The Yonahlossee Riding Camp For Girls Part 29

I nodded, a.s.sembling all this new information, which was, after all, unsurprising. Unsurprising that Mary Abbott should have followed Sissy and Boone into the woods, unsurprising that she had been an instrument of Sissy's demise without the malice that such action usually called for. She was lonely. That was all.

"You were bad at home, weren't you?"

"Yes," I said, without thinking. "Very bad." I felt my eyes warm.

"Oh, Thea," Mary Abbott said, and then she hugged me, fiercely, and whispered into my ear, "it's all right," and whatever spell she had cast was broken. I pushed her away, hard.

"Ow," she cried, and rubbed her shoulder, drew her arms to her chest as if to protect herself-she did need to protect herself. I recognized something in her, a certain deviancy, a certain need. A yearning she knew she needed to hide without knowing how. She hadn't the slimmest idea. She was too much like me; I could not be kind to her. The only difference between us was that I did not seem as strange, on the surface of things.

"It's better," I said, "not to be strange. Not to be noticed."

Mary Abbott looked pained, but she nodded. She reached for my hand, and this time I let her take it. She was always reaching for my hand, but this time would be the last time.

"Take care," I said, "take care of yourself."

- I found Sam that night after I had confessed everything to my mother, almost everything: I would never tell her that my cousin and I had slept together. I thought I was being merciful; I never imagined that she did not believe me, that she had her own ideas about what had happened. But she was right, in the end; she was correct not to trust me.

I believed, as I searched the house for her, finally finding her out back pruning roses, that telling might relieve me. I believed foolishly.

Sam was in our old nursery, reading a magazine, sitting Indian-style on the bare floor. He shook his head when I walked in; his eyes were gla.s.sy, and the room was very dim.

"Do you want more light?" I asked, my hand on the switch.

"Leave it."

Sam turned a page, and I saw an advertis.e.m.e.nt for roller skates, which neither of us had ever used.

"What are you reading?" I asked.

"I'm reading an article about people with unnatural desires."

"I'm sorry." My face was swollen from crying, it felt as if there was sand trapped underneath my eyelids.

"I should have stopped you." He looked miserable, his eyes swollen and red, veins I'd never seen before at their surface. His left eye was black from a bruise.

"You couldn't have," I said quietly. "It wasn't yours to stop."

"They're going to send you away."

I was stunned. "Who?"

"Who do you think? Mother and Father."

"Where?" I thought of my mother's brother, in south Florida; that was the only place they had to send me.

"To a place I've never heard of. It has an Indian name."

"I won't go, Sam," I said, my voice rising. I didn't stop to think how he knew this. He must have overheard something. "Don't let them take me."

"Why, Thea?" he asked. "Why did you do it?" He began to sob. "They'll send you away, and I'll be alone. Did you think of that? Did you? Did you think that you would go away and I would be all alone?"

I threw myself on him. I felt my twin relent, and this relenting made the next two weeks, before I was sent away to Yonahlossee-the utter awkwardness, the turned heads of my family, the acknowledgment of my deep betrayal-my brother yielding against me in that moment made all of this bearable.

"I should have known," he murmured into my hair. I could barely understand him.

I held his face in my hands. His cheeks were hot and sweaty.

"You did know," I said.

- My father had been in his study. I knocked and his voice sounded the same as always, giving me permission to enter: quiet, firm.

"Thea."

"Father." He was in the middle of writing a letter. Now he tapped his chin with his pen and waited. "How is Georgie?" I blurted, because either I said it now, and quickly, or not at all.

"Georgie is in the hospital. Did you know that?"

I shook my head. "He was breathing when I saw him last."

"Yes. Unfortunately one can breathe and still be badly damaged. It seems his brain is injured." He paused. "When your mother told me what you had confessed I was sure she was wrong." His voice was even. "Was she wrong?"

I shook my head.

"I wish with all my heart that she was." It was strange, for my father to use a sentimental phrase like that. All my heart. "But your brother is involved in this, too. Georgie's wound"-and here he laid his pen down and put his hands before him as if he were cradling a melon-"is consistent with violent injury. Do you understand, Thea?"

