14. Gage
GAGE
Beryl comes to the ranch on the first Sunday in July and refuses coffee.
“Bonnie’s fine,” she says before I can ask. “The baby’s fine.”
I let go of the chair back. “Did she send you?”
“No. I watched your interview.”
I stay standing.
“Did Bonnie tell you she wanted you and Tawny doing that campaign together?”
“We weren’t going to tell a crowd about our marriage.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
The refrigerator starts its damned humming. Bonnie has been asking me to get it fixed for a year. I look toward it because Beryl is waiting.
“No.”
“Did she agree to stop working?”
“She hasn’t stopped. You told me she’s teaching.”
“A woman asked her whether she’d given up serious training. After hearing you.”
“That wasn’t what I said.”
Beryl puts her bag on the table. “Then watch it again.”
I pull out a chair and sit. There’s a pale circle in the wood from a hot pan Bonnie put down before we owned trivets. We talked about sanding it out. We never did.
“I’ve read her message,” I say.
“Have you answered it?”
“I don’t know what she wants me to say.”
Beryl looks at me for so long that I hear how that sounds.
“I mean I can’t explain without making it worse.”
“Perhaps she doesn’t need another explanation.”
I rub both palms over my face. “Is she planning to come back before the birth?”
“She’s made her arrangements.”
“What arrangements?”
“She’ll tell you what she wants you to know.”
“You came here to tell me nothing?”
Beryl picks up her bag.
I stand. “Wait.”
“I’m not standing in this kitchen while you get angry at me because Bonnie has somewhere to live.”
“How long?”
She stops at the doorway.
“How long has she got somewhere to live?”
“She’s asked Cleo about keeping the cottage through next summer.”
I sit down without meaning to.
I have known for five weeks where she is staying. I kept picturing a guest room she would leave when she stopped being angry.
Next summer. Our daughter will be nearly a year old. There will be a birthday soon after. Bonnie has pictured all of it in a home I have never seen, and she is making sure she can afford to keep it.
I am frightened in a way I have not let myself be since she left. A year cannot be handled by waiting until she misses me enough.
“She said she needed time.”
“She has used it.”
Beryl leaves. I hear her truck start while I am still looking at the chair where she didn’t sit.
I get as far as opening Bonnie’s number. If she would talk to me, I could ask whether she really means a year. I could tell her we don’t have to do that.
She told me she wasn’t coming home to see furniture. I sent another picture anyway.
I close the number without calling.
Tawny comes that afternoon with the buyers’ weekend schedule. She knocks once at the office door and walks in before I answer. I have let her do that for months.
“Dewey said you were home.”
“I am.”
She puts the folder on the desk. “We need to settle the guest arrangements. My father’s taking the suite at the lodge, so there’s a table for eight Friday night.”
“Send it to Dewey.”
“I’m here.”
She sits, then studies me. “What happened?”
“Beryl came.”
“Oh.”
Usually I would tell her the rest. She waits with her hands around the folder, ready to hear what Bonnie has done to me now.
I can almost feel the relief of saying it. Bonnie’s making plans for a whole year. She won’t discuss them. She acts as though I’m someone she used to know.
“I’ve got work,” I say.
Tawny’s face closes a little. She opens the folder.
“I’ve put myself beside you for the dinner. The lodge asked whether we were arriving together.”
“You’re working.”
“So are you.”
“If we’re both staying at the lodge, make sure they understand we need separate rooms.”
“I didn’t book us a room, Gage.” She sits back. “You don’t have to make me sound cheap.”
“I wasn’t.”
“I was going to say we could drive together. Unless you want to spend another six hours calling someone who won’t answer.”
I look at the phone by my hand.
“Leave that alone.”
“You talk to me about it every night.”
Not every night. Often enough that the correction is useless. I said Bonnie was shutting me out. I told Tawny about the unanswered messages, the nursery, Beryl refusing the route. I described the silence on the other end as if it had begun for no reason.
“I’m not talking about it now.”
She puts the folder down sharply.
“Then talk about us.”
I look up.
“You know what I mean,” she says.
