Mercury (7 page)

T
HANKSGIVING HAD BEEN HARD,
but it was only one day, an American day. Christmas had always been our family's holiday. Every year had found us together, first in Scotland, then in the States, playing games, eating goose, hoping for peace on earth. Over the years Viv and I have invented our own modest traditions. On Christmas Eve we go to a carol service at Merrie's church, she and her daughters sing in the choir, and after supper we read an abridged version of
A Christmas Carol
. On Christmas Day, unless the weather is appalling, we go for a walk before making dinner and playing games. At some point during the holidays we drive into Boston to skate on the Frog Pond, and my mother treats us to tea at a fancy hotel. I assumed we would continue these traditions, sadly marking my father's absence. But then my sister announced she was staying in Nashville with a new beau. My mother, deep in her own romantic entanglements, was going to Philadelphia to meet Larry's children. As we bent over Marcus and Trina's advent calendars, exclaiming at each new picture, I could feel what Viv called my astronaut's suit growing thicker by the day. She had first used the phrase in August, the evening we got back from the Cape. When I asked what she meant, she said, “You're like a man in a space suit. Everything has to make its way through layers and layers to reach
you.” I had nodded, startled that she understood me so well. But later, as I put the groceries away, it occurred to me that her image was only half right: my astronaut's suit kept me aloof but it did not keep me safe: no oxygen, no water, no warmth.

On the solstice Steve thrashed me at tennis, and when I got home, Viv asked if we could invite Hilary and Diane for supper on Christmas Eve.

“We scarcely know them,” I said.

“You scarcely know them. Hilary's become a good friend. It's not like we exchange presents or anything.” She was, I recall, cleaning her riding boots.

“What about
A Christmas Carol
? The kids always complain, but they'd miss it.”

“She thought it sounded fun. And I'm sure Jack will enjoy it.”

She had, I realized, already issued the invitation. “When did she tell you about Jack?” I said.

“I don't think there's much to tell.” She rubbed a muddy heel. “She likes him, but she's wary.” She dabbed some polish. “Who can blame her?”

She did not seem surprised that I knew about their relationship and had said nothing, so why should I be that she had done the same?

O
N
C
HRISTMAS
E
VE
I
woke to the silvery light of new snow, Viv's side of the bed empty as usual. In a few months I would be forty, and this was the first Christmas, save for one as a student in Edinburgh, when I had not been in my parents' company. Dear Robert, I thought, do you remember the year we had lots of snow at Christmas, and went sledging in the local park? Happily Marcus and Trina burst into the room, rescuing me. We spent the day in seasonal activities: baking Christmas cookies,
making a snowman and a snow-woman, decorating the house. Viv, when she came home, was in a wonderful mood, teasing the children and taking even their most fanciful suggestions for decorating the tree seriously. Marcus made a boy diver for the top, and Trina made an elephant family, a baby, mother, and three aunts linked trunk to tail, which we hung in the lower branches. At the carol service I could hear our voices, separate and distinct, blending with the others.

Back at the house we had a fire going and dinner ready by the time Hilary, Diane, and Jack arrived. Hilary and Viv embraced warmly, and I did my best to follow suit. When everyone was seated at the table and the lasagna had been served and praised, Hilary said she'd met a woman who trained miniature horses to guide the blind.

“Wouldn't that be cute, Jack?” she said. “You could go everywhere with a little horse.”

“How little?” said Trina. “Could it sit at the table?”

“I bet they make great guides,” said Viv. “They live a long time.”

“I'm sorry,” said Jack. “My housekeeping skills are already challenged. What if I had a horse to clean up after too? You know who I think would make a good guide? Nabokov. He could say things like, ‘Boring colleague to the left.' His feathers are sticking up in a weird way.”

Trina said that he'd been pulling them out. I repeated my molting theory.

“But birds don't molt in winter,” said Diane. “That's when they need their feathers.”

“Maybe it's a cry for help,” said Jack. “He must be lonely without Edward.”

