The Blessings of the Animals_A Novel

CHAPTER Sixteen

CANTATA AND BISCUIT STROLLED IN THE SUNSHINE. THE periwinkle sky, the pear tree petals sprinkling down on us, and the pastel blossoms made me feel as if we moved inside a Monet canvas.
I waited for my mother to speak first. While she collected herself, the horses clopped along, Biscuit’s rocking walk massaging my lower back.
The memory of the contempt in Gabriella’s eyes nipped at me.
When we came to the creek, we let out the reins so the horses could drink. I’d been judging my mother for putting up with Dad’s cheating. Surprise and shame filled me as I realized I didn’t have the same disdain for my father, now that I knew the true story. Talk about a double standard.
Something Bobby had once said returned to me. Knowing nothing about my parents’ true history, he’d asked, “How come when a woman abandons a marriage, everyone says, ‘Oh, good for her,’ and it’s seen as this liberating act of independence, but when a man leaves a marriage, he’s nothing but a cad?” He’d repeated this question more than once, whenever we watched a movie or a play in which either spouse left a marriage. Had he been thinking of himself? Already wanting to leave?
My mother let Cantata walk out into the creek. Caroline’s Cantata. Dad’s last Olympic ride. It was hard for me to look at that horse and not flash back to Dad’s accident. I remembered sitting in the mud cradling the mare’s head—those panicked eyes, the foam from her nose. I shook myself. A little puffiness in her left front leg was the only remnant of her own injury.
Caroline’s Cantata. My father had named that horse after the infidelity.
Cantata put her nose under the water, then tossed her head, sending small splashes dancing across the stream’s surface. Biscuit and I stood on the shore, watching.
Mom combed through Cantata’s mane at her withers and finally spoke. “Your father and I had changed as people. We’d grown up, we’d evolved, really, as people do, as people should. We had problems, but instead of dealing with them, I took the easy route and became convinced that the marriage itself was bad.” She squinted through the sunlight. “I was wrong.”
Biscuit ambled down the slope to stand in the water, too, as if he wanted to be closer to hear Mom’s soft voice over the lapping of the water.
“We needed a change. I fell in love with another person because I needed a catalyst.” She made a face at some expected disdain from me, but what she’d said made sense. “I can explain it now, but at the time, of course, I had no idea what I was doing. But now I know that when someone’s in need of big change, the most common thing to do is convince yourself you’re in love. Not real love, either, but ridiculous besotted infatuation. The kind that’s so predictable it’s become a cliché—the midlife crisis, the trophy wife. My therapist said you typically fall in love with something missing in yourself, not in your spouse.”
I couldn’t help but wonder what Bobby was missing that he saw in Zayna. What was he missing that he couldn’t find in me?
“I was missing a sense of purpose,” Mom said. “I didn’t like who I’d become at competitions. I didn’t like who your father had become. I didn’t like our coach. I didn’t like how we treated our horses. I didn’t like the stress, the anxiety, the—”
“You are Dad’s coach.”
“I am, now.”
“But.” I tried to take all this in. I remembered other coaches, vaguely. Way back when Davy and I played or napped in a giant dog crate while Mom and Dad competed at shows.
She looked up at the sky, then returned her gaze to mine. “I convinced myself I was in love with someone else. It swept me away, consumed me—don’t worry, I won’t go into detail—but I wasn’t in love with that man. Not like I love your father. I was in love with what he did.”
We watched the water in that hypnotic way one might stare at a fire. I thought of the many male coaches her age who could have been her lover, but I already knew—in spite of all she’d revealed today—that my demure, private mother would never tell me his name.
Eventually, Cantata crossed the creek and climbed the opposite bank. She chose a path wandering up a rolling hill and we let her, Biscuit and I following behind. We moseyed along in single file for about fifteen minutes. When the path widened, I squeezed my calves against Biscuit’s sides. He picked up a lazy jog and we caught up to Mom, our boots nearly touching.
I listened to the creak of the saddles, the occasional clink of a horseshoe on a stone, the whisk of the horses’ tails. I wanted to tell her I was sorry, but I didn’t know words that would include my regret for all of it. All the misunderstandings, all the lost opportunity, all the pain and distance. How I’d judged her. What a bitch I’d been.
I reached out to her. Mom saw the gesture and reached to meet my hand with her own. We held hands between horses until Cantata stepped sideways to avoid a puddle, tugging us apart.
LATER, BACK IN THE BARN, WE UNTACKED THE HORSES AND hosed them off. Sweaty foam had gathered between their legs and along their necks. Finally spring.
“How did you mend it?” I asked. “The marriage?” I ran the hose over Cantata’s back, watching her coat change from white to gunmetal gray.
Mom stopped scrubbing the mare’s neck. “We just decided to. We said if we were going to end it, we had to earn our way out. We had to pick up every single stone and look beneath it for a solution. We vowed we weren’t walking away until we’d exhausted every possible option.”
