A Snowplow Parent Spinning Her Wheels on Summer Vacation
Chincoteague by Marian Crotty
Nora hated driving to begin with—especially highway driving, especially with a car full of teenagers—and that day it was raining. Not hard enough to delay the trip, just opaque gray skies and slick roads, a steady thrum of raindrops that made half the drivers slow down and the other half swerve impatiently. Already they’d passed two accidents. When she saw the first sign for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, she turned off her daughter Chloe’s atmospheric house music and announced everyone would need to stop talking until they’d safely made it to the other side.
“Seriously?” Chloe said from the passenger seat. “Just pull over. I’ll drive.”
In the rearview mirror she could see her son and his ex-girlfriend Ruth smiling at each other. Around her he almost seemed like himself again, which was such a gift that Nora didn’t care what Chloe had to say about the unfairness of Ruth being here. While Evan was withdrawing from his friends and ignoring his homework, Chloe was away at college. She didn’t see him lose weight or quit the lacrosse team or become afraid of sleep. At night he would start out in his own bed but by morning she’d find him in the living room with the lights on, his laptop open, a message from Netflix asking if he was still watching, and he’d missed enough assignments that he might not graduate from high school in June. She and Brendan had been so worried he would hurt himself.
“Your life shouldn’t be this stressful,” Chloe said. “You should get medicated.”
Nora started to say something but let it go. Chloe had a point—Nora’s anxiety had skyrocketed lately—whose hadn’t?—but this particular swinging bridge with its narrow lanes, no shoulders, and low railings made the gray water below them feel menacing. A digital sign at the entrance warned of a wind advisory.
“Okay, honey,” she said. “Thanks for your feedback.”
On sunny days, the bay sparkled, but today the water was a dull gray line on the edge of her vision that almost blended into the sky. At the height of the bridge, the wind shook the car. Nora kept her eyes on the road, made herself breathe, and eventually they were on the other side. She had a cramp in her right thigh and took one of the first exits, pulling into the parking lot of a local park with a playground, athletic fields, and a couple of picnic tables.
“I need to stretch my legs,” she said. “Does anyone need the curtain?”
It was May 2020, and the curtain was a hot pink privacy tent she’d found on Amazon along with a camping toilet and set of disposable bags—their strategy for traveling responsibly during a pandemic. The curtain and the trip had been her husband’s idea, but at the last minute, he’d had to cover for another oncologist and so now she was stuck with the driving and the pee bags and Chloe’s bad attitude. She didn’t blame him, though, if she’d known she’d be doing this alone, she would not have agreed to the trip. Plus, it was cooler than she’d expected it would be on Memorial Day Weekend.
“No thanks,” Chloe said. “I’ll pee in the woods.”
Nora, Ruth, and Evan huddled under a picnic shelter while Chloe walked toward a patch of skinny trees, pushing back brambles and vines. A couple of months ago, after William and Mary closed, she asked if her “friend” Emily could live with them in DC, and Nora and Brendan said no: He was working with immunosuppressed patients and needed to be careful, their DC townhouse was tiny, and Evan was still in the midst of a very hard time.
“Isn’t everyone?” Chloe had said and accused them of discriminating against Emily who identified as nonbinary.
“Give me a break,” Nora had said, but Chloe remained unconvinced.
Now Emily, who didn’t get along with their parents, was living in a hotel in Williamsburg and working at Food Lion. Because of their exposure at the grocery store, Brendan and Nora had said Emily was welcome on this vacation but would need to stay outdoors.
“It’s completely hypocritical,” Chloe had said. “But I can’t say I’m surprised. When it comes to me and Evan, you’ve never been fair.”
Brendan assured Nora that Chloe was manipulating them, saying the thing she knew would get to them, but Nora was having trouble letting this remark go. Until recently, Evan had always been the easier, happier child, and maybe, her relief in having one carefree, amiable child had made Chloe think she loved him more.
When Chloe came back to the parking lot, Ruth walked toward the woods, and Nora waved Chloe over to the picnic shelter. Her intention was to call a truce, to tell her daughter how much she loved her, but when Chloe arrived scrolling on her phone, half-heartedly scowling up at Nora, she snapped, “Can you put the phone away? I want to talk to you and Evan.” Chloe gave her a look but dropped the phone into her raincoat pocket. “Jesus, are you okay?”
