Lauren Jackson
Short story Nov 2012
Big House, Big Life
Eden grabbed the keys off the kitchen counter and swung through the
backdoor. By the time I got out to the driveway, she was already in the driver’s seat
of the charcoal grey BMW 535i.
I kinda just stood there with my mouth open.
“Jump in! It’s too far to walk down to the barn. This road is private. We can
do whatever we want. Even Will drives down there. And my parents are never
around.”
So I got in the passenger seat, and Eden eased the car down the empty road,
past the tennis courts with tall lights and a ball machine, past the mansion, to the
barn. She grabbed my hand to pull me through the door, hugging Julie, the horse
trainer with her other arm on the way in. Twelve immaculate stalls were filled with
twelve Egyptian-Arabian horses. After I gaped at the gorgeous horses, each worth
hundreds of thousands of dollars, Eden told me, all with exotic-sounding Arabic
names.
“This one is going to foal in a few months, her name is Du-roq. It means
peaches. Hellllooooo, sweeeet girrllll” she crooned with her lips pushed out, making
her bright red lipstick glow beside her straight, black hair.
I had never met such a sophisticated girl. Eden wore Guess jeans, riding
boots, and a flat, Irish-tweed cap. Her parents owned a slope-side condo at Seven
Springs and she went skiing on weekends. She drove a BMW for goodness sakes—
even her 10 year old brother drove the BMW. I was enthralled by this thirteen-yearold girl with a pave diamond ring and Egyptian-Arabian horses. And then she took
me to The Big House.
We went through the 5-car garage into the kitchen, or should I say “kitchens”
because there were two, mirror images of each other, filled with stainless steel
appliances for catering the huge parties that must go on in the house. Eden pulled
me into the “family room” which was bigger than the whole first floor of my house
and had steps that led down to the indoor-outdoor pool with the waterfall at one
end. We explored marble bathrooms—green, black, white—with heated floors so
your feet never had to touch cold stone. We peeked into the game room with
PacMan, Asteroids, and Space Invaders machines and the exercise room that looked
like it belonged to a hotel. I loved the cedar-lined walk-in closet that smelled like the
woods and Christmas. And I glided down one curved front staircase, past the crystal
and gold chandelier while Eden glided down the other like movie stars making our
grand entrance. It wasn’t her house, it was owned by the “syndicate” but no one was
ever there except Julie who lived in the servant’s apartment, so it was like Eden’s
own private playhouse.
I became Eden’s shadow. In French class, we sat next to each other, giggling
at everyone else’s bad pronunciation. At lunch, I followed behind her to her table
and sat quietly watching while she held court. At home, I talked about her nonstop,
until my mom growled, “Enough about Eden Sutter! I don’t care how she braided her
hair today.” But even when I was banned from talking about her, I dreamed about
her. I even bought a tweed driving cap like hers to wear to school.
The night of the Junior High Winter Dance, Eden called, “Bring a sleepover
bag to the dance! Duroq is foaling! We can watch the birth.”
Oh—my—gosh! I packed my duffel bag and impatiently waited through the
dance, spending half of my time hiding in the bathroom during slow songs and half
sitting by the dark wall. When we got to Eden’s house, her dad stopped where
Eden’s mom was, in the kitchen, picking up an argument they seemed to be in the
middle of. She quickly suggested, “Let’s sleep in the big house so we can be close to
the barn.”
We found a big empty bedroom and threw our stuff down, running out to
check on Duroq. Julie was there with her, “Nothing’s happening yet. We’ll check
every two hours and see how she’s doing.”
At midnight we went out again. Duroq seemed just peaceful, standing there
in her stall.
Two a.m. We struggled out of the cold water-bed and stumbled back over to
the barn. Duroq was there, standing with a sleek, brown foal next to her. Orange
warming lights gave a strange look to the horses. We missed the birth, but there was
a baby horse! “A filly,” Eden corrected me, “We’re naming it Duroq wa Kishda,
Peaches with Cream. My mom liked your idea.”
The next morning, I woke up alone in the bedroom. Hiking up to Eden’s
house, I snuck up the back stairs and found her, huddled in her bedroom in the dark,
shades drawn, crying. Her parents screamed in the cathedral-ceiling living room
below. I crawled under the desk with her, putting my arm around her, but she didn’t
respond. For half an hour, we sat like that, her parents’ yells and an occasional
smashing sound in the background. Finally, I crawled out and over to Eden’s phone
and dialed my dad, “Can you pick me up at Eden’s house now?”
“Are you sure, Sweetie? How was the birth? Don’t you want to spend the day
with the new foal?”
“No, please come now.” I gathered my things and left Eden there in the dark,
glad to walk up the long driveway and through the imposing entrance gate to wait
for my dad, glad to go back to my modest house, back to my ordinary cat, back to my
loving parents.