Mercury (11 page)

A
S A SCHOOLBOY IN
Edinburgh I learned the rhyme, “For want of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe . . .” The logic of the poem, the idea that a small thing I did in our house, on our street, might make a large difference in some distant place, fascinated me. Even now I cannot list all the factors that contributed to the events of that night in early March when, as swiftly as if someone had severed my optic nerve, my life changed. The snow, Viv, Mercury, Charlie, Jack, Hilary, my well-meaning mother, me—we all played our parts. And there were others—Claudia, her boyfriend, her great-aunt—of whose role I learned only later.

My mother, as our discussion over her new bookcase made clear, was worried about my marriage. In an effort to give Viv and me what she thought we needed—time alone together—she invited Trina and Marcus to go bowling on Saturday. They would stay the night, and on Sunday she and Larry would take them to the Museum of Science in Boston. I did not want to spend another evening listening to Viv talk about Mercury, but I dutifully made a reservation at a nice restaurant. Perhaps, later, she would turn to me. I had just got home from taking the children to my mother's when Viv phoned. Samson had colic: she was going to walk him for another hour and see how he progressed.

“Why don't you use the reservation with Jack,” she urged. “I don't know when I'll be home.”

My first impulse, if only I had acted upon it, was to get some take-out barbeque, open a bottle of beer, and watch bad television with Nabokov, but that seemed too pathetic. I rang Jack.

“Let me ask Hil,” he said. “Diane's with her dad.”

I had forgotten that Jack now came with Hilary. Our private conversations of the last few years were going to be hard to come by. On the drive to Il Giardino I lectured myself about trying harder with her. Perhaps she had made the same resolution. From the moment she kissed my cheek and thanked me for suggesting this, I could tell we were in for a jolly evening.

We ordered several appetizers, and Jack posed as the blind food critic with the amazing taste buds. “This baby octopus comes from the cold waters of Labrador. Note how it embraces the marinade. Though actually,” he added, “research shows that we blind have no better sense of taste or smell than you sighted. We just pay more attention.”

“So what do you think the shrimp is spiced with?” Hilary asked.

“Coriander. Perhaps a touch of fennel?”

“Donald and I need to close our eyes too.”

We did and made silly guesses. Jack joked about the challenge of fancy restaurants: finding your portion on the plate. They described the film they had watched the night before. Hilary said that if Jack knew the setup, he could follow most of what was happening. In fact he often figured out the plot before she did; he wasn't distracted by trivial details like clothes and hair.

We were on our second bottle of wine when a text came from Viv
: Samson OK Going to bed xo V
. I passed on the news and we raised our glasses to Samson. “The ultimate advertisement for the importance of hair,” Hilary joked.

Not until we were having dessert did she bring up Mercury. One afternoon while she was sick, she had dreamed about him. “You know how some dreams are so real,” she said. “They seem like they've just happened? Or are just about to? I was back in Ontario with Michael. Mercury had escaped, and we were searching for him along the railway line that led into town.”

Slowly, as if she were again walking along the tracks, she described the scene. “Michael was very calm. He had a stick he was clicking against the rails; I suppose that was Jack's cane? But I kept feeling that Mercury was in danger, that he needed our help. Then I heard the rumbling of a train, and suddenly we were both running, stumbling over the sleepers, trying to reach him. I woke up feeling wretched. I haven't been to see him in weeks.”

I said Viv was taking good care of him.

“I'm sure she is, but I wish we could go there now. Michael believed that at night we can hear what animals are thinking, and vice versa.”

“We can,” I said. “We can go there now. I have a key.”

Somehow, as we drank the last of the wine, the three of us agreed that this was the best possible plan. We finished our crème brûlée and chocolate bread pudding. I insisted on paying the bill. A month later my credit card statement showed we had spent $270. I drove us to my office, and while Hilary and Jack waited, I collected the keys from the back of the drawer and checked the code in my appointment book.

When I returned to the car, Hilary had put on one of the CDs Fran had sent me for Christmas. She and Jack were in the back, sitting as close as the seat belts permitted. “This is so nice of you, Donald,” she said.

“I feel as if I'm going on a mission with my friends,” Jack said. “When I was a kid, almost all our bad behavior started with a car at night.”

