Mercury

by Margot Livesey

  “You’ll feel better soon,” Hilary said. “We’ll be at the hospital soon. I love you.”

  I drove as fast as I could, using the horn ruthlessly when we reached traffic. The alcohol I’d consumed made everything vivid and ferocious. I could have lifted a car off a baby, climbed a burning building. All three of our lives, not to mention those of my wife and children, were at stake.

  PART TWO

  VIV

  1

  I HAVE ONLY ONE CHANCE to plead my case, and only one person to plead it to.

  When I was eleven, I presented my mother with a list of reasons why I absolutely had to have riding lessons. I remember four of them:

  I love horses.

  I want to win rosettes.

  I was a horse in my last life.

  My best friend rides.

  Mom countered with her own list: the cost, the inconvenience of chauffeuring me to the stables, the importance of school. I said I’d contribute my dog-walking money, and Claudia’s mother could drive me. I promised to study hard. Finally she agreed to three months of lessons. She hoped I’d forget when I went to camp, but that summer every girl in my cabin was in love with Misty of Chincoteague. Back home, I didn’t risk asking for permission again. I took my riding clothes to school and got a lift to the stables with Claudia. Soon the teacher said I was the best rider in our group, and I believed her. It was as if I had a sixth sense about what the horse wanted, how to make it do what I wanted.

  By the time I entered high school I mostly rode Nutmeg, a chestnut gelding with four neat white socks. The first day I led him in from the paddock, a cat spooked him. I hung on to his halter and broke my little finger. I didn’t tell my mother—she might have stopped me riding—and by the time she noticed, the bone had set crooked. The accident gave me a special bond with Nutmeg. We started to enter shows. Soon the frame of my bedroom mirror was filled with rosettes—some firsts, lots of seconds and thirds. I wanted to go to bigger competitions, farther away, but this time my mother stood firm.

  The week after I got into Yale, my parents announced, almost as if they too had filled out applications and written personal essays, that they were getting a divorce. My father was joining a dental practice in San Diego. I was shocked, but Claudia wasn’t. “Your parents always looked like they were going different places,” she said. Hers had been divorced since we were in middle school, and she moved back and forth between their households like an airline pilot, a suitcase permanently packed.

  My parents kept saying the divorce didn’t change anything. I knew what they meant, but it wasn’t true. I had to make two phone calls instead of one. I had to accept that they were people who wanted things. Dad offered to come back from San Diego for Thanksgiving, but I said I’d visit him at Christmas. California in December made sense. Mom joked she’d come too, and he said we were both very welcome. Their good humor made my last months at home easy, but I found it weirdly upsetting. Didn’t the breakup of our family merit some passion? Some bad behavior? Claudia’s parents had fought for months. “But yours are older,” she said. “Money isn’t a problem.”

  Do you remember, when we first met, I quoted Margaret Fuller? “Let them be sea captains,” she wrote, “them” being women. At seventeen I didn’t think of myself as a woman. That word belonged to my mother and her friends. But with their fulltime jobs, their hobbies, and their houses, they were more like hard-working first mates than captains. They would never shine as brightly as Fuller, nor end up like her. On her way back to America from Italy, she was shipwrecked off Fire Island. Our English teacher described her huddling on the deck with her husband and baby, waiting to be rescued. Then the tide turned, and they were drowned. Could you be a woman and a captain, I wondered, and not end up on the rocks?

  The worst part of going to Yale was leaving Nutmeg. The day before my flight I rode him along the trail by the river. “Don’t forget me,” I said. “I’ll be back in three months.” Even as he shied at a willow tree, I realized that wasn’t true. By Thanksgiving I would be a different person. Wasn’t that why I was going to college?

  I met a hundred people the first week, another hundred the second. At high school I’d been the best at math and computer science and debating. Now the bar was raised; everyone was used to being the best. I joined various clubs and agreed to do far too many things. I didn’t have the time, or the money, to ride.

