Meredith gets into the passenger seat of Pam's car, kicking around the plastic bottles on the floor.
"My car is a mess. I need to get it washed," Pam warns. She hasn't changed from her lesson but her face has a fresh coat of powder across it. She spends the twenty-minute drive to Argyle Saddlery talking about the women in the charity committee who annoy her and her twins' science project that made a mess of paint in her living room. Meredith tunes half of this out, nodding and letting out monosyllabic answers when it feels appropriate.
Pam pulls into a lot and parks in front of a building made entirely of stone. The wooden sign above the door has "Argyle Saddlery" carved into it and painted over in gold. When Meredith walks inside, she catches her breath. It's like a toy store for equestrians.
She follows Pam past a display of helmets, down an aisle of sweat-proof shirts, button-downs, and zip-ups in every color. She rubs the fabric of one shirt between her fingers.
"Can we help you with anything today, Mrs. Jennings?" The retail assistant asks, leaning over the counter.
"Yes," Pam motions to me. "She needs absolutely everything!"
They are in the store for over an hour. Meredith is in the changing room watching her thighs jiggle in the mirror as she peels off breeches after breeches. She hates her body in every pair but when Pam insists she walk out to model them, she clasps her hands together and says, "You look like a Grand Prix champion!" Meredith has no idea what it means, but it sounds good.
As Meredith is buttoning up the fifth shirt she's tried on, she hears the assistant outside the curtain say to Pam, "We have a lot of great items on the sale rack too, if you want to take a look."
Meredith hears Pam snort and, in a stage whisper, say, "No, that's not necessary. She's got her husband's credit card."
Meredith's cheeks burn with embarrassment. She's never been comfortable with people pointing out her privileges.
"She could buy the whole store," she hears Pam add.
Meredith gasps, but then she looks at her reflection—dressed like a true equestrian right before her eyes. The sight makes her cover her mouth. She looks exactly like the women in those catalogs she would sift through as a girl. She'd rip out the pages of women in their riding attire next to horses with matching polo-wraps and saddle-pads and pin them to her wall.
Her parents couldn't afford anything from those catalogs but now, Pam is right—she really could buy the whole store.
Meredith waits for the cash register to explode after ringing up all the items but neither Pam nor the retail assistant seem shocked by the total price. Meredith has bought a lot of clothes but she also bought grooming supplies, a bridle, and matching royal blue accessories.
"I'm lending you my old saddle until the fitter comes to measure Thor," is the last thing Meredith hears Pam say as they pack up the car before her mind drifts and she gives out mechanical responses again.
It's nearly one o'clock when they arrive back to the Hunt Club. Pam suggests lunch but Meredith isn't hungry, her stomach is full of taut knots from the excitement. Pam calls to Diego and the young groom, who Meredith finds out is named Carlos, and asks them to help pull Meredith's new tack trunk from her car. They sidestep like crabs to the barn and put it in the tack room.
Meredith thanks them, and then Pam adds, "Gracias," in her butchered accent so it sounds like "Grass-ee-us". The grooms both give unamused half smiles.
After Pam leaves and Meredith finishes organizing everything in her trunk, she takes the brand-new lead rope to Thor's stall to replace it with the fraying one. As she approaches, she can't see Thor through the bars. She opens the stall door, expecting to see him lying there, but the stall is empty; spotless with fresh shavings as if he'd never been there at all. She spins around, looking for one of the grooms.
She jogs over to a groom sitting on a bale of hay in front of Barn 5. He's rubbing oil on a bridle, humming along to the dusty, old radio playing beside him. The sleeves of his dark blue t-shirt have been ripped off to expose his ebony shoulders to the sun. His face drips in sweat.
"Hola," Meredith tries, thinking back to the flashcards she made for Olivia's Spanish quiz in 8th grade. "Dónde estás..."
"I'm not Hispanic, hun," he says in a thick Jamaican accent. "I speak perfect English."
"Oh, sorry." Meredith's face gets hot with embarrassment. She realizes she's slightly out of breath and her palms are damp. "I'm just trying to figure out where my horse is."
He laughs at her and leans back against the side of the barn, causing his shirt to ride up and expose his large, jiggling belly. The brittle hay crackles under the shift of his weight. "He in the paddock." He nods his head towards Barn 6.
"C'mon," he says, getting up. He leads Meredith down along the side of Barn 6, where behind the barn, Thor is grazing in a large paddock. The paddocks Meredith drove by that morning are chipping and decaying, and covered with patches of dead brown grass, but this paddock is lush green with black painted fencing.
"How long does he get to stay outside?" Meredith asks, folding her arms over the top plank of the fence and resting her chin there. She smiles. Mr. Jack didn't have fancy stalls and his horses were outside all day, every day. Horses need grass, they need outdoors, he said.
"For about an hour," the groom says and Meredith whips a look at him.
He smiles wide, wide enough for Meredith to notice one silver tooth in the back of his mouth. "It ain't right, hun. These horses need more grass." He clucks his tongue. "He looks like a good horse. You like 'im?"
"I love him," she says without missing a beat.
He starts laughing again. Meredith can't take it anymore.
"What is so funny?"
"It's not something ya hear very often. Loving a horse, and you don't even ride 'im yet. Wait 'til you ride 'im." He points his thumb behind his shoulder. "These women, they get a horse Monday, ride Tuesday, send 'em back Wednesday." He eyes me. "Wait 'til you ride 'im."
Meredith goes to the grocery store after the barn, a list scrawled out on the back of an envelope for steak fajitas but when she walks into the store, she loses all interest in shopping. She makes two large boxes of food at the hot bar and buys six apples to keep in the car for Thor. When she gets home, she lets Lemon in and the dog skitters along the floor, dancing in circles and weaving through Meredith's legs.
"Lemon!" Meredith hisses as the dog nearly trips her. She notices a line of dirt trailing her. Meredith follows the trail outside and sees that she's dug two holes in the flowerbed—something she hasn't done since she was a puppy.
Meredith grabs the dog by the scruff of her neck, drags her to the holes, and points.
"Did you do this?" Lemon quivers and yaps in her grasp. "Bad dog!" She carries Lemon into the house and locks her in the mudroom where she whines and scratches.
The cleaning lady comes tomorrow anyway, she tells herself as she looks at the dirty floor. She presses the heels of her hands into her eyes and sighs.
"Fuck it," she says. She can't wait that long.
She finds a bucket and mop in the garage, fills the bucket with soapy water, and scrubs the floor until it's spotless.
That night, a lacrosse teammate drives Olivia home after practice while RJ and Meredith are eating dinner. Her entire body is blush pink and her eyes look weighed down by shadows. She waves lazily to Meredith and RJ as she shuffles into the kitchen. Her eyes flick to the cardboard box of food on the counter next to the one RJ's already dug into, but then she turns to go upstairs.
"You're not going to eat with us?" Meredith calls after her.
"I need to shower," Olivia says. Lemon dances at her toes and Olivia makes kissing noises to her, but doesn't bend down to pet her.
"Want to see what I bought at the tack store later?" Meredith holds her breath. She remembers Olivia as a ten-year-old, sitting cross-legged on Meredith's bed when Meredith showed off her new clothes. Olivia would ooh and aah—she loved everything.
"The what?" Olivia scrunches up her face in disgust. She does that to everything unfamiliar to her.
"The horse store. I bought riding pants, and shirts, and—"
"Eh," Olivia's lip scrunches even more. "I need to shower and do homework." She spins around, skinny arms shining with sweat, and goes upstairs.