I hosed the mare’s tail. “How do you even begin, though? What did you do?”
“Talked. Fought. Cried. It was hard, Camden. The hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
The hardest thing she’s ever done? My mother didn’t say those words lightly.
I thought again of the accident.
I thought of my father’s face, freckled with mud. I saw the burgundy blood bubbling in one nostril. I heard my mother saying, “Just move. Just open your eyes. Show me you’re all right.”
I thought of how it took a crawling century of a week for my mother to get that wish.
That day was among my favorite being-married memories—that is, up until the clipped, British announcement that Cleveland Anderson was “unseated at the Broken Bridge.” Our whole family was present at the Kentucky Horse Park for the Rolex Kentucky Three Day Event. Crisp but sunny weather. My husband holding my hand. My funny daughter teasing us. Eating funnel cake and onion blossoms. Walking the miles of the cross-country course, Bobby animated, asking me questions about the sport and its confusing rules.
Bobby, Gabby, and I had waited for more than an hour to stake out perfect bleacher seats at the series of water jumps. The Davids were farther behind on the course, at the Broken Bridge. The water complex and the Bridge promised to be the most spectacular jumps of the day. Mom would be zipping to strategic places on the course in a golf cart, and all of us would be at the finish.
The rider before Dad had fallen here at the water. She and the horse were unhurt but disqualified. Now, five minutes later, Dad could be approaching any moment.
When I heard Dad was “unseated” I wasn’t worried. He’d get back on. It would cost some points, some time, and perhaps his wide first-place lead after the dressage, but he’d be fine.
I expected the announcer to declare him “away,” but instead we heard, “Both horse and rider are still down at the Broken Bridge.”
I stood up. “Let’s go.”
Gabriella took my hand to stop me. “Are you sure?” We’d earned these perfect seats.
“‘Horse down’ means they’re done. They can’t finish the course.”
I was still thinking more of Cantata than of Dad as we picked our way down the bleachers.
It wasn’t until the announcer told us that the rider on course after Dad had been stopped, and that no other riders would be sent out until the accident was “cleared,” that my limbs went to ice.
I remember whispering, “This is bad,” to Bobby.
I remember him nodding and taking Gabby’s hand.
I remember running. It was more than a mile from the water to the Broken Bridge. An ambulance passed me, both of us cutting across the open pastures. For a while I almost kept pace.
I remember the splintered top rail, the demolished stone wall, my father and Cantata down inside the gap in the bridge. Cantata’s panicked breathing filled my ears as I took in Davy holding my mom out of the way of the EMTs.
An EMT unsnapped Dad’s helmet and it fell in two halves, like a coconut.
I see that helmet in my dreams.
Big David ran his hands over his bald head, saying, “It was that dog. This damn dog ran out from the crowd.” He pointed as if the dog was still there. “They tripped on the dog!”
My mother grabbed my wrist—so hard she left a bruise—before she got on the helicopter and pleaded, “Please. Cantata. If she . . . if she has to—” and I knew she was saying, I want it to be you who does it if it has to be done.
Cantata stopped thrashing when I crawled into the narrow ditch and stroked her head. With the official event veterinarians, I ran my hands over the bones of her legs and felt almost sickening relief to find nothing obviously broken. She was trapped, unable to extend her legs to get out of the ditch. They had to dismantle the entire bridge to free her.
It was only after Cantata stood and lurched to a waiting veterinary trailer on trembling, caving legs—the anxious crowd cheered—that I followed the others to the hospital.
Davy met me first. “They think he’s paralyzed.”
You could call that day hard, I’d say.
Or the week that followed while Dad lay in a coma.
You could call the next half year hard as Mom refused to accept that he’d never walk again. Dad’s physical pain, his emotional despair—she took it all with a consistent, giving-up-is-not-an-option commitment.
She taught him how to eat with silverware again.
She taught him words with flash cards.
In the first days after the coma, she’d had to remind him of her name.
“IT WAS THE HARDEST THING I’VE EVER DONE,” MOM REPEATED, bringing me back to the soapy Cantata. “And the best.”
Mom had taken that scarred Passier and set it on the gate. I replayed my parents’ exchange over the saddle. Dad was right. The repair proved the saddle’s worth.
The mare put her head down to sneak a mouthful of grass while the cool water ran over her. “I feel sorry for Bobby,” Mom said. “I managed to salvage my mistake in time. If he doesn’t, it will be a tragedy.”
Mom and I skimmed sweat scrapers over the mare, sweeping the water from her coat. “You have the hardest work,” Mom said. “Forgiving is the hardest. Regret isn’t hard, but you carry it forever. Once you forgive, though, then you’re free. You just have to be clear about what you want.”
The mare whisked her tail at a fly and wet horse tail smacked me in the face. I shut my eyes against the sting.