“I’m on my way to lunch,” said Thadia. “Would you like to join me? We could talk about women’s lacrosse. Saint Anne’s is always a power.”
“Thank you, but I have to get back. Just had my first radiation.”
“Ah.” Thadia’s brow furrowed. “I was hoping you could help me.”
Here it comes, Harry thought to herself.
“Do jockeys, show riders, or polo players use performance-enhancing drugs?”
“Jeez, Thadia, I’ve never seen any evidence of it. Or even heard of it, either. Yes, the big-money riders, some of them, have battled the same demons a lot of people battle, but drinking and drugging, especially before riding, would be a real death wish.”
“Why?”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t cocaine speed you up?”
“Certainly speeds up your heart rate,” Thadia said.
“And alcohol is a depressant, a downer?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, then, when you ride, you have to be perfectly in tune with your horse. It’s like dancing. If you’re flying high, it isn’t going to work. You’ll rush your jumps or do something stupid, or you’ll set off your horse and the animal will refuse to do as you ask.”
“Really.” Thadia was incredulous. “I never fooled with horses. Half the girls at Saint Anne’s did, but that wasn’t the half I ran with.” She smiled ruefully.
“Horses are very emotional animals. They sense a great deal about you. Like I said, you need to get in tune. And it’s kind of like with people. Some you get along with better than others, but if you’re out of it or flat-out crazy, they know. They don’t like it.”
“But aren’t a lot of horses on drugs?”
“Depends on the venue. Are they on drugs foxhunting? No. Again, that would be a death wish. Flat racing.” She whistled. “Unfortunately, it’s a dreadful mess. Every state has different standards. Most of the drugs for horses abused by their trainers or owners don’t correspond to, say, cocaine for the horses, but they mask pain or inhibit bleeding—stuff like that. And, of course, there’s always steroids.”
“Bodybuilding for horses?” Thadia had never heard of that.
“For some medical conditions, steroids are appropriate. However, the horses loaded up on them aren’t being treated for those conditions. Steroids do to horses what they do to humans. They make them bigger, stronger, faster. In short, a better athlete.” She stopped. “Do you have people in the recovery groups who abused steroids?”
“Not many. And I can’t say that was their primary problem. A lot of athletes fall into evil habits.” She half smiled when she said that. “Pressure—too much too soon—and a lot of them don’t come from stable backgrounds. Well, since we were talking of horses, forgive the pun.”
Harry stated with conviction, “Horses have more sense than people. We screw up their body chemistry and the poor animal has no choice.”
Thadia nodded. “I read somewhere, wish I could remember, that if you tested a thousand Americans, about eighty percent would show positive for trace amounts of cocaine.”
Harry’s eyes opened wide. “What!”
“They aren’t users. It’s on our money.”
“Oh, my God.” Harry’s hand came up to her face. She’d never thought of anything like that.
“You can see, I got my work cut out for me. Also, when times are hard, people drink more, drug more, abuse women, children, and animals more.”
“That’s horrible.”
“The problem is men. They lash out. Women internalize their misery. They’ll hurt themselves, which in turn hurts others—it’s just not that obvious. Can you name one woman who’s picked up an assault rifle and gunned down innocent strangers?”
“No.”
“But I bet you can name some who have committed suicide.”
“Sure.” Harry hated that thought.
“Most of the work I do with the men in my groups is getting them to face their problems without taking it out on someone else or escaping via the bottle.”
“Well, you have to do that with the women, too.” Harry was ever suspicious of gender statements, even though occasionally she made them herself.
“I do, but it’s different. What really upsets me—and this gets back to drugs again—people, medical people, explain the violence of the men by latching on to physical explanations. Their hormones, the male brain. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Hey, there’s the male brain in France, too. They don’t have the problem of domestic violence to the extent that we do. It’s culture.”
“Yeah, I agree with you. And our culture also encourages all the drug use. Doesn’t matter if a doctor’s pushing it on you or the guy on the street corner.”
“Actually, Harry, the guy on the street corner corresponds to the streetwalker. Bottom of the barrel, because usually both of those jobs, if you will, are people who are paying for their habit. It’s the pushers in the country clubs that never get caught. The pusher in the big corporation, say, in personnel. It’s so easy.”
“Given your history, I can understand your anger.”
“What I’m angry about is our duplicity. Either legalize the crap or ban all of it. After all, the biggest drug is alcohol. It’s crazy. Our War on Drugs is a great recipe for failure, for ensuring that the brightest make fortunes and pay not a penny of taxes. It ensures that we have millions of poor people in prison, maybe they had a lid of marijuana. But the rich kingpin is untouchable. It’s so sick.”
“Thadia, I can’t say I share your passion about this, but then I don’t have your history. Do I think it will change? If the American people want it to, it will, even though the bigwigs you’re talking about can buy our senators and congressmen, can sway the churches with giant contributions, and probably the media, too. I trust the boots-on-the-ground American. My fear is Americans too often wait until it’s a crisis squared before we do anything.”
“Well, we’re already pretty damn close. Anyway, thanks for talking to me about people in the horse world.”
“You can cross out performance-enhancing drugs, because they won’t enhance performance. I’m pretty sure about that, but as to cocaine and booze, after the show—well, most horsemen carry a bit of pain.”
“You?”
“I have my share. I take Motrin when it gets to me. The ground is pretty hard.” Harry laughed.
“It was hard when I hit it playing lacrosse, and I was closer to it than someone falling off a horse,” Thadia remembered.
“All part of the game.”
“You take vitamins?”
“Susan—you remember Susan Tucker—gave me a bottle of Centrum when I turned forty. I actually take it.”
“She was the best midfielder I ever played against.”
“Now she’s a good golfer. Her handicap is four, and she’s determined to get it down to zero.”
“You’re a good natural athlete.”
“You, too, but there wasn’t a path for us. Team sports, I mean. I was lucky because I had horses. Now girls have the hope of a future in professional sports if they play basketball. Still not much else, though, besides golf and tennis.”
“And the skills you and I had, well”—Thadia shrugged—“golf and tennis are too tame.”
“Not the way Susan plays.” Harry laughed.
“Not to be pushier than I already am, but talk to your cancer support group about vitamins. They can really help.”
“I will.”
As Thadia turned to leave, Harry considered how lucky she was that she hadn’t gone down that gilded path, which turns to molten lead fast enough. Thadia—the pretty party girl, the good athlete, the girl everybody wanted to date—looked ragged, old, and gray in the face yet there was still something pretty about her. She’d lost her muscle tone by age thirty, every job she ever had, and all her friends. Much as Harry admired her comeback, she didn’t particularly want to be her friend, didn’t want to see much of her.