Flying Changes (30 page)

And so we are wed in Mutti’s garden under an apple tree that blossoms most gloriously for us. The other benefit of this arrangement is that I can have Hurrah present—something I doubt very much the priest would have agreed to in the church.

The only people there (besides Dan and me, of course), are Mutti, Eva, Jeremy, and the judge. Eva holds Hurrah, who is bathed, spiffed up, and unbearably bored. Just as the service begins, he trumpets a mournful call to his friends out in the pasture, waits for their response, and then, when he gets it, snorts and falls silent with a great sigh.

The ceremony—only seven minutes long—proceeds with great dignity until the moment Jeremy spits up copiously onto the shoulder of my new blue dress. I should have known better; I was jiggling him on my hip even though I knew somewhere in my brain that his tummy was full and he hadn’t yet burped. So I suppose it’s a self-inflicted wound.

The dress is similar to my other blue one but a size larger because Mutti’s gift to us is a wedding reception at Sorrento’s, and I want to be able to enjoy it without worrying about splitting a seam. And since I still don’t want to worry about splitting a seam, I decide not to try to squeeze myself into my original blue dress, choosing instead to mop up the milk from the new one and throw
a square cloth diaper—which I should have been wearing in the first place—over my shoulder to cover the wet patch and prevent any new ones that might occur over the course of the evening.

The reception is perfect, despite one moment right at the beginning when I wonder whether everything’s going to go terribly wrong. It’s the moment Luis steps out from behind his uncles—who happen to be our stable hands—and I hear Eva gasp. Dan and I exchange quick glances and I brace myself, because at this point anything could happen.

What was Mutti thinking?

The room falls so silent I hear dishes clinking from the kitchen. The moment stretches on so long that I begin to wonder whether I should hand Jeremy off to Dan in case I have to chase a fleeing Eva. Then she bolts across the room and throws herself into Luis’s embrace. His arms close around her and he lifts her from her feet, twirling around as they press their heads together.

I gasp, perilously close to tears, but there’s no time for that because it’s like someone flicked a switch and the party is back on. Dan, Jeremy, and I are surrounded by noisy well-wishers. The baby is plucked from my arms, and we are hugged, kissed, slapped on the back, and shaken by the hand. In addition to Luis and our stable hands, all of Dan’s volunteers are there, along with some of Mutti’s friends from church, Joan, and Walter.

Luis and Eva take a table in the back corner and spend the evening canoodling. They lean toward each other, all four hands clutched in the center of the table. She nods a lot, listening. Occasionally she gets teary and drops her head, and when this happens, he raises a hand and wipes her face with his thumb. When I watch
what’s going on with them, I am grateful that Mutti invited him and embarrassed that I doubted her. I should know better by now—as infuriating as it is, she is almost always right.

The
pièce de résistance
occurs when the maître d’ stands in the center of the room and clinks a glass with the edge of a spoon. The room falls silent. I look around, wondering if someone is going to toast us, but then the double doors to the kitchen swing out and Gerard—our waiter from the night of the disastrous nonproposal—marches across the room and presents me with a chocolate soufflé with a plastic bride and groom planted on top.

I stare, shocked, and then look up. Everyone in the room roars with laughter. I look at Dan’s smiling face, and then I look at Mutti’s, and then I look at Eva—who may well be smiling but I can’t tell because she is forehead to forehead with Luis. I feel the solid warm weight of Jeremy against my hip, and experience an up-swelling of joy so overwhelming I wonder if it’s possible to float right out of my chair.

Naughty Nathalie. It seems she was not entirely forthcoming with me during our last meeting. She had ulterior motives for wanting Eva back at her barn—or at least even more immediate ones than those to which she was admitting.

A week after Eva returns to training (three days on, two days off), she mentions quite casually that she is competing in the Rochester Invitational Sporthorse Tournament in August—in the jumper division, naturally. It appears that she and Joe were chosen as one of
the five “wildcard” invitees on account of what two of the committee members who were at Strafford saw—specifically, Joe and Eva taking the in-and-out as a single jump, and Joe’s brave attempt to take the canoe despite sliding into it chest-first.

Eva is over the moon.

I am terrified.

