White Horses Read online

  The sheriff stood with his hat in his hand. “He was doing eighty-seven miles an hour. I clocked him.”

  Renée lit a cigarette and smiled. She was wearing her jade-green silk blouse, and when she invited the sheriff into the living room, he smiled back. “My nephew was taking my car on a test run,” she lied. “I just had new brakes installed, and I asked Silver to test them for me. So if my nephew was driving too fast, if he broke the law—you’ll have to arrest me. It was my fault.”

  “You’re just like King,” Dina told Renée. “You walk right in and ruin everyone’s life.”

  Silver had begun to breathe easier, he listened to Renée lie with admiration, he smiled at her like a co-conspirator when the sheriff uncuffed him, even though there were now dark marks around his wrists where the metal had bitten into his skin.

  “My niece,” Renée said, introducing Teresa to the sheriff. Teresa shook his hand and then backed away. “And my sister-in-law,” Renée said, gesturing to Dina. “Bad times,” she explained. “My brother left them.”

  “Sure,” Dina said. “Tell everybody our business. I’ve had enough of this—I want you out of here. I married your brother—I didn’t marry you.”

  “She’s not herself,” Renée said hopefully.

  “Oh, no?” Dina said. She left the room, and when she returned she carried Renée’s suitcase, scarves and satin caught between the locks. Dina opened the front door and threw the suitcase out.

  “Really!” Renée said.

  “You’ve got the picture,” Dina told her. “I want you out.”

  Teresa looked over at Silver; she could tell that the white Corvette was riding right behind his eyes. She wondered if perhaps Renée might be thinking of taking them away with her when she left.

  “You’re not serious,” Renée said to Dina. “Think of your children—they hardly have any family left. You don’t even know where your oldest son is. At least think of these two.”

  “My oldest son is with his father,” Dina said. “Why shouldn’t he be? They have the same evil eyes, they belong together.”

  “She believes in spirits,” Renée explained to the sheriff.

  “Go ahead.” Dina was furious now. “Tell this stranger the story of my life.” She tapped her foot, faster and faster. She reached for a vase filled with straw flowers and then threw it against the wall. They all watched as the porcelain shattered and covered the floor with violet dust. Beneath the couch, Reggie, the old dog, whimpered and pawed at the floorboards. Renée tossed her hair and stubbed out her cigarette; she thought that if King Connors ever returned he deserved everything he got.

  “Do you want to file a complaint?” the sheriff asked Renée.

  Yes, Teresa thought. Oh, yes.

  Since Dina had become ill with her strange series of ailments, the house on Divisadero Street seemed filled with nothing but sorrow, and Teresa believed they might all be happier if they left it behind.

  “What about me?” Dina said. “Maybe I want to file a complaint. Maybe I’m tired. Maybe I’m sick and I don’t want company I never invited in the first place.”

  Renée went to the closet and got her suede coat and her leather purse. “Teresa,” she said, nodding. “Silver.”

  If there was anything Teresa wanted just then it was to ride up the coast to Oregon; Renée would be in the passenger seat, Silver behind the wheel, and Teresa would be safely cushioned in the back.

  “I have to go now,” Renée told them.

  She’s putting on an act, Teresa thought when her aunt bent down to kiss her goodbye. She doesn’t want anyone to suspect that she’s about to take us away, any second, any time at all now.

  “Goodbye,” Renée murmured as she walked away from Teresa and went to the door. Teresa ran to the window; she watched as Renée and the sheriff walked down the driveway, side by side. The act had gone too far; Renée wasn’t looking back, she opened the door of the white Corvette.

  “Good riddance,” Dina said. “Take those goddamned blue eyes and go back to Oregon.”

  Renée talked to the sheriff through the open window of her car; then she turned the key, and a film of exhaust floated into the air. When she pulled out of the driveway, the patrol car followed, and in less than a minute both cars had disappeared down Divisadero Street. Later, when Teresa went to sit on the front porch she could still see a shadow of blue exhaust above her. And long after Dina had gone to sleep, resting more comfortably than she had in weeks, Teresa was still out on the porch. The temperature dropped, and the moon rose, and Teresa waited.

