Mercury (9 page)

I
BLAME THE SNOW FOR
what happened next. It fell and fell. Our cars were buried, the stables were buried, our lives were buried. The horses had to be kept indoors and exercised in the arena, which meant vastly more work for Viv and Claudia. Jack organized a roster of students to guide him back and forth to his office. My mother worked at home. Marcus and Trina had frequent snow days, and we scrambled to make child-care arrangements, trading with Anne and other parents. I know Viv talked to Claudia and that some kind of peace was brokered, but I did not dare to ask the particulars. Nor did I dare to ask about the dream that had stopped her from getting an abortion. It was long ago, I told myself. What mattered was our family, our shared life, that we had been happy for more than a decade.

I was still waiting for the right moment to suggest that Viv buy a horse of her own, but she was even more distant, a distance only emphasized by meals. While the rest of us ate winter food, pasta and baked potatoes, she ate fish and quinoa. When Marcus and Trina asked why, she said, “I need to be stronger to ride Mercury.”

“But it's not kind to eat animals,” said Trina. “We ought to eat less of them.”

“Fewer,” said Viv. “What did everyone learn today?”

Marcus said he'd learned that the Sami have nearly a thousand words to do with reindeer. Trina said she'd learned that her friend Rachel's mother was whitening her teeth.

“Is that good?” I asked.

“No, it's weird. Like there's a light on in her mouth.”

I glanced at Viv, hoping to share the pleasure of our daughter's wit, but she was slicing her tuna.

D
URING THOSE SNOWY WEEKS
first Steve, then my mother, asked if something was wrong, leaving the “something” vague. Ask Viv, I told them. Steve, my docile friend, obediently changed the subject, but my mother was more persistent. “What do you mean, ‘Ask Viv'?” she said.

I was at her house, helping to rearrange the ground-floor room. It was here that I had often joined my father in the late afternoons to drink tea and talk about whatever caught his attention: the best way to boil an egg, the skunks that attacked his garden, Basho's travels. On one of these afternoons, sitting by the window, he had described the Simurg, a bird in Persian mythology, large enough to lift an elephant. It was very old, and very benevolent. “I picture it having beautiful brown feathers,” he said. “Like an owl. Sometimes, when I'm having a bad day, I wish the Simurg would carry me away.”

Now I was more sorry than I could admit to see my mother reclaim the room. “Just what I say,” I told her. “Viv's off on Planet Mercury. I'm the last to know what she's doing.” I set the cardboard box containing a new bookcase on end and began to cut it open.

“She loves that horse, doesn't she?” My mother was kneeling on the other side of the room, surrounded by books. “It'll be exciting when they start competing.”

“It'll be a nightmare when they start competing. She's already gone all the time. It's as if she forgets she even has children.” The sound of the blade, pushing through the cardboard, seemed to both echo and amplify my anger.

“Would you say that if she were a man?” Still on her knees, my mother was watching me. “With your father, and your work, and the kids, Viv has come last for years. Then, finally, Edward died. Mercury is an amazing horse, an amazing opportunity. Marcus and Trina won't feel neglected if you help them understand that.”

“‘Finally'?”

“Finally,” she repeated. “Did you ever wonder what it would be like if your life had revolved around taking care of Viv's father?”

“But Dad—” I started to say. But Dad was part of me. But Dad's illness brought me back to Boston. “No,” I said. “I didn't.”

“Nor did I,” she confessed, “until I started seeing Larry.” While they were in Philadelphia, his wife had fallen and broken her hip. He was convinced it wouldn't have happened if he had been nearby. “We won't be leaving town again any time soon.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I know you'd love to travel.”

“And I will.” She smiled. “Just not with Larry, not now. It's frustrating, but I admire his loyalty to Jean.” She stood up and came over to inspect the bookcase. “I hope you and Viv can work things out so you both get a part of what you want.”

“I hope so too,” I said. But what would a part be? A fetlock for her? A scalpel for me?

T
HE DAY AFTER THE
conversation with my mother, as we yet again dug out our cars, I asked Viv if she was glad Edward was dead.

