Read Online The Tin Horse: A Novel by Janice Steinberg - Free Book Online
Authors: Janice Steinberg
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matching cap. I put on booties, ease into the water, and greet the half dozen other regulars who are already there. A few minutes later, Harriet swims to the shallow end and joins us, stripping off her swim cap and shaking out her long gray hair.
Anytime I’ve attempted to go gray, the word
schoolmarm
immediately comes to mind. That’s why I get to the salon every six weeks for a feathery cut and to keep up my color, which has gotten lighter and lighter; it’s now a sort of cocker spaniel blond. On Harriet, though, wild gray locks suggest a free spirit who still puts marijuana in her brownies and has a diverting sex life. The look is perfect for her workshops, “Wise Woman: The Deep Knowing of Age.” Sounds like psychobabble, but Harriet really is a wise woman, and not only because she’s a respected psychotherapist; she sees beneath the surface of people and relationships and comes up withinsights that amaze me. Not that she often exercises her skill on the family. Refraining from analyzing us is part of her wisdom.
We prance—well, Harriet prances; I shuffle—in the pool for an hour to music than runs from big-band tunes to the kind of songs my grandkids listen to; then we take showers, dress, and meet back at my house.
“Wow. You’re really doing this!” Harriet surveys the living room, which already feels bare, though all I’ve done so far is empty bookshelves. Every piece of furniture, however—except for the few things that will fit in the apartment at Rancho Mañana—has been assessed by a sweet but ruthless woman named Melissa who bluntly told me what’s worth placing in her consignment store and what’s so pathetically outdated I should just give it away.
“Sure you don’t want to move in with me?” Harriet says.
“I’m sure. But thanks!” I think of Harriet’s household—her forty-two-year-old son who moved back home after getting laid off and the not-much-older man with whom she does, in fact, have a diverting sex life—and experience a moment of profound gratitude that I can afford my own apartment at Rancho Mañana.
Over lunch, I tell her about the boxes. Then I make tea and show her the gems I’ve found. I start with the daughter box, though I’m surprised, going through it with Harriet, to realize Mama saved far less ephemera of her life than of Barbara’s, Audrey’s, or mine. There are report cards and class pictures, but nothing more personal.
But what really stuns me is when we turn to Papa’s books.
“Remember Papa’s poetry lessons?” I say.
“What poetry lessons?”
“Didn’t he have you recite poems?” She looks blank, and I continue, “It wasn’t just because he wanted us to speak well. He loved to recite. Remember, he won a prize for elocution when he was in high school?”
“Did he?”
“Harriet! The story of Papa’s prize is a Greenstein legend.”
She laughs. “They say—and I guess this proves it—that every sibling grows up in a different family. That if someone asked you or Audrey or me what it was like growing up, we’d have wildly different stories. It has to do with birth order, temperament.” She picks up the tag on the end of herteabag, starts shredding it. “And of course, most of my childhood was after Barbara left.”
I think of Philip’s card and the wild idea I had that I’d stumbled on Barbara’s new identity. “What if we could find her now, if she’s still alive?”
“Why, so we could confront her with the damage she did?” Harriet snaps.
Her ferocity stuns me. As does what she says next.
“I used to make movies in my mind, of Audrey being so anxious it was torture for her to get out the door to go to school, or Papa when he came back from the morgue—remember, he nagged the police so much that for a year or two they called him every time they found some poor, nameless girl dead in an alley? He’d walk in the door, and his face was gray, like
he
was dead. I’d fantasize about forcing her to watch them.…
Anytime I’ve attempted to go gray, the word
schoolmarm
immediately comes to mind. That’s why I get to the salon every six weeks for a feathery cut and to keep up my color, which has gotten lighter and lighter; it’s now a sort of cocker spaniel blond. On Harriet, though, wild gray locks suggest a free spirit who still puts marijuana in her brownies and has a diverting sex life. The look is perfect for her workshops, “Wise Woman: The Deep Knowing of Age.” Sounds like psychobabble, but Harriet really is a wise woman, and not only because she’s a respected psychotherapist; she sees beneath the surface of people and relationships and comes up withinsights that amaze me. Not that she often exercises her skill on the family. Refraining from analyzing us is part of her wisdom.
We prance—well, Harriet prances; I shuffle—in the pool for an hour to music than runs from big-band tunes to the kind of songs my grandkids listen to; then we take showers, dress, and meet back at my house.
“Wow. You’re really doing this!” Harriet surveys the living room, which already feels bare, though all I’ve done so far is empty bookshelves. Every piece of furniture, however—except for the few things that will fit in the apartment at Rancho Mañana—has been assessed by a sweet but ruthless woman named Melissa who bluntly told me what’s worth placing in her consignment store and what’s so pathetically outdated I should just give it away.
“Sure you don’t want to move in with me?” Harriet says.
“I’m sure. But thanks!” I think of Harriet’s household—her forty-two-year-old son who moved back home after getting laid off and the not-much-older man with whom she does, in fact, have a diverting sex life—and experience a moment of profound gratitude that I can afford my own apartment at Rancho Mañana.
Over lunch, I tell her about the boxes. Then I make tea and show her the gems I’ve found. I start with the daughter box, though I’m surprised, going through it with Harriet, to realize Mama saved far less ephemera of her life than of Barbara’s, Audrey’s, or mine. There are report cards and class pictures, but nothing more personal.
But what really stuns me is when we turn to Papa’s books.
“Remember Papa’s poetry lessons?” I say.
“What poetry lessons?”
“Didn’t he have you recite poems?” She looks blank, and I continue, “It wasn’t just because he wanted us to speak well. He loved to recite. Remember, he won a prize for elocution when he was in high school?”
“Did he?”
“Harriet! The story of Papa’s prize is a Greenstein legend.”
She laughs. “They say—and I guess this proves it—that every sibling grows up in a different family. That if someone asked you or Audrey or me what it was like growing up, we’d have wildly different stories. It has to do with birth order, temperament.” She picks up the tag on the end of herteabag, starts shredding it. “And of course, most of my childhood was after Barbara left.”
I think of Philip’s card and the wild idea I had that I’d stumbled on Barbara’s new identity. “What if we could find her now, if she’s still alive?”
“Why, so we could confront her with the damage she did?” Harriet snaps.
Her ferocity stuns me. As does what she says next.
“I used to make movies in my mind, of Audrey being so anxious it was torture for her to get out the door to go to school, or Papa when he came back from the morgue—remember, he nagged the police so much that for a year or two they called him every time they found some poor, nameless girl dead in an alley? He’d walk in the door, and his face was gray, like
he
was dead. I’d fantasize about forcing her to watch them.…
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