The Horsewoman (17 page)

BECKY HAD GONE
to Coral Gables for a couple of days to visit her old college roommate. According to Maggie and Caroline, they had found a note from Becky on the kitchen table. She needed a break and would be back on Wednesday to ride Sky. Until then, she wrote,
Don’t miss me too much.

Now it was Tuesday morning. Day two of Daniel being back in the ring with Maggie Atwood.

“Listen,” Maggie said to him now. “I need to say this while Becky isn’t around. We’re all going to have to get used to the new normal.”

Normal?
Daniel thought.
This family?

“Fair enough,” he said.

“Don’t sound so enthusiastic,” Maggie said.

Maybe she’d always been this edgy, and he had forgotten. Today was starting out as awkwardly between them as yesterday had when Maggie had just been waiting for him in the ring, she and Emilio having already saddled Coronado. No request that Daniel continue to train her beyond “Let’s do this,” and they went right to work.

But
this,
Daniel knew, was about more than the horses and the women in this family riding them. So much more. Daniel, for all his misgivings and anger about the way she had pulled the rug—the horse, really—out from underneath her daughter, felt he owed her his best efforts.

He watched her do small jumps now, after having just trotted the horse the day before. She looked stiff in the saddle, as if afraid to even change her position slightly.

“You need to watch your posture, Maggie,” he called out to her. “Shoulders back more, where they used to be.”

“Small problem, Daniel,” she yelled back to him. “A lot of things aren’t
where
they used to be. You may have heard, some of my furniture got rearranged.”

Tread carefully,
he told himself.

She is still your boss.

“I told myself it would be like riding a bike,” she said. “Guess what? It’s not. My mind isn’t fully connecting with my body.”

“I’d like to see you press down harder into the stirrups,” he said. “You’re standing up more than you used to.”

“I
know,
” she said.

The edge again, the words brittle.

He’d set the rail at three feet, a height girls in the Hunters ring could clear with ease. Her distance was fine on the first jump she’d had on Coronado in a long time. The horse’s form was perfect. Daniel closed his eyes briefly and tried to imagine her executing the same kind of jump at 1.6 meter in the International Arena.

Could not.

Maggie circled back around. Jumped the big horse again. As she landed him Daniel could see her wince, revealing the strain on her face, the tension in her whole body.

“Better,” he said.

“Be honest, please,” Maggie said, slowing the horse and coming in his direction.

“I have never been a good liar,” he said. “You should know that by now.”

Except when I need to be, especially with your daughter.

She said, “Do you honestly believe I can ride this horse in a Grand Prix in two weeks?”

He believed she
would
jump in that ring two weeks from now. But she was asking him how well he thought she would do.

“If you are going to be ready,” he answered, “you need to ride as much as your body can stand. So even though you are finished with Coronado for today, I would now like you to ride Sky.”

“Nope,” she said. “Not happening. Not riding Becky’s horse.”

“She rode yours,” Daniel said.

“This is different,” she said.

“I’m not asking you to jump her if you’d rather not,” Daniel said. “She needs a light workout, perhaps a half hour, tops. Or less.”

She
was
the boss.

Finally, Maggie gave in.

Daniel went to the barn to get Sky ready, brought her back out, helped Maggie up. Her left leg went into the stirrup first, but as she swung her right leg over and settled herself into the saddle, Daniel heard her exhale sharply in pain.

“Enjoy the ride you are about to have,” Daniel said, grinning. “I know that you will.”

“Pretty sure of yourself.”

“With this horse?” he said. “Yes. Very sure.”

Right away Daniel could see Maggie’s face light up with joy, as if in bright colors. Could see her posture suddenly improve and her attitude along with it. Saw her smiling for the first time in two days, as if abandoning for the moment she was not in competition with herself, and her own ambition, and expectations. Saw her effortlessly picking up speed. The joy Becky regained from riding Sky again full time had now passed to her mother.

“I’m going to jump her,” Maggie called out to him from the other end of the ring.

She looked over at Daniel.

“You knew, didn’t you?” she said.

He smiled and nodded.

After about ten minutes, she held up a finger. One more.

“Go for it,” Daniel said.

“This is why I came back!” Maggie yelled from the far end of the ring. “This horse makes you feel like you’re floating!”

As Daniel watched Maggie and Sky float one last time, landing the jump perfectly, he heard the sound of a slow, rhythmic clapping.

Becky was standing at the barn.

I STOPPED CLAPPING
when I saw them both turn. Mom looked like a kid who’d been caught doing something wrong.

