On Thursday, Nancy had reached out to Murray. After sixteen years of silence, it somehow seemed perfect that his number one runner was the reason Nancy wanted to see him. She heard about what happened, she’d said, wondered if he wanted to have coffee next week.
In the last minute before the gun, Anna did three high jumps. Her feet kicked backward toward her gluteal muscles. Murray had secured her a set of longer metal spikes for the race, and as the starter went over instructions—the importance of staying inside the neon cones, elbows in—Murray silently extolled the power of shoes: how Anna would have a real advantage cleaving the mud.
“I’ll be at one!” he shouted to her.
She didn’t turn. No backward nod either. When the gun went off, she broke out of the pack immediately and maintained a lead of about four feet in front of Iona’s number one. Anna’s blue tunic gleamed in the sunlight. It was just several short-lived seconds before the Iona runner passed her, but she was already fighting her way back up. Sometimes he thought her stride bore an even closer resemblance to Sarah Lloyd’s than Becky’s did.
Some jostling happened amid the riffraff—then Murray heard the scream.
It took a few seconds to see the trampled girl. There was at least one in every meet. This time it was a U Conn girl, her calves lacerated by passing spikes. Her coach helped her stand up and limp back to their tent.
Becky’s line of sutures had been U-shaped, licorice tinged, around her right ear. Hydrocephalus, fluid buildup in the brain. Babies were born with it sometimes. Neural tube defects could be detected in early ultrasounds, he thought, almost automatically.
Murray drove to mile one in a cart he’d rented from the park. More often than not, at least in his experience, the runners who got trampled had female coaches. Female coaches didn’t inculcate body shoving as a necessary part of the game. He’d always thought girls should be trained from an early age to run aggressively. He practiced what he preached.
From where he was waiting at mile one, he picked out Anna approaching in the distance. Only three away from the lead. She looked strong, in control of her breathing and stride, on pace for a 17:45 finish. He could expect her next mile, the middle one, to be at least ten seconds slower, but she might drop another ten during the last.
Drop foot happened often inside hospital compression boots, he thought, pushing out the image of lifeless toes bent, pointing downward. Gravity. The way the tendons of the ankle could shorten.
Tanya was on pace for a twenty-second personal record, and Murray gave the rest of the girls his routine encouragement. “Hold on now,” he’d say.
He had about ten minutes before the finish and opted for a shortcut. As he blazed over winding dirt trails, he focused on the brown earth, its silken darkness. The sound of his cart masked the trail of cheers behind him; he focused on stones, tree roots, anything threatening his path.
One minute from the finish, he heard the roar of the crowds again, clapping and finger whistling that rallied the top finishers through the final stretch. Murray had a difficult time differentiating between the first three girls, torsos thrashing for the win. Eventually he pinpointed the body of Jenny Reese from Iona. Still leagues behind where Becky would have been, but Jenny had performed well at the Eastern Athletic Conference last year. She was 5′3″ tall, with a longer stride than U Conn’s Mary Winterson. Mary was 5′9″ and struggling to match Jenny’s fury. Then, turning out of the woods, he caught Anna approaching. She might hit 17:30; Murray could barely contain his excitement—he steadied himself out of the cart and shouted after her, waving his watch.
“Use the stretch. That’s it! Foot speed, turnover. That’s it! You’re setting your record!”
She made eye contact with him, her head and neck still evenly aligned, a clear sign she wasn’t exhausted, that there would be plenty left for Monday’s practice.
Two days ago, he’d heard from Rick—somehow Lisa had agreed to speak to him—that Becky had opened and closed a fist sporadically. He hadn’t lied to Allan, Murray assured himself, Becky was showing progress. Another day soon she might flutter an eyelid or try to pull out a tube. When he’d visited, next to her blood pressure cuffs, he’d noticed the soft cloth ties around her arms. Suddenly he imagined her strength rising, her desire to outstrip those temporary bounds.