“My bad behavior occurred on foot,” said Hilary. “We just passed Diane's school.”

Outside of town the sky was filled with high white clouds. I said that they made me think of Russia.

“Or Ontario,” Hilary said. “Somewhere with large skies and low temperatures. We're on the main road to the stables. Michael was always high. That was part of what went wrong in Kentucky. I used to lend him money, ‘lend' in quotes, until I realized he was spending it on speed.”

“Michael took drugs?” I too, I realized, had put Mercury's owner on a pedestal.

“I think it's quite common in the horse world,” said Jack. “Certainly among jockeys.”

I was still grappling with this revelation as we turned off the main road. “We're passing the paddocks,” Hilary said. “No horses and lots of snow.”

Out of habit I parked in my usual place behind the trailers. Another lost nail. If I had parked outside the barn, my car in plain view, there would be no need to write this story. As we approached the door, the security lights came on. I remembered the code; the key worked; we were inside. I turned on the lights, and the two rows of stalls stretched out before us, the main one by the bank of lockers, and the other, farther from the door, with the stalls on either side. I led the way towards the latter, where I had found Mercury at New Year's. Jack commented on the smell, and Hilary said, “In five minutes we won't notice it.”

Mercury was in a different stall, near the middle of the row. He was standing at the back, wearing two coats, one slung over the other.

“Do you think he's asleep?” whispered Hilary.

Neither Jack nor I answered.

“Mercury,” she said, and then again, louder, “Mercury.”

At the sound of his name he looked up, his dark eyes gleaming. Two ropes, a red and a black one, were looped around the door and the bars of the stall. Hilary hung them on the saddle post and slid open the door. She stepped inside. Jack put his hand on my arm. We followed, and I slid the door closed. Hilary reached out to stroke Mercury's neck.

“Are you awake? Good boy. Were you dreaming of nice pastures and sunny days? We're here to see you. Jack and I need your blessing.”

Mercury shifted from hoof to hoof. She continued to talk, and I led Jack over to stand beside her. We were all slightly drunk, Hilary and Jack perhaps more than slightly, yet the occasion had a solemn feeling. None of us mentioned Michael, but it was clear that Hilary was trying to lay her regrets about him to rest. Mercury gave a half snort, half sigh. Hilary took Jack's hand and placed it on the horse's neck.

“Talk to him,” she said.

“Mercury,” said Jack, “you fucking amazing horse, you emperor of quadrupeds, you king of equines. You represent what's noblest in us. No, that's not right. You embody what's noblest in us. If you're thinking tonight, think noble thoughts. If you're dreaming, dream noble dreams.”

Mercury snorted again, more vigorously, and Jack stepped back. “I've asked Hilary for her hand in marriage,” he went on, raising his own hand. “I hope you give permission. We'll get married in a field so you can—”

There was a loud, precise, frightening noise.

Mercury reared in a mad scramble of hooves.

Hilary screamed.

Jack stumbled against the wall of the stall and fell to the ground.

In the confusion neither Hilary nor I stopped to think about the dangers that lay outside the stall. Our only thought was to get away from Mercury, to get Jack away. Somehow we dragged him into the corridor. On all sides the other horses were whinnying, kicking, screaming. Viv had told me that horses scream in anger, or pain; now I heard the sound for the first time.

As soon as the stall door was closed, I dropped to my knees. I knew little about gunshot wounds, but I had to make sure Jack didn't bleed to death. “Where are you hurt?” I said. “Can you tell me?”

“My arm,” he whispered. “Or my shoulder.”

Beside me Hilary, also on her knees, was crying. “What happened? My God, did someone shoot us? We've got to get him to the hospital.”

“I need to make sure he's not bleeding.”

Mercifully Jack fainted as I tried to get his arm out of his jacket. In the dim light I saw that the wound was bleeding steadily but not furiously. I stood up with the thought that I could use a wheelbarrow to get him to the car. And then, at the end of the row of stalls, in the gloom, something moved. Viv was standing by the last stall, holding a black object in both hands. In less than a heartbeat, less than a saccade, I understood that Viv, the woman I loved, my wife of almost a decade, was holding a gun, and that she was pointing it in my direction.

Our eyes met for a brief, appalling moment. Then she lowered the gun and stepped back into the shadows.