I nodded, not understanding.

"Georgie was either hit, by your brother, or he fell. Either way the result is the same. But there is a great distinction between the two, as you must know."

I said nothing.

"It is plausible that Georgie fell on a large, blunt object. I told the hospital the rock. They relayed this information to the police. That your cousin had fallen and hit his head on the rock."

"All right," I said, because he seemed to require a response. "All right."

"Your brother did not know who I was when I found him later. He had been sitting under a tree for hours. He had wet himself. His recounting of what happened is faulty, at best." Father looked at me like he was surprised to find me there.

"I just wanted to find out about Georgie," I whispered. His name was dirty in my mouth.

"Well, now you know. He is not well."

"But he will be well again?"

I should not have asked, clearly.

My father shrugged faintly. "G.o.d willing." I made to leave, but my father spoke again. "Did you see, Thea? Can you tell me what happened? Can you be honest?" He looked so pained, my father, so lost. The top b.u.t.ton on his s.h.i.+rt was undone; it was never undone.

"It was the rock," I said. "The rock, not Sam."

It seemed an easy thing, to let my father believe what he wanted so badly to believe. The least I could do.

- My mother found me in the barn later, untangling the knots in Sasi's tail. It was something to do.

"Thea."

"Mother." I held the tail loosely; I did not want to let go of it completely.

"I was out for a walk." She gestured toward the wide expanse. My mother never took walks. She was either in the garden or in the house. She had spoken to me three times in the past week. Once she had asked me to sweep the front porch, which I had done, twice, even though it hadn't needed it.

She rested her forehead against the stall door; she looked tired, vulnerable. Perhaps she would have news of my cousin.

"We've decided to send you away from all this."

"I won't go." I looked my mother in the eye, and though she was surprised, all the rules of how we behaved with each other had disintegrated, as if into thin air.

She closed her eyes. "You have no choice. It will be better for you, to go."

"No. I'm fine here. I'll stay out of everyone's way. You'll see. I'll sleep out here. I won't be a bother. Please, it won't be better for me."

She laughed. "You'll sleep in a stall? You're not an animal, Thea. Are you?" She shook her head. "You will go."

"Oh." I wound Sasi's tail around my wrist. "I see."

My mother watched me for a moment. "Why, Thea? Why did you do it?" Her mouth was screwed into a small, ugly knot. She did not look so beautiful, in this moment. She looked betrayed.

"Why was it so bad?" I asked. My voice cracked. "You loved Georgie."

It seemed like she was ready for the question, like she had already asked it of herself.

"I wanted more for you!" she cried. "Don't you see, that Georgie is not enough? And even if he was, it's all a horrible mess now, Georgie in the hospital, your brother the one who put him there. Uncle George and Aunt Carrie cannot forgive. And I'm so angry at Georgie . . . and at you." She gestured outside the barn, at our thousand acres. "We had everything, Thea. Everything. This place is ruined."

"Please," I cried, "where are you sending me? Don't. Please don't." I touched her arm. "Please keep me here. I'll be good."

She looked at her forearm where I had touched it, then up at me again.

"I'm afraid it's too late for all that," she said, calm now.

- We settled into a semblance of routine in my final week at home. I woke up early in the morning and rode until Sasi was exhausted. I made jumps that were higher and higher, and Sasi cleared them because he could feel how reckless I was. Mother busied herself with ch.o.r.es, and I helped her by making myself scarce. I knew I was the last person she wanted to see. Sam disappeared for hours at a time out back. Hunting, I presumed. Father left before I rose and returned after I was in bed. When I pa.s.sed him in the hall, he made some mention of a sickly infant who would not nurse. I did not ask again about my cousin. I a.s.sumed that Father would tell me if his condition changed for the worse. I was naive, I thought my parents' silence meant that Georgie was getting better.

