22. Bonnie
BONNIE
Ihave been at the regional riders’ gathering for twenty minutes when somebody asks if Gage will be joining my clinic.
“This one’s mine,” I say, and point her toward the schedule on the wall. “Registration opens online next week.”
She takes the answer easily. I wish I could do the same. My name is printed by itself on the schedule, with a short description of the groundwork clinic I am teaching next month. The arena time beside it still says to be confirmed. I have checked it three times anyway.
Cricket is with Cleo for the afternoon. At ten weeks, she has begun giving us smiles that make us repeat ridiculous noises until she loses interest. I showed Cleo the milk in the fridge, kissed them both, and drove here wearing jeans that fit me now instead of the ones I keep hoping will fit later.
I am talking to an organizer about arena space when Tawny comes up beside us.
“Bonnie. I wondered when you’d turn up.”
The organizer greets her by name. Tawny is riding in the afternoon demonstration and has a table for Byers Western.
“I’ve got a meeting,” I say.
“This’ll only take a minute.”
I almost laugh. Instead I ask the organizer if we can finish in her office. She looks between us and says she needs five minutes to deal with a volunteer.
Tawny waits until she has gone.
“Was that enough for you?” she asks.
“What?”
“His speech. The public humiliation.”
I heard about Gage’s correction from Beryl the next morning. Keeley sent me the clip. I have read the message that came with it several times. I have not made myself watch him beside that arena rail again.
“He said what happened.”
“He made me sound like I couldn’t ride.”
“You can ride.”
She looks surprised by the answer. I continue before she can turn it into agreement.
“You could’ve ridden your own horse in your own jacket.”
Two women at the nearby table have stopped arranging brochures. Tawny notices them and lowers her voice.
“You’re using the baby to keep him doing this. He told everybody you’re living separately, and you’re up here giving clinics as though you haven’t got a home.”
Her eyes flick toward the schedule. Pueblo is printed beneath my name. I hate the quick relief I feel at seeing where she has got the pieces. I had thought, for a moment, that he was telling her about me again.
“You don’t know what happens in my house.”
“Was he even allowed at the birth?”
The women at the table can hear us. Tawny has brought my hospital room into this bright hallway, beside raffle tickets and coffee in paper cups.
“He sees Cricket,” I say. “We arrange it. That has nothing to do with you.”
“Everything he does has to go through you now.”
“She’s ten weeks old.”
My voice is too loud. One of the women looks away.
I want to say more, to explain the feeding and the travel and the fact that Gage is learning, that he calls because he wants to see our daughter and I answer because she is his too.
I owe none of that to Tawny, but being watched makes me feel I have to prove I am reasonable.
“You took my name out of—” I stop, furious that I cannot get the sentence out. “You wore the jacket I made after my name had been picked out of it. You wanted my place beside him. I’m not discussing my daughter with you.”
Tawny’s mouth tightens. “He wanted me there. You keep forgetting that.”
“I haven’t forgotten.”
“He called me when you wouldn’t listen. He liked having someone who wanted the same things.”
That lands exactly where she means it to. For a moment I am back in the fitting room, holding the damaged collar while she tells me what sort of wife Gage needs now.
“I wanted my husband,” I say. “You wanted him too. At least stop pretending we’re talking about a job.”
Her glance goes to the women at the table.
“You’re upset.”
“Yes, I am. Stop telling people that as if it settles anything.”
The organizer returns. I turn toward her before Tawny can answer.
“I’d like to finish our meeting.”
She leads me into the office and closes the door. I sit on the chair nearest it and discover I am sweating through the back of my shirt.
“Do you need a minute?” she asks.
“I need water, if you have some.”
She gives me a bottle. I drink too fast, cough, and have to laugh at the indignity of it. The organizer waits.
We finish the meeting. I get the arena slot I wanted. The fee is fair. She asks whether I can teach a second session if the first fills, and I say I will check childcare and let her know.
When I leave the office, Tawny has gone back to the Byers table. She is smiling beside a rack of shirts while a woman takes a photograph. I walk past without stopping.
In the car, I call Cleo before starting the engine.
“How’s she doing?”
“Asleep. How did the meeting go?”
“I got the slot.”
“Good.”
“Tawny was there.”
Cleo lets me tell her. I sit in the parking lot with one hand locked on the wheel, furious that the afternoon has ended this way when I arrived feeling almost like myself.
“I couldn’t even get the sentence out,” I tell her. “I’d thought of so many things to say if I saw her.”
