by Jodi Picoult
My mother began to smile, and it melted her from her head to her feet, making her able to move again. "I know who you are," she said. She did not take my hand. She shook her head and knotted her fingers around the leather lead. She fidgeted, scuffing the toes of her boots in the loose gravel. "Let me get rid of Eddy," she said. She pulled on the lead and then stopped to turn back to me. Her eyes were huge and pale, the eyes of a beggar. "Don't go anywhere," she said.
I followed a few steps behind the horse she led. She disappeared into a stall--the one the boy had been cleaning--and slid the halter off the horse's head. She stepped out, latched the mesh gate, and hung the leather contraption on a nail pegged to the right of the stall. "Paige," she said, breathing my name as if it were forbidden to speak aloud.
She reached toward me and touched her palm to my shoulder. I could not help it; I shivered and stepped back. "I'm sorry," I said, looking away.
At that moment the boy who had been working the stable earlier appeared out of nowhere. "I'm done for the day, Lily," he said, although it was only noon.
My mother dragged her gaze away from me. "Josh," she said, "this is Paige. My daughter, Paige."
Josh nodded at me. "Cool," he said. He turned to my mother. "Aurora and Andy need to be brought in. I'll see you tomorrow. Although," he said, "tomorrow is just the flip side of today."
As he walked down the long aisle of the barn, my mother turned to me. "He's a little bit Zen," she said, "but he's all I can afford right now."
Without another word, my mother walked out of the barn and headed down the gravel path toward the field that ran to the left. When she reached the field she propped her elbows against the wooden gate and watched the horse at the far end. Even at this distance he was one of the largest horses I had ever seen. He was sleek and sable-colored, with the exception of his two front legs. They turned pure white halfway down, as if he'd only just stepped into heaven. "How did you find me?" my mother asked nonchalantly.
"You didn't make it easy," I snapped. I was fuming. My mother didn't seem the tiniest bit put out by my appearance. I was more rattled than she was. Sure, there had been that shock of surprise, but now she was acting cool and relaxed, as if she'd known I was coming. This was not the way I'd thought she would be. I realized that at the very least, I'd expected her to be curious. At the very most, I had wanted her to care.
I turned to her, waiting for a splinter of real recognition to hit me--some gesture or smile or even the lilt of her voice. But this was an entirely different woman from the one who had left me when I was five years old. I had spent the past few days--the past twenty years--conjuring up comparisons between us, making assumptions. I knew we would bear a resemblance to each other. I knew that we had both been driven away from our homes, although I didn't know why she had left. I imagined that I would meet her and she would reach out her arms for me and there I would be, in the place where I always knew I would fit best. I imagined that we would sound the same, walk the same, think the same. But this was her world, and I knew nothing about it. This was her life, and it had gone smoothly without me around. The truth was that I barely knew her when she left and that I did not know her now. "A friend of mine introduced me to a private eye, and he tracked you to Bridles & Bits," I said, "and then I saw the ceiling."
"The ceiling," my mother whispered, her thoughts far away. "Oh--the ceiling. Like Chicago."
"Just like," I said, my words clipped and bitten.
My mother turned abruptly. "I didn't mean to leave you, Paige," she said. "I only meant to leave."
I shrugged as if I did not care at all. But something sparked inside me. I thought of Max's round little face and flat chin, and of Nicholas, pulling me against the hot line of his chest. I had not meant to leave them; I had only meant to leave. I wasn't running away from them; I was only running away. I peered at my mother from the corner of my eye. Maybe this went deeper than appearances. Maybe, after all, we had more in common than it seemed.
As if she knew I needed proof, my mother whistled to the horse at the far end of the field. He exploded toward us, running at a breakneck pace, but slowed as he approached my mother. Gentling, he circled until he was calm. He nodded and tossed his head, and then he leaned down and nuzzled my mother's hand.
He was easily the most beautiful animal I had ever seen. I wanted to draw him, but I knew I'd never be able to capture his energy on paper. "This is my best show horse," my mother said. "Worth over seventy-five thousand dollars. This whole thing"--here she swept her hand across the vast farm--"my lessons and my training and everything else I do, is just to support him, so I can show him on weekends. We show in the elite shows, and we've even come in first in our division."
