The Horsewoman(102)

ONE HUNDRED THIRTY



WHEN ALL THE YELLING and hugging had subsided and we’d made even more of a spectacle of ourselves, Dad apologized for being late, then asked if somebody could go get him a real drink.

“We finally caught a cab after the medal ceremony,” he said.

I turned to Daniel and said, “How did this happen?”

“Your dad should explain,” he said. “But your grandmother is right. It is a bit of a miracle.”

He looked much thinner than the last time I’d seen him, and tired, and more than a little overwhelmed. But he was Daniel. And was here. All that mattered.

“But you got to see us ride?” I said.

“We barely got there in time,” he said. “But, yes. Both of you.”

He turned to Mom then.

“See,” he said. “You didn’t need me after all.”

“Now you tell me,” she said, and hugged him again.

“You are aware,” I said to him, “that you saw me knock down the only rail I knocked down all week.”

He shrugged and smiled.

“What do I always tell you?” he said. “Don’t get ahead of your horse.”

“So I’m still not perfect,” I said.

He smiled again. “There’s still time.”

One of the waiters produced two more chairs. Grandmother walked across the room and told the ma?tre d’ that dinner would have to wait. He was not pleased. By now it was his permanent state. The two of them then seemed to go at each other pretty hard until Dad walked over there. As he was talking and smiling, I saw him discreetly hand the guy a fistful of cash.

He came back, still smiling, and sat down next to Daniel and me.

“Money,” he said, “the international language of love.”

“If I pay you will you now tell us how you two got here?” I said.

“How we got here,” he said, “is that the system finally worked the way it should for guys like Daniel, and not the way it usually does when somebody like me doesn’t come over the hill like the First Army.”

“He said modestly,” Mom said.

“Tell your mother she doesn’t need to give me a gold medal,” Dad said to me.

Then Dad took us through it. The room got quiet for the first time. He told us he couldn’t have done it without the immigration lawyer, Gleason Connors. Said he’d actually tried to hire him when it was all over, but Connors had told him that the Daniels of the world needed him more than Dad’s firm did.

“Goddamn, the system really is messed up,” Dad said, and drank.

By the time we’d arrived in Paris, Daniel’s DACA application had been renewed, even though he was still in detention. Then Dad, being Dad, fast-tracked his way to a meeting with an immigration judge who realized pretty quickly that the whole case, including ICE putting a detainer on Daniel, was total bullshit, including the original criminal case. By then Daniel’s new paperwork, minus the criminal case, had been moved along to another judge.

“The second judge was with the United States Something and Something,” Dad said.

“Customs and Immigration Service,” Daniel said.

Everything happened quickly after that. The removal proceedings on Daniel really were stopped before they began, and Daniel got released.

“That was Friday,” he said, “when my baby girl was winning her first gold medal. By then he’d refiled his DACA renewal, adding the part about getting arrested but the charges being dismissed. Which we did. Then the last piece to the puzzle was getting his parole application approved, the one that allowed him to leave the country now that his Dreamer rights had been restored, so he could watch the fabulous Atwood women become the darlings of the Paris Olympics.”

He sighed so loudly it sounded like a jet engine.

“Everybody got all that?” he said.

“Barely,” Mom said.

“You told me the parole application was the biggest long shot of all,” I said.

“Well, it should have been, even for your brilliant father,” he said. “Which is why I had to call in a favor, from somebody who’s practically besties with the governor of Florida.”

“Wait for it,” he said.

He paused for dramatic effect.

“Mr. Steve Gorton himself,” he said.

“What!” Grandmother yelled, loud enough I was afraid the artwork was going to fall off the wall behind her.

“There is no way you got that jerk to help you!” Mom said, and even slapped Dad on the arm.

I laughed.

“TMZ,” I said to him.

“What the hell does that mean?” Grandmother said.

“My daughter will explain it later,” Dad said. “Right now, it’s time to really get this party started.”

Mom said, “He means because he’s here.”

The night only got louder after that. Dinner eventually was served, not that anyone had much interest in it by that time. Daniel wanted to know all about the jump-off for the individual, and about the storm, and about how Sky had managed at the last second not to fall down.

It was near midnight by then. There was one last raucous conversation about whether we might need to have a few more bottles of wine when the door to our room opened and someone shouted, “Hey, is this the gold medal party I heard about?”