I was filled with such loathing for this woman I could have struck her, reached over and slapped that shocked look right off her pretty face. For a second, hating her took my mind completely off what she had said. I didn’t trust myself to speak. If I opened my mouth flames would engulf her. I’d incinerate the whole store.
When my knees stopped shaking, I turned and walked out, leaving the cart half full of groceries and the woman standing there with her hand still covering her mouth. I drove toward Allie’s house in a bubble of numb rage. I kept seeing the face of the woman in the grocery store—the wide eyes, the open mouth hidden behind the slender hand. No suffering I could imagine was enough to punish her for what she had done. For a few minutes hating and blaming her worked to keep my mind off what she had told me, but halfway to Allie’s I forgot about her and switched to hating Hank. By the time I was there, I hated all men, and before I was out of the car, I hated all men and all women. I was in no shape to talk. I felt possessed, as though I could have spun my head three hundred and sixty degrees and vomited frogs. Before Allie saw my car, I turned around and left.
It was four o’clock and already getting dark. When I reached home I walked from room to room, flipping on lights. I couldn’t stop moving. No matter where I went, I saw her face, the look of astonishment, her beautiful hand—slender with smooth white skin. She hardly knew me and she had brought me this news of Hank’s betrayal. I was obsessed with her, frozen in the moment of what she must have intended as a condolence, as words of solidarity.
I changed into barn clothes: long underwear full of holes, sweatpants, turtleneck, sweatshirt. Everything smelled of horses. Downstairs, I took the insulated snow pants off the hook on the stairwell wall. They smelled like the barn, too. Sometimes I worried that my whole house smelled like the barn.
I grabbed a bag of carrots out of the refrigerator and slipped my boots on by the dining-room door. The snow squeaked as I crossed the lawn and ducked under the fence into the pasture. The horses were there waiting, all four of them, right by the fence. They jostled each other, pressed around me, blowing columns of frozen breath. This was when Georgia could be her most possessive, her most obnoxious. Still, I loved this moment, seeing them again after a day apart, smelling them. I said their names, teased them by crinkling the bag of carrots. I gave them each one, then hurried them along to the barn before Georgia could spoil this moment with her jealousy.
Georgia followed me into the barn, bumping up against me when I stopped to turn on the lights. She amazed me. If she was a person I’d hate her. She was the woman behind you in line at the grocery store who bumps you with her cart, who slaps her checkbook onto the little transaction platform while you’re still waiting for change, who casually mentions that your boyfriend is cheating on you.
Georgia flattened her ears and stood in the entry, keeping everyone else out. Charming. Tempo ignored her and shoved her aside. He was the only one who could get away with this, who even dared try. Hotshot and Lay Me Down paced around outside. I could hear the crunch of snow as they circled. I didn’t trust Georgia to behave herself waiting for dinner. I got her to follow me to her stall by crinkling the bag of carrots. Once there, I gave her one, then left, shutting her in.
Right away Hotshot and Lay Me Down knew it was safe to come inside. Lay Me Down hurried to her stall with quick, stiff steps and heaved a big sigh as soon as she was there. She stretched her neck toward the ceiling and curled back her upper lip until it was almost touching her nostrils, and gave herself a deep whiff of her stall. It was a gesture of utter contentment. I understood. It was the way I felt about home, too.
Hotshot stood just outside her stall in the aisle, her guardian, her devotee. I couldn’t look at him without an ache in my chest. I kept seeing him trot up and down the fence when she was at Cornell, the innocence of his distress, how distressed he would be again.
Tempo went into his own stall and pawed at the wall with his front foot. BAM! BAM! BAM! It was so unlike his general attitude, this display of adolescent impatience, this boldness. But it was his unfailing routine, every morning and every night. Like Lay Me Down sniffing her stall, I thought kicking the wall was Tempo’s way of expressing joy at being home. Or maybe it was the way a predominantly anxious personality could say to the world, You might think I’m a scaredy-cat but I’m really a big, tough guy. BAM! BAM! BAM!
