drawers of my white dresser and rearranged my sweaters,
folding them all in seven moves like the girls who had run the Town & Country closet did. I emailed an ex-boyfriend from my magazine days (now probably married
to a Russian supermodel, I speculated) and then I replaced all of my beech-wood shoe
trees with new hand-carved cedar shoe trees that I had ordered with Amazon’s handy
one-click service while conducting a phone interview last week. I felt like a domestic
anorexic, trying to bring order to my chaotic life by making everything look nice.
Three hours later, still pumped up from wet-dry Swiffering every corner of the apartment
and wrapping all my silverware in velvet pouches, I put on a pair of old muddy paddock
boots, my thick winter riding coat, earmuffs, and gloves and headed downstairs to
see if my horse, Jasper, was asleep. Horses are like Capitolist workers, only dozing for about three hours a night, so he was most likely awake.
When I was a kid, my mom made me put my arm in a chestnut mare’s mouth to prove her
contention that horses were gentle as kittens and I didn’t need to be afraid. The
horse bit me and I had to get a tetanus shot. But I got over my fear and spent many
summer nights with my head on one of our horse’s stomachs while it was lying down
in its stalls. Payton used to say that I was going to die, squished by a thousand
pounds of animal flesh. She said that if I died, she wouldn’t care at all, and that
she had already had a draftsman come up with plans to turn my bedroom into a nightclub.
But I was never squished.
When I walked through the powder-coated fir doors, I saw that I wouldn’t get to listen
to an animal’s rhythmic heartbeat tonight. All ten horses were still standing. Some
were drowsy, with their heads falling below their withers, but Jasper was wide awake.
The barn was flooded with moonlight, and I didn’t have to turn on a single lamp to
throw a bridle on Jasper and lead him out to pasture.
A few years after I was born, my dad, who grew up on a horse farm outside Charlottesville,
Virginia, decided to take a break from his big job lobbying for Boeing and Lockheed
to get back to his roots and raise horses in Middleburg. Much to everyone’s surprise,
he never went back to K Street full-time.
While Payton had very successfully devoted her life to horses, like my dad, the hundreds
of thousands of dollars he had spent on my young riding career had resulted in me
pulling my horse out at midnight while drinking a Bud Light Lime. I finished my beer,
put the empty aluminum bottle on a fence post to pick up later, and pulled myself
onto Jasper’s bare back. My arms shook and he moved a few feet, leaving me in a defeated
pile. But my second try got me on.
Riding bareback was hard. Saddles have been around since 800 B.C.; why exactly was
I not using one? When Jasper gotinto a slow trot, I leaned my face against his loose mane, held on, and remembered
why.
I had no plans to leave the riding ring or to do more than a few loops around in the
moonlight, but as soon as I saw the faint outline of the Blue Ridge Mountains jutting
up in the light, I knew where I had to go. I just couldn’t get there easily on a horse.
From my parents’ house, it was possible, with a lot of illegal trespassing on property
owned by the rich and angry, to take Snake Hill Road to the Goodstone Inn. That’s
where I had seen the senator say Olivia’s name in the bar, and that could have been
where she was going to or coming from the Thursday night I had seen her on the road—there
was nothing nice open in Middleburg at that hour except hotels.
I hadn’t thought of it until now, but Goodstone screamed, “Welcome, adulterers with
discerning taste!” The staff was practically invisible, and along with a few hotel
rooms there were those cozy cabins sprinkled around the sprawling property. If the
senator were staying in one,
folding them all in seven moves like the girls who had run the Town & Country closet did. I emailed an ex-boyfriend from my magazine days (now probably married
to a Russian supermodel, I speculated) and then I replaced all of my beech-wood shoe
trees with new hand-carved cedar shoe trees that I had ordered with Amazon’s handy
one-click service while conducting a phone interview last week. I felt like a domestic
anorexic, trying to bring order to my chaotic life by making everything look nice.
Three hours later, still pumped up from wet-dry Swiffering every corner of the apartment
and wrapping all my silverware in velvet pouches, I put on a pair of old muddy paddock
boots, my thick winter riding coat, earmuffs, and gloves and headed downstairs to
see if my horse, Jasper, was asleep. Horses are like Capitolist workers, only dozing for about three hours a night, so he was most likely awake.
When I was a kid, my mom made me put my arm in a chestnut mare’s mouth to prove her
contention that horses were gentle as kittens and I didn’t need to be afraid. The
horse bit me and I had to get a tetanus shot. But I got over my fear and spent many
summer nights with my head on one of our horse’s stomachs while it was lying down
in its stalls. Payton used to say that I was going to die, squished by a thousand
pounds of animal flesh. She said that if I died, she wouldn’t care at all, and that
she had already had a draftsman come up with plans to turn my bedroom into a nightclub.
But I was never squished.
When I walked through the powder-coated fir doors, I saw that I wouldn’t get to listen
to an animal’s rhythmic heartbeat tonight. All ten horses were still standing. Some
were drowsy, with their heads falling below their withers, but Jasper was wide awake.
The barn was flooded with moonlight, and I didn’t have to turn on a single lamp to
throw a bridle on Jasper and lead him out to pasture.
A few years after I was born, my dad, who grew up on a horse farm outside Charlottesville,
Virginia, decided to take a break from his big job lobbying for Boeing and Lockheed
to get back to his roots and raise horses in Middleburg. Much to everyone’s surprise,
he never went back to K Street full-time.
While Payton had very successfully devoted her life to horses, like my dad, the hundreds
of thousands of dollars he had spent on my young riding career had resulted in me
pulling my horse out at midnight while drinking a Bud Light Lime. I finished my beer,
put the empty aluminum bottle on a fence post to pick up later, and pulled myself
onto Jasper’s bare back. My arms shook and he moved a few feet, leaving me in a defeated
pile. But my second try got me on.
Riding bareback was hard. Saddles have been around since 800 B.C.; why exactly was
I not using one? When Jasper gotinto a slow trot, I leaned my face against his loose mane, held on, and remembered
why.
I had no plans to leave the riding ring or to do more than a few loops around in the
moonlight, but as soon as I saw the faint outline of the Blue Ridge Mountains jutting
up in the light, I knew where I had to go. I just couldn’t get there easily on a horse.
From my parents’ house, it was possible, with a lot of illegal trespassing on property
owned by the rich and angry, to take Snake Hill Road to the Goodstone Inn. That’s
where I had seen the senator say Olivia’s name in the bar, and that could have been
where she was going to or coming from the Thursday night I had seen her on the road—there
was nothing nice open in Middleburg at that hour except hotels.
I hadn’t thought of it until now, but Goodstone screamed, “Welcome, adulterers with
discerning taste!” The staff was practically invisible, and along with a few hotel
rooms there were those cozy cabins sprinkled around the sprawling property. If the
senator were staying in one,
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