. And you can see the stars.

The night was perfectly clear and there were so many bright pinpoints of light above me, too many to count. I made myself dizzy trying.

The next day was a Monday, but after school I headed out to the stable again. I’d left my sleeping bag in the tack room, so I didn’t even have to go home. Dad brought me some tacos from a little place in town, and he stuck around long enough to eat with me. Then it was just me and my mare, and the stars, for another night.

Again I rested just outside Delilah’s stall door. My gaze returned to the sky; the stars were still there. Because it wasn’t like they disappeared during the day. We just couldn’t see them.

Ronny had told me something once. He’d been all amped up about space during his freshman year of high school; he even had a telescope. “Did you know,” he said, “that we’re all made of stardust?”

I was about twelve years old. We’d been sitting in the gazebo in our backyard, sharing a bowl of grapes. There was no koi pond yet. There was no death in my life, no great sadness. My mare was herself just a foal.

“What are you talking about?” I answered. It was irritating, how Ronny was always trying to educate me.

“It’s true. When the universe first came into being after the big bang, the only elements that existed were hydrogen, helium, and a little bit of lithium. That’s all there was! Those elements just floating around, and gravity started pulling them together into lumps and balls of matter.”

“Is this going to take long?” The grapes were gone. I was getting hot.

He ignored me. “So those lumps and balls, when they were big enough and dense enough, and there was enough pressure from gravity smushing the hydrogen and helium atoms together, the atoms actually bonded into heavier elements.”

“Smushing?” I interrupted. “Is that a technical term?”

“Shut up. So while the stuff is bonding, energy gets released. And a star is born.”

“Uh-huh.”

I guess I didn’t sound as impressed by his wealth of knowledge as Ronny would have liked, but he went on anyway. “Eventually,” he said, “the star uses up all its fuel.”

“How long does that take?” I was getting sort of interested, in spite of myself.

“A really long time. Like millions or even billions of years.”

“Then what?”

“Then it collapses inward.” Ronny demonstrated with his hands, forming a ball and tucking his fingers into the middle. “So when the star dies, it scatters its material in a huge explosion.” He threw his hands out wide, fingers spread. “And all the elements that created the star are released, and the whole thing happens all over again. Only this time
our
star is formed—the sun. And our solar system. And all of life, everything you see, everyone you know, all of it, all of
everything
is formed from the matter that once made up those stars. Do you know what that means?”

I shook my head.

He reached out and touched my nose. “It means you’re made of star,” he said. “And
I’m
made of star. Really, truly, we’re all freaking stardust. Isn’t that cool?”

I shrugged. “I guess.”

He snorted. “You
guess
? You
know.
” He got up, grabbed the bowl from the table, and carried it inside. Just before the back door slammed shut he turned and grinned at me. “Stardust,” he said. “It doesn’t get any cooler than that.”

It was way past midnight, close to three in the morning, when I was woken by sounds from inside Delilah’s stall. I unzipped my bag and blinked, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dark. In a moment I could see vague shapes, shadows and outlines, so I stood up and peered into the stall.

Delilah was pacing in her small space, swishing her tail. She’d take a few steps, then stop and look back at her flanks. Then she’d walk some more. Once she bit at her side.

This was it. “Easy, girl,” I soothed, but Delilah didn’t seem to notice me. I watched for twenty minutes as she paced and stopped, checked her flank and walked again. Even though it was cold outside the stall, she breathed hot steamy breaths and a fine coat of sweat began to break across her pelt.

Suddenly I knew who I wanted here with me tonight, who I wanted to share this with.

Their car pulled into the stable yard before four o’clock. Four doors opened and slammed closed. And then the twins came running at me, their father whispering, “Keep it down!”

There they were—Jack and Laura, Jasper and Henry.

I walked out to meet them. “Hey, guys. I’m so glad you came.”

“Not a big fan of the middle-of-the-night phone call,” Jack said. “But here we are.”

“Where’s Delilah?” Jasper asked.

I pointed to her stall. “She’s in there. But we’ve got to be really quiet, and we can’t crowd her, or she might not stay in labor.”

“You mean she has a
choice
?” Henry sounded surprised.

I nodded. “If a mare doesn’t feel safe, her labor stalls until she feels more secure.”

“Cool,” said Henry. I noticed him tapping his hand against his leg, but then he stopped and shot a look at his mom.

She smiled at him gently and put her hand on his shoulder. In the night’s blue darkness, her red gemstone looked black.

I led them over to Delilah’s stall. I peered inside; she was lying down.

We all watched her silently for a minute, but then she stood up. It looked uncomfortable and awkward, getting that big body back up on her four slim legs, but she did it and then she resumed her pacing, her tail swishing. She turned straight toward us once and looked into my eyes, curling back her upper lip in a way I’d never seen her do before.

“What’s she doing?” whispered Jasper.

“I don’t know,” I whispered back, and for a moment I was shot through with panic. What if this didn’t go right? What if Delilah had trouble in labor? What if she didn’t live through it?

For a second I considered telling Jack and Laura to leave, but then Delilah lay back down and rested her head in the straw, and I forgot about the cluster of people around me; I only saw Delilah.

“What’s that?” Henry asked, pointing. I looked down between Delilah’s hind legs and saw the white membrane of the amnion pushing out, and then her water broke and it came out in a rush, soaking the straw beneath her.

“Gross!” said Jasper, and if I hadn’t been so focused on Delilah I would have told him to keep it down, but now I saw something amazing—a tiny hoof emerging from my mare, glistening wet and tiny. A second hoof followed the first and Delilah groaned, just like a person, as the foal’s muzzle pushed out. There was a moment of rest between contractions, and then with the next one the foal’s head came out quickly.