“You said what you meant.”
I wipe the sweat off my neck with a napkin from the glove compartment. “I don’t want Gage calling her about it.”
“Then tell him that when you tell him.”
I sit for a few more minutes before driving home. By the time I reach the cottage, I am hungry and my breasts are uncomfortable. All I want is my baby and a clean shirt.
Cricket wakes when I lift her. She gives me one of her sudden smiles.
That evening, when Gage calls from Texas, I start with the meeting. He asks about the arena footing and how many riders I can take. I tell him six, maybe eight with help. We talk about that before I mention Tawny.
“I’ll have Dewey speak to the organizer,” he says before I have finished. “She can’t corner you at?—”
“Gage. I answered her. The organizer took me into her office. I don’t want another man called in before I’ve finished telling you.”
He goes quiet.
“Stay on the phone with me a while.”
“I’m here.”
I tell him the rest, including the part where Tawny said he called her when I would not listen. His breathing changes. For a few seconds I think he is going to dispute her words. He does not.
When I get to the question about the birth, I stop describing the hallway.
“Would you have stayed?” I ask.
“At the hospital?”
“If I’d called. If I’d said I wanted you there.”
“Yes.”
“You said you’d be right behind me that night too.”
“I know.”
I hear him move. A door closes at his end of the call, and then the noise behind him is gone.
“Where are you?” I ask.
“In the office. I shut the door.”
I sit at the kitchen table. Cricket is asleep in her crib, and I have a short time before she will need me again. I could spend it talking about the clinic. I would enjoy hearing him take an interest. I am so tired of discovering another thing I cannot let him forget.
But I cannot leave this one alone.
“I kept thinking you’d come when you saw how much it hurt,” I say. “At the arena. At that dinner. I’d tell myself you hadn’t understood, so I’d explain it differently. I started practicing what to say before you got home.”
“Bonnie.”
“Wait.”
He stops.
“I’d lie in bed next to you and think of a better way to ask my own husband to listen to me. You were asleep. I was trying to work out which words would make me sound less difficult.”
My tea has gone cold. I take a sip anyway because my mouth is dry.
“I remember you getting up,” he says. “I asked if the baby was keeping you awake.”
“I said yes.”
“You’d already told me what was keeping you awake,” he says. “I liked the answer about the baby better.”
“I wanted to tell you so badly that I kept doing it even after you made me wish I hadn’t.”
He says nothing. I hear a small scrape, as though he has moved the chair away from the desk.
“Did you know?” I ask.
“How much I was hurting you?”
“Don’t make it about whether you measured it properly. Did you know I was hurt when you sent her out on Mercy?”
“Yes.”
I close my eyes. I asked for the answer. It is worse than the excuses.
“And the jacket?”
“Yes.”
I get up and carry the cup to the sink, then bring it back because I have nowhere else I want to stand. He stays on the phone while I sit again.
“I told myself it’d settle down after the appearance,” he says. “That you’d be angry, we’d have a bad evening, and then we’d get past it.”
“We.”
“You. I expected you to get past it.”
I press the cup between my knees. It is too cold to help.
“Why?”
He takes time to answer. For once I do not supply the words he might use.
“Because you had before. When I was late. When I changed a plan. You’d be angry and then we’d have dinner, and I’d think it was over. Sometimes you’d still help me with the thing you were angry about.”
“Because the horses needed doing. Because people were waiting. Because I loved you. I wasn’t agreeing afterward.”
“No.”
I look toward Cricket’s bedroom door. Our daughter makes a noise in her sleep and settles. The sound is so small beside the conversation I can hardly bear it.
“You put me in a position where leaving was the only thing you believed.”
“I did.”
“And even then you told people I’d agreed.”
He breathes out roughly. “I wanted the version where we were all right. I stood there and said it because I wanted to keep it.”
“You had me. I was right there.”
“I know.” His voice breaks. “I know you were.”
I start crying then. I put the cup on the table before I spill it. Why couldn’t he have understood while we still lived in the same house? I want to ask him that. I want him beside me while I ask, and I cry harder because he is in Texas.
He does not tell me to stop.
After a while I wipe my face with the heel of my hand.
“What did you tell her?”
He does not ask who I mean.
“I told her you were afraid having the baby would cost you your work and your place beside me. That you’d become a visitor in your own life.”
“I told you that in our bed.”
“Yes.”
“And I found out you’d repeated it when she said it back to me.”
“I know.”
“What else did you tell her?”