Flying Changes, Page 2

  "I have no idea why you're so upset," she says, coming to a stop in front of the gate. "I ride bareback all the time. Okay, maybe I should have been wearing a helmet, but it's not like I jumped anything."

  "But you were going to, weren't you?"

  She opens the gate with nimble fingers and thrusts it toward me.

  It creaks forward and I catch it, holding it open until she leads Hurrah through. Then I shut it. As I fumble with the chain that secures it, she marches toward the stable.

  "Eva, please wait!"

  Of course she does nothing of the kind. She continues on without so much as a backward glance.

  I hate it when she does this. The person following is never in control, which she knows full well and which is exactly why she does it. I drop the chain, which my cold fingers can't make work, and jog a little to catch up with her. The gate creaks open behind me.

  "Eva!" I say, falling into stride behind her. I feel like Smike, shuffling and mewling behind Mr. Squeers. "Don't walk away from me! Eva, please!"

  She gives every indication of being deaf.

  "Eva! I asked you to stop!"

  Finally, I've had enough. I fall back long enough to run behind Hurrah and jerk the reins from her hands.

  Hurrah's head shoots in the air, turning his left eye to see who's got hold of him. I stroke his face and murmur until he calms down.

  Eva betrays a flash of surprise but recovers almost instantly, placing her hands on her waist and throwing her weight on one hip. She exhales loudly, rolling her eyes at the sky.

  "Tell me the truth. Were you going to take that fence?"

  Her brown eyes glom on to mine. She waits a few beats before responding. "Maybe," she shrugs. "Okay, fine. Yes. I was."

  "Oh God, Eva. You'd have been killed."

  "No way," she scoffs. "I've never come off a horse in my entire life."

  "That means nothing!" I shout. "Nothing! He hasn't taken a jump since he lost his eye. What if he misjudged? What if he slid through the fence? What if he refused? You had no protection whatever. No stirrups, no helmet. Nothing."

  "You need to calm down, Ma."

  "I beg your pardon?" My hand drops to my side. I stare into her eyes, seeking understanding. I'm baffled and I'm traumatized and I'm facing an adolescent who has absolutely no idea what nearly transpired.

  Hurrah dances nervously, taking several steps backward. The white of his left eye, which he's taking pains to keep trained on us, is showing.

  I step forward, shushing, stroking his cheeks and the crest of his neck. "Go back to the house and wait for me," I say to Eva.

  Her face compresses into a scowl. "Why?"

  "Because we're not finished talking about this."

  She turns and stomps up the drive. "Shit," she mutters, just loud enough for me to hear and just low enough for her to argue that I misheard, particularly as she kicks a spray of gravel into the air at that exact moment.

  "Stop right there!"

  She stops, and drops her head back. "What now?" she says.

  "What did you just say?"

  "I didn't say anything," she says, still without turning around.

  "Yes you did, and you know it."

  No response.

  "You're grounded," I say.

  "Well, there's a big surprise," she grumbles. And off she goes, periodically kicking up gravel with the toes of her boots.

  I watch her entire progress. She climbs the ramp that leads to the porch and enters by the back door, slamming it behind her.

  Poor Mutti. If she's in the kitchen, she's already getting an earful.

  I turn to Hurrah and slide a hand between his front legs. His chest is slick with sweat and I feel another pang of anger toward my daughter, although in my heart I know she would have cooled him off properly. Eva knows and loves horses as I do. It's me she has a problem with.

  I take Hurrah into the indoor arena and walk him slowly around its perimeter, periodically stopping to feel his chest and assess his breathing. After he's completely cool, I take him back to his stall to await his morning pellets. The other horses are shifting and nickering in anticipation of theirs, too. I could start feeding them myself, but the stable hands have their routine down to a science and I don't want to mess with it.

  As I leave the stable, they arrive in two ancient cars that rattle and bang down the lane. I lift a hand in uninspired greeting and trudge toward the house and whatever awaits me.

  About halfway there, it dawns on me that the hoofbeats I heard as I awoke this morning were not Harry's at all. They were Hurrah's.