  Silver let the dogs out of the house, then came out to the porch. He had planned to meet some friends who had managed to borrow a car, but when he saw Teresa sitting alone, he sat down next to her. He didn’t ask her anything, but after a while Teresa turned to him as if she’d been questioned.

  “I’m just waiting,” she told him. “That’s all.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Silver said. He leaned against the porch railing. “For who?”

  Teresa was shocked, she had expected Silver to know. “For Renée.”

  “Ah,” Silver said. “Renée.” He took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. “Listen to me—don’t bother waiting for Renée.”

  “She’ll be back,” Teresa said. She didn’t dare look at Silver. She couldn’t risk taking her eyes off the street for a moment, just in case the Corvette silently drove by.

  “She’s not coming back here any more than King is,” Silver said.

  Teresa was stubborn. “You’re wrong,” she told him.

  It was already too late for Silver to meet his friends and ride to the outskirts of town and drink beer till morning. So he stayed with Teresa until nearly midnight.

  “You’ve got to grow up,” he told Teresa when it was so late that Renée might already have reached the city limits of Portland, or she might just as easily have been turning to hold the sheriff in a dark room at the Lamplighter Motel on Sixteenth Street. “Forget about Renée.”

  “I can’t,” Teresa insisted.

  “Will you cut it out?” Silver said gently. “Look, as long as you’ve got me you don’t have to worry. All right?” he asked.

  And Teresa nodded her head, but she did not go inside until there was no hope that Renée would return that night.

  Up in her room she went to the window. Silver was out there alone, just he and the empty street. For weeks Teresa continued to watch that street from her window; she still listened for Renee’s car horn to call to her. But after a while Teresa stopped waiting; she could no longer remember if the interior of the Corvette was black or brown. Soon, she couldn’t even remember Renée’s face, she couldn’t imagine why she had wanted to drive up the California coast to Oregon to a place where the hills were even greener than the wings of the moths that gathered around those candles Dina continued to place at the foot of Teresa’s bed to ward off evil spirits.

  The one thing Teresa didn’t forget was Renée’s advice to find herself a boyfriend. In part she wanted to make Silver jealous—he was spending more and more time away from the house, there were nights when he didn’t come home at all and neither Dina nor Teresa dared ask where he’d been. And so at the end of the winter, a month before her fourteenth birthday, Teresa began dating Cosmo. He was sixteen and considered himself to be a ladies’ man.

  “Everybody wants to be my girl,” he reminded Teresa when she refused to have anything to do with him at first. “I’m the one for you,” he whispered when they danced together one night in the high-school gym. But there was nothing about Cosmo that marked him as special, so she put him off, she didn’t give him a second thought until she found him waiting for her one morning, parked in his Chevy right outside the house.

  “Get out of here,” Teresa told him. “Go away,” she whispered, looking back to see if Dina was watching from the window.

  “Give me a chance,” Cosmo said. He followed her in his car and called out from the passenger window as he steered with one hand.
/>   When they were a block away from the house, Teresa got in. “What do you want?” she asked. Instead of answering, Cosmo smiled slowly. When she saw his wide, even teeth, Teresa put her hand on the door. She was ready to jump from the moving car. “I’m only thirteen,” she said. “I’m too young for you.”

  “No one’s too young for me,” Cosmo told her as he stepped on the gas.

  Teresa wasn’t certain if she liked his looks; she didn’t even know his last name. All the same, she sat back in the passenger seat and clicked the lock shut on the door.

  “Nice car, isn’t it?” Cosmo said as they drove right past the junior high school. “It belongs to a cousin of mine. He doesn’t care if I have my driver’s license or not. He trusts me.” Cosmo had put his hand on her leg. “I hope you’re going to trust me, too.”

  And though she didn’t, Teresa found herself agreeing to meet him every day after school. All through the month of February they parked in vacant lots; Cosmo taught her to keep her mouth open when they kissed. He told her he had first noticed her because of her long dark hair. He assured her that no one would know if she took off her shirt in the back seat of his cousin’s car.

