Her eyes were red and puffy and her hair not as fresh and bouncy as it should have been, but I thought I saw signs of recovery in her smooth breathing and relaxed shoulders.
“Have you always known what you want, Aunt G?”
I laughed. “You mean you haven’t noticed my erratic migration patterns? Anyway, times are different now. When I got out of college, the options were few. Women became either teachers or nurses, until they got married. I didn’t really want to do that—be a housewife—mostly because my own mother didn’t make that life look very good. But I was ready to follow the rules, until … well, you know about Al.”
MC nodded and gave me a wide-eyed look. “How could I have forgotten? How hard that must have been. Here I am whining about Jake, and you lost your fiancé right before your wedding.”
I didn’t believe in that kind of comparison, but I let MC think about it, hoping it would give her perspective.
“You probably don’t want to handle the loss the way I did,” I said. “Move away, hole up, in many ways avoid the problem.”
“If Al hadn’t died, you might have stayed in Revere all your life, had three kids, like my mother. I’m sure she’s never looked back.”
Poor MC, I thought, if she’s trying to reproduce her parents’ relationship. I couldn’t contradict her notion that Rose and Frank Galigani had the perfect marriage and every intention of keeping it that way.
“And nothing would have been wrong with my remaining in Revere with a husband and three children, either. It’s not what you do, it’s whether you have the sense of contributing to life in some way … well, now I really am going off, aren’t I?”
“I hear you though. It’s just that I did so many things wrong with Jake. I let him get away with so much when we lived together. Then, just as we were finally starting to get it right … he’s gone.”
I didn’t want to tell her what I’d learned from Matt about DVR—domestic violence recidivism. An abuser seldom gets converted, he’d told me. If he stops, it’s usually because he’s gotten beat up himself and is no longer strong enough to batter someone else.
I noticed for the first time a photo of Jake Powers in a frame on MC’s end table. He was astride a spotted gray horse, the deceased Spartan Q, I presumed. Jake sat erect, a high white collar that could have been a scarf or a turtleneck jersey keeping his head straight and his neck rigid. I wondered if Jake had as many horse-related tchotchkes as Lorna, or if collecting symbols of your interest—like my large assortment of science-related pins—was a female thing. I fingered the pin I wore today, a square representation of an integrated circuit, bought from an on-line computer club.
MC had followed my gaze to Jake’s photo. She put down her mug and picked up the photo, holding it in both hands. “I found this in a box I hadn’t unpacked. Jake was so happy when he was riding. And competing—he loved winning. He loved Spartan Q, his jumper, and Werner, his dressage horse. He gave them only the best treats, home-baked cookies he bought from a friend who had a side business. No store-bought generics for Spartan Q or Werner.”
MC talked more about Jake, and I let her show me a video of dressage. I had no interest in a competition with prancing horses, but at that moment I would even have watched slapstick comedy, which I hated, if MC wanted me to.
MC scanned through to a prize-winning performance by Jake and the dark brown Werner. She narrated the moves for me. Canter pirouette right, extended trot, zigzag half-pass, and a gentle tap dance called a piaffe. Or it might have been pilaf.
Knowing I’d never be tested on the information, I concentrated instead on the peripherals. The ring, or corral, or whatever the fenced-in area was called, was draped in the banners of advertising sponsors. I checked off the obvious ads for saddles, insurance, riding apparel. But a beef restaurant? Would these equestrians who treated their horses like crown princes really have dinner later at the expense of a cow?
I also tried to apply a bit of basic physics, calculating the tension in each very skinny leg of a horse weighing about fifteen hundred pounds.
MC’s video camera lingered on the score chart, presumably to show Jake Powers and Werner in first place, with 76.525 percent.
MC laughed and held up her hand. “Don’t say it, Aunt G. I know what you’re thinking.”
But I had to say it. “Three significant decimal places! It looks like a freshman lab report.”
MC stopped the tape. “Okay, that’s it. Thanks for being a good sport, Aunt G. I feel a lot better.”
“I know it doesn’t seem so now, MC, but you’ll meet someone you won’t have to work so hard with.”