Mercury (15 page)

W
ITH YOU UNAVAILABLE IN
one way and Claudia in another, I turned increasingly to Hilary. We each had something the other wanted. She knew about Mercury's past. I knew about Jack's. In the weeks since she'd confided their relationship, I had begun to get used to the idea. The week before Christmas, we met at the reservoir to go for a walk. It was a cold, clear afternoon, a half moon already rising over the straggly oaks. We talked about holiday plans. She had decided not to go to Ontario, flights were so expensive, and would spend Christmas here with Jack. Then I brought the conversation around to Mercury. Did she know how Michael had come to own him?

“Only bits and pieces,” she said as a golden retriever loped past. “He was working at a stable in Kentucky when he won a mare in a bet. He started breeding her. Mercury was the second foal. By the time he was a year old, Michael was obsessed with him. This was the horse he would ride to victory. Then something bad happened—I don't know what—and he moved back to Ontario.”

She stepped squarely on a frozen puddle. “For a while it seemed like a good move. He worked hard; his boss appreciated him. But last winter he became convinced that Mercury was in danger.”

“Why would he think that?” I pictured the black glove lying on the ground.

She made an exasperated sound. “Why would Michael think anything? He got it into his head that someone was riding Mercury secretly. He started spending all his time at the stables, sleeping in Mercury's stall. He even went so far as to make a will and take out life insurance, two things I never would have expected of my brother. My parents were beside themselves. All he could talk about was Mercury and the Spruce Meadows derby, this big show in Alberta. They gave up on him, but I never did. I hate that he's dead, and I hate that nothing came of his dreams.”

His dreams aren't over, I wanted to say; I can take Mercury to Spruce Meadows. But she was pointing at the sky. Four mallards were flying across the half moon. “Would you like to come to dinner on Christmas Eve?” I asked.

S
OMEHOW, DESPITE YOUR MOTHER'S
absence, we got through Christmas. Then we came home from the Frog Pond, and you told me Claudia had left a message. At first all I heard was her anger. Only when I pressed repeat did I grasp that there'd been a second break-in. I walked back to the kitchen, counting my steps. When we'd had our fight and you'd blamed me for the things you'd promised never to blame me for, I headed for the door. I needed to see Mercury. You stepped forward, your face furious, blocking my path. Finally I had reached you.

How cheerful you were that evening with Merrie and her daughters. Meanwhile I looked at my watch twenty times an hour, wishing them gone. I had given you your chance; I had tried to tell you about Mercury. Now what I wanted was for you to go back to being oblivious. I did the dishes, hoping you'd
fall asleep. But upstairs you were still awake. We made angry love, and afterward my dreams were full of violence. A stranger wrapped his hands around my neck. Ice cracked beneath my feet. Flames leaped from doors and windows. The next morning, even before I opened my eyes, I knew I was sick.

Hours passed like a clap of the hands. It was eleven; it was four; it was dark, and the air smelled of fried onions. By the next day, as you and Trina came and went, offering drinks and magazines, my head had cleared. I kept thinking about Michael: his fear that someone else was riding Mercury, his falling at a jump, an accident that was perhaps not an accident. Had someone spooked Mercury? Or rigged the jump? Perhaps that someone had followed Mercury to Windy Hill and was now breaking in during major holidays? Even in my feverish state I recognized an insane hypothesis, but everything about Mercury was insane: his intelligence, his strength, his skill. How could I protect him?

I remember when Edward had that operation that involved cauterizing parts of his brain, you showed Marcus a picture of the brain in a medical textbook. “It's like a maze,” he said. “Not really,” you said, “because people are lost in a maze. More like a busy city with lots of streets and lots of people dashing around, most of them knowing where they're going.” Now, as if a town crier were running through the streets of my brain, the question came to me in headlines: H
OW
C
AN
I P
ROTECT
H
IM
?

On the fourth day my fever was gone. Standing in the shower, I felt I had passed through some disaster. On the other side everything was clear. I phoned Helen, and she answered as if people often called at 7:00 a.m. I said I wanted to make sure Claudia hadn't left yet. “Please don't tell her I'm coming,” I added.

