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.”
ON TUESDAY 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.
ON 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 po
orer?”
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.
“I’m hungry,” she said. “Is something wrong?”
Somehow we got through the evening. We both drank too much; Viv told stupid jokes and insisted we play serial Ping-Pong. No one else, I thought, noticed her frantic edge. At last Merrie and her daughters left; the children went to bed. I stood in the kitchen doorway, watching Viv scrub a saucepan, wondering if she was about to drive to Windy Hill.
“I’ll be up in ten minutes,” she said, not raising her eyes from the sink.
Dutifully I climbed the stairs and prepared for bed. I was sure she regretted her earlier outburst and everything else: keeping the break-in secret, paying for the alarm without consulting me. It never crossed my mind that I too was in the wrong. She had tried to tell me about Mercury; she had given me my chance; I had failed her. When she came upstairs, I closed my book, still hoping for an apology, but she only reached for me.
12
ILLNESS SAVED US FROM further argument. Viv awoke the next morning complaining that her skull was too tight. Her temperature rose to 103. For two days she lay in bed. We celebrated New Year’s Eve at home, watching DVDs, and were asleep by eleven. Not until January 2, when Marcus needed a lift to a friend’s house, did I have a chance to visit Windy Hill. As I got out of the car, Charlie and another girl were pushing wheelbarrows of hay towards the little barn. We exchanged Happy New Years.
Claudia was in the tack room, standing at the table, sorting bridles and halters. “Donald,” she said.
I knew at once that she was not pleased to see me. Despite everything, there was never any question who she would save from a burning house. “Happy New Year,” I said. “I heard your message. I’m sorry about all this stuff with Viv.”
Her gloved hand tightened around the bridle she was holding. “I was so mad I didn’t realize I’d called your home phone. By ‘stuff,’ I take it you mean not telling me about the first burglary, and not telling me why we were suddenly going overboard on security, and not allowing me to tell Hilary what’s going on, and probably a few other things that I’ll find out about months from now.”
This time the burglars had borrowed the ladder they used to replace lightbulbs in the arena and come in through the hayloft.
“But why break in and not take anything?” I said. “It’s a lot of trouble for nothing.”
“That’s what the police said.” She held up a bridle, testing the strap. “They think it must be someone who knows the stables, but we have so many people coming and going.”
Nearby I heard Charlie’s hearty laugh. I dropped my voice to ask about Hilary.
“You mean, have I told her?” Claudia gave me a quick glance. “The answer is, not yet. I mean to every day, but I haven’t seen her since before Christmas, and I know Viv will kill me.”
“You could,” I spoke hesitantly, “insist she move Mercury.”
Her face grew still. “I’d love nothing more than to see the back of him, but it wouldn’t do any good. Viv would just hate me and follow him to a new stable. He’s the horse she’s been waiting for.”
Two walls of the small room were lined with saddles, including presumably the one I had just given Viv. “Have you ever seen her like this before?” I said. “So obsessed?”
Claudia set down the halter she was holding and sat on the edge of the table. “I was asking myself that yesterday, and the answer is yes. As long as I’ve known her, Viv’s been ambitious. She ruined her favorite horse, overtraining him. Then she was determined to be a CEO by the time she was thirty. When she decided not to have an abortion, I knew she was in love with you.”
One of my most cherished memories was of the night Viv told me she was pregnant. Now, in response to my broken question, Claudia described how the two of them, over margaritas, had listed the pros and cons: abortion versus baby. Viv had phoned Planned Parenthood the next day. “But the night before the appointment”—Claudia was smiling—“she had a dream. She and the baby were having a picnic by a river, paddling. He was so happy, Viv said.”
My first reaction was neither sorrow nor anger but a kind of astonishment that my past life, which I had thought safely stowed away, could change so radically. All the milestones on the journey to my present self—a father, a husband—were suddenly up for negotiation. “I didn’t know any of this,” I said. At the time I did not stop to wonder why Claudia was, at last, telling me this long-ago story. Later I would understand.
