Riding Lessons Read online

  "I'm serious. We've had an offer on the house--the house in Minneapolis. If it goes through, I'm going to have a big wad of cash. Soon. It'll be totally liquid until I do something else with it. We can use it."

  "What for?" she says. She doesn't mean it the way it sounds. What she's actually saying is, What's the point?

  She has regained her icy demeanor. Her hand remains in mine, but is limp and cold. She moves not a muscle.

  "Because I want to. I really want to." I'm pleading now, wheedling like a kid trying to extract money before the ice cream truck passes out of range. "Please Mutti, we can do this. I want to do this. I owe you."

  "You owe me nothing."

  I grow increasingly desperate. "Then for Pappa. If you won't let me do it for you, let me do it for Pappa."

  Mutti stares at me for a moment. Then she withdraws her hand and goes outside.

  I collect Eva from the airport the next day. When I catch sight of her coming through the gate, she stops and sets her bag on the ground. I run the final steps and hug her fiercely. Her body stiffens, her arms pinned against her sides by mine.

  She's not amused when she discovers that the passenger door of my car won't open.

  "You can slide through the window, like the Dukes of Hazzard," I joke feebly, and then realize that the show's final episode probably aired years before she was born. Eva glares at me, walks around to the driver's side, and slides gracefully across the front seat.

  Dinner is excruciating. We eat in the kitchen, now that it's just four of us.

  Mutti's not talking to me, I'm not talking to Jean-Claude, Eva's not talking to me, and that doesn't leave a lot of room for conversation. Eventually, we give up and finish in dreadful silence. The only sounds are of cutlery clinking and food being chewed.

  "May I please be excused?" asks Eva.

  "Yes--" I say at the exact moment Mutti says, "Of course."

  I look quickly from Eva to Mutti. Eva is staring at Mutti. Jean-Claude is watching all of us. I glare at my plate, furious.

  "Thanks, Oma," Eva says pointedly. She tucks her napkin under the edge of her plate and gets up.

  As soon as she leaves the room, I set my own napkin on the table and stand up.

  "Where are you going? You haven't eaten a thing," says Mutti. Her voice smacks of rebuke, not concern. I look over and find her chin jutting sharply.

  "I'm not hungry," I say. I turn and go out the back door. There's a pause before the screen door slams, preceded by a tiny yelp. It appears that Harriet has decided to come with me.

  I head up the lane, away from the stable.

  I look down at Harriet, who is struggling to keep up. What silly little legs she has. I slow down. I have no particular agenda.

  Before I'm a hundred yards away, I hear someone running behind me. I scoop Harriet under my arm and march off.

  "Annemarie," says Jean-Claude, falling into step beside me.

  I look sternly ahead and walk even faster.

  "Annemarie," he says again, taking hold of my arm. I stop.

  Still holding my arm, he turns me so that I'm facing him. "What's this about?"

  "As if you don't know," I say.

  "I don't," he says.

  I continue to glare.

  "Annemarie," he says softly. He puts a finger under my chin and lifts my face. Finally I raise my eyes to his.

  "Is this about the other night?" he continues. He looks concerned, his forehead furrowed.

  I turn my head to the side. "Yes."

  "Did I do something wrong?"

  "Well, yeah," I say in my best Well, duh voice.

  "What?" he says.

  I look at him in surprise. He really does look baffled.

  "What were you going to do," I say loudly. "Take me to bed and then tell me you were leaving?"

  He sighs as understanding dawns on his face.

  "Now let's be frank here," he says, letting go of me and crossing his arms in front of him. "Who was taking who to bed?"

  "Okay, I don't need this," I say, as my face starts to burn. I set Harriet down and step around him.

  He catches up to me again. We walk in silence until we reach the road.

  I stand staring at it, unsure what to do. In the end, I drop Harriet over one of the whitewashed fences, and climb over it myself. Jean-Claude does too, and we head across the pasture, toward the far corner of our property.

  "I'm going back to Canada," he says eventually. "To Ottawa. I thought you would understand," he says.

  "Why would you think that?"

  "Because you also have a daughter."

