The Horsewoman (18 page)

I WAS IN THE RING
with Daniel in the late afternoon, just having schooled one of Grandmother’s new horses, when we saw Gus Bennett’s trailer pull up the driveway.

Mom walked toward us, announcing, “I’m moving Coronado over to Gus’s.”

Just like that.

“Wait,” I said. “Can we at least talk about this?”

“You’re right about something,” she said to me. “We’ve done enough talking for one day.”

She turned to Daniel.

“Gus is my trainer now,” she said. “You’re with Becky. I was angry before. But no hard feelings. If you don’t want me, I don’t want you.”

Daniel didn’t react except to offer his help. Mom said they could handle it themselves. About half an hour later, we watched the trailer pull away.

“Wasn’t I winning a Grand Prix on that horse about twenty minutes ago?” I said.

“Less,” he said.

“But now there he goes.”

Daniel and I had dinner that night at the Trophy Room. We talked over my mom’s suggestion from every possible angle, some I hadn’t even considered.

“I’m right,” he said. “And so is your mother. In this case, you must trust both of us.”

Now I was back from dinner, stopping in the kitchen to pour myself a white wine, hoping it might settle my nerves. And my brain. Still royally pissed off at my mother, as hard as she was trying to clean things up now. As much smoke as she was blowing at me.

If it was smoke, that is.

You hate to lose,
Daniel had said over dinner. He was right. For all my newfound love of riding, how much did I want to win my way to the Olympics?

Maybe that was the real question, whatever Mom and Daniel thought: was Mom’s dream now mine, too?

I drank some wine, starting to think that maybe I should have brought the bottle.

I heard a car in the driveway, then got up and parted my curtains and saw it was Mom’s, finally back from Gus’s. Briefly wondered if more than horse business had been going on over there. Left my glass and walked downstairs after I heard her close the front door.

“Everything okay with Coronado’s new digs?” I asked.

She put a finger to her lips, motioned me to follow her into the kitchen.

“It was kind of crazy,” Mom said, “seeing him in a stall at Gus’s barn.”

“The universe is crazy,” I said. “You don’t even have to leave our house to know that.”

“We’ll get through this,” she said.

“Can I ask you one more question before you head up?”

“Please don’t make it a hard one,” she said. “It’s like we say about a horse that needs a cool-down, I feel like I’ve been rode hard and put away wet.”

“Why do you really want me to do this on Sky?”

She didn’t hesitate.

“Because in my heart I think it’s the best thing for you,” she said. “And I only want the best for you, even if you don’t believe that right now.”

“Best for me,” I said. “Or for you?”

If she was insulted, she didn’t show it. Instead she smiled.

“I can see how you might think that way,” she said. “But all I keep thinking about is how unbelievable it would be if we both made it to Paris, on the same team.”

Before I could answer, she said, “I assume you spoke more to Daniel at dinner.”

“He’s all in,” I said. “Actually said a lot of the same things you did.”

She looked very happy all of a sudden, as happy as she had been in days, like we’d been in an airplane and the clouds had parted and we’d finally cleared some turbulence. As if the worst was suddenly over.

“So you’re going to do it then,” she said.

“Not a chance in hell,” I said.

SIX O’CLOCK SATURDAY
night at the Winter Equestrian Festival, parking lots overflowing, the Fidelity Investments 5-Star Grand Prix set to start in an hour or so.

I was already in the field, having prequalified by winning a Grand Prix on Coronado, even though I was riding Sky tonight. Mom was riding Coronado. She’d qualified, barely, in her first competition since the accident. She’d gotten two rails, both early, managed to pull it together, just enough, over the second half of the course. Forty riders had made it. One more rail and she wouldn’t have been one of them. But she was here. It meant she was back.

Daniel and I were on our way up from the barn to walk the course.

“You don’t have to decide tonight,” he said.

“I know I don’t
have
to,” I said. “But I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to give it this one shot. That’s as much as I’m opening the door.”

“Or,” he said, grinning, “you could go out there tonight and kick the door in.”

“You’ve always told me to ride my horse like I belong,” I said. “I’ll know by the end of tonight if Sky and I belong.”

“At least you’ve stopped saying no.”

“Not saying yes, either.”

“Obstinada,”
he said.

Not the first time I’d heard that one.

