Flying Changes (9 page)

“Not on my end, it didn’t,” he says, sounding exasperated. “She stopped calling about a week ago, and now she won’t talk to me at all. I don’t know what the heck is going on.”

“I’ll talk to her.”

“No!” he says loudly.

I frown, thinking I should probably be offended.

“I’m sorry,” he continues quickly, picking up on my feelings. “I didn’t mean to be rude, but please don’t. I’d really rather deal with this myself.”

Huh. All right then. We say our goodbyes.

“Where did she go?” I ask Mutti after I hang up.

“The stable.”

I cross the kitchen and grab my jacket from the hook.

“Leave her alone,” says Mutti. “Come. Eat.”

I pause.

Mutti points a finger at my chair. “Come. Eat,” she repeats. “There’s nothing you can do.”

I hesitate, watching as she spoons food onto the plates. Then I hang my jacket back up and join her at the table.

“You must let them work it out themselves,” she says, leaning over and pouring me a glass of wine. “Anything you do will seem like interference. Do you remember what happened when you were a teenager and I tried to help smooth things over with Dan?”

Boy, do I ever. If Mutti hadn’t loved Dan and hated Roger, I probably would have married Dan in the first place. I lift my wineglass and take a deep slurp.

“Besides, the semester ends soon,” Mutti continues, spreading her napkin across her lap. She rips a pita apart and uses it to scoop up hummus. “Perhaps they’ll sort things out when he returns for the summer.”

“Perhaps,” I say miserably.

Despite my initial misgivings about their relationship, Luis has been a wonderful influence. I should have known it was too good to last.

At eleven o’clock, Mutti rises from the table, takes Eva’s dish to the counter, and puts plastic wrap over it. Harriet follows hopefully, but after Mutti puts the plate in the fridge, she sighs and collapses to the floor. Fortunately, her legs are short and she doesn’t have far to fall.

Mutti turns to me and rubs her hands in front of her. “Well, I’m turning in. And so should that girl of yours. It’s a school night.”

I’m still sitting at the table, working on my second glass of wine. “I’m headed out in a minute. I’ll send her in. Good night, Mutti.”

“Good night,
Schatzlein.
”

When she disappears into the hallway, Harriet rises immediately and follows.

“Good night, Harriet,” I call out as she scrabbles around the corner. I stare after my fickle dog, listening as her toenails click up the staircase. I sigh, put my wineglass in the dishwasher, and head out to the stable.

When I first started sleeping there, Harriet automatically came with me. After a month or so, she started spending the occasional night with Mutti. Now she spends virtually every night in my mother’s room. I like
to think she’s only making a statement about being forced to take a cold, dark walk last thing at night. But still, she’s my dog, and dogs are supposed to be faithful.

I crunch my way toward the stable, which looms like a sleeping giant at the bottom of the long graveled drive. I stick my hands deep in my pockets and hurry, puffing like a steam engine.

When I get there, I slip inside and follow the only light in the building.

Eva has Flicka, her two-year-old Arabian filly, in the cross-ties. Flicka’s long winter coat is spotless, a glossy jet black, the result of regular and thorough grooming. Eva is finishing up, pulling Flicka’s long tail off to the side, catching up a section with the brush, running through it, and then letting it fall. I see a flash of metal handle, and lean forward, squinting.

Eva is using my hairbrush—my forty-dollar, ionically charged hairbrush—to detangle her horse’s tail.

“Lean further back, Jenna. Further. Good. But don’t stick your feet out in front of you,” I say, walking a small circle in the center of the arena as my student thunders around the perimeter on Tazz, who is quite possibly the most patient school horse ever put on this earth.

Jenna is a middle-aged mom who took up riding again after a twenty-year lull, like I did. Perhaps because of this coincidence, I feel an unusual affinity toward her. She is cantering for the first time since she was nineteen, and is scared out of her wits, holding on to the pommel and leaning so that her center of gravity is in her upper body instead of her seat. This causes her to bounce out of the saddle with each stride and then reunite with it so violently it’s painful to watch.

