Late Air

by Jaclyn Gilbert

  She thought, Is this what Murray was seeking after Jean died? She nearly stopped again, her eyes burning, her heartbeat stronger at her wrists, under her watch, numbers moving up, approaching the next minute, and the next one after that. These minutes, they had been Murray’s survival, she thought. He had lived these minutes the only way he’d known how to.

  The next time she traversed the Manhattan Bridge, she sought to feel what Murray might have, to encompass the entirety of that view: the whole island, all the places that become one—she saw out of herself, as though she were part of the buildings, smaller and smaller the higher up she went.

  She could look down at that world and say that living on was a choice she and Murray had made—that their life together, in their child, could not have been anything other than what it had been. It was how Nancy came to one day run past playgrounds and carousels, ice rinks dotted with children—to imagine a school or theater or newly erected apartment building filled with happy children. Could stop to finger violets or forsythia in spring, to really laugh at a movie or buy a lottery ticket. Cut her hair without regret. Hang photographs or brush the covers of her favorite children’s books with her palms.

  She was thinking like this seven months later, one early morning in August. She was fifty-nine and curating an exhibit on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The original manuscript had just arrived in her office from the British Library in London, and Nancy had already begun sifting through pages and illustrations, imagining Charles Lutwidge Dodgson’s pen over paper, how he’d written it for the Liddell sisters one evening when he’d been rowing them up the Thames for a picnic in Godstow, and the little girls had asked for a story.

  The phone rang. It was Caroline.

  “James,” she said. “He’s being a typical senior, but he doesn’t tell us where he’s spending the night and he’s been lying about his summer work, a few essays he’s supposed to turn in before his first day back. How is he going to be prepared for college in a year?”

  “Caroline,” Nancy said. “Relax. Take a deep breath.” And then she waited until she heard it. Breathe.

  “I’m sorry,” Caroline said. “You’re at work.”

  Nancy had her finger over an illustration of Alice shielding her face amid a spiraling vortex of cards. The six of spades was most pronounced, distended.

  “It’s alright,” Nancy said.

  “I suppose I panicked,” Caroline continued. “But I had a thought. That James loves to draw.” She breathed through the phone. “He has private lessons and supplies, his own charge account at Blick, but I realized he’s never really developed an appreciation, and I thought—”

  Nancy closed her eyes, waiting for Caroline to finish.

  “Well, I wondered if you could take him to the Met. Maybe as soon as next weekend before he goes back to school?”

  “I don’t know if one trip to the museum . . .” Nancy focused on the two of hearts, three behind the six of spades. Its proportions more balanced, its coloring soft.

  “Jim and I aren’t expecting change overnight. But it would just make us feel so much better to try now. Because then he’s gone until Christmas. I know he looks up to you. He keeps a print of the Rembrandt you gave him in his room. Nancy, you know the self-portrait, Etching at the Window, or—”

  “At a Window,” Nancy said.

  “What?”

  “It’s called Etching at a Window.”

  “Oh,” Caroline said. “Right. That one.”

  “I gave you that print.”

  “You did? You did! I remember. Well, I gave it to James.” Caroline’s breath was heavy again. “He loves Rembrandt, and he was really moved by the picture—the image, I mean—and so I framed it for him and hung it above his desk. I told him what you do, and how hard it is to make a career in the arts, and how you are an example of perseverance, brilliance, really, and he listened . . . no, hung on is better, to every word.”

  “Caroline,” Nancy said. She had slipped the illustration into a clear sheath, which she pressed her finger over. “Save it, will you?”

  “What?” Caroline said, her voice soft.

  “The lip service. I get it. I’ll do it,” she said. Now she had her pen poised over a Post-it note, on which she’d recorded the correct catalog number and the date.

  It took them over six minutes to pin down a time in the morning next Saturday—the day before James would leave for Choate. Caroline explained how he’d need time to eat breakfast and shower after tae kwon do, then they had to factor in travel time, because he liked to walk places. When it was done, Nancy drew a circle around the date on her wall calendar: August 26.