  My roommate, Tamar, came from Manhattan and seemed to know instinctively how things worked. So when she suggested we go to a Big Sisters meeting, I agreed. As we walked across the Green, she told me she too was an only child; she had always wanted a sister. Of course I said I felt the same, but the truth was, I already had Claudia; we’d sworn an oath of undying friendship when we were nine. The Big Sisters’ organizer gave a predictable speech about making a difference one person at a time, and I started meeting Jade every Thursday. She lived with her grandmother and three half brothers. With her grubby pink leggings and dirty hair, she was the opposite of cute. I took her to the library: boring. I took her to the playground: dumb. When I asked her the question my parents asked every night—What did you learn today?—she said “Zilch” or “Crap.”

  Tamar was struggling too. “I hate my little sister,” she burst out one night. Then she listed so many nasty things about her that suddenly Jade didn’t seem so bad. The next day I phoned the organizer and told her we were overcommitted; we couldn’t be Big Sisters. Our mutual failure sealed my friendship with Tamar. We studied together and joined the fencing club. But Claudia was the only one who knew how, after my first year at Yale, I had given up on riding; how I was waiting to discover something else I loved, to hear a professor say, “Ms. Turner, you have a gift for this.” Much too soon my parents began to ask about plans. Mom suggested law school; Dad said dentistry was a great career for a woman. My friends talked about Silicon Valley and Wall Street. By senior year, I was panicking. Once again Tamar intervened. She signed us up for recruitment meetings, and we each got three job offers. I started reading business magazines, picturing myself as a CEO.

  My job was demanding, which I’d expected, and a struggle, which I hadn’t. I was good with numbers, a quick learner, interested in politics and business, but I didn’t have the sixth sense I had with horses. I was seldom at the office less than ten hours a day, often twelve. Then I went out with friends or back to the apartment I shared with Tamar and her boyfriend on the Upper West Side; it belonged to her father. My room was very peaceful, with a single tall window.

  That first spring my mother visited the city for a conference on hospital administration. On her free Saturday we went to the Frick. Of all the paintings I remember only one: The Polish Rider. Last September you and I looked it up on the computer. You commented on the young man’s intense expression, but that afternoon at the museum my attention was on the badly painted horse, with his thick neck and odd proportions. The only horses I saw in New York were the ones in Central Park, and the occasional police horse.

  I told myself my life was amazing, but sometimes, catching the subway to work, or in the line at the Starbucks near the office, or in the lobby waiting for the elevator, I had a kind of vertigo. Where was the sky? Who were all these people? If someone had told me 50 percent of them were robots, I would have believed it.

  My second year in New York, our building had a blood drive. You know how scared I am of needles, but I lined up dutifully. So long as I kept my eyes closed, it didn’t hurt too much. That afternoon, though, my computer screen, and everything around it, seemed a little fuzzy. At seven I went downstairs to catch the subway; I was meeting a friend in Williamsburg. Waiting for the second train, I fainted.

  I came to lying on the platform, with two men bending over me. “What happened?” I said. “Where’s my shoe?”

  One of the men—he had a sharp widow’s peak—helped me to sit up and pointed to my black pump, lying beside the rails. A moment before I’d been lying there too. I must have asked again about the shoe. The other ma
n—he wore a purple tracksuit—said, “Oh, Christ.” Before I understood what he was going to do, he jumped down, grabbed it, hauled himself back up, and handed it to me. The train came, and the men were gone.

  The police took me home. In the empty apartment I got into bed and phoned Claudia. She was almost as slow to grasp what had happened as I had been. When she did, she was furious. How could I be so stupid, after giving blood for the first time? “Eat something,” she said, “and go to sleep.”

  The next day I stood far back on the subway platform. I still hadn’t seen Tamar, and I didn’t want to turn my narrow escape into another New York story. I went through that day with my secret, and the next. Soon it became a story I would never tell. Occasionally, on crowded trains, I thought I saw one of the men, but already their faces were growing vague. At Yale a friend had told me how his father celebrated two birthdays: the actual day, and the frigid November day in 1956 when he’d been shot and left for dead on the banks of the Danube. Now I had a second birthday, and I wanted to do better by my second life. I was sure I’d been saved for something special.

