Flying Changes (12 page)

Eva waxes ecstatic the whole way home. She has no need for answers from me, and indeed, doesn’t leave room for any.

“—and he’s just
solid,
Mom. I mean, you can feel it right through the saddle. He’s built like a brick shi—” She glances over quickly. “Er, I mean, he’s
solid,
Mom. The horse is made of
granite.
Oh, hey! And he looks like granite, too! I mean, have you ever seen such a coat? Well, okay,” she says, nodding grudgingly, conceding an unargued but obvious point, “I guess Hurrah still wins the prize for unusual coat, but have you ever seen such a beautiful roan? Honest to God, he looks blue. And all those specks on his flanks and stuff,
Nathalie said they’re from fighting with the other horses because he’s always got to be the dominant one, wherever he is. Oh! Did I tell you that when they shipped him here he managed to get under—or over, they don’t know which—the stall dividers? Not a scratch on him, but that was before he was gelded, so he actually has a foal on the ground. An accidental Smoky Joe Junior. Can you imagine that? Got loose and made the rounds in a slant-load trailer and actually managed to get one of the mares—”

I take a deep breath and try to follow what she’s saying. It’s not that I’m uninterested—actually it’s quite the opposite. I’m trying to absorb the knowledge that I’ve just lost my daughter to a horse. I was prepared to lend her to the training program, but Smoky Joe came out of nowhere, a freight train on a foggy night.

A fleeting smile crosses my lips. Eric Hamilton won’t know what hit him.

“—and there was one point right at the very beginning where I wasn’t sure what he was going to do, he was like a coiled spring, and then suddenly he went, like, ‘Oh, it’s you up there. Okay.’ Like he caught sight of me out of the corner of his eye, like he’s my horse and he just knew it. Or, no, that’s wrong. I’m his
person,
and he knew it. Yeah, that’s it. Totally the other way around—”

She’s still talking when we park around the back of the house, still talking as we mount the back porch.

“—and did you see when I asked him for the flying changes? No hesitation, nothing. Just skipped right across like it was nothing! Oh, Oma!” she shrieks as she opens the back door and catches sight of my mother.

She rushes over and grabs my shocked mother by both hands, spinning her around in a dance. “She took me! I’m in! And you won’t believe my horse!”

Mutti cocks an eyebrow. “Your horse?”

“Yeah! His name is Smoky Joe, and he’s a Nokota and he’s usually such a terror the rest of the girls call him Smokin’ Gun, but we just clicked and OHMIGOD you should have seen us, Oma! We were perfect, just floating. We just
connected
instantly. Apparently he never lets anyone ride him, ever, but the second I laid eyes on him, I just knew—”

I stare open-mouthed at my daughter, and then turn stiffly to hang my purse by the back door.

“Where are you going?” says Mutti.

“Nowhere,” I say, turning back around.

But she doesn’t mean me. She’s facing the hallway.

Eva is gone, thumping up the stairs—two at a time apparently, since her footsteps run out before the stairs should. The door to her bedroom slams shut.

I stare at Mutti.

We hear drawers yanked forth, objects clunking and banging. Chairs shoved aside, and things scooped from surfaces. Her door opens again, followed by more thumping, and then another door opens—is she in the bathroom? Mutti’s room? the linen closet?—and then shuffling and clunking as she drags something down the hall.

When I hear the Samsonite’s loose wheel, I realize she’s lugging all the suitcases into her room.

Mutti moves wordlessly to the fridge and removes the bottle of chardonnay we started last night.

“No,” I say miserably. “Thanks, but no.”

Mutti pauses, shrugs, and puts the bottle back in the fridge.

As I put my jacket back on, drawers continue to slam open and shut in the room above us.

Hurrah stands utterly still as I sweep my hands across his body, over and over, round and round, pausing only to brush off the hair that collects on my palms like mats of prickly felt.

His winter coat is shedding out—in response to the increasing daylight rather than a change in temperature—and in my experience bare hands work better than any brush at removing loose hair. But I don’t have a brush anyway, because I didn’t come in here to groom him. I came in here because I just needed to be with him.

