“Is it true that Mrs. Murphy rides the horses?”
“Of course it’s true.” Mrs. Murphy flashed her tail from side to side.“You ought to try it.”
Pewter craned her neck to observe the two horses munching away in their stalls.“I’m not the athletic type.”
“You’re awfully good to help me.” Harry thanked her ex-husband as he groaned, pulling a rubber mat closer to the wall. “Want a hand?”
“I’ve got it,” he replied. “The only reason I’m doing this, Skeezits”—he used her high school nickname—“is that you’d do it yourself and strain something. For better or for worse, I’m stronger.” He paused. “But you have more endurance.”
“Same as mares, I guess.”
“I wonder if the differences between human males and females are as profound as we think they are. Mares made me think of it. The equine spread is narrow, very narrow. But for whatever reason, humans have created this elaborate code of sexual differences.”
“We’ll never know the answer. You know, I’m so out of it, I don’t even care. I’m going to do what I want to do and I don’t much care if it’s feminine or masculine.”
“You always were that way, Harry. I think that’s why I liked you so much.”
“You liked me so much because we were in kindergarten together.”
“I was in kindergarten with Susan, and I didn’t marry her,” he replied with humor.
“Touch?.”
“I happened to think you were special once I synchronized my testosterone level with my brain. For a time there, the gonads took over.”
She laughed.“It’s a miracle anyone survives adolescence. Everything is so magnified and so new. My poor parents.” She smiled, thinking of her tolerant mother and father.
“You were lucky. Remember when I totaled my dad’s new Saab? One of the first Saabs in Crozet too. I thought he was gonna kill me.”
“You had help. Center Berryman is not my idea of a stable companion.”
“Have you seen him since he got out of the treatment center?”
“Yeah. Seems okay.”
“If I was ever tempted by cocaine, Center certainly cured me of that.”
“He came to Mim’s Mulberry Row ceremony at Monticello. One of his first appearances since he got back. He did okay. I mean, what must it have been like to have everyone staring at you and wondering if you’re going to make it? There are those who wish you well, those who are too self-centered to care, those that are sweet but will blunder and say the wrong thing, and those—and these are my absolute faves—those who hope you’ll fall flat on your face. That’s the only way they can be superior—to have the next guy fail. Jerks.” Harry grimaced.
“We became well acquainted with that variety of jerks during our divorce.”
“Oh, Fair, come on. Every single woman between the ages of twenty and eighty fawned over you, invited you to dinner—the poor-man-alone routine. I got it both barrels. How could I toss out my errant husband? All boys stray. That’s the way they’re made. What a load of shit I heard from other women. The men, at least, had the sense to shut up.”
He stopped cutting through the heavy rubber, sweat pouring off him despite the temperature in the low fifties.“That’s what makes life interesting.”
“What”—she was feeling angry just remembering—“dealing with jerks?”
“No—how we each see a slice of life, a degree or two of the circle but not the whole circle. What I was getting while you were getting that was older men like Herbie Jones or Larry Johnson on my case.”
“Herbie and Larry?” Harry’s interest shot into the stratosphere. “What did they say?”
“Basically that we all fall from grace and I should beg your forgiveness. Know who else invited me over for a powwow? Jim Sanburne.”
“I don’t believe it.” She felt oddly warmed by this male solicitude.
“Harry, he’s an unusual man. He said his life was no model but that infidelity was his fatal flaw and he knew it. He really blew me away because he’s much more self-aware than I reckoned. He said he thought he started having affairs when he was young because he felt Mim lorded it over him, his being a poor boy, so to speak.”
“He learned how to make money in a hurry.” Harry always admired self-made people.
“Yeah, he did, and he didn’t use a penny of her inheritance either. Fooling around was not just his way to get even but a way to restore his confidence.” Fair sat down for a minute. Tucker immediately came over and sat in his lap.
“Oh, Tucker, you’re always sucking up to people,” accused Pewter, who was the original brown-noser the minute the refrigerator door opened.
“Pewter, you’re jealous,” Mrs. Murphy teased.
“No, I’m not,” came the defensive reply.“But Tucker is so—so obvious. Dogs have no subtlety.”
“Pewter, you’re just a chatty Cathy.” Harry reached over and stroked her chin.
“Gag me,” Tucker said.
“Why do you think you fooled around?” Harry thought the question would shake her, but it didn’t. She was glad it was finally out there even if it did take three years.
“Stupidity.”
“That’s a fulsome reply.”
“Don’t get testy. I was stupid. I was immature. I was afraid I was missing something. The rose not smelled, the road not taken. That kind of crap. I do know, though, that I still had a lot of growing-up to do even after we were married—I spent so much of my real youth with my nose in a textbook that I missed a lot of the life experiences from which a person grows. What I was missing was me.”
Harry stopped putting in the brick and sat down, facing him.
He continued.“With a few exceptions like wrecking the Saab, I did what was expected of me. Most of us in Crozet do, I guess. I don’t think I knew myself very well, or maybe I didn’t want to know myself. I was afraid of what I’d find out.”
“Like what? What could possibly be wrong with you? You’re handsome, the best in your field, and you get along with people.”
“I ought to come over here more often.” He blushed. “Ah, Harry, haven’t you ever caught yourself driving down Garth Road or waking up in the middle of the night, haven’t you ever wondered what the hell you were doing and why you were doing it?”
“Yes.”
“Scared me. I wondered if I was as smart as everyone tells me I am. I’m not. I’m good in my field, but I can sure be dumb as a sack of hammers about other things. I kept running into limitations, and since I was raised to believe I shouldn’t have any, I ran away from them—you, me. That solved nothing. BoomBoom was an exercise in terrible judgment. And the one before her—”
Harry interrupted.“She was pretty.”
“Pretty is as pretty does. Anyway, I woke up one morning and realized that I’d smashed my marriage, I’d hurt the one person I loved most, I’d disappointed my parents and myself, and I’d made a fool of myself to others. Thank God I’m in a business where my patients are animals. I don’tthink any people would have come to me. I was a mess. I even thought about killing myself.”
“You?” Harry was stunned.
He nodded.“And I was too proud to ask for help. Hey, I’m Fair Haristeen and I’m in control. Six-foot-four men don’t break down. We might kill ourselves working, but we don’t break down.”
“What did you do?”
“Found myself at the good reverend’s house on Christmas Eve. Christmas with Mom and Dad, oh, boy. Grim, resentful.” He shook his head. “I flew out of that house. I don’t know. I showed up at Herb’s and he sat down and talked to me. He told me that no one’s a perfect person and I should go slow, take a day at a time. He didn’t preach at me either. He told me to reach out to people and not to hide myself behind this exterior, behind a mask, you know?”
“I do.” And she did.
“Then I did something so out of character for me.” He played with the edge of the rubber matting. “I found a therapist.”