Maybe he would take Anna with him to the hospital next week. Lisa and Doug would be more open to a teammate. The two of them could stop by the toy store beforehand and pick out a teddy bear. One with terry cloth would be best. Some even came with stimulating rattles. Bells.
Two days before movers had come to their apartment, Nancy had placed a bouquet of hydrangeas in fresh water on the kitchen counter. Said she clipped them from the communal garden outside their apartment, that she’d wanted something nice for him to come home to. She had cried, claimed how sorry she was. She had started toward him, as if she might reach out and hold him, but he had felt that same stiffness of his body. He’d felt numb to her then, but he’d known he wouldn’t always—that he would one day long again for the heat of her against him.
Murray looked up at the sky. For the first time this morning, he noticed its vibrancy. Sunlight piercing the atmosphere and scattering blue.
EIGHT
Three months had passed, and then Nancy finally found something in Jean’s eyes to hold on to. It happened one day during a diaper change, when her baby squirmed more than usual, and Nancy found herself saying, “Steady there.” She grabbed a knee and tickled the tiny crease behind it, this soft line separating rolls of skin. That did it: Jean’s eyes locked with hers. Little lips began to separate and stretch into a smile. They worked hard to match Nancy’s.
“Oh!” Nancy laughed. “Beautiful girl you are.” She smiled wider for her baby and scooped her up.
When Jean smiled, her eyes squinted like Murray’s in the sunlight. Nancy was already seeing so much of him in her. Not a speck of red in her baby-blonde hair. “It’s too early to tell at three months. Give her at least a year,” Murray said, when she told him about Jean’s smile. But the first time Jean smiled for him, one night when they were all on the sofa watching television, he turned to her and laughed. “I believe this is me. I’ll have to dig up a baby photo.”
He stroked Jean’s soft arm and looked into Nancy’s eyes, his as blue and warm as she’d known them when they were first falling in love, just a few years ago, as hard as it was for her to believe—she felt she was falling in love again, in this found wholeness of their family.
Jean brought her and Murray closer, she thought, each time they took a walk together on the weekends or shared more changings and giving Jean her baths. Murray seemed to enjoy the baths as much as Nancy did, in the plastic tub they nestled into the kitchen sink. Once she’d caught him singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” while he squeezed a puffy sponge over Jean’s arms and legs. He was as careful as Nancy, too, softly coaxing the water over her head and rinsing her belly button.
She and Murray began reading to Jean together in the evenings too. She’d gotten an illustrated version of Aesop’s The Tortoise and the Hare. The fact that it was Murray’s favorite came as no surprise, but when he explained why, when he said he felt sorry for the hare, she’d had to resist laughing. And she’d been glad for her restraint; he’d been so serious explaining his disappointment, his frustration, over how the hare’s risk-taking had gone unrewarded. Nancy was learning to appreciate every little moment Murray opened himself up, made himself vulnerable.
Nancy knew that Murray’s father, for those years he’d been alive for Murray, had put great pressure on him to succeed. It was important to achieve something, Murray had once said of his father, this phrase that had been sown into him over time—this idea that things were black and white: you won or you lost; you took risks or you didn’t; you pushed your body to the utmost or else you had regrets.
She tried to accept this about him, the extreme conditions upon which he’d founded his life, but she did worry about Jean, that
he might apply his philosophy to her one day—teach her to equate pain and physical exhaustion with achievement and self-worth.
They were all in bed together: Jean on Murray’s chest as Nancy turned pages in her sleepiest voice. Murray rubbed Jean’s back, soft with thin cotton. Jean’s eyes were soundly closed, breath steady with sleep, so that Nancy could quietly close the book and reach, even more quietly, to place it on the nightstand. As they waited for Jean’s sleep to deepen between them, she felt them embrace a stillness, a peace, and then she thought, How could she let her fear overburden the moment, as they made room for themselves to become different parents, better ones, than their own had been?
The next sunny day, not too hot or humid for late August, Murray suggested they drive up to East Rock Park for a picnic. Nancy packed a hat for Jean, and on the drive over, she said, “How about a picnic, Jean Bean?” She’d made her voice high. “Won’t you like that?”