“Lucky I came back early,” I said. “Or by tomorrow I might have no horse to ride.”

I watched Daniel quickly help Mom down. She came walking over to where I was standing.

“Daniel asked me to ride her,” she said, turning her back to him.

Daniel started walking Sky back to the barn, dropping the reins, palms down toward me in a calming gesture.

“Slight change of plans,” I said. “Turns out I didn’t miss college as much as I thought I did. I had to find out the hard way that you can only watch so many seasons of
Grey’s Anatomy
.”

“That seemed like pretty sarcastic applause right there,” Mom said.

“What did you expect?” I said. “I sit in traffic on the turnpike for two hours then find you on my horse. I thought this was all about you being on
your
horse?”

Just Mom and me in the ring now. How many rounds had we gone like this? Hundreds? A thousand? But today’s conflict was a totally different vibe.

All I wanted to do right now was walk away from her and all the weirdness between us and change into my riding clothes and ride my own damn horse.

Except that today Mom didn’t just have her own horse. She had my horse, too.

“We really need to talk,” she said.

“Mom,” I said, “
you
might need to. I don’t. Maybe it’s a mom thing to believe that heart-to-heart chats fix everything except a broken leg. That’s not me.”

“Five minutes,” she said. “To clear the air.”

“The air’s fine, Mom,” I said. “It’s the situation that kind of sucks.”

“Five minutes, then,” she said. “Up on the porch. We always did our best talking there.”

That actually made me smile.

“Well, yeah,” I said. “But as I recall, what I mostly did was listen.”

I followed her up the hill to where the two of us had sat for so many talks. About Dad sometimes. Or about her and Dad, long after they’d gotten divorced. Or her wanting to know about a boy I’d just broken up with. Or was dating. Or a class I was failing. Or how I wasn’t working hard enough at my riding.

I thought:
Now I’m working my ass off on my riding and it’s doing me a hell of a lot of good.

“Seriously, Mom?” I said. “You’ve made your decision. I accept it. Why are we here?”

“Because we need to handle being competitors going forward, that’s why,” she said, “even being from the same family and the same damn barn and being bossed all over the place by Caroline Atwood.”

“We’re only competing against each other if we enter the same events,” I said. “This shit is difficult enough already and I’m not even up on my horse yet.”

“But we’ve competed against each other in the past,” she said.

“Things were a little different then,” I said.

I noticed her absently rubbing her right knee. She was still in a lot of pain.

“You should ride in all the big events coming up, same as me,” she said now. “You’re ready for them.”

“Not your call, Mom,” I said.

“You’re right,” she said. “I’ve put everybody in a tough spot, but not by choice.”

“There’re always choices,” I said.

“There was a lot of avoidance the other night,” she said. “And that just ain’t gonna cut it, not around here.”

“Okay then,” I said. “
Okay.
I heard what you had to say. You heard what I had to say. Now I really am gonna go change and ride my horse.”

“Your horse is what I most wanted to talk to you about,” she said.

“Now you’re an expert on Sky?” I said.

“No,” Mom said. “But I’m still enough of a horsewoman to know you should try to ride her to the Olympics.”

WELL,
I THOUGHT,
she’s got my attention now
.

“You got that after one session in the ring?” I said. “Pro tip, Mom? You’re the one with the Olympic horse, not me.”

“Maybe not now,” Maggie said. “But in a few months, I’m convinced Sky can be, too.”

“You’re wrong,” I said.

“No, I’m not.”

“Mom,” I said. “I love you. I love Sky to death. But you really are talking some major shit here.”

“No, I’m not,”
she said again, with more force this time. “You’re the rider who’s going to scare me the most once I’m back out there.
You.
”

“It’s nice that you think so,” I said.

“Tell you what,” she said. “Why don’t we go down the hill and ask Daniel?”

Maggie got out of her chair, looking the way Grandmother did sometimes when she’d been sitting awhile, flexed her right knee a couple of times, walked stiffly down the porch steps.

And she’s going to ride in a five-star Grand Prix in two weeks?

But I followed her through the double doors of the barn.

“We may have some breaking news here,” she said to Daniel, who was talking on his phone.

“I need to call you back,” he said, then ended the call to listen to Maggie’s theory on Sky and the Olympics.

Daniel looked at me.

“What do you say about this?” he said.

“You first,” I said.

“Your mother is absolutely right,” he said.

“Ha!” Mom said. “There you have it.”

