Funerals for Horses (retail) Read online

  The trick, I knew, would be to push off the roof, push away from it, hard, to propel myself out instead of straight down. If I messed up, I’d land headfirst on concrete—a detail which seemed unimportant at the time.

  I stood with my toes curled over the edge and thought one more time about Shane. This time I felt it, which helped, because I knew that if I missed, at least I would never have to feel it again.

  As I pushed off, Sarah screamed. And then I was freefalling, a helpless, bottomless sort of feeling, but too familiar to scare me. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see how I was doing, and as my hands and face plunged into the water, I felt the tops of my feet smack the pool’s edge, and scrape going in. I hit the heels of my hands on the opposite wall of the pool, then surfaced to shouts and cheers and Simon with no blood at all in his face, and eyes cold and angry.

  I pushed up and climbed out of the pool. Simon grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me inside, slamming the patio door behind us. Sarah stood frozen, looking unsure of her next move.

  “What in god’s name did you think you were doing, Ella? You could have been killed!” It was the loudest I’d heard him yell since the disposable-lighter incident.

  “But it worked out fine, Simon.” As I said it, I followed his eyes down my body, and saw the tops of my feet bleeding and swollen, the thin red blood mixing with the pool water I dripped into the carpet.

  He stepped in close to me, his voice deep. “You could have broken your neck. You could have crippled yourself. Don’t I have enough trouble taking care of you now?”

  As I walked for the door, I heard him call after me that he didn’t mean that, that it came out wrong, that he was only scared for me, and I needed to come back so we could talk. I slammed the door behind me.

  I walked back up to Shane’s apartment, where I thought I could still smell him, and sat on his couch, just the way he had the night before. On the table before me I saw the only pieces of Shane I’d forgotten to claim—a half-empty pack of Kools and the double-edged razor blade.

  I lit a cigarette, which made me dizzy, trying to smoke the whole thing by myself. When I picked up the razor blade, I heard Shane in my head, saying you saved my life tonight.

  I stared for a long time at the inside of my wrist, the little section just below the scraped heel of my hand, which was normal skin, just above the scar line. The tighter I clenched my fist, the clearer I saw the little blue veins.

  I touched it with the corner of the blade, so sharp I felt nothing as it bit a short slice. I saw a well of bright blood collect and drop onto the floor, and I screamed. But not for myself.

  I screamed for DeeDee. And I knew then what I wasn’t supposed to do.

  I found a washcloth in the cupboard, and held it to try to stop the bleeding. Then I used Shane’s phone to call Willie. I asked her if I could come over.

  She said she’d never heard me so upset, and offered to come to me, but I needed to stay away from Simon for a while. I drove to her house.

  She met me in the driveway, in sweatpants and her good blouse from work, and she looked at my wet hair and clothes, my bare, bleeding feet, my scraped palms, the bloody washcloth on my wrist, and didn’t even ask questions.

  I fell up against her and she held me, and I sobbed and heaved, and I tried hard to make tears come out, but they wouldn’t move. I wanted to use an ax to break into the place where they lay hiding. I wanted to free all the prisoners.

  “Willie,” I whispered, “DeeDee killed herself.”

  And she held me, and rocked me, and said, “I know, Ella. I know.”

  SIMON'S HOUSE

  The sky clears, but my clothes still drip, and the day turns to dusk. With the sheer stone wall of the mesa against my back, I climb onto Yozzy, and as we stand, considering our options, three long-eared jackrabbits break out of nowhere and head east.

  So we do the same, only more slowly. I fear the cold that will come with night, with a wet sleeping bag, in wet clothes, on wet ground.

  I think only of this, and how far we will ride.

  The world has dropped out from under me. Why did I allow myself to see the touching of the mesa as a journey’s end? The mesa is miles long, maybe longer than we traveled to get here. How far will we ride it, until we find what we’re looking for, or until we don’t?

  And somehow, one way or the other, we must go back.