I scooped different amounts of grain into four buckets, added medication, vitamins, and supplements and broke up the carrots and added those. I brought Tempo’s out first to get him to stop kicking the wall and because he took the longest to eat. Then Lay Me Down’s, because she got so excited when she saw Tempo’s bucket that she’d pace around her stall, and I couldn’t stand to make her wait. Then Hotshot’s, for no reason except to get him out of the aisle, and finally Georgia’s, whose head arched and bobbed over the stall door, indignant at being last. I apologized, told her she was gorgeous, she was wonderful, the best horse in the whole world. Her ears flattened, and she shoved hard at my shoulder with her nose, almost spilling the contents of the bucket as I hooked it to the ring in the wall. Fat chance she’d fall for flattery. I’d made her wait!
I climbed the steep spiral stairs to the hayloft where there were six hundred bales, give or take, stacked all the way to the roof. There was a narrow path winding through the bales so I could drop hay through holes in the floor to the stalls below. Georgia was the only one who’d move out of the way when I dropped the hay. I’d warn her and she’d move. The others didn’t get it. They’d look up at me through the hole and get hay dropped on their heads. I tried to do it while they were still eating grain so I wouldn’t have to spend twenty minutes brushing hay out of forelocks and manes. I didn’t know why Georgia understood and the others didn’t. You’d think she would have explained it to them.
After I dropped the hay, I opened the wide hayloft doors that overlooked the pasture, my neighbor’s hay fields, and, twenty miles away, the ridge line of the Shawangunk Mountains. I sat in the doorway, dangling my legs over the edge. It was clear and cold and, in a few hours, the sky would be filled with stars. Right now it was a blue-black with a silver glow still visible to the west. To the left, on the other side of the pasture fence, yellow light spilled out of the tall back windows of my house, across the deck and onto the snow. I could see almost the entire downstairs: my grandmother’s red tapestry, the red couch, red dining-room chairs, a red colander hanging from a beam in the kitchen.
Hank liked blue.
It was so quiet I could hear ice crystals blowing across the surface of the snow. I listened for a long time, smelling the hay around me, watching the stars emerge one by one in the blackening sky. I cried because it was a terrible way to end a relationship. I cried because I was afraid it was too late for me to find love. I cried because I was losing Lay Me Down.
But I didn’t cry for Hank.
[ 17 ]
APRIL 25TH WAS unseasonably warm. At seven in the morning the thermometer on the porch off my bedroom read sixty-eight degrees. I knelt at the head of my bed and looked out the window into the pasture. Lay Me Down was lying by herself in the sun near the fence. Her head was up, and her front legs were bent at the knee, tucked under her chest. The other three horses were standing in the sun at the entrance to the barn. I opened the window and called Lay Me Down’s name. She raised her head and looked at me. She wasn’t wearing a coat, and in the sun she was a glossy mink brown.
I grabbed my cell phone and headed for the pasture barefoot, still in my pink plaid pajamas. The grass was prickly and wet, the ground cold in spite of the warm morning. I ran on tiptoes across the lawn and ducked under the fence near Lay Me Down. She watched as I approached but didn’t get up. The other three watched from the barn but didn’t come over. None of this felt right, not Lay Me Down here alone and not the other three standing so far away. Why wasn’t Hotshot with her?
I knelt in the grass in front of her and stroked her neck, her cheek, her nose. I said her name, asked
her what was wrong, why she was lying alone so far away from Hotshot. I looked at the tumor, still about the size of a tennis ball, but who knew what it was doing inside. She was warm where the sun fell on her. I ran my hand all the way down her spine, down the silky smooth contours of the muscles along her back. She turned her head to watch me, only her good eye visible from where I crouched near her shoulder. I held her gaze a long time. I wanted to remember her face, the grace of her body outlined in the early sun.
I called Dr. Grice and left a message with her answering service. I said, “Today’s the day. Could she come this afternoon?” The answering-service woman said, “Today’s what day?” I told her Dr. Grice would know.
I hung up and went back to the house for a camera. I was afraid I wouldn’t remember Lay Me Down exactly the way she was, right then, so beautiful lying in the grass. I wanted to keep her with me, to keep this morning close to me for as long as I lived. I thought a photograph could do that, something to hold in my hand.
I took several pictures. She didn’t move and neither did the other three still standing by the barn, watching. It was extraordinary to me how all of them knew, how I knew, too. Lay Me Down had crossed some invisible line and had already begun to separate from us.