  But what that was, I didn’t know. Once I’d thought it was winning shows, being a champion. Now I thought it was to rise up the ranks of a company. Walking home at night beneath the ginkgoes, I would gaze up at the penthouse windows and worry I’d been left behind. Several friends had already been promoted.

  At last, my third spring in the city, my boss summoned me. On the way to her office, I fantasized: The China team? Securities? “I think you’ll be a good fit for our Boston branch,” she said. Was this a step up or a step down? I didn’t know, but I did know refusal would mark me as difficult. I made my eyes bright, asked interested questions. That night, in a bar at Columbus and Eighty-eighth, I ordered a margarita and toasted Boston. Surely this was the door to my second life.

  New York, now that I was leaving, displayed its best self. Two transactions that had been stalled for months went through; the weather was warm but not humid; several men I liked asked me out. Departure made me sexier, safer. Walking along the south side of Central Park after one of these dates, I came across a small crowd. A carriage horse was lying on the ground, taking big, racking breaths. Her owner had got her out of the harness and driving lines and was leaning against the carriage. I went over and said I thought his horse had colic. She needed to walk.

  “How’s she going to walk?” He squinted up at me from beneath his baseball hat. “She can’t even stand.”

  “People will help,” I insisted.

  He squinted at me for a few seconds longer, then turned to the crowd and announced we were going to try to get Rosie back on her feet. Half a dozen women stepped forward, and some men, ashamed not to. The man tugged at Rosie’s bridle and said, “Come on, girl. Ups-a-daisy.” Two women and I heaved at her rump, but she kept slipping out of our hands. After a couple of minutes we stepped back. The owner gave a little shrug and returned to his carriage. I stayed with Rosie, talking to her, until the men came.

  A week later I took the train to Boston and moved in with Claudia. Every morning she put on a T-shirt and jeans and walked to the vet’s office; I put on my business clothes and caught the subway downtown. On Saturdays, when we were both free, we drove out to Windy Hill. Helen was in her late sixties then, tall and upright, her hair already gleaming white. She ran the stables with the help of Stu, who sounded like he’d left Donegal last week, and two men from Brazil. I remember one day watching her ride a stallion called Hotspur. He was eighteen hands, stubborn and distracted, but Helen didn’t give an inch. She rode him around and around until he was obeying the slightest twitch of the reins. It was a beautiful sight: the elegant, white-haired woman in control of the powerful animal.

  When I first started riding again, I was dismayed. I’d grown so stiff, so clumsy. Slowly, as I helped with lessons and exercised the horses, my skills began to return. Then there’d be a deadline at the office; I’d miss a couple of weeks and slip back. When I complained to Claudia, she told me Helen had ridden almost every day for sixty years and never competed outside New England.

  “You have to be a fanatic,” she said, “to get to the top.”

  “What about to be good?” I said. “To be really good?”

  Claudia smiled. She knew what I was asking. “You need to ride six times a week, five to ten horses a day, and push yourself all the time. Which is hard with a job like yours.”

  She was right. I didn’t want to give up anything for anything. I wanted to be a star rider, and I wanted to make killer deals. It turned out I was a good fit for the Boston office. After six months I was promoted, and I liked my colleagues. Sometimes on Fridays we went out for drinks. Sometimes, after drinks, I went home with Robert, who worked in accounting and played jazz cello.

  The day of my second birthday, I was coming home on the subway when I noticed a man. He was reading the New Yorker as if he were alone on the train. He had beautiful hands, and his upper lip was a perfect M. I sat down beside him, got out my own copy of the magazine, and took a deep breath. Let him notice me, I thought. And you did.

