by K. D. Miller
“He’s an Appaloosa. They’re all marked like that. Okay. Step up onto the block. Grab the horn. Put your left foot in the stirrup. Now pull yourself up and swing your right leg over. Hey, that’s good. You got a nice, natural seat. Good posture. You ridden before?”
“Never.” She had been so worried about getting up into the saddle. While Trace was checking the level of the stirrups, she said, “He’s not—I mean, he’s beautiful. But when I imagined how the horse would look—”
“Some people don’t want him. They don’t want a polka-dot horse for their first ride. But Frank’s great. Nice, easy, calm big boy.”
Big was right. Bigger than Steve’s horse, a brown-and-white patchwork named Gypsy. But it made sense. Trace had asked them both their height when they were filling out the disclaimer forms, and Steve was half a head shorter than her. Patrick too. They were so alike, her boys. Physically, at least. Both stocky, inclined to plumpness if they weren’t careful. Steve especially, now that he was less out on the building sites and more behind his desk.
She shook her head. Her mind was such a labyrinth of Steve and Patrick, Patrick and Steve. She was in Bermuda. On a horse, for God’s sake.
Steve was putting Gypsy through some paces, making her go and stop and turn in circles. He had told Trace twice that he used to ride when he was a boy. Then he had refused to wear a helmet. “If you need one of those things, you don’t know what you’re doing.” Steve, that’s stupid, Marion had wanted to say. That’s like saying, if you need to buckle up, you don’t know how to drive. She had expected Trace to insist, but all she said was, “That is your choice, sir.” Well, they had signed those disclaimers. If Steve was thrown and hit his head on something and came out of it a vegetable, it would be his own damned fault.
Had she actually thought that? So calmly and coldly?
Yes. She had.
Lunch on Sunday when Patrick comes is cold poached salmon with dill sauce and asparagus salad, out on the deck. It’s a drowsy late-August afternoon. The garden is just past its peak and the willow’s branches hang heavy and still.
“Sit down, Mom,” Patrick says as she gets up to take their plates in and bring out dessert. “This is like the old days—just the three of us.”
She has been thinking the same thing, glad of it mainly for Steve’s sake. Sometimes she lets herself wonder what it would have been like if they had had a daughter. She knows Steve loves Patrick. And Patrick was always a real little boy—rambunctious and adventurous. But would that line be there between Steve’s eyebrows if he was listening to his daughter talk about her architect husband’s latest contract? Speculating about the new class of grade threes she herself was going to be teaching in a little more than a week?
You’re going to have to tell your father.
Patrick had come out to her in confidence months before he told Steve. But Steve must have had his suspicions. For years, the story he and Marion had been telling each other was that their son was so bent on his studies he had no time for relationships. Girls would just get in the way. Now Patrick was starting his master’s and getting serious about Ranald. Marion wanted to meet him. Not on the sly. She wanted to have him over for dinner. Meet Harriet, his mother.
Dad. Listen. The way you feel about Mom? That’s how I feel about Ranald.
She and Patrick actually rehearsed—role-played, with her as Steve. She helped him choose a time for the talk. Mondays were not good. A Friday might ruin everybody’s weekend. Tuesdays and Wednesdays tended to be complicated. A Thursday, then. She thought about making one of Steve’s favourite dinners, then realized how obvious that would be, how infuriating in retrospect.
On the designated Thursday, as soon as the three of them were sat down together in the living room, Steve said, “I know what this is about.” Marion had perched herself beside Patrick on the couch. Steve was across from the two of them in his armchair. The worst possible arrangement, she realized too late. Steve was calm in a way she recognized. The same look, the same posture he had had all those years ago when she told him she was pregnant and intended to keep the baby. Then as now, she could practically read his mind. Not what I was planning. But it is what it is.
He stayed calm. There was no outburst. Nothing ugly. But at one point he did say, “Okay. Okay. Look. I’m all for equal rights. You and—this guy. You want to get married? You want family benefit packages? Fine. You can have all that. Just don’t ask me to—I can’t—When it comes down to it. Two men. I just. Don’t get it. And I never will.”