“Wait,” Daniel said. “I have news of my own I want you both to hear. I was about to come up the hill and tell you.”

Daniel was never easy to read, but whatever was on his mind was serious business.

“I have been doing a lot of thinking since the other night,” he said. “And once Becky was back, I was going to wait a few days. But there is no longer any point in waiting.”

He turned to Mom then.

“You are going to need to find another trainer,” Daniel said.

“
Excuse
me?” Mom said. She tilted her head, and curiously raised an eyebrow. “I’m sorry, but have you suddenly inherited your own barn, Daniel?”

“I’m the one who is sorry,” he said. “But I only want to train Becky.”

“No,” Mom said.

STEVE GORTON AND
Tyler Cullen were seated at Gorton’s table in the tent at the International Arena. Before buying the top-tier table for the season, Gorton had checked its location, a little closer to the ring than Bloomberg’s table and the one that belonged to Bill Gates.

It was a few minutes after twelve. The breakfast crowd had already cleared out. The waitstaff was setting up for lunch, which would be followed by some afternoon event in the arena. Gorton couldn’t have said what kind if somebody stuck a gun in his ear.

“Wait,” Cullen said. “Nobody told you that Maggie was back in the old saddle?”

“No one did,” Gorton said. “You say it just happened yesterday?”

Cullen nodded.

“How did you find out so quickly?”

“I make it my business to know,” Cullen grinned and said, “but maybe the owner of the horse is the last to know.”

God,
Gorton thought,
he is a cocky little bastard.
But maybe that’s what made him such a good rider. He’d invested in a few movies and been around enough stars to know how much shit directors and studios were willing to put up with from them.

“This might actually help you get all three of those women out of your life,” Cullen said.

“Why is that?”

“Because Maggie has no shot at winning on that horse, that’s why,” Cullen said.

Gorton sipped his Bloody Mary. Cullen had coffee in front of him. He was in his riding clothes, having told Gorton he was only schooling today—whatever the hell that meant—and due back to his ring in a few minutes.

“You’re full of shit,” Gorton said. “You don’t know she can’t win.”

“Yeah, boss,” Cullen said, “as a matter of fact I do. Maybe she’s back in form by the fall, if she’s lucky and doesn’t break her ass again. But not before. Nobody comes back this fast. Don’t ask me. Ask anybody. Trust me: The rider you thought you wanted in the first place isn’t the rider you want now.”

“Is that so?” Gorton said.

Cullen nodded. “You want to hear something funny?”

“Yeah, Cullen,” Gorton said. “You can probably see how much I want you to amuse the living shit out of me.”

“Not funny, actually,” Cullen said. “More ironic. Because as much as it pains me to admit it, the kid is the better rider.”

“Son of a bitch!”
Gorton said, loud enough to turn heads at nearby tables. “I’d rather lose without that kid than win with her.”

He finished his Bloody Mary.

“I could be boxed in here,” he said. “And I effing hate being boxed in.”

“Yeah,” Cullen said. The smug grin again. “It’s not like you’re Steve Gorton or anything.”

“Let me ask you something,” Gorton said. “Say I
can
figure this out and get rid of them both once and for all and get you on the horse without looking like I threw brave little Maggie under the bus, what about the horse you’re on now, and your owner, what’s-his-name?”

“You give me a shot at Coronado,” Cullen said, “and let me worry about the rest of it.”

“You’d sell him out?”

“I’d sell my mother out,” Cullen said.

Gorton said, “If everything else does turn to shit, and I’m with one or the other, we still need a Plan B.”

“Still working on it,” Cullen said.

“Work harder,” Gorton said.

“I hear you.”

“You better,” Gorton said. “You’ve got a lot riding on this, too. So to speak.”

“Hear that,” Cullen said. “Some money might have to change hands.”

Gorton smiled. “Now we’re talking about my sport,” he said.

Cullen stood up.

“Even you sometimes forget that you’re the one who tells people how this shit is going to go,” Tyler Cullen said. “Not the other way around.”

When he was gone, Gorton picked up his phone, punched in a number, waited, drumming the fingers of his free hand on the table.

“I need to see you,” he snapped. “Now.”

“What about?”

“I thought I explained to you before that I don’t like surprises,” he said.

“Where are you?”

“At my table.”

He put the phone back down.

He was working on his second Bloody, reading through some text messages, when he heard Caroline Atwood say, “What was so important that it couldn’t wait?”

Then he told her how it was going to go.

“You wouldn’t,” she said when he finished.

“Watch me,” Gorton said.