The Secrets She Keeps (23 page)

“Excuse me,” Nash says.

She leaves Ellen and Veronica to their drinks. She heads outside, passes the Styleline Deluxe, which is now calmly parked in the driveway. She sees Cliff heading into the barn with Jemima, hears the dusky croon of his voice as he leads her. The pool ripples in the tender light of summer and early evening. None of this soothes the red rage she feels, though. She strides down the path, heads straight for Jack’s log cabin.

She stomps up the steps, scaring a ground squirrel, which darts into the nearby bitterbrush. Jack’s boots are set almost primly outside the door, as if this small, hot place is a temple in the Orient. Nash pounds on the door with her fist. “Open up! Open up this minute!”

“Jesus, Peanut.” She hears this through the open window. “Don’t flip your wig! Something better be on fire, is all I can say.”

He opens the door. Only one button of his shirt is fastened, and he is zipping up his pants. Nash stands on her toes and looks over his shoulder to see if he’s alone.

“No one is here, Peanut.” His voice is stern. “What is it? I’m not expected at the house for another twenty minutes.”

Nash pushes him aside. She’s hardly ever even been in his cabin before; she brought him some food when he was sick once, and another time she came in to get a glass of water after helping him carry some firewood. There’s a woodstove and a cabinet with a porcelain sink curved into it. His bed is narrow and unmade. Nash’s imagination is adding details from another night—a mossy smell, a mix of sweetness and straining muscles—and she thinks she sees the shine of a rhinestone hair clip under the bed. She remembers that clip in Lilly’s dark hair. She thinks of the round globe of her, rising from the water.

“What are you looking at with that face?” he asks. He follows her gaze to the spot under the bed, leans over to pick up a small silver money clip with a horseshoe on it, a gift from Alice a few years ago. “I was wondering where that went,” he says.

“Stuart Marcel was here, and he was looking for you. What do you think you’re doing, Jack?”

“He was here?”

“He drove up in his car. They had that article you were in, from the rodeo! Lilly saw him, and she came running. He shoved her down on the ground! Her and that baby, don’t you forget! Right down, and you’re lucky that’s all he did! He’s been checking up on you, obviously. Probably knows every bit about you now, Jack. A little picture of a midnight swim might make a man crazy, don’t you think?”

Jack runs his hand through his hair.

“Don’t you?”

He takes that money clip and tosses it to the bed, like he’s skipping a stone. But when he looks at Nash again, she sees that he’s distraught.

“Dear God,” he says.

“Yeah, you better start getting on His good side, and fast.”

“Stuart Marcel was here.”

“Looking for you.”

“It makes me think—”

“It’s about time, is all I have to say.”

“No, it makes me think of the mustangs. Walt over at Bob Watson’s? He said there was this stud. Horse walked right up to Bob, gentle as can be, head down with his nose ready for a rub. And the minute Bob reached out, the stud rose on his back legs and lunged for his throat.”

“Jesus, Jack.”

“He’s fine, you know. But, point is, there are all kinds of ’em, I’ll tell you that.”

This is the most infuriating story Nash has ever heard. She is so mad at him for telling it right now, she could spit. “Why would you get involved with her, Jack? Why? You’re pouring gasoline on a fire!”

“Peanut, quit.” Jack takes her arms. She hadn’t even realized she’s been pacing that room until he stops her. She feels like she might cry again. She’s been feeling that a lot lately. He looks her deep in the eyes, and for a moment she thinks he might kiss her. “Lilly needs us,” he says. “You said he shoved her? That’s
nothing
. He loses his temper and goes crazy. Do you know why she was never in another film after
The Changelings
? He broke her arm. It was in a cast. No one would dare hire her. She can’t walk down a street without him accusing her of looking at another man.”

“Exactly! That is exactly what I am saying! Do you hear yourself? It makes no sense, Jack, that she’d tell him that baby was anyone’s but his. She’s just asking for trouble! That makes no sense at all. None.”