Pappa is probably dancing a jig in his grave.

The invitational has traditionally been a feeding pool for the various equestrian teams that represent the United States at the Olympics.

The family dream may have a pulse yet.

August 18. Rosemont Stadium, Rochester, New York.

I’m sitting on a hard bench in the stands, one leg jiggering like it’s having a seizure all by itself, although my heart is threatening to join in. Dan is perched on the very edge of the bench because he’s wearing Jeremy in a Kelty backpack. This gives Jeremy added height, and he reaches out with his little fists and grabs everything, including other spectators’ hair, glasses, and hats. Most are good-natured about it. Some are not. When no one else is within reach, he grasps Dan by the ears or tries to stuff both fists in his mouth at once. At one point he has a finger up each of Dan’s nostrils, trying to rip them asunder.

We’re in a section of the stadium that is unofficially reserved for riders and relatives, although no one says anything to the other spectators who wander in by accident. They quickly realize they’re out of place when they hear the conversations going on. Some gather their things and move; others settle back against the hard wood of the benches and listen with greedy ears, hoping for gossip.

We’re waiting for the announcer to call Eva. The announcer, in turn, is waiting for some of the jumps to be reassembled. Out of twelve riders in her class, Eva and three others made the jump-off. She’s the last to ride, and no one has gone clear yet. The last rider was going too hard for speed, knocked down four rails, and is now—depending on how Eva does—in either third or fourth place.

I’m in the stands rather than at Eva’s side for two reasons. The first is that I suddenly understand Nathalie’s outrage over Eva’s snit at Strafford. Nathalie takes moral support extremely seriously. Although Eva is the only rider from her barn competing, twelve other girls are here, all in matching crimson-and-silver Wyldewood jackets and hats. Seven are up here in the stands—directly behind us, as it happens—and five are down with Nathalie, Mutti, and Eva.

The other reason I’m here is that my therapist suggested that the less similar I made this to my own experience, the better. Ergo, instead of standing at the entrance to the arena and watching from ground level as the horses pass me, I sit perched up here and look down on things; a bird’s eye view that is, indeed, new to me.

“Are you okay, babe?” says Dan, squeezing my hand.

I nod.

The PA system screeches to life. “And now for our final contestant in the jump-off for class ninety-two, Open Jumper Division, Eva Aldrich on Smoky Joe, a blue roan Nokota gelding owned by Nathalie Jenkins of Wyldewood Farms.”

Eva and Joe canter into the arena, and my heart leaps into my throat. His neck is arched impossibly, his low-set tail streaming behind him. He throws his head and
>dances a bit, but I can see from both his and Eva’s body language that there’s no problem here. He’s raring to go and just making sure she knows it.

She canters in a small circle, passing the electric eye that starts the clock. As soon as the red numbers flash on the screen, a ticker tape gone berserk, Joe explodes into a gallop.

Jesus, Eva, a gallop? You can’t approach a jump like that. Oh God, oh God, I can’t take this. I squeeze my eyes shut and slam a hand over them.

Dan continues holding my other hand. He knows the drill—each time she comes down safely, he squeezes my hand to tell me it’s okay. Although this coping technique is of my own devising, my therapist has sanctioned it. She says that when I’m ready to watch, I’ll know—and that in the meantime, there’s no reason in the world not to close my eyes.

I have the course memorized—of course I do, how could I not, especially when it ends with a double oxer? So when I hear a deep horse grunt and Dan squeezes, I know she’s cleared the brush box and is headed for the brick wall. I can hear from the hoofbeats that they’ve slowed to a canter.

A sharp yell from Eva—an aggressive noise—and they speed up again, approaching the brick wall.

“Holy crap! Did you see that?” says someone from behind me.

Another squeeze from Dan, quickly, so I won’t leap to conclusions.

I know exactly where she is on the course even though I haven’t looked since she began. She gallops between the jumps on the straight, collecting him just in time for the takeoff, and cantering tightly around the
turns. With Joe now snorting with each stride, she takes the wishing well, triple bar, and picket fence.

They’re coming up to the water jump now. It’s a beast of a thing with a fourteen-foot spread. The last horse dropped not one but two rails and then came down in the water.

