NEWS
2010 Winner: Whirlaway
Posted: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 4:00 PM
by Mara Dabrishus
Memories fade.
That was what July told herself when she smoothed her young fingers over the scrapbook, running her blunt nails over the edges of the handled photographs, the newspaper clippings, the win tickets her father never cashed. They were little pieces of proof to a life she wasn't living, but she supposed it was as close as she was going to get.
She pressed a torn piece of paper, gummy with glue stick, to a page near the book's middle. The paper was rippled, damp with glue, and she smoothed it out patiently. At the top of the page, while she was waiting for the glue to dry, she wrote the date in permanent black marker. On the paper, after it was dry, she ran a yellow highlighter over her mother's name.
It seemed innocuous. She'd done it all before. This time, she sat back on the hardwood floor beneath her shins and stared at the page, considered the words, and slammed the book closed.
Memories would fade, so she would need proof. What she didn't need to do was routinely subject herself to the horror of it. She didn't need to read the words over and over, obsessing and analyzing, until she was bent backwards and couldn't see straight. She already knew all the words by heart, could repeat the whole program perfectly.
Whirlaway Stakes. Etymology, three-year-old bay colt. Celia Carter, jockey, her mother. They were details, little pieces of a memory she had to document and keep close.
It started, like always for July, in the morning. A freezing, miserable morning. She was numbed to the cold after the first hour in Maggie's saddle, ponying the Thoroughbreds and almost enjoying the brief bursts of speed on the track, if only it didn't mean a gust of frigid air forced down her throat. The paint mare snorted white plumes of steam into the air, turned her head to send one white-ringed look in July's direction, as if asking how long it would be until she could be back in her stall.
“Not too long,” July said, running one hand down the mare's mane, slipping the strands through her gloved fingers. Maggie flicked her ears and sighed. July knew how she felt.
“Heads up, Juls,” Pilar called, steering Lamplighter in from their work. The hot-headed chestnut was a coiled disaster, blond mane flying askew and his expression somewhere between wild and petulant. Lamplighter was as close to a spoiled toddler as a two-year-old colt could get, so he was partially loved, partially loathed, and usually always the thorn in July's side. Escorting him was never boring, but almost always hazardous.
She took care to dodge the colt's head as he whipped it up and over Maggie's neck, pushing his icy muzzle into July's leg.
“Yeah, I missed you too, buddy.”
Pilar grinned. “Never thought I'd see the day.”
“See what day?”
“The day you'd ever miss Lighter.”
July shook her head. “Sarcasm goes right over your head, doesn't it?”
“Genuine emotion goes right over yours,” Pilar shot back, but it was lost to July, her eyes on something else. Something else that was like a flash in the corner of her eye and gone between the barns. She would know the figure anywhere. It was like looking back four years, being allowed a glimpse of a past you thought you wanted to forget, and hadn't realized until now that you never wanted gone.
“Pilar?”
“Yeah?”
July swallowed, and told herself it was nothing. Lighter strained against her hold, and she shook her head.
“It's nothing.”
Pilar shrugged, and July told herself adamantly, repetitively, that her eyes couldn't be trusted.
The thing of it was, she knew she was wrong. It was a nagging itch that wouldn't resolve itself until she broke down, told herself to buy a program already and prove to herself that her eyes were liars. That her memories were wrong, and she could successfully tell herself that nothing about this day was different than all the others.
July was a horse girl. It was what her mother always told her when nothing else seemed to fit. School, friends, learning the basics of team sports, the nuances of instruments and arts, or anything in which those her age seemed to excel, never seemed to measure up to the simple fact that she was a horse girl.
“There is nothing better,” her mother would say, her crooked smile brightening July's whole world while her chubby, child fingers buried themselves in the length of coarse mane. “Remember, baby girl, that this feeling is never going to leave. Not ever.”
It wasn't a question of if July loved riding horses over an endless loop morning after morning. It was what she did because it was like breathing. She had her mother to thank for that, leaving her with longstanding lessons and indelible impressions that couldn't be washed away in the years of absence created by Santa Anita opportunities that her mother felt couldn't be matched by Belmont.