“Let’s have a good trip,” she said. “Dad can’t be here, and it’s raining, but we’re still very lucky. We’re healthy and together. We have enough money to rent a vacation home—”
“Got it, Mom,” Chloe said. “I’m totally spoiled and ungrateful. I know.”
The rental home was a small tan two-story house with aqua trim a few rows back from an inlet of water. It had a weathered roof, a screened-in porch, and a loose railing on the front steps. When they stepped inside, it was obvious the house was used only as a rental property. Dated or cheap furniture, plastic dishes and Formica countertops, a giant amateur painting of a mallard that hung over the mantel. The whole place smelled damp.
“Not great,” she said. “But it’s what was available.”
Her kids ignored her, but Ruth hung back.
“I think it’s okay,” she said. “It’s close to the national park, right? That’s what we came to see anyway.”
She had always liked Ruth who was skinny and freckled, self-possessed and kind. Before she’d ever met the girl, back when she couldn’t have been more than about ten, she sent Nora and the rest of the school’s board of directors a thank you note for expanding tuition remission to include the school’s support staff like her mother who was an office administrator in the lower school. I do not know what the future holds the note read but I have a feeling this school will change my life.
Ruth was a fellow cross-country runner a year behind Evan and they’d dated throughout his sophomore and junior year. They went to prom together, lifted weights together, did homework side by side at Nora’s dining-room table. They seemed so effortlessly happy that Nora would not have been surprised if they’d stayed together in college and eventually gotten married. When they’d suddenly broken up this past fall, Nora had felt heartbroken and confused. A few months later, when Evan told them his English teacher, Ms. Caldwell, had been abusing him, the breakup made sense: Ruth was one more thing that woman had stolen from her child.
Evan was the one who’d asked to bring Ruth on the trip, but when Ruth said no, Nora, unbeknownst to her son or husband, drove to her apartment complex in Bethesda and convinced her to go. She was, she knew, no better than those high-strung hated-by-everyone Hollywood parents who had been involved in the college admissions scandal, a so-called Snowplow Parent, but what were you supposed to do when your child was drowning and you saw one small way you might help?
Ruth answered the door with a confused and panicked look on her face that only got worse once Nora explained why she’d come.
“I don’t know Ms. King,” she’d said and stepped out onto the sidewalk. “I’m still not over him dumping me, and my parents are kind of strict about sleepovers with boys.”
Ruth sounded certain, but she was wearing a Georgetown Baseball T-shirt that had once belonged to Evan, and she took this to be a sign that Ruth still cared.
“He’s struggling,” Nora said. “I’m not sure how much he’s told you.”
Ruth shook her head. She knew she had to tread lightly. Evan would not be happy she was here at all, but if she told Ruth anything about Ms. Caldwell, he wouldn’t forgive her.
“Everything that happened this year has hit him really hard,” she said carefully. “I know it’s not fair to ask, but he could use a friend.”
Ruth squinted at her and what seemed to be a look of realization passed over her face.
“I’ll ask my parents,” she said finally. “I’ll let you know what they say.”
Nora shook her head. “Just tell Evan. I wasn’t here.”
She promised Ruth’s parents the room she shared with Evan would have two single beds, but when they all went upstairs to check out the house, they discovered the room only had a king.
“I thought—” Ruth said, looking at the bed.
Nora knelt down on the carpet to look under the mattress. “We’ll fix it. I’m sure they come apart. See? It’s two single beds hooked together.”
They got the beds separated but after searching all the closets in the house, they couldn’t find any sheets. She suggested they put in a Target order, but the closest store was an hour away.
It wasn’t until she asked if Chloe would share a bed with her brother that Chloe admitted she’d brought an extra set of sheets for the following night when she and Emily would sleep on an air mattress inside a tent.
“Chloe!”
“What? I don’t want to sleep on dirty sheets.”
For dinner they ate the baked ziti she prepped ahead of time, whole wheat focaccia from an artisanal bakery, a Greek salad with kalamata olives and peperoncinis. For dessert she set out a plate of lemon bars, peanut butter blossoms, and those chewy chocolate caramel cookies she usually only baked at Christmas.
“Happy vacation,” she said, clinking her wine glass with their water glasses, hoping the cheerfulness in her voice didn’t sound desperate.