Hilary noticed nothing; all her attention was on Jack. With her help, I hoisted him into a wheelbarrow. We hurried along
the corridor, she steadying him, me pushing, Jack groaning. At the door I ran to get the car. Between us we lifted him into the backseat. Then we were spinning away over the snow. The CD Hilary had put on was still playing. “
Give me bread and give me honey. Fill my wallet and fill my boot
.” I did not think to turn it off. Jack kept groaning.

“You'll feel better soon,” Hilary said. “We'll be at the hospital soon. I love you.”

I drove as fast as I could, using the horn ruthlessly when we reached traffic. The alcohol I'd consumed made everything vivid and ferocious. I could have lifted a car off a baby, climbed a burning building. All three of our lives, not to mention those of my wife and children, were at stake.

I
HAVE ONLY ONE CHANCE
to plead my case, and only one person to plead it to.

When I was eleven, I presented my mother with a list of reasons why I absolutely had to have riding lessons. I remember four of them:

    
I love horses.

    
I want to win rosettes.

    
I was a horse in my last life.

    
My best friend rides.

Mom countered with her own list: the cost, the inconvenience of chauffeuring me to the stables, the importance of school. I said I'd contribute my dog-walking money, and Claudia's mother could drive me. I promised to study hard. Finally she agreed to three months of lessons. She hoped I'd forget when I went to camp, but that summer every girl in my cabin was in love with Misty of Chincoteague. Back home, I didn't risk asking for permission again. I took my riding clothes to school and got a lift to the stables with Claudia. Soon the teacher said I was the best rider in our group, and I believed her. It was as if I had a sixth sense about what the horse wanted, how to make it do what I wanted.

By the time I entered high school I mostly rode Nutmeg, a chestnut gelding with four neat white socks. The first day I led him in from the paddock, a cat spooked him. I hung on to his halter and broke my little finger. I didn't tell my mother—she might have stopped me riding—and by the time she noticed, the bone had set crooked. The accident gave me a special bond with Nutmeg. We started to enter shows. Soon the frame of my bedroom mirror was filled with rosettes—some firsts, lots of seconds and thirds. I wanted to go to bigger competitions, farther away, but this time my mother stood firm.

The week after I got into Yale, my parents announced, almost as if they too had filled out applications and written personal essays, that they were getting a divorce. My father was joining a dental practice in San Diego. I was shocked, but Claudia wasn't. “Your parents always looked like they were going different places,” she said. Hers had been divorced since we were in middle school, and she moved back and forth between their households like an airline pilot, a suitcase permanently packed.

My parents kept saying the divorce didn't change anything. I knew what they meant, but it wasn't true. I had to make two phone calls instead of one. I had to accept that they were people who wanted things. Dad offered to come back from San Diego for Thanksgiving, but I said I'd visit him at Christmas. California in December made sense. Mom joked she'd come too, and he said we were both very welcome. Their good humor made my last months at home easy, but I found it weirdly upsetting. Didn't the breakup of our family merit some passion? Some bad behavior? Claudia's parents had fought for months. “But yours are older,” she said. “Money isn't a problem.”

Do you remember, when we first met, I quoted Margaret Fuller? “Let them be sea captains,” she wrote, “them” being
women. At seventeen I didn't think of myself as a woman. That word belonged to my mother and her friends. But with their fulltime jobs, their hobbies, and their houses, they were more like hard-working first mates than captains. They would never shine as brightly as Fuller, nor end up like her. On her way back to America from Italy, she was shipwrecked off Fire Island. Our English teacher described her huddling on the deck with her husband and baby, waiting to be rescued. Then the tide turned, and they were drowned. Could you be a woman and a captain, I wondered, and not end up on the rocks?

The worst part of going to Yale was leaving Nutmeg. The day before my flight I rode him along the trail by the river. “Don't forget me,” I said. “I'll be back in three months.” Even as he shied at a willow tree, I realized that wasn't true. By Thanksgiving I would be a different person. Wasn't that why I was going to college?

I met a hundred people the first week, another hundred the second. At high school I'd been the best at math and computer science and debating. Now the bar was raised; everyone was used to being the best. I joined various clubs and agreed to do far too many things. I didn't have the time, or the money, to ride.