  "Mutti said it was because you resented mucking out last week."

  "Come now," he says harshly, once again taking my arm. Harriet snarls from the ground, a vicious Vienna sausage. He looks at her in surprise, and then lets go of me.

  "You know better than that. Yes, it is a mess here," he says, gesturing at the farm in general. "I cannot deny that. But it is not the main reason for my leaving."

  "It's to be with Manon, then, is it?"

  I watch him carefully. His face is so expressive, his personality so--I don't know what, exactly, but I'm finding it hard to stay mad at him.

  "My wife--my ex--she has been having trouble with Manon. Much like you and Eva. It is kids, you know?" he says, shrugging. "But I have been watching you and Eva this summer, and..." He stretches his lips into a flat line, and then moves his head from side to side as though deciding whether to continue.

  Perhaps he thinks he would offend me. He wouldn't. I know I've made a hash of it. Accepting that is part of my plan for correcting it, although I can't say I'm thrilled at having become a cautionary tale.

  "Well," he says, apparently deciding to leave that part of it unexpressed. "I have accepted a position at the National Equestrian Centre. It is where she trains. Manon will not be thrilled, but c'est la vie. It is where I should be."

  "And your ex-wife?"

  "We are amicable. She is relieved for some backup. We can--what is the term? 'Gang up' on her."

  I try to smile, and then shake my head. "So when are you leaving?"

  "I start there in a month. I told Ursula I would stay until then, if she found it useful. We are taking students again, but..." He lets it trail off, and I know what he means. He means that he'll help Mutti eke the last few dollars out of this place before she tallies up her final losses.

  I step forward and take his upper arms in my hands. His muscles are hard, like baseballs. Harriet whimpers, confused.

  "Good luck," I say. "I mean it. With everything. Especially with Manon."

  A smile plays around his eyes and lips. He leans forward and kisses me, first on my left cheek, and then on my right.

  We continue walking until we've gone around the property's entire perimeter. Then Jean-Claude squeezes my arm and disappears into the stable. I start down the lane, headed for my sad, lonely room in my sad, lonely house.

  The phone rings as I cross the kitchen. I lunge for it, hoping it's Dan.

  "Hello?" I say, clutching the receiver with both hands.

  "Annemarie?" says a female voice.

  "Yes?"

  "It's Norma Blackley. I have good news."

  "You do?" I could use some good news.

  "I just got off the phone with Detective Samosa. They're indicting McCullough and four of his employees. Apparently the two they caught at your place started singing like canaries at the thought of fifteen years inside."

  "What are they charging him with?"

  "A list as long as your arm. Grand theft, grand theft by deception, third degree attempted theft by deception, two counts of extreme cruelty to animals--"

  "Two?"

  "They killed another horse after Hurrah got away. Burned it to a crisp so the vet wouldn't know the difference."

  "Oh," I say, shuddering.

  "The upshot is that they have bigger fish to fry than you."

  "They're not going to charge me?"

  "To tell the truth, I don't thi
nk they know quite what to make of you. You don't come out of this looking very good, but Dan Garibaldi's statement and the auction house records establish that you did come by the horse in the manner you claimed. That still leaves the phone call to McCullough and the dye job, but since no one in McCullough's camp has implicated you, they'd have a hard time making anything stick. In strictly legal terms, you're allowed to dye a horse as long as you don't injure the horse and you aren't doing it to aid in the commission of a crime. It would have been quite different if you had moved the horse to another property or tried to conceal his presence."

  "That's exactly what I was going to do, but then all hell broke loose."

  "And that is something you are never going to repeat to anyone else, ever again," Norma says firmly. "Understand?"

  "Yes. I know. I won't. Look, what's next? How do I go about getting him back?"

  "What, Hurrah? That's not going to happen."

  "Why not? He's my horse. I got him entirely legally."

  "Ownership wasn't the center's to transfer to you in the first place, so you have no claim on him."

  "That's preposterous."

  "It's the law. It's the same as with any other stolen property. The party who ends up buying it is simply out of luck."

  "So I'll buy him from whoever does own him. Who is that?"