For months Evan had barely seemed to function. He played video games for hours, showered only when she nagged him. A couple weeks ago they’d had a meeting with his advising team who warned his admission to Northeastern could be revoked if his spring semester grades didn’t improve, and he’d barely seemed to register the news. A year ago, they would have taken away his phone and his computer, made him sit with them each night to do his homework, but punishing him for being depressed felt cruel.
As soon as the call ended, she told Evan that if he ended up taking a year off or starting at a community college, this was okay, and he’d made a scoffing sound and slammed his belongings into his backpack.
“Expect more from me,” he shouted. “Stop staring at me all the time like you feel sorry for me.”
Nora didn’t want to stare at Evan, but she wasn’t sure how else she was supposed to know how he was doing. When Chloe was upset, she was loud and emotional, but Evan retreated and said nothing.
He might never have told them about Ms. Caldwell in the first place except he’d wanted to drop his journalism class, and they wouldn’t let him. She’d been Chloe’s adviser and favorite teacher, a pretty thirty-something who’d published two books of poetry and who was known for her no-nonsense attitude and challenging classes. They’d thought Evan wanted an easier teacher, and he said they didn’t understand.
“It’s not about the work,” he said. “It’s her. She’s terrorizing me.”
“What?” Nora asked. “What are you talking about?”
“She’s a horrible person,” Evan said. “You have no idea what she’s capable of.”
Brendan heard something that Nora didn’t and put his hand on Evan’s knee. “Did something happen?” he asked. “Did she hurt you?”
Eventually the story came out in bits and pieces. One afternoon, in the journalism lab, Ms. Caldwell had started touching his shoulders. When things got “out of hand,” Evan froze. He’d never had a crush on her, he told them, but he hadn’t said no. Soon they were meeting more often, and she was telling him she loved him, that she wanted to leave her husband. When he told her he couldn’t do it anymore—he was having panic attacks—she told him he didn’t have a choice. Every day, often multiple times each day, Nora fantasized about drowning the woman or throwing her in front of a train.
Every day, often multiple times each day, Nora fantasized about drowning the woman or throwing her in front of a train.
Ms. Caldwell had been put on unpaid leave immediately and soon fired. The headmaster had also sent an email to the school and alumni list explaining she’d been fired for having a sexual relationship with a student, and the story had been picked up by the local media. It was unlikely she’d teach again, but because Evan had been eighteen, the police wouldn’t press charges.
After dinner, Ruth and Evan volunteered to do the dishes. Chloe disappeared upstairs, and Nora went to the bedroom just off the kitchen and started to unpack. Behind the door she could still hear Ruth and Evan talking about their classmates and the weirdness of Zoom school, which Tupperware containers and bowls they’d brought from home and which belonged to the rental. Then she heard Evan say in a low voice, “I was stupid to break up with you. It’s honestly the biggest mistake of my life.”
The water went on and off. A dish clanked in the rack.
“I know,” Ruth said. “And if you break my heart again, I’m going to kick your ass.”
According to a couple online reviews, the wild ponies could be seen from overlook on the park’s Woodland Trail in the early mornings, and so Nora woke up before dawn to make four egg and cheese sandwiches and wrap them up in foil. She shuffled everyone out of the house just as the sun was rising, deep pinks and yellows backlighting the clouds.
“Gorgeous,” she said, her coffee kicking in, her mind relaxed now that she was driving on a two-lane road in a town where everyone crept forward at twenty miles per hour. “I’m so grateful for the sunrise and that all of you are here with me to see it.”
They crossed the salt marsh that separated the island where they were staying from the one that was home to the national park. She was thinking about how she used to make them all name something they were grateful for each night at the dinner table, how she used to be convinced this would help her privileged kids gain some perspective. She stopped herself from forcing them to do this ritual now, but Evan seemed to read her mind.
“I’m grateful my mom woke me up at the ass crack of dawn,” he said. “I’m grateful Chloe isn’t in charge of the music.”
“Ha ha,” Nora said sarcastically, though she was thrilled to hear him joking and happy she’d convinced Ruth to come. “Good one.”
The trail was a paved loop lined with dead white tree skeletons stripped of their leaves and bark. The air smelled of pine, and they could hear birdsong and the ocean’s waves in the distance. After about a half mile, they reached a wooden observation deck, where a gray-haired couple in Harley-Davidson windbreakers stared at their masked group skeptically. In the distance, four horses were visible, but even with binoculars, they were just blobs of color grazing.
