The Opposite of Never

by Mary Kathleen Mehuron

  “What kind of horses did they have at your riding school?” Kenny asked.

  “They had Morgans,” Zelda responded softly and without enthusiasm. Dutifully, she trailed after Spencer into the barn and stood before the stall of the expectant mare, which nickered at Zelda. Instinctually, she reached out to stroke the animal’s nose, but it pulled away. Seconds later, the horse moved back toward her and rooted around inside her hand looking for food. When she didn’t find any, she let her exasperation be known with a gust of air through her huge nostrils. Zelda was startled when unexpectedly, from behind her right shoulder, she heard Spencer’s voice. He spoke in a hushed tone very near her ear.

  “Her name is Clarice. She’s affectionate, but she doesn’t like to be touched on her nose.” Spencer paused for a moment, then added, “Good to see you again, Zelda. You look exactly the same; you’re still the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.”

  Zelda inhaled sharply, yet couldn’t catch her breath.

  Spencer’s eyes widened. “No. Please don’t worry. I don’t want to talk about that night. We made a terrible mistake, but it’s one we made together. I don’t blame you or anyone else that I messed up. Let’s just catch up and enjoy the day. You want to go for a ride right now?”

  She was so shocked by his question and overwhelmed by the guilt caused by her past that she couldn’t answer and instead looked shyly down at the floor.

  Spencer took charge. “Mr. Simmons?” he called to Kenny who was outside the barn taking in the view.

  “Yes, Spencer?”

  “Okay with you if I take Zelda riding right now? I can bring her home after.”

  “She doesn’t have her boots.”

  “We have plenty of boots and helmets, sir.” He threw in the “sir” because he wanted to convince Kenny to let him spend time with his daughter.

  “What do you think, Zelda?” her stepfather asked as he walked toward them.

  “I’d love to go. Do you mind, Dad?” Although she sounded certain, she was conflicted about withholding important information from her father, but riding used to give her so much joy. It was a long time since she had felt anything close to it.

  “Not at all. You kids have a good time.”

  Once Spencer had saddled up and found Zelda some riding boots that fit, they headed uphill across one of the pastures. She told him, “I haven’t been out riding in five years. You don’t jump or anything, do you? Take it easy on me.”

  In a stage whisper he said, “Maybe that’s my plot, to get you out here and take my revenge.” He made a grimace and let out an evil laugh.

  Zelda looked shocked and her horse abruptly stopped walking. The animal’s ears rotated and his nostrils flared. It was as if he were trying to sense her feelings. In a deep, shaky voice she asked, “How can you joke about it? What I did ruined my life and caused a whole lot of pain to all of the families involved.”

  Spencer hesitated before he answered her. He wanted to show her that he respected what she told him. Finally he said, “It changed mine, too. But, honestly, Zelda, when times get hard enough, sometimes the only thing you can do is laugh. You aren’t the same person; I can see it written all over your face. And I’m not either. I used to be a cocky little guy, trust me when I tell you that I’ve been humbled. I am so happy to be alive on this beautiful day, alongside a ravishing woman. Let’s have some fun. Can you gallop?”

  Before he could finish the sentence, Zelda had already taken off up the hill. The trail to the top was well-defined. He found her up there astride her mount staring out across the countryside. Below them, the Barmy River wound through farmland as far as the eye could see. She could have been an Indian princess on her horse, her black hair flowing out on the wind, except for her bright crystal-blue eyes that flashed this way and that as she took in the view.

  The same soft breeze that caressed Spencer’s face gently blew locks of her long hair away from her face. He could tell that she was thrilled to be here and it filled him with contentment. “What do you think? Pretty nice, right? Zelda, someday soon I have to take you up to the pine forest.”

  She turned to him with eyes aglow, “I would love that. Hey, want to race back down?”

  “I’m in no hurry to get home. No hurry at all. There’s another path leading down to a wide stream. It’s really narrow and a little tricky but worth the trouble. You want to try it?”

  Though she uttered only four words in response, Zelda seemed to convey a message that was both broad and deep when she said, “I’ll follow you, Spencer.”

  Nine

  “Have no fear of perfection—you’ll never reach it.”

  —Salvador Dalí

  Yvonne and Rolland had agonized over the decision to stake Spencer in his cheese-making business. After his five-year struggle, they were thrilled his cognition had been almost fully restored, as they had almost given up hope. Before the accident, they were certain he would go to college and get a degree. He would have been the first one on either side of the family to do so. But they had to face the fact that given his age now, his physical limitations and medications, and his need to rest when he read for more than a half hour, college was no longer an option. They worried that if reading wore him out, throwing bales of hay and wheels of cheese around might be perilous.

  Spencer had gone through periods of horrifying seizures. They had stood by helplessly when his eyes rolled back and he shook and jerked around. The best they could do was to make sure he didn’t harm himself. Sometimes he peed in his pants during the episodes, and that was when Rolland took over.

  “I know you want to help, Yvonne, but a grown man should not have to be cleaned up by his mother. I’m going in with him and stand by the shower stall. Just leave some clean clothes outside the bathroom door.”

