Mercury (16 page)

E
VERYTHING MIGHT STILL HAVE
been all right if Tiffany hadn't taken me up on my offer. I was helping Marcus draw a map of sub-Saharan Africa when she phoned to ask if she could come to the stables on Saturday. Her whispery voice made me picture her alone in a small apartment, crowded with rickety furniture.

“We'd be glad of the help,” I said. “Can you be there at seven?”

“I can't get there on my own,” she said, even more whispery.

I felt blindingly stupid—did I think she lived in a family of doting chauffeurs? I said I'd pick her up, six thirty sharp. After I hung up, Marcus asked what was wrong.

“I just agreed to do something that's going to make Claudia mad.” He studied me with his blue eyes—your blue, not mine—while I described the problem. Tiffany was a little older than him, she loved horses like he loved swimming, but her parents couldn't afford lessons, and now her dad was in prison. “So,” I said, “I invited her to ride.”

“I think that was a good thing to do, Mom. I'd hate you or Dad to be in prison.” There was, at the time, no irony in his comment.

“So what should I say to Claudia?”

“Tell her what you told me. If she's mad, let her tell the girl she can't come.”

I held out my phone. He dialed Claudia's number. When she answered, I confessed my invitation and started to apologize. But she was laughing. “I could never resist a horse-crazy teenager,” she said. “We'll just have to be sure she doesn't fall.”

I thanked her and leaped across the room to hug Marcus. “Do you promise you'll keep giving me advice, even when you grow up and get all confused?”

“My pleasure.” He made a little bow. “Why will I get confused?”

“It happens to grown-ups. We want too many things, and it makes our lives complicated.”

“Mom, everyone wants too many things. You sounded happy when you spoke to Claudia.”

“I was,” I said. Only as her anger began to recede did I grasp the toll it had taken.

T
HAT
S
ATURDAY WHEN
T
IFFANY
stepped into my headlights, I had a moment of panic—she was not much taller than Trina—but before I could change my mind, she and her backpack were in the car. I asked if she had boots, gloves, food, drink.

“Yes, I made a list.”

“And your mom knows where you are?” I persisted.

“Like she gives a crap.”

Go back upstairs
, I wanted to say.
Go back to sleep
. But there she was, sitting next to me, a small, determined figure. Instead I turned on the radio and pulled out into the street. Neither of us spoke until we were driving up the hill between the empty paddocks. Then she said, “It's so strange not to see any horses.”

“They're all inside. That's why we need help exercising them.
How did your dad get a gun in New Hampshire?” I had no idea I was going to ask the question.

“The usual way. He gave someone money to buy it for him.”

Inside the barn I headed to the lockers. All sixteen doors were wide open, as if they'd been ransacked. Had they been that way the night before? I couldn't remember. Like so many things at the stables, I passed them dozens of times a day without seeing them. As Tiffany put her possessions away, I looked up and down the corridor. Had that wheelbarrow been there? Had someone left the door of the tack room ajar?

“Is something wrong?” Tiffany said. Like Trina, she was very sensitive to adult moods.

I said I always worried when so many horses were shut in for the night. If one started banging up his stall, the others might panic. But here was Mercury, his usual eager self, and no sign of nocturnal visitors. We left him in the corridor and went to get Sir Pericles. When Tiffany tried to hug him, his lips pulled back. Then, recognizing affection, he nickered. In the arena she at first posted stiffly but soon found her seat. Afterward, as we rubbed down the horses, she asked if I'd ever seen
National Velvet
.

“I bet Mercury could win a big show,” she said.

“I do too.” I was thinking how odd it was that this girl I hardly knew should be the one, the only one, to guess my heart's desire when Matheus showed up.

As usual Saturday was busy with owners and lessons. Not until lunchtime did I have a chance to ask Claudia about the lockers. She said lost-and-found was overflowing. If the doors were left open, she thought, people would be less likely to forget stuff. Walking back to the arena, I noticed the modest sign above the lockers: “Please leave doors open. Thank you!” Later
I stopped at Mercury's stall and left my own sign. I looped two halter ropes, one brown, one black, around the first bars of the door and the stall. They wouldn't stop a visitor, but they would betray him. Then I took a photograph so I wouldn't spook myself by misremembering.

