Authors: Barbara Kay
“Start by telling me I still have a chance with you.”
Nathalie’s eyes welled up. “Oh Polo, when did you ever
not
have a chance with me?”
“Nath, I know what it is you came to tell me. It’s a story from the past that I should have figured out, but I didn’t want to know. So go ahead. It’s time we put the secrets from the past on the table.”
Nathalie looked shocked and a little fearful. “But you couldn’t possibly know what I was going to tell you. Clarice and I only talked about it for the first time last night. No one else knows.”
Polo remembered riding the bombproof ponies stables prudently provided for beginner clients. He was too good for them by his second lesson, and he would pound his heels furiously into their big, furry bellies to make them break out of a walk. But they were on automatic pilot, no matter what you did. They didn’t even feel your heels drumming away. Clip. Clop. Clip. Clop. This was his brain at this moment, a bombproof pony.
“What are you talking about, Nath? Why would you want to discuss your abortion with Clarice Jacobson?”
Nathalie stared at him as though he were deranged. The colour drained out of her face, and her lips fell apart. Polo’s pulse raced.
“That wasn’t what I was going to tell you,” she whispered. “I mean, not today. Not until I knew whether–Never mind. It was something else I was going to tell you. About you.
About you
. Not about me. Who told you about the abortion? How did you know?”
Clip. Clop. Clip. Clop. Giddyup. Giddyup. The English word–giddy–that’s a good word. My brain is plodding and my heart is galloping. I think I need to get out of here.
“Will you take a walk with me, Nath?” He glanced around the condo. The walls of the tiny space seemed to press inward. “I think I need some fresh air.”
* * *
“It’s so beautiful here, Polo.” They were standing on top of a hill with views of the cross–country course and steeplechase. “Didn’t you ever consider the Townships when you were looking for land?”
“It is beautiful. I love it here. But I think I didn’t want to be too near Roch’s turf. It’s hard to maintain a friendship when you’re competing for slim pickings. And St. Lazare is closer to the airport.”
“Should we sit for a while, Polo? You look a little–you don’t look well, you know.”
They settled down on a flat rock and looked out in silence for a few minutes. Polo took off his glasses and rubbed his face and eyes. “I’m whacked, Nath. It’s not the flu or anything. It’s all mental. Overload. I’ve been telling you about it for an hour, and I don’t even know if I got in half the details. There was so much. I thought I was doing okay yesterday up to dinner, but then there was the fight with Roch, then the gelding, and hitting Jocelyne, and then Guy…”
“Polo, I’m sorrier than I can say that you found out that way.”
“Why didn’t you tell me when it happened?” His throat closed over the words.
“
Comment
?”
“Why”–he cleared his throat and breathed deep. “Why didn’t you tell me back then?”
Nathalie reached for a stick and picked at the earth in front of the rock. “You know why,” she said softly.
“Tell me anyway.”
“If I’d gone on with the pregnancy, you would have left me. The next best scenario was to tell you I was pregnant but was thinking of an abortion, and have you immediately try to talk me out of it. But that wasn’t going to happen. That was the problem. I knew you’d agree to it, encourage me. Then I’d not only hate myself, I’d hate you too. This way”–
“I wouldn’t have left you if you decided to have the baby.”
“Not right away, maybe. But you know it would have killed us as a couple. You were afraid. What child needs a father who feels trapped and shows it? Sooner or later we would have split, and I didn’t want a child under those circumstances.”
“I should have been with you when you went for it, at least. You shouldn’t have had to go through it alone.”
“I was ashamed of what I was doing. Having you with me would have made it worse–the shame. It wasn’t as if it was a rape, or a deformed fetus, or that I was too poor. It was a healthy, viable pregnancy. What kind of relationship could we have had after that if you’d shared in the planning and–execution…? Sooner or later, it would have come between us. This way I didn’t have to resent you. I made the decision myself, and I have only myself to blame.
“Why do you think I was so patient for so long about starting a family? It was important to me that the next time, you really want it to happen. I could never go through that again, me wanting it, you sucking back. Anyway for years I didn’t feel I deserved another chance. When I did feel I deserved one, I realized that the other part–you wanting it–just wasn’t happening, likely never would.”