  I pull the damp paper package from my sleeping bag and chew on a sheet of beef jerky, and think of Everett and May. They would have a fire tonight, and a hot bath. A hot dinner. Why would anything in the universe envy me?

  And then, in the murky dusk, Yozzy stops suddenly, and I fall forward against her neck. In front of her feet, I see a circle of three jackrabbits. If she moved into the circle, surely she would disperse them, but she won’t.

  She takes a step backward, then pivots sideways. She repeats this process three times. Then, facing the mesa, she waits patiently until I see it.

  The cave entrance is puddled with leftover moisture. The fire pit is flooded with water and ash; it has a spit on forked sticks. It is not a tent, as in Everett’s dream. There is no animal skin across the door, as in mine. No animal skin anywhere. Sam was the best dreamer, so far as I can tell, in that he has provided no inaccurate details. And Sam said Simon was home.

  I wonder if my heart is beating.

  I sit straight on Yozzy’s back, cup my hands to my mouth and shout Simon. In my peripheral vision, I watch the jackrabbits scatter. The mesa echoes it back to me, but when the sound fades, nothing rises to take its place.

  I am a better dreamer than I thought.

  I slide down, scramble up the rock to the plateau facing his door. Now my heart is beating, I know. I hear it, and feel it. I wade through the puddle to the mouth of his cave. I call his name again.

  I step inside. The entryway bends, and it’s dark further in. I trip over something and fall onto the heels of my hands, scraping them. I lie still until my eyes adjust to the light, and I see I’ve tripped over one of a pair of five-gallon plastic water bottles. It’s nearly half full.

  I look and feel further around, until I’m satisfied with the dimensions of the cave. It’s just a hollow. A hole in the rock. The broadest expanse of floor is covered by a pair of faded overalls.

  There is nothing else to be seen. No hunting rifle. No big knife. No Simon, alive or dead.

  And yet I can honestly say I’ve found Simon’s house.

  I lift the half-full plastic bottle to carry it outside for Yozzy, and as I do, I see several boxes of ammunition hidden between bottle and wall, and a flat, black object. I pick it up and carry it out into the half-light.

  A wallet. I hold it in my hand. I want to open it, but I’m afraid. Do you hear that, Simon? I’m afraid, and I know it. As I try, my hands shake, and I drop it onto the red-brown, dirt-coated rock. When I bend to retrieve it, it’s open.

  I see a row of credit cards peeking from their separate slots. I grasp the top of a gas company card and pull it out into my hand, holding it under my nose, straining to read it.

  It says Simon Peter Ginsberg.

  When I’m done reading, still half unsure of my vision, I touch the raised letters and read them again, with my fingers. It says the same. I return the card to its slot, open the money compartment, and find five bills, at least three of which are twenties.

  I slip the wallet into my wet jeans pocket.

  Maybe I have found Simon. Maybe he’s around the corner urinating, fetching water, watching the stars come out. Maybe he’s long gone, but considerate enough to pay my way home.

  I go back for the water bottle, pour for Yozzy into my muddy, battered hat. She drinks two hatfuls.

  I remove her blanket and hackamore, and she wanders a hundred yards away, to the thickest scrub, to nibble.

  Knowing she is satisfied, I tip the bottle back and drink, water spilling down my chin, soaking my already soaked clothes. I watch her graze in the dark, watch the moon rise, and it smiles at me.
It says, nobody knows. Some things no one can tell you.

  I realize then how far I have come. How much I have accomplished. I have done the impossible. I have defied death and probability. What remains is out of my control.

  It’s also the only part that matters.

  I sleep on Simon’s bed, on the dry overalls, the dry cave floor, sheltered from the wind. I dream about madness.

  In the morning I am still in Simon’s house alone.

  THEN:

  I drove Simon and Sarah to the airport in Simon’s Oldsmobile, soon to become my own.

  “I’ll call you every day,” he said.

  “You don’t have to call every day, Simon.”

  “Well, at first. And you can call collect, anytime. Day or night.”

  “I don’t have to call collect, Simon. I work two full-time jobs. I’ll be all right.”

