Warpaint Page 14

  “Give me a half hour, dear. I should be even more a prune, by then.”

  Sara laughed and left the bathroom

  Liz stared at the water about her waist. Suppose I just slipped in? How easy it would be to mistake for an accident? If I wait, what sort of thing will I be? She’d seen enough of age. She wanted to know the end – and did not. Her limited view had never gone to that place, the last place. One thing she did know with certainty though: if she decided to take the plunge one day, she wouldn’t flinch.

  ♦

  Quiola patted the side of Splash’s neck, slipped her right foot out of the stirrup and swung into dismount but the stirrup bumped against the horse’s wither, as if in a kick, and the horse began to move forward. Her teacher, Megan White, a trainer at Flash Farm, tried to steady the horse but something about the unfamiliar situation got to the gelding, and he took off, yanking Quiola forward and down to her knees. She let go of the reins and the horse, neighing, trotted off, leaving Quiola to stare at her hands, planted in shavings and soft dirt. She dusted them off and rocked back to her feet as Meg went to get the mount, who, being well trained, had only trotted off a few feet to wait for a human to come and fix things.

  Another instructor ran out of the tack room. “Are you all right? What happened?”

  “I didn’t feel like I was going to fall.”

  “You fell off Splash?”

  “Not really. Not all the way. I was halfway to the ground before he bolted.”

  “Can you stand?”

  “Yeah,” said Quiola, taking his offered hand. But her legs shook.

  “You’d better come inside.”

  Unsteadily, she followed him into the barn, and into the darker darkness of the tack room, where there was a small desk and chair. She sat down. “My knees hurt, but I’m okay. Except for this –” she gazed at the underside of one arm, where a buckle shaped welt was beginning to form. “I must have hit myself on the stirrups.”

  The instructor, Mike, looked over the bruises with care. “The skin’s not broken. That’s good. People will wonder what you’ve been up to.”

  “Well, I’m not known for kinky, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Make ’em wonder, I say.”

  “Really, Mike!” She touched the bruise. “What the hell, huh? Everyone falls, sooner or later, right?”

  “Part of the game.”

  Megan led Splash, once again his placid, schoolhorse self, into the barn, where she undressed his face, slipped a harness on, cross-tied him and unbuckled the girth. Expert and efficient, Megan could tack up and down faster than most could mount or dismount. Watching her, Quiola said, “I envy you, Meg.”

  “You shouldn’t. I’ve been doing this since I was nine. You’ve been doing it, what, a few months?” Meg set the saddle down on a stand, then patted Splash’s arched neck. “He rarely does that. I think he heard something. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. Is he all right?”

  “Oh, sure. You want to give him a bath? Or are you feeling too messed up?”

  “Physically or psychically?”

  This made Mike turn away from cleaning tack. “Uh-oh,” he said.

  “I’m going to look at a house this afternoon,” said Quiola. “A big house.”

  “To buy?” said Megan. “But I thought –”

  “– that I’d just moved into a condo not too long ago? Yes. But C.C. wants this house. She’s wanted it for years, and if she buys it, I know she expects me to move in.”

  Megan shrugged, and tapped a cigarette out of its box. She lit it and blew a stream of smoke before she said, “You don’t have to move, do you?”

  “Can I bum one?”

  “Sure,” Meg held out the box.

  “Okay then, time for a break,” said Mike. He put down a sponge, capped the leather oil, and fished a box of cigarettes out of his front pocket.

  Splash sighed a mighty horse sigh, which made Meg laugh. “Humans boring you, old man? Here –” she opened a tin named “Treats” and found a peppermint.

  “No,” said Quiola. “I don’t have to move. But C.C. will make me, as the saying goes, an offer I can’t refuse.”

  “Ominous,” said Mike.

  “What sort of offer?”

  Quiola inhaled, blew out and leaned against Splash’s bulk. “No more mortgage, insanely reduced living expenses, half or more of the house for my own use, a studio and so on. I could afford to ride everyday, quit one of my teaching gigs and still be ahead.”

  Mike whistled. “Sweet! What’s the catch?”

