“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.
And Bitsy talked about how it was about more than just numbers, and how that made it much more difficult for the people picking the team, especially in a year like this when the top riders were grouped so closely at the top of the rankings.
“Blah blah blah,” I said.
“Hush,” Grandmother said.
On the television screen Bitsy Morrissey then said, “And Mike, it’s worth reminding the viewers, especially on a night like this, that the enduring beauty of our sport never changes: Men competing against women, men and women my age competing against riders a third of our ages, men or women. Nick Skelton, from England, won the gold in Rio at the age of fifty-eight. If Becky McCabe makes the team tonight, she’ll get her chance at the gold medal at the age of twenty-one.”
“Big if,” I said.
“And she might get a chance to do it alongside her mother, Maggie Atwood,” said Mike.
“Hush!” Grandmother said, even louder than before.
They took everybody through the rankings then, right before showing some of the interview NBC had done with Mom and me a few days ago at the barn, on the chance that we both did make the team for Paris.
“In truth, Mike,” Bitsy Morrissey said, “it’s Becky McCabe who’s the outlier. Her and her horse, Sky. At the start of the year, neither one of them was supposed to be here.”
“Becky McCabe the alternate, she means,” I said.
Gus said to my mom, “Can you send her to her room?”
“It never worked,” Mom said sadly.
Ten minutes from the end of the half-hour show, after they’d tortured those of us in the room that long, they finally got to it, Mike Tirico actually holding up an envelope as they did at the Academy Awards. The riders’ names would be read in the order they’d been chosen, first to fourth, including the alternate.
“But first,” he said, “one more message from our sponsors.”
“Kill me now!” I yelled.
At least they didn’t kill more time when they came back from commercial.
“First is Tyler Cullen,” Tirico said. “No surprise there. He’s been at the top of the rankings for the past three years, and now qualifies for his first Olympic team.”
When Gus and I would watch videos of my rides, he’d sometimes point out that I wasn’t breathing. I wasn’t breathing now.
“The second name on the list, and we’ve just told you about her inspiring comeback story, is veteran Maggie Atwood,” Tirico said.
A cheer exploded in the living room. Roof raiser. Everybody shouting except Mom. I looked over at her. She just sat quietly in the chair she’d moved over next to Gus, still staring at the TV set motionless. I started across the room from the couch to give her a hug. She held up a hand.