Two If by Sea (20 page)

Claudia said, “Is that what you really think?”

Frank said, “Not really.” In a few sentences, against his better judgment and almost against his will, Frank told her about Ian's effect on his mother, and the animals in the hold of the airplane, and about Cedric and Tura's deaths—everything short of how Ian had come into his life.

“Marty said he's a relative of your late wife.”

“Yes, indirectly . . .” They are both human, Frank said to himself.

“What did other people in the family say?”

“Nothing. Not to me,” Frank told her. “I would imagine it's something no one talks about.”

Claudia then sat quietly until Frank pulled the truck into the parking lot at Hilltop. Necklaces of paper lanterns swung like festive plums from poles and eaves at the opening to the converted barn that was now used as a banquet hall. She didn't say a word for so long Frank thought she would simply get out of the truck, get into her own car, and drive away.

When she did speak, it was to say, “I met someone who could do that once before.”

“Was it part of some study?”

“No. I was in college.”

“Where?”

“She lives in North Carolina, not far from where I grew up. We moved to the south when I was twelve. I was born not very far from here, north of Chicago. Then later, my father was a professor of anatomy at Duke. My sisters and I went there. This woman was probably in her thirties then. I thought of her as old. She's probably fifty now.”

“How did you meet her?”

“Well, she was the aunt of a professor of mine. This professor took an interest in me. I was going to medical school, and I was interested in neurology then, the physical part of the mind, and mostly in the vestiges of instinct in human beings. This professor, she took me up there, a few times. I don't want you to get the impression that the woman was some kind of hillbilly mystic . . .”

“I don't think that.”

“Her name was Julia. Julia Madrigal. Isn't that lovely? Everyone knew Mrs. Madrigal. Sounds like ‘magical.' She did a great deal of good. She taught school. There were kids whose parents abused them, and people who hit their wives. There were kids like that guy back at your farm.”

Frank glanced at Ian, who had seen the lanterns, and, impeded by the pockets stuffed with rubber horses, was struggling to get out of his car seat. “Ian, here. You can go ahead and find Aunt Eden.”

Gratefully, Ian said, “Okay.”

They watched him, a small dark hullock moving against the mounds of faraway clouds and hills, disappearing with a bounce into the sweet orange glow of the barn's open bay. They could hear the music, an old Eagles song.

“So, she worked with the parents and those others,” Frank said.

“She didn't need to work with them. She was just with them. The way Ian was with that guy at the barn,” said Claudia.

“Did you want to study her?”

“Of course I did. My professor did, too. But she wouldn't allow that. She told us that she had always been this way, and helped people do the things they should do and that they probably really wanted to do anyhow. She didn't want anyone outside the county to know about it.”

Frank admitted to himself then that this was why he had let the fat, drunken kid go home to his grandfather's farm when he deserved to be in the back of a cruiser on the way to the Sauk County Jail. He admitted that he didn't want to answer questions, to draw even more attention, and his aversion was a wall in front of his common sense. The ranks of those who knew about the Ian effect were swelling, and if people didn't want Ian for their use, then certainly they would want him under their lens.

“Do you want me to talk to Ian?” Claudia said. “At least, you want to know if this troubles him.”

“I don't know,” Frank said. “Do you think it troubles him?”

“Maybe now that he is talking, he could talk about what it's like. That makes people feel better, to talk about what things are like for them.”

“I'll help you and the horse,” Frank said.

“You don't have to. I wouldn't tell anyone about Ian. I'm not like that. I'm offering to talk to him because he's little and you can't help but care about him.”

Frank said, “I think you misunderstand. It's not a quid pro quo. I assumed you wouldn't tell anyone about Ian.” Frank got out and opened Claudia's door. “I'll try to help, although I'm not really at all like my dad.”

“Don't take me on if you really don't want to.”

He put out his arms and Claudia let herself be lifted down. Frank felt a stirring, like a memory, at the spring of the warm flesh under her light coat, and was surprised.