“You’re being naïve, Nash. I’m sorry, but you are. This is why I always beat you at backgammon. You don’t think far enough ahead. How can she be free of him for good? If he knows that baby is his, he’ll be in their lives forever. It’s fury now for freedom later. It’s a good plan. Better than no plan.”

Nash yanks away from him. “And you and her. Is that a good plan?”

“Nash, come on. That’s my private business.”

“As long as no one ends up killed in the process, it’s your private business.”

“She’s one of ours. She came to us,” Jack says.

“You’re one of ours. You came to us.”

“I’m a grown man. I can take care of myself.” He averts his gaze from hers, turns suddenly at a strange noise—but it’s only that squirrel, which has now climbed out to the end of a far branch, causing it to dip and scrape against the roof.

Nothing seems clear after all, not good choices or bad ones, not men or horses or even the reasons for her own rage. The only obvious thing is that Jack Waters is in the deep dark heart of his own struggle, pulled toward fragile wrists and delicate cheekbones, drawn to a woman, maybe, but even more to an idea of himself.

She should call Alice. Right this minute. Nash should let her know what is going on, beg her to come back. But she can’t and won’t call. Nash can feel her own reluctance as strong as an actual hand yanking her back. She is in the deep dark heart of her own struggle.

These are the matters of the heart that have been battling for eons, Nash thinks with spitting fury, as she watches Jack bend his head to finish buttoning his shirt. Ever since the first fierce crash of the atom against atom that created us. Protection and vulnerability. Capability and the luscious descent into another’s strength. Yours versus mine. Hunger and reason. Violence and love. This is what Nash understands right now, as Jack Waters loops his belt through his pants and fastens it: All living beings are conceived with some degree of passion and intensity and confused desires, and then are left to figure it all out from there, using their own sorry devices.

“Your stupid boots are outside,” she says to him, as he hunts under the bed.

Clearly, my car was not meant for the kinds of roads out there. It hit a rut in the ground, and I could see the hood bounce. That car was a pampered urban vehicle, familiar only with the occasional city pothole and my own inept reversing up the curb of the Victrola Café. I couldn’t explain my presence out in that dry, vast wilderness right then, even to myself. But I felt my own keenness as strong as an actual hand pushing me forward.

Out there were gopher holes and grouse. I bumped past several Joshua trees, and barrel cactuses dotted the ground like sharp, unpleasant little ottomans. At home, there were tall, sulky evergreens and clouds fat with rain, roofs still slick and green from winter, and crows on telephone lines.

The air conditioner blasted. My camera rode in the passenger seat. I wasn’t sure exactly how I’d gotten so far from home or why I’d done what I just did—left my own message to Thomas, an answer to his now tense and worried ones. I was the one who needed time to think.

My reasons for staying at the ranch were becoming both more steadfast and further away. Nearly two weeks ago now, I’d tossed my clothes in a bag and filled Hugo’s water bowl. The leftovers that had been in the fridge had certainly gone bad, if Thomas hadn’t already thrown them away. The mail would be stacking up. My pots of flowers would need watering. I had bought a new pair of sandals that I hadn’t even worn yet, and they were likely still where I’d left them on the floor of the closet.

Maybe Thomas and his crisis had just made me weary, but I wasn’t sure I cared about any of it. It all made me tired. The sloping floor did, and the laundry Amy left behind before she went on her trip, and the yard, and our neighbors (especially the spying Mrs. Radish), and the garbage collection on Wednesdays. Christmas—right there: It seemed more than I could bear. How weighty was a tree with its wet needles dragged across the carpet, and a search for a parking space in the crowded mall lot, and a stout, frozen turkey in the shopping cart.

The same holiday recipes, the same high-thread-count sheets I’d bought years ago, the same arguments with the same words, the same creak in the same spot in the hall, which I heard every day—well, I was never one to read a book twice or watch a movie more than once, but somewhere along the line, my personal-life button had gotten stuck on rewind. I was the one-woman version of the poor old Rolling Stones, who had to sing “Gimme Shelter
”
over and over again.