Dessert out on the deck is peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream. “Your mother’s fattening me up for the kill,” Steve says, picking up his fork the second she puts the plate in front of him.
She kisses the top of his head. “Just more of you to love.” Then, to Patrick, “And we don’t eat like this every day.” She joked once to Harriet about having to pimp Steve’s vegetables to get him to eat them. “And he’ll only eat fruit if I slice it up,” she said.
The three of them eat silently, the only sounds the clink of forks and the chirping of birds from the cedars at the edge of the garden. Not for the first time, Marion wonders what exactly it is that has gathered them around this table. Keeps Ranald and Patrick together in their condominium, and in a few hours will couple her and Steve in their bed. What name to give it. Love is too vague. Water under the bridge is only part of it.
A few years ago, when the Higgs boson was in the news and people were calling it the God particle, she thought she might have the answer. So she asked Ranald, with his math background, if he would explain it to her. She could have asked Steve, but she was always looking for ways to engage with this remote young man who loved her son.
“You mean it’s kind of like—glue?” she asked after listening hard to him for half an hour.
Ranald closed his eyes, summoning patience. Marion smiled. Even Harriet called Ranald difficult. He didn’t have Patrick’s sweetness. He was a bit like Steve, come to think of it, which was likely why the two of them didn’t get along.
“Think of the adhesive property of glue,” Ranald finally said. “Now think of something that makes that adhesiveness possible. That’s what the Higgs boson does.”
“Okay. So. Without it? Everything would just fall apart?”
Ranald smiled thinly. “Without it, apart would have no meaning. Because together would have no meaning.”
Marion could tell that something about that notion actually intrigued her son-in-law. Thank God you found Patrick, she thought. Maybe he’ll keep you human.
Steve and Patrick are scraping their dessert plates in unison. “More?” Steve says, picking his up and holding it out Oliver Twist-style.
“Nope.” She stacks his plate onto hers and Patrick’s. “You’re back on the wagon.”
In the kitchen she makes coffee, fills the dishwasher and listens through the screen to her son and husband chatting. Just as the coffee is dripping its last, the chatting stops. Silence. She freezes, suddenly convinced that if she goes to the window she’ll see empty chairs. No crumpled napkins. No half-filled glasses. Not there. Never there. All a dream.
These last ten years of peace in her household. The rekindled warmth between her and Steve. Sometimes it feels like something she has stolen. Something she has no right to, and will have to give back.
Then she hears Patrick murmur something and Steve cough. Silly. So silly. But isn’t there some old notion that the gods are jealous and will snatch away whatever you love too much?
Don’t think about it.
At Spicelands in Bermuda, while they waited on their horses for Trace to saddle up, Steve let Gypsy graze. “She said not to let them eat,” Marion whispered. When Frank had reached down toward a tuft of grass, she had pulled his head back up, steadily and firmly, the way Trace had shown them. “You’re just like a kid, aren’t you?” she had murmured, patting the speckled neck. “Seeing
what you can get away with.”
Steve snorted. “I’ll lay down the law once we get going.”
Except he didn’t. He couldn’t seem to. He lagged behind Marion and Trace while Gypsy went as slow as she liked, grazing on anything in sight. Trace kept twisting around in her saddle. “Shorten your reins, sir!”
“She’s got the bit between her teeth.” Steve called. “There’s nothing I can do.”
Marion recognized his tone. She heard it a lot these days. More than once she had wanted to sit him down and say, Steve, I know you wanted to be an engineer. But you run a construction company. And you’ve done well. And I know your son is gay. But he’s still your son. He’s still Patrick.
It was impossible to make somebody else’s peace for them. Marion knew that. But she felt she had to try. And she was so tired of trying.
Ride away, don’t say goodbye, just ride on. For the first time in years she was composing a song in her head. Maybe the rocking rhythm as they rode along had inspired her. The trail took them through forest, alongside farmers’ fields, even across a highway that had a caution sign with a black silhouette of a horse and rider. That’s me, she thought proudly, like a child. I’m riding a horse. A real, live horse. Frank’s ears were a speckled frame to look through. She breathed in the dark animal smell of him, and the surrounding smells of sage, rosemary, and the nearing sea.