  Inside she printed James. 11:30.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Monday

  6:02:45 a.m.

  On Anna’s first practice back, Murray had her warm up for twenty minutes on the bike and complete eight by 400 meters on the treadmill. The idea was to work out in a controlled environment so they could pinpoint a target speed slightly slower than preinjury training. They had easy access to the training room if anything went awry. Anna was working out twice a day with resistance bands to strengthen her hips and glutes and getting regular chiropractic, massage, and electro-stim therapy. She looked like she may have gained a few pounds since the sprain.

  He told her to increase the treadmill’s incline to 2.0, speed to 9.5: effectively a 6:13 pace. Once she could maintain this for two minutes, he set his timer for 1:20 and had her increase the speed to 10.5.

  “Shoulders relaxed. Head up,” he said, thirty seconds into the first interval. “See your competition. Imagine passing her on a hill.”

  Anna’s right foot still looked a little weak, the way she was collapsing on her instep. Once Becky was well enough, she’d have to do at least three one-hour sessions of physical therapy a day.

  Last night he’d stayed up reading about brain injury—not in the stacks, at home. He had not fallen asleep until 3:22 a.m., but right now his head felt surprisingly clear.

  Becky would need to start with a roller walker. Patients, like athletes, needed experts to set milestones, ones that at first seemed out of reach but that were, ultimately, attainable.

  “Rest,” he said. Anna had forty-five seconds of rest before the next quarter. Thirty seconds in, she should start ramping up the speed.

  Becky was getting regular massages: experts managing her limbs, and he had to assume it wasn’t all passive. That they had a plan to engage her core muscles, her pelvic stability.

  “Go!” he said. His left eye twitched as he thought about bed rests and how they made for weak lower backs. For a moment, he saw Nancy’s body-racking contractions, and then the sound of her heaving—the searing red of her face. A one two three four five six seven eight nine and ten!

  He imagined doctors marking Becky’s progress through tiny hash marks on a whiteboard or along the wall.

  “Thirty more seconds!” Then he told her to notch up her base speed. “Hold it . . . hold it.” Twitching seized the right side of his mouth. “Five . . .” He began counting down. Last night he’d dreamed of Nancy reading in the bathroom. Shrouded in steam. He had wanted to join her there, but couldn’t move through the opacity of heat.

  “Three down, three to go.” He and Anna were on better terms now, but she still felt far away. When was the last time she’d smiled or told him to have a good night after evening practice?

  “Twenty more seconds!” he said. “After this, you’re halfway through!” Anna’s breath labored, not wheezing, but searching. She breathed through her mouth. “Rest!”

  Rick had shown him one of Becky’s medical reports Lisa had sent over before the university settlement. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Long-term neuropsychological assessment.

  “Go!” Anna was starting interval number five. He thought of the piston of Becky’s ventilator, moving up and down. Less than 50 percent chance patient will regain normal cognitive function. Level 3 on the Rancho Los Amigos scale of cognitive function.

&n
bsp; “Rest!”

  He thought about the other possible obstacles to Becky’s progress that he’d read about: involuntary eyebrow movement, blurred vision, the struggle for balance, to relearn language; but he had not been convinced. Not by any of it.

  “Go!” he said. “This is it!” He had her amp the incline to 3.0 and her speed to 12, the highest the machine would go, for five minutes. Halfway in she was grunting. Moaning. But Lisa had not given ample warning about Becky—the outbursts.

  “Keep it going! Keep it going!” He said it repeatedly over the next fifteen seconds. Anna’s head and arms struggled to remain square. Knees perpendicular. Hair along her neck was soaked. Sweat blackened her blue T-shirt.

  “Done,” he said. Treadmill twenty minutes exactly, including rest. He told her to jog for another twenty minutes, to grip the handlebars for twenty seconds, so they could measure heart rate.

  “One-eighty-two,” he said, after numbers stabilized. “How is your foot?”

  “Pretty good,” she said, breathless. “I feel it, but not bad pain.”

  “It stayed the same?”

