She mentally stored the names of plants—both their common and Latin names—in much the same way that she stored the names of books and writers. But this summer at the Divide, there was such hectic abundance, she couldn’t locate them all. Riding up through the canyon, she had identified arrow-leaved balsamroot, paintbrush, and shooting star. But these she had just spotted were new to her. She let the others lope ahead, slowed to a walk, and circled back.
She and Benjamin were riding with the Delstock parents and two women from Santa Fe who had arrived the previous evening. Abbie and Josh and all the kids were riding with Ty, making their way to The Outlook by a different route. The Delstocks was Abbie’s collective name for the Bradstocks and the Delroys, the two families they had met here three years ago on what was for all of them a first visit. Their children—in every case, a boy and a girl of roughly matching ages—had formed an immediate bond and so had the parents. They had reconvened every year since. The fact that for the other fifty weeks of the year, except for the occasional phone call at Christmas or Thanksgiving, they might as well have lived on different planets only seemed to intensify the friendship.
Tom and Karen Bradstock were from Chicago and were both lawyers in private practice, though of very different kinds. Karen represented the poor and oppressed, Tom their rich oppressors or, as Karen put it, “assorted corporate gangsters.” He had the salary and she the social conscience and this was the subject of a perpetual war between them, waged in public with wit and mock outrage and the support of anyone either could enlist. In almost every other way, inasmuch as one could ever judge these things, they seemed well matched. Both were big and loud and zestful, with a kind of mutual, almost brazen sensuality that Sarah sometimes found embarrassing.
The Delroys, from Florida, were hipper, skinnier, and altogether more mysterious. Phil (whom everyone, even his wife, called Delroy) ran his own software company whose precise purpose nobody seemed able to establish, except that it was “entertainment-oriented.” Tom Bradstock often taunted him by saying this was a euphemism for porn, but Delroy would just give one of his inscrutable, black-eyed smiles and let the mystery hang. He was tanned like a beach bum and tied his graying black hair in a ponytail. On his right shoulder he had a tattoo of a Chinese symbol whose meaning, again, he would never disclose. He had that laconic, laid-back sense of humor that some women seemed to find attractive, though not Sarah, who found it all a little too contrived.
Maya Delroy was an alternative healer. It had something to do with “kinetic focus” but when she tried to explain what that meant, Sarah’s attention always seemed to wander, which probably indicated that she was in need of a session herself. Maya was airy and lithe and wore a lot of red and amber and yellow and early every morning laid a little rush mat on the grass outside her cabin and did yoga. Most of this qualified her to be the kind of woman that Sarah would normally pay good money to avoid. But there was an undermining edge to Maya’s alternativeness, a sort of scurrilous, self-mocking wit that redeemed her, almost as though the whole spiritual image was one big put-on.
Benjamin’s theory was that the Bradstocks and the Delroys were so unalike that they probably wouldn’t have bothered to get to know each other if it hadn’t been for him and Sarah bridging the divide between them. The fact was that none of the three couples had more than a few trifling things in common and it was probably this very disparity, along with their children’s complementary ages, that made their annual two-week friendship work.
They had all ridden far ahead now and out of sight. The sun was high and hot and there was barely a breeze to ruffle the grass or shift the few floating cotton clouds from the mountains. In search of perfect specimens, Sarah had dismounted. She took off her straw hat and tilted her face at the sun and, shutting her eyes, tried to let the peace of the place seep into her. All she could hear was the hum of insects and the swish of the horse’s tail and the chomp of his teeth on the sweet-stemmed fescue. Like all the others, he was a quarter horse, a sturdy fourteen-year-old bay, named Rusty for his color. He wasn’t the best ride on the ranch and because the head wrangler knew how well she rode, each year she was offered better. But the horse was brave and big-hearted and she would have no other.
She opened her eyes and rubbed the sweat from his neck. It was time to move on. She picked her flowers, one yellow, one white, and stowed them safely in the little tin she kept for this purpose in the breast pocket of her white cotton shirt. She knew the place where the others would be resting the horses before they started the last leg of their ascent to The Outlook so she didn’t need to hurry. She swung herself into the saddle and nudged Rusty into a gentle walk, filling her lungs with the hot green scent of the grass and thinking, as she had been all morning, about Benjamin.
The power of human habit never failed to astonish her. How was it that two intelligent, decent people who basically loved each other could get so locked into a pattern of behavior that neither of them—or so she presumed—enjoyed? It was as if each knew the role he or she was expected to take and had no choice but to play it. Sarah had often wondered if Benjamin felt as miserably miscast in their drama as she did. She ever the frigid bitch and he the libidinous brute. As the years had gone by, like actors in some tired TV soap, they had become caricatures, marooned in their own sad clichés, unable to contemplate any other way of being with each other. God, how tired of it she was.
For more than a week he had virtually ignored her. Simply because on their first night here, after all the hours of traveling and then staying up too late partying with the Delstocks, she had felt too tired to make love. Could he not have waited until morning? Could he not have just given her a cuddle? If he had, without forcing the issue, she might, despite her tiredness, have been coaxed into what he wanted. But with Benjamin, nowadays, there was no such thing as just a cuddle. It always had to lead to sex. And women didn’t work that way. At least, she didn’t.
