saw how the force of their presence for that short time made the rest of the world disappear. Happiness was not the issue. I simply wanted to vanish into the other misty and distant world, never wanting to be pulled back.
“I’ll make you feel better,” Austin said, as if he were comforting a child who had awakened in the middle of the night
from a nightmare. “Close your eyes.” He gently moved his fingers over my face, closing my lids as if they were a doll’s. Like a kind of sly sorcerer, with his soft breath, he had the power to make me disappear into his earth-cool dark room; possessing my body, the way men do.
I knew when something out of the ordinary was about to happen, just like Aunt Rose used to tell us she could sense a storm coming because her arthritis began to act up; I felt it hovering like a heat cloud. The sun seared bright with possibility, but inside our house my mother was cooped up, obsessing about the color of paint she wanted for each room.
In the days after Austin’s party, I played the night over in my head like a scene in a movie: the minute I heard his knock on the window of my house, the sandpapery feel of his lips against mine. It was as if a door had creaked open, just slightly, exposing the white crest of his soul. When the phone rang I practically leaped out of my skin.
One morning I awoke early and found blood splattered against the window. A bird had flown into the pane, broken its neck, and fallen onto the windowsill. It was a bad sign, I thought. I was like that then. If it was raining the day I was supposed to take a history test, I was sure that meant I would fail. I read my horoscope every morning and analyzed its meaning as if I were deconstructing the allusions in a Shakespeare play. I opened my underwear drawer and took out the robin’s egg wrapped in tissue that Austin and I had found one
day when we were getting high in the woods behind his house, rubbed it as if it had powers, and prayed.
Austin cleaned the stalls at the harness track a few days after school and on weekends. I knew when he’d been in the stables; the stench of the manure in his clothes and in his hair was a dead giveaway. But it was something besides his love of horses. The track life was different from the upper-class world he had grown up in. Most of the guys I knew were into sports and partying. Austin’s passion for horses made him different.
“When you first start training a horse, you can’t control her,” Austin said the first time he took me to the track and showed me the horses he cared for. “It’s like developing a relationship. She has to learn to trust you. Once you develop the trust, she’ll do anything you ask. It’s that strength and power in a horse’s body that gets to me,” he continued, as he reached out his hand and let one of the horses eat a handful of oats from his palm. “When a horse is in her rhythm, she’s on fire.”
He was employed by a man named Howard White, who owned a slew of racehorses. Once school ended Austin worked in the barns full-time. When he wasn’t at the track, he sometimes rode his own horse, which he boarded at a stable off County Line Road in Chagrin Falls. Austin rode with Jane Smart, one of the girl grooms who worked in the barns. Jane had dirty blond hair, greasy near the part, and a face cut like a diamond. Sexuality seeped from her pores.
One Saturday Austin was working at the track. Even though I had no interest in hanging out with Skippy Larsen and his entourage that night, I told Maria I’d go with her to Skippy’s party. Maria and I had the reputation at school as being joined at the hip. For my tenth birthday she had given me a friendship necklace, with one of those hearts perfectly
split in two. We each wore one half, tucked into our blouses, close to our skin. But since I’d begun seeing Austin, he became my heart’s cool and silent keeper.
Shortly after we arrived, the party spun out of control. Maria
“I’ll make you feel better,” Austin said, as if he were comforting a child who had awakened in the middle of the night
from a nightmare. “Close your eyes.” He gently moved his fingers over my face, closing my lids as if they were a doll’s. Like a kind of sly sorcerer, with his soft breath, he had the power to make me disappear into his earth-cool dark room; possessing my body, the way men do.
I knew when something out of the ordinary was about to happen, just like Aunt Rose used to tell us she could sense a storm coming because her arthritis began to act up; I felt it hovering like a heat cloud. The sun seared bright with possibility, but inside our house my mother was cooped up, obsessing about the color of paint she wanted for each room.
In the days after Austin’s party, I played the night over in my head like a scene in a movie: the minute I heard his knock on the window of my house, the sandpapery feel of his lips against mine. It was as if a door had creaked open, just slightly, exposing the white crest of his soul. When the phone rang I practically leaped out of my skin.
One morning I awoke early and found blood splattered against the window. A bird had flown into the pane, broken its neck, and fallen onto the windowsill. It was a bad sign, I thought. I was like that then. If it was raining the day I was supposed to take a history test, I was sure that meant I would fail. I read my horoscope every morning and analyzed its meaning as if I were deconstructing the allusions in a Shakespeare play. I opened my underwear drawer and took out the robin’s egg wrapped in tissue that Austin and I had found one
day when we were getting high in the woods behind his house, rubbed it as if it had powers, and prayed.
Austin cleaned the stalls at the harness track a few days after school and on weekends. I knew when he’d been in the stables; the stench of the manure in his clothes and in his hair was a dead giveaway. But it was something besides his love of horses. The track life was different from the upper-class world he had grown up in. Most of the guys I knew were into sports and partying. Austin’s passion for horses made him different.
“When you first start training a horse, you can’t control her,” Austin said the first time he took me to the track and showed me the horses he cared for. “It’s like developing a relationship. She has to learn to trust you. Once you develop the trust, she’ll do anything you ask. It’s that strength and power in a horse’s body that gets to me,” he continued, as he reached out his hand and let one of the horses eat a handful of oats from his palm. “When a horse is in her rhythm, she’s on fire.”
He was employed by a man named Howard White, who owned a slew of racehorses. Once school ended Austin worked in the barns full-time. When he wasn’t at the track, he sometimes rode his own horse, which he boarded at a stable off County Line Road in Chagrin Falls. Austin rode with Jane Smart, one of the girl grooms who worked in the barns. Jane had dirty blond hair, greasy near the part, and a face cut like a diamond. Sexuality seeped from her pores.
One Saturday Austin was working at the track. Even though I had no interest in hanging out with Skippy Larsen and his entourage that night, I told Maria I’d go with her to Skippy’s party. Maria and I had the reputation at school as being joined at the hip. For my tenth birthday she had given me a friendship necklace, with one of those hearts perfectly
split in two. We each wore one half, tucked into our blouses, close to our skin. But since I’d begun seeing Austin, he became my heart’s cool and silent keeper.
Shortly after we arrived, the party spun out of control. Maria
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