I was impressed, but I did not understand why she was telling me this now when there were so many other things that needed to be said. "I don't own this land," my mother continued, slipping the halter over the horse's head. "I rent from Pegasus Stables. I rent my house and my trailer and my truck from them. This horse is just about the only thing I can really say is mine. Do you understand?"
"Not really," I said impatiently, stepping back as the horse lifted his head to dodge a fly.
"This horse is named Donegal," my mother said, and the word brought back what it always had--the name of the county in Ireland where my father had been born, the place he never stopped telling us about when I was little. Tumbling clover like emeralds; stone chimneys brushing the clouds; rivers as blue as your mother's eyes.
I remembered Eddie Savoy saying that people can't ever wholly give up what they've left behind. "Donegal," I repeated, and this time as my mother held out her arms, I stepped into their quiet circle, amazed that the vague wisps of old memories could crystallize into such warmth, such flesh and blood.
"I spent years hoping you would come," my mother said. She led me up the steps to the farmer's porch of the small white clapboard house. "I used to watch the little girls walk down to the stable for their lessons, and I kept thinking, This one will pull off her riding helmet, and it's going to be Paige." At the screen door, she turned to me. "It never was, though."
My mother's house was clean and neat, almost Spartan. The porch was empty, except for a white wicker rocking chair, which blended into the background paint, and a bright-pink hanging begonia. The front hall had a faded Oriental runner and a thin maple table, on top of which was a set of Shaker boxes. To the right was a tiny living room; to the left, a staircase. "I'll get you settled in," my mother said, although I had never said I would be staying. "But I've got some lessons this afternoon, so I won't be around much."
She took me up to the second floor. Straight ahead at the top of the staircase was the bathroom, and the bedrooms were to the right and the left. She turned to the right, but I got a glimpse of her own room--pale and breezy, with gauze curtains billowing over the white of the bed.
When I stepped into the doorway of the other room, I drew in my breath. The wallpaper was a busy tumble of huge pink flowers. The bed was a frothy canopy, and on a chest against the wall were two porcelain dolls and a stuffed green clown. It was the room of a little girl. "You have another daughter," I said. It wasn't a question really, but a statement.
"No." My mother walked forward and brushed the cool cheek of one of the dolls. "One of the reasons I decided to lease this stable was because of this room. I kept thinking how much you would have liked it here."
I looked around the room at the sugar-candy decoration, the suffocating wallpaper. I wouldn't have liked it as a child. I thought about my bedroom at home in Cambridge, which I didn't like, either, with its milk-colored carpet, the near-white walls. "I was eighteen when you got this place," I pointed out. "A little old for dolls."
My mother shrugged easily. "You were kind of stuck in my mind at five years old," she said. "I kept thinking I'd go back and get you, but I couldn't do that to your father, and besides, if I went back I knew it would be to stay. Before I knew it, you were all grown up."
"You came to my
graduation," I said, sitting down on the bed. It was a hard mattress, unforgiving.
"You saw me?"
I shook my head. "Private eye," I said. "Very thorough."
My mother sat down beside me. "I spent ten hours in Raleigh-Durham, trying to make up my mind about getting on that plane. I could, then I couldn't. I even sat down on one flight and ran off before they closed the door."
"But you came," I said, "so why didn't you try to talk to me?"
My mother stood up and smoothed away the wrinkles on the bedspread so that it looked as though she'd never sat down. "I didn't go there for you," she said. "I went there for me."
My mother checked her watch. "Brittany's coming at two-thirty," she said. "Cutest little kid you've ever seen, but she's never going to make it as a rider. Feel free to come down and watch, if you like." She looked around as if something were missing. "You have a bag?"
"Yes," I said, knowing that even if I wanted to I could not make myself stay at a motel. "It's in my car."
My mother nodded and started to walk out, leaving me on the bed. "There's food in the fridge if you're hungry, and be careful because the toilet lever sticks a little, and if you need me in a hurry there's a sticker on the phone with a number that goes straight to Pegasus's barn, and they can get me."
