Pegasus: A Novel (40 page)

The weekend after New Year’s, they went to Virginia, as planned. Nick and Christianna
both thought that Arthur was a wonderful person when they met him, and perfect for
Marianne. Violet was adorable, and Arthur’s horse farm was spectacular. He came from
an old
Southern family and knew a lot about horses. And although she was shy at first, Marianne
was so warm and welcoming, as was Arthur, that Christianna had a good time too. And
Lucas remembered Marianne, once he saw her. She was sad not to see Toby, and it made
his absence and Alex’s seem more acute to Nick. But in spite of that, they had a wonderful
time with Marianne and her family. The visit was a great success. He and Christianna
talked about it all the way back to Florida. And when they got back, he reminded Christianna
again that he wanted to give notice. He was not going on tour again. His years in
the circus were over. And he wanted a horse farm like Arthur’s.

Inevitably, it turned into an argument that lasted for weeks, and he couldn’t win.
She brought her father and brothers into it, and they argued with him too. Nick simply
said that he was too old to go on with the circus. He wanted a horse ranch, and to
breed horses, and that was it. And for Christianna, the circus was it. She wanted
no other life, and was refusing to leave with him.

In March, they came to the conclusion that he had hoped to avoid. They were separating.
He was going to California with Lucas to set up a ranch. And she was staying with
her family and the circus, and keeping Chloe with her. It made his heart ache to lose
both of them, but he knew he had to do it. He would visit Chloe whenever he could,
and when she was older, she could visit him on the ranch. Christianna was as heartbroken
as he was, but she agreed. Their paths were going separate ways, and neither of them
would be happy doing what the other wanted. They weren’t divorcing, but they were
separating. Gallina was devastated when she heard it. And Lucas was unhappy too. He
was going to miss his friends in the circus, and he loved Christianna and his little
sister. But Nick was sure it was right for them to leave, and he didn’t waver.

He handed in his notice before they left on tour, and John Ringling North came to
see him himself to try to dissuade him. But when they finished talking, he said he
understood, and thanked Nick for staying as long as he had. He realized that it was
time for him to move on.

“You saved my life,” Nick said to him gratefully. But seven years later, he needed
to leave. “I’ll never forget it.” The two men shook hands. Nick had decided to leave
for California the same day the circus left Sarasota on tour. There was no animosity
between him and Christianna, it was just a very sad decision, and a fork in the road
for both of them. They each had to follow their own path, and they were no longer
the same, or headed in the same direction.

Nick had said goodbye to all his old friends that week, and he packed the horse trailers
with everything but the horses the night before he left, and he and Christianna spent
their last night together in the trailer. He wanted to make love to her but he didn’t.
He watched her sleeping all night, but didn’t touch her. He knew he would love her
forever. And she said the same the next morning when they got up. And he knew he would
miss her every day from now on, but he had to follow his dream.

They walked to the horse tent together, and Christianna cried when she patted Pegasus
for the last time. She was going to miss him and Athena too.

Nick and Lucas went to load up the horses then, and Christianna watched with tears
rolling down her cheeks. She smiled sadly at Nick, and he brushed the top of her head
with a kiss, and turned away so she wouldn’t see the tears in his eyes. And then they
were all loaded up. He went to kiss Chloe, and he looked long and hard at his wife.

“Take care of yourself. Don’t give up that net again because I’m
not watching.” She shook her head and knew she never would. She was trying not to
think of all the ways he had made her life better.

One of her brothers got into their trailer to drive it away, and he waved at Nick.
They were sorry he was leaving. And then the convoy of circus trailers and vehicles
headed out. Nick and Lucas got in line to leave the fairground in the new trailer
Nick had bought. They had just gotten to the exit, when Nick stopped with a look of
panic. He looked at Lucas and then turned around, and headed back into the fairground.

“What are you doing, Dad?” Lucas asked, looking confused.

