Mercury

by Margot Livesey

  The next day was the cross-country. I’d worked hard at the precision of dressage, but this was what I loved, galloping at top speed, jumping the different kinds of jumps. It had rained in the night, and the course was sloppy, but Nutmeg’s boldness served him well. Mine too. We were both covered in mud as we crossed the finish line with a clear round and no penalties. I rubbed him down, singing his praises. Next day’s stadium jumping seemed like child’s play. Victory was so close I could taste it.

  Back at the stables, Elsa was waiting. “Hurrah for you,” she said when I told her about the cross-country, but as I backed Nutmeg out of the trailer, her eyes narrowed. “Stand still,” she said. She ran her hands up and down his legs. His near foreleg was hot. Maybe he’d fractured the pastern.

  “But he’s not lame,” I protested. “He cleared every jump.”

  “Hopefully I’m wrong. Cold-hose his leg tonight, and see how he is in the morning.”

  I kept protesting. How could this have happened? I had taken the best possible care of him.

  Elsa gave a pinched smile. “It’s probably been coming on for a while,” she said. “You’ve been training him awfully hard.”

  I ran cold water over his leg for half an hour, bandaged it, and sprinkled bute into his grain. That night I hardly slept. In the last few weeks Nutmeg had had a couple of off days, but there’d always been a reason; he was stiff from the previous day’s training; he’d hit a rail. Now I remembered those days, and I remembered the hill where he’d stumbled in the mud and I had urged him on. Perhaps it was then that he had hurt himself? Or at the last jump, where he’d taken off awkwardly and landed hard.

  I was back at the stables at 4:00 a.m. His pastern was cool to the touch. It was nothing, I told myself; a passing tenderness, a little bump. I drove north as if he were made of glass. I mustn’t push him, I told myself. Better to be a few seconds slower than to knock down a rail.

  But when I led him out of the trailer in broad daylight, he was walking gingerly. I ran cold water over the leg again. I borrowed a bandage. If it hadn’t been illegal, so close to the event, I would have given him more bute. I only needed to ride him for ten minutes.

  “What’s up with your horse?” the woman in the next trailer asked.

  “He bumped himself,” I said. “He’ll be fine.”

  By 9:00 a.m. there was no doubt: Nutmeg was lame. I tortured myself by watching the jumping—we would have won easily—and spent the rest of the day loitering around the show. I brought Nutmeg back after dark and left a note for Elsa: “I quit.” If I saw her, I knew I’d start yelling. Why hadn’t she saved me from overtraining Nutmeg? Spelled out the dangers? We’d been so close. I’d rather we’d fallen at a jump, gone down in a blaze of glory, than this pathetic mishap.

  The next day I got a job at the photocopy center. I spent the last weeks of August running machines and flirting with students. The next summer I followed Claudia’s example and went to Spain. I was in a library in Barcelona when an e-mail came from Elsa. “We put Nutmeg to sleep yesterday,” she wrote. The fracture in his pastern had worsened until they’d had no choice. “I’m sure you weren’t to blame,” she added, which could only mean I was.

  For more than a dozen years I kept my failed ambitions in a tightly sealed box, like your box of Robert’s letters. But when we moved out of Boston and I started working at Windy Hill, the box began to open. I gave up on becoming a CEO and once again pictured myself training horses, winning competitions.

  13

  THE WEATHER GREW A little warmer, the days a little longer. I began to train Mercury in earnest. He learned quickly but was easily bored. I had to vary our routines, to surprise him with different challenges. More than six weeks had passed without a break-in, but I didn’t believe that the intruder had lost interest. I wished I could follow Michael’s example and sleep at the stables. On several occasions I came home for dinner and made up an excuse to return: I’d forgotten to check the office radiator, a horse needed medicine. One evening I told you I was going to Pilates and drove to the stables. I sat in my car, holding the gun, watching until I was sure everything was safe.