She stood up and turned her smile on me. “Viv loves you, Donald,” she said. “I’ve never seen her happier than with you and the kids, but Mercury has started something in her. Or maybe he’s reminded her of something that never entirely went away. In Ann Arbor we used to daydream about a horse that could jump anything, like in National Velvet. Most people grow out of those dreams. Not Viv.”
She went to check on the stable girls, and I made my way to the rows of stalls. Samson came over to the bars and lost interest as soon as he saw I was empty-handed. Mercury was standing at the back of his stall, wearing a red blanket, swishing his tail. I said his name softly and he looked at me, ears pricked.
“You’re causing a hell of a lot of trouble,” I said.
My family was founded on a dream, a dream of a baby paddling in a river. As Mercury whinnied, it came to me: we should buy Viv her own horse, a good horse she could ride in local shows. Ever since her failure with Dow Jones, she had been complaining about the horses at Windy Hill—how hard it was to train them above a certain level—but I hadn’t taken her seriously. Now, I told myself, she wanted more. But the more didn’t have to be Mercury, with his huge talents and demands.
13
SO THIS WAS HOW we started 2011. My father’s African grey sad. Claudia and Viv at odds. Viv training Mercury every minute she could, convinced he was her last great chance. Marcus’s swimming team enjoying a winning streak. Trina, her mother’s daughter, obsessed with drawing and elephants. Hilary and Jack making their way unsteadily from day to day. My mother, as she liked to joke, happy as Larry. And me, still deep in grief, worried about our finances and how seldom Viv turned to me in bed, or talked to me on the sofa.
On the first Monday of the year I drove Marcus and Trina to school and returned to the house. Leaving the engine running, I covered Nabokov’s cage and whisked him into the car. When he was safely strapped in the seat beside me, I removed the blanket.
“We’re going to work,” I told him.
“Hey ho, hey ho,” he chanted.
For the next fifteen minutes he kept up a cheerful commentary, including a recital of a railway timetable—the eleven o’clock for Inverness will depart at eleven oh six—that perfectly captured my father’s intonation. At the office Merrie had set up a table in a brightly lit corner with a large cage and two ficus plants. As I arranged his perch, a fresh maple branch, she appeared, coffeepot in hand.
“Welcome, Nabokov. Do you remember me? I’m Merrie. You must be sure to tell me what I can do to make you a happier bird. Does he peck?”
“No, he’s mostly very affectionate. He likes conversation and sunflower seeds.”
I showed her how to approach him from the side, not the front, and the place behind his head where he liked to be scratched. When I returned from hanging up my coat, Leah had joined the conversation. Then Jo showed up. How
this would have tickled my father, I thought: three intelligent women giving Nabokov their complete attention.
On his third day at the office, Bonnie Dawson, the patient with a door in her head, finally returned. She had made a follow-up appointment, canceled it, rescheduled: kids, she said, work. But the shadow was still there, still growing. “It’s scary,” she said. I put in drops to dilate her eyes and sent her out to the waiting room. Three patients later, when I called her back to the chair, she said, “Your parrot kept saying ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’”
“He belonged to my father, who taught him poetry. Put your chin here.”
Looking into the eye is like looking into a room where, ideally, all the furniture is in the same place. In Bonnie’s left eye the furniture had moved. A tear in the retina had allowed fluid to accumulate; now the retina was becoming detached. I turned on the lights and broke the news: she needed surgery. In the meantime she had to be as careful as possible—no lifting, no bending or stretching, no running after children.
“It looks,” I added, “as if you had surgery as a child, perhaps more than once.”
“Are you sure? Wouldn’t I remember?”
The idea of a past operation seemed to alarm her almost as much as the prospect of one. I said not to worry. The main thing was, she needed surgery now.
“But I’m not in pain. What about wearing a patch again? Or new glasses?”
“Bonnie, you said yourself the shadow is getting bigger. New glasses can’t stop that. If it gets too big, you won’t have any vision to improve.”
Mercury Page 7