  I lay my hand on the doorknob and pause for a moment, staring down at the bristly doormat and steeling myself in case Eva is still in the kitchen. Then I take a deep breath and enter.

  To my relief, Mutti is alone, scooping coffee beans into the electric grinder, her blonde hair pinned into its usual tight coil. Her quilted turquoise dressing gown is zipped right up to the soft loose flesh under her chin, and I find myself wondering whether she's ever caught it in the zipper, whether it was terribly painful, and whether it was hard to work free.

  Mutti glances at me, frowning as though she's read my mind, and turns back to the grinder. Its growl fills the kitchen, relieving us both of the pressure to speak. I peel off my paddock boots, hang my vest on one of the hooks by the back door, and take a seat at the table.

  Mutti puts the grinds into the coffeemaker and flicks the switch. It begins to gurgle immediately, which means she used hot water to fill it.

  Of course she did. She's Mutti.

  She glances back at me, eyes narrowed as if she's once again read my thoughts. I blush and look down, cowed, and resolve to never again think about Mutti while in her presence.

  She turns and wipes her hands on an ironed dish towel hanging from the oven door and retrieves two mugs from the cupboard. She sets them on the counter and joins me at the table.

  "So," she says, plopping her hands on the table in front of her. With her accent, it comes out Zo.

  "So," I say glumly.

  "You want to tell me what happened?" Her eyebrows are raised. She examines her hands, twisting her plain gold wedding band round and round. Her knuckles are prominent, her hands pale but mottled with age spots.

  "What did Eva say?"

  Mutti stops twisting her ring, folds her hands neatly, and looks at me. "She says she decided to take an early morning ride on Hurrah, and that you came out and"--she frowns and looks away as she tries to come up with the word--"I believe her exact phrase was that you 'wigged out completely.'"

  "I don't suppose she mentioned that she was galloping bareback on frozen ground with no helmet straight toward a solid fence on my one-eyed horse?"

  A slight pause. "No."

  "Well, she was."

  "So what happened?"

  "She saw me at the last second and veered away."

  Mutti rises and sails to the counter, standing in front of the coffee machine as it sputters into silence. Although the mugs look perfectly aligned to me, she adjusts them again before moving to the fridge to get the pitcher of cream. On her way back, she picks up the sugar bowl. She is the picture of dignity. Always calm. Always cool.

  She doctors my coffee in the same unhurried manner, leaves hers black, and brings both mugs to the table.

  "Thanks," I say as she sets mine in front of me.

  I wrap my icy fingers around the hot ceramic and stare at the steam rising from the liquid's surface. Its center is still moving, a whirling indentation. I lean down and take a small sip and end up slurping because it's so hot. I look up quickly, expecting Mutti to disapprove.

  She seems not to have noticed. She's staring straight through me with her cool blue eyes, waiting for me to continue.

  "I did not 'wig out.' In fact, under the circumstances I think I was relatively calm. I thought I was going to watch her die."

  Mutti watches me silently, and then reaches over to pat my hand. "So where do things currently stand?" she asks.

>   "Who knows? She walked away from me. As usual."

  Mutti lifts her coffee, takes a sip, and then sets it back down. She runs her forefinger round and round the mug's rim, as though trying to make a wineglass sing.

  "I think you should let her go," she says finally.

  "I know you do."

  "You won't even consider it?"

  "No! Whose side are you on, anyway?"

  "I'm on both your sides, of course."

  Where Eva wants to go--in fact is entirely desperate about--is the Strafford International Young Rider Horse Trials. It's my fault. I let her compete at the Canterbury Horse Trials in Florida last month. The problem is that while I viewed Canterbury as a one-off--a reward for staying out of trouble and getting her grades up--Eva viewed it as the start of a competitive career. The campaign to enter Strafford began almost immediately after, and quickly became both an assumption and an imperative.

  "There's no point, though, is there?" I argue weakly. "The best horse we have is Malachite, and he's nowhere near good enough. Besides, he's nasty. He'd swipe her off under a branch given half a chance."

