Harvesting the Heart

repeated, and this time as my mother held out her arms, I stepped into their quiet circle, amazed that the vague wisps of old memories could crystallize into such warmth, such flesh and blood.

“I spent years hoping you would come,” my mother said. She led me up the steps to the farmer’s porch of the small white clapboard house. “I used to watch the little girls walk down to the stable for their lessons, and I kept thinking, This one will pull off her riding helmet, and it’s going to be Paige.” At the screen door, she turned to me. “It never was, though.”

My mother’s house was clean and neat, almost Spartan. The porch was empty, except for a white wicker rocking chair, which blended into the background paint, and a bright-pink hanging begonia. The front hall had a faded Oriental runner and a thin maple table, on top of which was a set of Shaker boxes. To the right was a tiny living room; to the left, a staircase. “I’ll get you settled in,” my mother said, although I had never said I would be staying. “But I’ve got some lessons this afternoon, so I won’t be around much.”

She took me up to the second floor. Straight ahead at the top of the staircase was the bathroom, and the bedrooms were to the right and the left. She turned to the right, but I got a glimpse of her own room-pale and breezy, with gauze curtains billowing over the white of the bed.

When I stepped into the doorway of the other room, I drew in my breath. The wallpaper was a busy tumble of huge pink flowers. The bed was a frothy canopy, and on a chest against the wall were two porcelain dolls and a stuffed green clown. It was the room of a little girl. “You have another daughter,” I said. It wasn’t a question really, but a statement.

“No.” My mother walked forward and brushed the cool cheek of one of the dolls. “One of the reasons I decided to lease this stable was because of this room. I kept thinking how much you would have liked it here.”

I looked around the room at the sugar-candy decoration, the suffocating wallpaper. I wouldn’t have liked it as a child. I thought about my bedroom at home in Cambridge, which I didn’t like, either, with its milk-colored carpet, the near-white walls. “I was eighteen when you got this place,” I pointed out. “A little old for dolls.”

My mother shrugged easily. “You were kind of stuck in my mind at five years old,” she said. “I kept thinking I’d go back and get you, but I couldn’t do that to your father, and besides, if I went back I knew it would be to stay. Before I knew it, you were all grown up.”

“You came to my graduation,” I said, sitting down on the bed. It was a hard mattress, unforgiving.

“You saw me?”

I shook my head.ve N€† “Private eye,” I said. “Very thorough.”

My mother sat down beside me. “I spent ten hours in Raleigh-Durham, trying to make up my mind about getting on that plane. I could, then I couldn’t. I even sat down on one flight and ran off before they closed the door.”

“But you came,” I said, “so why didn’t you try to talk to me?”

My mother stood up and smoothed away the wrinkles on the bedspread so that it looked as though she’d never sat down. “I didn’t go there for you,” she said. “I went there for me,”

My mother checked her watch. “Brittany’s coming at two-thirty,” she said. “Cutest little kid you’ve ever seen, but she’s never going to make it as a rider. Feel free to come down and watch, if you like.” She looked around as if something were missing. “You have a bag?”

“Yes,” I said, knowing that even if I wanted to I could not make myself stay at a motel. “It’s in my car.”

My mother nodded and started to walk out, leaving me on the bed. “There’s food in the fridge if you’re hungry, and be careful because the toilet lever sticks a little, and if you need me in a hurry there’s a sticker on the phone with a number that goes straight to Pegasus’s barn, and they can get me.”

It was so easy to talk to her. It came effortlessly; I could have been doing it forever. I supposed I had, but she hadn’t been answering. Still, I wondered how she could be this matter-of-fact, as if I were the kind of visitor she got every day. Just thinking about her made a headache come behind my eyes. Maybe she knew better and was doing this to skip all the gutted history in between. When you don’t keep looking back, it’s that much easier not to trip and fall.

My mother stopped at the threshold of the door and held her hand against the wooden frame. “Paige,” she said, “are you married?”