“I thought they’d be closer,” Nora said. “I can barely see them.”
Online there had been dozens of pictures of these squat wild ponies running on the beach, tails whipping in the wind, but these animals in the field were far away and practically motionless. They’d had a better look at the penned ponies they’d seen outside the hotels getting photographed and fed handfuls of corn by tourists.
The man raised his chin in her direction. “The big herd is on the other side of the island,” he said. “If you want to see more of them, you’ve got to go by boat.”
“Ah, okay,” Nora said. “Thanks.”
She had read a little bit about the island and the wild ponies but hadn’t done the usual legwork required to plan a good trip. Usually she ordered guidebooks, scoured online message boards for off-the-tourist-track beaches and restaurants, but in a normal year, they would go to France or Italy, Hawaii or Colorado. In the fifteen years they’d lived in DC, they’d never once vacationed in Maryland or Virginia, but they’d needed to go somewhere within driving distance and coming to the beach with the wild ponies she’d read about as a girl had felt romantic and freeing, an antidote to their months of constricted movements.
“Sorry I woke you up for this,” she said, once the couple was out of earshot. “I’ll see if I can book a boat ride for tomorrow.”
Evan shrugged. “It’s okay, Mom. Nobody cares about the ponies.”
They followed the paved road to a dirt trail packed with crushed oyster shells and eventually reached an inlet of blue water. Yesterday’s storm had passed, and the sun was out, but the air was still cool enough for a light jacket. They walked along the water’s edge, and when they saw a strange-looking metal structure on a wooden platform, Evan and Ruth ran ahead to investigate. Chloe looked at a flock of gulls with her binoculars, and Nora took out the trail map and pretended that she wasn’t watching Evan and Ruth, trying to figure out if they were falling back in love.
Chloe checked her phone and a look of anguish washed over her face. Nora suspected Emily had texted to say they couldn’t make it, but it turned out to be Chloe’s internship in Provincetown, which had been canceled.
“I should have known, but I was just hoping,” she said. “It was the last good thing that might happen for a while.”
The internship was at a writer’s retreat where she would have done twenty hours of janitorial work each week in exchange for free lectures and poetry workshops. She would have needed to get a job at a restaurant to pay for her food and housing, and the internship itself seemed to have little practical use, but Nora knew this wasn’t the point.
What Chloe wanted was a summer in a sunlit seaside town filled with rainbow flags and queer people. In high school, she had announced she was pansexual and spent most of her time hanging around with kids she knew from Pride Club, some of whom had serious mental health issues. Chloe had dated two people that they knew of—a nice enough girl named Alex who wore gold aviator glasses and took photography classes and a sweet but troubled trans guy named Conrad who had been hospitalized twice for self-harm. Nora was fine with Chloe’s sexuality—she’d always assumed she was queer; they’d picked this school because it was progressive—but she didn’t love the fact that several of her friends seemed to be in a constant state of emotional distress. They were in and out of mental health treatments, struggling in school, fighting with their seemingly supportive parents, and often their depression felt contagious. After Conrad’s first hospitalization, Chloe had become moody and fragile and had eventually started taking antidepressants. Nora was not proud to admit that when she’d first heard about Emily—a nonbinary kid at odds with their family—her first thought had been, “Jesus Christ, Chloe. Not again.”
“Who knows if it will even be an option next summer either,” Chloe said. “By then I’ll need a real internship.”
Nora thought Chloe was being dramatic: Everyone’s summer had been canceled—some people had lost jobs, watched relatives die. But Nora knew it wouldn’t be helpful to say so. Instead, she tried to, as her therapist had instructed, “reflect her child’s emotions.”
“You must be so disappointed,” she said, tentatively resting her arm across Chloe’s shoulder. “It was going to be such a good summer for you.”
“Yeah,” Chloe said. “It was.”
They drove to the ocean side of the island, which was windy but bright, and walked along the sand, collecting shells. When they passed a stoic young woman in a fur coat and hat, Evan and Ruth cracked each other up by referring to the woman as Melania. After a while, Chloe and Nora set out a beach blanket and watched the water, and Evan and Ruth ran with the tide, in and out, letting the cold water chase them.
“He’s so dumb. He acts like a little kid,” Chloe said, but her voice was affectionate. To Nora, Evan and Ruth looked like puppies, frolicking.