“Okay, good, now bring him back to a posting trot,” I say, for the sake of both Tazz’s spine and Jenna’s rear. “Good. Only sit a beat, because you’re on the wrong diagonal…One beat, Jenna. Not two. Try again…Good. Now you’ve got it. Cross at
B
and change directions…Sit one beat right in the center. Good. And again, at
E.
”

Her riding is more than rusty, by which I mean that I don’t think the hiatus is responsible for the way she rides. I believe this is probably the level she was riding at before she quit, and that’s fine with me. When we hired Joan, I made a conscious decision to take the students who were doing this for pleasure and to leave the competition-minded ones for her.

My cell phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out and flick it open, scanning the glowing blue display. It’s Mutti, calling from the house.

“Jenna, keep doing figure eights. Sit one beat right in the center when you change directions. I’ll be right with you.” I bring the phone to my ear. “Hi, Mutti. What’s up?”

“Annemarie, come back to the house. I need to speak to you right away.”

“I can’t. I’m in the middle of a lesson.”

“Annemarie, please. This is important.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“I will tell you when you get here.”

“Mutti, for God’s sake—just tell me. Did something happen? Is Eva all right?”

A heavy sigh, followed by a pause. “Yes and no. They caught her smoking marijuana at school. The police are there now. You need to go right away.”

I gasp and cover my mouth with my hand.

Jenna does a double take as she passes at a trot.

“I’ll be right there,” I say, my voice and hands shaking. I snap the phone shut and stand staring at the spiffy new Surefoot rubber granule footing that covers the floor of the arena. Black-and-white checks invade my peripheral vision. Eventually my eyes flutter shut.

“Annemarie? Are you okay?”

Jenna’s voice snaps me out of my stupor. I open my eyes and find myself looking at Tazz’s dapple gray chest. Jenna stares down at me, the edges of her eyes creased with concern.

My response is to burst into tears.

After Jenna assures me that she is perfectly capable of removing Tazz’s tack and putting him back in his stall, I rush to the house to change. I have no idea whether my appearance is likely to influence the police and their ultimate decisions, but I would rather not show up at the school in muck boots and breeches smeared with green saliva.

I stumble down the stairs in my unfamiliar high heels, dragging a brush through my hair. It’s full of Flicka’s long black tail hair—damn it, Eva! There are how many grooming kits in the stable and you had to use
my
hairbrush? I make a mental note to check myself in the rearview mirror once I get in the car, to make sure I haven’t given myself black extensions.

As I flee through the kitchen, struggling to tuck my pressed white blouse into my tweed skirt, Mutti and I exchange rushed words, the gist of which is that while I’m at the school trying to beg, wheedle, or otherwise persuade the police not to press charges against Eva, Mutti will try to scare up Joan to take over the rest of the day’s lessons; or, failing that, she’ll stay at the stable herself and come up with any excuse other than the truth to explain my absence as students arrive.

The school is one of those uninspired designs from the sixties; functional and plain, with little else to distinguish itself. But at least it doesn’t have a slew of
trailers out back, as so many do. It does, however, have three police cruisers parked in front. When I see them lined up against the curb, I feel physically ill.

The hollow
tap-tap-tap
of my heels on the linoleum floor sounds almost otherworldly, and it’s not just the misplaced sound of authority—I’m trying to remember the last time I wore heels. I have an uneasy feeling it was at Pappa’s funeral, and for some reason I can’t quite fathom, this makes me miss Dan so fiercely that tears spring to my eyes.

Classes are in session. Each of the wooden doors has a single eye-level window, and as I pass, I see teachers gesticulating, expounding, pontificating. They are fresh and enthusiastic, and surprisingly young. It reminds me of just how much depends on perspective.

My heart quickens as I approach the office. The secretary’s area is exposed to the hallway by windows, and each of the wooden chairs is filled by either a dour, blank-faced teenager or pale, grim-faced parent. Three uniformed officers lean against the walls.