“I do,” he said. “I can try. I've done this with horses way more than people. And not really at your level. My dad was the master. Better than my grandfather, who was a legend. In Australia, I was starting to get good at it, but I'm not at all an Olympic coach . . .”

“You could be.”

“No, I couldn't be, because that would have had to have started a long time ago. You, you still have events to go through . . .”

“Quite a few. I've taken a year off. A second year if I make the national team. I'll be ready if I qualify for Sydney.”

“Sydney? Seriously? They're going to be there again?”

“The summer games. Sydney. Australia.”

No fucking way was he ever going to fucking Sydney. Even if her horse was Pegasus.

“Well, you should find a real coach,” Frank said.

“I have one. He comes up from Chicago. I knew about you from Marty. Then I heard you were coming back, so I spoke to Marty.”

“I can help,” Frank said. “Maybe. I'm reluctant. What I can do is give it a try. Once. If your real coach doesn't mind.”

“When I was twenty-two, I almost got there. But I didn't. I got hurt. The orthopedists said I'd never ride again. So I went to medical school . . .”

“What happened?”

Claudia said, “I broke my neck.”

“Oh. Are you sound now?”

“Yes. I got better. Like how you got hurt, it wasn't glamorous. It was a stupid error. I wouldn't risk ending up paralyzed. This is my last chance.” She lifted her hair off the back of her neck. Frank saw that she was young, and only seemed rather than looked older. She said, “I'm curious. Would you have changed your mind if this hadn't happened?”

“I don't know. I might have. But it goes without saying that I'm grateful. And of course, I'd like you to look at Ian, not formally, but . . .”

“I get it,” said Claudia. “Well, it's been quite a day. Are you going to tell your sister?”

“Maybe someday.”

“Ready for the dance?”

“Sure.”

“But what?”

Frank told her, “I don't know what to do.”

“Anyone can dance,” Claudia said, a smile exploding with dimples and creases.

“I can dance,” Frank said.

“What, then?”

“I meant, I don't know what to do about Ian. Or what to make of my life.”

Claudia said, “If today was a taste of it, I wouldn't either.”

Y
OU'RE GOING TO
have a hard time getting a clean run at that speed,” Frank called out. “I'd rather you ride a careful course and avoid taking a rail, Claudia.”

She laughed. “I like to go fast, and so does Pro.”

Frank sighed. It was an early summer afternoon, sulky with rain to come, his fifth session with Claudia. She was the most stylish rider he'd even seen, astride the prettiest and most ungainly horse. Prospero was a big, red, fancy ten-year-old Hanoverian stallion with a sweet streak. Standing still, he looked like the proverbial million bucks. In motion, none of his legs seemed connected to his body. He was like a horse marionette manipulated by a child. When he cantered, he was all tossing and extra motion, even with a tie-down in place, and he looked so slow that Frank could scarcely believe the times he recorded on his stopwatch. When Prospero approached in that jerky all-over-the-place way, Frank held his breath. Almost every time, he thought Prospero would refuse, and then, instead, he sailed over fairly high verticals with inches to spare, his leap anything but classic—a sort of goat jump with a crazy feint at the end, almost like an air kick. Sometimes, the air kick knocked a rail, but never, not once, dislodged one. Fortunately, the way horses looked when they jumped didn't matter at all in show jumping classes of the kind Claudia would need on her march to the Olympics, an absurd, sweet dream at best. The fastest clear run won. Prospero could jump backward if he went smoothly over all the jumps in the right order. He could make all the noise he wanted, and bang the rails until they shuddered in their cups, so long as he didn't knock them out. Still, watching Claudia's patrician carriage on top of that lumbering creature drove Frank nuts.

Claudia had raised Prospero and trained him, too, with the help of a college coach and then two esteemed professionals. It could have been a murderous combination, like a codependent couple. It was not, but Claudia had an inflated faith in her own flexibility. Now she pulled up and brought Prospero to the center, where Frank stood. She slid off, with one hand automatically soothing the horse's glistening neck.

“Pro is a really tidy horse, Frank,” Claudia argued. “You see how much room he has.”