It was so easy to talk to her. It came effortlessly; I could have been doing it forever. I supposed I had, but she hadn't been answering. Still, I wondered how she could be this matter-of-fact, as if I were the kind of visitor she got every day. Just thinking about her made a headache come behind my eyes. Maybe she knew better and was doing this to skip all the gutted history in between. When you don't keep looking back, it's that much easier not to trip and fall.
My mother stopped at the threshold of the door and held her hand against the wooden frame. "Paige," she said, "are you married?"
A sharp pain ran straight down my spine, a sick ache that came from her being able to talk about phone lines and lunch but not knowing the things a mother is supposed to know. "I got married in 1985," I told her. "His name is Nicholas Prescott. He's a cardiac surgeon."
My mother raised her eyebrows at this and smiled. She started to walk out of the room. "And," I called after her, "I have a baby. A son, Max. He's three months old."
My mother stopped, but she did not turn around. I might even have imagined the quiet tremble of her shoulders. "A baby," she murmured. I knew what was going through her mind: A baby, and you left him behind, and once upon a time I left you. I lifted my chin, waiting for her to turn around and admit to the cycle, but she didn't. She shifted her weight until she was moving down the stairs, humbled and silent, with the parallel lines of our past running cluttered through her mind.
She was standing in the center of the oval--the ring--and a girl on a pony danced around her. "Transitions, Brittany," she called. "First you're going to take him to a trot. Squeeze him into it; don't lean forward. Sit up, sit up, push those heels down." The girl was leggy and small. Her hair hung in a thick blond tail from beneath the black riding helmet. I leaned against the rail where I'd stood earlier, watching the squat brown horse jaunt its way around in a circle.
My mother walked to the edge of the ring and adjusted one of the redwood rails so that it was lower to the ground. "Feel when he's going too fast and too slow," she yelled. "You need to ride every step. Now I want you to cross the diagonal. . . . Keep stretching down in your heels."
The girl steered the horse--at least I thought she did--coming out of the corner and making an X across the ring. "Okay, sitting trot," my mother called. The girl stopped bouncing up and down and sat heavy in the saddle, wiggling a little from side to side with every step of the horse. "Half seat!" my mother called, and the girl bounced up once, freezing in the position that held her out of the saddle, hanging on to the horse's mane for dear life. My mother saw me and waved. "Let's cross the diagonal again, and you're going to go right over this cavalletti," she said. "Ride him right into the woods." She crouched down, her voice tense and her body coiled, as if she could will the horse to do it correctly. "Eyes up, eyes up . . . leg, leg, leg!" The horse did a neat hop over the low rail and slowed down to a quiet walk. The little girl stretched her legs out in front of her, feet still in the stirrups. "Good girl," my mother called, and Brittany smiled. "We can end with that."
A woman had come up beside me. She pulled out her checkbook. "Are you taking lessons with Lily?" she asked, smiling.
I did not know how to answer. "I'm thinking about it," I said.
The woman scrawled a signature and ripped off the check. "She's the best there is around here."
Brittany had dismounted, neatly sliding off the saddle. She walked up to the fence, leading the horse by the reins. My mother glanced at me, looking from my head to my shoulders to my walking shorts and sneakers. "Don't worry about tacking Tony down," she said. "I think I need him for another lesson." She held out her hands for the reins and watched as Brittany and her mother disappeared up the hill toward the barn.
"My three-thirty has the flu," she said, "so how'd you like a lesson for free?"
I thought of the horse that morning taking the jumps with the power of a locomotive, and then I looked at this little horse. It had long dark eyelashes and a white patch on its forehead in the shape of Mickey Mouse. "I don't think so," I said. "I'm not the type."
"I never was, either," my mother said. "Just try it. If you don't feel comfortable, you can get off." She led me toward the little redwood rail and paused, holding the horse's reins. "If you really want to know about me, you should try riding. And if you really want me to know about you, I can learn a hell of a lot just by watching you in the saddle."