Sometimes, July felt that her mother just expected her to understand. On the worst days, sometimes she even did. They were horse girls, and nothing compared. On the better days, July just wished it all away and it was gone. Every day, she wanted her mother back, not that she ever knew how to accomplish that goal.
Her father had only one horse running on the card, a hyperactive filly in the fifth with Jorge aboard. There was plenty of time to go over to the grandstand for her concession stand hamburger just before noon. When she got there, she didn't need to bother buying a program.
“Juls,” one of the regulars, one of the men she saw every day eyeing the horses, inched up to her. He smelled like smoke and aftershave, an overpowering mixture that clung to everything and never let go. He was eager, but wary, like he wasn't too sure of his question. He asked it despite noticeable reservations. “Got any news on the third?”
“Why would I have news on the third?” she asked, pausing on the way to her next stop, the programs sitting all dull and expensive there on the stand. It was a matter of needing to know, she reasoned. To have the tangible proof in her hands that she was wrong.
He looked at her a little sideways, which subsequently made her feel a little sick.
“My mistake.”
She realized later that it was to his credit to back out before he was too far in, but she wasn't going to let him. It was his misfortune to be the one who told her, halfheartedly, that there was something she needed to know.
“I'm sorry,” he prefaced, handing his program out to her. It was wrinkled and battered, marked all to hell before the second race. “I thought you knew. Your mom is on the five horse.”
She dropped her drink, and it went spraying all over their shoes.
Later, she bought the program anyway. She put it on her father's desk and bit back a frustrated scream at his resigned sigh.
“It was a last minute change,” he said in defense. She crossed her arms over her stomach, shivering and shaking, reacting, and then overreacting with no visible outlet.
“She's riding in the Whirlaway. And in the third. How last minute could it have been?”
“They're both Mosby's horses,” her father said, like this made sense to her. He was shifting in his seat, eager to slip out of this conversation, but July wanted more. She wanted to be wrong, and this wasn't going in the right direction.
“Did you know about this?”
“Honestly, Juls,” he sighed, “I didn't know how to break this to you when I found out. She's only here today, and I imagine she'll be gone right after the race. I wouldn't ...”
“What?” She laughed, because it was funny. What would she do? She had plenty of options, all somewhere between calm acceptance and freaking out. Any of them felt like completely rational responses, but she felt like she was headed toward indignant outrage. She could live with that, she decided. It felt right, and that was a feeling she wanted to cling to for a while.
“I wouldn't make this more than it is.”
“Mom has a Derby horse, you mean.”
“Mom has a potential shot at the Derby with Etymology,” her father nodded, leaning back in his chair, like all the fight was knocked out of him and answering questions was a way toward relief.
“She couldn't just, I don't know, pick a horse that was running in California? Where she usually is?”
“It's her decision.”
“Did she call you? Did you know?”
He hesitated. “No.”
Not a good sign, but she caught herself. What did she expect to be a good sign? She was starting to think all signs with her mother were dreadful omens of family unrest. Her chest tightened, her head clouded, like she was seeing everything through a haze of cobwebs. She realized, somewhat belatedly, that she was starting to cry.
“July.”
She thought her father might have been making a move to get up, to walk around the desk and do something fatherly, like envelop her in a hug or push her hair out of her eyes, but she would never be sure because she was out of the office before he could touch her. She was out of the office and running.
Three-quarters toward the grandstand, she lost her nerve. She stumbled to a stop, her boots slipping on a little patch of ice, nearly bringing her to the pavement before she scrambled to catch her balance. The air was freezing in her lungs, and everything in her burned with the cold and the bitter recognition that she was right when she didn't want to be.
She pulled her cell phone from her pocket, scrolled through the names and numbers to land on her sister's name somewhere at the start of the M’s.
“This had better be so good.” Martina answered the phone like she was simultaneously bored and too busy to humor anyone like her little sister. It was a Saturday, her reprieve from the office work she hated and always defended when July made ruthless fun. July wasn't in the mood to navigate her sister's attitude.
“Mom is here.”
“What?”
“You heard me, Martina,” July said, exasperated, so many seconds from screaming. “She is here.”