He hadn’t always been like this, though the change had been too gradual to pinpoint. For sure, he had always wanted more sex than she felt able to give him. But wasn’t that the way things were with most couples? Sarah had never been the kind of woman (though she’d often wished she were) who talked candidly about these things to friends, but she had the impression that most women felt the same—at least, after those first heady eighteen months or so when you couldn’t get enough of each other. Once passion had given way to familiarity and then kids and the plain old routine of living, things changed. Sex became more of a comfort.
That didn’t mean she found it boring or that she couldn’t be stirred. There had been times, particularly in the old days if they were away on their own somewhere, when their lovemaking had been thrilling. But back then, when the kids were much younger, he had been more patient, gentler, more understanding. Now, if she didn’t switch on immediately, she was made to feel cruel and cold and sexless.
Perhaps this impatience was something that afflicted all men when they reached middle age and saw their youth ebbing away. Perhaps this first glimpse of their own mortality made them more demanding and desperate to prove themselves, made them interpret even the gentlest deflection of desire as a dagger thrust at the heart of their manhood.
Whatever it was, Sarah resented it more and more. It was so unjust. So disrespectful. And the routine that went with it was almost unbearable. The sulking. The dark, brooding silences. Were these supposed to make her feel more inclined to make love with him? And the hypocrisy of it all. For in public—in front of the children and the Delstocks, in particular—he was all sweetness and light. Only the other night Abbie had been rhapsodizing about how lucky they were to be such a happy family. The happiest family she knew, she had boasted. Neither she nor anyone else had apparently noticed that her father had barely spoken a direct word to Sarah in more than a week.
And nobody, of course, saw how it was when they were alone, how he only ever broke the silence if he was lucky enough to have spotted something to criticize. Otherwise he shutt
ered himself off behind his newspaper or his Architectural Digest—or that wretched biography of Le Cor-busier that he’d been trying to read for the last six months—and behaved as if she existed only in the coldest, most remote margins of his consciousness.
Of course, Sarah knew she was actually at its very center. And she also knew that it made him seethe if she inhabited her exile blithely, as if she had no inkling of his rage and resentment or simply didn’t care. Perhaps, again, this was how it was with all marriages. Each partner found an appropriate weapon and learned how best to use it. His was icy silence. Hers—and she knew it was the more potent—was pretending not to notice.
Anyway, this time Sarah had been determined to hold out for as long as she could. She felt guilty about what had happened that morning. It was, after all, the poor man’s birthday and though he hadn’t apologized (for he never did), it must have been hard for him to suspend his sulk like that and come on to her when she stepped out of the shower. But the stubborn streak in her, that notorious Davenport obstinacy that had helped make her father’s fortune, had clicked in and told her not to succumb. All he wanted, after all, was to fuck her and why the hell should she let him after all those days of being ignored?
It would resolve itself, no doubt, as it always did. Eventually, the tension would become so unbearable that she would crumble and cry and blame herself, telling him he ought to go out and find someone else, someone younger and sexier and more normal. And she would sob and so, probably, would he. And they would have sex. And it would be tragic and desperate and seismic.
She could see the others now, way ahead across the rippling grass. There was a stand of aspen where some were taking shade while the others watered the horses in a rocky pool of the stream below. The pale stems of the trees seemed almost aglow against the hazed blue of the distant mountains.
Tom Bradstock and Delroy were down with the horses talking with Jesse and the two women from Santa Fe. Benjamin, wearing his new hat, was sitting in the shade, talking with Maya and Karen. Jesse saw Sarah and called out and the others turned to look and everyone waved. Except Benjamin, who just sat there and stared, as if assessing her, for such a long time that even at a distance she felt disconcerted and self-conscious. She wondered what he thought of what he saw and whether he still loved her. For in spite of how he hurt her and punished her, she had no doubt about her feelings for him. She loved him and always would.
SEVEN
Ty and his band had been playing for almost an hour and Abbie still couldn’t get over how awesome they were. The place was totally rocking. All the tables and chairs had been cleared in the big dining room, the band was at one end, the bar at the other, and everyone who could still stand was dancing—kids, parents, grandparents, not to mention the staff. Nobody was dancing with anybody in particular, just with whoever happened to be in front of them at the time. Even though all the doors and windows to the deck were wide open, the place felt like an oven and they were all drenched with sweat, but nobody seemed to care.
The band was called Hell to Breakfast, a name Abbie didn’t quite get, but at least it was unusual. Their own stuff was amazing, though tonight they had been playing mostly goldies for the oldies, a lot of Rolling Stones and Beatles and Eagles numbers. At the moment they were into a great version of “Born in the USA.” Abbie was dancing with Lane Delroy and her brother Ryan. He and Abbie had had a bit of a thing going last summer but thank heaven he was over it and cool about it and they were now just good friends again. Everyone was laughing at Ryan’s dad, Delroy, who Abbie secretly found a little creepy. He was one of those guys who was always putting his arm around you, not quite feeling you up but almost. Right now he was trying to coach Katie Bradstock and her mom to do some funny kind of African tribal dance.