Apparently Joe’s capacity for spreads has become the thing of legend—it was, after all, the in-and-out at Strafford that secured Eva and Joe the wildcard space. I hear people around us murmur things like, “watch this” and “check this out,” and find myself peeking through my fingers.

They are flying. Joe’s powerful body is pounding the footing so hard it flies up in chunks behind him. His muscles are so defined he looks like separate pieces you could take apart and reassemble, like Lego. He barrels toward that jump like nobody’s business and Eva is right there with him, pumping her arms with each thrust of his head. Two strides before, he pulls his head up, brings his haunches under him, shifts from a four-beat gallop to a three-beat canter, and bursts from the ground.

As they arc silently through the air, my eye-covering hand drops to my lap and I stop breathing. Joe rises impossibly, with Eva curled over his back and around his neck, her hands thrust up toward his head.

All around us, people gasp. They clear the top rail by a good six inches. When Joe lands more than a foot past the end of the water, a wild cheer goes up.

I glance at the flashing red numbers. She’s flying. She’s clear. And the only thing left between her and the finish is the double oxer.

Dan has seen that my eyes are open, and he’s looking
at me, not Eva. He knows about me and double oxers. The last time I encountered one, I broke my neck and my horse died. I glance quickly at him, emit a tiny sob, and watch as my daughter approaches my greatest fear.

They’re over in a flash, then gallop hell-bent toward the electric eye that will stop the clock.

Eva swings her head around to get a look before she even slows Joe down. As the numbers sink in, the crowd goes wild. I almost leap out of my skin when five or six short blasts of an airhorn go off directly behind me.

Jeremy shrieks, and I jerk around just in time to see Nathalie’s girls quickly stuffing the contraband airhorn into the arm of a jacket, leaping about, screaming and hugging each other.

Eva’s face is so full of joy, so full of—I don’t even know what, it’s indescribable, so beautiful I can hardly bear it. She reaches down and slap-pats Joe, whose whole demeanor indicates he knows exactly what he’s done.

And then, as Eva takes an impromptu victory gallop around the perimeter of the arena to the enormous delight of the crowd, Dan leans in to me and says, “Do you realize your daughter just won a thirty-thousand-dollar purse?”

I snort. Never had it crossed my mind. Not through any of this. And I’ll bet anything it didn’t cross Eva’s either.

Dan, Mutti, Jeremy, and I make the long drive home that night, leaving Eva to spend the night at a hotel to celebrate with her friends. Last I saw, she was surrounded by stablemates and sipping a glass of cham
pagne. Illegal, yes—but I don’t mind because Nathalie was there, so I have no doubt whatever that her glass wasn’t refilled. Eva will travel back to Wyldewood with her friends and horse tomorrow.

It’s been a long day, and the drive is grueling. Five hours into it I wonder whether we should have flown after all. When I was planning the trip, I figured that with having to change planes it would take about the same amount of time as driving, but right now it feels like any other option would have been better.

Even though Dan does all the driving, the only person who manages to sleep is Jeremy. Which means, naturally, that when we finally get home—even though it’s well after midnight—he doesn’t feel like going to bed.

I pace back and forth, back and forth, jiggling and singing until I finally get him to sleep, but each time I try to lay him in his crib, his eyes pop open and I have to start all over again. At one point, when he’s fallen asleep for the sixth time and I lean over the crib to try to deposit him, I consider spending the rest of the night exactly as I am—bent over at the waist with my arms between him and the mattress, because I know for absolute certain that he’ll wake up when I try to pull my arms out and I’ll have to start all over again.

But it turns out to be impossible to sleep standing up with a crib rail running across your midsection and nowhere to rest your head. And so slowly, slowly, I pull my arms out.

Silence.

I wait, frozen, disbelieving.

He jerks awake and begins to shriek.

When Dan appears and takes him from me, I almost weep with gratitude. Then I make a beeline for bed.

I’m out instantly, and just as instantly am flying over jumps on Harry—one after another after another—stadium jumps, set up in a field of wildflowers. Each time we approach, he says, Let me, and I wait until the moment is right and then say, All right, because that’s the way we work.