“Not glad,” she said, angling her shovel into a drift. “But these last few years, everything was hard. And it was all for nothing. He wasn't going to get well. He wasn't happy. I hated to see him struggling day after day.” Her blue eyes regarded me across the snow. “Didn't you feel that way, at least sometimes?”

“I don't think so.” But even as I spoke, I remembered standing in his room, on another snowy day, holding a pillow while he slept, wondering if I had the courage to use it, knowing I didn't. I had never spoken of that moment, tried never to think of it, but standing knee deep in snow, I silently acknowledged that I had thought of killing my father.

“You've had a lot to put up with,” I said, “being married to me.”

I know the date because in my appointment book there is a note: “Call Bonnie D. re op.” Later that same morning, when I went to the mall to get supplies for Nabokov, I sat in my car outside the pet shop and dialed her number. She answered so swiftly she must have been holding the phone.

“I just want to make sure you're all set for tomorrow,” I said. Her operation had been postponed because of a cold.

“Thanks for calling, Dr. Stevenson. I'm okay. Greg's taken the day off work. He won't even let me put on my own shoes.”

The snow was falling in tidy flakes that melted the instant they touched the windshield. I turned off the engine to hear her voice more clearly. “And what about your daughters? Are they old enough to help?”

“Alice waits on me hand and foot, and she keeps Suzie in line. What's that noise?”

“A van reversing. I'm at the mall, picking up supplies for the parrot.”

Bonnie did not comment on the oddity of this. “Oh, the
parrot,” she exclaimed. “He was so cute, spouting poetry. I was telling Greg we ought to get a bird. It would be someone for me to talk to when I'm here alone all day.”

The windows were misting up, cutting me off from the quotidian world. Idly I drew a bird on the glass—the Simurg—and watched its wings blur. Bonnie was still talking. She'd never had a pet, but when she was a kid, her neighbors had a Pekingese. “Rollo had these huge brown eyes, and his owners were at work all day. I used to sneak into their yard to play with him. Somehow they found out. They came and shouted at my parents. Rollo was worth thousands of dollars. If I didn't stay away, they'd call the police. I never got to play with him again.”

Her own eyes, I realized, had a little of that exophthalmic quality so marked in those of Pekingeses. “Well,” I said, “I just wanted to make sure you're all right. Don't eat or drink anything after midnight.”

“Thank you, Dr. Stevenson. I appreciate your calling, especially after I stomped out of your office. I know you were doing your best.”

As I bought Nabokov's bird food, I thought how there was no art to detect inappropriate behavior. I always called patients before surgery—by some standards, in not calling Bonnie, I would have been remiss—and yet our conversation had crossed a line. When I got back to the office, Nabokov and Merrie greeted me warmly, and my patients for the rest of the afternoon were punctual and grateful. Later, when I drove to the stables to collect Marcus and Trina, the sky in the west was still light. A van was parked in my usual spot by the trailers. As I maneuvered between two cars, a light went on in the car in front. Two heads came together. Then a door opened, and Charlie loped towards the barn.

P
ERHAPS ONLY THOSE WHO
are, or were, married will understand how Viv and I saw each other every day, slept together every night, and yet seldom found time to talk. At last on a Saturday, when both the children had play dates, we decided to tackle the long-postponed task of painting the basement. As I stirred the sky-blue paint and Viv lined the doors and windows with masking tape, I said I'd been thinking about returning to surgery.

“Why not?” She unfurled more tape. “You used to enjoy it.”

She spoke as if we were discussing returning my library books. Later, when she claimed I had been oblivious for months, I would say the same about her. As I started rolling paint onto the walls, I explained I would have to study to requalify. For a while I would earn less.

“How much less?”

At once she registered her misstep. Since our conversation about the alarm system, money had been a dangerous topic. Switching to the ultrareasonable voice she used to urge the children to tidy their rooms, she said we should discuss the pros and cons. Maybe when Marcus was settled in middle school? She kept talking, but the phrase “pros and cons” had carried me back to my conversation with Claudia in the tack room. Had
the dream baby looked anything like our son? Now, writing this, I wonder what would have happened if I had asked Viv that question—if one of us had adjusted our orbit to cross paths with the other. But when she paused, I said I'd also been thinking she should buy a horse of her own.