Polo studied his thumbs, which were cleaning his glasses with the edge of his shirt. Nathalie made little random pokes at the ground with her stick.
“So”–he cleared his throat after a long minute’s silence–“even though I didn’t know about the abortion, you had it for me. I as good as made you do it.”
“No.”
“Yes. You were like a soldier who knows what the campaign strategy is without having to ask. You did the triage. You chose me over that baby.”
Nathalie’s voice was thick with anguish. “Don’t do this, Polo. I can’t bear it. I loved you so much. I knew I would lose you. I was young. I didn’t realize–I thought I could walk away from it and forget and we’d start again”–
“It’s kind of funny, you know. You should have seen me last night, so pompous and righteous and rational, telling Guy he was damaged goods, lecturing him all about the slippery slope, and then, when he very reasonably pointed out that I was a killer myself, I went ballistic. I’m no better than he is–where human beings are concerned, anyway.”
“You are
not
a killer.”
“I am in spirit. If I were the kind of man I should have been, if I were the kind of man you knew would take his responsibilities seriously–a man, in other words, not a cowardly boy, you wouldn’t have felt you had to do that to keep me.”
Nathalie was now stabbing hard at the ground. A little crater was forming between her feet. “Do you hate me for it, Polo?”
“
Hate
you?” he echoed in wonder. “I could never hate you, Nath. You’re the only woman I ever met I could picture waking up with every day for the rest of my life.”
He too had been gazing out at the landscape, but now he turned to look at her profile. Really look. She had dropped the stick and was hugging her knees and staring blindly at the rock face of Saint Armand. Polo had known her face in all its subtle variations since she was a nine–year old girl. Now he saw fine lines around her eyes he hadn’t noticed before as she squinted into the late morning sun. She had never seemed more desirable to him. What smote him, though, was her expression. Not sad. It was way beyond sad. She looked–bereft. And–he ached with shame–so alone in her grief. The solitude of her long sorrow tipped his full heart to overflowing for her. He hadn’t touched her once since she arrived, but now his arms reached out and pulled her to him.
“I love you, Nath. More than I can say. I would give anything to have known then what I know today.” She moaned and buried her face in his shoulder, and he felt the sobs begin. “Dearest girl,” he murmured, “I want to tell you something important, okay?” He bent to kiss her hair, and confided to its lemony fragrance, “I have it in me to be a good father. That’s what I found out this weekend. And I want that before it’s too late. I want us to have a child. Children. When I thought you weren’t coming back, and I had missed all these years of us being a real family, and I was going to end up alone, a failure, a nobody, I got very, very scared. I can’t bring back the years. I can’t undo our mistake. I can’t promise I’ll be the greatest husband and father of all time. I can only promise I’ll be there a hundred per cent, giving it my best shot. Nath, I’ve only ever been half there for you, and you’ve always known it. I may not be the man you deserve, but from now on I can give you the best of what I am. If you’ll let me.”
He pulled her closer, tighter, ignoring the pain in his ribs. She was weeping with complete abandon now, in great, racking, noisy convulsions, and he didn’t have the slightest impulse to run away. It was the complete opposite. He only wanted to comfort and protect her. He pulled her on to his lap and folded her into the hollow of his body. He sheltered her in his arms, and rocked her like a child. He stroked her hair. He purled soft nursery noises into her ear to soothe her. He found her hand and caressed the bitten–down nails. Tenderly he kissed her salty wet cheeks and eyelids, over and over again.
And in this way, oblivious to everything else, he attended her passage through the storm. He would have been her safe harbour all day if he had to. At some point as he waited, the heavy cloud in his brain dissipated, and he began to feel physically well and strong. Mentally he felt–at peace? Yes, and that was good, but he distinguished another sensation too–something unfamiliar, unanticipated, but glorious, actually. He felt–normal…
Hands linked, they walked slowly back to the condo. Polo was thinking about what a lucky man he was, when suddenly he thought of Guy, alone in that isolated house, and he remembered those mournful eyes staring into his. He tried to shake the image off–he wanted to wallow in the unalloyed pleasure of his own windfall, but–
“Nath, I can’t get Guy out of my mind.”