Suddenly everyone at the table was looking at me reproach
fully. I promised to take Nabokov to the vet as soon as possible, and offered seconds.

In the living room we settled ourselves around the fire with
A Christmas Carol
. I read, as my father had always done, Dickens's epigraph—“I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book to raise the Ghost of an idea”—and we were off. Jack, with his braille version, was Scrooge, Diane and Trina enjoyed being pathetic orphans, I was the narrator, and Marcus and Viv shared the other parts. Hilary had volunteered to be the audience, and when we reached the last lines, she jumped to her feet, clapping and shouting, “Bravo. Encore.”

The children disappeared to play Ping-Pong in the basement, I poured more wine, and Viv asked Jack and Hilary one of her questions: How had they celebrated Christmas as children? “If you celebrated,” she added, in cautious American fashion.

“We did,” Jack said. His whole family—aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents—had gone to the midnight service on Christmas Eve. “It's the closest I've come to a religious experience without drugs: the church lit by candles, everyone wishing each other merry Christmas. Afterwards, walking home, I'd be so sleepy I could hardly put one foot in front of the other, and so happy, knowing that when I woke up there'd be presents and no one getting mad at me for an entire day.”

But that world, he went on, was utterly gone. His father was dead. His mother didn't know Christmas from Easter. His older sister lived in Baltimore and had no money to travel. His younger sister, a Christian Scientist, lived in Malden and didn't want her kids to meet him.

“Horrible people,” said Hilary, reaching for his hand. “What I remember is Michael, my brother, carrying me out to the barn to wish our horses Merry Christmas.”

Viv had mentioned Mercury's previous owner. Now I learned that Michael was nine years older than Hilary and believed there were five elements: earth, air, fire, water, and horses.

“He died very young,” I said.

“He did,” Hilary said. We were all silent as she blinked back tears. “He was riding alone, late in the day, and he fell at a jump. Mercury made his way back to the stables. They said it was an accident, but I still find it hard to believe. Michael didn't have accidents involving horses.”

Listening to her, I was struck by how we crave precision around death. We want to know the exact minute of passing; we note where we were and how we heard; we ponder that strange interval of afterlife during which we assumed the other person to be still alive and how that interval vanishes when we learn the news. I was with my father at the nursing home when he died. I had been sitting by his bed for an hour, holding his hand and talking to him, when I wandered over to the window. In the parking lot a woman was clearing the snow off her car. As she swept the hood, I noticed that the room had fallen silent. It was eleven minutes past four.

Hilary had been working on a house, hanging a mirror, when her phone rang. “As soon as Mom said hello,” she said, “my reflection turned white.” She had flown to Ontario for the funeral and brought his ashes back to the States—her parents couldn't bear to keep them. She still hadn't decided what to do with them.

“You'll figure it out,” said Viv. “He'd be glad you're taking such good care of Mercury.”

It was then that Jack asked what I'd wondered on several occasions: How much was the horse worth? Hilary looked over at Viv. “Five thousand dollars?” she said. “Ten?”

“More,” said Viv. “A good jumper, his age, athletic, well trained”—she spread her hands—“you might be surprised what he'll bring. When he starts to win competitions, people will see what he's worth.”

“But who's going to ride him in competitions?” said Hilary. “Besides I'll never sell him. He's all I have left of Michael.”

Her voice shrilled with dismay. Jack put his arm around her and leaned over to whisper something. Neither of them heard Viv's answer to her question.

“I will,” she said. “I will.”

O
N
T
UESDAY THE VETERINARIAN
confirmed Jack's diagnosis. Nabokov was pulling out his feathers because he missed my father.

“So should we get him another parrot for company?” Viv asked that evening when the four of us gathered around his cage.

“The vet thought that might be tricky,” I said. “Parrots mate for life, and we couldn't be sure we were choosing a bird that would suit Nabokov. What he needs is human company.”

“We have to talk to him more,” said Trina. “Hello, Nab. What did you learn today?”

We each came up with ideas for spending more time with Nabokov, but still he would be mostly alone. “Could you take him to the office?” said Viv. “I bet he'd enjoy the waiting room.”

