Harvesting the Heart (50 page)

"Just
like," I said, my words clipped and bitten.

My
mother turned abruptly. "I didn't mean to leave you, Paige,"
she said. "I only meant to
leave."

I
shrugged as if I did not care at all. But something sparked inside
me. I thought of Max's round little face and flat chin, and of
Nicholas, pulling me against the hot line of his chest. I had not
meant to leave them; I had only meant to leave. I wasn't running away
from them; I was only running away. I peered at my mother from the
corner of my eye. Maybe this went deeper than appearances. Maybe,
after all, we had more in common than it seemed.

As
if she knew I needed proof, my mother whistled to the horse at the
far end of the field. He exploded toward us, running at a breakneck
pace, but slowed as he approached my mother. Gentling, he circled
until he was calm. He nodded and tossed his head, and then he leaned
down and nuzzled my mother's hand.

He
was easily the most beautiful animal I had ever seen. I wanted to
draw him, but I knew I'd never be able to capture his energy on
paper. "This is my best show horse," my mother said. "Worth
over seventy-five thousand dollars. This whole thing"—here
she swept her hand across the vast farm—"my lessons and my
training and everything else I do, is just to support him, so I
can show him on weekends. We show in the elite shows, and we've
even come in first in our division."

I
was impressed, but I did not understand why she was telling me this
now when there were so many other things that needed to be said. "I
don't own this land," my mother continued, slipping the
halter over the horse's head. "I rent from Pegasus Stables. I
rent my house and my trailer and my truck from them. This horse is
just about the only thing I can really say is mine. Do you
understand?"

"Not
really," I said impatiently, stepping back as the horse lifted
his head to dodge a fly.

"This
horse is named Donegal," my mother said, and the word brought
back what it always had—the name of the county in Ireland where
my father had been born, the place he never stopped telling us about
when I was little.
Tumbling
clover like emeralds; stone chimneys brushing the clouds; rivers as
blue as your mother's eyes.

I
remembered Eddie Savoy saying that people can't ever wholly give up
what they've left behind. "Donegal," I repeated, and this
time as my mother held out her arms, I stepped into their quiet
circle, amazed that the vague wisps of old memories could crystallize
into such warmth, such flesh and blood.

"I
spent years hoping you would come," my mother said. She led me
up the steps to the farmer's porch of the small white clapboard
house. "I used to watch the little girls walk down to the stable
for their lessons, and I kept thinking, This one will pull off her
riding helmet, and it's going to be Paige." At the screen door,
she turned to me. "It never was, though."

My
mother's house was clean and neat, almost Spartan. The porch was
empty, except for a white wicker rocking chair, which blended into
the background paint, and a bright-pink hanging begonia. The front
hall had a faded Oriental runner and a thin maple table, on top of
which was a set of Shaker boxes. To the right was a tiny living room;
to the left, a staircase. "I'll get you settled in," my
mother said, although I had never said I would be staying. "But
I've got some lessons this afternoon, so I won't be around much."

She
took me up to the second floor. Straight ahead at the top of the
staircase was the bathroom, and the bedrooms were to the right and
the left. She turned to the right, but I got a glimpse of her own
room—pale and breezy, with gauze curtains billowing over the
white of the bed.

When
I stepped into the doorway of the other room, I drew in my breath.
The wallpaper was a busy tumble of huge pink flowers. The bed was a
frothy canopy, and on a chest against the wall were two porcelain
dolls and a stuffed green clown. It was the room of a little girl.
"You have another daughter," I said. It wasn't a question
really, but a statement.

"No."
My mother walked forward and brushed the cool cheek of one of the
dolls. "One of the reasons I decided to lease this stable was
because of this room. I kept thinking how much you would have liked
it here."

I
looked around the room at the sugar-candy decoration, the
suffocating wallpaper. I
wouldn't
have
liked it as a child. I thought about my bedroom at home in Cambridge,
which I didn't like, either, with its milk-colored carpet, the
near-white walls. "I was eighteen when you got this place,"
I pointed out. "A little old for dolls."

My
mother shrugged easily. "You were kind of stuck in my mind at
five years old," she said. "I kept thinking I'd go back and
get you, but I couldn't do that to your father, and besides, if I
went back I knew it would be to stay. Before I knew it, you were all
grown up."

"You
came to my graduation," I said, sitting down on the bed. It was
a hard mattress, unforgiving.

"You
saw me?"

I
shook my head. "Private eye," I said. "Very thorough."

My
mother sat down beside me. "I spent ten hours in Raleigh-Durham,
trying to make up my mind about getting on that plane. I could, then
I couldn't. I even sat down on one flight and ran off before they
closed the door."

"But
you came," I said, "so why didn't you try to talk to me?"

My
mother stood up and smoothed away the wrinkles on the bedspread so
that it looked as though she'd never sat down. "I didn't go
there for you," she said. "I went there for
me."

My
mother checked her watch. "Brittany's coming at two-thirty,"
she said. "Cutest little kid you've ever seen, but she's never
going to make it as a rider. Feel free to come down and watch, if you
like." She looked around as if something were missing. "You
have a bag?"

