The Horsewoman (16 page)

TYLER CULLEN MADE
the mistake of engaging her. Not all the other riders had stopped to watch the show. But most of them did.

“You have a problem, Grandma?” Tyler said.

“I saw what you did,” Grandmother said. “Keep your horse away from hers.”

“I’m just getting ready to go into the ring, same as her.”

“No, you’re not,” Grandmother said.

I imagined the judges could hear her by now.

“Andrew in five,”
the announcer said behind us.
“Kyle four, then Becky, then Jennifer, then Tyler.”

“You better run along, Grandma,” Tyler said. “Or you might miss the Early Bird Special.”

Grandmother smiled wickedly.

“Oh, look,” she said. “Tiny Tim got off a good one.”

Now she walked me toward the ring. I leaned down and said, “I don’t need you to fight my fights for me.”

“I know that,” she said. “But sometimes I can’t help myself.”

“Sometimes?” I said.

She looked, I thought, like a kid who’d just egged her enemy’s house.

I expected Sky to be rusty. But once we were out there, she wasn’t. Not even close. It was as if I’d been riding her every weekend. She wasn’t going as fast as I knew she could. It was like she was feeling her way, same as I was feeling my way now that I was riding her again, for real.

We killed it on the first combination, early in the round. No hesitation. Perfect line. Hit the first and the second. And just like that, we were into it.

“Eyes up!”
my grandmother yelled.

I asked Sky to turn it up in the middle of the course. Chipped one rail. It stayed up. Maybe it was our day. One more combination, late, then a rollback. My girl made it look easy. We finished clear. For now, we had the best time in the class.

Today you didn’t wait for the jump-off if you went clean, you went right into it.

“Stay ahead of your horse!”
Grandmother shouted.
“Not the other way around!”

We went clean in the jump-off, too, with a time of 33.8. There was a place near the end, a place where I could have gone inside. But Sky
was
leaning right and I didn’t account for that enough. We were too wide and chose not to take a chance. I’d already asked enough for one day. Went outside instead. Not Sky’s fault. Mine. It pissed me off, even though Grandmother had said the goal today was just to go double clean. I still felt as if I’d chickened out. But it was a solid time, and we still might have a chance to win.

But didn’t. Tyler, going last, finally blew away my time in the jump-off, winning by nearly two full seconds. Jennifer Gates finished second. Sky and I were third.

Even as competitive as my grandmother was, she was thrilled as we walked Sky back to the barn, talking and talking about how she couldn’t believe the horse had come that close to a first-place ribbon after not having shown in months.

“We found out one thing today,” she said. “Somebody’s still got it.”

“Sky
was
pretty great,” I said.

“I meant me,” she said, and laughed.

“I still hate losing to that guy,” I said.

Grandmother said, “You never will again when it matters.”

She put a hand on my shoulder. “He rode like a crazy man today. And you know why? Because even though he’s too mean and stubborn to admit it, he knows how good you are. You’re in his head, not the other way around. And one of these days, kiddo, you’re going to use that to your advantage.”

I turned to look at her, saw her smiling still, squinting into the last of the afternoon sun. She was still walking in her stiff-legged way, going a lot slower than when we’d come up from the barn earlier, on our way to walking the course. But somehow, in the softness of the light, she looked young.

It was in the next moment that I heard her say “Becky?” in a small voice, right before she began to sway from side to side as if a strong wind had suddenly blown across the grounds.

Then her eyes rolled back and she dropped to her knees before pitching headfirst into the dirt.

A COUPLE OF EVENTS
were still going on, so there was a lot of horse traffic between the barns and the rings. I carefully rolled Grandmother onto her back, saw she hadn’t bruised her face, took off my riding jacket, folded it and placed it as a pillow under her head.

I had no idea what had caused her to faint. Even though she was a diabetic, and I’d seen her get weak and shaky before, I’d never seen her faint until now. It was why I was so scared.

A rider I didn’t recognize stopped her horse near where we were between a side ring and the food court and said, “Should I call 911?”

Before I could answer, Grandmother opened her eyes and said, “Don’t even think about it.”

She hadn’t made any move to get up. But she was awake. And sounded pretty alert to me.

She looked up at me and said, “Now everybody in this family has ended up on the ground. I just joined the on-your-ass club.”

“Is there something you want me to do, Miss Becky?” Emilio said.