“You girls,” she said.

After days lying in bed, just to step outside made me happy. As I scraped the windows of my car, I took big gulps of the frigid air. Driving to Helen and Claudia's, I kept to the speed limit and stopped neatly at every intersection as if that could make up for my bad behavior. My footsteps were the first leading to their front door. The new snow squeaked underfoot.

“Oh, it's you,” said Claudia.

Even at this early hour her face was glowing. How could Rick not notice? She led me not to her part of the house but to the living room, where only six weeks before we had celebrated Thanksgiving. Now she chose an upright wooden chair. I chose another. She didn't turn on the light, and I could just make out her expression of faint boredom. She was interviewing me for a job, a place in her affections, and she didn't expect me to get it. But as soon as I spoke—I don't know how to tell you how sorry I am—her boredom vanished.

“You don't know?” she said scornfully. “I'm the one who doesn't know anything.”

In Ann Arbor we used to play a version of truth or dare. How badly could we behave without destroying our friendship? Would we still be friends if one of us burned down a bank, or dated a forty-year-old, or became a Republican, or ate horsemeat, or cheated on an exam? Later, sharing an apartment, we had more serious arguments. She thought the company I worked for did shady deals. I thought she sometimes gave false hope to pet owners. But all these ruptures were minor compared to her fury now. How could I have treated her this way?

I had planned to beg for forgiveness, but I couldn't help fighting back. “You have a grudge against Mercury,” I said.

She flung out her hands. “Viv, you're crazy. I don't have a grudge against Mercury. He's Hilary's horse, she pays his fees,
end of story.” Then she listed my mistakes. I'd been late for lessons. I hadn't noticed a horse was lame. I'd failed to check a delivery. Samson's water bucket was frozen.

“I'm sorry,” I said again. Stealthily I tried to invoke her pregnancy. “You seemed so on edge, I didn't want to upset you.”

At last she gave a small groan, not so much accepting my apologies as worn down. “If you're going to keep working at the stables,” she said, “you have to pay attention to all the horses.”

From my first week at Windy Hill, we had run the stables as equals. Now I heard the threat; we were equals only by her choice. I promised everything she wanted. Then I asked humbly about the break-in. She told me the details: the ladder, the hayloft.

“The police said our biggest worry is arson,” she said. “If someone drops a cigarette, the barn would catch fire in a second.”

She stood up; my interview was over. I hadn't gotten the job, but I hadn't been rejected outright. As I walked back to the car, the snow was silent. I understood Claudia's anger. What I didn't understand was how she, who could find a good word to say about the most spavined, swaybacked, knock-kneed, badly trained horse, could be immune to Mercury. Not just immune, but hostile.

At the stables, on all sides, I saw the effects of my absence. Mercury turned his back on me. Only after I had brought him some alfalfa hay and talked to him for ten minutes did he nudge my shoulder. I fetched a notebook and began to check the horses one by one, making a list of what needed to be done. By the time Matheus and Felipe arrived, I had turned the page.

“The police were here again,” Matheus said. Beneath his woolen hat his face was dark with stubble.

“Someone broke in through the hayloft. Did you see anything?”

“Not me, not Felipe. Trust me.”

“No one thought it was you. Can you do the stalls?”

“No problem.”

The phrase lacked his usual cheer. For four years he and I had worked easily side by side. We were all—owners, students, stable girls, employees—in this together, shoveling shit as fast as we could. But that morning everyone was gloomy and irritable. One of our best students burst into tears when I told her to shorten her stirrups. Bridget, who'd been boarding horses at the stables for twenty years, complained that her stall hadn't been mucked out. Normally Claudia would have made a joke, and they would each have seized a fork. Now she said curtly, “You can't expect everything to run like clockwork over the holidays.”

“What did I do to deserve that?” said Bridget when Claudia was out of earshot.

“Breathed,” said Matheus, who was passing with a load of hay.

No one had connected the second break-in to Mercury, but when I went to get his saddle, it was on a different peg.