I went back to the house to change. There was a message on my answering maching from Dr. Grice. She’d be at my home at two. I called Allie and asked her to come. She said she’d arrive by one o’clock. Then I called Clayton Barringer. He had wanted a day’s notice, but I asked if he could come that morning to dig the hole, right away. He said it would take him an hour to drive the backhoe.
I went back to the barn to feed the horses and do morning chores. I didn’t know what to do about Lay Me Down. Should I bring grain out to her or leave her alone? I led the other three inside and shut them in their stalls while they ate. I threw a bale of hay out the hayloft doors and went outside to separate it into four sections, one for each horse. While I was doing that, Lay Me Down got up and walked across the pasture toward the barn. She looked normal for her, moving with choppy, stiff-kneed steps. What wasn’t normal was her isolation from the herd and this delay in going to the barn at feed time.
I stood by one of the sections of hay and she came right over and sniffed it but didn’t eat. I went back to the barn and brought out a bucket of grain and put it on the ground near the hay. She sniffed that, too, but didn’t eat. Now what? I didn’t know what to do, how to get through this day. For a second I felt panicky. Was she in pain? Nauseous? Suffering? Was waiting until two o’clock too long? How did you spend the last few hours with your horse?
I stood in front of her and started to cry. I dropped my chin onto my chest and let the tears roll down my face and onto my grimy blue sweatshirt. Then I sobbed, shoulder-shaking sobs that started in my stomach and felt like they’d split me open.
I couldn’t bear that she was leaving me, that tomorrow morning she wouldn’t be standing there. I wouldn’t be able to touch her any longer. I couldn’t bear it. I took a few steps toward her and leaned my forehead against her neck and wrapped my arms around her.
The last time we visited her in the hospital, you climbed into her bed, and it took two nurses to pull you away from her.
Lay Me Down didn’t seem to mind my arms around her neck. When I stopped crying, I kept my head pressed against her. She was warm and alive.
I took a deep breath and picked up the bucket of grain. I took it back to the feed room and then let Hotshot out. Maybe without Georgia and Tempo around he’d go to be with Lay Me Down. And that’s exactly what he did. As soon as I opened his stall door, he trotted right out, whinnying for her. When he saw her he went to her and sniffed her neck. She flicked her tail. He backed off a little and started eating hay. They were like an old married couple following their breakfast routine, only this morning the wife wasn’t hungry. Still, at least she wasn’t alone. I’d keep Georgia and Tempo inside, letting Lay Me Down and Hotshot have this day to themselves.
Two o’clock came fast. The hole was dug, Allie had come, and then Dr. Grice’s blue truck pulled into the pasture right on time. I felt awful, jittery and sick and half out of my mind. I wondered if I could go through with it, if I could be present when Dr. Grice injected Lay Me Down. I could hardly talk to Allie. We’d been sitting on upturned buckets in the pasture watching Hotshot and Lay Me Down together while I fidgeted with a piece of baling twine.
“Let’s get a halter on her,” Allie said as Dr. Grice’s truck pulled alongside the barn.
“I’ll do it.” I jumped up, glad for an excuse not to have to say hello to Dr. Grice. Allie could take care of the social amenities. I got Lay Me Down’s halter and a lead line. My hands were jerky and clumsy. I dropped the halter, dropped the lead, kicked over the treat bucket. Stumbling around in the tack room, I realized there was nowhere to run, no way to escape dealing with this. If I ran all the way to China, Lay Me Down would still die. I’d still wake up tomorrow without her.
I heard the tack room door open.
It was Allie. “Bring Hotshot’s halter, too,” she said. “You have to put him in his stall until it’s over.”
Her voice was matter-of-fact. It was the voice of someone who had done this before, who knew what to do and what to expect. I didn’t have a voice. Mine was the silence of fear. I was afraid of what would come out if I opened my mouth.
Outside I slipped Hotshot’s halter on with shaky hands. I couldn’t look at Dr. Grice. I couldn’t even look at Hotshot. He followed me to his stall quietly but looked anxious when I shut his door and whinnied as I left the barn. I felt like a monster, as though I was killing him, too.