Eva is sitting at the end of a row of chairs. When I enter, she looks up and then immediately away, her face drained of blood.

“Eric! Get up and give the lady a seat!” snaps a man with a crimson face. His eyes are bloodshot. A vein pulses so violently at his temple it looks like he’s about to keel over from an aneurysm.

His son, a bone-thin teenager with short dark hair and a ring through his eyebrow, is sitting beside Eva. He shoots me a hateful look and then slides slowly off his chair. As he passes me to take a place against the wall, I have to twist sideways to keep our shoulders from banging. His heavy gray jacket smells earthy and
sweet—I take a deep breath, memorizing the smell in case I ever need to recognize it again.

I sit beside Eva, who shrinks away. I turn and stare at her, willing her to meet my gaze. But she doesn’t. She stares studiously at the feet of the people sitting opposite. Only her crooked brow betrays her fear.

The principal’s solid wooden door opens, and a pimply boy in a camouflage jacket spews forth, propelled by the flat of his father’s hand. The man’s jaw grinds back and forth, and his eyes burn with anger. The mother follows a moment later, honking into a tissue.

A weary-looking woman appears in the doorway. “Mr. Hamilton, Eric,” she says, reading off a piece of paper.

The bone-thin boy and his father disappear into the office. There’s an uncomfortable settling in the ensuing silence. Kids steal fearful glances at their parents, who shift uncomfortably in their seats.

Fifteen minutes tick interminably by before the office door opens again. This time the father exits first, striding out and through the door without so much as a backward glance at his son, who follows with an amused, self-satisfied look. He throws Eva a glance as he passes, lifting the corner of his mouth into a smirk.

I turn so quickly something snaps in my neck. Eva is smiling coyly up at him, watching through the windows as he recedes down the hall.

Everything is entirely clear to me now.

“Mrs. Zimmer, Eva,” says the woman in the doorway. She pokes at a wisp of loose hair, sighs, and slips back into the room to let us pass.

We don’t exchange a single word in the car on the way home. I mean, really—what is there to say? I’m so disappointed and overwrought I’d probably just end up crying.

In a way, Eva was lucky. She and the others were caught smoking pot in the forested area behind the school, but since no drugs were found in Eva’s locker, she’s not being charged with anything. She has, however, been expelled. The school has a zero tolerance policy, and—despite my impassioned entreaties—apparently zero tolerance means exactly that. So here she is, expelled from two schools in as many years.

As we pull into our drive, I catch sight of Joan’s car in the parking lot by the stable. Thank God for that—at least Eva hasn’t also cost us an afternoon’s revenue.

I see the kitchen curtain fall, and the door opens before we reach it. Mutti stands aside as I enter. Eva follows me—slinking, disgraced, and yet somehow radiating anger, as if this were someone else’s fault.

“What happened? What’s going on?” cries Mutti, closing the door and hovering.

I throw my purse on the table. It slides across and onto the floor, scattering its contents everywhere. A coin skids across the linoleum, spinning. I stand utterly still, blinking at it. Then I turn to Eva.

“Give me your backpack,” I say quietly.

“What?” she says. Her eyes widen. She takes a step backward.

“Give it to me.”

Her fingers tighten around its pink vinyl strap. I lunge forward and rip it from her shoulder.

“Mom! Stop it! Give it back!” she screams.

I whirl around—first this way, then that—switching
direction as necessary to avoid Eva, who leaps around me, snatching at it.

I clutch the backpack to my chest, fumbling with the zippers that meet in the middle, still doing my dervish dance.

“Mom!” Eva is desperate, shrieking. “Give it back! You can’t do that!”

One side unzips and I tear the other open, removing most of a fingernail in the process. Then I dump its contents, which hit the floor with a splat—three textbooks that land with their pages mashed; a binder that explodes, sending lined paper and colored class schedules flying; a hairbrush, a compact, a plastic tampon container—and finally, a foil-wrapped condom.

All motion ceases. In the background, a single drop of water hits the bottom of the sink.

I lift my face to Eva’s.

