by Rachel Toor
Walter-the-Man said, “Tell me. Why Yale?”
“Because—I mean, it’s obvious. It’s one of the top schools in the world—the third oldest in North America after Harvard and William & Mary. Three of the nine Supreme Court justices are Yalies. Take a look at the biographies of the poets in The Norton Anthology. Tons of them went to Yale. They have secret societies, like Skull and Bones and Scroll and Key. The Frisbee was invented when Yale students tossed pie tins at each other, and pizza and hamburgers both originated in New Haven.”
Walter-the-Man watched me as I talked. He no longer seemed interested in the game.
So I continued, “Yale has a copy of the Gutenberg Bible—it’s in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, which is made of translucent marble. A building with no windows but whose walls let light come in. The Payne Whitney gymnasium is known as the Cathedral of Sweat. The Yale Center for British Art has the most comprehensive collection of British Art outside the United Kingdom, housed in a building designed by the architect Louis I. Kahn, who also designed the Yale University Art Gallery, which also has an impressive collection. In one of the freshman dorms there’s a room reserved for any Vanderbilt descendant who attends. The last one was Anderson Cooper. Yes, that Anderson Cooper, class of 1989. Jodie Foster, Meryl Streep, Paul Newman, Hillary Clinton (and her husband) are also alumni. Cole Porter wrote the fight song, ‘Bulldog.’” I was winded by the time I finished.
Walter-the-Man said, “I see.”
He shined his head again and sat up straight and said, “SONS OF COUSINS OF DAUGHTERS OF BITCHES! Guard your man, you pencil-necked geek. YES! YES! DE-NIED! DEEEEE-NIED!”
He looked at me and said, “You sound like you should be walking backward. Now, tell me, future tour guide: What does any of that have to do with why you want to go there? Do you aspire to be a poet or a Supreme Court justice? Are you a Vanderbilt? I suspect you’re not going to go to be a frequenter of the gym, nor did I know you were interested in art, British or otherwise. Sure, you like pizza, but guess what? You can get it anywhere.”
“And your point is?”
“My point is you’ve collected a lot of facts and still haven’t given me one reason why Yale would be a better place for you than any of the hundreds of other schools you could attend.”
“Ms. Chan went there,” I said in a small voice.
True, my English teacher had gone to Yale. But she’d also said she’d never used the words Yale and happy in the same sentence. It was a pressure cooker; she said she thought she would have been happier someplace else. I didn’t feel the need to share this fact with Walter-the-Man.
“Why Yale, Alice?”
“Because I’ve wanted to go there for forever. Because it was my dream.”
“So dream a different dream.”
Then he hit himself on the forehead and said, “Christ on a crutch, I sound like a goddamn greeting card.”
He got serious again. He had the lines between his eyes—the elevens—that my mother eradicated with Botox from the foreheads of women who never wanted to frown.
“You know what I think?”
“I bet you’re going to tell me. I bet I couldn’t do anything to stop you from telling me.” I let out another big sigh.
“Right you are. I get that you’re upset. But I don’t think it’s because you wanted to go to Yale so badly. I think it’s because, for the first time, you didn’t get what you wanted. Or what you thought you wanted.”
I could feel my mouth start to quiver and I bit down on my lip.
“It’s not that,” I said, though even as I said it I realized it was partly that.
I thought about how wounded Mom had looked when I told her about the REJECT notice and how shocked Jenni had been, and how I worried Jenni wouldn’t think I was smart anymore. I’d always been the smart one.
“Maybe you’re right,” I said, my voice rough and crackly. “Maybe it was just the idea of Yale I wanted. But I told everyone about it and I assumed I was going to get in and now they think I’m a loser.”
Walter-the-Man spent a while looking at his beer and then took a long sip. He said, “I went to a crappy state university and a crappy law school. Am I a loser?”
I shook my head because I no longer trusted myself to speak.
“Alice, there are many measures of success. One of the biggest failures is not to aim high enough. Google ‘Teddy Roosevelt’ and ‘the arena’—you’ll see. Me, too often I’ve settled for the easy stuff. I’ve managed to cruise through life without ever stretching, without ever really testing myself. I look at you and I think, you’re going to do something. Okay, you didn’t get into Yale. So what? Neither will most of the other kids who applied. Big freaking deal. You tried. You’ll go on. You’ll do something.”
He took a final swig of his beer and continued. “You’ve had time to sulk and feel sorry for yourself, but enough, okay? No one died. No one got hurt. No one lost a limb or a job or a marriage. You will go to college. You will likely go to a fine college. You’ll be fine.”
He rubbed his hand over his head yet again and then dragged it across his face.
“I know what you’re running away from, Alice,” he said, and motioned toward my shoes. “It’s the notion that you failed. You’re running away from your own shame. What are you running toward? Can you figure that out?”
He shook his empty beer bottle at me. “And now, would you please go get me another beer? And, Alice? Get one for yourself. You need to chill the hell out.”
PART TWO
1
Even though I usually got up early for a teenager, I was still a teenager. Six o’clock in the morning seemed like a ridiculous time to be awake.