“You’re still angry at him. That’s natural”–
“No. It’s not that. I’m actually a little–Nath, I can’t remember–I mean, I remember I went for him when he said–you know–about me being a killer too, but that’s all. I seem to remember leaving the house without doing anything to him, but not the drive home. The next thing I remember is checking Gilles back at the condo–crazy–to see if he was, like, breathing, and I’m wondering”–
“You think you may have gone back and hit Guy? Hurt him and then blocked it out?”
“I–it’s weird–I just can’t remember. I was out of my mind with rage…”
“You would have. Remembered, I mean. You probably just don’t want to think about what he said.”
“Yeah…”
They walked on.
“He’s the saddest, loneliest guy I ever met,
chérie
.”
“There are a lot of lonely people in the world,” she said softly, and laced her fingers with his, squeezing tight.
“Not like him, Nath. He’s…human wreckage…a lost soul.”
Nathalie sat beside Polo on the sofa, as Clarice had done with her, and she laid the photograph gently on the coffee table in front of him. She expected to wait a full minute for his reaction. But Polo leaned over to see it closely and knew instantly.
“This isn’t me,” he said flatly. “It looks like me–but it isn’t. Who is it?”
“How did you know so fast? He looks exactly like you.”
“I never sat on that pony.”
“Turn it over.”
Polo read the inscription, and now it took a little more time.
Clip. Clop. Clip. Clop.
Then he turned it back to the picture and took a good look at the older boy. Morrie. Then back to the other side.
Clipclop. Clipclop.Clipclop
.
“Morrie’s brother.”
“Yes. He died young. In Poland. Morrie had thought he would bring him over here one day, but it never happened.”
clipclopclipclopclipclop
“I was the pretend brother. The knock–off.”
“Yes. He always meant to tell you, but he was afraid you’d hate him for it.”
“Me? Hate Morrie?”
“Well, it’s a serious thing he did. He–kind of bought you from your parents, didn’t he?”
Polo smiled wryly after he considered what she had said for a moment. Then he said, “Let me tell you a joke.”
“A Morrie joke?”
“Yeah. I’ll give you the short version. ‘Okay, so this St Urbain type, this crude street guy asks this very proper Westmount lady, would you sleep with me just once for a million bucks? And she hesitates and says, well, a million dollars, I could buy a lot with a million dollars, so yes, I guess I would sleep with you once for a million dollars. So then the guy says, would you sleep with me for a hundred bucks? So she gets all huffy and says, what do you think I am? And the guy says, oh I know what you are, we’re just haggling over the price…’”
“Any other time, I’d laugh. But jeez, Polo, that’s a pretty harsh comment on your parents…”
“Is it? Nath, all the money in the world can’t buy something that isn’t for sale at any price.”
“Whoa! That’s not being fair to your mother anyway, Polo.”
Polo shrugged. “It’s not a judgment on her character. Circumstances took away her leverage. She had too many children. The temptation was too great. I honestly don’t blame her.” He paused and smiled a little sadly. “It was my being ‘bought’ that gave her some independence, ironically enough. Things improved between her and my father when I left, you know. That
Clar–Mor
material she got every month–she knew she could support herself if he walked out. I think he started treating her with respect when I left.
“And as for Morrie”–he took a deep breath and carefully picked up the photograph. He stared intently at the smiling boy on the pony–“How can I blame him for trying? He’d lost his family. Love makes you selfish. Losing someone you love–a broken heart–you want to mend it. It’s natural. It’s human. You take what’s at hand.”
“I’m glad you don’t hate him. It’s a shame he never told you so he could know it too before he died.”
“No, it’s better this way. Telling me would have changed things. I don’t think I could have accepted his generosity if I’d known where it was coming from. Ignorance was really bliss in my case.”
“He loved you, you know. I mean, not because he loved his brother. He loved
you
.”
Polo flashed on Morrie in his tuxedo. He said softly, “Oh, I know that,
chérie
. That was another thing I found out this weekend.”
“There’s a letter, too, Polo. Clarice said it wouldn’t be wrong for me to read it first, but in the end I decided not to.” She took the sealed envelope from her purse and handed it to him.