On the Road to Find Out

by Rachel Toor

  Me: “I mean, really. Don’t you have more important things to do?”

  Walter-the-Man: [Looks down at his empty beer bottle. He picks at the edge of the label. He crosses one leg over the other, uncrosses it, and looks right at me. He leans forward.]

  Walter-the-Man: “Hmmm. Let me think. Do I have more important things to do? Like what? Like make tons of money defending multinational corporations that do indefensible things? Right. I already do that. I spend most of my waking hours doing that.

  “The fact is, Alice, I love being a fan. I am, in fact, the very definition of a fan, ‘a fanatic,’ especially when it comes to Duke basketball. When I see these kids play, when I watch a team come together and become something bigger than each individual man, when I see a beautiful play, a buzzer-beating shot—where everything goes right, everything is in sync, when the impossible happens—it makes me believe. Not in God or anything spiritual—I stopped believing in God when I quit being an altar boy, but in possibility. It makes me feel part of something special. I met your father in a bar because we were both watching Duke play and we discovered we worked for the same firm, and we both said it was something we’d do only for a while because it was soul-sucking, life-deadening work. But here we both still are. Your father has your mother and you, which is a good thing when you’re not being a pain in the ass. [He winks. Like a skeevy old man. He actually winks.]

  “Me? Watching this team each season makes me come alive in a way that, you may find this hard to believe, corporate law does not. It helps me forget—though your mother is nice enough to remind me—that I’m fifty years old and still dating. It makes me forget my receding hairline and my increasing waist size. I have no family, no kids, I don’t even have a dog or a plant, but what I do have is a couple of handfuls of young men whose physical talents impress the bejesus out of me and whose stories I get to know because they inspire and delight me.

  “I could never jump that high, or run that fast, or handle a ball with such grace. When I follow this team I become invested in something outside myself. I care. And this is what I know: not caring is the end of a meaningful life. To be cynical about everything is a sad way to live. I don’t want to doubt; I want to believe. I want to feel passionate about something. I love it when Duke wins. I want them to go all the way to the big dance, the Final Four. I want them to win another national championship like you would not believe.

  “But even when they lose, while I’m not happy, I’m kind of happy I’m not happy. You know what I mean? I mean, it feels good to feel something. And it’s something I can share with other people.

  “I can walk into any bar and have a conversation with the guy—or the woman—on the next stool, where all of the things that make us different fall away and we can talk for hours about this game, or last season, or players long since retired, and it doesn’t matter if I’m a sad sack of a lawyer and he’s a housepainter who married his high school sweetheart and never went to college, or if she voted for people I think are evil, because that stuff never comes up.

  “We are citizens of the nation of basketball and for a few minutes, or an hour, or the length of the game, for that brief amount of time, I feel less alone in the world.”

  [He gets up and walks to the kitchen for another beer.]

  19

  I couldn’t sleep that night.

  When I wasn’t worrying about my run with Miles, I was wondering what Jenni was doing and if she was going to call me, or thinking about what Walter-the-Man had said about being passionate. I couldn’t come up with anything I cared about as much as Walter-the-Man cared about Duke basketball.

  I ate breakfast early because I didn’t want to get a cramp when I was running with Miles, and I took a shower and washed my hair. Yes, I washed my hair before I went for a run. I even used some mascara. For a minute I wished that Jenni was there to help me, but then I remembered I was mad at her.

  I put on my running clothes and waited. I didn’t know how I was going to last until noon.

  Walter was sleeping and didn’t want to come out of his cage. So I left him in there and played some rounds of Freerice until I kept getting pulchritude wrong. There’s no way such a hideous word should mean “physically attractive.”

  After about a hundred hours it got to be quarter to twelve. I jogged to the boulevard and could see, waiting for me at the corner, Miles and Potato.

  Don’t sound stupid, I told myself.

  Be yourself, I self–pep talked.

  And then I thought, God no! Don’t be yourself. That will scare him off.

  “Hey,” Miles said when he saw me. He wore short black shorts and a black shirt with a blocky picture of a guy running and the words Pre Lives.

  “Hey,” I said, and then Potato was on me. He danced on his itsy back legs and hit my knees with his front feet. His toenails were long black talons. He wagged his tail so hard his whole body vibrated. I bent down and he jumped up and planted a wet one on my nose. Today he sported a leopard-print harness.

  “He likes you,” Miles said.

  I sat on the sidewalk and Potato crawled into my lap. He kept putting his head against me and waiting to be petted. I cooed to him the way I do to Walter, saying things like, “You sweet little man, you munchkin poochie.”

  Don’t be yourself! I remembered, too late.

  I stood up and brushed the paw prints off my tights. “He’s nice,” I said, trying to be cool.

  “You an animal person?” Miles asked.