I do. I have known when she waits after a call has finished being about work. When her hand stays on my shoulder. When she asks whether I’m going home and sounds disappointed by the answer.
I have kept taking the calls. I wanted the attention without having to answer for what it meant.
Now she is looking at me as though I owe her something, and I am angry with her for asking. It is easier than thinking about how many evenings I let her believe she could.
“I’m married.”
“Your wife left. I’m here.”
She comes around the desk. I move my chair back before she reaches it.
“Don’t.”
She stops.
“You can’t keep calling me when you need someone and acting offended when I want you.”
I get up. The chair catches against the cabinet, loud in the small room.
“Bonnie told me you said that.”
“Bonnie said plenty.”
“You told me she misunderstood.”
“She was trying to make me say something you wouldn’t forgive. I wasn’t going to help her.”
I see Bonnie at the fitting, with the blue collar facing beneath her hand. She told me Tawny wanted the man I had become, that she thought the wife who loved me before the money no longer belonged beside me. I heard both versions. I chose the one that let me keep going.
I want to ask Tawny why she lied. The words are ready. Then I remember Bonnie asking me to believe her, and how impatient I was to get her into the truck. I knew which answer would let me keep the campaign. I drove her home believing I was the one who deserved an apology.
Tawny watches my face.
“She told you she was afraid of being a visitor in her own life,” she says. “Then she left it. How long are you supposed to stand here keeping everything empty for her?”
For a moment I can feel Bonnie’s head on my shoulder. She was warm from the bath. She kept stopping because she was embarrassed by how frightened she was, and I told her she could tell me. I was proud that she trusted me enough to finish.
Tawny has those words now. I am so angry at hearing them in her mouth that I nearly forget who put them there.
“You don’t get to use that.”
“You told me.”
I want to say I trusted her. I want to say she was supposed to understand, not throw it back. Bonnie could have said both things to me. She did say them, in the fitting room, while I watched the door for people who might hear.
My face burns. I cannot make Tawny responsible for the first telling.
“I know.” It comes out quietly. I have to make myself look at her when I say it.
She reaches for me. I step away.
“Go home, Tawny.”
Her hand drops. “And tomorrow you call me again?”
I look at the folder on my desk, my name printed beside hers.
“Tomorrow you and Dewey come to the office at nine. We need to end this.”
“The weekend?”
“The pairing. The calls. All of it.”
She picks up her bag but leaves the folder. At the door she turns.
“You wanted me here yesterday.”
I cannot tell her she is wrong.
That night I open my messages with Tawny.
I go looking for the ones about the tour. There are plenty. Times, horses, clothes, questions I answered while Bonnie was beside me on the sofa.
Between them are other things.
Bonnie’s angry about the jacket again.
I sent that one on the Sunday before the fitting, after Bonnie went upstairs. I remember standing at the sink, angry that the food hadn’t made the evening easier.
Tawny answered that Bonnie was frightened of being left behind. I told her what Bonnie had said in bed. I wanted someone to understand how hard I was trying.
Reading it now, I keep looking for a sentence where I hesitated. There isn’t one. I typed my wife’s private fear into a message to another woman, then waited for her to tell me I was a good husband.
I put the phone down. Pick it up again.
I hate going home to another fight.
That was mine too. Tawny replied that I could call her instead.
I did.
I walk upstairs. The nursery is too neat. Nothing has been used. I open a drawer and find the little green coat Bonnie bought too early, delighted by a sale and then worried our daughter would never be the right size in the right weather.
I sit in the rocking chair with it in my hands. There’s no reason to take it out of the drawer. I don’t know what else to hold.
Bonnie asked me to stop telling Tawny things. I told her someone had to worry about me. I can hear my own voice saying it in the kitchen while her bags stood by the door.
I miss her so badly that I press the little coat between my hands.
I want to call and hear her answer as if I am still the person she wants when something hurts.
The thought makes me ashamed enough to put the phone away.
I take it out again because leaving her message unanswered is another choice I have been making.
I start a message.
I didn’t realize how far?—
I delete it. I knew enough to turn the phone facedown at dinner.