Back at the rental, she moved the sheets to the drier, set out the overpriced brie, crackers, candied pecans, and shortbread cookies she’d splurged on for the trip, and they took turns using the showers. Nora went last and let herself take a long bath. By the time she dried her hair and came downstairs, Emily had arrived and was with Chloe, masked, turning kabobs on the grill. Someone had set out placements and silverware on the glass patio table.
“This is great,” she said. “Thank you. I’m Nora by the way. It’s nice to meet you.”
Emily gave a little wave. “Emily. Thanks for having me. It’s nice to meet you, too.”
They had thick wavy brown hair cut into a shag and were wearing a cropped floral top with loose high-waisted jeans, hot pink eyeshadow at the corners of their eyes. Nora didn’t quite understand what it meant to be nonbinary if you went by a girl’s name and wore pink, but Emily seemed friendly and helpful, and she appreciated that they were wearing a mask.
“What can I do?”
“Nothing,” Chloe said. “You already prepped everything. Just relax.”
While Chloe went inside to make a salad, Nora sat at the table and asked how Emily had been holding up. They talked about Food Lion, where coworkers kept getting sick and customers no longer made small talk, the strangeness of being in Williamsburg without students or tourists or the colonial actors you used to see sometimes walking around. Their life sounded difficult, but she didn’t sense any of the resentment Chloe had about their current circumstances. Nora felt like an asshole for assuming Emily was depressed and a bigger asshole for having wanted to protect her daughter more than she’d wanted to help a young adult without a place to go.
“I can’t believe this is how college ends,” Emily said. “None of it feels real.”
“What’s next for you? Never mind. I’m sure that’s a horrible question.”
Emily shrugged. “It’s okay. I have some interviews. I actually got a job offer with Northrop Grumman, but I have to think about it.”
Nora tried to hide her disbelief, but when Emily saw it, they just laughed.
“I know. I never thought I’d work for a defense contractor either, but the money is good, and I have student loans. Plus, I can’t rely on my parents.”
She felt another surge of guilt. “Listen,” she said. “I’m sorry we couldn’t invite you to live with us. My husband works with cancer patients, and we already had four of us living in a townhouse, but I know you were in a bad spot, and I’m sorry.”
Emily looked a little perplexed. “Oh, I didn’t expect you to take me in.”
“If you get stuck, we’re here, though,” Nora said. “And congratulations. A steady job right now is no small thing.”
The temperature had dropped, and it felt almost too cold eat outside, maybe pointless anyway if Emily was making out with Chloe, but this was the agreement she and Brendan had made. The food was cold before they finished eating and to compensate, Nora offered them Pinot Noir—full glasses for Emily and Chloe and half glasses for Evan and Ruth.
“Why?” Evan said. “Yesterday you said no.”
“It’s chilly,” Nora said. “I thought the wine might help.”
After dinner, Chloe pointed out a firepit and woodpile Nora hadn’t noticed and asked if they could make a fire.
“Sure,” she said. “Why not?”
Emily and Chloe arranged the logs and fanned the flames with a cereal box while Ruth and Evan moved plastic lawn chairs around in a circle. The lawn was low and wet in some places but there was a dome of elevated sand around the firepit. Once the fire was going strong, Emily sat by Chloe and put a hand on her knee. Ruth and Evan asked Emily questions about college and the world “out there” that they largely hadn’t seen since March. They all talked about how boring it was to take classes online, how much they missed their friends, but the tone was upbeat, almost giddy. When Emily’s hand moved higher on Chloe’s leg, Nora announced that she was going to sleep and that since the lawn was so damp, Emily and Chloe should feel free to sleep on an air mattress on the screened-in porch instead of in the tent. This was a small gesture—the porch was old and they would still practically be outside—but Chloe seemed pleased.
Inside she found an extra comforter that she brought out to the porch and then poured herself another glass of wine and FaceTimed Brendan.
“Everybody’s happy,” she said. “Nobody’s arguing. You should have seen Ruth and Evan chasing each other around the beach. He actually seems like himself.”
Brendan smiled. His eyes were red, and he looked exhausted. “Good.”
She was proud of herself for smoothing things over with Emily and Chloe and for knowing somehow that what Evan had needed was connection. She started to tell him about visiting Ruth but stopped herself.
