Flying Changes

  "You're entering her?"

  "Yes, of course. Why wouldn't I?"

  "It's just that...well, it's only two weeks away. I wouldn't have thought she'd have time to prepare."

  "It's a little longer than that. And besides who cares? Nobody expects her to place--although after watching the audition, who knows? Consider it practice. A way of getting her feet wet. Besides, it's not set in stone. I'll watch for the next two weeks and if I don't think she's ready, we'll scratch. But in the meantime, we have to get the paperwork in."

  I clear my throat. "At what level are you entering her?" I ask, trying to sound casual.

  "Intermediate."

  The two-star level. Jumps that are a minimum of four feet in height and--with the exception of the very first round--have no maximum.

  My head begins to swim. Nathalie's face moves in and out, circling mine like a gigantic rubber clown. Shimmering fireworks explode in my peripheral vision and then, whoosh!

  "Annemarie? Are you all right?"

  I find myself on the gravel with my head between my knees.

  "There, there. You haven't eaten yet, have you?" says Nathalie, crouching beside me. "You're as bad as the girls. Come back to the apartment and have a piece of toast."

  "No, thank you," I say weakly. "I think I'll just go home now."

  "Don't be ridiculous. I can't let you drive," says Nathalie, taking my elbow and dragging me to my feet. She leans me up against the car and hovers, her arm on the crook of my elbow. "There now. Are you steady?"

  "Yes," I say, staring down at the dented hood of my car as Nathalie opens the door and retrieves Harriet.

  When she marches off through the barn with my dog, I have no choice but to follow. We go through the barn and arena, past Smoky Joe's empty stall, and straight through the other side.

  The girls' "apartment" turns out to be a house that is larger than Mutti's. It's in the same style as Nathalie's colonial mansion at the top of the hill, but smaller and tucked behind the indoor arena.

  I follow Nathalie inside, glancing around with wide eyes. We pass a heap of Eva's belongings that have been dumped in the entryway.

  It's all one level. There was clearly a second storey at some point, but the house has been gutted and rebuilt so that the rooms are tall and airy, with whitewashed rafters crisscrossing the cathedral ceiling, which is dotted with skylights. The floor is hardwood, light oak in alternating wide and thin strips. The kitchen, living room, and eating area are all open, but the spaces have been designed and decorated so that they are clearly distinct. The kitchen has a long granite island with a bowl of fresh produce in the center. The maple table is stretched with an impossible number of leaves--without counting, I'd guess that it probably seats sixteen. The living room has a stone fireplace with a gas insert, but the focal point is an enormous flat-screen television mounted on the wall between two lead-paned picture windows. The bookshelves are piled with books, magazines, movies, and games. The stained-glass lamps on the end tables--in Frank Lloyd Wright style--match the floor lamps. There are plants in the corners, lined curtains of William Morris fabric, and a tinkling, shimmering butterfly mobile that hangs from the center of the cathedral ceiling.

  In short, I want to move in.

  "This is where the girls live?" I say as Nathalie leads me to the table and pulls out a chair.

  "Four to a room," she says, going to the kitchen and rummaging around in a bread box. She drops a piece of bread in an industrial-sized toaster.

  "When you said apartment, I thought you meant something above the barn."

  "That's a reasonable assumption, but no. This used to be the plant manager's house."

  "The plant manager of what?"

  "This is the original Klaas estate."

  "Klaas--as in pickles?"

  "Exactly," she says. "My brother runs the company, but I maintain a large interest."

  Which explains why money isn't an issue. Somehow I wasn't expecting the famed Nathalie Jenkins to be a pickle heiress.

  But then again, I also wasn't expecting to be sitting at her table signing permission slips, waivers, and medical cards so that Eva can compete in about two weeks at the two-star level on a horse who hasn't let anyone else ride him for more than six minutes running since moving to this barn.

  Chapter 8

  "Um, Mrs. Zimmer? Can we stop now?" huffs a sandy-haired twelve-year-old named Kevin as he whizzes past me on Tazz.

  Kevin's hands are on the pommel and he leans precariously forward, taking great pains to keep his bottom out of the saddle.

  I shake my head to get my bearings.

