26. Bonnie
BONNIE
On the second Wednesday in December, I have six riders waiting for me and cannot find the notes I wrote for the opening.
I check the folder again. They are not between the attendance sheet and the arena agreement. They are not beneath the drawing of the exercise. I remember taking them out at breakfast because I wanted to change one sentence.
They will be beside the toaster, where I cannot use them.
Cleo catches me staring into the folder.
“What have you forgotten?”
“My introduction.”
“Do you know your name?”
“Yes.”
“Start there.”
She touches my elbow, then goes to welcome a late spectator. The riders are already mounted. I have taught every part of this session before, some of it to people who have traveled back for the follow-up after my November clinic. I wanted the opening to sound as competent as the work.
Gage comes through the side door carrying Cricket. Her hat has slipped over one eyebrow. He stops well outside the working area and adjusts it, listening while Cleo points him toward the heated room where he can stay with her during the session.
He looks over at me. I raise the folder in greeting, which is ridiculous because he saw me less than an hour ago when I left him with Cricket at the cottage. He smiles anyway.
I am more nervous because he is here, though I asked him to come.
“Good morning,” I tell the riders. “I’m Bonnie Redfern. We’ll start with what your horses are telling you before you ask them for the pattern.”
One woman nods as though that is exactly what she came to hear. I put the folder down on a chair.
I ask the riders to walk a loose circle while I watch. One man near the back keeps shortening his reins every time his gelding lifts his head. By their second circuit, I know where we need to begin.
At the far end, the man with the short reins is doing more of what he was doing before, only harder.
I walk toward him. He watches me approach with a defensive expression I recognize from years of teaching people who are good at other things.
“Can you show me the first few steps again?” I ask.
He does, quickly.
“Slower.”
“The horse wants to get on with it.”
“So do you.”
He almost smiles. I wait beside him until he lets the gelding stand.
We begin again. I ask what he feels in the saddle before the horse moves off. He tells me about the gelding’s shoulders, his own knees, the rein he thinks is too long. I have him change one thing. The horse takes three ordinary steps without the argument that came before the first attempt.
The man looks surprised. Then he asks a better question.
I forget where Gage is for the next twenty minutes.
At the break, a rider asks whether Gage will be giving the demonstration after lunch.
For a moment I feel the old drop in my stomach. I have spent the morning teaching these people, and still I am waiting to find out whether they came for him.
“I’ll be working with each of you on the same exercise,” I say. “Gage is here with our daughter.”
The woman looks pleased. “I hoped we’d get more time. I’ve nearly got it.”
“So have I,” the man beside her says, and the group laughs.
I laugh with them, relieved enough to feel foolish. Then the woman asks me about her mare’s left turn, and I forget to be foolish because I have something to tell her.
Gage meets me outside the heated room. Cricket is awake against his shoulder. I take her because I want her, then kiss the place above her ear before asking how she has been.
“Good. Cleo stayed with her for ten minutes so I could watch from the rail.”
“Did you see the gelding?”
“I saw his rider stop pulling.”
“He didn’t know he was doing it.”
“He knew by the time you finished.”
I look at Gage, trying to decide how much of the pleasure I feel is about the lesson and how much is because he understood it.
“Was I talking too fast at the beginning?”
“A little.”
I groan.
“Then you watched the horses and forgot to be nervous.”
“You noticed?”
“You kept folding the corner of the folder.”
I glance toward the chair where I left it. He is right. I find this mortifying for half a second, until he adds, “I used to know you were about to say something important when you put it down.”
I look back at the folder. All those years, and he had noticed that.
Cleo brings my lunch. I feed Cricket in the quiet room, then eat while Gage takes her. Outside, somebody is asking where I got the poles I use. Another rider wants the dates for spring.
I listen to the voices outside while I unwrap my lunch. I’m glad they want more, but I need ten minutes before they ask me for it.
“Close the door?” I ask.
Gage does. The noise drops, and I eat a whole roll without speaking.
He walks Cricket near the window. I watch him turn carefully in the small space, shifting her so she can see me. She opens her mouth in delight when I make a face. I nearly choke on the roll laughing at her.
“Don’t encourage her,” he says.
“I’m her mother. It’s most of my job.”