  He hugged me, which I know was hard for him, and Sarah hugged me, and whispered that I could always change my mind. When they stepped onto the plane, terror mixed with relief. It had been so hard to watch them go through all that. Was this really what I inspired in those around me?

  Simon and I had moved shortly after the Shane incident, into both halves of a tiny duplex on Silver Lake Boulevard, not a mile from Willie’s house.

  He married Sarah at city hall, downtown. They honeymooned at a Malibu hotel for the weekend. They lived in one side of the duplex, I lived in the other, quietly, without expectation, allowing each day to look and feel much like the one before.

  Simon quit school to work a second job, and when he announced his plan to move to Sacramento, where Sarah’s father had offered him a job with his investment firm, he seemed to take for granted that I would come along.

  That I would even need to think it over sent him into an uncharacteristic snit.

  “Ever since you met Shane you don’t need me anymore.”

  He looked embarrassed the moment his words hit the floor, lying like an animal needlessly killed.

  I left for my own apartment. If only Shane were the issue, I would need Simon again. Apart from a postcard, though, forwarded from our old Hollywood address, Shane was gone.

  I rose at five forty-five to join Willie on her morning walk around the reservoir. This was nothing special. I did it every day.

  “Why do they even call this a lake?” I said, my voice carping and cool. I pointed to the barbed wire strands which topped the chain-link fence, the steep concrete of its sides. “I mean, have we been living in the city too long, or what?”

  “What’s on your mind, Ella?”

  She wore a red bandanna tying back her unruly hair, no makeup—her usual morning outfit. She had proven, with that simple question, why Simon was wrong to say I could get a new counselor in the new city. Maybe he could just leave Sarah, marry a new wife once he settled in.

  “Simon’s going to move to Sacramento.”

  “Oh. That’s a pretty big something.”

  “I guess.”

  “Are you going to move with him?”

  “He wants me to.”

  “Do you want to?”

  “No.”

  We walked in silence, to the far end of the reservoir, around the bend, back toward home, keeping up the brisk pace that Willie liked.

  “He’s not Simon anymore,” I said on the home stretch. “I still remember when he was. But what good does that do?”

  “But you still love him?”

  “Well, yeah, but it just doesn’t make that much difference if he’s there or if he’s not. He’s gone either way, you know? It’s because of me. You know that, don’t you?”

  “What is?”

  “This thing about Simon not being Simon. He’s doing that for me.”

  “Care to elaborate on that?”

  “Doesn’t matter now. He’s going.”

  She had said it sounded like I’d made up my mind.

  I watched their plane taxi down the runway, but I turned to leave for work before the wheels lifted off.

  He called in the morning, but what was there to say?

  For three weeks running I followed a careful routine. Morning walks with Willie, work, sleep. Laundromat on Sunday, grocery shopping Thursday afternoon. On the days I worked only one shift, I caught up on my sleep.

  Everything went fine until a holiday forced a day off. I loved to work. Life was always in perfect order, from the beginning of a shift to the end of it. This life held what my other life so painfully lacked. A rule book. An order of moments. Show up. Count the cash drawer. Initial the register tape. Sign in. Smile at the customer. Ring up the customer. Give correct change. If there’s no customer, wipe the glass on the refrigerator cases.

  In time of any doubt, ask the boss, and he’ll differentiate right from wrong.

  I probably could have survived on just one of those jobs. Financially, that is.

  On Presidents’ Day the bank was closed, and it fell on my day off at the market. I woke in the morning without a plan. I lay on my back on the couch for most of the day. Called Willie at work, but she was busy with a patient.

  I filled the Oldsmobile’s tank, drove to Santa Monica, watched the waves come in by the last light. They have no plan, I told myself, but they keep busy all day long, just doing the same thing over and over. They ask no questions. I told myself that maybe I ask too many questions. I drove back through Topanga Canyon, wove through Coldwater Canyon, Laurel Canyon, watched the lights glow inside each of the houses, looking warm. Something warm existed in each of those homes. For a split second I almost thought back to Mrs. Hurley, but I stopped myself before it had gone too far.

