13. Bonnie
BONNIE
On the last Sunday in June, the woman who comes to watch Keeley ride tells me she knows my husband from television.
She tells me this while Flint walks a careful circle around the first barrel. Keeley brought her as company for the drive, and she has been pleasant for most of the morning. She held my water while I adjusted my chair. She asked before taking pictures.
“It’s lovely that you can do a few lessons while you’re on maternity leave,” she says. “Keeley said I should ask you about my mare, but I didn’t want to start something if you’ve given up the serious work.”
I keep watching the horse. “Bring your outside hand forward, Keeley. Let him finish.”
“Gage said you planned it so he could do the whole campaign.”
Flint comes out of the turn straighter. Keeley smiles at me, and I lift a thumb because I cannot get my voice to work in time.
“Where did he say that?”
“The circuit interview from Denver. The first Sunday in June. My sister was there and sent me the clip. Tawny was with him.”
I put the clipboard on my lap.
“I’m still training. I didn’t agree to leave my work or to have Tawny replace me.”
The woman stops smiling. “Oh. I must’ve misunderstood.”
“You probably heard him correctly. If you’d like to talk about your mare after the lesson, we can.”
Keeley comes to the rail, pleased with Flint and ready for the next exercise.
I give it to her. I finish the lesson without telling either woman how Gage has made my absence useful to him.
Keeley pays me and asks about next month.
I say we will plan around the birth and that Cleo can cover anything I cannot teach.
After they leave, I go into the tack room and shut the door.
My jacket is on the table, blue collar facing turned upward.
Beside it lies a separate scrap of cotton where I tried the first few stitches of my name yesterday.
The silver floss is wound on a small card.
I chose a needle with an eye wide enough for it. I know how to do this.
I cannot make myself put the needle through the first empty hole.
I pick up the scissors and put them down. I do not want to cut anything. I want my husband to stop saying I am happy.
Tawny told me the life I shared with him no longer fit the man he had become.
Now he is telling people I chose to step aside.
I am furious with him. Beneath the anger is the awful wish that he would come through the tack-room door, take one look at my face, and be sorry without my having to tell him why.
His message is still on my phone. I miss you. This has gone on long enough. Call me. Three weeks ago, the same Sunday as the interview. I read it until I could hear him saying it, then put the phone away.
He stood beside Tawny and told people I wanted her there. Afterward, he told me to stop being gone.
I open my messages with Gage.
A client heard you say we planned my maternity leave and that I wanted your campaign. Neither is true. I’m still working. I told you what Tawny said to me. You asked me to apologize to her. Do not tell people I agreed to any of this.
I send it before I can make it gentler. Nothing comes back. I stay at the table until I can call Beryl without beginning in the middle of a sentence.
Beryl answers while she is driving home from a clinic. I tell her what the woman said. She pulls over before I have finished.
“I’ll find out exactly what he said,” she tells me.
“Please don’t send me the video.”
“I won’t.”
“I’m thirty-five weeks pregnant. I’ve spent six weeks making a home in somebody else’s cottage. Why would anybody think I planned this?”
“They heard your husband say you did.”
I cry then, with the jacket folded beneath my cheek and the phone flat on the table. Beryl stays on the line. She asks if Cleo is close, and I tell her she is in the barn. I don’t want to make another person leave work because I cannot get through a Sunday.
“I can call her myself,” I say.
“Do that. I’ll call you later.”
When Cleo comes in, I have unwound more floss than I need. She waits until I put the needle safely into the practice scrap, then takes the card from my hand.
“Shall I put this away for today?”
I nod. She winds the loose length around the card without cutting it.
She sits on the feed bin. I go through the interview again. She listens without suggesting that he might have meant something else.
“I want to stay through next summer,” I say. The three months I paid for will not be enough. I want our daughter to have a first home we will not have to leave as soon as I can bear a long drive.
“The cottage?”
“If you’ll still rent it to me.”
“Of course.”
“I mean pay you properly. With the stall, and use of the arena. I want to know what I have.”
“We’ll work out the rent for the rest of it after lunch.” She waits. “Bon, if you’re planning that far ahead, will you speak to a lawyer? Just find out what you need to arrange.”
“I haven’t decided to divorce him.”
“I know. You can tell the lawyer that.”
The word still makes me want to take back the whole conversation. I look at the empty holes in my collar. Not knowing what I will do about Gage cannot keep being my only plan.
“Do you know someone I could call?”
“I can get you a name.”
“And I want you at the hospital.”
She puts the card of floss into my sewing tin. “I’ll come.”
“I asked at my appointment. I can have the person I choose. I thought I’d feel differently by now.”
I have pictured Gage beside the bed every night. Bringing water. Making a nurse laugh. Crying when he sees our daughter.
Then I picture him answering his phone in the corridor, telling Tawny what I said when I was afraid.
“I can’t wonder who he’ll repeat it to,” I say. “I need one room where being frightened won’t become something he explains to her.”
Cleo moves closer when I begin crying again. She puts an arm around me, awkward with the table between us, and I lean against her shoulder.
“I’ve got work to arrange,” she says. “And somebody to spoil my kid while I’m gone. We can do that.”
“He can’t be there too?”
She laughs. “At three, he thinks a Band-Aid is an operation. We’ll leave him with somebody who can find his favorite pajamas.”
I laugh with her, then cry a little harder because I can. She stays beside me until I am ready to leave the tack room.
We eat lunch at her kitchen table and talk about the cottage.
I want my teaching to cover the rent. I can take six weeks away from lessons and return gradually, with Cleo covering the physical work until I am ready.
I have fewer clients here, and I want to build a full teaching week again.
Starting over frightens me less than the thought of going home to be photographed beside a dresser.
Beryl calls back that afternoon. She has heard the interview. Gage said we planned it. I close my eyes while she tells me, then ask her to say nothing more about it today. Instead I tell her I have asked Cleo about keeping the cottage through next summer. She says good.
“He’s asking if you need anything,” she says.
“I need him to stop telling people what I think.”
Outside, Cleo’s son has dragged two little chairs to my porch. He wants to sit beside me while I eat a peach. I give him a slice, and he drops it. I get him another one.
“Baby likes peaches?” he asks.
“I hope so.”
He pats the empty chair beside us. “She can sit here.”
I look at the little chair, then at the open door of the cottage. My hospital bag is inside, still empty.
By Thursday, I have spoken to a lawyer. I tell her I have not decided whether my marriage is over. We talk about the baby, where I am living, and the arrangements Gage and I will need to address. I write down what she needs from me and what questions still have no answer.
After the call, I cry for a few minutes. Then I put the notes in a folder and pack the yellow shirt in my hospital bag.