Miracle Beach (8 page)

Jack wondered what it would be like to have that kind of money. He figured that, at the very least, he’d have a pretty stellar golf game.

“Oil. Wasn’t that how your grandfather made his money?” Jack asked.

Macy offered an affirmative nod only, nothing else. But Jack had heard enough of the story through Nash. Her grandfather had had more money than he could have spent in his lifetime. He ensured that his wife—Macy’s grandmother, who was now in some sort of home—had been fully taken care of, and after Macy’s father had died, ten or fifteen years ago, he set both Macy and her sister up financially for life. Instead of handing each of the girls a chunk of cash, though, Macy’s grandfather sat down with them separately and discussed with them what they most wanted to do with their lives. Then he set up a fund for each of them that would pay any and all expenses, but only those that had to do with their designated career paths. Regan, who wanted to someday act on Broadway, was given an apartment in Manhattan, a full ride to New York University, and any and all acting, singing, or dancing classes she could take. For Macy, their grandfather bought a farm on Vancouver Island, imported from Europe one ready-made show jumper and several additional mares that were in foal, and ensured she had the best possible truck and trailer that she could need. The horses’ feed, her show entry and trainer’s fees, and vet and farrier bills were all covered. As long as either granddaughter could tie an expense to her chosen field, it would be paid. Before he had passed away, their grandfather had solidified the arrangement with a raft of legal documents to be executed by the accounting firm to which he had been loyal his whole life.

They were on their way back to Macy’s truck and trailer, parked and waiting to be unloaded, near her assigned stalls.

“I hate this part,” Macy said.

“What’s that?” Jack asked.

“All the setup work. Hauling tack trunks in, bedding stalls, hanging buckets. There’s no better feeling than walking into an arena, with every eye on you, but I loathe the unloading and loading.”

“You could hire someone,” Jack suggested. They both knew Macy could afford it.

Macy shook her head. “You’re right—people do,” she said. “But as much as I dread all the work, the braiding and bathing, there’s something you lose when you don’t spend that kind of time with your horse. They get to know you better, bond better with you. And when you get into the ring, that’s key.”

Macy snapped Gounda’s lead rope onto his halter and backed him out of the trailer while Jack held the door open. He helped her unload the other two horses as well—young “projects” that Macy was showing to sell—and helped her cut open and spread the bags of sawdust that had been delivered to each of her stalls. They put up water and feed buckets and hung extension cords and fans outside the stalls. Then Jack held each of the three horses while Macy bathed them, amazed at how they would simply stand and let someone hose them off. He noted that Macy was the only non-Hispanic—and, he assumed, the only rider—bathing a horse in the wash stalls.

By the time each horse had been tucked back into its stall, matching sheets on each of them that bore Macy’s initials across the barrel area, it was nearly ten o’clock, the show grounds had filled to capacity, and Jack was exhausted.

“Almost done?” he asked Macy, planting himself on an overturned bucket in the middle of the aisle. She was puttering around in her tack stall, organizing and arranging saddles, bridles, and grooming equipment.

“Still have to braid,” she called out.

Jack’s spirits sank; he hadn’t eaten since they had stopped for lunch, and his stomach felt like it was about to eat itself. “I’m going to run and pick us up some food then,” he said to Macy. “Any requests?”

“Tim Hortons?” Macy said. “There’s one just outside of town—take a right out of the grounds. Turkey on white bread, a low-fat iced cap, and a few Timbits, please.” She rummaged through her tack trunk for the keys to her truck and tossed them to Jack. “Be careful with her,” she joked.

“Always,” he said.

He thought, driving to Tim Hortons, how strong Macy seemed. He didn’t know quite what he had expected, exactly. And, granted, he didn’t know what it was like for Macy in those moments before sleep came, when loneliness seemed magnified a million times over, or the shock of it immediately upon waking. But he knew what those moments were like for him, and truth be told, he wasn’t managing all that well as it was. Since his arrival on the island, though, Macy’s stoicism, her resolve to keep moving forward, had inspired him.

But upon returning from his food run, Jack walked down the last row of stalls in barn C with the sandwich and iced coffee Macy had ordered and saw her standing on her braiding stool, slumped over Gounda, her face buried against his neck and only half his mane braided. She didn’t look up.

He set the food on one of Macy’s shiny wood tack trunks rimmed with brass and entered Gounda’s stall, so that he faced her over the horse’s thick arch of a neck, which tapered into an equally thick head that was bobbing in and out of sleep.

“Macy?”

She still didn’t look up.

“I can’t do this,” she said, her face still buried in the horse’s neck.

“What was that?” he asked, not quite hearing her.

“I can’t. I can’t.”

“Can’t what?” Jack asked quietly. He brushed her hair, which had fallen on Jack’s side of the horse’s neck, away from her head.

“I shouldn’t have come here.”

He put his hand on hers. She raised her head, and then her eyes, to meet his. “Aww, Macy girl? Come on now. This is your thing,” he said, patting her hand. It felt like a child’s under his. Small and delicate.

“It’s not the same without him. Nothing’s the same. I can’t do this. I don’t want to.”

“You can—and you will,” Jack said. He ducked under Gounda’s neck and tugged on Macy’s sleeve to get her to step down off the stool. Like a drugged puppy, she let Jack guide her down, and he put an arm around her, leading her to the tack trunk just outside Gounda’s stall.

He knew these bouts. Oh, how he knew them. He knew how fast they hit, how they seemed so deep and impossible to crawl out of. They could be brought on by a song, or a smell, or, as he had experienced at Festival Foods only a few weeks before, seeing Nash’s favorite childhood cereal—Count Chocula—on a walk down aisle five. He had left that day with Magda’s shopping list in shreds, and his dignity in a similar way after a concerned fellow patron, and then a stock boy, were unable to rouse him from where he had crumpled, unable to catch his breath or cease his sobbing. After that, he and Magda had arranged to have their groceries delivered.

