CHAPTER 5
Johnny left an hour and a half later, after they’d checked some fences and spent twenty minutes simply sitting on the horses and shooting the shit.
Johnny was quite talkative for someone of his upbringing, chatting amicably about his amateur rodeo days, like one story of the time his buddy got food poisoning and shat his pants during a bull ride.
Nothing seemed to be off the menu when it came to conversational topics with Johnny.
Maybe Victor should have found his garrulous nature irritating, but Johnny was funny, and Victor enjoyed listening to him.
After untacking the horses, Victor’s phone rang. He saw his mother’s name on the screen, so he walked around to the closest paddock for some privacy as he answered.
“Hey,” he greeted. Saturn’s filly and a boarder’s weanling had stopped grazing at the back of the paddock and were now watching him. In a moment they’d probably head his way, hoping for a treat.
“It’s been a while since we’ve talked,” his mother began, forgoing a greeting. She was that type of person, always on the go and focused on the next thing. “I wanna know how things are going with you.”
“Everything’s fine.”
“I’d be nice if you called more often so I would know for sure.”
“I’d call you if something was wrong.”
His mother made a sound of disapproval, then asked, “Then tell me about all the things that are fine.”
Victor did, because his mother was someone obsessed with the details.
She wanted a run-down of every veterinary emergency and missed payment, as if he were a barn manager relaying details to the property owner.
Both of his parents had been horse trainers, but his father hadn’t been particularly competitive, and his interest was more in riding than in running a business.
Without his wife’s accounting skills and willingness to harass people for board payments, he probably wouldn’t have been able to eke out a living in the horse world.
As irritating as his mother’s punctilious nature could be, Victor had grown up without having to worry about bills or where his next meal might come from.
After he was done assuring her that he wasn’t in debt or struggling with the upkeep of two dozen horses, she decided to make it worse by asking about his social life.
“Have you made any friends out there?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“Like who?”
“My assistant trainer, Jade.”
“Anyone else?”
“Yeah.” Saturn’s dark bay filly Venus arrived at the fence, and she nuzzled Victor’s forearm, demanding treats. He had nothing to provide, so he leaned over and plucked some grass for her. She took it with relish. “An ex-rodeo guy named Johnny.”
“Ex-rodeo?”
“Yeah, he used to ride the broncs. I sold him a horse, and he took me to a rodeo thing last night. I gave his niece a lesson, and she’s a cute kid.”
“Is he gay?”
Victor let out a long and slow sigh so that the phone wouldn’t pick it up. “No, Mom.”
“There’s gotta be at least a few out there. Aren’t there apps and things to find them?”
Victor tried not to laugh. “Yeah, but I haven’t found much.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means it’s usually guys in the closet.
” Headless torsos, men without photos at all, or older married men wanting to “experiment”, and if he wanted anything better, he had to be willing to drive the hour into Tulsa.
Sometimes Victor couldn’t blame them. He’d purposely chosen a blurry photo in fear that someone would recognize him.
Rural California was no picnic, but Oklahoma had him feeling more paranoid than ever.
“Maybe with some patience and time, they wouldn’t have to be.”
“I’m not out here to date, I’m here to run a business.”
“You can’t get married to a horse.”
“Not yet,” Victor joked.
“I just know how antisocial you can be, and I’m afraid that where you’re at is going to make it worse. You’re the responsible child. You should be the one who gets married first.” She paused, her voice turning a shade darker. “Which reminds me of the whole reason I called. Your brother is engaged.”
“I didn’t even know he had a girlfriend.”
“He only met her four months ago. And now they’re engaged!
I’m not happy about it. I’ve met her twice, and each time she was rude.
The second time, they drove out here to meet me, and she refused to come into the barn because she said it smelled bad.
Well, you can imagine how I took that, and I was about to throw them both off my property. ”
“What’s her name?”
“Violet. I doubt she’s any better with money than Oscar, judging by her get-up. She told me she’s a nurse’s assistant. That’s not a well-paying job, so how does she drive an Audi?”
Leave it to Oscar to have the worst taste in women. It would be just like him to find his mother’s polar opposite, just to spite her. To Victor it sounded like Violet and his mother might be alike in personality and different in execution. “Sounds perfect for Oscar.”
“What if they have children? You know Oscar’s not responsible enough for that, and I doubt there’s a maternal bone in that woman’s body.” She sighed angrily. “I had hoped my first grandchild would come from you.”
Victor decided to ignore that remark. “Have they said they want kids?”
“Violet said she wants them.”
That made it much more likely to happen.
Maybe kids would do Oscar a favor. Or maybe he’d continue being bad with money and bad with women and it’d all end in a messy divorce.
Victor didn’t know what he was supposed to do about it.
He was not his brother’s keeper. Horses were far easier to train than Oscar.
“He’s an adult, Mom. He can do what he wants.”
“That doesn’t mean I have to like it!”
“Maybe the horse gene skips a generation. Maybe that grandchild will want a pony.”
“I’d rather you have a kid. You’d do a better job with it.”
“Mom, can we please not talk about this?”
“You’re thirty now, which means you’ve only got another, what, five years? Maybe seven if you’re lucky? You told me that was what you wanted.”
“Yeah, ten years ago, when I was engaged.”
“Have you changed your mind?”
“I’m not engaged anymore.”
“There are sperm banks.”