I held the horse's reins while my mother adjusted the stirrup lengths and pointed out the names of things: blanket, pad, and English saddle; bit, bridle, martingale, girth, reins. "Step on the cavalletti," my mother said, and I looked at her blankly. "The red thing," she said, kicking the rail with her foot. I stepped onto it with my right foot and then tucked my left foot into the stirrup. "Hang on to the mane and swing yourself over. I'm holding Tony; he isn't going anywhere "
I knew as soon as I was sitting that I looked ridiculous. A little girl might have looked cute on a pony, but I was a fully grown woman. I was certain my legs almost touched the ground. I might as well have been riding a burro. "You're not going to kick him,'' my mother said. "Just urge him into walking."
I touched my foot gently to the horse's flanks, but nothing happened. So I did it again, and the horse shot off, bouncing me from left to right until I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around its neck. "Sit up!" my mother yelled. "Sit up and pull back." I summoned all my strength and did what she said, sighing when the horse slowed to a quiet walk that barely jogged me at all. "Never lean forward," my mother said, smiling, "unless you're planning to gallop."
I listened to my mother's calm directions, letting all the words run together and feeling the simple meter of the horse's movements and the scratch of its hide against my bare calves. I was amazed at the power I had. If I pushed my right leg against Tony's side, he moved to the left. If I pushed my left leg against him, he moved right. He was completely under my control.
When my mother urged the horse to a trot by clucking at him, I did what she said. I kept my shoulders, my hips, and my heels in a straight line. I posted up and down, letting the horse's rhythm lift me out of the saddle and holding the beat until the next hoof fell. I kept my back erect and my hands quiet on Tony's withers. I was completely out of breath when she told me to sit back and let the horse walk, and I turned to her immediately. It wasn't until then that I saw how much I wanted her approval.
"That's enough for today," she said. "Your legs are going to kill you tonight."
She held the reins while I slid out of the saddle, patting Tony on the side of his neck. "So what do you know about me now that you didn't know before?" I asked.
My mother turned, her hands on her hips. "I know that at least twice duri
ng that half hour you pictured yourself galloping across a field. And that if you had fallen the first time Tony pulled away a little fast, you would have got right back on. I know you're wondering what it's like to jump, and I know that you're more of a natural at this than you think." She tugged on the reins so that the horse separated us. "All in all," she said, "I can see that you are very much like me."
It was my job to make the salad. My mother was simmering spaghetti sauce, her hands on her hips in front of the old stove. I glanced around the neat kitchen, wondering where I would find a salad bowl, tomatoes, vinegar.
"The lettuce is on the bottom shelf," my mother said, her back to me.
I stuck my head into the refrigerator, pushing past nectarines and Barries & Jaymes wine coolers to find the head of iceberg lettuce. My father believed you could tell a lot about people from their kitchens. I wondered what he'd have to say about this one.
I started to peel the leaves off the lettuce and rinse them in the sink, and looked up to find my mother watching me. "Don't you core it?" she asked.
"Excuse me?"
"You know," my mother said. "Take the core out." She rammed the heel of the lettuce against the counter and neatly twisted it out. The lettuce fell open in a series of petals. "Your father never taught you that?" she said lightly.
My spine straightened at the criticism. No, I wanted to tell her. He was too busy doing other things. Like guaranteeing my moral conscience, and showing me how to trust other people, and letting me in on the unfair ways of the world. "As a matter of fact," I said quietly, "he did not."
My mother shrugged and turned back to the stove. I began tearing the lettuce into a bowl, ripping it furiously into tiny pieces. I peeled a carrot and diced a tomato. Then I stopped. "Is there anything you don't take?" I asked. My mother looked up. "In your salad, I mean."
"Onion," she said. She hesitated. "What about you?"
"I eat everything," I told her. I chopped cucumber, thinking how ridiculous it was that I did not know what vegetables my own mother would eat in a tossed salad. I couldn't prepare her coffee, either, or conjure her shoe size, or tell a stranger which side of the bed she slept on. "You know," I said, "if our lives had been a little different, I wouldn't be asking these things."