The moon throws only dim light through the bars of his window, and his brindling is invisible. He could be any solid-colored Hanoverian. Well, no, he couldn’t—even under the shadow of night, there’s no mistaking his magnificent conformation.

I continue running my hands in circles over his body. Eventually he utters a deep, shuddering sigh and allows his ears to droop. When I realize that I’m lulling him to sleep, I move quietly to his shoulder and press my nose up against his neck. I inhale, taking his scent as deeply into my body as I can. Then I slip my hand between his
front legs, seeking his cowlick. When I find it, I twirl my fingertips around it, stopping several times to change direction. My face is still pressed against his cool, smooth shoulder, my other hand hooked over his withers.

After a few moments, I position myself by his left side, brace my hands on his rib cage, and leap up so that my weight is on my arms. I push my feet against the wall behind me and wriggle onto his back.

With my legs hanging loose, I lean forward so I’m resting on his neck. I run both hands toward his head—left under mane, right in the open—until I reach his ears, which I scratch in unison. When I’m finished, I grasp them in my fists and let them slide through—first one, then the other—before moving my hands back to his shoulders, smoothing the hair I roughed up only moments before.

Then I lie back, my legs slack and my head resting on his rump. His spine is padded and warm and slightly indented. I love the feel of my vertebrae stretched out along his. We fit like a zipper. I cross my arms on my chest and close my eyes.

“Hey sweetness.”

At the sound of Dan’s voice, Hurrah’s body stiffens and my eyes snap open. I scramble upright, bracing a hand on each of Hurrah’s flanks.

“Sorry—I didn’t mean to startle you,” Dan says quickly.

There’s a soft thud as I drop to the floor.

“You didn’t have to get off. I can wait for you upstairs.”

“No,” I say. “It’s okay.”

“I’m glad to see you on him,” Dan says. “Even if it is just in his stall.”

My face burns.

“Hey,” he says gently. “Are you okay?”

I pause, and then turn and drop my forehead against his shoulder. “Actually I’ve had an appalling day.”

“Why? What happened?”

“Eva was accepted into Nathalie Jenkins’s training program.”

Dan is silent for so long I look up. He’s staring at me. “You’re kidding, right?” he finally says.

“No.”

“Annemarie?”

“Yes?”

“Perhaps I’m missing something, but isn’t this what you wanted?”

I burst into tears. “Yes. I mean, it was the best available option, but my God! You should have seen her! She can’t wait to get out from under my despotic rule. She hardly stopped long enough to give Mutti the good news before running upstairs to pack.”

“When’s she leaving?”

“Not for another three days. I guess she’s going to live out of suitcases in the meantime.” I turn and throw myself against his chest. “I’m going to be completely alone by the time I’m forty!”

“Oh, baby. Eva won’t be far, will she? Nathalie’s only in Columbia.”

I frown against his shirt.

“That’s not the point,” I continue. “With Eva gone, the sum total of my life is part-time employment at my mother’s riding academy. Most forty-year-old women have a little something more going for them at this point in their lives.”

There’s a long silence. I might as well have called myself a spinster. I look up at Dan, who has lines etched in his forehead. “Annemarie, are you unhappy with our relationship?”

“Oh, Dan, I don’t know…It’s just you’ve been away so much this winter. I mean, I know you’ve saved eighty-seven horses from slaughter since January—”

“Eighty-eight.”

“See? How can I complain about that? Forget I said anything.”

I try to twist away from him, but he won’t let me. He takes me by the shoulders and turns me back around.

“Annemarie, I don’t want to forget you said anything. If you’re unhappy with our relationship, I need to know. Are you?”

“I don’t know,” I say, looking at my feet.

“It’s a simple question, Annemarie. And one I need the answer to.” His voice is harsh, and it shocks me.

I lift my hands and then drop them against my legs. “But the answer’s not simple, is it? I love you, but I hardly ever see you, and when I do see you, we never do anything. I know your work is important. I’d never ask you to give it up. I’ve been trying to be patient and supportive and involved, but I was also hoping that we’d manage to…you know…spend more time together.”