“That isn't possible,” Martina informed her. “We would have known.”
“Well, that isn't her style, is it?”
Silence. “Maybe not,” Martina allowed. “What are you going to do?”
July gritted her teeth, almost by instinct. “I don't know. Maybe you can counsel me.”
“Hey, you called me. Remember that, July.”
“You're her daughter, too, Martina.”
“Sometimes I think abandonment goes both ways.”
“Sometimes I think you're not being helpful.”
“Fine,” Martina said. “You want to know what you should do? You should walk up to her and tell her to go to hell.”
Before July could respond, the phone clicked in her ear. Martina was gone, leaving a digital void of dead air in her wake. July shut her cell phone, slipping it back into her pocket. How helpful, July thought. Perfectly done, perfectly typical, and her own response was utterly expected.
She stood and did nothing, watching the third race come and go. The horses rounded around the curve of the clubhouse turn, and she watched with a rising sense of dread. It was a sense of mistakes and impending consequences. Every second she stood there she ached more, and it was an effort to turn around and walk back to the barns.
It was an effort to do nothing.
Pilar looked up when July walked into the relative warmth of the shedrow.
“I heard,” she said, her face twisted in an amalgam of disgust and pity. No one claimed to like Celia Carter, not because she hadn't been well liked before, but because there was July to look after. There was a hole to fill, and no one could quite figure out how to do it. There was just a space, a pair of girls, and horses.
July focused on the horses.
July focused on the horses until she couldn't. Until she was bone weary and the Whirlaway was right on top of her. It felt like she was crawling up the walls. Time was suffocating, and the look Pilar gave her when July refused to go to the paddock for the fifth race was all she needed to know. Put everything down, July told herself. Put it all down and go, because this could be your only chance.
She had been afforded few chances. There were times, somewhere in the past four years that July would sit in the smoky Belmont lounges and wonder if this was how she would interact with her wayward parent. Watching the grainy images of simulcast racing on televisions with smeared screens like a hawk, all for the prize of a glimpse, didn't seem like classic family bonding. It didn't seem like classic anything outside of desperation, the way you cling to something long gone in efforts to remember.
The television was always on. After a while, July opted to turn it off. You could only hope so much, and four years of absence and dwindling, increasingly missed phone calls seemed to point to the overwhelming conclusion that the only chances she would have would be of July's own making.
“Would you just go?” Pilar asked, pushing July out of the barn. The gravel slipped under her shoes, and the cold wind whipped through her hair. Pilar kept pushing, and July kept digging in her heels. Finally she spun and faced her, taking everything into her own hands.
“Come with me,” July said, and Pilar stopped, blinking at the change of pace. It wasn't an act, so July added, “I'm going to go over there, but I'd like someone with me. You're the best person for the job.”
Pilar nodded, resolutely. She'd started at the barn at the end of July's normal family life, just in time to see enough to come up with her own opinions.
“Of course.”
“Just,” July paused, shoving her hands in the pockets of her coat, feeling dirty around the edges and very unlike the 13-year-old girl her mother left. Well, maybe the dirt would be the same. Everything else was older, baby fat shedding off and leaving behind a 17-year-old girl with an unresolved confrontation on her hands. “Don't let me turn around.”
“I promise I won't.”
“And don't let me tell her to go to hell.”
Pilar laughed. “I promise.”
They were late. Even running, they were late to the paddock. The horses moved off to the track and the girls shoved their way to the rail, in time to be nameless faces passed by in the post parade.
It wasn't enough, but July saw what she was there for. Celia, her wiry little mother, crouched on the back of a lanky bay. The colt, all muscle and grace, walked into the chill wind and turned his head, looking into the stands, right at July. Or so July thought.
She was watching her mother, who was focused on the dirt track between the colt's ears. Celia Carter gathered the reins and took off at a canter, came back to the gate and loaded without incident into the sixth hole. When the doors opened with a crash and a bang, they were the first out of the gate.
Etymology ran up into second, held his ground until the last turn, and faded fast. Pilar reached over and wrapped her fingers around July's wrist. The colt pulled up, his head hauled low, malleable and happy not to panic. Celia jumped off at the first opportunity, standing with the colt at the head of the stretch while the rest raced on.