“Never mind. Wait here,” Nick said, pulling their trailer off the road and jumping
out. He ran back to where the other trailers were in line. He ran until he saw her,
by the side of the road, with her suitcases, holding Chloe, and Peter was carrying
the rest of their bags. She looked like a refugee in a war zone, with big, terrified
eyes. “Okay, I give up. We’re staying. We’ll stay in the circus forever. I love you,”
Nick said, feeling like jello inside. The dream was worth nothing to him without her.
And he loved her more than any ranch.

“We’re coming to California,” she said in a trembling voice. “We’re leaving.”

They had each been willing to give up everything they wanted for the other. Her brother
smiled at them and set down her bags.

“You’re both crazy. You deserve each other.” But he was happy for them. “So which
way are we going?”

“California,” she said clearly as she looked at her husband and smiled.

“Are you sure?” Nick asked her. “I’ll stay if you want to. All I want is you. The
rest isn’t important.”

“Yes, it is. To all of us. It will be good for Lucas and Chloe. I don’t want her growing
up on the high wire, or terrified like my sister.”
She and Nick walked to his trailer then, and her brother followed with the rest of
her bags. Peter kissed them both, and Nick opened the door to speak to Lucas.

“We forgot something,” he said matter-of-factly.

“What?” Lucas asked him, confused by the delay.

“Christianna and your sister. They’re coming.” Lucas’s face exploded in smiles. Christianna
settled Chloe in the backseat with a bag of toys, and slid in next to Lucas.

They waved at her brother as they left the fairground, and headed for California.
It was a long trip, and took them ten days, going slowly with the horses, but they
never looked back.

It was six months before Nick and Christianna found their ranch in the Santa Ynez
Valley. They looked every day, and the right property finally fell into their hands,
on the bluff that Nick had always loved on their annual pilgrimages to Santa Ynez.
Finding a ranch there was his dream come true.

They rebuilt the ranch house while living in a rented house, and by the end of the
year, Pegasus Ranch was off and running, and Nick had bought six more Lipizzaners
and a few Arabians. He wanted to breed the best Lipizzaners in the country, using
Pegasus as his champion stud, which had always been his plan.

Lucas missed the circus and the clowns, but he liked his new school and made lots
of friends, and Chloe was thriving. And even Christianna agreed that a normal home
life was better for them all.

Nick exchanged letters with Marianne at Christmas. Her baby, a boy, had been born
in July, and she was already pregnant again. Having lost her father, she was grateful
for the contact with Nick. He was the last vestige of her lost life in Germany before
the war.

Christianna’s entire family came to stay with them for several
days during the holidays, and again when they were on tour in California the following
summer, and they made it a tradition to come twice a year every year from then on.
The house was bursting at the seams the moment they arrived, with lots of cooking,
laughing, talking, and riding horses around the ranch. Although her father was still
unhappy that Christianna had left the circus, he was pleased to see her with a good
man and a solid life. And despite her earlier reluctance, Mina had stepped into Christianna’s
shoes on the high wire. She had no choice once Christianna left, and she had taken
on the role without complaint, and seemed more confident about it now. She was dating
a Romanian gymnast, and her brother thought they’d get married. They were happy he
was in the circus. Only Nick had gotten away with absconding with his bride.

For Nick, and even Christianna, the circus began to feel like a dream that was fading
behind them. They loved living on the ranch. The circus had been exciting, but they
had a life now that she had never dreamed of before. They had a beautiful home, friends,
and Lucas loved his school and friends too. Christianna also loved their horses, and
in time Nick had the finest Lipizzaners in the state, and wanted to have the best
ones in the country. Pegasus’s foals had begun to be born, and were finer than Nick
had ever hoped.

After they left the circus, Marianne sent them a Christmas card every year, announcing
a new baby. She had four with Arthur now, three boys and a girl, and Violet of course.
In her letters, she said that the Beaulieus came to visit them at Garrison Farm once
a year, and she and Arthur and the children stayed with them in England at Haversham
every summer. Marianne said they were wonderful grandparents to her other children
as well. And best of all, she was
happy with Arthur. She said he was the kindest man alive, and they shared a terrific
life together. Just as Nick and Christianna did on their ranch. They had each found
the life of their dreams, after the turbulent years of the war.