Murray parked the car just outside the entrance. Nancy had brought water, which she used to rinse the grapes, some of it splattering over the pavement as she shook the bag. In the shadiest spot they could find, Nancy spread out a blanket. She unpacked the rest of their food as Murray held Jean by his chest, her floppy white hat brushing his chin.
“She’s like a little flower,” she said.
“A tulip.” He rolled his eyes.
Nancy couldn’t believe that in just two weeks she’d be back at work already. She wished they could afford a nanny—even though Yale promised many of the best options for day care—but still she couldn’t imagine leaving her child with a stranger.
Jean started to fuss. Nancy had just fed her before they left, so she told Murray it was her diaper. He reached for a fresh one from their bag, filling his eyes with that look, since he’d started a game of having her time his speed with her watch. There was something exciting in his every move, as he folded up the sides especially, securing tape in two even strokes. His record was 1:20, but today fell just short of that at 1:22. Jean seemed to enjoy the fury, Nancy thought.
“You’re getting red.” Murray looked at her, touching his chest.
And when she looked down at her own, she could confirm the splotches. They came on so quickly.
“I’ll get sunscreen from the car,” he said.
Suddenly she heard “Look!” She realized an older couple was standing behind them, the wife somewhere in her seventies, sporting long shorts and a safari hat, the husband with a baseball cap and binoculars. “Isn’t it wonderful?” the woman said just as loudly.
“Different times,” the husband said.
“How old is she?” the woman asked Nancy.
“Three months.” Nancy tried not to sound curt, but it was better than Murray, his typical pretending no one else was there; he hated making conversation this way. He tied Jean’s floppy hat a bit tighter.
“Well, keep that one,” the woman told her.
“I will,” Nancy said, but inside she cringed. No one ever extolled her for the dozens of diapers she changed a week. It was merely expected, and sometimes she thought a man could do half as much and reap double the gain.
But after the couple left, she had to remind herself not to fall into such generalizations, since her particular situation was different. These past weeks, Murray had grown into a great help. He’d started getting up with her now that she was pumping, so she felt less alone in her exhaustion. They both fantasized about naps, any pocket of time they might seize for just fifteen extra minutes of rest. And he had yet to complain about the break in his training routine like she’d expected. He seemed to be riding on pure adrenaline, channeling it into his work more than ever, so she wasn’t surprised when he returned from the car with her SPF 50 and one of his pads.
“I thought it was your day off,” she said.
“It is,” he said. “I needed to check something.”
“Couldn’t you have done it in the car?” She felt gratitude slip.
“Nance—”
“What could be so important?” She had been planning to bring up what their schedule would be once she returned to the office, how she wanted to take turns leaving early to pick up Jean. Beinecke had already been so generous; there had to be a limit to their flexibility.
He had his finger on a newspaper clipping, switching between it and his notes.
“Murray,” she said again—starting to spin, one reaction yielding to another. Wasn’t her work just as important? He hadn’t asked, not once, about how scary her transition might be. This tightness in her stomach was digging a pit.
“Do you really want to know?” he muttered.
Do you really want to know me? was what she should have said. Murray’s self-absorption only seemed to double as time passed, and before she could take a step back, let her feelings settle, she said: “I actually do want to know.” It had been impossible for her to hide the bitterness in her tone, her frustration over how clueless he was to her needs—or maybe it was something about the realness of Jean in her arms that made her wonder if he’d ever understand her silent struggle: Could she balance her desire to stay home with Jean a few months longer—she’d never get this time back—with her hope to be able to lose herself in her work again, to know she could live and breathe it as she used to, as easily as Murray still seemed to?
Her anger stewed, waiting for his answer. Finally, when he’d had the luxury of finishing his thoughts—she heard her mother again: men can’t do two things at the same time—he said, “There’s this new phenom from Maine that Ed and I are talking to, and she might race at Franklin Park next weekend.”
“Oh,” she said. That did seem really urgent, she thought sarcastically. She pushed a pacifier into Jean’s squirming mouth.