  Quiola closed her eyes for a moment. “I’m afraid.”

  “Of what? Not C.C.,” said Megan.

  “No, not of C.C. I’m afraid of what’s ahead.” She pulled off her riding gloves, folded them in half and tucked them into her black carry-all. “It’s not just the cancer. She’s got this cough, too.“

  “What does the doctor say about it?” asked Meg.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if C.C. has told her about it, or if Dr. Shea has heard it, or if I’m just hearing it because I’m worried and its nothing more than a cough. And then there are those days when I wonder which one of these awful things – cancer, Alzheimer’s, you name it – is aiming down the pike at me.”

  Mike shook his head. “I try not to think about it. You think about it, you get stuck in it, and then what? You worry. I say, just live. Besides, you won’t ride well with mortality on the brain.”

  “Isn’t that the truth! Sorry, guys, I’ll lighten up.”

  “No problem. We all have worries.” Megan gestured with her cigarette at Splash. “Do you have time to give the old man a bath?”

  Quiola smiled. “Absolutely.”

  ♦

  “Quiola? Where are you?” C.C. said as she hung up the black rotary phone, and got off the sofa as her Cambridge living room darkened and shadows grew long on the hardwood floors. It was a fine September evening, a couple months after they had started seeing each other, on the sly. Quiola didn’t know what Arthur Rivers might think, and she wanted to keep her internship.

  “I’m in the kitchen!”

  “Just got off the phone with Mother.”

  “What? I can’t hear you –”

  “I said,” C.C. raised her voice as she stalked through the swinging door into the kitchen. “Mother just called.”

  “I just can’t get this right,” said Quiola. Standing at the yellow-tiled counter near the stove, she was mixing something in a glass bowl. She looked over her shoulder at C.C., making her long hair swing. “Corn fritters. The dough is too doughy.”

  C.C. leaned one hip against the counter, crossing both her arms and ankles. “You cook like my mother, and here I am, twice your age and I can barely boil an egg. That was Mom, on the phone. She wants us to come down next weekend for a party. Can you get away?”

  “To Connecticut?”

  “Mm. My niece turns three and Karen’s about to pop, so Mom’s throwing the party – but they’ll be plenty of adults. We won’t be run off our feet by the kids.”

  “Your whole family will be there?”

  “Yes, silly. That’s the point, isn’t it? I’d like you to meet them.”

  “And they know?”

  “Know? Of course they know. My parents have known since I was twenty-five.”

  “Your brother, too?”

  “Ah, well, Ted.” C.C. peered into a grocery bag. “These need shucking.”

  “Uh-huh. So? What about your brother?”

  “Ted will be there, of course, he is the proud Dad, after all. Don’t worry, I’ll try not to shriek.” She took several ears of corn from the grocery bag. “The last time I heard from him, it was Christmas. He wanted me to go in on a gift for Mom and Dad. Like he doesn’t have plenty of money, the old turd.”

  “Is he that bad?”

  “See for yourself, when we get there.”

  Rather than bother with a rental car, C.C. and Quiola took the train down from Boston to New London. Sta
nding in the dim, echoing stationhouse, waiting for Tom Davis to pick them up, Quiola checked on her duffel bag.

  “Off to the ladies,” said C.C. “Be right back.”

  “What if your father shows up?”

  “Say hello.”

  “But I won’t know what to say besides hello.”

  C.C. laughed. “My father will do all the talking.”

  Left alone with the suitcases, Quiola clasped and unclasped her hands, gazing back and forth between the station doors and the ladies.

  “Hurry up,” she said in the direction of the bathroom as the station door creaked open, letting in a streak of light. An elderly man in a fedora stepped inside, stood still for a moment, let his eyes adjust to the gloom. Then, he smiled and said, “You must be Quiola?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr., I mean Dr. Davis.”

  He shook her hand. “Tom, please. My daughter’s in the can, I take it. She never could hold it. Made car trips loads of fun. These yours?” He reached down for the duffel.

  “That’s all right,” said Quiola hastily snatching the duffel before he could.