  Spencer’s parents’ resolute kindness and respect altered the teenager–parent relationship they’d had before the accident. He recognized that although he was dependent on them for a while, they were game for anything that helped him enjoy his life. Rolland and Yvonne told him to take it easy. “We have money saved; there is no reason for you to push yourself, especially when it could be detrimental to your health.” Spencer, however, had other ideas. The more he healed, the more he grew into a vital and vigorous young man.

  During his convalescence on the farm he loved, schemes for the place exploded in his mind like fireworks. His plans for the property were revealed almost as visions. He would wake at night from a dream and grab the notebook he kept close by.

  Why didn’t I see this before? If we reshape the lower pasture and bring the cornfield right up to it, storing the grain would be so much more efficient.

  A potential list of improvements stacked up. Rolland couldn’t argue with a single one of them, and that made him burst with pride over his son. Rolland was busy with his new lumber company and the hardware store. He and Yvonne went south now in January and February and, the truth was, Rolland had never meant to be a farmer. It was Yvonne who loved this old place and loved animals, too. To Spencer, the farm was both his home and a business with room to grow. Developing it was now Spencer’s purpose for living.

  Not surprisingly, Yvonne and Rolland’s top priority was also Spencer. The downside of starting the cheese making company was he might overdo and hurt himself. In addition, he was still on medicines that could impair his judgment around large animals and dangerous equipment. The convincing upside was the way his eyes lit up whenever he talked about his work.

  Yvonne had come home while Spencer and Zelda were out riding. She spotted them after they returned down in the fenced pasture below the house with their horse Tom. Spencer was showing off to Zelda by making Tom walk backward and then sideways. Zelda sat on the top fence rail watching. What a beauty that girl was. Yvonne resolved to take her aside and compliment her. She believed most young women were insecure about their looks. A kind word from an older woman could give her more confidence. Her coloring is nothing short of dramatic. Oh, and those cheekbones. She’s
simply striking.

  After a while, Spencer dismounted and helped Zelda up onto the horse. Yvonne couldn’t hear what the girl said to her son, but she saw him double over with laughter. The sound of him chortling was almost like music, and it was carried up to her through her open window. How it made her smile.

  Why I haven’t heard him laugh like that in a million years.

  It warmed Yvonne’s heart to think he was enjoying himself.

  Zelda was having fun, too. While she sat astride Tom, Spencer gave her instructions.

  “Teaching a horse to back up is important, because the better he is at it, the better he will be at stopping on command. In my mind, the backing up and stopping are linked for them. Okay, pick up the reins nice and high and run one of your hands down his neck. Now, hold them relaxed with your thumb and first finger. That’s it. Just a little bit of pressure from each hand, not a lot. When you pull your elbows back by your side, Tom will feel pressure. He backs up and you release. He wants the pressure to be released, right? That’s what gets him to walk back. Okay, let’s try it. Hands shoulder width apart, close your hands around the reins, and pull your elbows baaaaaaaacccckkkk. That’s it! Now, release the reins. You did it. See it’s the release part is what teaches them what to do.”

  “I took riding lessons for many years and loved it, but this is the first time I’ve been shown you can be gentle with an animal and still get him to do what you want.”

  “I’ll get the horses unsaddled. You want to help me?”

  “I would love that, Spencer. Just show me where everything gets stored.”

  Spencer dropped Zelda off about dinnertime. She skipped in to see her father, who was sitting at his desk paying bills. When he caught sight of her face he exclaimed, “Well, someone had a good time today.”

  “I did Dad, and guess what? Yvonne wants to talk to us about me having a part-time job working with the horses.”

  “Us?”

  “She said it was only right you know what they are offering me. She says some girls like to be around horses so much they volunteer to work for free, but it doesn’t last long. She wants to outline the responsibilities and come up with a fair wage.”

  “That would help you learn how to take care of your own horse when we find the right one.” His original plan to get a dog and a horse for Zelda had repeatedly been derailed by her relapses into addiction, but he hadn’t forgotten the promise. He was holding it out like a carrot, as a reward for prolonged sobriety.

  Kenny thought it was tremendous that Yvonne was treating him like a real father. He had known Zelda since she was tiny and had legally adopted her, but it was a tricky situation. Her biological father had shown up three times before she turned eighteen. When he did, she doted on the man. In fact, she idolized him and kept a box with every card and letter he had ever sent to her. Sometimes, when Kenny walked into her room, she would be on her bed with all the notes circled around her, reading them with a tender expression on her face.

  Kenny longed for a closer relationship with her, and Zelda was quite capable of using it against him. In fact, it was one of the “tells” that made him suspect she was smoking, snorting, or shooting drugs again. She would ask him for money and sweetly call him “Dad,” even “Daddy.” He had learned to perk his ears up when she talked like that.

  After considering what she told him about the job offer, he decided to probe a little. “Let’s have a meeting with the Paquettes over here. Maybe invite them for a cookout. We’ll call your doctor first to see if she thinks you should do this kind of work. Do the Paquettes know you’re pregnant?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Let’s try to imagine what the job would entail and run it by the doc. If she approves, we’ll have to think about telling the Paquette family about the baby so they know what they are getting into.”