A sharp pain ran straight down my spine, a sick ache that came from her being able to talk about phone lines and lunch but not knowing the things a mother is supposed to know. “I got married in 1985,” I told her. “His name is Nicholas Prescott. He’s a cardiac surgeon.”

My mother raised her eyebrows at this and smiled. She started to walk out of the room. “And,” I called after her, “I have a baby. A son, Max. He’s three months old.”

My mother stopped, but she did not turn around. I might even have imagined the quiet tremble of her shoulders. “A baby,” she murmured. I knew what was going through her mind: A baby, and you left him behind, and once upon a time I left you. I lifted my chin, waiting for her to turn around and admit to the cycle, but she didn’t. She shifted her weight until she was moving down the stairs, humbled and silent, with the parallel lines of our past running cluttered through her mind.

She was standing in the center of the oval-the ring-and a girl on a pony danced around her. “Transitions, Brf tN€†ittany,” she called. “First you’re going to take him to a trot. Squeeze him into it; don’t lean forward. Sit up, sit up, push those heels down.” The girl was leggy and small. Her hair hung in a thick blond tail from beneath the black riding helmet. I leaned against the rail where I’d stood earlier, watching the squat brown horse jaunt its way around in a circle.

My mother walked to the edge of the ring and adjusted one of the redwood rails so that it was lower to the ground. “Feel when he’s going too fast and too slow,” she yelled. “You need to ride every step. Now I want you to cross the diagonal… Keep stretching down in your heels.”

The girl steered the horse-at least I thought she did-coming out of the corner and making an X across the ring. “Okay, sitting trot,” my mother called. The girl stopped bouncing up and down and sat heavy in the saddle, wiggling a little from side to side with every step of the horse. “Half seat!” my mother called, and the girl bounced up once, freezing in the position that held her out of the saddle, hanging on to the horse’s mane for dear life. My mother saw me and waved. “Let’s cross the diagonal again, and you’re going to go right over this cavalletti,” she said. “Ride him right into the woods.” She crouched down, her voice tense and her body coiled, as if she could will the horse to do it correctly. “Eyes up, eyes up… leg, leg, leg!” The horse did a neat hop over the low rail and slowed down to a quiet walk. The little girl stretched her legs out in front of her, feet still in the stirrups. “Good girl,” my mother called, and Brittany smiled. “We can end with that.”

A woman had come up beside me. She pulled out her checkbook. “Are you taking lessons with Lily?” she asked, smiling.

I did not know how to answer. “I’m thinking about it,” I said.

The woman scrawled a signature and ripped off the check. “She’s the best there is around here.”

Brittany had dismounted, neatly sliding off the saddle. She walked up to the fence, leading the horse by the reins. My mother glanced at me, looking from my head to my shoulders to my walking shorts and sneakers. “Don’t worry about tacking Tony down,” she said. “I think I need him for another lesson.” She held out her hands for the reins and watched as Brittany and her mother disappeared up the hill toward the barn.

“My three-thirty has the flu,” she said, “so how’d you like a lesson for free?”

I thought of the horse that morning taking the jumps with the power of a locomotive, and then I looked at this little horse. It had long dark eyelashes and a white patch on its forehead in the shape of Mickey Mouse. “I don’t think so,” I said. “I’m not the type.”

“I never was, either,” my mother said. “Just try it. If you don’t feel comfortable, you can get off.” She led me toward the little redwood rail and paused, holding the horse’s reins. “If you really want to know about me, you should try riding. And if you really want me to know about you, I can learn a hell of a lot just by watching you in the saddle.”

I held the horse’s reins while my mother adjusted the stirrup lengths and pointed out the'›‹N€† names of things: blanket, pad, and English saddle; bit, bridle, martingale, girth, reins. “Step on the cavalletti,” my mother said, and I looked at her blankly. “The red thing,” she said, kicking the rail with her foot. I stepped onto it with my right foot and then tucked my left foot into the stirrup. “Hang on to the mane and swing