  The six students in my Monday evening group lesson are cantering around me, the horses puffing, the humans' faces red. I glance at my watch and realize just how long I've left them cantering.

  "Oh, geez--yes, of course. Slow to a walk, please. Pull back and sit deep in the saddle, Marina. That's it." My attention is caught by a jerky movement to my left.

  I pivot and find Blueprint dancing away from the rail. Then he stretches his neck down, preparing to buck. "Amy! Don't let him do that. Pull him up. Amy! Pull him up! Oh crap--" I say as he skids sideways and across the arena at full gallop. I run after them, screaming, "Amy! Pulley rein! Pulley rein! Amy, yank him around! Grab his mane with one hand and--"

  There's a thud as Amy hits the ground.

  I sprint toward her, keeping track of Blueprint's whereabouts through his hoofbeats, grunts, and flapping stirrup leathers.

  I stop once as he passes directly in front of me, and consider making a grab for the reins. At the last possible moment I decide not to because there's a very good chance I'd dislocate my shoulder, but I regret my decision immediately. The reins have now come over his head and if he gets a foot caught, that'll be the end of Blueprint.

  Amy lies on her back with her knees up, her face scrunched into a purple grimace.

  "Oh God, oh God," I say, kneeling beside her. My hands frame her face, fingers fluttering, never making contact. "Amy, can you hear me?"

  "Amy!" shrieks her mother, tearing out of the lounge and into the arena, leaving both doors wide open. I jerk my head from side to side. Parents and younger siblings will start arriving any second to pick up the students, and the last thing we need is a crazed horse stampeding through the aisles.

  Fortunately, Blueprint has come to a stop just behind Domino, a sturdy black-and-white paint whose response is to flatten his ears. He surveys the runaway with great suspicion, but doesn't move.

  Blueprint stretches his head forward and sniffs Domino's rump. Then he snorts and shakes, sending a prolonged shudder dancing down the stirrup leathers. Whatever it was, he's over it.

  I turn back to Amy, who is sitting with her head slumped over her knees. Her mother, Sherrie, investigates each limb, carefully bending each elbow and then each knee.

  "Don't move her!" I croak. "Please!"

  "I'm okay," Amy says. "I think I'm just winded."

  "That could be just adrenaline," I say, digging in my pocket for my cell phone. "I'm calling an ambulance. Better safe than sorry."

  Amy fumbles with the strap of her helmet and then removes it with trembling hands. She moves her head in slow circles, wincing, stretching, testing things out.

  "No. Really," she says in a cracked voice. "I think I'm okay."

  "Can you get up, honey?" says Sherrie.

  "Oh God, I really think we should--" I start, but then I shut up because Amy's mother is pulling her to her feet.

  I catch hold of Amy's other elbow.

  "How does that feel?" says Sherrie. "Are you steady?"

  "I think so," says Amy. "Yeah. I'm okay."

  I turn back to the other students, who watch grim-faced from on top of their horses.

  "Okay," I say, clapping my hands. "Everybody off. The lesson's over. Please walk your horses until they're cool and then put them away. Loosen your girths first. But not enough that the saddle slides around," I add quickly, remembering Jerry Benson from last week.
br />   When I turn back to Amy, she's limping forward, leaning on her mother.

  "Sherrie, can you take her to the lounge? I'll be right there. I need to catch Blueprint."

  Sherrie meets my eyes and nods. She's pale and her expression strained, but to my immense surprise, she doesn't seem to be preparing to launch herself at me.

  Because she should. Because this was my fault.

  It takes the better part of forty minutes to persuade me that Amy is all right. When it dawns on me that Sherrie is muttering platitudes to me, I decide it's time to let the matter drop. As they head for the door of the lounge, Sherrie looks over her shoulder at me, and the look on her face says everything. She thinks I'm crazy. Or neurotic. Probably both.

  I fight a momentary impulse to explain myself, to tell her my history and exactly why it is that girls being thrown from horses inspires such panic, but I'm pretty sure that if I did, I'd dig myself even further into that hole labeled "crazy" and might just lose myself a student in the process. And so I mutter a weak goodbye and watch them leave.

