The Horsewoman(91)

Then he slid his phone across the table. He said the video was ready to go, just to make sure the volume was low before I hit Play.

“Got this from one of the waiters who was working the tent that night,” he said. “He’d gone out back to have a smoke. Heard some loud voices from the road leading down to the parking lot. Recognized our friend Gorton and decided to shoot some video for his own amusement.”

“How’d you find him?” I said.

Dad shrugged. “When you’re good,” he said, “you’re good.”

And there were all the good parts: Gorton calling Daniel “chico” and objectifying me for all the world to hear. Gorton putting his hands on Daniel and throwing the first punch. Finally, there was Steve Gorton nearly bursting into tears when he saw all the blood on his clothes.

“What did he say?” I asked. “Gorton, I mean. When you showed this to him.”

“Tried to be a tough guy,” Dad said. “Told me he had lawyers to make things like that go away. I had to tell him at that point that Daniel’s lawyer was better.”

“You.”

“Me.”

“My hero,” I said.

“Many people might say superhero,” he said.

He dipped some toast into what was left of his eggs over easy, drank his coffee before waving at the waitress that we needed more.

“Anyway,” he said, “that’s pretty much all of it, at least for now. Still a long way to go.”

There was something about the way he said it.

“Pretty much all of it?” I said.

“Well, I might have mentioned something to Gorton about the video, just in case I needed him to do us a favor someday,” he said.

“Don’t make me beg,” I said.

“Actually, it was just three letters,” Dad said. “TMZ.”





ONE HUNDRED FIFTEEN



MOM HAD GOTTEN HER MRI results back that afternoon, Dr. Garry informing her that she’d suffered an “incomplete” tear of the ligament he’d repaired when she first got hurt. He told her that in a non-Olympic year, he’d recommend arthroscopic surgery, and she’d be as good as new in a month.

“Not good enough,” she said.

Then she asked if she could hurt it more by continuing to ride. He said that he wouldn’t recommend it but he couldn’t stop her.

“But he warned me there were going to be days when it hurt like hell,” Mom said. “I told him not going to Paris would hurt a hell of a lot more.”

We’d just finished dinner at the house and had brought our drinks into the living room. Wine for Mom and me. Whiskey for Gus. Before her fainting spell, Grandmother had never been much for drinking, maybe an occasional glass of wine. Since the fainting spell she’d stopped completely. Mostly her drink of choice was strong black tea.

“Then he told me not to get into any ass-kicking contests for a while,” Mom continued. “I told him that’s what the Olympics were.”

We were getting ready to watch the announcement show on NBCSN for show jumping, the sport’s first time presenting it this way. By now, I’d had nearly a full week to convince myself that I was going to be the alternate and that Mom and Tess and Tyler would be the ones riding in Paris, in both events, individual and team.

“I’m prepared for it, I really am,” I said, not speaking to anyone in particular, more stream of consciousness. “Mom and Tyler have done it longer. They’ve got results going back years, not a couple of months. It’s going to be them. Totally. I get it. I do.”

“Who are you,” Grandmother said, “and what have you done with Becky McCabe?”

“Consider yourself lucky,” Gus said to her. “I’ve been listening to this crap all week in the ring.”

“Then we get it when she gets home,” Maggie said, “on what feels like a continuous loop.”

“You guys know I’m right,” I said. “Especially you, Mom. Both you and Tyler were already short-listed coming into the year. And the last thing the selectors saw was Tyler dusting me in the Hamptons when I had a great chance to win. If I’d done that, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, I’d already have punched my ticket to Paris.”

“We aren’t having this conversation,” Grandmother said. “You are.”

“The show’s coming on,” Gus said. “Can we turn up the volume on the set and mute Becky at the same time?”

I sipped some wine, still working on my first glass. I’d briefly considered walking down to the barn after we finished dinner and not coming back until the announcement had been made. But in the end, I knew I couldn’t not watch, as Mike Tirico welcomed everybody to the show. His cohost was Bitsy Morrissey, one of the all-time great American riders, who’d competed until last year before finally retiring from competition at the age of sixty-five.

Right away they started to drag things out, milk the drama for all it was worth. Mike Tirico let Bitsy explain the selection process to the audience, and how some of the best riders wouldn’t be going to Paris, starting with Tess McGill, whose horse had been diagnosed with cellulitis after the Hampton Invitational, Bitsy pointing out how it was the same thing that had stopped Lord Stanley when Maggie Atwood was sure she was on her way to the Olympics in London.