I didn’t know how long I’d felt this way or even that I felt this way at all. But now it made me wonder if I had made an actual choice about the way I lived or if I had only drifted to it, riding along like a seed on a gust of wind. Settling into the ground where it landed because that’s simply where it ended up.

I have a confession
, Shaye said the other night.
Do you remember when Mom was with Gene and we used to go get McDonald’s and eat it in the back of the car?

Yeah.

I used to eat my fries really slowly, just so you wouldn’t have any left and I would.

I know.

You knew that?

Of course. Why do you think I read all the time? So I could ignore you.

You always ate yours so fast
, she said.

It sounds crazy, I realize, but moments of clarity can arrive like this, through French fries or a song or a heel broken from a shoe.

Shaye?

What?

How many French fries have we eaten without even
tasting
them?

Thank God, I had a sister who understood me.
Too many, Cal
, she said.
Way, way too many.

I turned on my car radio, but the only station I could get was that damn KEXP with Dr. Yabba Yabba Love.
You wanna be someone’s nurse, work in a hospital
. I snapped it off. I suppose it was a good thing I’d never been that great at following directions involving street numbers and roads going east or west and that I’d always needed a Shell station, or some billboard landmark, because it was fairly easy to find the place where we’d last seen the horses. I remembered the saguaro that looked like a frightening, lethal penis and the two hills that formed a perfect
M.

I parked way back from the area, same as Kit Covey had, but there were no horses to be seen. Of course, they wouldn’t have just been waiting there, the same broad neck leaning to take the same drink, as if we’d never left. Things don’t wait for you. Kit had said that the mustangs traveled over miles and miles of land. Still, I was rewarded. A large tortoise ambled wearily past, as if he carried the entire weight of history and human error on his wrinkled shoulders.

I doubted my phone would work out there, but I reached into my purse anyway and unzipped the pocket where I had placed Kit Covey’s business card. He picked up on the second ring. I had plenty of faulty ideas about the desert.

“Callie?”

“Hey! How did you know?”

“Unfamiliar area code. It was either you or some credit-card company. You’re not offering me a special zero percent interest for six months, are you?”

“Do you need it? I can’t give you that, but I could lend you a twenty.”

He laughed. “I think I’ve got it covered.”

“I was actually calling to ask if you knew where the mustangs are. I was going to take a few pictures.”

It was loud where he was—there was clanging, and someone shouted something I couldn’t quite hear. “Just a minute!” he said, not to me. It was muffled, his hand over the receiver.

“You’re busy,” I said.

“That headache is not going anywhere, trust me,” he said. “The horses…Well, this is where I give the public-safety announcement. Promise me you’ll keep your distance. You don’t want to spook them. They can be dangerous.”

“Okay.”

“Remember where they were when we saw them?”

“I’m there now.”

“Okay, great. Do you see that cactus? The one that looks like a giant…”

I started laughing. “Yeah. Hard to miss.”

“From there, head toward town. Maybe three, four miles. You’ll see a ravine that’ll stop you from going farther. Drive south, and they’ll likely be right around there. You’ve got to be careful, though, right? Sometimes those studs—they can be unpredictable.”

“That’s what all the foxy chicks say,” I said. I thought the word
stud
had vanished along with Chevy vans and crocheted ponchos, but here it was, alive all along in this world.

He tossed me a
pretty mama
, and I flung him a
boogie on down,
and then we hung up.

The ravine was deep and clearly visible, and I drove alongside it until I saw the horses. Even though I’d set out for that purpose, their presence was startling. I took Kit’s warning to heart, because they were larger than I remembered and there were so many of them, and the whole idea of me there alone, without Kit, seemed like folly. They were stunning and romantic, yes, but I had that uneasy animal feeling, the one you get at the zoo after you’ve just turned your back to that gorilla, whose watchful eyes had let you know he could break your neck with a single Naugahyde hand. The horses didn’t look at me, but their own eyes were manic and their tails stringy. They were an entire street corner of scary men shouting that the end of the world was coming. They were beautiful and dirty, alluring and repelling, a reminder that nothing is ever one thing, as much as you wish it.