36. Bonnie
BONNIE
Cricket puts her hand in the cake before we finish singing.
Gage laughs and moves the unlit candle farther away. We have already blown it out for her because she was more interested in reaching for it than admiring the flame. Now she is concentrating on the small piece of soft cake on her tray, with an intensity I recognize from her father studying a run.
“Let her enjoy it,” Cleo says when I reach for a cloth.
“I was going to clean the chair.”
“That chair’s already lost.”
Her son, four now and deeply interested in birthdays, asks whether he can have his piece before Cricket eats the whole cake. Beryl cuts it for him. He thanks her solemnly, then asks for the flower made of frosting on the next slice too.
We are in the yard between the houses, under the shade we chose after spending the morning moving the table twice. Gage wanted it closer to the porch. I wanted room for the children to play. Cleo told us to stop carrying furniture and look at where the sun would be at four.
She was right. We have admitted it enough times that she has begun enjoying herself.
Keeley comes through the gate with a small parcel and an apology for being late. A client kept her at the plumbing shop. She has changed her work shirt but still has a pencil behind one ear.
“We saved cake,” I tell her.
“I came for the baby.”
“She’s saved you some of hers.”
She laughs and comes to greet Cricket, who offers her a damp handful of crumbs. Keeley accepts the greeting by touching her little wrist and telling her how well she has grown. My daughter reaches for the pencil at once.
Gage takes a photograph when I ask him to. I stand beside the high chair, with Cleo leaning in to stop her son from taking a second flower off the cake. The picture will contain a mess. I want that version.
Beryl has come from Texas for Cricket’s birthday. She arrived yesterday with a bag of peaches and no advice about the party. This morning she watched me teach a session of the summer series and stayed afterward to argue about one exercise. I was delighted. I have missed arguing with her in person.
“You’ve got a good group,” she told me.
“They listen.”
I told her she could come back next week and explain that to the rider who kept defending a saddle that did not fit. She said she charged extra for furniture disputes.
She brought the Texas news in with the peaches yesterday.
"Byers has a new rodeo queen. He announced her at his sponsor dinner. Tawny sat at the family table and clapped for the girl."
I put the bag down.
"And the circuit board asked him who told the broadcaster you and Gage had agreed to that film. He told them it was Tawny. He said his daughter gave him the wrong information and he passed it along in good faith. It's in the minutes, with her name."
"He said that in writing."
"He did. She's paying her own entry fees now, and she's riding the small stops on that gray. No Byers banner behind her. When they call her name, nobody says his."
I didn't say anything for a while. Peach juice had run to my wrist.
Back in April, at the final, Tawny stood at the end of the trailer row with a line ready and nobody left to say it to. I've thought about that picture more than I'd like.
This is a better one. Her father saved his contract and let her take the blame.
"He blamed his own daughter," I said.
"He chose his contract over his daughter. She spent a year choosing whatever she wanted over whoever was in the way. She learned it from him."
I asked her which peaches were soft enough for Cricket, and she let me change the subject.
Now she sits beside Gage and tells him the saddle story, making me sound less patient than I remember. He looks over at me, smiling. I stick out my tongue where only he can see it.
We have lived together for ten weeks. He knows where the clean towels go. I know he will occasionally leave a cup beside the sink for an imaginary future drink.
Today he has made a cake, washed a high-chair tray, and asked twice whether I have eaten. The first time I had not. The second time I handed him my plate and told him to find me another piece of chicken.
He brings it while I am opening Keeley’s parcel. Inside is a wooden horse on red wheels, with a string to pull it along. Cricket drops the wrapping paper to investigate it, then goes back to the paper because she has priorities none of us control.
Cleo’s son wants to show her how the toy works. Gage sits on the grass with them, close enough to keep the paper out of her mouth, and lets him explain. I watch my husband listen to a four-year-old with his whole attention.