“Thank you,” she said instead. “I’m so glad you suggested this trip.”
Nora woke up to the sound of the screen door slamming and Chloe swearing. It was past seven, but a headache throbbed in her right eye socket. She had almost gone back to sleep when she heard voices in the kitchen. At first, she thought it was Chloe and Emily—hopefully masked, hopefully just using the bathroom—but then she heard Ruth’s voice.
“Do you think there’s any way Emily could take me to a pharmacy?” she whispered.
“The only one that’s opened on Sundays is thirty minutes away, but it’s kind of an emergency.”
Chloe said something Nora couldn’t hear, and she grabbed the glass beside the bed, swallowed the stale water, and put it against the door to amplify the sound. She wasn’t proud of herself, but she was the adult, and shouldn’t she know what was happening? There was a long enough pause that Nora thought she’d missed the answer, but then Ruth said, “Um . . . Plan B?”
Nora’s heart squeezed.
“I won’t tell my mom or anything,” Chloe said. “Don’t worry.”
Ruth laughed. “She gave me wine, and I’m pretty sure she had them put the twin beds together. I feel like she wanted us to hook up.”
Nora couldn’t breathe. This wasn’t true. How could Ruth believe this was true? What she had wanted was the sweet relationship she and Evan had before Ms. Caldwell had ruined his life. What she had wanted was the opposite of this.
“Wow.”
“If I tell you something, would you not tell Evan?”
“Okay?”
“She came to my house and kind of pressured me to come on this trip.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“It’s whatever,” Ruth said. “I’m not sorry about what happened. I’m the one who wanted to hook up. I just don’t think your mom will care about this.”
“She has no boundaries,” Chloe whispered. “She acts like our privileges make us weak, but it’s her. She can’t stop herself from micromanaging our lives.”
She can’t stop herself from micromanaging our lives.
They were both quiet for a moment and then Ruth said, “What happened with Emily?”
“I have no idea. I thought things were fine, but apparently I came on too strong.”
“That sucks.”
Nora thought of the perplexed look on Emily’s face when she’d mentioned their living situation and told herself not to overthink it—surely the breakup had nothing to do with her—but felt a twinge of guilt anyway.
“It does, but it’s also fine,” Chloe said. “We’re pretty different. It probably wasn’t going to work out anyway.”
Chloe sounded less upset than she would have expected, and Nora let herself zone out for a bit. She was thinking about the boat cruise she’d booked and now regretted, her headache, and also how much she needed to pee, when she heard Chloe confess that she’d texted Ms. Caldwell to tell her about her internship being canceled.
“I know I’m supposed to break off all contact, but I actually miss her,” Chloe said. “Do you think it would be awful if I met up with her?”
Nora’s blood pressure spiked so quickly that she felt dizzy, and it took all her restraint not to fling open the door and scream.
“I’m sorry,” Ruth said eventually “but I think it’s a bad idea. Evan is kind of traumatized. As far as I’m concerned, she’s a rapist.”
Chloe mumbled something she couldn’t hear and then apologized.
“You’re right,” she said. “I don’t know why I miss her so much.”
“You’re not, like, in love with her, are you?”
She couldn’t hear an answer, but Nora knew immediately that Ruth was right.
She waited as long as she could to leave the room and pee and then took a long hot shower. She made eggs and pancakes in almost total silence, but no one seemed to notice. When Chloe said she needed to drive to another town to get a phone charger for Ruth, she seemed poised for an argument, but Nora handed over the keys.
“Wow, okay,” Chloe said, staring at her. “Thanks.”
“Just go,” Nora said. “If you wait around, I’ll change my mind.”
The boat cruise was fifty-five dollars per person for a two-hour ride narrated by a heavyset retired naval officer named “Captain Jerry.” Out on the water, it was windy and cold. Every few minutes, the boat idled so that Captain Jerry could point to distant wildlife and deliver commentary filtered through a conservative lens. He was opposed to oversight by the Fish and Wildlife Commission and believed the volunteer fire department that owned the ponies on the Virginia side of the island should not have to pay taxes on the land they used. On the Maryland side of the island, the National Parks Service controlled the population with birth control darts, and Captain Jerry seemed opposed both to the birth control and the National Parks Service.
“Their story is that the horses came from settlers,” he said. “But the genetic tests they’ve run can tell you that doesn’t hold water.”
