Miracle Beach (10 page)

“Magda, this is going to be fine. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

She didn’t answer. She just sat at the table, thinking of that woman and the boy. And then she started to sob. Big, loud, hiccuping sobs.

“Magda?”

“It’s not going to be fine tomorrow.”

“I promise it is. Have some water and go to bed, and we’ll talk tomorrow, okay?”

“You’re not
hearing
me, Jack.” That was one of her favorite Dr. Phil–isms. That people could be talking to you, but not hearing you. And that people needed to be
heard
to feel
validated
. “I’m never going to be a grandmother.”

“Oh, Magda,” Jack said.

But there was nothing more than that to say. He couldn’t say that it wasn’t so. He couldn’t tell her that she might be someday.

So she hung up the phone. Then she laid herself down on the fresh, cool tiles of their kitchen floor and willed her world to stop spinning.

“I’LL SEE YOU NEXT WEEK, MADAME!” MARTINE CALLED TO Macy.

Macy waved to him, unusually relieved to see him go. Normally Macy looked forward to her biweekly lessons with Martine, this year especially, since they were working on qualifying Macy for Jump Canada’s Talent Squad, a precursor to World Cup competition and getting onto the Canadian Equestrian Team. But today, Macy couldn’t bring herself to partake in Martine’s joviality, which always seemed to be turned up a notch or two whenever he got to “horse around,” as he called it, with Macy.

Martine had been a godsend for Macy. An accomplished show jumper in Paris, he had suffered a bad fall and permanently injured his back. Unable to continue riding, he followed his Canadian wife to Victoria and threw himself into earning a living teaching his native tongue. But he felt, as he would later tell Macy, like a “beached whale”—which Macy later learned was his way of saying “a fish out of water.” Right around that time, he had pulled up behind her truck and trailer at the Horseshoe Bay ferry. He had been hungry to talk horses with anyone, and couldn’t believe his good fortune when he found that Macy was a fellow hunter/jumper rider, and an aspiring Grand Prix rider at that. Martine desperately needed to find a niche, and Macy had desperately needed a trainer.

That was more than a decade ago, and in the years that followed, they had formed an unlikely team. Macy had found that she couldn’t—didn’t want to—ride for anyone but Martine. And she liked to think that he felt the same about her.

Today, though, she wanted all to herself.

She had sent Jack off with Sophie, assuring them both that she had no interest in showing Jack around town and couldn’t possibly cancel on Martine on such short notice. This was true. But so was not wanting to be stuck in the backseat of Sophie’s jalopy station wagon like a teenager on a road trip with her parents.

She checked the time on her cell phone. Twelve twenty-two.

Macy dismounted and rubbed Gounda’s wide forehead, planting a quick kiss on his velvety muzzle.

“You were a very good boy,” she told him. And he was. He always, always was.

She loosened his girth and slipped the reins over his head, and he plodded along behind her toward the barn. Once inside, she unfastened the girth on the right and then on the left, set it on top of the saddle, and stripped the saddle off, heaving it onto a standing rack with one hand. She swapped Gounda’s bridle for his halter, taking care not to bump his teeth with the bit as she eased it out of his mouth. Then she led him to the wash stall. She let the water from the hose run over her hand first, testing the temperature. Even though Gounda had worked up a good sweat, Macy was careful to use only lukewarm water on him so as not to startle his muscles into spasming. If he stood patiently as she ran the water over him, she knew she had gotten the temperature right. Too cold, and Gounda would tap-dance around the wash stall. But with a bit of heat to it, he would stand patiently, like now. He almost seemed to enjoy it as Macy sprayed his front feet first before moving slowly up his legs to his chest, and then letting the water cascade over his neck, back, and haunches. The salt ran off of him in white rivulets.

Macy grabbed a squeegee and took care to get as much excess water off of Gounda as she could, not only to help him dry, but to keep his fur from trapping a blanket of water that would actually make him hotter, not cooler.

She checked the time again: twelve thirty-seven.

She repeated the process of hosing and scraping Gounda once more and then put a hand on his chest, almost between his front legs, to gauge his temperature. He had cooled down enough, but Macy hand-grazed him before turning him out, just to be sure. Gounda, like any horse, would binge on water after a workout and make himself sick in the process. Hand-grazing took care of that problem. He was clean, dry, and cool by the time Macy led him to his paddock. Once he was inside, Macy turned him so that he faced her before removing his halter, and clucked to him, encouraging him to run off. In true Gounda form, he simply ambled away.

Twelve forty-six

Inside the barn, she hung Gounda’s halter back on his stall. She unzipped her gaiters and unlaced her paddock boots, removing both in one motion. Then she peeled off each sock and slipped on a pair of flip-flops. After pulling a backpack out of her tack trunk, she was finally ready.

She started toward the back pasture—the one with a slight rise that overlooked parts of the water, Saratoga Beach and Oyster River up-island to the left and Miracle Beach to the right, where Gounda’s mare used to frolic with her babies and the other broodmares. Used to.

A gangly, dark brown foal with a blaze and four white socks teetered over to her, following her at a safe distance as she walked. Then something rustled in the woods beyond and the foal bucked and ran back to the safety of its mother and the rest of the herd. It stared accusingly at Macy. Its feather duster of a tail twitched, and it snorted a foolish little snort. Macy chuckled. “Tough guy Tuesday,” she said to him, then thought that might not be a bad name for the little guy, and made a mental note to check and see whether it was available.

She hopped the fence line at the very back corner of the pasture and followed a wooded path that gradually gave way to sand. Eventually, the trees fell away and Macy found herself on a wide, flat expanse of sandy beach.