It was an impossible feeling to deal with, that kind of loss. It was impossible to predict what might trigger the flood of memories. And it was equally impossible to understand—the finality of someone who always was, suddenly being nothing. Nowhere.

One early morning, not long ago, he had woken suddenly from a dream about Nash. He and Nash had been in a white room with no decorations and no furniture except for the orange, molded-plastic chairs they were sitting on. There was one slim door in the far wall.

“What took you so long, Pops?” Nash asked.

“What took me so long for what?” Jack asked back.

“To get here. I’ve been waiting for you.”

“I should’ve called,” Jack said. “Sorry to make you wait, Nashville.”

Nash laughed lightly at the mention of this long-forgotten nickname.

“Did I ever tell you why we named you that?” Jack asked. Nash shook his head, still smiling. “Your mom and I went there—to Nashville—on our honeymoon. Drove down there. We didn’t have a penny to our names then. We were opening up envelopes and cards people gave us for the wedding every time we had to get gas or eat. And there was something about that place—the lushness of it and the energy of it—that was just like fairy dust. And when you were born, almost nine months later exactly, and you were lying there all purple in your mother’s arms, and we still didn’t have a name picked out for you, she looked up at me, radiating joy, and told me that the only time she had ever felt as happy was with me on our honeymoon. There were three of us, now, she said, and we should include this little guy in all our happy times, even the ones he wasn’t quite present for. I smiled down at her and she looked up at me and said, ‘Nash.’ And I agreed. Nash it was.” Jack looked up to see Nash tying his shoes. “Where are you going?”

Nash turned to face him. “I have to leave now, Pops.”

Jack could feel the light in the room getting brighter and brighter. “No, not yet. Please don’t go, Nash. Just a little longer. We could talk, like before.”

“Sorry, Pops,” Nash said. He was smiling as he walked toward the skinny door. Like he used to do when Jack asked him to go one more round in cribbage and Nash had had somewhere else to be. “It’s time for me to go. Have to. I love you, Pops. And I’ll be around; don’t worry.”

Jack found himself in the room alone suddenly, and he woke with a start to see the red digits on the alarm clock glaring at him: 4:11. The empty darkness had startled him, pressed hard into him with its nothingness. He so desperately wanted to stay in that light-filled room with Nash.

He had gotten up then, wandering frantically from room to room in their house, hearing Nash’s words,
I’ll be around. I’ll be around
, and taking them for gospel.

“Where?” he had cried out.

In the opaque darkness, he stumbled against the buffet table in the front entranceway, knocking pictures and knickknacks to the floor. He picked one up—a silver-framed photograph of him and Nash salmon fishing north of Campbell River a few years ago. Glass shards jutted across their windblown faces, one just in front of the other, each half-hidden by the hoods on their yellow rain slickers. “Where, Nash?” he had whispered desperately, looking into the blackness of the foyer. “Where?”

That morning, when Magda came downstairs to start the coffee, she had found Jack clutching the photograph tight to him, curled up amid a mosaic of glass shards, and fast asleep.

He told Macy then, with Gounda’s breath moist on his outstretched hand, about how these feelings would pass. About how every time she wallowed through one of the bouts they would get easier and easier, until one day—maybe one year or ten years down the road—without her even knowing it, they would cease altogether, and she would be left with only happy memories of Nash that didn’t sear and tear when they came bubbling up.

“How do you know?” she asked.

The truth was, he didn’t. That was only what he told himself. Because if all the hurt and gut-gnawing emptiness didn’t ebb away over time, he didn’t think he could bear it either.

IT WASN’T EVEN SEVEN O’CLOCK, AND MAGDA WAS ALREADY TIPSY. She was sitting at a cocktail table with Ginny Fischer, one of her oldest and dearest friends, finishing a glass of white zinfandel and waiting to be seated for dinner. They were at Poultry in Motion, a hot new restaurant on De Pere’s main drag that was receiving rave reviews, but it was so busy that the restaurant had instituted a no-reservation policy. So Magda and Ginny had arrived at six o’clock sharp, expecting to beat out the seven-o’clock crowd, and had been waiting ever since. Magda had been drinking seltzer water up to a point, and then somewhere around six thirty decided to have a glass of wine, anticipating that they’d be eating soon. But here she was, no sign of a table opening up and not even a whole glass in, her toes and fingers had already starting to tingle.

“Why, you don’t drink, Magda. What’s going on?”

“I don’t
usually
drink, Ginny. That doesn’t mean that I can’t
ever
drink.”

“Are we celebrating something?” asked Ginny.

“Goodness gracious, Ginny. What do you think I have to celebrate?” Magda said.

Ginny’s face crumpled so horribly that Magda changed her tone and added, “Well, I suppose I am celebrating a bit, with Jack gone and all. I mean, not that I don’t adore him, but I was thinking the other day—we’ve been married almost thirty-four years and haven’t ever spent much time apart. I’m enjoying this new-found freedom a little. It’s nice.”

“I wish I had a little freedom like that,” Ginny said. “I just read this book about a woman who left her husband and family for a year and took a kayaking trip around all the Great Lakes—or maybe it was only one of the lakes—well, anyway, it was all about her spending this year on her own, and the self-discoveries she made, and then, at the end, she was more than happy to come home to her husband and such. Totally content to be back, because she had this great adventure. It left me feeling a little jealous. I’d like to do something like that. Put the spark back into things with me and Frank.”

“You’ve lost your spark?”

Leaning toward Magda, she asked, “Haven’t you and Jack?”

“Well,” said Magda, “not really, no.” It wasn’t technically a lie. Truth be told, there hadn’t been a whole lot to lose.