The story he preferred was a Spanish shipwreck that happened before the arrival of English settlers, the marooned horses fleeing to shore, somehow finding a way to survive.
Chloe, who was on the bench beside her, took pictures with her phone. Ruth and Evan sat on the other side of the aisle, huddled under a blanket borrowed from the tour company. When Captain Jerry began to talk about the social dynamics of the so-called harem bands of mares who “belong” to a single stallion, Ruth looked like she might throw up, but Nora knew she was probably just nauseated from the Plan B.
“Here we go!” Captain Jerry shouted. “This is Riptide’s band, and as you can see, he likes the blonds.”
He pointed to a chestnut-colored stallion in the distance, grazing in a field with several ponies with blond manes. According to Captain Jerry, these ponies had survived only because their bodies adapted over generations to the harsh conditions of their environment. They were squat and scruffy with bloated bellies and had thick stomachs and enlarged kidneys. When other breeds had been introduced to diversify the gene pool, they’d all died pretty quickly. It seemed to Nora that there was a lesson here about resilience and survival, but she couldn’t say what the lesson was.
As soon as they stepped off the boat, Nora handed her car keys to Chloe.
“My head hurts,” she said. “Just be careful.”
She cranked up the heat and watched the RV parks and vacation homes slide by. She was overwhelmed, tired, not sure what to think. Should she be happy Ruth had the maturity to get herself to a pharmacy or was this just what it felt like—another parenting failure, another lapse in judgment from one of her kids? She was furious with Chloe for contacting Ms. Caldwell but felt compassion for her, too. What had it felt like to discover her mentor, who she had apparently also loved, had come for her brother? Back when Chloe was in ninth grade, the Parents’ Association at her kids’ school had sponsored a lecture by a parenting expert who argued that their goal as parents should not be to prevent their children from failing but to raise self-sufficient kids. At the time, she’d laughed at the stories of parents cutting up steak for their twelve-year-olds and making their kids’ science fair projects. She was thinking about how sure she’d been that she was different, how little she’d known then about how high the stakes could feel, when she heard Chloe scream and felt the car lurch as she slammed on the brakes.
“Oh my God,” Chloe shrieked. “Jesus Christ.”
When Nora looked up, a pony stood feet in front of the SUV—brown and white spotted with a black mane. Up close, he looked wild and strange—a ragged coat, bumpy with mud and scars, a thick muscular body, a dark wet mouth chewing a long amber reed.
Chloe was shaking. “He ran into the road out of nowhere. I thought I was going to kill him.”
At the roundabout ahead of them, a police barricade blocked traffic, and Nora saw that it was not just this pony but a whole group that had made its way into town. Three ponies grazed in the grass by a Days Inn; another one had stopped in the middle of the road. A small group of people had gathered in the parking lot of the Days Inn to watch.
“Can we get out?” Evan asked.
Nora nodded. “Just not too close.”
When Chloe opened the door, the spotted pony darted across the road and pranced through the soggy grass in front of a pink cottage advertising vacation rentals. Ahead of them a police officer directed traffic. In the parking lot of the Days Inn, they watched the ponies shake flies and eat grass. Ruth took a video. People came out of hotel rooms, more cars stopped, and a crowd began to form. The mood in the air was one of wonder and excitement, though she was disappointed to hear that these were likely not really wild ponies but rather that some of the penned ponies on display for tourists had probably escaped.
When a little girl in pigtails walked right up to a pony, Nora expected a parent to stop her, but no one did. The girl, who looked about five or six, pet his tail and then reached up to touch his face, at which point, the pony flicked back his ears and shook his head.
A man called out, “You want to give him some space now,” but the girl stayed still. Nora’s heart lurched. The girl could be bit, kicked, trampled, but she just stood in the spooked horse’s path, unmoving.
“Lindy!” a woman yelled. “Move back.”
The woman had long damp hair and was wearing a tracksuit and Nike slides. She had a toddler on her hip that she handed to what looked like a stranger. She ran toward her daughter, but the pony reacted first, shaking his mane and throwing his feet in the air, just missing the girl’s head before he galloped off toward a patch of grass by the dumpsters. Her mother picked her up and the little girl threw her arms around her, sobbing. As her children wandered away, Nora watched the woman and her daughter. She could feel the girl’s weight and her grip, the woman’s heart and breath slowly resetting their pace.