That night, after you were in bed, I updated my spreadsheet: Tiffany, two new riders, an owner's friend, a student's father. Each evening when I got home I marked down everyone I'd seen at the stables that day. If there was another break-in, I would have a complete list of suspects. I remembered Rick saying, “Get a gun.” I remembered summer camp and the thrill of hitting three clay pigeons in a row. The next morning the ropes were as I had left them.

I
STARTED GOING TO THE
library to use a computer so you wouldn't stumble on my searches. Rick, Tiffany, Helen, even Michael, each had nudged me in this direction, but nothing would have happened without the Internet. I could look up one thing; I could look up another; I didn't have to admit exactly what I was thinking. Buying a gun in Massachusetts required waiting several weeks for a license which required a background check which required . . . But in New Hampshire things were easier. I schemed, got prices and addresses, and finally—you and Claudia had both grown accustomed to my visiting Garth's classes in New Hampshire—I had a plan.

The forecast that day was for no precipitation, upper twenties, but as I exercised the horses, snow started to fall. Each time I went between the arena and the barn, the flakes were hurtling down thicker, faster. But by the end of the first lesson the snow was dwindling and the clouds were clearing. When Claudia arrived, she said, “Shouldn't you be on the road?”

“I was worrying about the weather.” I gazed at her glowing face, hoping she would stop me.

“The forecast is good,” she said. “Come back and teach us everything you learn.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. We only have four lessons scheduled today.”

I drove away before I lost my nerve. At the bottom of the road, I got out my list of addresses and maps. On the drive north I tried to listen to the radio, tried not to think about what I was planning to do. A few weeks earlier you had mentioned a patient who had a shadow inside her head. That morning I'd have liked a shadow between me and my plan.

The first address turned out to be a busy intersection. The store sat alone in a parking lot. A large sign read “Guns.” Another asked, “Are You Ready for Hunting Season?” When the light changed, I kept going.

The second address, seven miles away, was a mall with a liquor store, a shoe store, a diner, and a hair salon. I parked outside the shoe store: a nice, innocent alibi. In the mirror I combed my hair, put on makeup. There was nothing to be done about my clothes, but just before I got out of the car, I remembered my wedding ring. As I slipped it into the zippered pocket of my jacket, I saw how dull the gold had grown, all that shoveling. In my other pocket were the stiff new bills I'd collected from the ATM.

The diner was a daytime cousin of Paddy's Lunch: a narrow, L-shaped room, the windows streaming with condensation. Almost all the tables were full. I took a seat at the counter between two men and ordered a second breakfast. The man on my left was deep in conversation with the woman to his left. When the coffee came, I asked the man on my right for the cream.

“Cold enough for you?” he said. The metal jug looked very small in his fat fingers.

“I'd no idea it could be so cold in New Hampshire.”

He edged his stool around to examine the woman who would utter this stupidity. At dinner one night you explained
that although some people's eyes look much bigger than others', they actually differ by only a few millimeters. This man's eyes were like small, dull pebbles. He stared at me for several seconds and swiveled back to his food. A few minutes later, he asked for the bill.

Almost immediately another man, much younger, sat down. While he unzipped his jacket, the waitress brought him coffee. I passed back the metal jug. He added a few drops of cream, and when he saw me noticing, said, “I promised my mom to start putting cream in my coffee. She thinks it'll make me less jittery.”

“Is it working?”

“Maybe, but I like being jittery. I haven't seen you here before.”

It was an observation, not a line. I told him I was from Michigan. I'd come to help my sister with her kids. He said he'd been fishing in the UP. Beautiful country. You could walk all day and not see a soul. As he spoke, I glimpsed the darkness of a missing molar. I asked if he came from around here, and got the answer I wanted: New Hampshire born and bred.

The waitress brought my eggs and his special and flourished the coffeepot. “Any more for you, Chance?”

