Mercury

by Margot Livesey

  That night I dreamed I was sitting by a river, the river where I’d ridden Nutmeg, and a little boy, dark haired, blue eyed, with a rosebud mouth, was sitting beside me. He took my hand, and we played in the warm, shallow water. The next morning I told Claudia I’d changed my mind. “Can I be godmother?” she said. My lingering doubts were banished by your delight. And you were still delighted when I persuaded you we didn’t need to get married. Being a mother was already overwhelming; I didn’t want to be a wife as well.

  But even Margaret Fuller finally succumbed. When I got pregnant for the second time, something shifted, and I was ready. Once again we got blood tests and went to city hall. Beforehand I told myself it was just a formality—I already loved you and Marcus—but when the justice of the peace asked us to stand, my heart leaped. In bed on our wedding night, I remember holding up my hand with my new gold ring. “I’ll never take it off,” I said.

  “Nor will I,” you said. Then you said some very un-Scottish things.

  FROM OUR THIRD DATE it was clear that your parents would play a large part in our lives, and mine a small one. It wasn’t that I disapproved of Dad’s bubbly new Californian wife, or Mom’s violinist boyfriend, but, seeing them only once a year—New Year in San Diego, Memorial Day in Ann Arbor—I scarcely knew them. Whereas your parents invited us to meals and movies, took an interest in my work, and babysat often. Edward in those early years was so gentle and witty, it was easy to forget he was ill. Then, soon after Trina was born, he grew worse.

  I knew you were stretched thin, but I didn’t know how thin until that afternoon we went for a walk in the park. As we passed the playground, you told me that on Friday you’d had to cancel two patients. Then you got home late and made Marcus cry.

  At the top of the park we sat down on the bench overlooking the track. A man and a girl were jogging. The man’s tracksuit was the same purple as that of my savior in the subway. While they circled the track, you laid out your argument: we should move closer to your parents, and you should start your own business so that you could help them and still be a good father. “And husband,” you added.

  I came last, but I still thought I had a choice. Hadn’t we promised each other never to live in the suburbs, where Republicans and ax murderers roamed the streets? You listened quietly to my arguments. When you spoke again, your words came from far away. A few days before, operating on a young man, you’d almost made a fatal mistake. “I’m not sure I believe in nervous breakdowns,” you said, “but I may be having one anyway.”

  The next Sunday, Scott whisked us through six houses and then, turning to me, said, “Tell me why all of those are wrong?”

  “They’re wrong because I don’t want to live in the suburbs,” I said.

  “So we must find a place that doesn’t feel like the suburbs. Make a list of the things that will make you happy to move here.”

  He went to get coffee, and we both began to laugh. “He should be a therapist,” I said. “Or a politician,” you said. But I started on my list.

  In one of those odd coincidences—what Edward used to call serendipity—Claudia phoned a few days later, her voice brimming with excitement, and begged me to meet her for a drink. At the bar near our old apartment, she had two margaritas waiting. Helen had asked her to manage the stables.

  “It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” she said, “but I hate that there’ll be no more last-minute dinners, no more babysitting.”

  The floor of the bar was sticky with beer. I pulled my feet free, first one then the other, and told her our news. “Maybe you won’t be farther away,” I said.

  It helped that Scott found a house we liked, and it helped that Marcus and Trina, after a shaky first week, begged to go to day care each morning. It helped that your business flourished and that Edward responded to treatment. But I had become someone I’d hoped never to be: a commuter. Despite the World Trade Center, despite Iraq, new markets were opening up. Nathan, Gabe, almost everyone who’d been at the office when I arrived, had moved on. I wanted to follow them, but a new job would have meant even longer hours.

  Most of the mothers on our street didn’t work, or worked part-time. They helped out when you had another crisis with Edward, but I was the one who paid back the favors. “You’re so busy,” they said, and I caught the criticism beneath their smiles. When Marcus threw a tantrum, when Trina kept rearranging her books, I worried my work was warping my children. Meanwhile my colleagues complained that I missed late meetings and was slow to respond to e-mail. Those weekend mornings I spent at the stables were the only times I felt like myself. Do you remember how I cried over the film Seabiscuit? Those were tears of rage because I only got to ride once a week.