  “I won’t hear of it, young lady. Hand it over.”

  “Dad!” cried C.C. as the bathroom swung closed behind her. “Dad for gracious sake, we can carry our own.”

  He turned and held open his arms and C.C. walked across the station, into the hug, kissing her father on both cheeks. “It’s good to see you.”

  “And you, darling. You see I’ve met Quiola. Shall we? Mother’s waiting, and you know how she gets.”

  Tom’s 1965 VW Beetle was parked at the corner. Stowing the bags inside the hood, he unlocked the doors for the two women. Once they were well on their way home, and smaller inquiries asked and answered, C.C. said “So, is Ted home yet?”

  “Not yet. But Karen’s here. Ted couldn’t get away until tomorrow.”

  “Karen drove herself, in her condition?”

  “No, Charlie. I went and picked her up.”

  “Dad, you spoil Ted rotten.”

  “I spoil both my children. Besides, he’s got a busy practice. You know that. I don’t see how he handles it, quite frankly. How is your job going?”

  “I don’t like teaching.”

  “You don’t?” said Quiola, from the back seat. “I thought you did.”

  “And you, Quiola?” asked Tom, glancing up into the rearview. “Do you like being a student?”

  “I did. But I was ready to graduate.”

  “And you work, Charlie told me, at Riverbed Press?

  “It’s an internship, and it’s almost over.”

  “We have a plan for after, don’t we?” said C.C.

  “Oh?” said Dr. Davis as he pulled into the blind driveway, hidden behind a wall of bushes too high to see over. Having moved to Madison, Connecticut, from Montauk in 1971, the Davises lived in a house they dubbed Gardencourt. “What kind of a plan?”

  “An escape plan. We’re leaving for Paris. Lizzie gave me the keys to Paul’s studio. I figure we can live cheaply there for a couple years, really paint.”

  “And just what about your work, Charlie? I haven’t heard or seen anything for months on end.”

  “Oh, Dad, you don’t expect to read about me in the Times or anything, I hope.”

  “I read about Lizzie,” he said.

  “Of course you do.” C.C. opened the door. “And I expect to wait as long as Liz has for anyone to notice. It’s still a boy’s club, you know. Art. It still belongs to the boys.”

  “Isn’t that the truth,” said Quiola.

  Dr. Davis looked puzzled. “A boy’s club?”

  “Come on, Dad,” said C.C. popping the front end for the suitcases. “Art has been a boy’s club for a long time now. The girls make coffee and the boys make art, with a capital A.”

  “But I thought you girls were all liberated now. Gloria Steinem and all –”

  “Huh. I’ve been told and more than once a serious artist has to be big, bold and brash, which means a guy.”

  “Nonsense,” said Dr. Davis. “Oh, here’s Mother.”

  Walking down the slate path from the house to the detached garage, Nancy waved and called out, “Charlotte!”

  “Mom –” and C.C. left her bags to dash up the path for a hug.

  “Honey,” said Nancy, taking her daughter’s face by the chin. “You look lovely.”

  “Even without a stitch of make-up?”

  “Well, I always say a little lipstick wouldn’t hurt.”

  “You don’t give up, do you?”

  Nancy put her arm around her daughter’s waist, and beamed at both her guests. “Of course not. Now, are you going to introduce me to your new friend?”

  “Mrs. Davis, thank you for inviting me,” said Quiola politely, and she remained polite while meeting Karen Davis, C.C.’s sister-in-law, and Anne, her niece; remained polite throughout dinner, polite over coffee, polite about retiring to her guest bedroom, polite until C.C. snuck out of a second guestroom to join her, which is when Quiola, already in bed with a book, let go with “I thought you said they knew.”

  C.C. sat cross-legged on the white-flocked bedspread, her back against the baseboard. “They do. But we don’t talk about it. Never. They accept me, they love me, and they will love you, too. But they’re also old-fashioned. They knew all sorts of artists and such, but they’re conservative. Surely you can see that?”

  “And which part do they disapprove of most? The painter, the lezzie or the dirty half-breed?”