  But soon after her fourteenth birthday, Teresa decided that she no longer wanted to date Cosmo, no matter how many girls he said were wild about him. One afternoon, when they had parked in a field near a peach orchard, Teresa told Cosmo the truth.

  “I don’t think we should see each other any more,” she said.

  “What are you talking about?” Cosmo said. “Of course we should see each other. Listen, Teresa, you don’t know how lucky you are—girls fight over me with knives.”

  Still, Teresa couldn’t persuaded—Cosmo didn’t even know her, he didn’t look into her eyes and search for her soul, he didn’t look any farther than the back seat of the borrowed car. And she didn’t dare compare him to Silver—that would have been ridiculous, she would have found herself giggling each time they kissed.

  “Okay, okay,” Cosmo said when Teresa shook her head and insisted they weren’t made for each other. “It’s your loss. It’s a shame, though,” he sighed. “You could have wound up with a diamond ring one of these days.”

  “I’m sorry,” Teresa said.

  “You’re sorry,” Cosmo muttered, but then he turned to her and smiled. “Since this may be the last time we’re together, let me really touch you.”

  Teresa frowned. He had touched her breasts every time they were together. “Where?” she asked.

  “You know,” Cosmo urged. “It’s nothing,” he promised. “It’s not fucking.”

  Teresa unzipped her jeans and took them off. She closed her eyes when Cosmo put his hand inside the elastic waistband of her underpants. When Cosmo had finished Teresa got up and got dressed. She felt as though she had been watching a film in a dark theater, as if she hadn’t been there at all.

  “You’re crazy about me,” Cosmo told her as he dropped her off on the corner of Divisadero Street. Teresa got out and closed the car door. “Admit it,” Cosmo called after her. “You can’t give me up.” Teresa didn’t even bother to answer; half of her walked down the street, placing one foot in front of the other, but the other half floated above the sidewalk in a cloud of thick confusion. Her stomach felt stormy, everything inside her ached. When she reached home, Silver was out in the front yard. Teresa started to walk past him, but Silver grabbed her arm.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” he asked her.

  “I think I’m sick,” Teresa said. She wanted to get to her own room, to the silent wallpaper—apple blossoms on thin branches which reached to the ceiling.

  In spite of himself. Silver had been feeling more and more responsible for Teresa. “Don’t give me that crap,” he said. “I just saw you get out of a car. And I’ve seen you before. Who is that guy you’re riding around with?”

  Teresa was queasy, sailors and seas lurched in her blood. “I’m sick,” she said. “I might throw up.”

  Silver wouldn’t let go of her arm. “Who is he?” he demanded. “Tell me right now, or you’re not going anywhere.”

  Teresa’s head was filled with drums, the ground seemed farther and farther away. She wrenched her arm away from Silver and ran toward the house. Silver ran after her. Then he followed her through the living room and into the bathroom, where she leaned over the sink.

  “You better tell me,” Silver whispered.

  Teresa held her stomach, her forehead was damp.

  “All right,” Silver said. “I’ll just have to find him. I’ll get the truth from him.”

  Teresa ran the cold water and splashed some on her face. As she reached for a towel, she looked down; there was a pool of blood on her shoe, a line all along the bathroom floor. “Oh, God,” she said. She sat down on the toilet seat: there was blood everywhere. “I think I’m dying,” she said.

  Silver looked at Teresa and shook his head. He ran a washcloth under the faucet and handed it to her. “Here,” he said. “Clean yourself up.”

  Teresa wiped her leg and then her shoe; she could feel blood pooling in her underpants.

  “He put his fingers up me,” she told Silver. Tears came to her eyes; she hung her head. “I’m dying,” Teresa said. “I just know it.”

  Silver sat on the rim of the bathtub. “Don’t you know anything?” he said. When Teresa didn’t answer, Silver took a deep breath. “It’s something that happens to women,” he said. “Every goddamn month.”

