Simone Sachs lives in Seattle, USA and has been writing for some years. In the summer of 2007 she attended the Iowa Creative writing summer school in Dublin, and was the joint recipient of the IES/Iowa short story competition. She is currently working on a series of longer projects set in the US and Ireland.
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The grey horse with red hooves was a
gift from my husband. Bought by me with his money on our one hundred and twentieth date night. Akako gave
us the good table, the booth, nodded and verified the usual, yes: ebi tempura roll, two salmon nigiri, one
scallop nigiri, agedashi tofu. My husband and I held hands, let them rest on the table top. We tipped
Akako twenty percent. Then round the corner to the cupcake shop: white chocolate and a sugar violet.
I suggested it on our twentieth date night: sushi for dinner, cupcakes for dessert, and now I crave the
two whenever there is just the one. Which isn’t often, our life not being the sort that comes without things.
When we bought the grey horse with red hooves my husband made a fuss.
It was in the cupcake shop, mounted above a green velvet couch, its price over-written on a fortune cookie fortune.
Let’s get that painting. I touched my husband’s shoulder.
No, no way. Order two cupcakes, and then a painting? Carry it out of
the bakery under an arm, have other couples on other date nights notice, whisper, joke about it with
each other later in bed. My husband grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the counter, he ordered our sweets.
My bangs had a good sheen that night and lay straight across my forehead,
my skin wasn’t blotchy or red, I wondered if other lovers would aspire to our marriage.
We’re young, we’re in love, let’s do it, I said. I pulled him back to the grey horse with red hooves.
| "My husband finds this clever and artistic. He doesn’t ask me
why I like the space behind, the triangle of shadow between the mantelpiece, the fireplace, and the edge of
the painting. He is at a gallop, the grey horse with red hooves. He is keeled to the left, and if I stand
in front of the painting and lean to my right, I can match the attitude and pitch of his momentum." |
We spoke in a whisper, I did my best to enrapture my husband: a good wife. I appealed to the anecdote: a
dinner party, we and our witty young friends, the chatter, the sturdy globes of red wine wrapped in white
hands, the grey horse with red hooves poised and noble above us all. And should one of our friends ask—one
of the smart ones, the rich ones, Cherise maybe, with her black fingernail polish and marathon muscle tone—Where
did you get that painting? or even, Nice painting, you and me, husband and wife, we could answer, casual, offhand,
flushed by our own cheekiness: We bought it in a cupcake shop.
A week later my husband told his officemate the story of the grey horse
with red hooves. He included the details of our sushi order, the bakery till ringing several hundred dollars,
the bold walk home.
I was just thinking about how cool you are, he says to me that night, I forget
sometimes how cool you are and how much I love you. To buy a painting like that, you devil!
We decide to try and have sex. We undress. He used to wear pleated khaki
pants, but now, after a handful years of marriage, he picks out striped socks and fitted jeans on his own.
I don’t hang the grey horse with red hooves; I rest it on our mantelpiece, let it abut the fireplace. My
husband finds this clever and artistic. He doesn’t ask me why I like the space behind, the triangle of
shadow between the mantelpiece, the fireplace, and the edge of the painting. He is at a gallop, the grey
horse with red hooves. He is keeled to the left, and if I stand in front of the painting and lean to my
right, I can match the attitude and pitch of his momentum.
It is eight or ten date nights before my husband decides the grey horse
with red hooves is tacky without a frame.
This boy’s been too long without his barn, he says. He takes photos of
it with his cell phone; he will show these to the framer. I load the dishwasher, wine glasses on top,
upside down, canted to protect their thin stems. My husband speaks of aged wood, gilded gold or maybe
silver. A glass bursts in my hand. I stand for a moment, my palm splayed. Will a red line appear,
divide this blank plain? Maybe a shard, if there is one, will open a scarlet life line, track a new
path for me.
Are you cut? With wide and careful strokes my husband sweeps the shards
into a pile. I decide I am passionate the grey horse with red hooves remain closer to the edge of things,
frameless, open to our lives from all sides.
| "If I’d been walking that mountain path and come upon
that lake, I would have skirted around the left side, and Bucephalus would have jumped the middle.
It would be a hard separation, the space between us, and if I tripped myself onward to gain his side
the nearness of his shoulder would be a comfort." |
I suggest we skip the next four or so date nights.
The grey horse with red hooves is dappled, and a mane that makes spires
of negative space arcs from his neck. There must be a wind up around him.
I push the coffee table aside and lie down below the painting. I like
to look at it from this perspective.
How can you stand lying on that nasty floor?
I haven’t vacuumed in a few months is why my husband says this.
When I get up off the floor there are two dust balls stuck to my back. I decide we should try and
have sex, it’s the twenty-eighth.
I think we should name him.
Who? My husband preens a smudge of lint from my bangs, then orders them
to a straight line across my forehead.
The grey horse with red hooves.
I name him Bucephalus. I don’t tell my husband. I feel guilty and wonder
if it’s the right name for the grey horse with red hooves, if he wants to be named. Maybe he doesn’t.
Maybe that’s why his tail waxes a half moon, why he carries the base high and curved and lets the hair
that trails behind pick up ruby stars, the dirt kicked up by his red heels.
I decide to grow out my bangs.
That night I worry Bucephalus can see us, the bedroom door is ajar.
My horse’s hooves are poppy red, each a gloppy painted circle fragment. If you pulled all four from
the canvas and ordered them, you would have an almost complete ring of flame in bloom. I measured it
that morning, the ends don’t meet.
My husband says I’m beautiful, I’m amazing, I’m the best thing that’s ever
happened. He says not to worry, it doesn’t mean anything, we’ll try again another time. We love each other.
I love you, he says.
Bucephalus leaps a great grey lake. It is the same color as the ground,
so it could be poor creation on behalf of the artist, but to me it is a lake, turbid. If he and I had
come upon it together, if I’d been walking a mountain path, wooded with layers of shivering green beauty,
if I’d been walking that mountain path and come upon that lake, I would have skirted around the left side,
and Bucephalus would have jumped the middle. It would be a hard separation, the space between us, and
if I tripped myself onward to gain his side the nearness of his shoulder would be a comfort. If the
two of us could walk long enough—leave the lake behind until it was a raindrop in the palm of the
valley—the foot or so between our shoulders could become inches, then half that, then millimeters,
then half that again, until all the space between was pressed away.
* * *
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