  "Malachite is not our best horse. Hurrah is."

  "He's blind, Mutti!"

  "He's only half blind--"

  "He's seventeen years old," I say. "Even if I let her ride him, he'd have to retire soon."

  Mutti shrugs. "So buy her more horse."

  "We can't afford more horse," I say. "More horse, as you put it, translates into at least forty thousand dollars. At least. I don't have that kind of money and neither do you."

  "You could ask Roger."

  "No, I can't," I snort.

  "Why ever not?" she says. "He's her father."

  "Because he's got plenty else to spend it on, what with his brand-new house, brand-new wife, and their brand-new baby."

  There's a moment of uncomfortable silence as I realize just how bitter I sound. I flush and look down at my twisted fingers.

  "You don't know until you ask him," Mutti says softly.

  She watches me carefully. Then she leans forward across the table, reaching for both my hands. "Schatzlein, I don't want to argue any more than you do, but think about this for a moment. You took the child away from everything she knew--her home, her friends, her father--and plunked her down on a horse farm in the middle of nowhere. Against all odds, she excelled anyway. Her grades are up. She's riding every day. And now--when it's starting to pay off for her--you're putting on the brakes? It makes no sense. Never mind what the repercussions will be, because you know she'll find a way to punish you."

  I stare at her for a long time, my eyes and cheeks burning. "I know," I whisper.

  "So let her."

  "I can't, Mutti. I wish I could. But it scares me too much."

  "Then it's time you talked to someone about it."

  "Counseling wouldn't help."

  "And how do you know, since you refuse to try it?"

  I stare silently at the table, my cheeks burning.

  Mutti grows impatient, waves a hand dismissively. "Fine. Whatever. You're a grown woman."

  I stand up so abruptly my chair legs screech against the linoleum. "I'm going to take a shower. Can I use your shampoo?"

  "You can't be out yet. I bought you some last week."

  "It's back at the stable."

  Mutti leans back and folds her arms across her chest. "This is ridiculous, this trekking back and forth between the house and stable. Why don't you just move back into the house?"

  "Because," I say, writhing with embarrassment.

  "Honestly, Annemarie. You're forty years old."

  "Thirty-nine!"

  "Sure, for four more weeks."

  "I'm thirty-nine until the stroke of midnight on April twenty-eighth. Besides, it's not like I've actually moved out there. I just sleep out there."

  Mutti arranges her features in sour judgment. "Exactly. It makes no sense whatever."

  I march to the sink and dump my coffee. It was a gesture, of course, and I regret it immediately, not just because the coffee was excellent but also because it leaves a milky film in the sink--which I can't leave, because Mutti is an Austrian Cleaning Machine and I'm the World's Biggest Slob. And so I am forced to follow my grand gesture by slooshing water around the sink until it is clean. Then, since my gesture has lost all its oomph anyway, I decide to just go ahead and pour myself another cup.

  Such a symphony of amplified noise: never has cream glugged so loudly, nor spoon tinkled so shrilly. I swear I can hear each grain of sugar as it melts into the liquid. When I'm finally finished, I set the spoon on the bottom of the sink--with a deafening clink--and retreat upstairs.

  I haven't looked at Mutti, but there's no doubt in my mind she's sitting with arms crossed and mouth pressed into a thin line. And shaking her head.

  I climb the stairs, muttering to myself but being careful to keep it under my breath since I know Eva is holed up in her room on high alert. Since I'm at a clear disadvantage--I have no idea what I'm going to say to her and she's had ample time to frame her arguments--I decide to take my shower while I consider my approach. Besides, letting her stew a bit longer might be helpful, might soften her up. Of course, it might also have the opposite effect. One never knows with Eva. I thought fifteen was difficult, but sixteen is shaping up to be at least as volatile. It's been a hard year for us both.

  I stomp past her door and march to the bathroom, grumpy at both daughter and mother. Daughter, for reasons that were more obvious before I talked to my mother; and mother for being painfully astute about some things and hopelessly obtuse about others.