Y
OU USED TO TEASE
me about reading my horoscope in magazines. Did I really believe that a twelfth of the population was going to have a good Thursday because the moon was ascendant in Jupiter? No, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the optimism that came with reading that the day was especially promising for business, or romance. What I do believe in is fate, moments when the people and events in my life line up, like iron filings in the grip of some giant magnet. Fate saved me in
the subway, made you talk to me on the train, brought Mercury to Windy Hill. And that afternoon, in the produce aisle of the supermarket, it nudged me once again. I was reaching for a cauliflower when I saw our former student Tiffany standing a few feet away, holding a box of pasta. I wished her a happy new year and asked what she was doing there. The store wasn't near her house.

“Visiting a friend,” she said. “Mom texted me to pick up some things.”

I offered her a lift home. When we were both in the car with our groceries, she asked after Sir Pericles. I told her he was fine. Then, we were idling at a red light, she said, “Dad's in trouble again. There was a fight in a bar, and when the police came, he had a gun. He wasn't using it or anything.”

“Where did he get a gun?”

“I don't know. New Hampshire? That's where he got the last one.”

It wasn't even news to her. Guns, police, prison, that was the world she lived in. I found myself asking if she'd like to help exercise the horses. The last thing I needed was another fight with Claudia, but I remembered all the times when I was Tiffany's age and the only thing that made me feel better was riding. Outside the triple-decker we tapped our numbers into each other's phones.

“I'm sorry about your dad,” I said.

She picked up her groceries and reached for the door. “Mom says he's the baby of the family. He'll grow up one of these days.”

You made the same comment, I remember, when I came home from my eye exam and reported that I still had 20/20 vision.

W
ITH
C
LAUDIA'S PERMISSION,
I bought eight fire extinguishers, stationed them at key points in the barn, and summoned everyone for a fire drill. No one smokes anywhere in the buildings or within a hundred feet of them. If you smell smoke, call 911 and get the horses out. Matheus said he'd found a cigarette in the arena. Was it okay to smoke there? No, not okay. Charlie volunteered that a couple of the parents sometimes smoked.

“We'll put up signs,” I said, “and make sure everyone knows the rules.”

For a few hours I felt better; I was protecting Mercury. Then I thought, Who was I kidding? A burglar wasn't going to obey a No Smoking sign.

The next afternoon Claudia asked if I could take Helen to physiotherapy, while she met with a prospective boarder. It was the first hint she'd given that we were still friends. As I was driving to their house I suddenly wondered if Helen might have guessed about Claudia's pregnancy. What would I say if she asked? But her first question, when she and her walker were safely stowed in the car, was, “How's that horse of yours?”

I told her we were working on spread jumps. Mercury could clear almost anything, but he didn't like extending himself. I
was worried about our training schedule: that I was pushing him too hard in some areas, not enough in others.

“Maybe you should consult Garth,” she said. “He's giving master classes in New Hampshire for the next couple of months.”

Garth was a legendary teacher in our riding circles. At once I was sure he could solve my problems. “That's a great idea,” I said. “I'll phone tomorrow.”

A truck passed us, spraying grit. Little pieces pinged against the hood as I asked Helen if she had ever thought of competing outside New England.

“I wanted to, but the best-laid plans . . .” She'd been about to qualify for the regionals when she got pregnant. She didn't ride for three months and then miscarried. “It caused a lot of grief with my husband. He couldn't help blaming the horses, and when I started riding again, it was different. I still loved it, but I didn't have that drive. The first time I saw you ride, I knew you did. Of course Claudia's green-eyed about Mercury.”

“Green-eyed?” For a moment I didn't recognize the expression.

“Jealous,” said Helen. “She thinks all your attention goes to him these days.”

Claudia had said the same thing. But now I understood her comment differently. It wasn't just the other horses I was ignoring; it was her. Suddenly her hostility toward Mercury made sense.

“And maybe she's not the only one who's jealous,” Helen continued. “She says someone's been breaking into the stables. You need to be careful.” Then she told me the old story about the two horses being stolen and the third, her favorite, Snowbird, poisoned.

“Horses bring out the best in people,” she said. “And the worst.”