Just before they got to the beach, Trace called a halt. Steve was still several lengths behind. She twisted around in the saddle, smiled into Marion’s eyes and said, “You’re doing great. But Gypsy’s being a bad girl today. So I’m going to swap horses with your husband. Gypsy’ll behave for Big Momma. You and Frank okay here for a minute?”
“We’ll be fine.”
She watched as Trace trotted back to where Steve was and explained the plan to him. She could hear Steve blustering on about how Gypsy must have gotten the bit between her teeth, yeah, she’s got the bit between her teeth, that’s why he can’t do anything, it’s the bit—
Oh, shut the fuck up, Steve. She’d had it. Worst week of her life, this so-called late honeymoon. The cold, loveless nights. The stupid small talk filling the days.
Then came that moment when Steve was saddled up on Trace’s horse, but Trace hadn’t yet mounted Gypsy. Marion thought, What if— She knew how to steer Frank, and how to make him go. How fast would he go for her? How far could she get?
The three of them are finishing their coffee out on the deck. The shadows in the backyard are lengthening. Marion can smell fall in the air.
“How are the riding lessons coming, Mom?”
“Oh, didn’t your father tell you? I’m trying out for the Olympic equestrian team next week.”
The truth is, the anticipation of her lesson is a lot better than the reality. She’s in a class of four. The other three all rode as girls and caught the rhythm of the rising trot right away. But except for a few paces when things smooth out and she’s riding with the horse instead of just on it, Marion keeps bump-bumping up and down in the saddle.
They haven’t been allowed out of the paddock yet. Their teacher, a short Quebecois named Roger (Ro-zhay) rides with them, twisting around to see how they’re doing. Sometimes he guides his horse in to the centre and halts there to watch them go by, calling out things like, “Heels down, Mari-on!” He doesn’t single her out any more than any of the rest. She’s sure of that. But she worries about holding the class up. Last week on her way out of the stable after unsaddling, she overheard one of the women complaining to another about being stuck in the paddock, and still not going faster than a trot. The woman broke off talking and smiled when she saw Marion. Were they all being held back because of her?
“Elbows in, Mari-on!”
The worst thing is having to ride a different horse every week. She knows that’s part of the training, learning to deal with a variety of mounts. But each time she finds herself looking around for Frank’s speckled coat. It doesn’t feel like ten years ago. Would Frank still be alive? How long do horses live? She has the oddest notion that if she could get up on his back again and go off on the trail, just the two of them alone, Frank could make a rider of her.
As Trace led them down to the beach for their promised morning splash, all three horses perked up, snuffing the salt air. “They love this,” she said, turning to Marion and grinning.
Gypsy was behaving perfectly for her, and Buddy, the horse she had been riding, was giving Steve no trouble. Steve clicked his tongue and nudged Buddy with his heels, manoeuvring to be first into the water.
“You two want me to take your picture?”
Marion handed Trace her camera, then urged Frank close to Buddy, who was splashing water up onto his belly with his front hooves. “Okay, everybody,” Trace said, focusing. “Show me your teeth!”
At that very second, Buddy belly-flopped straight down into the water.
Marion couldn’t figure out at first what had happened. Steve just disappeared, as if through a trap door. Then she looked down and saw him hip-deep in the water, still on his horse.
“Stay on! Sir, just stay on! Do not dismount!”
Buddy stood back up. Steve was soaked. “Shit!” he said.
Trace rode up to Buddy and swatted him on the nose. “You are in trouble! You know better than to do that!” Buddy’s ears wilted and he hung his head. “Sir? You okay?”
“Just. Wet.”
Marion’s mouth had been open the whole time. Then, to her horror, she started to laugh—a loud, braying, snorting laugh that she had never heard herself come out with before.