  After I've given everyone in the barn more than enough time to leave, I top up all the water buckets, throw a flake or two of hay into stalls that are looking a bit low, and go to the end of the tack aisle to collect the dirty saddle pads.

  I lean over and clutch them to my chest. When I stand up, I realize my face is inches from about a dozen tiny rodent droppings.

  I shriek and leap backward, dropping all the saddle pads to the floor. Then I stare at them, puffing in horror. I rush to the washroom, start the water full blast, and scrub my face, neck, hands, and as far up my arms as I can without getting my clothes wet.

  Ten minutes later, the contaminated saddle pads are safely enclosed in a garbage bag, which I've hermetically sealed before slinging over my shoulder.

  I pause at Blueprint's stall on my way out. He stands with his rump to the door, calmly munching hay, utterly oblivious to having nearly killed a girl this afternoon.

  What's more astonishing is that the girl herself seems utterly oblivious to having nearly been killed.

  And then I remind myself that people fall off horses all the time and that not only do most of them not die, they don't even get seriously hurt.

  I sigh, knowing this but not believing it, and then go to the house with my rodent-infested laundry.

  I set the garbage bag beside the washing machine and go looking for Mutti.

  She's sitting in the living room with a cup of cocoa, a book, and Harriet wedged between her and the arm of the chair. A large fire crackles beside her.

  "Und so," she says, looking at me from over the top of her reading glasses.

  "And so," I reply, sinking into the chair opposite her.

  Harriet's eyebrows twitch. She's considering whether to switch chairs. Oh, the heck with it, she is my dog--

  "Come here, Harriet! Come here, girl!" I chirp, patting the chair beside me.

  Harriet stares me straight in the eye, sighs haltingly, and shifts her gaze to the fireplace.

  Mutti scoops her off the chair and dumps her on the floor. Harriet yelps with surprise and throws Mutti a wounded look.

  Mutti removes her glasses and stares right back. After a few seconds, Harriet plods resentfully over and lays herself across my feet.

  "Do you want some cocoa?" asks Mutti, folding her glasses and setting them on the table beside her.

  "No thanks," I say.

  "Something stronger?"

  "In a bit," I say. "Blueprint threw a student tonight."

  "Is everyone okay?"

  "Yup. They seem to be," I say.

  "Well, thank the Lord for that," says Mutti.

  Both of us stare at the fire for a bit.

  "Will you be sleeping here tonight?"

  "No, I don't think so," I say.

  "Eva's room is free for the next five days."

  "No, I'm okay at the barn."

  Mutti shakes her head dismissively. "Honestly, Annemarie. I can't imagine why you persist in this silliness. You're a grown woman. What you and Dan do at night is of no interest to me."

  "It's not silliness," I say, feeling more than a little defensive.

  "Huh," says Mutti in a tone that makes it perfectly clear what she thinks. "Well, anyway. We will have to address the issue at some point."

  "Why? What do you mean?"

  "Presumably you and Dan will get married eventually and then you'll have to live somewhere. And somehow I can't picture you moving into his trailer."

  "Yeah, well, I'm not so sure you should presume anything," I grumble.

  Mutti looks up quickly. "What do you mean?"

  "Well, we've been dating again for almost a year, and so far he hasn't so much as mentioned the M word."

  "So you bring it up."

  "I can't."

  "Why not? For goodness sake, Annemarie--you're nearly forty years old, not some blushing teenager. Talk to the man."

  "No! I can't."

  "Why?"

  "Because what if he doesn't want to marry me? What then?"

  "Well, indeed. Wouldn't you rather know?"

  We sit in silence, each staring at some other point in the room. Then I get up, go to the kitchen, and pour myself a glass of wine.

  When I return, I put the wine down beside my chair, scoop Harriet up by the armpits, and settle her on my lap.

  "Mutti, why don't we have a barn cat?"

  "Your father didn't like cats. Besides, we never needed one."

  "We do now. I just found rodent droppings on the saddle pads I was bringing back to wash."

  She flaps her hand. "Psssh," she says. "What's a few little mouse pellets?"

  "Hanta virus! Rabies!" I sputter. "Bubonic plague!"

  "You forgot one," Mutti says, staring calmly at the rim of her blue-flowered mug.

  "What?" I say.

  "Ebola virus."