After I took her home, I stopped at Paddy's Lunch. We'd talked about going there for years. What I must do, I thought as I sipped a margarita, was make Mercury disappear among the other horses. I would ride only in the early morning; I would groom him secretly; I would buy his vitamins and bandages myself. At the same time I would redouble my efforts to make sure the other horses were taken care of, the bills paid, the barn clean, the students and owners happy. And I must watch over Claudia, be there for her when Rick bolted. She would have ample evidence of my devotion.

While I drank a second margarita, I turned over the paper placemat and wrote a list: “Students, Owners, Parents, Deliverymen, Strangers.” Names, or sometimes descriptions—“the hay man, the wood shavings man”—soon filled the mat. Not one of the people I'd listed seemed likely to drive out to the stables at night, drag a ladder over to the hayloft, and clamber inside to visit Mercury. The risks were too great, the rewards too small. The only person crazy enough to do such a thing was drinking margaritas at Paddy's Lunch.

A
LMOST EVERY DAY THERE
was more snow. I shoveled out my car and drove to the stables, and shoveled some more and directed Matheus to use the snow blower. We cleared the paddocks for our own horses, but most of the owners wanted their horses kept indoors. Claudia exercised them on the lunge line, and I rode as many as I could. It was too cold to train Mercury properly, but I came to the stables half an hour early each day to ride and groom him. And I started going to New Hampshire to watch Garth teach his master classes.

In all the busyness I refused several invitations from Hilary.
Then late one afternoon the farrier canceled, and I called to see if she was free. “Can you come here?” she said.

I hadn't been to her house before. In the kitchen she introduced me to a dainty calico cat called Teacup. Then she showed me around. Each room was painted in warm, surprising colors, the furniture carefully chosen, the lamps and rugs glowing. The whole effect made me want to sit down and never leave. Later, when you visited Jack there, you said the same thing.

“It's my only skill,” Hilary said. “I can look at a room and see how to make it nicer.”

We settled in the living room, and I told her about our plans for your father's anniversary, how I hoped your mood would lift once the day was passed.

“Anniversaries are hard,” she said. “Last Tuesday was Michael's birthday. I suddenly found myself wondering if maybe he was the way he was because of Jessie.”

“What do you mean,” I asked, “‘the way he was'?”

She gazed toward the empty fireplace. “This will sound strange,” she said, “but for years the news about my sister was mixed up with my abortion. It was only after I split up with Franklin that I realized she was Michael's sister too. I phoned to ask if he remembered her. He said yes, Jessie was great. She was always smiling, and she made a rumbling sound, like pigeons cooing. When she learned to walk, she came into his room in the morning and pressed her face against his. I asked what happened when she died. ‘What do you think happened?' he said. ‘She died, and then she was dead.' I asked if he understood she might die. There was a long pause. Then he laughed and said, ‘Who ever understands someone's going to die?'”

I thought of you, still waiting for the Simurg. “What do you mean,” I asked again, “‘the way Michael was'?”

At critical moments a horse sometimes simultaneously shrinks and gathers itself. Hilary sank briefly into the sofa, and reemerged to say that defending Michael was a lifelong habit. Since she was nine or ten, he'd been in trouble. He was hopeless with money, rude to employers, took too many drugs. It wasn't just bad luck that he was forty-four and living in his boyhood bedroom.

I reminded her of what she'd said on Christmas Eve: perhaps his fall wasn't an accident.

“I'm afraid that was your Chianti talking.” She tilted her glass mockingly. “The autopsy showed he was high as a kite. But the weird thing was, he seemed to have a premonition. Three days before, he phoned me and talked about this scene in
Anna Karenina
. The hero is racing his beloved mare. They're in the lead. Then, at one of the jumps, he shifts in the saddle, and the mare falls and is killed. Of course in Michael's case it was the other way round.”

She went to get more wine. I stared at the oil painting over the mantelpiece, blues running into blues, thinking how strange it would be if I inherited both Michael's horse and his enemies. After the second break-in I had almost told Hilary that someone was interested in Mercury. Now, more than ever, I was glad I hadn't. When she returned, I said I'd entered him for a couple of shows in late March. We would see how he responded to crowds and competition.

Hilary's lips parted, she was about to speak, when the door opened. “Are we ever having dinner?” Diane said.