  “It’s my period,” Teresa said, cheering up when she realized she wasn’t about to die. “I saw a movie about it in school.”

  “Good,” Silver said, “just go ahead and take care of it.” He stood up to leave the bathroom, but his sister held him back. There were still tears in her eyes.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Teresa whispered.

  “I feel like I’m a goddamned nurse,” Silver said as he reached into the cabinet under the sink. He brought out a box of Kotex and handed them to her.

  Teresa examined the box. “What do I do with these?” she asked.

  “Christ!” Silver said. “I don’t know. Figure it out.”

  The churning in her stomach was still there, but Teresa felt calmer because Silver promised to wait for her outside the bathroom door. “Get me a pair of underpants,” she called to him. She heard Silver mutter, but he went upstairs to her room. When he came back, he knocked on the door and threw the pants inside. Teresa put them on, positioned the Kotex, then washed her hands and walked outside to where Silver was waiting.

  “Everything under control?” Silver asked.

  Teresa looked at him scornfully. “Of course,” she said. “Do you think I’m an idiot?”

  “Just don’t ask me any more questions,” Silver said, glad to be done with the whole business. “And you just forget you heard all this shit from me.”

  “Where are you going?” Teresa asked when Silver walked into the living room.

  Silver stopped at the front door. “Where the hell do you think I’m going?” he said before he went outside. “I’m going to find your boyfriend.”

  From then on, whenever Cosmo saw Teresa, he looked the other way. If he passed by her house he didn’t even bother to honk the horn; if they happened to meet in town, he crossed over to the other side of the street. Teresa was so glad that Cosmo left her alone she never asked Silver what had happened, and although she wondered if he had given Cosmo a black eye or a chipped tooth, she certainly never got close enough to look. The fact that Silver had protected her made her dizzy with delight; he had done just what he promised to do that night Renée drove back to Oregon—he had taken care of her.

  Teresa didn’t have one sleeping spell in March or April, she didn’t miss a day of school, and it was probably just chance that her good humor coincided with spring, and with Dina’s recovery.

  The detective, Arnie Bergen, had begun to telephone. He had not forgotten them, and in his mind the house was just as he last saw it, before their trip to New Mexico: the
garden was in full bloom, artichoke plants crowded the rows, peppers and tomatoes were ready to pick, pumpkins had begun to grow on the vines. The first time he had telephoned he had been thinking about that garden; Teresa picked up the phone, then called to her mother. “It’s the detective.”

  Dina waved her arms and shook her head no. “I’m not here,” she whispered.

  “All right,” Bergen had said to Teresa after she told him Dina was out. “Tell her I’ll call back next week.”

  The following week, on a Friday at the very same time, the telephone rang. Dina had been sitting on the couch watching the phone. All the same, when it rang she jumped. On the fifth ring she picked up the receiver.

  “I’m not here,” Dina said quickly. She tossed the receiver back into its cradle. Still, she didn’t move, she stared at the phone and her skin felt alive, as if she’d been stung by electrodes. When the phone rang again, Dina picked it up, but this time she didn’t say a word.

  “Hello,” Bergen said into the silence. “Dina?”

  “What do you want?” Dina whispered.

  “Is it all right if I call you Dina?” Bergen went on. “It’s not rude, is it?”

  “No.” Dina considered. “It’s not.”

  “I’m calling to see how you’ve been getting on,” Bergen said uneasily.

  “Just fine,” Dina answered.

  “Oh, good,” Bergen said. “Very good,” he said, and then he quickly hung up the phone.

  That weekend Dina worked in the garden for the first time in months; she began to pull out the weeds that had all but taken over the vegetable patch. By Wednesday she was ready to plant the first row of tomatoes, and by Thursday she was already waiting for the phone call she knew would come the following day at exactly three-thirty.

  “Hello,” Dina said immediately.

  “Just checking in,” Bergen told her. “Just wanted to know if you needed anything.”

  “Needed anything?” Dina said, puzzled.

  “Something for the garden?” Bergen asked.

  “Compost,” Dina said. “I could use some of that.”