  You wrote down my number, you called me, and on our first date you told me you’d recently broken up with your Scottish girlfriend. I couldn’t believe my luck. On our third date, you used the ominous phrase, “There’s something I need to tell you,” but the “something” was that your father had Parkinson’s.

  A few weeks after we met, I went out for Friday drinks. When Robert nodded toward the door, I hesitated. Then I picked up my bag and followed him. You hadn’t mentioned monogamy, but I knew you took it for granted. Would you have been able to understand that Robert helped me to be casual with you? I’d ruined several relationships with premature intensity.

  That Sunday when we were eating breakfast in your kitchen—I wonder if you remember?—you said I’d murmured the name Robert in my sleep. You weren’t suspicious, just curious.

  “The only Robert I know is at work,” I said, reaching for the strawberries. “He has no business in my dreams.” Between one breath and the next I vowed not to sleep with him again, not to risk the sweetness I had with you.

  You told me then about your Robert, how you still felt bad about not answering his letters. “I didn’t want to tell him I wasn’t coming back,” you said.

  “Because he’d be mad at you? Or because it would have made it real?”

  Behind your elegant glasses your eyes grew thoughtful. “Because I’d have lied,” you said, “and promised to see him soon.”

  “Isn’t it better to lie than to hurt someone?”

  “I suppose, but I hate that messy middle ground.” You lined up the strawberries on your plate, largest to smallest, and said something I’ve thought of often since Edward died. “When I see trouble coming, I tend to hide. I hope I never hide from you, Viv.”

  A month later you announced you were going to be tested for HIV; there was no way I couldn’t do the same. As the phlebotomist released the tourniquet, the room began to spin. Remembering my shoe in the subway, I insisted on taking a taxi home. I spent the rest of the day in bed, fingering the little bandage on my arm. One of two possible futures was already running through my veins, but I could only picture the worst. I couldn’t tell you about my fears, and I didn’t tell you what happened when I phoned for the results. A young man’s voice, cool and cocky, said, “Cambridge morgue. You kill ’em, we chill ’em.” I was not the first person to have misdialed.

  After I stopped shaking, I called the correct number. A woman answered. She said the lovely word “negative,” a word that led to your not using a condom and to my getting pregnant.

  At that time I had only one close friend with a baby. Lucy was already living in Duxbury. When I visited, I enjoyed playing with Leo, but really what I wanted was to talk to her. At Yale we had stayed up late, arguing about William James’s theory of the scapegoat and the Iran-Contra affair. Now, even after he was in bed, Leo was her main topic. Had all our studying been in order to discuss why he
didn’t like his sippy cup?

  I hadn’t faced a choice while I waited for the HIV results. This time I did. My life could continue with work, riding, you, friends. Or it could change radically. I knew you’d be pleased. You’d already suggested we live together, and when we visited Lucy, you devoted yourself to Leo. But did I want to be colonized by a small, helpless being? Was this my second life? After a long evening in a bar with Claudia, I called Planned Parenthood.

  The Monday before my appointment I arrived at the office to find Gabe and Nathan deep in conversation. They changed the subject, but not before I understood that a deal I’d worked on, fruitlessly, months before, was going through. Nathan was in the next cubicle, and Gabe and I often shared meals. I had thought they were my friends, not each other’s. Why had they cut me out? Had I drunk too many margaritas one Friday? Or revealed a shocking ignorance of South American politics?

  That evening I walked over to the vet’s office. Claudia lent me a white coat, and I helped her feed the cats and dogs and two tremulous angora rabbits. As we ladled out pellets, refilled water containers, I told her what had happened.

  “But Viv,” she said, “there must be dozens of times when you’ve made people feel left out.”

  She was watching me, but I kept my gaze on the beagle we were feeding. “It’s not about popularity,” I said, stroking his silky ears. “It’s about not being the best.”

  “Of course you’re the best. Look how much they pay you.”

  I tried to explain—good enough to head a team, run a company—but she didn’t understand. My world was too different from hers. And I was too different. She didn’t believe she was destined for greatness; she didn’t have the hunger, the ambition.