I was supposed to be packing my clothes. Mother had been vague about what I'd need. I had gotten as far as emptying my drawers onto the floor. Now I combed through these piles of all my fine things: s.h.i.+mmering dresses, stiff cotton skirts, smooth silk scarves. I didn't deserve them. I couldn't imagine a future in which I'd wear them again.

A knock. I'd been keeping my door closed to spare my family the sight of me.

"Come in."

Idella's brown hand, first. I went back to my things. The disappointment was nearly unbearable.

"Your mother sent me to help pack."

I gestured at the piles. "I've made such a mess."

"Let me."

I watched as she made better piles, put skirts with skirts, breeches with riding s.h.i.+rts; deftly folded all the things I'd unfolded.

"Your mother says to pack lightly." Idella glanced at me. "She says there will be a uniform."

"A uniform," I repeated. "Do you know why I'm going away?"

Idella smoothed the collar of a blouse. I knew so little about her. She wasn't married. She lived with her mother and two sisters; they were all deeply religious.

"I'm sure it's all fine."

I nodded, close to tears. "It's not," I said.

"G.o.d willing," Idella said. "G.o.d willing."

{23}.

The train from Asheville to Orlando was half empty. There was another girl my age who sat in first cla.s.s. We ate together in the dining car, at separate tables. I studied her. She did not look at the waiter when she ordered, and when her food came she ate in a hurry, shyly, as if she were in danger of offending someone by dining. She wore beautiful, teardrop-shaped emerald earrings, which she touched constantly, in the same way that Sissy touched her horseshoe pendant. The horseshoe pendant hung around my neck now, and I found myself tapping it constantly, as Sissy had, but not for the same reasons: I touched it because Sissy had, because I missed her.

I could not eat the tomato soup the waiter brought. It wasn't very good, but I should have been hungry; I hadn't eaten very much in days. I forced myself to eat the roll. As I sat here, on this train, this bland food before me made everything real again. I could feel my resolve scattering like dandelion fluff. It was so green outside the train window, so green and alive. The beauty of North Carolina lay in its austerity, the mountains so far away, so cold, so distant. Once we crossed into Florida, everything was alive, at you. I knew as soon as I stepped off the train the heat would greet me like an old friend, even though it was only spring.

I was jealous of the girl, whose name I didn't even know, who I would never see again. I had never wanted to be someone else so badly. I wanted to begin again: at birth, without a twin, without a cousin so close he was a brother.

"Do you know the next stop?" the girl asked. She stood before me. I hadn't even noticed that she'd left her table. For a moment the name would not come to me. But finally it did.

"Church Street," I said. "Orlando." The girl seemed nervous, and I wanted to take her by the shoulders, say, Look, please, you have nothing to be nervous about. But I didn't know that. I didn't know what or who she would meet when she stepped off the train, which was beginning the slow process of stopping. I could see the station, where I would soon be, and it seemed impossible that I could be here on this train but that in five minutes, ten, I would not be. And that I would not be by my own volition. Why, Thea, why. Why had I wanted to return to all this? To my brother who hadn't written me a single word for months, to my mother and father who had sent me away so quickly it was as if they'd known all along how they would handle a crisis, a tragedy, a thing Mother hadn't planned: Send the girl away, keep the boy?

And then I saw them, my parents, waiting on the platform, my father in a suit, my mother in a wide-brimmed hat. And I knew why I had wanted to come back. Yet I was not ready to see them. I faltered. I put my head in my hands.

I looked up again and saw the girl was watching me. At Yonahlossee she would not have been popular; she was too nervous, too needy.

"Who are you meeting?" she asked.

"My parents." I looked outside the window. My mother stood in front of my father; my father's hands were clasped behind his back, his head bowed. My mother looked agitated. My fast mother, who had once been beautiful and shameless. She looked thinner. Sam was not there.

I watched my parents as the train pulled in, stayed in my seat as the other pa.s.sengers disembarked and my mother peered anxiously into their faces.

I stood. I could already feel my legs weakening, atrophying ever so slightly from disuse. I hadn't been on a horse in days.