As she circled on to another customer, I asked if Chance was his real name.

“Wild, isn't it? It's an old family name on my mom's side.”

“I'm Jane.” His plate was still half full, but he was eating swiftly. “Can I ask you a strange question?” I launched into part two of my story. My sister had asked me to buy her a gun, but I'd no idea how things worked in New Hampshire. Buying a gun in other places, I tried to suggest, was no problem. He asked why she couldn't buy her own gun, and I said the rug rats kept her so busy she could barely buy a gallon of milk.

“Well, it's pretty easy in these parts. All that live-free crap. You just need money and a driver's license.”

I said I had both, but my license was for Michigan. If I couldn't find a job here, I might have to go back. Chance's plate was nearly empty. My boss in New York used to claim the key to successful negotiation was knowing when to shut up. I ate my last slice of toast in silence.

“So your sister,” he said, “does she know anything about guns?”

Once again I was glad I'd rehearsed. She used to have one. Then she got rid of it because of the kids. But last month a friend of hers was home alone when a man shot her dog and broke into her house. My sister didn't want to feel scared every time there was a noise in the night.

“Maybe she shouldn't live in the country,” Chance said.

“She shouldn't, but that's where her husband left her.”

The waitress set down our bills, V'd to avoid the damp counter. We both swung round on our stools. For the first time I saw him full face. His eyes were the faded blue of Marcus's bathing suit after six months of chlorine. A faint scar zigzagged his jaw.

“So, Jane, do you by any chance have the money for a purchase on you right now?”

“I do.”

He gave a little smile. “So here's what I suggest. We go outside and get in my truck, and you give me the money. Then you watch me walk over to the conveniently located gun shop, and hope that I pass the security check. You can put your wedding ring back on while you wait.”

You'll be glad to know I blushed.

We did just what he said. I handed him $600. Alone in his very clean truck, I turned up the heat and thought this was
the stupidest thing I'd ever done. What if Chance absconded with my money? Or had me arrested? But he didn't seem the kind of person who leapt to dial 911. I sat there, looking at my watch, looking at the snow, remembering Mercury that morning clearing a five-foot spread.

After nearly thirty minutes, the driver's-side door opened. He climbed in, holding an incongruous brown paper bag. “Here you go,” he said. “One Smith and Wesson, M&P Shield, 9mm, plus ammo. I kept the change.”

As soon as I took the bag, I felt the weight. At the bottom lay a black gun and a small box. I reached in and lifted out the gun. Over and over in movies, on TV, in the holsters of policemen, I'd seen guns, but I'd never held a handgun. At camp, when we shot clay pigeons, we had used shotguns. Here was an object, unmistakably heavy, that changed everything.

“Let me give you some advice.” Beneath his hat only the final curve of his earlobe was visible. “Go to a range and learn to shoot. Never leave a gun loaded. Never leave it anywhere unlocked. Never use it except as a very last resort. If I hear on the news that a woman from Michigan called ‘Jane,' with a broken finger, has had some kind of accident with a firearm, I'll be so darned mad you won't know what's hit you. Now beat it. I have to get to work.”

I opened the door and jumped down onto the dirty snow. Chance reversed out of the parking slot and headed for the exit. I walked over to my car, with its incriminating Massachusetts plates. I pictured him passing it on his way to the gun shop: one more piece of evidence against “Jane.” I put the bag on the passenger seat. Then I realized I couldn't drive around with a gun on the seat beside me. I got out again and put the bag in the trunk, under the jumper cables and the extra horse blanket. All the way
to the stables I kept thinking, I am a person who owns a gun, and when I walked into the arena and took a seat in the viewing area, I kept waiting for someone to notice. Surely the woman sitting on the bench next to me would sense my new possession; surely the older man who'd come to watch his daughter ride would guess. But when they talked, it was to exclaim about the weather, to remark on my driving so far, to comment on one horse's steep shoulders, another's gait.

Afterward, when I drove home and saw the Welcome to Massachusetts sign, I thought, Now I'm a criminal. But no police car flashed me down. No motorist cut me off.