Another start. Another explanation. I want to tell her Tawny came here today and made it clear. It would not excuse the morning I drove Bonnie home from the fitting and asked her what she thought she was accusing Tawny of.
I put the coat back. I leave Bonnie’s message unanswered one more night because I still can’t get through the first sentence without trying to make myself look better.
At nine on Monday, Tawny sits across from me with Dewey beside her. Her father is already calling her phone. She turns it facedown.
“We’re ending the paired campaign,” I say.
Dewey sets down his pen. “Ending which appearances?”
“All the ones that sell Tawny and me as a pair. She won’t come to the house. No private calls. You can handle the cancellations through the office.”
Tawny looks at him, then back at me. “You could have said this to me alone.”
“We spoke yesterday.”
“You were upset. Beryl had been here.”
“I’m still ending it.”
Dewey opens the calendar. “Your individual Crown entry?”
“Stays. I’ll compete under my own name.”
Tawny leans forward. “You picked me. You gave me the mare. You asked me to keep you company when she wouldn’t.”
“I did.”
“Then don’t act as though I walked in and stole something.”
I have to put both hands on the desk to keep from defending myself.
“I gave you things that weren’t mine to give. What Bonnie told me. What she was afraid of. I kept calling you because you told me what I wanted to hear.”
Tawny’s face flushes. “I cared about you.”
“I liked it.”
The words are ugly enough that Dewey looks down. I want to stop there. I don’t.
“I knew you wanted more than a job. I let you keep thinking there might be more. And when Bonnie told me, I made her the problem.”
Tawny gets up.
“Is she coming back?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then you’re throwing this away for nothing.”
I want Bonnie home. I nearly argue about the word nothing. I look at Tawny’s hand on the chair where my wife used to sit when she brought me lunch.
“It ends today.”
“My father won’t keep putting you on his stages while you treat me like this.”
“I’ll call him.”
“You can call him now.”
She leaves the room. Dewey waits until the door closes.
“Byers owns the invitationals’ venue arrangements. If the pairing goes, that string probably goes with it.”
“I know.”
“You wanted those dates for years.”
I look at the empty doorway. I have used so much of what I wanted as a reason for Bonnie to give way.
“Call the organizers. Tell them the paired appearances are canceled.”
He makes the first call at my desk. I stay while he makes the next. Every person wants a reason. I give him the same one: I approved a campaign that used my wife’s work and presented a relationship I should not have encouraged. I am ending it.
Mr. Byers calls before noon. Tawny’s father has no need to introduce himself.
“The summer launch was sold as a pair. Thirty-eight thousand in penalties, Gage. It’s in the contract. And you can find your own invitationals. My dates are gone.”
Thirty-eight thousand. I have spent more than that on a horse I decided I wanted after watching a video twice.
I told Bonnie changing the advertisements cost too much.
“Send the penalties to the office,” I say.
“My daughter worked for you. You chose her for this campaign, and you were happy to have her beside you until your wife complained. I won’t let you make Tawny the villain to save your marriage.”
“I chose her. I encouraged her. I’ll say that when anyone asks.”
“Then make sure you do. Don’t put out a statement blaming my daughter for decisions you made.”
He hangs up. I stay at the desk until Dewey returns with the canceled bookings. He asks whether I want him to contact Cleo and arrange a visit to Bonnie.
For a moment I picture driving there with this list. Showing her. Getting her to understand that I have done it this time.
“No,” I say. “She hasn’t invited me.”
When he leaves, I open Bonnie’s message. The words are still there, exactly as she sent them.
I told you what Tawny said to me. You asked me to apologize to her.
I type slowly.
You were right about Tawny. I told her things you trusted me with. I encouraged her, and I asked you to apologize when you told me what she wanted. I’ve ended the paired campaign and the private contact. I’m sorry.
I want to add that I miss her. I want to ask whether she will call. My thumb hovers over the keyboard until the screen dims.
I send what I have.
Then I go upstairs and sit beside the dresser. Nothing in the room has changed. The drawer closes without a sound. I can hear the silence after it for a long time.