"Yes,"
I said, knowing that even if I wanted to I could not make myself stay
at a motel. "It's in my car."

My
mother nodded and started to walk out, leaving me on the bed.
"There's food in the fridge if you're hungry, and be careful
because the toilet lever sticks a little, and if you need me in
a hurry there's a sticker on the phone with a number that goes
straight to Pegasus's barn, and they can get me."

It
was so easy to talk to her. It came effortlessly; I could have been
doing it forever. I supposed I had, but she hadn't been answering.
Still, I wondered how she could be this matter-of-fact, as if I were
the kind of visitor she got every day. Just thinking about her made a
headache come behind my eyes. Maybe she knew better and was doing
this to skip all the gutted history in between. When you don't keep
looking back, it's that much easier not to trip and fall.

My
mother stopped at the threshold of the door and held her hand against
the wooden frame. "Paige," she said, "are you
married?"

A
sharp pain ran straight down my spine, a sick ache that came from her
being able to talk about phone lines and lunch but not knowing the
things a mother is supposed to know. "I got married in 1985,"
I told her. "His name is Nicholas Prescott. He's a cardiac
surgeon."

My
mother raised her eyebrows at this and smiled. She started to walk
out of the room. "And," I called after her, "I have a
baby. A son, Max. He's three months old."

My
mother stopped, but she did not turn around. I might even have
imagined the quiet tremble of her shoulders. "A baby," she
murmured. I knew what was going through her mind:
A
baby, and you left him behind, and once upon a time I left you.
I
lifted my chin, waiting for her to turn around and admit to the
cycle, but she didn't. She shifted her weight until she was moving
down the stairs, humbled and silent, with the parallel lines of our
past running cluttered through her mind.

She
was standing in the center of the oval—the ring—and a
girl on a pony danced around her. "Transitions, Brittany,"
she called. "First you're going to take him to a trot. Squeeze
him into it; don't lean forward. Sit up, sit up, push those heels
down." The girl was leggy and small. Her hair hung in a thick
blond tail from beneath the black riding helmet. I leaned against the
rail where I'd stood earlier, watching the squat brown horse jaunt
its way around in a circle.

My
mother walked to the edge of the ring and adjusted one of the redwood
rails so that it was lower to the ground. "Feel when he's going
too fast and too slow," she yelled. "You need to ride every
step. Now I want you to cross the diagonal. . . . Keep stretching
down in your heels."

The
girl steered the horse—at least I thought she did—coming
out of the corner and making an X across the ring. "Okay,
sitting trot," my mother called. The girl stopped bouncing up
and down and sat heavy in the saddle, wiggling a little from side to
side with every step of the horse. "Half seat!" my mother
called, and the girl bounced up once, freezing in the position that
held her out of the saddle, hanging on to the horse's mane for dear
life. My mother saw me and waved. "Let's cross the diagonal
again, and you're going to go right over this cavalletti," she
said. "Ride him right into the woods." She crouched down,
her voice tense and her body coiled, as if she could will the horse
to do it correctly. "Eyes up, eyes up . . . leg, leg, leg!"
The horse did a neat hop over the low rail and slowed down to a quiet
walk. The little girl stretched her legs out in front of her, feet
still in the stirrups. "Good girl," my mother called, and
Brittany smiled. "We can end with that."

A
woman had come up beside me. She pulled out her checkbook. "Are
you taking lessons with Lily?" she asked, smiling.

I
did not know how to answer. "I'm thinking about it," I
said.

The
woman scrawled a signature and ripped off the check. "She's the
best there is around here."

Brittany
had dismounted, neatly sliding off the saddle. She walked up to the
fence, leading the horse by the reins. My mother glanced at me,
looking from my head to my shoulders to my walking shorts and
sneakers. "Don't worry about tacking Tony down," she said.
"I think I need him for another lesson." She held out her
hands for the reins and watched as Brittany and her mother
disappeared up the hill toward the barn.

"My
three-thirty has the flu," she said, "so how'd you like a
lesson for free?"

I
thought of the horse that morning taking the jumps with the power of
a locomotive, and then I looked at this little horse. It had long
dark eyelashes and a white patch on its forehead in the shape of
Mickey Mouse. "I don't think so," I said. "I'm not the
type."

"I
never was, either," my mother said. "Just try it. If you
don't feel comfortable, you can get off." She led me toward the
little redwood rail and paused, holding the horse's reins. "If
you really want to know about me, you should try riding. And if you
really want me to know about you, I can learn a hell of a lot just by
watching you in the saddle."

I
held the horse's reins while my mother adjusted the stirrup lengths
and pointed out the names of things: blanket, pad, and English
saddle; bit, bridle, martingale, girth, reins. "Step on the
caval-letti," my mother said, and I looked at her blankly. "The
red
thing,"
she said, kicking the rail with her foot. I stepped onto it with my
right foot and then tucked my left foot into the stirrup. "Hang
on to the mane and swing yourself over. I'm holding Tony; he isn't
going anywhere "