Half broke horses: a true-life novel by Jeannette Walls Page B

still working as a maid when, one summer morning, crossing the street while carrying an armload of groceries for the family whose house I kept, a white roadster with wirespoked wheels came tearing around the corner. The driver slammed on the brakes when he saw me, but it was too late. The grille upended me, and I went rolling across the hood, scattering the apples, buns, and tins that I’d been carrying.
    I instinctively went soft as I tumbled off the hood and onto the street. I lay there for a moment, stunned, as people rushed over. The driver jumped out. He was a young man with slicked-back hair and two-tone shoes.
    Slick started insisting to everyone that I had stepped out into traffic without looking, which was a darned lie. Then he knelt down and asked if I was okay. The accident looked worse than it was, and lying there, I could tell I had no serious injuries, only bruised bones and some nasty scrapes on my arms and knees.
    “I’m fine,” I said.
    But Slick was a city boy, not used to seeing women take hard spills, then get up and walk away. He kept asking me how many fingers he was holding up and what day of the week it was.
    “I’m okay,” I said. “I used to break horses. One thing I know how to do is take a fall.”
    Slick insisted on taking me to the hospital and paying for the examination. I told the nurse at the emergency room I was fine, but she told me I was a little more banged up than I seemed to believe. While filling out her forms, the nurse asked if I was married, and when I said yes, Slick told me I should call my husband.
    “He’s a traveling salesman,” I said. “He’s on the road.”
    “Then call his office. They’ll know how to get in touch with him.”
    While the nurse put mercurochrome on my scrapes and bandaged me up, Slick found the number and gave me a nickel for the pay phone. As much to put his mind at rest as anything else, I made the call.
    A man answered. “Sales. This is Charlie.”
    “I’m wondering if there’s any way you can help me track down Ted Conover on the road. This is his wife, Lily.”
    “Ted ain’t on the road. He just left for lunch. And his wife’s name’s Margaret. Is this some kind of prank?”
    I felt like the floor was tilting underneath me. I didn’t know what to say, so I hung up.
    SLICK WAS BAFFLED BY the way I rushed out of the phone booth past him, but I had to get away from him and out of the hospital to clear my head and try to think. I kept fighting panic as I made my way to the lake, where I walked for miles, hoping the still blue water would calm me. It was a sunny summer day, and lake water lapped at the promenade’s stone wall. Had I misheard Charlie or imagined what he’d said? Was there an explanation? Or had I been two-timed? There was only one way to find out.
    The Electric Suction sales office was in a five-story cast-iron building near the Loop. When I got to the block, I fished a newspaper from a trash can and took up a position in a lobby across the street. As five o’clock approached, people began pouring out onto the sidewalks, and sure enough, my husband, Ted Conover, joined them, walking out the door of that cast-iron building wearing his favorite hat—the one with the jaunty little feather—tilted at a rakish angle. He’d clearly fibbed about being out of town, but I still didn’t have the full story.
    I followed Ted at a safe distance as he made his way through the crowded streets over to the El. He climbed the stairs and so did I. I stood at the far end of the platform with my nose in the newspaper and boarded the train one car behind him. At every stop, I stuck my head out to watch and saw that he got out at Hyde Park. I followed him a few blocks east to a shabby neighborhood with walk-up apartment buildings that had sagging wooden staircases in the back.
    Ted went into one of them. I stood outside for a few minutes, but he didn’t appear at any of the windows, so I went into the vestibule. None of the mailboxes