He was still there, holding on to Sky’s reins.

“Go see if you can find me some fruit or some yogurt or both,” she said to Emilio. “It’s the damn blood sugar again.”

He handed me the reins, then ran toward one of the concession stands.

“That horse needs to get back to the barn,” Grandmother said.

“The horse,” I said, “is in better shape than you are right now.”

“Wanna bet?” she said.

I was watching her get back into character, but when she tried to get up on her own, she made it only a few inches before putting her head back down.

“I need to call for the show doctor,” I said, kneeling next to her.

“You need to do no such thing,” she said.

Now she reached out a hand. I grabbed it and pulled her up into a sitting position.

“This is not going to be a thing,” she said. “We have too much going on. I got so caught up in being a trainer again I forget to take my insulin shot this morning. Simple as that.”

Somehow Emilio was already back, with an apple and some yogurt, and a bottle of water. She ate the yogurt first, then devoured the apple. Knowing her, she had probably forgotten to eat lunch, never a good idea for a diabetic, especially one over the age of seventy.

“All right, then,” she said. “Feeling better already.”

“All right, nothing,” I said. “If you won’t see the doctor here, we’re going home right now and calling Dr. Garry.”

“The hell we are,” she said.

She reached up again with her hand and I got her standing. She still looked a little wobbly to me. But she stayed up.

“We’re not calling anybody,” she said. “This has happened to me before, just not in front of you. We’ve got way more important things to worry about than me having a little dizzy spell.”

Then she grinned and brushed some dirt off her shirt and the front of her breeches. My grandmother, as much of a baseball fan as my dad, said, “Was I safe?”

I reached for her arm. She pulled it back. I handed the reins to Emilio. The three of us continued our walk toward the barn as if nothing had happened.

“We are not going to tell your mother about this,” she said. “And if somebody tells her, we are simply going to tell her that I tripped, got it?”

“Got it,” I said.

“We had another good day,” she said. “That’s what matters here.”

We had to pass Tyler Cullen’s owner’s barn, which was much bigger, much fancier, than our own, with a lot more horses in it. As Emilio and Sky approached, Tyler came walking out, big smile on his face that signaled he already knew about Grandmother.

Shit.

“Down goes Grandma!” he said, and then barked out a laugh that I worried might scare all the horses in the area.

He looked as if he had more to say, but then Grandmother was slowly walking in his direction. Emilio stopped, but Grandmother put up a hand and said, “I got this.”

Grandmother was about five nine. Maybe five ten in her riding boots. Nearly half a foot taller than Tyler Cullen. She got very close to him now.

She was smiling, but not speaking until finally, she said, “One more to put on my list.”

“What list?” he said.

But she was already walking away.

EVERYTHING WAS SETTING
up perfectly for us, coming off a month of successes on both Coronado and Sky. I’d gotten a third-place ribbon on Coronado the previous weekend. Then a second on Sky this afternoon. Solid performances, by the horses and me, as we moved toward the big events in March and April that would determine whether I rode my way onto the Olympic short list.

Tyler Cullen was already on the short list. So was Jennifer Gates. But now I had started to think I had a legit shot at Paris. I could not only feel it, but I
wanted
it. Over the last month I’d started to perform like an elite rider. An awesome feeling. The way Mom had always felt.

We were having a family dinner: Mom and Grandmother and Daniel and me. Mom had been even more quiet than usual tonight, drifting into the background as was her way when Grandmother was holding court. Rarely would all of us have a meal together. Most days Mom left to work out before I got up, sometimes not returning until early afternoon.

Mom had even shocked the hell out of all of us by going on a couple of dinner dates with Gus Bennett, who had a barn not far from ours. It was just another sign that she was feeling better, mostly about herself. One subject practically off limits was her riding. She’d made it clear, a week or so after the accident, that she’d tell us all when she was ready to be in our ring again. I knew she had some kind of timetable in her head. But didn’t ask.

We finished dinner, all of us helping clear the table, and then with the handwashing and drying of Grandmother’s china and cutlery. Our dishwasher, Grandmother said, was “for the cheap stuff.”

“You don’t have any cheap stuff!” I said.

A few minutes later we were in the living room having coffee and chocolate chip cookies baked by Emilio’s wife, talking a little more about the upcoming schedule for Coronado, and for Sky, all the way to what was essentially an Olympic qualifier in Kentucky in May.