  "Mutti! I'm serious! Rodents carry terrible diseases. And I had already picked the pads up. They were right...right...here!" I say, flapping a hand in front of my nose, which is scrunched in disgust.

  "Annemarie, barns have mice. It's a fact of life."

  "I want a cat."

  "So get one," she shrugs.

  "Really? You don't mind?"

  "Of course not. It was your father who didn't like cats," she says, sipping her cocoa.

  "Oh. Okay," I say. For some reason I was expecting her to argue with me. "So, um, do you think the washing machine will get rid of everything?"

  "You mean the Ebola virus?"

  "Mutti!"

  "Annemarie," Mutti says in her take-control voice. "People wash diapers in washing machines. They'll be fine."

  I suppose she may have a point. But I must still look dubious, because she suddenly blurts out, "Oh, for goodness sake, Annemarie. I'll do the laundry."

  "Make sure you use hot--"

  "Annemarie!"

  "Okay, okay," I say, raising my hands in surrender. I turn to look at the fireplace with equal parts embarrassment and relief. Then I take a large and unabashed slurp of wine as Mutti marches off to the basement to deal with the Ebola virus.

  Later, when I'm lying in bed with Harriet as my only bedmate and wondering whether Dan will show up, my thoughts wander for the millionth time to our relationship's trajectory.

  When Dan and I first started seeing each other again, I just assumed our relationship would follow the natural progression. I know I made a mess of my first marriage, but I did sort of think I'd have another go at it, particularly since Dan is the man I should have married in the first place. But on we go, month after month with no sign of progress, no sign of him being dissatisfied with the state of things, and with me finally beginning to wonder whether marriage is even on his radar.

  To be sure, I'm not perfect wife material: I'm neurotic. I'm compulsive. I speak before I think and can't cook worth a damn. I'm messy and germaphobic all at once, and it's not entirely unheard of for me to get hold of the wrong end of the stick and then hang there like
a pit bull.

  But I have this deep fear that Dan might find all that charming and quirky if it weren't for the one thing I can't do anything about.

  While I adore him and would give anything to bear his children, I can't. My type of infertility is absolute and unfixable, and has been a source of terrible grief since the moment I came out of the anesthetic all those years ago and realized that the emergency surgery that saved Eva's life also cost me my uterus. And while he's never said a word about it, I'm painfully aware that Jill's ovarian cancer was discovered during treatment for infertility.

  So if Dan marries me, what does he get? A highly opinionated and neurotic wife, a highly opinionated and out-of-control stepdaughter, a highly opinionated mother-in-law who would certainly expect us to live with her, and no hope of ever having a child.

  And no matter how many times I turn that over in my head, I can't seem to wrap it in an attractive package.

  I lie alone with my dog, so upset I'm grinding my teeth, listening as their edges squeak together. I move my jaw around and try to settle it into a relaxed position, but it doesn't work.

  Harriet snuggles into my armpit like a piglet rooting for truffles. She seems to feel guilty about earlier this evening because she followed me out here of her own accord, and I'm grateful for her presence--almost to the point of tears. Her long warm body is pressed up against me, her snout buried under my arm. She digs with her front paws, as though she'd like to burrow entirely beneath me. I stroke her lightly, fingering her silky ears and gently unworking the beginnings of a mat.

  After three hours I realize that not only is Dan not coming, but that I also don't have a hope of falling asleep.

  Eventually I slip downstairs and into Hurrah's stall. He stirs and shifts his weight as I bury my face in his neck, breathing deeply of his scent.

  Chapter 9

  I decide to test the issue and wait to see how long it takes for Dan to contact me if I stop calling him. Three days later, when he has neither called nor shown up, I decide that enough is enough. Mutti is right--I'll be forty years old in nine days. If I can't take control of my life now, what hope is there?

  After the last of my students has left, I climb into my Camry and head to Day Break. As I bump my way down the drive, I pass Squire in one of the front pastures.

  Appaloosa, indeed. There's not a spot anywhere on his body, unless you count mud flecks. He's still stick-rib skinny--even thinner than before because his bloating is going down, but his ears perk when I drive past. He lifts his proud pony head and sniffs the wind, almost as though he recognizes me.