But suddenly we’re approaching a double oxer. My body, vision, limbs, and veins flood with stress. I stiffen, realizing with dreadful clarity that I’m dreaming, but that’s no comfort at all because I know perfectly well how this dream ends.

I’m begging now: No, no, no, Harry, no, not that. But he doesn’t listen to me and then I do what I’ve never done with Harry—I yank hard on the reins and lean back in the saddle, thrusting my legs forward and trying to pull him back. But it’s no use. He just charges forth.

Let me, he says, as though we’re approaching a normal jump. My hands and calves and lower back scream No! For God’s sake, No! and then his ears prick forward, together this time. Trust me, he says, and next thing I know I’m flying over the crest of that oxer.

And then we’re over it. We’re just over it.

I awake with a start. When my eyelids flicker and I realize I’m staring at the ceiling of my bedroom, my breathing and heart rate start to normalize. I lie staring up at the rabbit-shaped crack in the plaster, trying to process what just happened.

This is the first time in more than twenty years that Harry and I have come safely down on the other side of an oxer. It’s our first safe landing since his death.

I begin my early morning ritual in utter silence, pulling my tan breeches on over cotton underwear and long socks, and completing the effect with the T-shirt that Dan wore at the show yesterday and left tossed in a heap in the corner.

I creep down the hallway, pausing just long enough to peek into Jeremy’s room. Dan is in the gliding rocker with Jeremy sprawled across his chest. They’re both out cold.

Hurrah is expecting me—as though he, too, dreamed of his brother.

I enter his stall with his bridle slung over my shoulder. I run the reins over his neck and then stand at his shoulder, holding the bridle’s headband up with one hand and guiding the bit into his mouth with my other.

Then I stop.

With the reins still draped around his neck, I put the bridle back on my shoulder and lead him from his stall. When I say lead, I mean I walk and he follows, his shoulder at my hip, because I have nothing on his head at all, just reins slung around his neck.

I walk into the arena and come to a stop just past the mounting block. When Hurrah stops beside it, I remove the reins from his neck and toss the whole bridle into the corner. It hits with a thud.

I’ve never ridden completely without tack in my entire life. I have a brief moment of misgiving, but then decide that if Pat Parelli can do it, why not me?

The center of the arena is set up with jumps—from one of Joan’s lessons yesterday, I guess, and the guys haven’t taken them down yet to drag. This will make things easier, since by default we’ll have to stick to the rail.

And so I climb the mounting block and slip onto Hurrah’s red-and-white-striped back.

Even though he knows I have no equipment with which to control him, he waits until I ask him to walk. And then he does. And when I ask him to stop, he does that too. And I laugh because I can’t imagine why I’ve ever used tack in all my life, and next thing I know we’re cantering around the perimeter of the arena. I have my eyes closed and my arms stuck out like wings, which is appropriate because we’re flying and there’s not a moment of hesitation, not a hiccup of misunderstanding. Hurrah and I are in at least as much harmony as when he’s got a snaffle in his mouth. Perhaps more.

When I open my eyes, I see a flash of movement through the window that leads to the lounge. Dan has brought Jeremy down from the house. They’re both in pajamas, both sleepy, with tufts of hair sticking up at odd angles.

Dan freezes when he realizes I’ve seen him, because this is usually when I turn bright red, slip from Hurrah’s back, and disappear until I’ve recovered my equilibrium. But since I’m cantering without a saddle and without a bridle and with my arms out to the side like a little kid playing airplane, I burst into laughter instead and press my left calf into Hurrah’s rib cage.

His left ear drops in surprise. Are you sure? he asks. And I bring my right leg back a bit and press harder with my left and say, Yes. He leans into the turn, heading for the triple bar even though I can tell he still doesn’t believe me because his ears are swiveling independently.

Are you sure? he asks again.

Yes, I say emphatically, urging him forward with both legs and my upper body.

His ears perk forward, together this time, and his pace picks up and I feel the joy of flight in his body. We’re nearly there now and I look up at Dan’s astonished face just as Hurrah gathers his strength for the massive push, a hundred thousand pounds of compressed energy exploding forth before—

Silence. As we arc over the fence, I raise my face and close my eyes and hope that Pappa’s out there somewhere, watching.