All in all, a good, drama-free night.

Then Mom stood up suddenly, as if she was headed up to bed. But instead she walked to the front window, turning so she could face us all at once.

“There’s no good time to say this,” she said. “Or good way to say it. But I wanted to say it to all of you at once, so here goes.”

She took a deep breath that I worried might have rocked her rib cage.

“I want to start riding again,” she said.

“Mom,” I said, “that’s great! Why would there ever be a bad time for you to tell us that?”

She looked at me now and said, “You didn’t let me finish.”

She took another deep breath and said, “I want to start riding Coronado.”

There was a long pause until Grandmother spoke.

“What are you saying, Maggie?”

Grandmother had asked the question, but Mom was still looking directly at me.

“I want my horse back,” she said.

ONCE MAGGIE HAD
made her decision, there was no rationalizing the fallout: what this was going to do to Becky.

I want my horse back.

The words of a spoiled brat just hanging there, everybody staring at her, almost as if they hadn’t heard her correctly.

It was Becky who spoke first.

“Wait,” she said. “You’re saying you want Coronado back
now
? You haven’t even started riding yet.”

“Yes,” Daniel said, “she has.”

“Where has she been riding?”

“At Gus Bennett’s barn,” Daniel said.

Becky’s head whipped in his direction.

“You
knew
about this?” she said. “What the hell, Daniel?”

“I knew she had begun to ride again, with Gus,” he said. “She made me promise not to tell, and I honored her wish. But I did not know about
this.
”

“You told Daniel,” Caroline Atwood said to Maggie. “And you didn’t tell me, either?”

“Daniel found out on his own,” Maggie said. “A week ago, before I started jumping.”

Maggie took a deep breath.

No going back now.

“I looked like an idiot on the horse he had me riding,” she said. “I didn’t want to start here because I didn’t want any of you to see me that way. I was tired of everybody looking at me like I was some kind of invalid. But then one day…I started to feel better. The day of my MRI, I finally told Dr. Garry what I was doing. When he looked at the pictures from all the tests, he basically told me it was my life.”

Maggie turned to Becky.

“Honey,” she said. “I am so sorry. I know it’s not just my life. It’s yours, too.”

“No shit,” I said.

“I want you to understand my decision.”

“You chose your horse over me,” Becky said. She gave a sarcastic thumbs-up. “Got it.”

“That’s not fair. You know how long this has been my dream,” Maggie said.

She looked at Becky and saw both the hurt and anger on her face.

“What about my dreams?” Becky said, standing. “They don’t matter?”

“So what you’re telling me,” she continued, “is that you plan to go from Gus Bennett’s ring all the way to a five-star Grand Prix, and then straight to Paris? I get off, you get on, is that it?”

She looked at her mother, face red, eyes red.

“Should we pass an effing baton?” she said.

“Honey,” Maggie said, “it’s a lot more complicated than that. I never dreamt I’d feel this good—this
ready
—this soon. But I finally decided that if I was going to try, it had to be now. And I mean, like,
right now.
”

“I’m glad you were able to work this out in your head, Mom, no kidding,” Becky said. “Not only did you set the debate, nobody else got to join it.” She nodded. “Very cool.”

Maggie was breathing so hard, more deep breaths in and out, that her ribs were starting to feel sore all over again.

You’ve come this far.

No turning back now.

“I was going to wait another week,” Maggie said. “Just to be sure that
I
was sure. But then at dinner you all got so excited talking about the calendar, and what’s coming up, and what’s at stake, and I decided my waiting any longer wasn’t fair to anybody.”

“Now we’re talking
fair
?” Becky said. “To who?”

“You think me getting thrown from the horse was fair?” Maggie said.

Then she paused and said, “The Olympics was my dream first.”

Maggie was waiting for her mom to weigh in. Or Daniel. Or both. But this was between Maggie and her daughter. The room crackled with silent tension. And the intensity of an electric storm.

“This is a lot to process,” Maggie said. “Maybe we all need to sleep on it and talk in the morning.”

“Coronado is your horse, Mom,” Becky said. “You can do what you want with him. Next time, maybe think about giving me a heads-up.”

Becky walked over to the front door, opened it, started out, stopped, stepped back inside.

“Have at it,” she said to Maggie, and left.