  The week after Claudia’s announcement, I took Mercury to New Hampshire. I was determined not to repeat my mistakes, to get the best advice about training him. Garth was just finishing another lesson when we came into the arena. Mercury was cold from the journey, and jumpy. Horse trailers had always meant huge changes in his life: Kentucky to Ontario, Ontario to Massachusetts. Perhaps he thought he was moving again? I stroked his neck. “I’m right here,” I said. At the far end of the arena we started cantering.

  “So this is the horse you’ve been telling me about.”

  Garth was walking toward us. I muffed the change of leads, jerked the reins. Mercury, too, was distracted and kept looking at this strange man. And Garth, who normally kept up a stream of advice, said nothing, although I knew he saw every misstep. Then Mercury stumbled, and I pulled myself together. I shifted my grip on the reins, patted his neck.

  “Let him go,” Garth called. “Circle the arena.”

  I lost count of how often we passed the mounting block before Garth said, “Now you’re ready to listen to each other. Do a figure eight. Nice tight circles.”

  From then on he directed me and I directed Mercury, until at last he called, “Let’s talk about balance and position in the halt.” For ten minutes he described how my balance affected Mercury’s. “Can you feel it?” he kept saying. “Can you feel the difference?”

  I couldn’t. And then I could. My commands were flowing into Mercury, and he was moving with a new precision. When Garth told us to stop, I was suddenly aware of the people in the viewing area. We had never had an audience before.

  “Get down,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

  In an instant he was in the saddle. “Your hands and your legs are only part of the picture,” he said. “What you want is for your whole body, starting at the top, to be in control.” Inch by inch he demonstrated how he aligned himself with Mercury. Then he let Mercury walk forward, his hindquarters squarely under him, his stride long and fluid.

  “You’re almost there,” he said, “but getting beyond almost means watching yourself every minute. We all learn to ride in a less than ideal way, on a less than ideal horse.”

  Sometimes at the end of a lesson a student asks me if she’s getting better. She’s embarrassed, almost ashamed, but she has to know. Now I couldn’t leave without Garth offering some confirmation. “Should I book another lesson?” I said.

  He swung himself down from the saddle and stood, one hand resting on Mercury’s withers. “If you don’t,” he said, “I’ll hunt you down. People often make their horses sound like the second coming. I’ve learned to be a tad skeptical. But you underplayed this one. He’s a great horse and a quick learner. I don’t know what you have in mind, but if you’re asking is he worth the trouble, the answer is a hundred percent yes.”

  “And me,” I persisted, “what about me?”

  His broad face broke into a smile. “That’s always the question. There are no guarantees but yes, I think you’ve got what it takes. And he likes you; he listens to you. You won’t hold him back.”

  I held out my hand as if to seal a bargain.

  As I led Mercury to the exit, a woman asked what prizes he’d won, another wanted to know his age and pedigree.

  All the way back to the stables, I kept repeating Garth’s words, and as soon as I had Mercury in his stall, I wrote them down. I longed to share them, but who could I tell? You’d listen politely and say “That’s nice.” Claudia and Hilary were out of the question. Peggy and Anne, like you, wouldn’t understand. Helen was too close to Claudia. The only confidante who came to mind was Charlie. Next time we were alone at the stables, I thought, I’d tell her about Garth. Magic, she would say. Cool. We would sit in the office, looking over the schedule of shows. Perhaps she could be my groom.

  I was still fizzing with excitement when I met Hil
ary that evening. The bar was crowded with young people, but we squeezed into a booth. She ordered a cosmopolitan; I did too. Later I regretted the choice, but at first the sweet, icy drink seemed perfect. She was taking her real estate exam next month. An older agent at the office was coaching her. “She’s like you,” she said. “Kind and super efficient.”

  “I wish,” I said, pleased that she saw me that way. I told her how we’d marked Edward’s anniversary, and she said it sounded beautiful. Maybe she could do something similar for Michael. Her parents had asked several times what she planned to do with the ashes. She was taking Jack to meet them in April.

  “He claims he’s a much nicer person since he went blind,” she said. “Do you think that’s true?”