Move in together. Get married. That’s what I should say, but somehow I can’t make my tongue move the words out of my throat.

“Well, that’s my fault then,” he says gently. “Maybe I haven’t made it clear just how much I appreciate everything you do. The simple truth is without your
help, I could never have made those runs to Canada. And there’s no question Bella would have died. Heck, just this last week you saved Maisie’s filly and performed a solo rescue. That’s at least three horses, possibly four, who wouldn’t be around right now if it weren’t for you, personally.” He wraps his arms around me, holding me tight. “I won’t be making these runs forever, baby. This winter has been hell on all of us. But in just a few months the pee farms will be closed and the horses dealt with, one way or another. If you can just hang on until then, we’ll see a lot more of each other.”

See a lot more of each other.
That’s not quite the level of commitment I was seeking, although, I suppose, technically it’s what I asked for.

“Yes, well, all right then,” I say miserably.

Hurrah snorts impatiently and shakes. He’s ready to fall asleep and wants us out of his stall.

“So,” says Dan, assuming a stern tone. “Are we going upstairs, or am I going to have to ravage you right here?”

“Upstairs,” I say grumpily.

“Mmmm,” he says, slipping his hands inside my vest. He cups my clothed breasts in his hands and runs his thumbs across my nipples. “I have an idea. Why don’t I run us a bath?”

I gasp and close my eyes. I’d answer, except that I seem to have forgotten how to breathe.

That’s one of the problems with Dan, if you can call it that. Our chemistry is so explosive I can never manage to stay upset even when it would be in my best interest to do so.

After he’s ravaged me—beautifully, gloriously, sinfully—and I’ve forgiven him everything as I always do, we lie entangled on slightly damp sheets. My pillow is soaked through because my head got dunked several times before we left the bathtub, so I rest my wet head on his chest, feeling his voice rumble through his rib cage. I stroke him, running my hands up the soft skin on the underside of his arm, and then tracing my way back to his sternum, curling his hairs in my fist.

He straightens my wet tresses gently, separating the tangles and smoothing them across my back.

We are silent for a few minutes, caressing each other in the dark.

“Dan, do you remember when I said I’d had an appalling day?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, there’s a little more to it than I told you.”

“What do you mean?” he says, still stroking my back.

I pause. “I nearly did something terrible today.”

“What?”

“I think I tried to sabotage Eva’s audition.”

There’s a beat of surprised silence before he answers. “You what? Why?”

“I don’t know why. I have no idea. She was riding—doing spectacularly well, in fact—and all of a sudden I found myself telling Nathalie about all the things she’s done wrong. When I realized what I was doing, I stopped. Nathalie didn’t seem to care, but still. That’s not the point.”

I struggle up onto my elbow and look down at him. “Are you shocked?”

“Well, yes. A little.”

“Me too. I couldn’t believe what I was saying, and yet there it was, coming out of my mouth.”

I look down at the expression on his beautiful face and cringe with shame. “You’re disappointed in me. I can tell.”

He doesn’t answer right away. “Well…at least you stopped yourself.”

“Yes,” I say, my eyes filling with tears.

Dan looks at me for a moment longer. Then he pulls me to him. I fold my arms like wings and let him envelop me.

“Don’t beat yourself up, Annemarie. You’ve got a lot of things going on right now. The important thing is you caught yourself and did the right thing.”

First thing in the morning I creep out of bed and across the hall to the office, pausing just long enough to gaze at Dan. He lies on his back in the center of the bed with his arms outstretched. The dog is pressed against him, a bloated sausage whose legs move in time to her snoring.

The office is directly above the lounge, and, like the lounge, has a window out onto the arena. Sometimes when the lessons for the day are finished, I turn Hurrah out into the arena and steal glances at him while I’m doing paperwork. I don’t do much paperwork anymore, having discovered that it’s not my forte. Mutti still trusts me with some of it, but after last year, I’m pretty sure she checks it afterward.

As I slip into the chair behind the desk, I wonder if it’s too early to call Roger. Then I decide that no, they’ve got a new baby. Of course they’re up.