“Mom!” Victor rubbed his face with both hands, Venus still nuzzling his elbow in search of treats. “I don’t want to have this conversation.”
“I just think it’s important that you really think about this farm and what you want your future to look like. What matters more to you? The horses or a child? I’m glad I didn’t have to make that choice. You may have to.”
Victor reached out to pet Venus’s forehead while her weanling pasture mate rubbed his lip against Victor’s forearm, a silent request for similar attention.
“Call your brother,” his mother said after a long silence that Victor refused to end. “Talk some damn sense into him.”
“Oscar does what he wants. He doesn’t care what I think.”
“He cares even less what I think.”
“Fine, I’ll call him.”
“Thank you.”
Twenty seconds of pleasantries later, Victor was able to hang up.
He shoved the phone in his pocket and stared blankly out across the paddock, knowing that ten years ago that conversation might have brought him to tears.
He didn’t cry that easily anymore. In fact, he hadn’t cried since his aunt’s funeral two years ago.
His mother could be a difficult person. No one knew that more than Victor, because they hadn’t talked for a whole year after Victor came out.
It wasn’t a decision he’d made lightly, but their conversations had become too upsetting to continue.
She was grieving a daughter she’d never had.
Their interactions turned toxic, and she said hurtful things, usually about what his father would think, then refused to apologize for them.
Victor had inherited his father’s easy going nature, but even he had to put his foot down.
In the time they weren’t speaking, she’d done some work on herself with the help of a therapist, and they were better able to communicate.
He’d been her favorite child, her protégé.
She’d tried life without him and couldn’t do it.
So she came back. She made her apologies.
Victor had forgiven her to the best of his ability.
Sometimes that resentment slithered back, especially when she chastised him for not having the things he wanted.
He wished his father were alive. He wished that every week.
As a kid his mother’s worst tendencies had been tempered by his father’s protection, and he’d made Victor feel safe.
Whenever he got into fights with his mother—something that happened weekly back when he was a teenager—it had been his father who came to his room, dragged him into an embrace, and assured him that everything would work out.
They’d go for a ride together and have a long chat.
She’s not an easy woman to love sometimes, his father had said, but I know she does her best.
If his father were alive, Victor would have called him and relayed the whole conversation, just to hear him laugh and say No te preocupes, mijo.
It’s your life to live. Don’t you worry about anybody else.
Of course, Victor worried about everything.
As the “responsible” older sibling, it’d been his job to make his parents proud.
There was no way to win his father’s ghost’s approval, and yet he still wanted it, along with his mother’s.
With a sigh, Victor pushed back from the fence and headed back to the barn. He had work to do.
* * *
That night, Victor called Oscar, just as his mother had asked him to. When Oscar picked up, Victor could hear music and shouting in the background. Oscar yelled Give me a minute! and Victor waited until Oscar had found a semi-quiet room to be in before saying anything.
“Hola, hermanito,” Victor greeted. “I hear you and Mom are at it again.”
“Ugh,” Oscar grumbled. “She was a complete bitch to my fiancée.”
“And you, I’m sure, were on your best behavior.”
“Mom was acting like I’m supposed to take her side over Violet’s.”
“You didn’t even tell me you were dating someone.”
“I didn’t? Well. It’s been a fast thing. I’m really in love with her.”
Oscar was head over heels for all his girlfriends, and he’d had many, starting in fourth grade. Victor liked to joke that he was so gay because his brother was so straight. The universe craved balance. “Four months is really fast though.”
“We’ll make it a long engagement and get married once we’ve been together a year. She’s already moved in with me.”
Of course she had. Oscar couldn’t stand to be alone for a single second of his life.
“Mom’s upset because she made some comment about the horse barn smelling, which is true. It smells like horse shit,” Oscar continued.
“I’m guessing she’s not an animal person.”
“She has a cat that she likes. But no, she doesn’t care about horses.
She’s a city girl. That’s what had Mom all up in arms. Like, I’m sorry I’m not dating some backcountry redneck chick.
Violet smokes weed and reads books and knows what foie gras is.
Fucking sue me. Also, she thinks that I can’t handle children.
Like hey Mom, I’m twenty-six, not a fucking baby.
I can figure out parenthood.” Oscar snorted.
“I hate that I’m now her one last hope for grandkids.
You were supposed to be married and pregnant by twenty-one so I wouldn’t have to deal with this. ”
“Yeah, sorry about that.”
“What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing. Same old, same old.”
“How’s Oklahoma? You see any tornadoes yet?”
“I’ve seen some nasty looking storms, but no twisters.”
They talked for another thirty minutes. Oscar chatted about his fiancée, who seemed like a completely different person than the one their mother had described, so who knew the truth.
Victor was willing to believe she was somewhere between “disrespectful harpy” and “cultured angel”.
In true Oscar fashion, he didn’t ask a single question about Victor’s love life, which was a relief.
He did ask Victor if he was making enough money to live by.
Victor had to wonder if Oscar was asking in hopes of requesting money down the line, but thankfully, Oscar didn’t bring that up.
After hanging up with Oscar, Victor made a late night dinner and sat down to watch TV and glance at Grindr, as if his conversation with his mother were some sign that he needed to check again.
He had only two messages. One was just Vagina?
??? from a 52-year-old man in a trucker cap.
The other was from a man without a photo asking to check out these men who suck and fuck at . The account was deactivated already.
Victor deleted both messages and decided it was time to go to bed.