My roommate, Tamar, came from Manhattan and seemed to know instinctively how things worked. So when she suggested we go to a Big Sisters meeting, I agreed. As we walked across the Green, she told me she too was an only child; she had always wanted a sister. Of course I said I felt the same, but the truth was, I already had Claudia; we'd sworn an oath of undying friendship when we were nine. The Big Sisters' organizer gave a predictable speech about making a difference one person at a time, and I started meeting Jade every Thursday. She lived
with her grandmother and three half brothers. With her grubby pink leggings and dirty hair, she was the opposite of cute. I took her to the library: boring. I took her to the playground: dumb. When I asked her the question my parents asked every night—What did you learn today?—she said “Zilch” or “Crap.”

Tamar was struggling too. “I hate my little sister,” she burst out one night. Then she listed so many nasty things about her that suddenly Jade didn't seem so bad. The next day I phoned the organizer and told her we were overcommitted; we couldn't be Big Sisters. Our mutual failure sealed my friendship with Tamar. We studied together and joined the fencing club. But Claudia was the only one who knew how, after my first year at Yale, I had given up on riding; how I was waiting to discover something else I loved, to hear a professor say, “Ms. Turner, you have a gift for this.” Much too soon my parents began to ask about plans. Mom suggested law school; Dad said dentistry was a great career for a woman. My friends talked about Silicon Valley and Wall Street. By senior year, I was panicking. Once again Tamar intervened. She signed us up for recruitment meetings, and we each got three job offers. I started reading business magazines, picturing myself as a CEO.

My job was demanding, which I'd expected, and a struggle, which I hadn't. I was good with numbers, a quick learner, interested in politics and business, but I didn't have the sixth sense I had with horses. I was seldom at the office less than ten hours a day, often twelve. Then I went out with friends or back to the apartment I shared with Tamar and her boyfriend on the Upper West Side; it belonged to her father. My room was very peaceful, with a single tall window.

That first spring my mother visited the city for a conference on hospital administration. On her free Saturday we went to
the Frick. Of all the paintings I remember only one:
The Polish Rider
. Last September you and I looked it up on the computer. You commented on the young man's intense expression, but that afternoon at the museum my attention was on the badly painted horse, with his thick neck and odd proportions. The only horses I saw in New York were the ones in Central Park, and the occasional police horse.

I told myself my life was amazing, but sometimes, catching the subway to work, or in the line at the Starbucks near the office, or in the lobby waiting for the elevator, I had a kind of vertigo. Where was the sky? Who were all these people? If someone had told me 50 percent of them were robots, I would have believed it.

My second year in New York, our building had a blood drive. You know how scared I am of needles, but I lined up dutifully. So long as I kept my eyes closed, it didn't hurt too much. That afternoon, though, my computer screen, and everything around it, seemed a little fuzzy. At seven I went downstairs to catch the subway; I was meeting a friend in Williamsburg. Waiting for the second train, I fainted.

I came to lying on the platform, with two men bending over me. “What happened?” I said. “Where's my shoe?”

One of the men—he had a sharp widow's peak—helped me to sit up and pointed to my black pump, lying beside the rails. A moment before I'd been lying there too. I must have asked again about the shoe. The other man—he wore a purple tracksuit—said, “Oh, Christ.” Before I understood what he was going to do, he jumped down, grabbed it, hauled himself back up, and handed it to me. The train came, and the men were gone.

The police took me home. In the empty apartment I got into bed and phoned Claudia. She was almost as slow to grasp what
had happened as I had been. When she did, she was furious. How could I be so stupid, after giving blood for the first time? “Eat something,” she said, “and go to sleep.”

The next day I stood far back on the subway platform. I still hadn't seen Tamar, and I didn't want to turn my narrow escape into another New York story. I went through that day with my secret, and the next. Soon it became a story I would never tell. Occasionally, on crowded trains, I thought I saw one of the men, but already their faces were growing vague. At Yale a friend had told me how his father celebrated two birthdays: the actual day, and the frigid November day in 1956 when he'd been shot and left for dead on the banks of the Danube. Now I had a second birthday, and I wanted to do better by my second life. I was sure I'd been saved for something special.

