The concentration it took to navigate the road was almost like meditating, especially after a rainstorm when slides were not just common, they were the norm. I had to let go of everything that was on my mind and pay attention, to be ready for anything. For Mike and me, that short trip up into our canyon was like crossing a moat that kept the events of the world down below from invading the life we shared.
Though the house still felt empty without Mike, I always felt a beautiful surge of well-being whenever I pulled up into our drive.
First chore when I got home, after changing into old jeans and pulling on knee-high Wellies, was feeding the horses. We had three: Duke, Mike’s big gelding; Rover, my sturdy quarter horse; and Red, my neighbor Early’s sorrel. They were all rescued pets. Times were tough, and horses are expensive to maintain, so there were plenty of them around in need of rescue.
Not one of our beasts would win a beauty contest, but they were all loyal, easygoing mounts, and comedians, every one.
We shared the rail-fenced horse enclosure with Early, a co-worker at the network that canceled my show. And we shared horse-tending duties. Because it worked for our schedules, Early usually took the morning shift, and I the later. But Early was out of town for the weekend, so I was doing double duty.
The horses had plenty of room to roam in their half-acre enclosure, but they hadn’t been walked since the rain started on Monday. They were restless and needy and demanding of attention, and generally made pests of themselves while I did my chores.
They had churned their enclosure into a giant, muddy pit. I led the horses out to the little lawn next to their feed and tack shed and left them there while I cleaned up their house.
We kept a little John Deere Gator in the shed. I drove it out, attached a chain drag to the back and leveled out the worst of the holes and mounds in the enclosure so no one would get hurt. More rain was predicted for the week ahead, so I’d be doing this chore regularly for a while yet.
Next I raked muck out of their stalls and raked fresh straw in. With the three of them kibitzing every step of the way, I filled their feeders and drained and refilled the old claw-foot bathtub we used as a trough.
Each horse got hosed off, wiped down, and each got a quick brushing, which they loved. By the time I was finished, they were shiny and proud, and I was a muddy, sopping-wet mess.
No one was around, so I left them pulling up dandelions in the lawn while I stripped off my wet shirt and wiped my arms and face with it. I was just pulling on a clean one I had stashed in the shed when a familiar sleek black Mercedes pulled into my driveway. Smoothing the shirt into the top of my jeans, I walked over to meet Jean-Paul.
“What a nice surprise,” I said, tucking some damp hair behind my ear.
“I should have called,” he said, emerging from his car wearing the same beautiful suit he had worn to the reception. “Forgive me.”
I plucked at my wet, muddy jeans. “If I’d known…”
He laughed softly. “I suppose you don’t get many drop-in guests.”
“Not many, no,” I said. I was too filthy to offer cheeks to kiss or a hand to shake. “So, you were in the neighborhood?”
“You told me how much you enjoyed the wine, and your mother remarked on the pâté,” he said. “There were some-how do I say this delicately-party leftovers. So I thought I might bring some to you.”
He cocked his head and gave me a shy smile. “Since I was in the neighborhood.”
He popped his trunk. I counted three cases of wine and a shrink-wrapped flat with a dozen tins of pâté.
The horses were making a fuss-they wanted to go for a walk. I turned, raised a finger, and told them, “Later.”
But horses don’t understand later. They were clean, they were fed, the sun was still shining, I was home, and they were ready to go for a ramble up into the Santa Monicas, drop-in company or not, right now.
“Oh dear, I have interrupted something,” Jean-Paul said.
“They’re expecting to go up on the trail.”
He looked over my shoulder, where he could see the trail as it came around a bend along a green hillside speckled with flowers. “So beautiful.”
Then he looked down at his suit with the same sort of ill-ease I felt standing there in my filthy Levis and rubber boots. He shrugged and raised both palms in a gesture that meant either too bad or oh damn.
“Maybe another time, I could join you?” he said.
“I hope you do. It’ll be muddy up on the mountain, but so beautiful after the rain.”
He picked up a case of wine and asked where he should take it. I picked up a second case and led the way to the garage.
Mike and I used a cupboard in the garage for wine storage because, with two floors above it and a canyon face abutting the wall behind it, the garage was always about the same temperature as the dungeon of a medieval castle, the room the experts had in mind when they advised storing wine at room temperature.
I punched the code into the electronic lock and the garage door rolled open. Jean-Paul saw Mike’s big F250 pickup truck and his eyes grew wide.
“Beautiful,” he said, running an appreciative hand along the top edge of the truck bed. “You have this for the horses, yes?”
“It’s handy for picking up hay,” I said. “But that truck was my husband’s pride and joy. When he wasn’t driving a police car, he drove that truck.”
“Maybe he wouldn’t mind if we took it for a little drive sometime?”
“He wouldn’t mind at all.”
The garage was full of Mike’s things. There were shelves stacked with boxes marked MIKE. His clothes, some mementoes, old notebooks, his corny country music, much of it on vinyl LPs. I didn’t know what to do with most of it. It seemed morbid to keep his personal things around the house where I would see them and touch them in the course of an ordinary day, so friends had helped me box it and store it down here. Most of it had been important only to Mike and had no real utility. Except his clothes. I had been intending to take his clothes to the VA, but just never could quite bring myself to do it. Silly, hanging on to things someone could make good use of. What would Comrade Dad say?
“Jean-Paul,” I said, as we set the wine cases on a shelf in the cupboard, “if you would like to come for a ride today, I can find you the right clothes.”
I knew he had noticed the boxes. He asked, “Your husband’s?”
“Yes.”
Because he hesitated, I added, “I don’t mind, if you don’t.”
He gave a little toss of the head, smiled, which, because he was French, turned downward.
“Then yes, of course.”
When he was still healthy, Mike was bigger than Jean-Paul. But I found a box with jeans I had bought after his first round of chemo, lifted out a couple of pairs, and handed them to Jean-Paul. Next, out of other boxes, a T-shirt and a sweatshirt.
I looked at his feet. “Mike wore a ten-and-a-half.”
“The trainers I wear at the gym are in my car. Would they offend the horses?”
“Around here, people ride barefoot wearing bikinis.”
“Well then.”
With just an hour of daylight left, we rode up Bulldog Trail, Jean-Paul in front on Duke, and me behind on Rover, leading Red on a line. The first quarter mile of the trail was a grueling uphill slog. Duke kept turning his head, as if trying to get a good look at the man in his saddle. Maybe he smelled Mike’s jeans, or maybe it was simply a new rider, a new weight, and new voice. But Jean-Paul knew how to handle a horse. He talked easily to Duke, used a light hand on the reins except when Duke tested him by suddenly dropping his head to snack on the spring flowers emerging between ruts in the trail. By the time we came out on top where the narrow trail opened onto a broad, flat meadow, Jean-Paul was clearly in charge of his mount and Duke was his happy companion.