The Mare

Ginger

After we put her to bed — she looked at me so longingly, her golden eyes slowly and heavily closing — I talked with Paul about keeping her longer. “We can’t,” he said. “It’s time for her to go back.”

We were sitting at the kitchen table, the little red Formica table I’d moved from my East Village studio, drinking soda from juice jars. I told him about the way she was on the brown horse. “She needs more of this,” I said.

“Do you mean you need more?”

“I want more, I don’t need it. But so what if I did?” My voice went from soft to sharp back to soft. “What’s wrong with satisfying a mutual need?”

“Nothing, if you’re talking about people in an equal position. But you aren’t. She’s a disadvantaged child. She has needs you can’t satisfy. It’s unfair to act like you can. And—”

“I can get her horse-riding lessons.”

“—you have needs she can’t satisfy. And I thought this was supposed to be maybe a first step toward adoption.”

We both took drinks; he put his glass down too hard and looked away. He was mad, and so was I, but why?

“Do you even know she wants to stay longer?”

“Yes. If it weren’t for the horses I wouldn’t say that. But you didn’t see her on that horse.”

He looked doubtful.

“What if the organization agrees to it?” I asked. “Would that make you feel better?”

“Maybe,” he said. “Though I doubt they will. At least not on their insurance.”