When I go back out, he wishes me luck without following me through the door. He will take Cricket to his house for the afternoon; I will collect her when I finish. Cleo has the room to use for the riders’ lunch. Everything can continue without my holding every part of it at once.
By afternoon everyone is tired. One woman admits she is afraid she will get home and forget everything. We choose one thing she can practice, and she writes it in her notebook. Before she loads her horse, she makes me check that she has understood.
She thanks me.
Afterward I go into the empty arena before I can talk to anyone else. I am proud enough to cry and too tired to make it dignified. I wipe my face with the back of my wrist.
In May, I kept explaining that I intended to come back to work, as though wanting it enough might make Gage leave a place for me. Today six people paid to learn what I know. They are asking when they can come again.
Cleo comes in carrying the forgotten folder. She stops beside me without asking why I am crying.
“That went well,” she says.
“It did.”
“You can say it louder.”
“It went well.”
She smiles. I let myself enjoy saying it.
Gage has tea made when I reach his house. He is on the floor beside Cricket, who is awake on a blanket and reaching for a toy. He looks up as I come in, and I start telling him about the woman with the notebook before I have taken off my coat.
He gets up, takes the coat when I wrestle it free, and hangs it on the hook. Then he sits on the floor again and waits for the rest.
I sit beside them. My daughter catches my finger while I explain the afternoon. I can hear myself talking too quickly again. Today I do not care.
“The man with the gelding came back to watch her,” I tell him. “He said he could see what I meant when he wasn’t trying to do it himself.”
“That would’ve annoyed me,” Gage says.
“It annoyed him.”
“Good.”
I nudge him with my knee. “You’d have argued with me for ten minutes.”
“I’d have wanted you to get on and show me.”
“I know. Then you’d have said it worked because I’m smaller.”
“Would I have been wrong?”
“Yes.”
He concedes. I lean against his shoulder, exhausted all at once now that I have told someone who understands why the day mattered.
He kisses my temple. “You were good with them.”
“I was.”
The words feel bold in my mouth. He turns toward me, and I kiss him because I want to. He tastes faintly of the tea I have forgotten to drink.
I draw back first. He follows an inch and stops when I put a hand on his chest.
“Hold that,” I say.
“For how long?”
“Until I’ve told you what I want to teach next.”
He laughs and lets me go.
I stay for the cup I forgot. While Gage warms it, I find the photograph Cleo took at the end of the session. I am standing beside the woman with the notebook, holding a pole under one arm, with dirt on my jeans and my hair escaping its tie.
“Will you send me that?” he asks.
“For you?”
“For me.”
I send it. He looks at it once more before putting the phone away. Then he asks about the next class.
I begin telling him an idea I have not said aloud to anyone yet. It is unfinished, and twice I change my mind while I am explaining it. Gage asks a question about the riders I want to reach. I answer, then tell him where I am still unsure.
When I stop, I realize I have not spent the whole conversation choosing which parts of myself he is allowed to hear. The relief makes me go quiet.
“What?” he asks.
I lean against his shoulder again. “I’m glad I told you.”
A week later, Gage burns the first piece of garlic bread because he is telling me a story and forgets the broiler.
I smell it before he does. By the time he opens the door, the edges are black. He puts the tray on the stove and looks at it with the same concentration he gives a disappointing run.
“We can cut that part off,” he says.
“We can make another piece.”
“There’s only one left.”
“Then we’ll share.”
He looks at me. I have been standing close enough to touch him for most of the evening, finding reasons to pass behind him in the little kitchen.
I invited him for dinner because I wanted him here.
He offered to cook because I had spent the day teaching.
Neither of us has admitted that the meal is taking an unreasonable amount of attention.
Tonight Cleo has taken my daughter so I can have an evening with my husband. She told me to come over when I was ready, then asked Gage whether he knew where I kept the fire extinguisher.
I have not stopped smiling about it.
We eat at the small table. The second piece of bread survives. Gage gives me the larger half, and I break it again so we each have the same amount. He tells me I have ruined his attempt to be charming.
“You can try another way.”
“I’m open to suggestions.”
I touch his knee beneath the table. He stops talking long enough that I know he understood me.
I stopped us in a parking lot. I stopped us again on his sitting-room floor, at the end of a clinic day, with Cricket on the blanket beside us. Both times I slept in my own bed.
Tonight I want more than a kiss.