Harvesting the Heart Read online

  The next day I watched, wide-eyed, as judging went on in three rings at once. Men and women competed together, one of the few sports where they were equal. My mother's class was Four Foot Working Hunter, the highest show class. She seemed to know everyone there. "I'm going to change," she said, and when she returned, she was wearing tan britches, tall polished boots, a high-necked white blouse, and a blue wool blazer. She had jammed her hair into fifteen little barrettes all around her head, and she asked me to hold a mirror while she stuffed her helmet on over them. "Points off," she told me, "if any hair is sticking out."

  There were twenty-one horses in her class, the last event of the day. She was the third rider up. While Donegal pranced around the warm-up ring, I watched from the bleachers, keeping an eye on the man jumping the largest stallion I'd ever seen, over fences that were nearly as tall as me. My mother's number was forty-six, tied on her back on a crinkled piece of yellowed card. She smiled at the man who had finished the course, passing him on her way in.

  The judge sat off to the side. I tried to make out what he was writing, but it was impossible at this distance. Instead I concentrated on my mother. It took only seconds. I watched Donegal come down the final line on the outside of the ring. As he reared up, his front legs were tight, his knees were high. He didn't take the jump long or chip it; it was right in stride. I saw my mother sit back, holding Donegal slow until the next jump rose in front of them, and then she pulled into her half-seat, chin high, eyes burning straight ahead. It was only when they finished the course that I realized I had been holding my breath.

  The woman sitting beside me had on a copper-colored polka-dotted dress and a wide-brimmed white straw hat, as if she'd been expecting Ascot. She held a program, and on the back she was writing the numbers of the riders she believed would win. "I don't know," she murmured to herself. "I think the first man was much better."

  I turned to her, angry. "You've got to be joking," I said. "His horse took every jump long." The woman sniffed and tapped her pencil against her chin. "I'll give you five dollars if forty-six doesn't beat that guy," I said, pulling a fold of cash from my back pocket.

  The woman stared at me, and for a moment I wondered if this was illegal, but then a smile spread across her onion features and she held out a gloved hand. "You're on," she said.

  Nobody else in the class was as good as my mother on Donegal. Several of the horses ducked out at the jumps, or dumped their riders and were disqualified. When the results were announced, the blue ribbon went to number forty-six. I stood up in the bleachers and cheered, and my mother twisted her head around to look at me. She jogged the horse back into the ring so Donegal could be judged sound, then fixed her blue ribbon on the loop of Donegal's bridle. The woman beside me sniffed loudly and held out a crisp five-dollar bill. "One thirty-one was better," she insisted.

  I took the money from her palm. "Maybe," I said, "but forty-six is my mother."

  At my mother's suggestion, we celebrated the end of summer by camping out in the backyard. I didn't think I would like it. I figured the ground would be lumpy and I'd be worried about ants crawling up my neck and into my ears. But my mother found two old sleeping bags the owners of Pegasus had used in Alaska, and we stretched out on them in the field where my mother rode Donegal. We watched for falling stars.

  It had been unbearably hot in August, and I had become used to seeing blisters on the backs of my hands and my neck--the parts that were exposed to sun all the time. "You're a country girl, Paige," my mother said, reaching her arms up behind her head. "You wouldn't have lasted this long if you weren't."

  There were things to be said about North Carolina. It was nice to see the sinking sun cool itself against the face of a mountain instead of the domes of Harvard; there was no pavement to breathe beneath your feet. But sometimes I felt so secluded that I stopped to listen, to make sure I could hear my pulse over the singing black flies and the rumble of hoofbeats.

  My mother rolled toward me, propping herself on an elbow. "Tell me about Patrick," she said.

  I looked away. I could tell her what my father had looked like or that he hadn't wanted me to search for her, but either one would hurt. "He's still building pipe dreams in the basement," I said. "A couple have actually sold." My mother held her breath, waiting. "His hair is gray now, but he hasn't really lost any of it."

  "It's still there, isn't it? That look in his eyes?"

  I knew what she meant: it was this glow that came over my father when he saw a masterpiece even though he was looking at a concoction of spit and glue. "It's still there," I said, and my mother smiled.

  "I think that's what made me fall for him," she said, "that and the way he promised to show me Ireland." She rolled onto her back and closed her eyes. "And what does he think of the fine Dr. Prescott?"

  "He's never met him," I blurted, cursing myself for making such a stupid mistake. I decided to tell her a half-truth. "I've just barely kept in touch with Dad. I ran away from Chicago when I graduated from high school."

  My mother frowned. "That doesn't sound like Patrick. Patrick only wanted you to go to college. You were going to be the first Irish Catholic woman President."

  "It wasn't college," I told her. "I was planning on going to the Rhode Island School of Design, but something else came up." I held my breath, but she did not pressure me. "Mom," I said, eager to change the subject, "what about that rodeo guy?"

  She laughed. "That rodeo guy was Wolliston Waters, and we ran around together with the money we stole from the Wild West show. I slept with him a couple of times, but only to remember what it was like to feel another person next to me. It wasn't love, you know; it was sex. You've probably seen the difference." I turned away, and my mother touched my shoulder. "Oh, come on, now. There had to be a high school guy who broke your heart."

  "No," I said, avoiding her eyes. "I didn't date."

  My mother shrugged. "Well, the point is I never got over your father. Never really wanted to. Wolliston and I, well, more than anything we were in business together. Until one morning I woke up and he'd taken all our cash and savings, plus the toaster oven and even the stereo. Just disappeared, like that."

  I rolled onto my back and remembered Eddie Savoy. "People don't just disappear," I told her. "You of all people should know that."

  Overhead, stars shifted and winked against the dark night sky. I opened my eyes wide and tried to see the other galaxies that hid at the edges of ours. "There was nobody else?" I asked.

  "No one worth mentioning," my mother said.

  I looked at her. "Don't you--you know--miss it?"

  My mother shrugged. "I have Donegal."

  I smiled into the darkness. "That's not really the same," I said. My mother frowned, as if she was thinking about this. "You're right; it's more fulfilling. See, I'm the one who trained him, so I'm the one who can take credit for whatever Donegal does. With a horse I've made a name for myself. With a husband I was nobody." Barely moving a muscle, my mother covered my hand with her own. "Tell me what Nicholas is like," she said.

  I sighed and tried to do with words what I would ordinarily do a sketch. "He's very tall, and he has hair as dark as Donegal's mane. His eyes are the same color as yours and mine--" "No, no, no," my mother interrupted. "Tell me what Nicholas is like."

  I closed my eyes, but nothing came clearly to mind. I seemed to be seeing my life with him through shadows, and even after eight years I could barely hear the patterns of his voice or feel the touch of his hands on me. I tried to picture those hands, their long, surgeon's fingers, but couldn't even imagine them holding the base of a stethoscope. I felt a hollow pit in the base of my chest, where I knew these memories should be, but it was as if I had married someone a long time ago and hadn't kept contact since. "I really don't know what Nicholas is like," I said. I could feel my mother's eyes on me, so I tried to explain. "He's just a different man these days; he works ex-tremely hard, and that's important, you know, but because of that I n't get to see him all that