  But as Jack used to say, we don’t step in the same river twice. Suddenly Edward’s balance was worse again. Marcus went through that phase of bad dreams and bedwetting. I started going to work even earlier so I could be home earlier. There was no end in sight. Or to be exact, the only end was the one you dreaded. Then Helen needed her first hip replacement, and Stu quit to move back to Donegal.

  The first year at Windy Hill was exhilarating. I overhauled the business side. We had a dozen new students, and I bought three more barn horses. Every stall and paddock was filled. I was still busy but much more flexible. When Trina was sent home from school with suspected chickenpox, I was there in twenty minutes. But sometimes as I drove to and from the stables or helped a girl saddle a horse, I was plagued by the feeling I’d had in New York: Was this really my second life?

  One day, after watching me ride Dow Jones, Helen told me I was holding the reins too wide. She started giving me lessons, and I started entering competitions. But it was hard to train a horse that other people were riding badly. We kept coming third or fourth. When we failed to place in a small local show, I gave up competing.

  Then one fall afternoon I came home to find Anne looking after the children. You had taken Edward to the emergency room, again. “Shouldn’t he be in a home?” she asked.

  That night I asked you the same question. Your beautiful mouth tightened. “I hate to think of him being a patient, not a person,” you said.

  “But he’s been both for years. Think how stressful it is for him. He knows he might fall at any moment, and that Peggy can’t lift him.”

  You stared at your book and insisted that they were still figuring out the dosage of a new drug. When they got it right, his balance would be fine.

  Finally I drove into Boston and took Peggy to lunch. I had barely uttered a sentence when she interrupted. “For years,” she said, “people have been telling me to put Edward in a home, and I’ve said over my dead body. But he and I have talked about it; the time has come.” For the rest of the meal we discussed solar panels.

  Gradually we got used to visiting Edward in his small room overlooking a grove of birch trees and the parking lot. Or at least the children, Peggy, and I did. I’m not sure you ever did. When he died, I guessed the size of your distress from what you didn’t do: you didn’t phone me right away, you didn’t take time off from work, you didn’t want to deliver the eulogy. You listened stony-faced as your sister spoke about how Edward had negotiated with his illness rather than fought it, and how he had never stopped being interested in other people.

  In bed that night, when I asked how you felt, you said, “Like an orphan, which is ridiculous for a man of my age.”

  “Especially for a man whose incredible mother is very much a part of his life.”

  As I fell asleep, I could feel you lying awake beside me, and when I woke, you were in exactly the same position. “I want the Simurg to carry me away,” you said. Then you told me about the Persian flying creature, very kind and so large that it could carry an elephant.

  I knew I had to let you grieve in your own way. I tried to make sure you never missed a tennis game with Steve. I tried to make sure you did things with the children. But most of the time it was as if you were walking around in a large protective suit, you
r astronaut’s suit. Was it protecting you from us, or us from you? When I told you my fears about Marcus, the information vanished between one layer and the next.

  A few weeks after Marcus broke his leg, I ran into another mother at the school gates. She asked how he was doing. I said he was great. His crutches were like a new toy.

  “They heal so quickly at that age,” she said. “Nick says the other boy was mostly to blame.”

  “To blame for what?” Marcus had been vague about the accident. One minute he was fine; the next he had a broken leg.

  “Charging around,” she said. “Chasing the little kids.”

  Before she could say more, her son appeared.

  “Everyone charges around in the playground,” you said when I described the exchange. “Especially ten-year-old boys.”

  But I was worried that our son was becoming a bully. The following week, when Ivy and Lynn came over, I noticed how they avoided being alone with him. I began to listen to Anne’s arguments about Greenfield: the fantastic teachers, the structure, the individual attention.