Walter had only a little out-of-cage time, while I put on my running clothes, before I headed for the door. I thought it would be a good idea to wear stuff that would make me look like I fit in, even if I wasn’t a real runner. Because it was also cold, I layered on a bunch more stuff—including my father’s old Bowdoin sweatshirt. I hadn’t washed my hair so I jammed it under a fleece hat that Jenni had made for me. She said she didn’t want to knit me a wool cap because if I got sweaty, I’d smell like a wet dog.
It’s a good thing Mom’s car had GPS. The race was way out in the boonies and the directions listed a bunch of unfamiliar roads.
When I finally got to Country Homes Lane, Gladys, the lady in the GPS, said, “Turn right on James Road in one mile.”
Okay.
Then she said, “In half a mile, right turn.”
I wanted to say, I heard you the first time. I can remember for half a mile.
Then she said, “In one-tenth of a mile, right turn.”
“Shut up, Gladys.”
Then she said, “Right turn. Right turn.” And went ding.
I was so busy being mad at her I drove past James Road.
I could practically hear her thinking, Why can’t this loser follow simple directions?
All she said was, “Recalculating.” But I felt it was in a snide tone.
In my family we call her Gladys, this domineering though often helpful voice. It’s because Gladys is the patron saint of parking spaces. Whenever we drive downtown and need to find a place to park, we have to say the prayer. It might be strange for secular Jews like us to say a prayer, let alone believe in a patron saint of parking, but I’m telling you, it works. It goes like this:
Gladys, Gladys, full of grace
Help us find a parking space.
When you find one—which you always will if you pray to Gladys—you have to say, “Thank you, Gladys,” or she won’t help you again.
So after she told me to turn around and turn left (“Turn left,” she said, and I swear her bossy voice got louder), I made the turn and eventually found my way to the New Hope fire station. The directions said we were supposed to park along the side of the road, and I did, thankful I didn’t have to invoke the Gladys prayer because, frankly, I was done with her.
People dressed in th
e red shirt Joan had showed me in the store scurried around setting up folding tables. A big digital clock ticked off numbers. All of a sudden I felt nervous. What was I doing here?
What a stupid, stupid idea.
As soon as I got out of the car, I heard my name. Joan had spotted me and she came running over.
“Alice!” she said. “I’m so glad you made it.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I said, “Um. Thanks.”
“I decided I want to have a water station at the turn and I’ll need you to help man—I mean, person—it. I have all the stuff in the car and I’ll drive you out. Miles should already be there and he can show you what to do.”
She gave me a twinkly look and said, “You’ll like Miles.”
We got into her car, crammed with orange traffic cones, a folding table, stacks of paper cups, jugs of water, a box of red shirts, and four pairs of dirty running shoes. She said, “We’ll drive along the course so you’ll see what it’s like for the runners. Someday you may want to get yourself a red dress and run this race.”
There were orange cones along the shoulder. No sidewalks out here in the boonies.
“We can’t close the roads, so runners have to be careful. You know to run on the side of the road facing traffic, right?”
No, I didn’t. I thought you were supposed to be like a bike, going with the flow.
“Um, sure,” I said.
“There’s the mile mark,” she said, and I saw a white line about two feet long painted on the road. “Every mile is marked like that. We don’t have enough volunteers to call out splits, but so many people run with Garmins now it’s not a big deal.”
I had no idea what she had just said.
“What do you mean by ‘splits’?” I asked. If people had to stop and do a split while running, this sport wasn’t for me.
“Oh!” she said. “I forgot you’re a newbie! Splits are the time at each mile. If you don’t have a Garmin, a watch with a GPS system”—she held up her tiny wrist to show me the biggest and ugliest watch ever made, way bigger and uglier than the black plastic one I’d snagged from the junk drawer—“and if you don’t have a good sense of pace, it’s useful to know how fast you’ve run a mile. You want to start out at a pace you think you can hold, and, if possible, run the second half the same pace or even faster. If you run the second half faster than the first half, it’s called a negative split.”
She patted my leg. “Don’t worry. You’ll learn our language. And you’ll find out about all the things only runners know.”
We got to a dead end and Joan stopped the car.
She said, “The course turns onto the trail here. It’s only two miles back to the start. You’ll work the water station and direct runners onto the course.” She took out the folding table, the water, and the cups, and plopped them on the side of the road.
She said, “Miles should be here any minute.”
Right then, out of the woods, popped a guy in running tights carrying a backpack.
The cute guy from the boulevard. This time, he didn’t have the Toto dog.
2
“Miles! Meet Alice! You two are working the water station! Thanks!”
Like a pocket pet, Joan moved in quick bursts. She slipped back into her car and drove away.
“Um,” I said.
“Hey,” he said, and raised a hand. “I’m Miles.” He was even cuter when he wasn’t running away from me.
I didn’t know what to say, so I said, “Miles.”
“I know, I know,” he said. “I’ve heard all the jokes. Miles the distance runner. It’s a family name, okay?” He smiled and then he looked down at the ground.
I hadn’t even made the connection. I had never met anyone named Miles.
