Ariel's Crossing - Bradford Morrow [8]
—That’s surprising.
In a cautious voice, —Not everybody knows what they want to do with the rest of their lives.
—That’s not what I meant.
Mary sensed Franny had slipped so remained silent, noting for the first time Marcos’s hands which lay casually atop the steering wheel as if slumbering one on the other like awkward yet comfortable creatures, callused and crosshatched with old scars and fresh nicks. Aged hands for one so young.
—I meant, isn’t it unusual for a mother who’s a teacher—
—Professor, she managed inconspicuously.
—not to make her daughter stay in school?
Should she say, My mother doesn’t make me do anything I don’t want to do? Instead she considered questioning him about Pajarito, his own apparent choice, or nonchoice, to stay home on the ranch, but again thought better of it. —My mother’s unusual that way.
—You’re lucky.
While Mary admired both the irony and truth of the idea, Franny said, —I guess. She then waved her hand, as if swatting away from her face something visible only to her, before continuing. So here she was in Santa Fe. Once she saved enough money, she told Marcos, she planned on traveling overseas somewhere. No maps, no destination. Patagonia, Malaysia, Timbuktu. Elsewhere, anywhere elsewhere, all the elsewheres she could find. She made no mention of the framed, autographed images of movie stars back at El Rancho that had inspired her toward Tinseltown, not Capetown, as she suffered the premonition she would come off shallow. Which naturally caused her to wonder whether it wasn’t just that. Shallow, hollow. Change the subject, now. —And what about you?
Already the Jemez rain had ceased and the massive banks of clouds were silvering, while still others rearranged themselves up over Cerros del Abrigo and down along the Dome Wilderness. Even when Einstein lived in Princeton, she thought, the skies probably never put on shows like this. Should she say as much? No, be quiet.
Marcos discovered Franny hadn’t ever ridden a horse only after he’d saddled a pair and brought them out into a paddock. —I’ve always been afraid of them, she confessed, but she was willing to learn that very day, and more or less began to do just that. She knew nothing of life on a breeding ranch, though it did remind her of some film she’d seen, Gable and Monroe? The weekend following, Marcos drove her up to a ranch in Abiquiu, to watch him and a veterinarian get a semen collection out of one of his three-year-old Arabians. Strange idea for a second date, she thought, but why not. Marcos admired how she behaved as the two of them did their violent chore, calmly observing as they shouted and shoved the struggling horse into place where he mounted an artificial mare. Once the job was done, they gathered in the small lab adjacent to the collection barn. With a pipette they dotted a specimen on a thin glass slide, turned on the phase-contrast microscope, and adjusted its focusing knob. After the vet said he was pleased by the frenzied spermatozoa he saw in the bright-green field, Marcos took a look, then turned to Franny with an open smile.
—Want to see? Progressive motility makes the world go round.
—Progressive?
—Means they’re swimming forward.
—Sometimes they swim backwards?
—Like everything else on this crazy planet.
Mary was aware that her doppelgänger, Franny, was freer than she herself had ever been and seemed possessed of a bona fide boldness, an ability to embrace things around her. Mary envied this a little, though Franny was willing to share. As time passed, however, Mary became more vigilant