  As for our new student at the stables, I didn’t even try to tell you about her. Tiffany was thirteen, horse crazy, desperate to improve. One day she had her lesson on one of our trickier horses. Mrs. Hardy kept nipping at the other mares. Afterward Tiffany’s mother complained, and Claudia said how about half off for today.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” I said when she told me. “It sets a terrible precedent.”

  “I know, but she works in a 7-Eleven, and she was wearing that godawful sparkly sweater.”

  We agreed I’d take Tiffany’s next lesson and suggest she go on our budget plan. I had seen her ride before, but I was impressed by her seat, by how easily she posted. I explained about the plan: twelve lessons for the price of ten. Her mother said great. She’d bring a check next week.

  After the next lesson, I again praised Tiffany and asked for payment. Her mother reminded me they were on the plan, and I reminded her about the check. Next week, she promised.

  But the next time Tiffany came with a friend, and the lesson after that, her father brought her and knew nothing about any check. For the fifth lesson she once again came with a friend. When I said we couldn’t keep teaching her on account, tears spilled down her cheeks. I handed her a Kleenex and relented. It was a quiet, hot afternoon, and by the end of the lesson she was riding Sir Pericles in graceful circles. Her friend had already left, and I gave her a lift home. As I pulled up outside the ramshackle triple-decker, I offered to talk to her parents. She was out of the car before I finished. “See you next week,” I called. But I didn’t.

  “Good riddance,” said Claudia. “We can’t do battle for every payment.”

  “But she’s really talented,” I said. “It doesn’t matter if we don’t get paid once in a while.”

  “Viv, she got five free lessons. You see our cash flow.”

  She was right—everything about the stables cost money—but I couldn’t get Tiffany out of my head. She was my younger self. I had failed her, and somehow that failure connected with all my other failures. At my job. With Nutmeg and Dow Jones. With various men. Even with my Little Sister Jade. I had failed my second life. You were in the grip of your grief, and I was in the grip of mine. When we went to Wellfleet, we hardly spoke to each other, but you didn’t seem to notice.

  Back at Windy Hill I found we had a new contender for our worst rider award. Week after week Diane slouched around on Samson. So when her mother asked if she could board a horse, our expectations were low. I was walking back from the paddocks when the trailer pulled up outside the barn. From it emerged the most amazing horse I’d ever seen: a dapple-gray Thoroughbred, almost seventeen hands, five years old. Mercury backed out of the trailer, tail clamped, legs ready to kick, ears pinned, nostrils wide. Given half a chance, he would have galloped back to Ontario. The driver held out the forms for Hilary to sign, but she simply stood there, frozen. I stepped forward to take delivery.

  Hilary didn’t come by the next day, or the next. Between giving lessons, I brought Mercury up to the stalls and brushed him using the softest rubber curry. Claudia appeared while I was picking burrs out of his tail.

  “I thought you were checking the supplies,” she said. “It’s not our job to groom him.”

  “I’ll get to them. I don’t think anyone’s been near him in months.”

  This brief conversation set the pattern for our exchanges about Mercury: my enthusiasm, her disapproval. The next day, when Claudia had to go to Boston, I phoned the one person who I knew would appreciate him as much as I did. Helen said she would love to see him.

  I went to fetch her at lunchtime. When we pulled up beside the paddock, he was grazing in the far corner. “Help me out,” she said. I hovered, worrying she’d lose her footing as she moved her walker over the rough ground. Mercury had caught sight of us and was trotting toward the gate.

  “Good shoulders,” Helen pronounced. “Good pasterns. Good suspension. The last time I saw a horse like this was when my first husband took me to the regionals.”

  At the gate Mercury fixed his large dark eyes on me and nickered softly. Then he scraped the ground, twice, with his right front hoof, choosing me.

  2

  SUDDENLY I WAS FULL of hope. Think about the best thing that ever happened to you, not counting Marcus and Trina. That was how I felt during the days following Mercury’s arrival. Even simple things—cutting the crusts off Trina’s sandwiches, putting gas in the car—were filled with meaning. But he was Hilary’s horse. Without her permission I could do little other than feed and groom him. She came to ride him once when I was supervising the stable girls. Then nothing. Eight days passed before she phoned to ask if she could visit Mercury after work. She hadn’t boarded a horse before and didn’t know the rules. That afternoon, the minute Claudia left, I went to get Mercury from the paddock. Walking up the road, he pulled like a yearling. When, instead of fetching his saddle, I cross-tied him outside a stall, he snorted.