“Buy a horse?” She was painting around the door, her hand deft and steady. “Why would I do that? Claudia and I were just saying we've finally got the right ratio of horses to students to boarders. We're not going to replace Nimble.”

“I meant a horse just for you, to train for competitions.”

“I have Mercury.” She hurled the sentence across the room.

“But you don't own him,” I said. “You don't have a legal arrangement with Hilary.” What I wanted to say was that he was too good for her, that he made her want too much.

“Don, I used to be in business. We have an understanding. She pays his board, the veterinarian's fees. I take care of him and pay the expenses of competing. She doesn't want to sell him but if she did, she would sell him to me.”

Years ago, when Marcus was still a baby, someone had asked Viv if we were married. No, she said, we have an understanding. As she spoke, she smiled at me, and I heard the word with new meaning; we were standing on the same ground. “And is this understanding written down?” I asked now. Paint oozed beneath the roller. “Witnessed?”

I can name only some of the muscles involved in the hard stare she gave me. “I thought you Scots believed a woman's word is her bond.”

For several minutes the radio filled the silence until, by way of a peace offering, Viv brought up Burns Night. Every year we joined with my parents to celebrate the Scottish poet; my father, as long as he was able, had acted as master of ceremonies.
Now Viv reported that my mother was making the vegetarian haggis. I said Steve would offer the “Address to the Lassies.” We finished painting the basement, and the following evening I found myself presiding over a table full of friends and neighbors. When we joined hands to sing Burns's most famous song, “Auld Lang Syne,” I felt we were honoring both my father and the poet.

Later I would learn that the next day Viv drove to New Hampshire and spent six hundred dollars on a handgun, ammunition, and a bribe to the man who made the purchase.

B
Y EARLY
F
EBRUARY
N
ABOKOV
was uncrowned king of the office. Merrie rationed his treats, her daughters provided him with fresh tree branches, and Jo had taught him to say, “Better? Or worse?” His feathers were growing in, smooth and thick, and in the morning he often urged me to hurry. One day, when I was collecting the children from the stables, he started calling from the front seat: “Hurry up. Hurry up.”

“He sounds like us now,” Trina said.

At once I realized she was right. Only when he quoted poetry or recited the railway timetable did Nabokov still sound like my father. In my dismay I failed to ask the children if they had everything. After supper Marcus discovered he'd left a crucial schoolbook on the office table.

“You'll just have to explain to your teacher,” I said.

“But there's a test tomorrow. Ms. Fisher hates to give makeup tests. Please can we get it?”

Viv and Trina were watching a show about a game reserve. Lions were roaring. “I want to see this,” Viv said. “Can you go, Don? I'll explain the alarm.”

“I'm paying the bills. Marcus needs to take responsibility when he forgets things.”

“He does, but all the shuttling around is hard on the
kids.” She smiled up at me. “Everyone gets to make a few mistakes.”

All the shuttling around is because of you, I thought, but I wrote down the instructions for the alarm and told Marcus to start studying while I fetched his book.

The night was cold and starless. Outside town I passed only a few other cars, and when I turned up the road to Windy Hill, my headlights shone on the empty paddocks. As I walked towards the barn, I was grateful for the brightness of the new security lights I had unwittingly paid for. I pressed the buttons of the alarm once, then again. Nothing seemed to happen, but the door opened silently. Inside I heard a faint rustling. Only a mouse, I hoped. I hurried along the dimly lit corridor and retrieved Marcus's book from the office. Back at the door, I reset the alarm. I was turning towards my car when I noticed the windows of the arena glowing. Someone had forgotten to turn out the lights.