  I said I didn’t know; I’d met him only after he stopped being your patient. Then, despite my earlier concerns, my firm belief that I should not confide in Hilary, I found myself describing the master class, what a great teacher Garth was, how he’d praised Mercury.

  “You took Mercury to New Hampshire?”

  “Yes. Garth couldn’t get over how well trained he is.” Still in the grip of my day, full of enthusiasm and alcohol, I barreled ahead, describing the shows we planned to enter.

  When I fell silent, Hilary said, “I thought our arrangement was I pay to board Mercury, you exercise him. I don’t want you driving him here and there, putting him at risk.”

  For once she was not smiling, not even about to smile. If only I had kept quiet. Carefully I explained. Michael had been training Mercury to compete. He had died training him. All his work would be in vain if Mercury just trotted around a field. I would pay the entry costs. We’d share any prize money. The easy road of our friendship was suddenly slick with black ice. Didn’t Hilary remember the conversation we’d had in her living room? Then I recalled how, just as I began to explain my plans, Diane had asked about supper.

  “Viv, calm down. All I’m saying is I need to figure out what’s best for Mercury. Competing is dangerous. A woman I met suggested I lease him to keep down expenses. If you want to compete, why not ride another horse? You’ve got plenty to choose from.”

  Both ideas—her leasing Mercury, my riding another horse—were so preposterous that I couldn’t speak. Our server came over to ask how we were doing. I held out my glass. Hilary said no thanks and excused herself. In the empty booth, I sat very still, my mind racing. A month before, when you suggested I get my own horse, I’d been furious. Mercury was the only horse I wanted. Now I understood that you and Claudia had been right: Hilary could take him away on the slightest whim. All these months I’d thought I was doing her a favor: training her beloved horse as her beloved brother would have done. But some stranger had turned everything upside down. I’d been riding Mercury for free. I’d been putting him in danger.

  I had almost finished my second cosmo when Hilary returned, smiling. She’d run into a woman who was interested in one of her houses.

  “Great,” I said. I was desperate to get away, to figure out what to do next. I drained my glass, waved my credit card. We parted with kisses, good wishes to you, love to Jack. The four of us must have dinner soon.

  As I reversed out of the parking lot, a voice shouted, “Stop! For Christ’s sake, stop!”

  I stamped on the brake; the car fishtailed to a halt. I was looking over my shoulder, trying to find the owner of the voice, when a man tapped on the window.

  “You nearly hit me.” He was about my age, bundled up against the cold, his eyes bright with anger. “You could have killed me.”

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you with all the snow.”

  “You could have killed me,” he repeated. And walked away.

  I drove home, still shaking. After the crises of the New Year, I had thought I was finally doing everything right. Taking care of the stables, training Mercury, giving more lessons to pay for extra babysitting, keeping you, and Hilary, and Claudia happy. Now I had nearly run over a man, and Hilary had got it into her head that competing was dangerous.

  Do you remember when Jack reenacted Roman battle formations with Marcus and Trina’s toy animals? There was one called the quincunx in which gaps were left in the lines so that the first warriors could retreat after throwing their javelins. Another, the Cannae, had a weak center—Jack lined up four sheep—and strong flanks: Marcus and Trina arranged their lions and tigers. The sheep collapsed while the big cats circled the enemy. For years Claudia and I had guarded each other’s flanks. But not now.

  I was so upset I pulled over to reread Garth’s words. I sat there holding the piece of paper, reminding myself that nothing terrible had happened. I had taken too much for granted, but I would explain to Hilary. If she needed to lease Mercury, then of course I’d lease him. And when he won a couple of events, she’d begin to understand that together we could fulfill Michael’s dreams.

  When I got home, I tried to talk to you. Perhaps you were right, I said, about my arrangements with Hilary. We ought to have something in writing.

  “That’s a good idea,” you said. “Then you’ll both know where you stand.”

  “But what if she won’t let Mercury compete?”