  “I can’t,” I told him. “Your mistress is coming.”

  As soon as I saw Hilary heading our way, wearing a flowery skirt, carrying a bag of carrots, I knew she wasn’t planning to ride, but I gave no sign. “Mercury’s waiting by the stalls,” I said. “Do you need help finding his saddle?”

  “Oh, I’m not riding him again.” She was startled but quite definite. “I’m too out of practice, and he’s too strong. I’m just here to pet him.”

  “He really needs to be exercised,” I said.

  “Why can’t he just run around in a field?”

  I explained that he was a Thoroughbred; besides, we didn’t have a large enough field. “I’d be happy to ride him,” I said, “as part of your boarding him here.” I could hear my voice cracking with casualness.

  She started to smile—you know how Hilary nearly always looks as if she’s about to smile—and asked if we could discuss the arrangements over dinner. Diane was away. Now she was the one trying to sound casual. I phoned you, and you said, “Fine.” My absence made no difference.

  At the sight of me, Mercury stamped the ground and tossed his head. Where had I been? He danced from hoof to hoof as I saddled him. Normally, riding a horse I didn’t know, I would have walked him around the arena, letting him get used to me and his new surroundings, but as soon as I mounted Mercury, I could feel the energy coursing through him. He was ready, eager, unafraid. I decided to break my own rules and take him out to the large field. As we stepped onto the grass, his ears came forward. We walked two sides of the fence. Then I let out the reins, and that was that. All I had to do was push my hands into the crest of his mane, and his body unfolded beneath me. He had been cooped up for much too long. And so had I. Do you remember the picture you showed me of the Roman god with his winged shoes? Riding Mercury, it was easy to believe his hooves had wings.

  Afterward, as I followed Hilary’s rear lights down the road and back to town, even my car seemed different, the steering more sen
sitive, the accelerator more powerful. How many horsepower was it? A hundred and fifty? Two hundred? I imagined a cavalcade of horses, like Mercury, galloping before me.

  In the restaurant we took turns telling our life stories. Hilary had met her husband in Toronto, buying Gouda at Kensington Market. Franklin was a computer programmer who loved to cook. They’d married after three months and moved to Providence, where they bought a ramshackle Victorian. For nearly a decade they’d been absorbed in wainscoting and moldings. But after the house was finished, Franklin just wanted to get stoned and play guitar. Or so she thought.

  Then some elderly neighbors asked Hilary to stage their house. It sold in a weekend. The next day she quit her job, technical writing for software manuals. “Once I started earning decent money,” she said, “I was even less patient with Franklin. He wasn’t interested in my houses, didn’t like my new friends. One day he forgot Diane’s school play. I said maybe we should try living apart. I thought he’d argue, promise to change, but he said not a bad idea.”

  Two days after she moved out, her friend Beth had moved in. She couldn’t stand it. Beth enjoying the window seat she’d built in the kitchen, Beth getting Franklin to do the things he’d never do for her. Hilary hadn’t planned to leave Providence, but one weekend she’d been visiting a cousin in Lincoln and driving around, she’d seen a cute house for sale in our town. Diane still hadn’t forgiven her.

  I nodded, asked questions, waiting to ask about what really interested me: Where did she find the amazing Mercury? When I did, a shadow fell across her face. “He belonged to my brother,” she said. “I’ll tell you another time, when I’m not going home to an empty house.”

  To our left, a couple was holding hands; to our right a couple was studying the menu. I remembered all the empty rooms I’d gone back to, before you, and apologized for prying.

  “You’re not prying. I just hate Diane being away. You understand I can’t pay you for riding Mercury? I can only manage the boarding fees because Michael had life insurance.”