“Until he bonks a stile . . . that is, a pole.” Frank sometimes caught himself using the quasi-Brit Australian terms. “He's not a tidy horse, Claudia. He's a lummox that can jump like the cow over the moon.”

“But those are just touches. I think I can go for the time and trust him not to take any rails. If I don't win this class, I won't even get near the Olympic trials. I have to take chances.”

“I'm not saying that you shouldn't take chances later. Later, you will have to take chances. Today, right now, I would rather you be conservative, Claudia.”

“Conservative? I am being conservative.”

“It's a hot day. Go slower. You said you would do what I say. I thought you'd agreed to do what I say?”

“I am doing what you say,” Claudia insisted. “And you said you're not a real coach.” Frank realized that it wouldn't have occurred to Claudia that she refused on principle to do anything that wasn't her own idea. Woe betide the man who married this woman. Maybe she was already married, for all Frank knew. Maybe she left her husband in a closet when she went to work, like a broom. Maybe she wasn't even into marriage . . . or men, for that matter.

“Frank?” Claudia said. “Frank!”

“What?” He blushed, having been caught imagining Claudia brandishing a riding crop over the prostrate form of a woman wearing only thigh-high leather boots. He laughed and said, “You're going to take him all out no matter what I tell you.”

“I'll try to pull up a little.”

“Good. But really try. A class like the Mistingay is your perfect event. We don't know the order, but you're already coming in under the qualifying time for the final three . . .”

Ian squeezed through the fence and came running, skinning past Prospero's back legs to rub his belly. Claudia had to visibly stop herself from calling out for Ian to look out. He was so little, these horses so big and excitable. Since the night of Edie's wedding, “the Ian effect” had not been much in evidence. Many children were deft around animals. Frank saw Claudia watching Ian, and imagined her thinking, Am I seeing anything extraordinary? He didn't discuss it with her. Claudia, he decided, would have to speak first.

“Helmet,” Claudia said to Ian, and Ian zoomed off again, returning with his riding helmet, the size of a melon on his little head. As Frank and Claudia discussed strategy for the Mistingay Medley, a very formal, old A-level event in Chicago sponsored by some soft-drink heiress, Ian set up his mounting stool, scaled Prospero like a tree, settled on the smaller, flatter jumps saddle, and began circling the ring in a posting trot. Patient and sedate by nature, Prospero responded sweetly, but the big stallion must have felt as though he was being ridden by a talking monkey. Frank had taught Ian to hold the reins properly, but the horse's ears seemed to flick in response to Ian's cheerful monologue—
Do you like hotdogs, Pro? You would if you tried them. Do you like chocolate, Pro? Do you like chocolate cake best of all? Do you like crisps? You would if you tried them. But they'd make you fat, I bet. I like crisps. They don't make me fat because I can fly. Can you fly? I know you can. I saw you fly!
If Prospero had been a cat, he would have purred. Even Claudia didn't soothe her mount so easefully.

“Look at him,” Claudia said. “He's three. I rode a pony when I was three. Not very well either.”

“I absolutely could not ride like that when I was three, or ten, and I grew up on a horse farm.” Breezily, Ian urged Prospero into a slow canter, which worried Frank a little because Ian's legs were so short that he used the saddle straps as makeshift stirrups. Ian needed his own saddle. Frank would make the call tomorrow. He also should get Ian his own horse. He would make that call today. Glory Bee was more than eighteen hands tall—not that a fall off a short horse was any more or less hard on a child than a fall off a tall horse. Most often, Ian rode with Frank's own childhood saddle. It was functional, but still too big. Frank had used it from age eight to about twelve, before he got an adult saddle, but after he switched over from riding bareback with a rope halter. Though he ate more than Frank—ate more in fact, not pound for pound—Ian still weighed about as much as an armful of thistles.

Claudia said suddenly, “Do you think he can do this because he's telling the horses how to be good?”

Frank waited to see if Claudia would say more. When she didn't, he answered, “I think he's a natural rider. Maybe he had some experience with horses before. The Ian effect probably helps, though.”