She tried to stop, but couldn’t. Steve looked away and concentrated on pressing saltwater out of his jeans. Trace moved Gypsy near to Frank, reached and put her hand on Marion’s wrist. “It’s gonna be okay,” she said softly. That was when Marion realized she had stopped laughing and had started to cry. “It’s gonna be just fine.”
Frank stood calmly through all the noise, radiating warmth. He turned his head once to look back at her with one slow-blinking eye. While she was trying to settle down, Marion wondered what horses made of the strange, fraught creatures that sat on them and made them go and stop and turn around for no good reason.
At her sixth lesson, all at once, she gets it. And keeps it. She raises and lowers herself in the saddle in perfect rhythm with the trot, riding so smoothly that her horse might be water, or air.
“Vair-y good, Mari-on!”
Roger moves the whole class ahead, showing them how to command a canter. Marion loves it from the first, grinning as she tightens her grip and sees the paddock fence posts moving round her in a rocking spin.
“Hey, you were galloping today,” Steve says in the car.
“Well, it’s called a canter. But it’s a slow gallop. And we’re all going out on the trail next week.” She’s flushed and happy. In the stable, the other women applauded her and called her the star. Maybe she’ll have them back to the house for drinks and snacks after their final lesson. Invite Roger, too. One thing’s for sure—she’s going to sign up for the advanced class when this package is done. Start learning to jump.
At home she looks at riding habits online. The wide-shouldered jacket, tight cream trousers and tall boots would look terrific on her slender height. Steve comes up behind her, sees what’s on the screen and kisses her neck. Whispers that the sight of a woman all kitted out to ride turns him on.
Afterwards, while Steve dozes, she lies looking at the ceiling and imagining what it would be like to have her own horse. They could probably afford it. And she could board it at Roger’s stable. Maybe Roger would help her pick one out. She hasn’t a clue how to buy a horse. All she knows is that she wants an Appaloosa. And she’s going to name him Frank.
That trip to Bermuda ten years ago was never to be repeated. Marion could feel the two of them making that tacit decision, like silently building a wall, while the
y packed for home in Spindrift. On the return flight, while Steve dozed, Marion concentrated on the view out the window. Clouds. Ocean. Then the eastern states. She felt an almost painful tenderness for the tiny houses and thread-like roads. Communities. Clustering in the face of all that immensity.
Once home, they settled into a cold war. What kept things balanced was the need to plan for the wedding. Patrick and Ranald greeted them on their return with the announcement of their engagement. It was already late spring, and they wanted to be married before Patrick started teaching in the fall.
For the next several months, a just you wait energy thrummed between the two of them that was oddly sexual. They bickered. Squared off politically, Steve taking increasingly right-wing stances, Marion leaning more and more to the left. Things got dangerous once when they were discussing Patrick’s preference for teaching grade three. “Interesting that they would let him near kids that young,” Steve said. And even though she knew what he meant and what he did not mean, she tore into him. The truth was, she had been thinking the same thing. Not that there was anything wrong with Patrick teaching little ones. But there were enough people who would assume there was.
Their future in-laws afforded them another battleground, each championing the one the other didn’t like. They hosted a barbecue early on to celebrate the engagement and start making plans for the wedding. Ranald hardly spoke except to turn a cool eye on their Tudor-style house and call it cosy. (“He’s an architect. He has leading-edge taste,” Marion said afterwards when Steve wondered out loud who the hell Ranald thought he was.) Harriet arrived late, wearing what appeared to be a smock and with a splash of green paint on her left wrist. (“Hey, give her a break. She’s an artist.” This from Steve when Marion remarked that Ranald’s mother could have made more of an effort.)
Though Harriet offered her cottage in Muskoka as a venue for the wedding, she made it clear that that would be the extent of her hostessing. (“I don’t do hospitality.”) So all the meetings had to happen at Marion and Steve’s. One afternoon Marion was in the basement fishing a bag of dinner rolls out of the freezer when she thought, I’m not sure I can stand these people who are going to be part of my family. She felt a sudden, sharp need to say that to Steve. She knew he was thinking the same thing. And she so wanted to lie beside him in bed, having a big old clutching, grabbing laugh about it all.