For nineteen years after Nick and Christianna left the circus, Marianne was busy with
her kids, her husband, and their farm. She and Arthur added on to it, and she was
always taking her children to horse shows, as all of them were serious competitive
riders. She never made it to California for a visit during those years as a result.
Her life was too full where she was, with five busy children and a husband. And Nick
was no better. He could never get away, nor wanted to. And Lucas and Chloe kept them
busy too. And monitoring Pegasus’s breeding and that of the other horses kept Nick
present and intensely occupied on the ranch.

Nick was ashamed and often felt guilty at how much time had gone by without getting
together with Marianne, and she felt badly about it, too, but the years passed too
quickly. It was 1965 before Marianne and Violet were in Santa Barbara for a horse
show Violet was in. She was training for the Olympics, and Marianne wanted to drive
to the Santa Ynez Valley with Violet, and visit Nick and Christianna at last, even
if it was only for a day. She was planning to leave the other children at home with
Arthur, and she had a free day with Violet after the show. Nick wrote back and invited
them to stay for the weekend. He felt as though he had let his old friend down, that
he hadn’t seen Alex’s daughter for so long. And she was a woman now, with five grown
children of her own. Nick was seventy, Christianna was forty-eight. And Chloe had
turned twenty-two that year,
while finishing college at a Stanford program in Florence, and speaking Italian fluently,
or so she claimed.

Lucas was thirty-three, married to a terrific girl from the Valley, and working on
the ranch with his father. They had only been married for a year, and didn’t have
kids yet, but Nick figured they’d get around to it eventually. Lucas and Sally were
in no hurry. And Nick liked her a lot. She was from a family that owned a ranch nearby,
and she was as horse crazy as the Bings, and was both knowledgeable and helpful on
the ranch. Nick had invited Marianne and her family to Lucas’s wedding, but she couldn’t
get away, and had missed it. She wanted to at least meet Sally now, and hadn’t seen
Lucas since he was fourteen, which she was sad about too. In her heart, they were
part of her family, and always would be.

When Marianne got out of the car at the ranch, after the horse show in Santa Barbara,
she looked no different to Nick at forty-four than she had at twenty-five, nineteen
years earlier when he’d last seen her, or barely. She was the same beautiful, tall,
aristocratic-looking, lanky blonde that she had been as a young girl in Germany, and
when she’d married Arthur nineteen years before. And like Nick and Lucas, she’d been
American now for years, ever since she married Arthur. And Violet was a beautiful
young woman at twenty-three.

Marianne was bowled over when she saw Nick’s Lipizzaners—they reminded her of her
father’s so long ago. And she was pleased to find Pegasus still alive at thirty-one.
She considered him an old friend and went to the stables where they kept him, to say
hello. He was quiet and old now, but still a spectacular-looking horse, just as he
had been when she was in her teens and her father had given him to Nick. He had served
Nick well to establish their bloodlines. The success of the
ranch was thanks to him. And Violet was excited to see Pegasus and the other Lipizzaners
too. She was a horsewoman to her core, like the grandfather she had never known. And
she had the exuberance and slightly British eccentricity of her paternal grandmother,
Isabel Beaulieu, with whom she spent her summers. Violet said the Beaulieus and her
stepfather were close too. And although Arthur had never adopted Violet, out of deference
to her father and the Beaulieus, Violet was extremely close to him and he had always
been wonderful to her, and treated her no differently than his own children.

Marianne and the Bings had a wonderful visit, and spent a terrific weekend together,
as Nick rode all over the ranch with Marianne, and they talked about her father, and
some of the memories Nick hadn’t allowed himself to think of in years. He still missed
Alex, and Toby of course. But life in Germany had faded into the mists for him, except
for Alex, Toby, and his own father, Paul. It was part of another lifetime, for both
of them. It all seemed so long ago.

Although Violet was ten years younger than Lucas and Sally, they were all such passionate
horse people that they talked about horses all weekend, and her training on the Olympic
equestrian team. They saw her ride at the ranch, and it was no surprise three years
later, when they saw on TV that she won the gold medal. She was beaming during the
ceremony, and Nick was proud watching her, and knew Alex would have been too.