The phone rings five times before anyone answers.

“Hello?” says Roger. The baby wails approximately an inch from the mouthpiece.

I’m relieved that he answered, because I still grate at the sound of Sonja’s voice. I’ve come to terms with my divorce—and even come to realize that I wasn’t any happier than he was—but still. You don’t get left by your husband for another woman without some residual bad feelings.

“Yeah, hi, it’s me,” I say.

“Oh, Annemarie. Hang on just a second.” There’s shuffling and thumping, a baby’s gurgle followed by an earsplitting squeal.

“Honey?” says Roger’s muffled voice, and a pain shoots through me because I very nearly answered him. “Can you take Jeremy for a minute?”

More shuffling, a mother’s cooing, and then Roger is back. The sounds of Jeremy recede into the background. “Hi there. Sorry about that. He won’t let us put him down. We think he might be getting a tooth.”

“Isn’t that a little early?”

“He’s thirteen weeks. It’s on the early end of the normal range.”

“Is he drooling?”

“Not really.”

“Pulling his ear?”

“Gosh, I’m not sure. Are you thinking ear infection?”

“Seems more likely than a tooth,” I say. And then I shift into business mode because I’m irritated at finding myself discussing his new baby. “So, listen, we have to talk.”

“Uh-oh,” he says. “Eva, I presume?”

“Yes. Brace yourself.”

I tell him about the pot, the expulsion, and the condom. And then I tell him about the training program.

At the end, there’s dead silence.

“Hello? Roger? Hello? Are you there?”

“I’m here,” he says.

“You went all quiet.”

“I’m a little shocked, that’s all.”

“I know. I’m sorry to spring this on you.”

I hear Jeremy wailing in another room, along with Sonja’s gentle murmurings. I picture her pacing in a floor-length satin negligée—and Roger’s eyes upon them.

“Are you sure this is the best thing for Eva?” Roger asks. “Because she could come live with us.”

“No!” I croak.

“Why? We could get her a horse here. It would be a fresh start.”

“Please, Roger. I don’t think you understand. Nathalie Jenkins is the best of the best, and there are zero opportunities to get into trouble. And this horse…well, this isn’t just a horse. You should have seen them, Roger. This is a horse who won’t let anyone else ride him, and yet for her he was doing one-tempi changes. I think this might be her Harry.”

I hear him suck in his breath.

“Roger?” I say tentatively.

“And you’re sure you’re okay with this?” he says. “You’ve always been so…I don’t know how to put this. Reticent.”

“Well, we can’t keep going as we have been. I don’t see that we have much choice.”

I hear his fingers drumming as he mulls:
Rat-a-tat. Rat-a-tat. Rat-a-tat.

“All right,” he says as the baby cries piteously in the distance. “Let’s give it a try and see how it goes.”

After we hang up I sit staring into space and pondering how very different Roger’s life is from mine.

On Monday morning, I wake to the sound of the apartment’s front door crashing into the wall behind it.

“Ma! Ma!” shouts Eva from the living room. “Where are you?”

I groan and press my face into my pillow. Thank God I don’t have a naked Dan beside me. A few hours earlier, I did.

Her bright, young head appears in the doorway of the bedroom.

“Oh my God!” she screams in horror. “You’re not even up yet?”

“Eva,” I say, peering groggily at the clock radio by my bed. “It’s only…Eva! It’s not even seven yet!”

“Ma! Please!” she exclaims, sighing dramatically and staring at me as though my stupidity is beyond comprehension.

“Oh, all right. All right,” I say, throwing the covers back and creating a triangle of eiderdown from which only Harriet’s head and front paws stick out. A dachshund turnover. Harriet opens her shiny black eyes, takes in the scene, heaves a sigh equal in magnitude to any of Eva’s, and goes back to sleep.

I wish I could do the same, but my daughter is yelling at me.

“And brush your hair! And put on some lipstick or something!” she calls after me as I stumble toward the bathroom.

I stop and turn to face her. “Eva! Please!” I say, putting my hands on my waist. “What do you think I am?”

“I just don’t want you looking like a—”