“Last year she won Foot Locker.” And when that meant nothing to Nancy, he added, “You know, for high schoolers. The national cross-country championships.”
No, she didn’t know. Was she supposed to have memorized this detail he might have told her once in passing? What had her last symposium been on? Could he tell her that?
“Ed and I are going to try to meet with her next Sunday to see about her grades and test scores, see if we can get her down for a recruiting weekend to stay with one of the upperclassmen, meet the team.” He scribbled something else down. He passed Nancy the clipping. “That’s her,” he said.
At first she was appalled: He was carrying this around with him? On his day off? This close-up of a teenager who couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds, wearing nothing but a tunic and briefs, chiseled arms and thighs.
“That’s healthy?” she said.
“What?”
“She’s skeletal.” Nancy was surprised, not only that she’d said it out loud, but that she’d had to explain herself.
“She’s young,” he said. “Most runners her age are smaller to begin with—”
“Oh. That makes it okay then.” She looked back down at Jean, whose eyes were blinking slowly, struggling to stay awake. “If Jean ran, you wouldn’t mind?”
“What?”
“You wouldn’t have a second thought about her health?” Did she really have to spell everything out for him?
“This has nothing to do with Jean.”
Maybe it didn’t; maybe she’d forced this analogy—but wasn’t it implied, what he’d expect of their little girl one day? But she didn’t say this. She focused on the concrete, the objective, the only language that ever seemed to resonate with him.
“What were we going to do next Sunday?” She said it bitterly, scolding, like her mother would have, and she hated that, her wont to embrace the pure, insatiable heat of her mother’s anger suddenly, without warning.
He just looked at her. “I don’t know,” he said, rubbing his chin, and then reaching for Jean’s foot to tug it, as if that made everything better, these little shows of affection.
“We were going to try that church,” she said. “I made an appointment with the pastor.” Tears brimmed, but she held them back; th
is was not a moment to appear delicate, shaky. She must hold her ground: last week they couldn’t go because he was driving the team to the trails—he wouldn’t be able to go once the season officially started—and the one before that, he’d needed to run. If he kept this up, it would only get later and later. Jean would be two by the time she was baptized.
“Right,” he said, seeming genuinely surprised he’d forgotten. “I bet I can reschedule it.” He put his pad away. “I’m sorry I keep forgetting,” he said.
Jean had fallen asleep in the shade, in Nancy’s arms. He moved closer to her; he kissed her head.
That night, he insisted on making dinner, and she knew she’d been wrong. As angry as he made her sometimes, especially in his obsession over his athletes, she could not ignore the love she felt from him. She knew she had to find an appreciation, a love in herself, she could really cling to, to accept and savor all the good things. Like the other night, when he’d confessed that something in his body felt different. He’d said he couldn’t describe it exactly, but Jean made him feel part of the continuance of life. Those were the very words he’d used, and she’d been stunned, proof that his perspective, around time especially, was shifting.
Later that night, as she drew a hot bath, she thought again that she shouldn’t take her insecurities out on him. She breathed in the scent of garlic and cooking oil from the chicken Murray was sautéing, Jean fast asleep in her bassinet. Murray had fed her, too, so Nancy could rest.
But now work, going back to it in a few weeks and all the thoughts she’d been pushing down, crept up: images of mail stockpiled on her desk, all the prints, the spreadsheets with which she’d have to refamiliarize herself.
The other day, over the phone, Marjorie had assured her it was like riding a bike. Even if the wheels were rusty, she’d find a way to get by.
And she did. Nancy found a way to balance her hours at the library with those she spent at home. The first time she left Jean in day care, she cried the whole bus ride to work, but had consoled herself that Jean hadn’t seemed so upset. Her eyes had been wide, just staring at all the new faces and the toys Nancy and the day care worker had waved before her, and Nancy had kissed her many times, assuring her she was safe, that she was going to like day care, even though Nancy knew she’d only been assuring herself, assuaging her own guilt.
Late Air Page 9