Stubborn Becky McCabe. Obstinate Becky.

Or just Becky.

This would be the biggest event I’d ever had with my horse in this arena, this big a purse, this strong a field. I hadn’t been bullshitting Daniel. I hadn’t changed my mind on the Olympics. But after days of persuasion, I had promised him that I would at least try to keep an open mind. I’d told Mom and Grandmother the same. And then asked all of them to please drop the subject until after the Grand Prix.

Mom and Gus happened to arrive at the arena at the same time Daniel and I did. They were getting ready to walk the course, too. Gus, of course, riding his motorized wheelchair, bright yellow and black, thick, all-terrain tires rolling through the deep and soft dirt.
Everybody
could see Gus Bennett in that statement chair.
I’m here. Now what?

Move along fast, or be prepared to get the hell out of his way or get run over.

“Hey,” I said to Mom.

“Hey yourself,” she said.

Over the past few days, Mom had spent most of her time at Gus’s. I jokingly asked if they were finally dating, and she’d said, “I think of it more as boot camp. What he doesn’t say to me in the ring, he says at dinner.”

“Good luck,” I said to her now, as we all started out on the course, Gus leading the way.

“Same,” she said.

I thought: I could just as easily have been talking with Matthew or Jennifer or Tess or Georgina or any of the other heavy hitters in our sport. She hadn’t known I was definitely entering the event until Friday, and only then because Daniel had told her.

She was going eighth in the order. In the past, she’d absolutely hated going early. When I mentioned that to Daniel he told me to focus on
my
place in the order—thirty-fourth—and not hers.

“You’re riding your horse tonight,” he said. “Not hers.”

When we finished walking, I saw Steve Gorton up above us, as if the master of all he surveyed, leaning against a railing above the in-gate. Drink in one hand. Phone in the other. I knew he saw me. But he just looked away. Whatever. He was Mom’s concern now. Her problem. Not mine.

Emilio wouldn’t be taking the walk with Sky until the class had started. For now, Daniel and I made our way up through the bleachers to my usual perch: back row, corner.

“What do you expect from her, really?” I said when we got up there.

“Your mom or Sky?”

“You know who I mean.”

“Seriously, I expect very little,” he said. “But perhaps she will surprise us.”

“She’s world class at surprises lately,” I said. “Now we’re going to find out if she can still ride.”

She then proceeded to ride like crap.

Not the horse’s fault.

Hers.

She got too close to the third jump, on a terrible distance, and Coronado hit the rail so hard with his front legs that the sound was like a gunshot, even as far away from them as Daniel and I were.

“Don’t give up,” I said.

It was what she’d yell to me sometimes when I’d catch an early rail, and she’d see my shoulders slump. Or my whole body. I looked down and saw Gus, usually the loudest trainer out there, sitting silent in his chair near the in-gate.

“She is way too forward on the horse,” Daniel said quietly. “If he ever stops short, she will go flying right over his head.”

Two jumps later, another bad distance, another rail.

“Her brain is going faster than her horse,” Daniel said.

We were both leaning forward, watching her blow through another rail as she started the second half of the course.

Finally, second-to-last jump, Coronado refused. We could hear the loud, collective groans and gasps from the crowd. I could see the slump in
her
as she circled the horse. The death moment for any rider. The death move. She brought him around and this time he made the jump. They were done. Mercifully. I was vaguely aware of the announcer listing the faults and time faults. In the moment it sounded as long as a grocery list.

She walked Coronado slowly back toward the in-gate, her head down. As she did, Daniel said we should get down there.

“Not sure I want to talk to her right now,” I said.

“No,” he said, “I meant, Emilio is on his way with Sky.”

As we passed underneath the stands, I could see Grandmother and Steve Gorton locked in heated conversation. When Grandmother laid a hand on his arm, Gorton jerked it away, nearly toppling her balance. Then he was moving away from her and down the stairs as if he’d been shot out of a cannon.

I wished that Gus were right here, right now, but he was making his way toward the ring, slowly this time, navigating high-volume horse traffic with the wheelchair. Gorton was about to follow Gus when I managed to cut in front of him, nearly knocking him off balance.

“Hey,” Gorton said.

“I got this,” I said.

“Who do you think you’re talking to?”

“Somebody I used to work for.”