  “Yes.” The machine said she slowed to 7:30 pace. When he asked her how this felt as a cooldown, she said fine. Said she’d averaged about that on her first run back.

  It was Monday. They had five days until Saturday, the invitational at Lehigh. She should run four miles on Saturday, and a pace run under 6:00 to start. If she felt good, she could work toward 5:30 or faster. Then for Sunday’s long run, she’d do nine miles, instead of the twelve she had managed preinjury.

  He’d read that some patients benefited from listening to Mozart’s Sonata 448 every morning. A form of expressive therapy that expedited healing.

  He’d read about all the other forms: cognitive for everyday functioning, recreational for engaging in social leisure activities, occupational for daily demands—showering, dressing, personal hygiene.

  He wished he’d pressed Lisa about the physical exercise Becky needed. Becky’s muscles had to learn how to relax and relearn certain sensations. Reflexology and water therapy: other options he could have stressed.

  Anna had finished the first five minutes of her cooldown. He had to remind her to relax and square. To still her pelvis and imagine her navel. Told her to see her hips as two headlights, staring into the dark.

  “I’m trying,” she said.

  He merely wanted Becky to be able to transition from walker to cane sooner. To practice taking real steps. Independent ambulation first and foremost.

  He told Anna to grip the handlebars again. They waited six seconds for the heart rate sensor to activate, numbers adjusting around her pulse. “One sixty. Keep that.” More sweat had splashed over the treadmill’s belt. Her feet had no other choice but to fall over it. How fast would she go on the road at this stage? Or in a race, along less predictable trails?

  When she finished, he sent her to the trainer for rehab. They went over the exact sequence of strengthening exercises, and then how long she’d need the stim machine. He wanted to confirm they were putting electrodes along her calves, feet, and glutes. That she left with ice plastic-wrapped to her ankles and shins.

  “I’ll tell them.” She walked away: no sign of her limping.

  Later, at the diner, he asked for two cups of coffee. He had not slept in two days and needed the caffeine.

  Becky’s face had looked sallow, as if improved diet and mobility made no difference. And her left arm had been in a brace, because the left hemisphere controlled the opposite side of the body.

  Coffee was better with sugar and cream. Real sugar, not the pink stuff so many of the girls consumed. At away meets, when they stayed over at hotels and gathered early in the morning for complimentary breakfast, he’d watch them tip packet after packet into their cups.

  Today they were working out on the IM fields. Since Anna was through with her workout, she’d help him take splits, at least for the first half. For the last, they’d agreed on some added supplementary training so she would reach over sixty minutes of cardio today. The plan was for a thirty-minute tempo, hitting her max speed and resistance twenty minutes in. Exertion was exertion. It didn’t matter if she did it all in one go or sporadically throughout the day, though mentally it was always better to push through pain for a longer period of time.

  Sarah Lloyd had won the Eastern College Athletic Conference in 2002, six months postinjury her sophomore year; she’d had acute Achilles tendonitis, nothing like the stress fractures she would endure as a senior, but still the tendonitis had required a long, arduous recovery. Murray had customized a plan for her: three and a half hours of intensive cross-training daily, coupled with physical therapy, intensive calf stretching, and strengthening at least four times a week.

  Sarah came in just as Murray was ordering his eggs over easy. She wore a long black skirt with a purple blazer. Usually this place was full of locals and college kids. Hands worked frantically around her purse after she took her booth.

  She was searching for medication; he saw the white top of the bottle and then its dark, shadowy orange. She took a capsule with water, still unaware, it seemed, of him.

  “Home fries?” the waitress asked. He’d seen her before—she had large eyes, but had they always been this vibrant, glistening green?

  “No,” he said, “just toast. Whole wheat.”

  “You got it.” She smiled.

  Murray waited for Sarah to turn a bit more in his direction so he could be certain before he said anything. But she didn’t—she just looked out the window, hands resting on the purse in her lap.

  He was sure Sarah saw him here, even if she never turned to confirm it, him, in her periphery. He’d thought of waiting, something to prompt her, but then—he wasn’t certain how much time had passed—his eggs came. He studied their soft, wobbling centers.