She stares at me, her rib cage heaving, her face growing redder and redder. “I hate you!” she screams. She turns and runs from the room.

“Eva! Get back here!” My voice is raw, catching in my throat. “Eva!”

She stomps up the stairs. A door slams.

I turn to Mutti. She is pale, staring at the condom on the floor with the fingers of one hand pressed to her throat and her other arm wrapped around her chest. She is trembling.

Mutti and I are still on our hands and knees, collecting the things from Eva’s backpack and my purse, when we hear gravel crunching under tires. We look up at the same moment, locking eyes.

Above us, a door opens, and Eva’s footsteps thump down the stairs. She crosses the floor between us and grabs her jacket.

“Eva! Don’t you dare leave! Eva!” I shout, lunging for her ankle. “Where do you think you’re—”

The door bangs shut behind her. A car door slams, a motor guns, and then there is silence.

I am left on my knees in the middle of the kitchen floor, one hand reaching for my absent daughter, the other perched on a condom’s foil packaging.

After a stunned pause, I open my mouth and wail, a low moan that rises and ripens into a howl.

There’s the muffled thumping of knees on floor, and a moment later Mutti wraps her arms around me from above.

Mutti installs me in one of the deep winged chairs in the living room, hands me a Jägermeister, and kneels down to light a fire. Harriet sits beside her, sniffing suspiciously.

I watch Mutti’s slim back as she fusses with the kindling, alternately staunching my leaky nose with the edge of my sleeve and sipping my drink. I’m not all that fond of Jägermeister anymore—I’ve become more of a chardonnay girl—but when Mutti hands me a glass, it’s a friendly gesture. At this point, I’m just grateful for its effect. As its warmth spreads through me, I pull my knees up onto the chair and allow myself to sink into its velvety embrace.

When the fire is crackling and licking its lazy way up the logs, Mutti puts the poker on the hearth, wipes her hands, and rises. Then she takes a seat in the chair op
posite me. Harriet follows, slumping down on Mutti’s feet. I stare into her deep brown eyes, beaming guilt signals, hoping she’ll come to me, but Harriet is oblivious. She heaves a sigh and closes her eyes, shifting to a more comfortable position.

“Well, it could be worse,” says Mutti, reaching for her glass.

“How?”

“She wasn’t arrested.”

“Well, yes,” I sigh.

“And at least she’s using protection.”

“Mutti!”

“Would you prefer she weren’t?”

“I’d prefer she weren’t doing it at all!”

“Well, of course.”

“She’s probably doing it at this very moment,” I say miserably.

“She can’t have been doing it for long.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because this Eric is a new development. I heard her talking quite happily to Luis last week. And we know she wasn’t sleeping with Luis because he lives in Henniker.”

“Oh, great. So she’s been seeing this Eric creep for a week and she’s already sleeping with him?”

Mutti stares at me, tapping her lips with her finger.

“What?” I say irritably.

“Are you going to tell Roger?”

“About what? The pot or the condoms?”

“Yes,” she says simply.

I drain my glass in a single gulp.

Mutti rises instantly and refills it from a cut glass decanter.

“I can’t tell him,” I say. “If I tell him, he’ll want her to come live with him.”

“And is that such a bad idea?” she says, topping up her own glass before heading back to the side table.

“Yes! It’s a horrible idea.”

“Why?”

“Because I can’t stand the thought of her living away from me. It’s the whole reason I never called Nathalie Jenkins back.”

Mutti freezes, the decanter suspended an inch above the table’s surface. “What?”

I stare at her, but what can I do? The words are already out there.

“What did you just say?” Mutti says.

I look guiltily into the fire.

“Did you just say Nathalie Jenkins called you?” Mutti sets the decanter down and turns so she’s staring at me full on. She puts both hands on her hips. “Annemarie!”

“What?” I say.

“Why? What was she calling about?”

I sigh and turn back to her. “About Eva potentially coming to train with her. She watched Eva ride in Canterbury and was impressed. She wanted her to come try out.”