Abbie’s mom was dancing with Tom Bradstock, who had this hilarious Blues Brothers shuffle going, while her dad was into his Bruce Springsteen impression with Maya Delroy. A few years ago Abbie would have been mortified at the sight of her parents making such a spectacle of themselves, but now she was proud of them. It was good to see them so happy and having fun.
And all the time her eyes kept coming back to Ty. He was almost too good to be true. Not only was he sweet and sensitive and looked like Brad Pitt (well, okay, at a distance, a little), he also played the guitar and sang like some real live rock star you might see on MTV.
The other day when he had casually mentioned that he and some of his friends from college had a band and that, if she wanted, they could come and play at her dad’s birthday party, Abbie hadn’t expected anything remotely as good as this. He looked gorgeous in his blue jeans and his white pearl-buttoned shirt all patched with sweat. She was dancing for him and felt his eyes upon her wherever in the room she moved. Only five more days until it was time to go home. She was going to miss him badly. Especially after last night.
Every evening after the last ride, the horses were turned loose and a couple of the ranch hands would ride up behind them to see them safely to the pasture. Yesterday it had been Ty’s turn and on the flimsy pretext that his buddy wasn’t feeling too good, he’d asked Abbie to ride with him instead. It was the first season he had worked at The Divide and from the moment they laid eyes on each other, it had been obvious that there was a connection and that if they allowed it, something might happen between them.
For days Abbie had been going down to the stables to help him with the horses and after a lot of talk and touching each other as if by accident, two days ago, they had finally kissed. The problem was, there was scarcely a moment they could be alone together and for the sake of his job they had to be discreet. Lane and Katie knew but nobody else. And even though Abbie suspected they were a little jealous, they had covered for her yesterday evening.
The sight of the horses thundering up through the sagebrush, churning a cloud of red and sunlit dust behind them, was awesome. They needed no herding and Abbie and Ty just followed on. Once they were up in the pasture, they had ridden across to a low hill and lain together in the sweet-smelling grass below the trees and watched the horses graze their lengthening shadows. He was tender and more hesitant than she had expected, almost shy. And though she had only once made love before, with a boy from school at a party earlier that year, she guessed that for Ty it was the first time and surprised herself by taking the lead, helping him when he fumbled with the condom, telling him not to worry when he quickly came. It was a lot easier and better the second time.
In the twilight as they dressed, they heard voices and, before they could pretend to be doing something more innocent, two figures appeared as if out of nowhere. It was the women from Santa Fe whose names, Abbie had later discovered, were Lori and Eve. It was their first evening, and they were hiking around, exploring. There was no doubt they had seen her and Ty clearly enough to recognize them and to figure out what they were up to, but they acted as if they hadn’t and without a word veered off and headed down toward the ranch.
On the ride that morning, when they reached The Outlook, Abbie was appalled to see the two women were there waiting with her mom and dad and the Delstocks.
“I guess I’d better start looking for another job,” Ty said quietly as they climbed down from their horses.
But if the women had spread the word, there was no indication. Of all the men, Katie’s dad was the biggest tease and could always be counted on to blurt out anything embarrassing. And it was he who took it upon himself to introduce Eve and Lori to Ty and the kids, none of whom they had, supposedly, yet met.
“And this is the lovely Princess Abbie,” Tom Bradstock said.
The women smiled and said a warm hello and Abbie, never normally shy, nervously said hello back with just enough eye contact to see that there was no hint of a knowing look.
“And this is Ty, Montana’s best-looking cowboy heart-throb.”
Ty shook their hands and only then, when there was still no betraying look or smart remark from Katie’s dad, did Abbie relax a little and begin to thin
k they might have gotten away with it.
Right now, watching him singing and playing his guitar, she wanted the whole world to know. Everyone was yelling the final chorus of “Born in the USA” and it felt as if the roof was about to lift. When the music stopped there was a great cheer and Ty waited at the microphone, grinning and glistening with sweat, until he could be heard.
“Thank you very much,” he said. “We’re going to take a break now. Some of you folks sure look as if you could handle one too. That was just the warm-up. We’ll be back in a while and play some real rock and roll.”
There was fruit punch at the bar but Abbie just wanted water. Somebody handed her a bottle and she walked out to the deck which had been prettily strung with tiny white lights. It was too crowded and noisy and she eased her way through to the wide wooden steps that led down to the lawn. The low-angled lamps in the flower beds cast swaths of light across the grass but Abbie chose to stand in the shadow between, enjoying the cool of the air on her flushed cheeks and of the grass on her bare feet. She tilted back her head and finished the water in one long draft, staring up at the stars. Even as she looked there was a falling star and an instant later another.
“I hope you made two wishes.”
She had thought she was alone and the voice startled her. For a moment she couldn’t figure out who it was and then she saw Eve, smiling from the shadows.
“Oh, hi. But if you saw them too, I think we should get one each.”