The arena, I know from the Windy Hill website, is seventy-five feet by two hundred. As I stepped through the side door, I saw an almost white horse cantering at the far end, a dark figure on his back. Charlie was riding Mercury. In the middle of the arena stood a young man who seemed to be alternately checking his phone and taking pictures. Even at this distance I could smell his cigarette. Now I understood why the alarm had behaved oddly; it was already off. Neither of them noticed me. For several minutes I remained standing in the doorway, spellbound by the drama of the solitary horse and rider. As Mercury approached, cantering up the nearest wall, I could see his breath streaming in the cold air. Charlie, beneath her helmet, was radiant.

By the time they approached for the second time, I had come to my senses. I stepped forward, arms raised. “Charlie,” I called. “Stop. Stop.”

Both horse and rider startled. Then Charlie was lying on the ground, and Mercury was again heading to the far end of the arena. I bent over Charlie, asking if she was all right.

She was already scrambling to her feet. “Dr. Stevenson—Donald—you scared the shit out of me. Don't you know not to shout at a horse?”

“What are you doing here, riding Mercury? How did you get in?”

The young man was running towards us, shouting, “Are you okay? Who the fuck is this?”

“Viv loaned me the keys last month when she had to leave early. Ben and I were driving by—and I so wanted to see Mercury.”

“Who the fuck is this?” Ben repeated. Despite his swearing, he was not a threatening figure. He was wearing far too few clothes for the cold night—a hoodie, tight jeans, and sneakers—and his face, even scowling, had a good-natured look.

“This is Viv's husband.” As she spoke, Mercury cantered by, showing no signs of slowing. If anything, he was going faster, stretching into a full gallop, stirrups flying. We all three turned to watch him.

“Mercury,” called Ben. “How are we going to catch him?”

“Food.” Charlie stepped out of the side door and returned with an armful of hay, which she dropped in Mercury's path. He slowed to a trot. A moment later he was greedily nudging the hay. Charlie captured his bridle, and order was restored.

Only then did she turn to me. “Please, please, please,” she said, “don't tell Viv. I promise we won't ever do it again.”

Until she asked, it had not occurred to me that I had a choice. I imagined Viv seizing the phone, firing Charlie. But of course
I must tell her. Not to do so would be a terrible betrayal. I became aware that my face and hands were freezing.

She sensed my hesitation. “Riding is my favorite thing in the whole world,” she said. “I know it was wrong to come here like this, but I was desperate to see Mercury.” Her eyes were brimming.

I remembered Bonnie's story about losing her beloved Pekingese—“I never got to play with him again.” What would my silence cost me? Nothing, other than the pain of lying to Viv. She had often said Charlie was their best worker.

“Put him back in his stall,” I said. “Bring the keys to my office tomorrow.”

“And you won't tell Viv?”

Her eyes were very wide and her lips very red, but that was not what made me decide, between one moment and the next, to keep her secret. At the time I thought it was because of Bonnie. Now I suspect that I also wanted to punish Viv, for her almost abortion, her obsession with Mercury, her betrayal of Claudia, her falling asleep, night after night, without turning to me.

“I won't,” I said, “but you must never do this again. If Mercury got hurt, there'd be hell to pay.”

She promised fervently—cross my heart and hope to die—and led him towards the door. Ben followed. I heard the ring of hooves on the icy snow. I was turning to leave when something lying in the middle of the arena caught my eye: a black scarf. I hung it on a railing, like any other piece of lost property, and turned out the lights.

At home the safari show had ended. Trina reported that the baby hippopotamus had learned to swim.

“Here,” I said to Viv, handing her the keys. “Did its mother teach it?”

“Not really. She just led it into the water. The father was off somewhere.”

“Fetching missing schoolbooks,” I said.

And so in a couple of sentences, in less than a minute, I did to Viv what she had done to Claudia; I let the opportunity to tell the truth pass. I lied. I was helping Trina choose her pajamas when it came to me that the glove of the first break-in was not some sinister message, but the result of Ben's inability to hang on to even his few items of clothing.

The next day when I returned from my lunchtime walk, an envelope lay on my desk with the words “Thank you!” written in black marker. I put it at the back of my desk drawer and noted the code for the alarm in my appointment book. Like those householders who hung a picture of Mercury on their doors, I was committing a small crime, I told myself, to prevent a large one.