Far to her right, a swarm of people dotted the scene like ants. Macy could make out beach umbrellas and chairs. She imagined a crude sand castle or two was under construction. An inlet of water had made its way up the beach and now ran parallel to it, in her general direction. She guessed the water in it was far warmer than that of the ocean just beyond, judging from the number of young kids splashing and playing in it. She imagined they were shrieking and laughing, but she was far enough away and the breeze off the water was just heavy enough that on her own plot of sand, she heard only what was supposed to be there: wind, trees, water, and the cry of an occasional bird.

Macy walked halfway to the water and set down her backpack. She removed a blanket, which she spread with the help of the wind, two wineglasses, a corkscrew, and a bottle of Bordeaux that Martine had brought back for her and Nash from Paris.

Twelve fifty-eight.

It had been a wedding present. Nash, guessing it was a good, expensive bottle, insisted they save it for a special occasion.

Macy opened it and poured wine into each glass, filling them equally, halfway.

This was their special occasion.

Nine years before, at three o’clock in the afternoon Green Bay time, in a gazebo on the banks of the Fox River, Macy had worn white. She had said, “I will,” to a number of questions, and finally, “I do.” She had married Nash Allen.

“Happy anniversary, baby,” she said. Her voice startled her.

She had wanted to wear slacks—a nice, presentable pantsuit—but Magda had shamed her into a dress, and Macy spent most of the afternoon and night silently cursing Magda. The straps of the dress kept falling off her shoulders, the boning poked her ribs, and there was no fabric to stem the streams of sweat that ran down her legs.

Macy remembered picking out this piece of land with her grandfather. She remembered loving it, even then. Even before a single building went up on it. She could see its promise. She remembered towing a U-Haul trailer packed with Nash’s belongings up the driveway days after their wedding. And she remembered the days that followed, filled with unpacking—merging utensils, CDs, closet space, ideas about how things should be organized. She remembered looking at him as he confidently took a glass out of the cupboard and a Coke out of the fridge, and thinking,
He lives here now.
The space seemed more full with him there. Not only his things, but his presence. The promise of a whole life to be lived in tandem with hers.

She had taken Nash riding for the first time not long after he had moved there, only a week or two after they had married. It had been impossibly hot, and Martine had rescheduled her lesson for later that week. She remembered how out of place Nash looked on top of Gounda, sitting too far back and nearly overhanging the back of her old saddle, his jeans having ridden up above his ankles, his runners pushed straight through the stirrups and toes down, instead of the balls of his feet resting on them with his toes pointed up. His body rocked with each step Gounda took, and it seemed as though Nash thought that he might be able to push the horse forward if he simply bobbed his shoulders harder. Macy could sense Gounda’s irritation with his new passenger, and she barked at Nash on Gounda’s behalf. “You’ve got to sit up straight,” she told Nash. “Hold your core tighter. You’re jackhammering his spine.” Sometimes she wondered what her life might have been like had she married another show jumper—if she’d enjoy it more, being able to fully share what she most loved with the person she most loved—or hadn’t gotten married at all. She wondered if she’d be a better rider. She wondered if she would be more dedicated, more focused, more willing to go from show to show instead of always coming home in between. Sometimes she found herself frustrated that her real life didn’t more closely line up with that alternate reality in her head. Sometimes she took that frustration out on Nash.

They had ridden down to this very spot. Gounda, knowing exactly where he was and what the excursion meant, plodded purposefully toward the water. “Whoa,” Nash said, pulling on the reins. “Whoa,” he said, louder and with more authority. But Gounda paid him no heed. Nash might as well have been a sack of flour fixed to the horse’s back.

“Just go with it!” Macy called to Nash. He looked back at her for affirmation just as Gounda waded into the water. She was about to yell to him to hang on to Gounda’s mane, and wondered if perhaps this hadn’t been the best idea, when she saw Gounda give a push and begin to swim. Nash instinctively reached for a handful of mane. He hovered above Gounda’s neck in the water. He whooped as the horse motored through.

Eventually, of his own accord, Gounda turned toward shore, and the two of them, dripping wet, walked up to where Macy’s own mount stood knee-deep and splashing the water with one front leg. Nash shook his head, smiling at her. “What an amazing life,” he said.

Macy loved him, in that instant, perhaps more than she ever had before. She remembered thinking that they would do this when they were old and gray. By then, the pastures would be chock-full of horses who simply needed a home. They would have built another barn or two. She would make them all bran mash when nights got cold and treat them to ice in their water buckets during the occasional summer swelter. Then she’d come in from the barns and find Nash grilling something or other. He’d hand her a glass of wine, and from the back porch they’d look out over the fencing and green grass and happy, happy horses, and remember what they had built. Together.

Macy took a sip of the wine. It coated her tongue, sweet and hinting of spice and then a little bitter. It evaporated in her mouth after she swallowed it, like an apparition, as if it had never been there at all.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Not yet. And if sheer will was what it took, Macy could have conjured Nash out of thin air. She ached for him. In ten short years, she had forgotten how to be her without him. She hadn’t the faintest idea of how to go about untangling her life from his, from theirs. She also didn’t want to. If she held him close enough, if she thought about him often enough, if she didn’t forget to mark things like his birthday, Christmas, the first day they met, days like today, maybe she could keep him there with her. Maybe she could somehow prevent him from being relegated to a part of her life that was now over. Her own personal past tense. How ridiculous she had been to have wanted a man who could jump a horse over a bunch of painted wood rails like she could. Instead she had stumbled into a life with a man who could do everything else. Who had become everything else to her.