  She’s done. Sarah’s parents had called him, after that last moment with Sarah in the common room when he’d brought the chocolate milk, when he’d wanted to hold her but hadn’t. The phone had quivered in his hand as Sarah’s father said, She is done, and that he didn’t want Murray contacting her with any more of his “plans and timelines.”

  She’s going home after graduation, her mother had interjected, voice as shaky as Lisa’s. They didn’t want her staying on with him to train for the Olympics, like he’d hoped from the beginning. More like they’d forgotten what they’d signed up for. A Division I program in the Ivy League. That was the best there was.

  He closed his eyes, felt himself sink into the padded seat at his booth, where he had his eggs and toast. He raised his fork to pierce the yolk, but he couldn’t push down, couldn’t break it, feeling the yolk overtake the size of the white. Usually he liked to dip the bread, but the thought of that taste—he pushed the plate away.

  You don’t look good, Rick had said. You should see someone. Murray’s hands shook as he raised his pen to his pad and noticed the dry patches around his knuckles. Eight hours before practice, he told himself. You just have eight hours, and he wrote down every hour as a list, with the things that had to be accomplished. He had the itinerary and final roster to print for Lehigh. Stats and seed times to review. Several recruiting emails to send. He had to stay within those boundaries—there was no going past the minutes he allotted.

  When the waitress asked if he wanted his food to go, he said no, and as he waited for cash, he looked once more in Sarah’s direction, his eyes twitching, his mouth dry. He reached for his water glass, sipping slowly.

  The whole while, she remained there, turned away from him, silent, by the window.

  When the waitress came back with his receipt, he asked if the woman was a regular.

  “What woman?”

  He explained, without pointing, but the waitress didn’t understand.

  “There aren’t any women here. Just me.” She laughed.

  Was she joking with him? Was this a joke? He thought so, then didn’t, as he looked down at his watch, its face glazed with sweat. The runni
ng time: but he could hardly differentiate six from nine, seconds from minutes. Hours, arbitrary numbers. Letters. Words.

  “Sir, can I get you anything else?” The waitress stood before him, holding water. “Are you going to be alright to leave?”

  It wasn’t a joke, Murray thought. No woman had been there by the window. The booth was empty.

  You’re muttering to yourself, Rick had said, the girls are concerned. Murray shook his head, then looked up and took the water the waitress was still holding. He sipped it, trying not to cough as he breathed. “I’m fine,” he told her when she asked again, and from the black plastic tray she’d brought, he scraped what change from his breakfast was left, and he stood up and made his way out.

  TWENTY-TWO

  James had not arrived yet. Nancy waited in front of the Met, on the steps, precisely according to plan. It was a hot day, even for August. She wore golfing shorts and a polo with her running shoes, the most comfortable outfit she’d been able to conjure for this weather. Still, she felt stupid. She had not held a club since she was a small child, no older than eight, when her parents had insisted on lessons. Funny, she thought, when she’d first come to the city, James had been eight. Had it already been ten years? Yet, still she hardly knew him. She supposed for most of those years, she had not wanted to get to know him.

  She looked for his face among the herds of people toppling in, many of them speaking languages she couldn’t decipher—the air thick with human sweat and musk. Nancy looked for James’s blond hair, his tall, lanky build, a near copy of Jim, at least when he was young, as Caroline had once pointed out in photographs, after she’d dug out an old album to peruse on her sofa. Jim had been away on business then, and Nancy recalled several of the photos: Jim carefree on a tire swing. Jim fishing with his brother. Jim poised for a baseball pitch. Now, Jim, hunched and bald, spent most of his time running his own consulting firm—a sight that had led Nancy to wonder whether stress or loneliness had been as unkind to Murray over the years. She had seen a few photos of him as a child, photos before church or at family gatherings, never ones of leisure. Murray had been afforded meager comforts his whole life, but his hair, it had been as full and blond as Jim’s as a child. What did he look like now in the eighteen years since Jean, in the fifteen since she had left him completely?