“There’re some things I need to say to your mother,” he said.

“Get in line,” I said.

THERE WERE SO MANY
horses in the ring, so much of the round incomplete, I couldn’t spot her at first.

Then I saw her crouched in a far corner, taking deep breaths, her shoulders rising and falling, as Emilio passed behind her with Sky.

“I need to get down there,” Gus said.

“Me first,” I said.

“I’m the one training her now,” he said.

“I’m her daughter.”

I made my way along the outside of the ring and when I reached her I hopped the fence. She didn’t see me at first.

“Hey,” I said.

She looked up, as if startled. There were red blotches on her cheeks. Eyes a mess. She’d already taken off her hairnet and laid her helmet on the ground next to her.

“I just embarrassed myself out there in front of the whole world,” she said.

I waited.

“I can’t do this,” she said. “I was crazy to think I still
could
do this.” I wasn’t worried about her crying, not here, in front of everybody. She looked more like she wanted to fight somebody. Maybe herself.

Finally she said, “You want the horse back, he’s yours.”

She pulled herself to her feet.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” she said finally.

“Yeah,” I said. “Suck it up.”

IT WAS MORE THAN
a year since I’d been in this ring with Sky. It had been a much smaller event, on a Wednesday afternoon. But I’d never been with her under the lights on a Saturday night. Never even considered it until now.

I kept telling Daniel that I needed to see how Sky could handle the stage. But the truth was, I wanted to see how
I
could handle the stage, riding her now and not Coronado.

I wasn’t even going to start the Olympics process if I didn’t think we were both up to it. She’d always been my wonderful little horse. My baby. But now, maybe for one night only, we were about to dial things up. And, being competitive as hell, I wanted to do well tonight. Maybe even shock the crowd and the rest of the field and win. But I promised myself from the first time Sky and I had started showing that I’d never make her do something that I honestly thought she couldn’t.

Daniel and Emilio were with me in the gate. My mouth was suddenly as dry as the dirt on my boots. I could feel my hands shaking. Good nerves? Bad nerves? Who the hell knew, except that the horse ahead of us in the order had just finished its round. I took in the lights and the noise and the crowd and the atmosphere and even the excitement in the air, everything Daniel Ortega called “the moment.”

Of truth, maybe.

Eric Glynn came past me on his horse, Valance, having just gone double clean.

Time.

I knew I was being introduced, heard my name, nothing after that. Trying to block out the noise, trying not to think too hard on the moment.

Truth or dare.

We took the first part of the course like breezing through low-height jumps in a side ring on a weekday afternoon.
I love this horse,
I thought. I could always feel how hard she was trying, how she wanted to do well. Tonight she was even more dialed in, almost as if she knew how much was riding on this, for both of us.

Don’t tell me horses don’t know.

Not thinking about the Olympics now. Just riding my horse. We were here. We might as well go for it.

We came up on the first rollback. Sky was usually great on even the tightest rollbacks, maybe because she
was
small, and closer to the ground than a horse as big as Coronado. Sometimes the hardest turns for the bigger horses were the easiest ones for her.

But I didn’t rein her in enough, and she was suddenly drifting too far outside on an inside turn, Sky leaning so far to the left that I was afraid that we might go around the jump and not over it.

Pilot error.

Totally.

Sky nearly saved me. Tried her hardest to save me. Chipped up in time. Just not enough time. Took down the rail with one of her hind legs.

Shit.

I heard my voice inside my head:
Don’t give up.

Still good advice.

We came back around. Sky was still flying. Hit a combination like a champ. Forget about a ribbon. No reason not to finish strong. Maybe prove to me we did belong.

Then it happened, three jumps from the end. Nothing tricky, nothing complicated. Nothing fancy. Seven strides from the last jump to this one. Wide-open spaces.

But I misjudged the distance. Not by a lot. Just enough. Sky landed her last stride fine. But we were too far away from the jump. Not impossible to still
make
the jump. Just more difficult than it should have been.

“Come on!”

She tried again. She did. Tried to take one last small stride to get herself close enough. A horse with less heart would simply have refused. Either stopped or circled.

Sky tried her ass off.

Chipped up again.

Too late.

We were just too close, way too close, when she finally did elevate.

Then she didn’t just take down one rail.

She crashed through the jump and took down all of them.