  I cut through Hollywood, drove up into Griffith Park, circling the observatory parking lot until I found a space. I made it through the door into the telescope area just moments before closing time.

  Virgil seemed glad to see me.

  “Ella. How’ve you been? Haven’t seen you in ages. Where’s Simon?”

  The question surprised me, as though I thought he should know. Everybody should know.

  “He moved away.”

  “Really?” I heard all the questions he didn’t ask, and it was just as well. It took some hunting on his part, I know, to find one that might sound properly supportive. “So, how does it feel to be on your own?”

  I shrugged, my gaze fixed on a chart of the solar system. “All right, I guess. Until today. I don’t have anything to do today.”

  I thought about seeing Willie, just ducking out right then, and finding her at home, because it was important, what I needed to say, to know, and I knew Willie so much better. But my feet stayed stuck, and I realized I hadn’t sought Virgil by whim or accident.

  “Well,” he said. “You’re here, that’s something to do. Come on. You want to look at the moon?”

  “But you’re closed, aren’t you?”

  “Not to you.”

  I pressed my eye to the lens, and saw the moon dead full. I saw mountains and valleys and craters.

  “Where is he?” I said.

  “Who?”

  “The man in the moon.” I’d never seen a full moon through the telescope, and I always thought if I did, I’d see him.

  “Well, you get closer up, it kind of ruins the illusion.”

  Without realizing I was going to, I told Virgil about my resentful disappointment on the night of the moon landing. He listened well—one of Virgil’s steadfast traits.

  Then he said, “You know, I felt that way, too, just a little. And I couldn’t have been more surprised. Here I am, a scientist. But I guess part of me is still a mystic. Or just a dreamer. It always seemed so ethereal. Tell anyone and I’ll deny it.”

  I smiled and pressed my eye to the lens again, because it was easier and safer to talk that way.

  “Simon wants to be an investment broker.”

  “Okay.” I could tell by the way he said it that he wouldn’t state his feelings on the subject until I’d stated mine.

  “Is that a good thing to be, Virgil?”
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br />   “Well, it depends. Anything’s a good thing to be if that’s what you want.”

  Now, I felt, we were nearing the heart of the issue.

  “How do you know what you want?”

  Virgil scratched his chin, the way he always did when thinking. It made him look more like a scientist.

  “I guess you just go by what you feel.”

  “Damn!” I shot it out hard, full of disappointment. Wouldn’t you know it would come down to that? So what about me— how would I ever know?

  “What’s the matter, Ella?”

  I didn’t dare say what I was thinking. I wanted Virgil to be pleased with me, happy and surprised at how I turned out. No talking to DeeDee, or letting on that I couldn’t feel. Even Simon didn’t know that.

  “Well, it’s just that... he was going to be an astronomer.”

  “I know, Ella. I remember. But maybe that was just a childhood dream.”

  My mouth fell open, my eyes came up to meet his, and I know I didn’t hide my amazement. I forgot to even try. A childhood dream? There are dreams for children and others for grownups? My god, how far behind had I already fallen?

  “I never had a dream, Virgil. Ever. I never wanted to be anything. Just happy.”

  Virgil smiled. “That’s all any of us want to be, is happy, Ella, that’s all a dream is. It’s just an idea of what will get you to happy.” His face took on a helpless, sympathetic look. This was an exchange in a foreign language to me. I guess it showed.

  I said, “I never had a single idea of how to get to happy. I guess that’s why I never did.”

  “What are you, seventeen, eighteen years old?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “It takes most of us a little longer than nineteen years. It takes some all their lives.”

  I realized then what it was, what chewed at me, like mice in a dark corner of the cellar, but I never once said it out loud. I only ever had one dream, once, in my whole life, and it was to make Simon happy. And I worked hard for it, too. Sent him back to school to find it, but he picked up and walked away. Didn’t Simon want to be happy? I wanted it badly for him—couldn’t some of that rub off?