“So let’s get set up,” he said, unfolding the table. “Nothing worse than runners who don’t have their water when they want it.”
He grabbed the gallon jugs, ripped off the lids, tore open the plastic bag with the paper cups, and began to fill them. He moved quickly and his hands were shaking a little. I stood and watched.
“So, Alice, right? Want to pitch in?”
“Oh,” I said. I didn’t know what to do with myself and wished I had washed my hair. “Sure. Yeah.”
I picked up one of the water bottles, which was heavier than I expected, and filled a cup.
“Yikes!” Miles said, and made the enough motion with his hands. “You only need to fill them halfway.” But when he moved his hands, he knocked over a whole row of cups.
I laughed. He smiled and shrugged his shoulders. He had the best smile I’d ever seen.
“You race?” he said.
“I don’t even really run. I mean, I just started. I have no idea what I’m doing here.”
“Well, I’m confident you’ll be able to handle the challenge of working a water station. All we have to do is make sure there are plenty of cups on the table—half full—and point the runners toward the trail.” He gestured into the woods. On the ground was a giant white arrow that could have been made out of baby powder.
“What’s that stuff?” I asked.
“Flour,” he said. “It’s how we mark the course. It’s a pretty obvious turn, but still. I did the last two miles on my way here.”
We continued to fill the cups and lined them up near the edge of the table.
He looked at his watch, not quite as big as Joan’s, but still substantial, and said, “Plenty of time before the lead pack comes through. Might as well get comfortable.” And he sank down on the ground and rested against a tree.
He dug into his backpack and pulled out a puffy jacket, which he put on. I saw the outline of a book and wondered what it was. He riffled through the pack and offered me food: “Orange? Banana? Inedible energy bar?”
“Um, no thanks.”
His legs were doing that boy thing, twitching as if they were being electrocuted. I didn’t know what to do with my hands, so I pulled them inside my sleeves and rolled the bottom of the sweatshirt around my arms. Then I thought about what a dork I must look like and shook them out.
“I think I’ve seen you running,” I said finally.
He looked at me, raised his eyebrows. His eyelashes were so long and thick they would have made Jenni jealous.
“On the boulevard,” I said.
He nodded.
“With a dog. With a little Wizard of Oz dog.”
“Potato,” he said. “The Tater Tot. I take him with me when I run in town. Harriet—my grandmother—complains that all he does is lie around and eat bonbons and watch Animal Planet, so I try to take him a few times a week and he loves it and it keeps him from porking out too much. Harriet says animals should have a waist, even terriers.” He’d said it all without taking a breath.
“Why do you call her Harriet?”
“That’s her name?” He said it like a question.
“I mean—” He made me so nervous.
“Kidding. I know what you mean. Harriet’s a kick. Truth is, most of the time I call her Harry. She’s a photographer and has lived all over the world and she says she isn’t old enough to be a grandmother.”
“How old is she?” I asked, and realized what an idiotic question that was. I made half circles in the dirt with my foot. I was afraid if I looked at him some kind of gravitational collapse would take place in my body and I’d turn into a black hole.
He laughed and said, “Believe me, she’s old enough to be a grandmother, just in a bit of denial. She walks with Potato every day, eats only organic food, and can twist herself into a pretzel. She’ll probably outlive us all.”
He patted the ground next to him. “Take a load off.” He seemed to be relaxing but he still talked fast.
I looked down at my thighs in my tights and wondered if he’d said “load” because he thought I was a chunk. I also wondered if he noticed how bowlegged I was. I didn’t want him to see how my knees could not come together and so I sat.
“You go to the high school?”
“Junior.”
“Haven’t seen you around school.”
“Homeschooled.”
He must have seen something on my face because he added, “Don’t worry. We live off the grid, but not in any survivalist, antigovernment, Bible-thumping way. My parents are hippie-artist types and thought they could do a better job of teaching me than what I’d get in the public school system. Mostly I teach myself.”
Then he bounced to his feet and said, “Here they come,” and I thought maybe he meant his parents.
He clapped his hands. A small, wiry guy with cropped dark hair in a short, tight, stretchy red dress came running down the road.
“Great job, Nate,” Miles said. “Looking good.”
“Miles,” the guy said, breathing out hard. “Need you here to pull me.” He whooshed past the table and made the turn into the woods. He was out of sight when he called, “Congrats on yesterday.”
Miles yelled, “Thanks!”
I thought: here we are in the boonies to provide water for runners and the dude didn’t even take any. What’s up with that?
I said:
1. “How come he didn’t take any water and
2. what did he mean by needing you to pull him and
3. what happened yesterday?”
I got so caught up in the moment I forgot to be nervous and sounded like myself for the first time that morning.
Miles said, “The fastest runners won’t stop for water in a race this short.”
I thought, if six miles is short, what’s long?
He continued. “And, well, he meant I’m usually ahead of him.” He adjusted the cups so they were in perfectly even rows. “When you’re running behind someone, it can feel like you are being pulled along by them.”
“You mean if you were running, you’d be in first place?”
No other runners were in sight. That guy Nate was far ahead of the rest of them.