  “That’s not nice.”

  “This situation is not nice. I don’t feel comfortable.”

  “Why? They’ve been nothing but sweet. Even Karen has been a honey.”

  “Sure, because we’re friends. That’s what you told them, isn’t it, that we’re just close friends?”

  “Mom and Dad know perfectly well that any woman I bring home is my lover. I don’t know what Karen knows, and I’m not about to rock that boat.”

  “So why the separate bedrooms?”

  C.C. burst into laughter.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “How sweet!”

  “What is?”

  “You,” said C.C. “Goodness, Quiola, if either of us were a man, we’d sure as hell have separate bedrooms. We’re not married, are we? No. Now, if I brought home a boyfriend, do you think my parents would let me share his bed? Of course not! Like I said, they’re old-fashioned and they aren’t about to change.”

  ♦

  C.C. walked down the gravel drive away from the house with more spring in her step that Quiola had seen in many months. “It is, of course, perfect,” she said, stopping to gaze back at the rambling home that the realtor named The Carriage House. “Four bedrooms, two full baths and it looks so humble from here.”

  “Yes,” said C.C. rubbing her hands together. “I hope they’ll jump for it. If not, I’ll just give them the full asking price.”

  “Stone in the kitchen, pot-bellied stove, airy bedrooms – everything perfect, except for the wall to wall shag rug in the family room.”

  “I’ll rip it up. Put in hardwood.” C.C. had reached the road. She could just see the driveway of the “shed” from there. She turned to face Quiola and asked, “What the hell have you done to yourself?”

  Quiola lifted her arm to look at that morning’s bruising. The purpled pattern in one soft place under her forearm replicated the shape of a flattened buckle. “Nothing serious,” she said, lowering her arm. “A bruise.”

  “That’s more than just a bruise. You fell off the damn horse, didn’t you?”

  “I fell. Not far.” She gazed back at the white house with its black shudders and trim. “It is perfect – except for the rug. I wish someone knew more about the history. The whole place must have been really big, if the ‘shed’ was for the gardener, and that was only the carriage house. I wonder if the real main house is still standing?”

  C.C started up the country road again with Quiola behind, her gaze resting for a moment on C.C.’s hair, t
hick now, and styled once again. The spring air, as the afternoon waned, began to chill, bringing goose bumps up on C.C.’s neck. She shivered a little, and coughed.

  “Have you talked to Dr. Shea about that cough?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure.” At the shed’s mailbox, C.C. put down the flag and took her mail, then let them in to the house “When do you think I’ll hear from the realtor?”

  “Not now. It’s nearly six.”

  “Not tonight, then. You’re sure you’re all right?”

  “Me?”

  “You fell. Off the horse.” C.C. sat down at the dining table, her mail still in hand. “I said you’d get hurt.”

  “It’s just a bruise. I’m fine.”

  “And you’ve started smoking, haven’t you? Quiola? Haven’t you? I can smell it through the mint. I was a smoker. I know all the moves. And it’s a devil of a thing to quit. I’ve been wondering, too, what’s gotten into you? Ever since you took up with this riding business, you’ve been, I don’t know, distant. Different.”

  “No I haven’t.”

  “Yes you have. Do you have to ride? Why? And why are you smoking? It’s not good for Amelia, quite apart from everyone else.”

  “I don’t smoke a lot, and riding takes my mind off other things. I like to learn something new. It’s a challenge.”

  “You mean you like having a teacher, that’s what you mean. You’ve always liked having a teacher. What’s her name again?”

  “Meg White. She’s great. Patient, smart – I like her.”

  “Oh, I bet you do.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Oh for chrissake! Meg’s married and has two kids. You want to come out to the farm and see?”

  C.C. hung her head. “No.”

  “Good. I ride because I want to.”

  “What if I don’t want you to?”

  “Don’t ask me to stop, C.C. just don’t. I need to do this – for me.”

  “It’s dangerous.”

  “No more dangerous than driving Moby.”

  “I’m a good driver.”

  “So am I. But who knows about the guy on the other side?”