Page 16 of Rainshadow

After he dropped her off at home, Flora reflected that on the ride back they hadn’t seen a single other car. There had only been the headlights of Ethan’s sports car, eerie yellow on the asphalt. They hadn’t spoken much, and it didn’t occur to Flora until later that he had never needed directions to her house. That wasn’t so unusual. Everyone knew where everyone else lived on the island. He and Sylvia had almost certainly asked around about her when she was asking (begging) for her job.

Flora’s mother was asleep on their futon couch, her face pressed into a pillow, wearing a faded pink housecoat and a slinky, tattered satin dress, her blond hair, graying at the nape and temples, in disarray. Flora felt a strange urge of resentment at having to look at her mother, cheap and disheveled. It sent a ripple of disgust and anger through her.

Her mother had been asking about her first paycheck, already hinting that their money problems might require her handing over every last dollar. Flora got into bed, not caring if she gave her mother every penny she made working at Rainshadow. At least she got to be there, spending her days among the horses and the lavender. At least she had met Ethan, the only person who seemed to appreciate her. She fell asleep imagining she was a girl in one of her books, a girl who had only needed to be noticed by a prince, one person who finally really saw her, and then all of her dreams could come true.

9

For almost two weeks, Flora worked every day at Rainshadow alongside Sylvia without incident. She had been worried that Sylvia would know, or ask her, about dinner with Ethan, but the other woman seemed either unaware, oblivious, or uninterested.

On Friday, the last day of her workweek, she let the horses back into their stalls and watched the sun creep down across the Douglas fir trees. She realized that over the course of the week she had maybe spoken ten words to Sylvia. Now, she wondered when and how she would get paid. She didn’t have to wonder long. As she put Mars back in his stall, she looked out the window of the barn and saw Sylvia stalking up the path toward her in a long, black wool coat.

Flora realized that she did not like the other woman, but she wanted Sylvia to like her.

She didn’t like seeing herself through Sylvia’s cold, appraising eyes and imagined the other woman saw a grubby, poor, meek little girl.

She was meek, she was poor, and of course she came to work in her scuffed boots, used when she got them years before, and mud-darkened canvas men’s trousers, but those things didn’t define her. She really was good with horses, and believed, truly,that she had a special connection with them. She might be poor, but she was a very hard worker, and might eventually pull herself out of poverty. She imagined Sylvia noticing her one day, carrying bales of hay down from the loft, and realizing how very strong she was and how much she had under-appreciated her. She imagined someone, anyone, looking at her and seeing anything but someone who needed help.

She had fantasies of finally mounting Zeta, Mars, even Bane, and taking them through complicated dressage routines that she had not been able to coax Lisa’s less-trained mounts into. As she was moving elegantly through these routines, with classical music piping through the arena speakers, Ethan would emerge, and watch her, captivated. Sylvia’s horses, imported and finely bred, were as sensitive and elegant as a Steinway piano, so finely tuned that even a novice would look good sitting upon them, but a master could make them sing. Flora wasn’t a master, but she could be.

“Your pay,” Sylvia said. “We never discussed specifics, but I think you will find this to be adequate.”

Inside the envelope was five hundred dollars in neat one-hundred-dollar bills. Flora thumbed through quickly, then looked back up at Sylvia. She assumed she was making minimum wage, about three hundred a week, like she made at King’s, but this was substantially more.

“Thank you,” she managed, restraining her impulse to be effusive. Sylvia, she knew, would not like effusive thanks.

When Flora returned home that evening her mother, who seemed to have a preternatural sense for when she would have money, was waiting for her at the kitchen table.

“How was work today?” her mother asked, but Flora could feel the anticipation in her voice.

“Oh, uh, fine. I’m tired.”

“Oh, yeah, me too,” her mother said, putting a hand to her forehead. “Oh, but, uh, hey, did you get paid today?”

Flora felt a prickling anger, and fished the envelope out of her pocket.

“Four hundred dollars,” she lied, slipping the money out and tossing it to her mother.

The sight of the cash on the table seemed to visibly relax her. “I’ll get groceries,” she said. “And maybe we’ll go out to dinner to celebrate. My treat.”

Flora looked at her mother, not even bothering to point out how absurd it was to ‘treat’ someone to a dinner with their own money.

“No,” Flora said. “I already ate out this week. Ethan, my employer, took me to Deer Harbor.”

Maureen’s eyes sharpened at the mention of the expensive resort. “Your employer took you to Deer Harbor? Why?” Her mother was terrible at concealing even the smallest of jealousies.

“I guess he just wanted to,” Flora said. “I’m tired. I’m going to make dinner and go to bed.”

“I’d like to meet them,” Maureen said. “Your employers. It seems like a mother has a right to know who her child is with all day.”

“I’m not a child,” Flora said, going into the bathroom and locking the door behind her.

On Monday, something had shifted. Sylvia was not herself. She came out to the training arena late, her steps heavy and shuffling, wearing her heavy black wool coat and a thick cashmere scarf around her neck and over her head like a hood, even after the heaters in the arena had made it much more bearable. Her hair hung lank and lusterless around her face.All of the heavy clothes diminished Sylvia, made the statuesque woman look smaller.

“Come help me,” she demanded of Flora, who had been repainting a white fence around the paddock.

Flora was so confused that she looked down at her paint bucket, like she wasn’t sure for a moment which was more important.

“Close the paint, get up, and come help me,” Sylvia said, her voice slow and her pronunciation clipped, like she was talking to a child.

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