When I walked out of the barn I was assaulted by the sunshine. Allie was holding Lay Me Down by the halter while Dr. Grice listened to Lay Me Down’s heart with a stethoscope. Dr. Grice’s assistant, Donna, stood next to Allie with a stainless-steel pail. Inside the pail were two large syringes filled with blue liquid and a much smaller one filled with pink liquid.
Dr. Grice pulled the stethoscope out of her ears and turned to face me. “It’s the right time,” she said. “I’m glad it’s warm and sunny for her.”
I nodded, afraid if I opened my mouth I’d crack up.
Dr. Grice turned and talked to Lay Me Down. She stroked her neck, telling her she was a good horse, a wonderful horse. Allie talked to her, too, and so did Donna. I remained mute, silenced by my terror. The four of us surrounding Lay Me Down reminded me of Cornell; all those female vet students at Cornell, when there had still been hope.
After she had stroked Lay Me Down’s neck, Dr. Grice explained what would happen. First would be the pink shot, a tranquilizer to relax Lay Me Down. Then we’d lead her to the hole, and she’d be given the blue lethal injection there. Usually one syringe was enough, but Dr. Grice had brought two, just in case. Most of the time the horse dropped fast. The drug went right to the heart; Lay Me Down wouldn’t feel any pain.
She paused to see if I had any questions.
I shook my head.
“Shall we start?” she asked.
I nodded and walked over to hold Lay Me Down’s halter. Dr. Grice took the syringe with the pink liquid and injected it into Lay Me Down’s neck. In less than a minute Lay Me Down dropped her head and her eyes became sleepy.
“OK,” Dr. Grice said. “Let’s lead her to the hole.”
On the way to the grave, I noticed Clayton’s truck in the driveway. He was waiting until it was over, until it was time to arrange her real pretty.
When we got to the hole Dr. Grice handed me an apple. “Why don’t you give her this while I inject her.”
I stood right in front of Lay Me Down, who was noticeably drowsy from the tranquilizer. I hoped she felt fantastic. I hoped she felt loved. I pressed my lips against her forehead, only inches from the tumor, breathing in her horsey smell. “Thank you,” I whispered. It was OK now. It was almost over.
I gave her the apple and felt the prickly whiskers of her chin in my palm. Before she had eaten ha
lf, she dropped straight down. I dropped next to her in the grass and held her beautiful head in my arms. It was heavy and warm against my chest. Her breath smelled like apple. She had fallen on her side, her long legs stretched away from her as though she was getting ready to roll, to take a lazy stretch in the afternoon sun. I looked down at the huge unmoving body and felt a moment of pure horror. What had we done? I wanted her to finish her apple, to have her get up. I wanted her back.
With trembling fingers I touched the silky ear, traced around the bony ridge of her temple, down her cheek to the curve of her jaw. It was a magnificent face, a marvel of contours. It was impossible to imagine where such beauty had come from, and now, where it would go. Allie knelt next to me in the grass, one hand stroking Lay Me Down’s neck, the other around my shoulder. Dr. Grice knelt between Lay Me Down’s outstretched legs, nestling her stethoscope high on her furry side to listen and confirm what we already knew.
“There’s no heartbeat,” she said a few minutes later, letting the stethoscope drop beside her in the grass. She stayed where she was, Donna next to her, still holding the pail with the extra syringe.
It was quiet in that back field, too far from the road to hear cars, too far from the barn to hear the swallows or the screeching of the killdeer nesting on rocks near the watering trough. We were quiet, too, the four of us, and it was in that silence, in the fragile warmth of the spring sun surrounded by gentleness and compassion that I stopped feeling afraid, that my heart stopped pounding and my hands stopped shaking.
I had lost love before, but even worse, I had lost the memory of love, all traces that it had ever existed. I wondered what I had left of Lay Me Down’s love. What did I have to show for it, to prove that it had ever existed? With her head still warm in my arms, she already felt so far away, so very gone from me.
Allie, Dr. Grice, and Donna stayed where they were, kneeling in the grass. Somehow I understood that they weren’t going to leave. They would stay for as long as I needed them to stay, absorbing this experience in their own way, but mostly they were there for me, to guide and support me through the death of my horse. No one was going to tell me to stop crying or to be strong or that I would be OK or that it was just a horse. No one was going to tell me how I should think or feel.
Chosen by a Horse Page 17