I imagine the beach at Rehoboth, dotted with all her washed-up horses, good horses, Flanagan, Whistler, Canadian Bay, bloated on the sand, like sweaters full of wind on a clothesline. I run down to help them. A spike in the abdomen—I’ve seen it done with sheep. It leaves them flat as sacks.
Callie laughs at me from somewhere as I run from the swill of the waves. She’s got the engine running in the car up on the foreshore. She says they’re dead and she’s ready to go home. She’s eating unwashed carrots from a bag.
I think of things I never told her, how she’s as variable as weather, how she has talent without grace, how I’ve dreamt of making love to her on the lawn at Lower Wye, the plastic scarf around her neck. How I can’t help thinking about who she sleeps with now.
I could tell her about the horses here, how they wander wild and wormy, like hat racks in the desert. I could tell her what’s left of the garden, how the cypress trees are all but gone, a leggy camellia, the familiar smell of the septic tank, the black-eyed Susan that grows from a seep and spreads across the concrete lid like a veil. I sit up against the dark and wonder if she’d like it here, my childhood strewn about me like so many rocks.
If she’s still at Charlie Easterbrook’s, it would be ten o’clock at night her time, it would still be yesterday. I walk down the passage, past the linen closet, everything dusty and untouched. The hall light sheds on places I would hide in as a child, where I lay along shelves and underneath things. I’d appear from the dark like a secret. The Creeping Jesus.
I kneel by the phone stool and fumble along the skirting for the socket and connection. My father leaves the phone unplugged, he doesn’t like it ringing. From the stool I dial enough zeros for directory long distance, recite the string of numbers. “I’ll pay for it here,” I say to the operator.
“What are you doing?” my father asks from behind me. I didn’t expect he would hear.
“Using the phone,” I say.
“Local?”
I shake my head and listen to the ringing, the receiver feels cold on my ear.
“Who you calling?”
I pretend not to hear him, concentrate hard on the phone. I turn my body but he doesn’t leave or come closer.
“Who’s paying?” he asks.
Someone picks up and says hello, a man’s voice I don’t recognise.
“Is Callie there?”
No, he says, but I can hear her in the background, laughing with someone else. It sounds like a party, it sounds like a long way away. She’ll be back in June, says the man, and then starts laughing himself. I can’t tell if he’s drunk or if he’s joking, or if he knows it’s me.
“What sort of name is that?” my father asks.
I listen for her voice in case she’s coming but there’s no answer, just the sound of people talking. Then the line goes dead. I don’t hang up or turn around, I pretend that I’m still waiting. My father stands at the door.
“Where is she?” he asks.
I put down the phone and look at him. I shake my head without saying.