  "That's not clear yet. He could belong to the insurance company, but if they sue McCullough for the return of the settlement, ownership might revert to him. For now, though, the horse is being kept as state's evidence."

  My mind is reeling. "I'm going to call them."

  "As your legal counsel, I don't recommend it."

  "Why not?"

  "Because your position is still shaky. You don't want to do anything to change their minds."

  "I have to call them."

  She sighs. I seem to have that effect on people.

  "In that case, be very, very careful. Don't push them, or our next meeting might very well be at the station."

  "Okay."

  "And Annemarie? For God's sake, don't mention that you were planning to move Hurrah. Just don't."

  "Okay," I say, feeling small and contrite.

  Chapter 20

  "Hey there."

  Dan is standing in the doorway of Hurrah's stall, a dark outline with light spilling in around him.

  "Hi," I say miserably. I'm crouching down against the back wall.

  "Your mother's been looking for you," he says.

  I sniff twice, and then run a finger along the lower lashes of each eye.

  Dan watches me for a moment. Then he comes in and crouches against the opposite wall. We fall silent.

  "I've been trying to reach you," I say after nearly a minute has passed.

  "I've been busy," he says.

  He's too polite to say any more than that, and I'm too exhausted to push it.

  "I called the police," I say, twisting my hands.

  "You did? And?"

  "Same story they gave me before. Which is to imply that even though they didn't charge me I'm obviously a criminal and don't deserve to know anything."

  He stares at me, eyes unreadable, and then drops his head. He seems to be studying the floor between his feet.

  "I called them too," he says finally.

  "And what did they tell you?"

  "They said that normally they auction off confiscated property at the end of the year, but that these were special circumstances."

  "Special how?"

  "Well, for one thing, he's livestock. And for another, McCullough's in New Mexico, so that's where the trial will be. They might have to take Hurrah back there."

  I stare at the dark grainy planks that run vertically behind him. My eyes feel like sandpaper. I blink, trying to clear them.

  "It sounds like they told you a lot more than they told me," I say.

  "Well, I didn't find out much that was useful either," he says. "But I did ask them to call me if anything changed."

  I examine my ringless hands. I'm out of things to say.

  Dan looks at his watch, and then back at me. "It's almost time to go," he says gently. "Are you ready?"

  I nod wordlessly. He gets up and approaches me with both hands extended. I take them, breathe deeply, and let him pull me to my feet.

  I brush the dust from my new black dress, and head for the house.

  So this is what it all comes down to, is it? A box, poised above an open grave?

  I haven't been to a funeral in my entire life. I'm an anomaly, I know. I foolishly expected the coffin to be lowered into the grave by pallbearers. I expected stony-faced men, three on each side, slowly letting out strap until the coffin finally reached the bottom.

  Instead, my father's coffin rests on two blue straps, held snug by a rectangular device that squats around the open grave like a scaffold.

  It's hard to believe that he's in there. Harder still to believe that what made him Pappa, the essence of him, is gone. Is it, really? Does it just dissolve, like a wisp of smoke? If so, how long does it take? Or is it still there, in and around his body? Is he aware of what's going on, terrified at being shut in the darkness? Shouldn't we let him out?

  The priest is singing, a low, beautiful incantation: "In paradisum deducant te Angeli; in tuo adventu suscipiant te Martyres..."

  I am flanked by Mutti and Eva. Dan stands grimly on the other side. There are probably three dozen other people here, which is considerably less than at the funeral mass.

  I was surprised at the turnout. Mutti and Pappa were never particularly sociable--they never had dinner parties, they didn't belong to clubs, and the only family either of them has are distant cousins in Austria, but the congregation came out in full force.

  "...Dominus Deus Israel: quia visitavit et fecit redemptionem plebis suae. Et erexit cornu salutis nobis, in domo David pueri sui. Sicut locutus est..."

  Oh God. It's going down now. My father is actually disappearing into the earth. I catch my breath, unsure whether I'm going to be able to keep myself from crying out, Stop! Stop! You're making a terrible mistake! Instead, I hold the air inside my lungs and concentrate on staying absolutely still.

