Horse People: Stories

Hollyhocks

156 Hollyhocks E very one of Dudley Fenton’s six older brothers is married, and when Dudley is drunk he can’t remember the names of their wives. On nights when Dudley is locked out of the house, head buzzing, the harder he tries to remember, the more the names elude him. The only sure thing is that eventually he will remember them, and eventually he’ll get back inside. As he circles from one door and window to the next, he knows he’s safe. Philip will have left a pantry window cracked for him. Yes, there. He finds it in the moonlight. The window is high off the ground at the back of the house, facing the Blue Ridge. Dudley has to haul a stepladder from the tool shed, climb it, part the hollyhocks, all stiff and dead, with stalks so spiny they cut his hands, and boost the window. The effort takes all his strength. While he pushes, thoughts of his sisters-in-law run through his mind: the rich one; the shady one; the fussy one; the loud one; the prissy one; and the sweet one, who is his age and a new bride, and whom he loves. Who locked him out of a house so far out in the country you can’t even shout to your neighbors? His own mother did it. It’s her comment on his drinking. She waits until he goes out to check on the dogs or to get a hidden bottle from his car or the barn. Then she’ll lock the windows and doors, and he has tried them, every one. In the summer or fall he’ll climb a ladder, or a tree limb if necessary, to the second 157 floor, to ease through a French door or an open window. In winter, if it weren’t for Philip and the pantry, he’d be out of luck. The cold’s a bear on his back, hanging on, blasting its breath down his neck. When at last the window is up, he launches himself inside, crashing across the cabinet beneath the sill, his body unwieldy. Always he plans to thank Philip for leaving the window unlocked, but they have never spoken of this. Philip understands about Dudley’s loneliness and the drinking and probably, Dudley figures, even knows how Dudley feels about Pamela—there, her name comes to him even as he untangles his legs, bumping a muffin pan to the floor—Pamela, the sweet one. The visits to her husband’s family, Dudley can tell, are a trial to her. She twirls strands of hair or bites her lip. She doesn’t have the competitive spirit of the other wives. Her husband Barrett, Dudley ’s next-oldest brother, blurts out truths that embarrass her, revealing how she worries about thank-you notes, wondering if hers are all right. The other wives pick on her or ignore her—they’re jealous, Dudley realizes—except for the shady one, who is sometimes her friend. This big house, where Dudley and his brothers grew up, contains three floors and twenty rooms, not counting the baths. When Dudley’s brothers, their wives, and children visit for holidays and vacations, the house easily holds the entire family. Usually, only Dudley and his seventy-year-old mother live here, and Philip the cook and Edmonia the maid (though Dudley thinks Edmonia declared a half day off, this being Christmas, and went home to her people), along with Dudley’s mother’s two spoiled Standard poodles. Those poodles ought to be out with the hunting dogs, in Dudley’s opinion, out in the pen in cold fresh air acting the way dogs ought to act, but nobody can say a word to his mother about her animals. It is Christmas 1953. Dudley leans against the cabinet and catches his breath, and the night air rushing in behind him smells of cedars and woodsmoke. It’s almost 2:00 a.m. by his watch, so it’s really the day after Christmas. In a moment he’ll close the window, but first he’ll rest. 158 Just before supper there was a scene. It all comes back to him. The rich wife announced that her new necklace, which she’d left on her dresser, was gone. She is from New York, and in times of excitement her voice goes very nasal...