  I can't move back into the house. There are only two bedrooms, and with Eva occupying my childhood room, that leaves only my parents' upstairs bedroom and the dining room, which my parents converted to a bedroom when my father became ill and could no longer manage the stairs. My father's life ended in that room, and because of that--even though Mutti was practically mule-like in her determination to continue sleeping there--I finally reached the point where I couldn't stand it anymore. The thought of her spending her nights alone down there where he died was keeping me awake. I considered the possibility of sleeping there myself for all of twelve seconds, but that was also out of the question. Too much of Pappa remains in that room, and although changing its configuration back from bedroom to dining room obscured that cosmetically, we all feel it keenly. It hasn't escaped my notice that Mutti now serves dinner in the kitchen even on formal occasions.

  But if I'm really honest with myself--and I'm trying hard to do that these days--that's not the only reason I started sleeping out at the stable. Because if it were, I could have just taken up residence on the lumpy foldout couch in the study, in spite of the metal bar that runs across the middle of my back.

  I know that I'm thirty-nine and divorced and entitled to sleep with whomever I like, but somehow the idea of making love with Dan in a room above, below, or even down the hall from either my mother or daughter has the same effect on my libido as a raging case of cholera. We tried on several occasions, and despite heroic effort on Dan's part, it just didn't work. And so for the two months before I finally upped stakes and started sleeping in the stable, we snuck around much like we did as teenagers. This worked fairly well--and even added a certain je ne sais quoi to the mix--until the night my dachshund decided I was an armed intruder.

  I knew Dan was coming, so I was waiting by the window in my parents' old bedroom. When he flashed his headlights, I rushed silently down the stairs.

  I had the routine down pat--tread lightly down the left side for the first three steps, skip the fourth entirely, cross over to the right for the next five, skip the tenth, and then tromp down the rest of the stairs however I want because none of them squeaks.

  I was wearing a thin cotton nightgown with small blue flowers--an ankle-length, blousy thing with no waist in the style of Laura Ashley, which I thought was romantic in a Victorian type of way. It was entirely unsuitable for the weather, which was already b
elow freezing, but I knew that if I hurried down the drive, Dan would be waiting for me in the stable lounge with the heater going and a down comforter.

  I swung by the fridge, grabbed the bottle of champagne I had hidden under a plume of collard greens, pulled my rubber boots over my bare legs and feet, and opened the back door as quietly as I could.

  At this precise moment, Harriet--my thirteen-year-old selectively deaf dog, who slept like a top through my departure from our shared bedroom--came tumbling down the stairs snarling and yapping like Cerberus using all three heads. Since Mutti was still sleeping in the dining room at this point, it took her only a few seconds to appear and flick on the kitchen light. And there I was, busted, in my blue-flowered nightie and rubber boots, holding a bottle of contraband bubbly. Harriet shut her snout so quickly she left teeth outside her lips and assumed an expression of great confusion. After a moment she wagged her tail uncertainly.

  Mutti scrunched up her face to adjust to the light, ran her eyes over me, and said, "What in heaven's name are you doing?"

  "I'm, uh," I said, flushing from my head to my toes. Then I glanced behind me.

  Mutti cocked her head to see around my blousy self, caught sight of Dan's truck through the screen door, laughed uproariously, and disappeared back into the dining room.

  I moved out to the stable the next night.

  On second thought, I decide to deal with Eva before my shower. What's the point in leaving everybody miserable? I put my coffee on the antique dresser in the bathroom--setting it on the white lace runner only after first checking that the bottom is dry--and then go back to Eva's room. I stand outside her door with my hand raised, hesitant.

  "Eva?" I say without knocking. "Honey?"

  There's a muffled response from the other side of the door. Since it didn't sound like "Go to hell," I push the door open.

  I pause in the doorway. Eva sits at her vanity, her muck-caked boots up on its surface, crossed at the ankle. Beside them is a silver-framed picture of Jeremy, her shiny new half brother. He's nestled in a molded car seat under cheerily patterned baby blankets, beaming at the camera with fat round cheeks and toothless gums.