  The coffin continues on its way, silently, smoothly, until its burnished lid disappears from sight.

  He's gone. Just like that.

  I am unable to fathom this. How can someone just be gone? You know--in theory, anyway--that life is an arc. That you start out as a child, and rise until you are at your peak, and then slowly taper off again until you die. But I can't seem to apply this to Pappa.

  I've seen the silvery pictures of his childhood, the fat baby with the huge smile tearing across the lawn in a cloth diaper and white baby shoes. I've seen the newspaper clippings and photographs from his heyday as a jockey. I remember him as a father: stern, silent, impossible to please. How instead of praise, he'd give me a single kiss on the forehead if I managed to do something right. I remember him knocking on my door before dawn, clapping his hands and shouting that it was time to get started. In the middle of the day I had a three-hour break to do schoolwork with my tutor, but other than that I was on horseback all day long. I rode until I could barely walk back to the house, one horse after another. I was miserable, I was lonely. I felt like I was living under an enormous black cloud that shut out the sun.

  Until Harry. Harry changed everything. For the first time, I was passionate about what I was doing. The problem was in getting me off the horse, not on. But by then Pappa was no longer around to terrorize me. By then, he'd sent me off to train with Marjory.

  I feel ashamed now at how happy I was that my parents sent me away. Marjory worked me hard, hard, hard, but she also heaped praise on me. I wanted to please her. I adored her. I felt like a released convict. My life at Marjory's was nothing but blue skies, rolling horizons, and one enormous striped horse. Are other kids as desperate to get away from home? Probably not, but damn it, he was really hard on me. And that's what baffles me the most as I stand here by his grave: how did Pa
ppa the Drill Sergeant turn into the older Pappa, the man who defended me against Mutti? The man who defended Eva against me when I found her tattoo?

  I stare at the gaping earth.

  "...misericordiam cum patribus nostris: et memorari testamenti sui sancti," says the priest. He looks around solemnly, and then switches to English. "I am the resurrection and the life: he that believed, in Me, although he be dead, shall live: and every one that liveth and believeth in Me shall not die forever."

  God, I hope so. I don't believe it, but I hope so. Maybe that thought in itself dooms me to eternal death. I can't help it, though. I don't think I have it in me to believe.

  We're supposed to recite the Lord's Prayer now. Silently, but we're supposed to think it in unison. I begin, falteringly, and then find I can't continue.

  Possessed by I don't know what, I reach out and take Mutti's hand. As my hand crosses the space between us, I bite my lip, afraid that she'll brush my hand away. But when she feels me groping, she grasps my hand like a leg-hold trap. Her cold bony fingers close so tightly around mine that her rings cut my flesh. I hold my breath and close my eyes.

  When I open them again, the priest is leaning over and taking a handful of dirt. He swings his fist forward in an elegant arc, releasing a few grains of earth into the open grave. The sound of it hitting the top of the coffin is almost more than I can bear.

  "Memento homo quia pulvus es et in pulverem reverteris," he says, moving his hand back and forth two more times.

  I close my eyes again, feeling unsteady. Although the world stops spinning, I'm still nauseous, afraid I might faint. I've done it before. I know how it feels. If I did faint, would I fall into the grave? How would they get me out?

  Mutti tightens her grip on my fingers, and the pain makes me wince. With anybody else, I'd just shift my hand, silently suggesting a new configuration. But with Mutti, I'm afraid she'll let go.

  Maybe if I focus on the pain, it will help me stay conscious. I'm still pondering this when I feel Eva's warm hand slip into mine on the other side. I gasp, and suddenly hope that the service isn't over.

  The mood at the reception is not nearly as mournful as I expected. It's not exactly jovial, but you hear the occasional laugh, muted out of respect. I suppose it's a stepping stone, a midpoint to help you ease away from the grief of the funeral.

  The house is full of people. They stand or sit in groups of three or four, holding drinks and small plates of food. The food appeared with the guests. I don't know what it is about death that makes people cook, but casseroles and cakes and spinach dips in hollowed-out granary loaves started coming into the house, and now every surface in the kitchen is full.