Waltz

Abstract

Waltz Erin Somers (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution UP UNTIL HER FORTIETH YEAR, there hadn't been a season of Marian's life she hadn't had to grovel and beg, send off invoice reminders couched in manic cheer: Just checking in! At forty, an unexpected windfall changed all of that. She bought a house in a town in the Hudson Valley that seemed occupied solely by arty people, and made a hobby of overpaying for furniture. She spent $5,899 on an antique chest of drawers, laughed as they loaded it into her car. "What's funny?" asked the guy with the dolly. "Where to begin?" she said. The children adjusted instantly. They shrugged off their old lives like [End Page 143] winter coats on the first real day of spring. Marian never caught them pining or calling the friends they'd left behind. She bought them anything they asked for, and they asked for a lot. Sophie wanted a horse and Dan wanted a BMX bike. "It's not exactly fair, is it?" she said to them. "Horses eat tons of grain and have to be boarded. BMX bikes eat almost nothing." She loved them equally, so she got them each one of each. The horses lived ten minutes away in a stable surrounded by green grass. The BMX bikes lived in the garage. One afternoon the children's father came to visit. He walked around peeking into rooms and doing that low whistle of his. The house was huge, simple, and old, everything that impressed him. He pointed at different features and pronounced their names. "Wainscoting. Crown molding. Antique mahogany tallboy." And at the stable: "Steeds." "They're Mort and Zombie," Sophie told him. The children had found the horses' original names unsatisfactory. Marian had always let the children do whatever they wanted, and in return they worshipped her. But since the money appeared, they'd been thinking bigger. Their father laughed. "Zombie?" Marian reached out and touched the horse's velvety nose. She was afraid of him, of his shuddering animal intelligence, but it seemed important to demonstrate that they were all together on one side against the children's father. "What's wrong with it? Dan chose it. He's seven." "I know how old he is. Don't insult me. Why does a seven-year-old need a horse?" "He's gone this whole time without one," said Marian. "And without other things too. The amount of Batmobiles he wished for and didn't get could fill a truck." "How could notional toys fill a truck?" asked the father, whose name was also Dan. Marian felt like divorcing him all over again. Zombie sneezed. The air in the stable was filled with particles of blond dirt floating around in beams of light. Marian took in a lungful and explained that the children adored the horses and were very sweet about brushing them and shoveling their dung and such, which proved, ipso facto, that they deserved them. You had to use words like ipso facto with the children's father if you wanted to him to pay any attention. Dan Senior laughed again and said, "If you say so." "Do you want to see me ride?" asked Sophie. "Why not?" said Dan Senior. They got the stable manager to help take Mort out. Sophie rode him [End Page 144] around, while the rest of them leaned against the split-rail fence. She wore her round black helmet and sporty jodhpurs. Beyond the dirt enclosure, a field extended to the tree line. Heavy clouds inched in over it. It was a spectacle—the churn of muscle, the blue creep of thunderheads. Sophie with her cruel posture and shiny boots, like the officer of a preteen cavalry. "God, she's a natural," said Dan Senior. Now that he mentioned it, Marian could see it was true. She had an inborn lightness that seemed suited for horseback. Possibly they'd found her calling; they'd only had to vault about three social classes to do it. The wind picked up and it was time to get Mort back inside. Dan Junior ran ahead to say...