I remember the photograph beneath the arena screens, the place I stood holding Mercy while he told me one second. The memory comes without warning sometimes. Cleo’s son calls for me to watch, and I turn back to the children.
Cleo sits beside me with two glasses of water. She puts one in my hand and asks whether I am tired.
“A little.”
“You’ve been up since six.”
“So has she.”
Cricket is laughing at her father. The sound makes both of us look.
“She’s had a good year,” Cleo says.
I turn toward my friend. “You were there for the hard beginning.”
“She yelled at me for most of it.”
“I yelled at you.”
“You both had opinions.”
I put my head against her shoulder for a moment. She stays still until I sit up.
Later, when Cricket is tired of being admired, Gage takes her inside to clean her up and settle her.
I stay with our friends, eating the chicken he brought and listening to Keeley describe the next event she wants to try.
Beryl disagrees with the timing. Keeley asks me what I think, and I give her an answer that makes both women start talking at once.
I am laughing when Gage comes back.
“She’s asleep,” he tells me. “For now.”
“You’ve learned.”
“I’ve been corrected.”
He sits beside me and steals a bite from my plate. I let him because I am full and because I like having him close enough to steal from me.
As the evening cools, Keeley leaves for home.
Beryl and Cleo begin putting the food away, refusing my help until I believe they mean it.
Cleo offers to stay in the cottage with the monitor while Gage and I go check on Mercy.
Her son is with Beryl, explaining the birthday toy again at greater length.
“Go before he starts over,” Cleo tells us.
It is cool enough now for sleeves. My jacket is on the porch hook, and I put it on. The fringe swings against my wrists.
Gage stops on the bottom step. He looks at the silver braid, then at the sleeves I never changed, and his hat comes off in his hand.
He has seen me teach in the jacket since I finished the name, but I haven’t shown him the lining.
Tonight I turn the collar back. He reads it.
His free hand stays at his side until I take it and press his fingers to the stitches.
The thread is rough under my fingertips, and his are not quite steady beside them.
“You did these yourself,” he says.
I nod and turn the collar down again.
I take Gage’s hand as we cross the yard. At the barn I let go to open Mercy’s stall.
The mare comes toward me with the calm interest she saves for people who might have brought something edible. Last week I rode her through a quiet demonstration for my own students, in this jacket, with dirt on my boots.
Gage waits while I brush a little dust from her neck. I hand him the halter, and he holds it while I fasten it.
“Want to take her out?” he asks.
“Just a walk.”
I clip on the lead and bring her into the aisle. At the door, I give Gage the rope.
He takes it without gathering the mare too close. I walk beside him as we leave the barn, one hand resting briefly against Mercy’s neck before I let it fall.
The lane is quiet. We can hear Cleo’s son laughing in the yard behind us. Gage tells me he thought the cake would collapse when he took it out of the pan. I tell him I knew, because he called the cake names from the kitchen when he thought I was still asleep.
“You could’ve helped.”
“You said you wanted to make it.”
“I did.”
“It was good.”
He smiles. “She liked it.”
“She liked the wrapping paper too.”
He laughs, and I move close enough for our shoulders to touch as we walk. Mercy follows at an easy pace, the rope loose in his hand.
“Bonnie.”
“Mm.”
“I love you.”
He says it to the lane ahead of us, in his ordinary voice. Heat climbs the back of my neck, and my next step lands wrong on the gravel.
“You’ve never said it like that.”
“I wanted to be somebody you could hear it from.”
“I can.” I take hold of his sleeve so I keep my feet. “I love you. I have the whole time. It was the worst part.”
His hand finds mine on his sleeve and stays there.
At the bend, I stop him for a kiss. He keeps the mare beside us and turns toward me. I step closer and kiss the man I have chosen to live with, warm from the long day and still tasting faintly of birthday cake.
When I step back, he asks whether I want to go a little farther.
I take his free hand.
“Yes,” I say, and we walk on.