  “Okay,” Zelda said timidly. They hadn’t talked much about her pregnancy in the last couple of weeks. She knew her dad was furious about it, and it made her feel like a loser. During the years she was addicted to heroin, she had lied to him constantly. She had to own the fact that she had outright stolen from him many times. Zelda constantly thought about what her mother would say to her if she were alive, and it filled her with such a sense of dread that she craved getting high. She knew from experience that narcotics would alleviate her pain for a couple hours, but she would feel even worse in the end. She beat back the ache for relief as best she could.

  When she had fallen back into opiates, Kenny became a hard-ass once he knew for sure she was using again. He told her to leave until she could pass a drug test, then she would be welcome back home. Somewhere online, he found pee tests he kept right in the medicine cabinet. When things got bad enough out there on the streets, when she hit bottom, she would call him. He never failed to have a plan, which made her all the more humiliated that she continued to let him down.

  Once, after she called him to tell him her drug dealer was holding her captive, he used a crowbar to break into the crack house where she was living, and carried her out in his arms. He had already contacted the Emergency Response Team, and although they told him they couldn’t enter a house without just cause, they immediately checked her into the hospital once Kenny delivered her to them. The rehab facility he found for her was actually nice. It was on the Vermont-New Hampshire border out near Lake Sunapee. Zelda stayed clean for five months that time.

  She was feeling pretty confident about her sobriety when, one night, she took Kenny’s car and drove over to DeGranit. She convinced herself she simply wanted to say hi to old friends. The old friends she wound up finding were on their way to score. She left Kenny’s car on the street with the keys in it. Zelda didn’t see him again for a year and a half until Christmas came, and she became desperately nostalgic about clean sheets, roast beef, and a fire in the fireplace.

  She called him, and he started to cry, “I have been so worried about you. I thought something terrible had happened to you this time. When the police found my car, I was sure you had been kidnapped. There’s still a missing person’s alert out for you. Where are you now? Tell me where to pick you up. We’ll go to the Emergency Room and get you started on detox.”

  “Dad, it’s Christmas Eve.”

  “No better day to start your new life, Zelda.”

  “Can’t I just come for the night? We can go to the hospital tomorrow.”

  “You know my rule. No heroin in this house. You’ll go into withdrawal by morning. Just tell me where to pick you up.”

  “Pull around to the back of the Opera House and park. I’ll find you.”

  “In DeGranit? You’ve been here the whole time? I can be there in half an hour.”

  “Dad. Give yourself forty-five minutes. You’re going to get arrested for speeding. I will be there I promise, just drive safely.”

  After three days of detoxification, Kenny came to see her. He had asked for a meeting with her and her counselor. The three of them gathered around a table, and Kenny laid paperwork down on it.

  “I have done extensive research on addiction and treatment. For the last few years, I thought if I got one more chance to help you, we would seek the best treatment there is for a heroin problem. World-class treatment. Go big or go home. Here is some information for you to take with you, Zelda. With your permission, I’d like to make plane reservations tomorrow so we can fly to San Diego. People from this program will meet us at the airport where I will hand you off to them. That’s the rule; I can’t go to intake with you. They are going to give me a tour of the facility, though. I told them there was no way I would leave you in a strange city unless they show me it’s the right place for you.”

  Zelda’s counselor spoke to her bluntly. “Most junkies are lucky to get three weeks in a local rehab. This is a three-month program, Zelda, with a two-year follow-up plan. This is the Cadillac model. The place has a gym and a private beach. Rumor has it the food is to die for. Your stepdad must be shelling out fifty grand.”

 
“Sixty, but consider it a gift from your mother, honey. I thought we would use it for your education, but we have bigger fish to fry now. She left a life insurance policy with me as beneficiary, but she also trusted me to take care of you. My gift, assuming you make it through the three months, is to get your teeth fixed. You’ll never be able to get a decent job with them literally rotting out of your head.”

  Zelda covered her mouth with her hand and flushed red.

  “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think when I said it.”

  “It’s all right, Dad. I know it’s true. When I look in a mirror, I don’t even recognize the person looking back at me.”

  Kenny patted her hand and choked on his own emotions. They both cried for a few minutes and then wiped their tears. “Zelda, listen to me. When you are done with the three months of your intensive program, you do a year in their halfway living sober plan. You have to submit to random drug tests and hold down a job. It’s important to me you get a job you can enjoy.”

  The counselor asked Kenny, “So, the crowns and teeth implants? Another twenty thousand?”

  Kenny shrugged as if the matter were of no importance.

  Her therapist forced Zelda to make eye contact with him. “Upwards of eighty thousand dollars. Any of your buddies around here going to do something like that for you? Think about it, would you ever do it for anybody? No, you wouldn’t. You’d put every cent up your arm. I need you to wrap your head around this kind of sacrifice because this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. The more times you are in and out of rehab, the less likely it is you will stay in recovery. You think your childhood was the worst thing that ever happened? Please trust me, you’re not even close to being in the front of that line.”