But what that was, I didn't know. Once I'd thought it was winning shows, being a champion. Now I thought it was to rise up the ranks of a company. Walking home at night beneath the ginkgoes, I would gaze up at the penthouse windows and worry I'd been left behind. Several friends had already been promoted.

At last, my third spring in the city, my boss summoned me. On the way to her office, I fantasized: The China team? Securities? “I think you'll be a good fit for our Boston branch,” she said. Was this a step up or a step down? I didn't know, but I did know refusal would mark me as difficult. I made my eyes bright, asked interested questions. That night, in a bar at Columbus and Eighty-eighth, I ordered a margarita and toasted Boston. Surely this was the door to my second life.

New York, now that I was leaving, displayed its best self. Two transactions that had been stalled for months went through; the weather was warm but not humid; several men I liked asked me out. Departure made me sexier, safer. Walking along the south
side of Central Park after one of these dates, I came across a small crowd. A carriage horse was lying on the ground, taking big, racking breaths. Her owner had got her out of the harness and driving lines and was leaning against the carriage. I went over and said I thought his horse had colic. She needed to walk.

“How's she going to walk?” He squinted up at me from beneath his baseball hat. “She can't even stand.”

“People will help,” I insisted.

He squinted at me for a few seconds longer, then turned to the crowd and announced we were going to try to get Rosie back on her feet. Half a dozen women stepped forward, and some men, ashamed not to. The man tugged at Rosie's bridle and said, “Come on, girl. Ups-a-daisy.” Two women and I heaved at her rump, but she kept slipping out of our hands. After a couple of minutes we stepped back. The owner gave a little shrug and returned to his carriage. I stayed with Rosie, talking to her, until the men came.

A week later I took the train to Boston and moved in with Claudia. Every morning she put on a T-shirt and jeans and walked to the vet's office; I put on my business clothes and caught the subway downtown. On Saturdays, when we were both free, we drove out to Windy Hill. Helen was in her late sixties then, tall and upright, her hair already gleaming white. She ran the stables with the help of Stu, who sounded like he'd left Donegal last week, and two men from Brazil. I remember one day watching her ride a stallion called Hotspur. He was eighteen hands, stubborn and distracted, but Helen didn't give an inch. She rode him around and around until he was obeying the slightest twitch of the reins. It was a beautiful sight: the elegant, white-haired woman in control of the powerful animal.

When I first started riding again, I was dismayed. I'd grown so stiff, so clumsy. Slowly, as I helped with lessons and exercised the horses, my skills began to return. Then there'd be a deadline at the office; I'd miss a couple of weeks and slip back. When I complained to Claudia, she told me Helen had ridden almost every day for sixty years and never competed outside New England.

“You have to be a fanatic,” she said, “to get to the top.”

“What about to be good?” I said. “To be really good?”

Claudia smiled. She knew what I was asking. “You need to ride six times a week, five to ten horses a day, and push yourself all the time. Which is hard with a job like yours.”

She was right. I didn't want to give up anything for anything. I wanted to be a star rider, and I wanted to make killer deals. It turned out I was a good fit for the Boston office. After six months I was promoted, and I liked my colleagues. Sometimes on Fridays we went out for drinks. Sometimes, after drinks, I went home with Robert, who worked in accounting and played jazz cello.

The day of my second birthday, I was coming home on the subway when I noticed a man. He was reading the
New Yorker
as if he were alone on the train. He had beautiful hands, and his upper lip was a perfect M. I sat down beside him, got out my own copy of the magazine, and took a deep breath. Let him notice me, I thought. And you did.

You wrote down my number, you called me, and on our first date you told me you'd recently broken up with your Scottish girlfriend. I couldn't believe my luck. On our third date, you used the ominous phrase, “There's something I need to tell you,” but the “something” was that your father had Parkinson's.

A few weeks after we met, I went out for Friday drinks. When
Robert nodded toward the door, I hesitated. Then I picked up my bag and followed him. You hadn't mentioned monogamy, but I knew you took it for granted. Would you have been able to understand that Robert helped me to be casual with you? I'd ruined several relationships with premature intensity.

That Sunday when we were eating breakfast in your kitchen—I wonder if you remember?—you said I'd murmured the name Robert in my sleep. You weren't suspicious, just curious.