“That's it for her Derby,” Pilar said. July leaned over the outer rail, watching the ordeal instead of the finish. The horses flew by, the thuds of hooves on dirt and the cacophony of the crowd ringing in her ears. Her mother was walking off the track, her little shoulders back, head up, like a petite warrior coming off the battlefield with her honor intact.
July wasn't sure what her mother's opinions were on honor.
“We have to go if we're going to catch her,” July said, pushing from the rail and dragging Pilar with her.
“July,” Pilar said, her grasp breaking on July's wrist and getting left behind.
July pushed her way through the dispersing crowd, speeding through the grandstand down toward the jocks' room, where she waited, and waited.
Pilar caught up with her. “Anything yet?”
“No.”
She shifted and waited, nervous energy spiking until she started to lose track of what she was going to do when she was presented the opportunity. This wasn't exactly what she wanted, coming here to ambush someone she loved like they were participating in guerilla warfare. It wasn't like she had a speech ready for this moment. Most of her daydreams of reconciliation involved her mother doing most of the talking, and that looked like it would be a slim shot in hell of ever happening.
Words weren't needed, she decided. Neither was preparation. Whatever she needed to say would come to her when called upon, and of that she was sure, until Jorge emerged, caught sight of her, and shook his head.
“Jorge?” she asked, confused. He walked across to her, putting a hand on her shoulder.
“Not today, baby doll.”
She laughed, because what day would it be if not this one? She laughed because it was better than doing anything else. It was better than hunting Celia Carter down in the parking lot, finding her car, demanding that she talk to her, pushing anything at all. It was better than breaking down, and July did not break down.
She walked back to the barns, a quiet mess of a girl. It was four years of waiting compounded and lost in a day, altogether unforgivable.
“She avoided us,” she said as soon as she got to her father's barn, watching the crown of his blond head as he bent to run his hands down the leg of a filly. He ignored her for a moment, or so she thought. He had a habit of letting a question sit until he was ready to answer it, and by the time he was ready minutes would pass. July waited, not because she demanded an answer, but because she knew he would give her one.
He stood and gave her a steady stare. “Your mother was never good with owning up to a lot of things, July. Don't hold it against her.”
She would take that as an unspoken yes.
“Why shouldn't I? She slunk in and rolled out of here faster than a damned hurricane.”
“Language, July.”
“Oh, please,” she scoffed. “She's wrong. Just flat out wrong.”
“She's alone,” her father said, letting himself out of the stall. The filly came forward, dropping her head and nudging July's hands, trying to nip at her fingers. “It's not a justification, but it is what she's used to.”
“Of her own making,” July muttered bitterly, stretching her fingers out and playing with the filly who redoubled her efforts to snag a fingertip between her teeth. July pulled her hand back and rested it on the horse's nose. The filly tossed her head and gave her a dirty glare.
“July.” Her father turned her around, resting both hands on the sides of her head. “Your mother loves you dearly, but she's a horse girl. Just like you. She tends to forget about the rest of the world more often than you do, and doesn't know how to reconcile the two.”
“Please,” she sighed, closing her eyes, “don't tell me I'm like her.”
He smiled and smoothed a hand over her head.
“You're better,” he said, and some roiling part inside her settled. “Better and better every day.”
She took a soft breath and opened her eyes.
The pages of the book were thick in her hands, weighed down with the artifacts that proved her right. Occasionally, everything was crystal clear. Sometimes, even with the photos and the little scraps of paper there to remind her, the details were still blurry around the edges, and a little bit of panic would slither in unwanted. Sometimes, she wouldn't care. Memories fade, she would tell herself. They do exactly what they're supposed to do.
July looked down at her mother's face smiling up from the pages, and slammed the book closed. She shoved it under the bed, and pressed her knuckles against the floorboards until they ached. Memories fade, she told herself, like little whirling flashes of light. They fade, and sometimes they would disappear all together.
It's always this thought that has her pulling the book out from its hiding place and throwing open the cover. She would memorize her handfuls of artifacts until her eyes ached, and her heart was full.