“You mean drive him back and forth every day? What if he catches cold? Or swears at a patient?” My mind was crowded with possible disasters. Was it even legal to have a bird in a waiting room?

“Please, Dad,” said Trina. “It would be so sad if he made himself bald.”

Once again everyone was looking at me, even Nabokov, his pupils growing larger by the second. I promised to talk to Merrie and see what could be done. The idea of my father's last companion being lonely was more than I could bear.

O
N ONE OF OUR
early dates Viv had told me about Clever Hans, a horse famous for being able to add 4 and 2, or 3 and 5. Only after many trials did investigators discover that Hans was not doing arithmetic but picking up on the cues given, unconsciously, by his audience. If no one present knew the answer, neither did Hans. “The scientists felt vindicated,” Viv said, “but actually he was doing something much more complicated than counting.” All autumn she had been praising Mercury's intelligence. Her superlatives reached new heights when she came home from riding him with the saddle I had given her for Christmas.

“There was this barrier between us that I didn't even know was there.”

“Excellent,” I said. After nearly a month of consultations with the saddle fitter, I was glad she was finally pleased.

Our annual expedition to the Frog Pond was usually a high point of the holidays, but this year my mother was missing, the ice was rough, the wind vicious. A superstitious person might have said the omens were bad. After less than an hour we headed across the snowy Common to the hotel where we always had tea. In the lounge, with its beautifully decorated tree, we grew almost giddy, drinking hot chocolate and eating little sandwiches. It was dark by the time we got home. While Viv and the children took off their outdoor clothes, I moved through the house, turning on lights, drawing curtains. When I saw the blink of the answering machine in the study, I pressed
play, thinking Merrie had phoned. She and her daughters were due for supper, another tradition, in a little over an hour.

“Why the hell didn't you tell me about the break-in at Thanksgiving?” Anger rendered Claudia's voice almost unrecognizable. “Have you forgotten I own the stables? All that crap about getting a new alarm because of the farm stand. How could you treat me this way?” And so on until the machine cut her off.

Back in the kitchen I took refuge in unloading the dishwasher. When Viv came in, I said Claudia had called. “Oh, good,” she said, and went to listen. I heard again the furious crescendo, muffled by the wall. In the silence that followed, I began to put away the cutlery. Viv appeared in the doorway. She walked slowly to the table and sat down with her head in her hands. I kept putting knives in the drawer.

“Viv,” I said, “why didn't you tell her?”

“Because of Mercury.” She spoke as if the answer were utterly obvious.

“What do you mean, ‘because of Mercury'?”

Still she kept her face hidden. “Claudia already thinks he takes too much of my time. I didn't want to give her an excuse to ask Hilary to move him.” Then she told me that we, not the stables, had footed the bill for the new alarm and grills. She let her hands fall, and I saw her face, flushed with cold or emotion, or both. “It was only seven thousand dollars,” she said.

As I stood watching her, half a dozen forks in one hand, a dishtowel in the other, it came to me that her change of heart about Greenfield was due not to the importance of Marcus's friends but to the many expenses around Mercury. Even our son came second to her horse. For a moment anger robbed me of speech.

“Why,” I said at last, “why would you spend all this money on someone else's horse?”

“We've been very lax about security. The changes were long overdue.”

“If that's true, then why go behind Claudia's back, and spend my money secretly?”

“So now it's ‘my money'? What about for richer, for poorer?”

Useless to point out that, in our abbreviated ceremony at city hall, we had never made such a promise. She stood up and headed towards the coatrack.

“Where are you going?” I stepped forward to block her path. “Merrie and her daughters will be here any minute.”

“They'll understand,” she said. “It's an emergency.”

“No, Viv. It's not an emergency. Claudia said nothing about needing you at the stables.”

I put my hand on her arm, meaning only to remind her that her place was here, at home, but when she started to pull free, my grip tightened. Suddenly we were struggling, both using all our strength, Viv glaring as if I were her enemy. She was almost free when Trina appeared.