  I was voicing my worst fear, the thing I couldn’t bear to contemplate, that would make a mockery of all my hopes and hard work, and what did you say? You probably don’t remember.

  “That is her prerogative,” you said.

  Do you wonder that I felt alone?

  14

  TWO DAYS LATER I was approaching Mercury’s stall when something brought me to a standstill. For a moment I didn’t know what it was. My eyes registered the change before my brain. Then I understood. The ropes I’d draped around the bars of his stall the night before now hung from the saddle post.

  Someone had been here. Someone had visited Mercury. I looked up and down the corridor: empty. I looked in his stall: empty save for him. I didn’t know what to do first: phone the police, phone Claudia, check the building. He settled the matter by whinnying. I ran my hands down his legs but found no bumps, no hot spots.

  “Who was here?” I said. “What did they want?”

  I hurried back to the car. With the gun in my pocket, I went around the building, testing windows and doors. In the office I made a cup of tea and tried to calm myself. There was no point in calling the police—I’d already done everything they’d do—and there was no point in telling Claudia. She’d only worry. And besides, how could I tell her without mentioning the ropes? My cunning precaution would strike her as evidence, yet more evidence, of my obsession with Mercury. I clasped the gun until I felt calm enough to return to him.

  In the arena I swung myself into the saddle, adjusted the stirrups, and walked him forward. We circled only twice before I urged him into a canter. I gave myself over to his drumming hooves, his steady breath, his muscles moving beneath me, his mane flying. Then we turned toward the jumps. The day before I’d set each one an inch higher. Now Mercury cleared them greedily. And with each jump I felt myself not flying, but even better than that, entirely one with him, each of us exerting every bone, every brain cell, to clear the jump, each of us thrilled as we arced through the air.

  Give me more, he was saying.

  “I will,” I said.

  This time I was determined. Nothing, nothing I could prevent, would go wrong. Can you understand? I loved you, Marcus, and Trina, but I loved Mercury too. I was going to ride him to victory. After more than a decade I was going to fulfill the promise of my second life.

  PART THREE

  DONALD

  1

  WHAT I HAVE RECOUNTED so far is my experience of events more or less as I lived through them, and Viv’s account of those same months, which she delivered at our kitchen table during several late-night conversations. Like the three blind men, each encountering different parts of an elephant, each believing he grasped the whole, I had believed myself the possessor of the 20/20 vision my progressives promised. That night at the stables, when I saw Viv holding a gun, I real
ized my vision was almost as limited as Jack’s. There is listening and listening; there is also seeing and seeing. I had missed, or misunderstood, almost everything. Which surely means that, despite everything Viv told me, I am still missing a good deal.

  Even as I came to a stop outside the emergency room, Hilary was running towards the door. Jack was deep into shock, moaning softly. Then two orderlies were sliding him out of the car, wheeling him through the waiting room and the swing doors beyond, into a curtained cubicle. A nurse began to cut off his jacket. Briefly the sound of scissors ripping through fabric carried me back to that afternoon at my mother’s house when, while I opened the box containing the bookcase, she had urged me to let Viv pursue her dreams. Now Hilary held Jack’s hand. “You’re at the hospital,” she said. “They’re cutting off your clothes. You’re going to be fine.”

  But Jack was far from fine. His skin, always pale, shone white as Mercury’s mane; his mouth was screwed tight with pain. For nearly three years I had seldom seen him without his dark glasses. Now they were gone—safe, I learned later, in Hilary’s bag—and his eyes were the same disconcerting, vehement blue as they had been the last time I examined them.

  Dr. Gaitonde appeared, slight and narrow-shouldered. “So Mr. Brennan got in the way of a bullet,” she said, bending over him with her stethoscope. How long ago was he shot? Did we know his blood type? Any heart problems or allergies? I introduced myself as Jack’s optometrist, and answered as best I could. She typed my answers into a computer terminal.

  “Please,” said Hilary, “will he be all right?” In her blue dress, lipstick still gleaming, she looked as if she were on her way to a party.