  “Yeah, I guess,” I said. I realized I didn’t want to tell him about Walter because of the whole kids-with-rats-are-loner-weirdos thing.

  “Spud,” Miles said suddenly, “run?” Potato stood at alert, his ears pricked as high as they could go, which, like the rest of him, was not very. His tail stood straight up. “Wanna?” Miles said, and Potato wagged like a maniac.

  “Wanna?” he said to me.

  And we started.

  20

  At first all I could think about was how hard I was breathing. You could probably hear me two counties away.

  Miles said, “Need to take it easy,” and was running—jogging—so slowly I couldn’t believe it.

  After a few minutes, I felt like I could go that speed all day. I relaxed. Then Miles started talking and I stopped paying attention to what was going on in my body and just listened to him.

  His grandmother had forced him to watch a movie the night before. It was one of her favorites, she said, and he simply had to watch it with her. He said it exactly like this and I giggled.

  “What’s funny?” he asked.

  “Uh, nothing. It’s just kind of cute the way you said you ‘simply had to watch it with her.’”

  “Huh. Guess it’s just a phrase she uses a lot.”

  He told me how he stayed at her house on weekend nights and they had a routine. His grandfather had died a long time ago and Harry had never remarried. She occasionally had “friends” over, but she’d lived alone for a long time. She was, he said, fun to hang out with. I thought it was sweet he liked to spend time with his grandmother. Then I realized she was no ordinary grandma.

  For movie-night dinners Harry made two gigantic bowls of popcorn—one for each of them—and hot chocolate, prepared with Mexican chocolate and a splash of hazelnut liqueur. She doctored the popcorn with a combination of flaxseed oil and olive oil and sprinkled a hefty dose of brewer’s yeast on it.

  “Whatever flaxseed oil and brewer’s yeast are, that sounds disgusting.”

  “Harry claims they’re the secrets to her health.”

  “That, and the liqueur,” I added. He laughed.

  Last night’s movie was Harold and Maude, he said, a romance between a teenage boy and a seventy-nine-year-old woman.

  “Sounds great,” I said, being sarcastic, and then worrying that he would think I was bitchy.

  “It was,” Miles said. “Totally freaking awesome.”

  But the more he told me about it, the more bizarre it seemed. The boy, Harold
, was obsessed with death and dying. And then he met Maude, who loved life more than anyone. Maude reminded Miles of Harry.

  “You should see it,” Miles said. “And the sound track is great. It’s by Cat Stevens.”

  My mother listened to Cat Stevens once in a while. When I was little, she used to sing “Moonshadow” to me, especially when I followed her around the house.

  “Maybe I will.”

  “What’s your favorite movie?” he asked me.

  That was easy. “Ratatouille.”

  “That kids’ cartoon about the rat?”

  I tried not to hear judgment in his voice.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Hard to imagine a rat being a sympathetic character, much less a hero.”

  I said nothing. I was glad I hadn’t mentioned Walter to him.

  We ran in silence for a while and then Miles asked, “So what do you like about it?

  “Besides everything?”

  “Including everything.”

  “Well,” I said, and started in. “What I love most is the message: anyone can cook but only the fearless can be great. I love the idea that cooking—and cooking, of course, stands in for most things in life—is something anyone can do with enough effort. But there are those who are, well, talented in ways others aren’t. Our generation has been fed this diet of ‘You are all beautiful and unique snowflakes.’ I think that’s hooey. Some snowflakes are better than others. But we’re not supposed to say that. The idea that someone can find his or her talent—and passion—and pursue it to the nth degree is something I envy. Last night Walter-the-M—”

  I stopped myself because I realized, maybe for the first time, that it was strange I called him Walter-the-Man, and if I explained that, I’d have to explain about Walter.

  “—um, a family friend, was talking about how much he loves being a Duke basketball fan. I didn’t get it before, how having a passion can help you to live. But that’s exactly what Ratatouille is about. Remy is the kid who doesn’t fit in because he likes something other people don’t understand. Well, other rats. You know what I mean.” I was getting flustered because I knew I could sound all nerdy when I talked like this. But I couldn’t stop.

  “He gets an opportunity to follow his passion and it takes him places. That movie makes me think if I could only figure out what I’m interested in, I could excel at something. And I like the idea that while not everyone can become a great artist, a great artist can come from anywhere.”

  Miles ran beside me and listened. I was talking fast and was already breathless from running.

  But I kept going. “Plus, there are all these other things about the movie I love. I love that when he gets swept away in the water, Remy is saved by a book. The book literally is his life raft. I often think books help me to live.”

  I was all excited because I was figuring out more as I was speaking. Sometimes I don’t really know what I think until I talk or write about it. “Plus, I like the point the movie makes about how, in a good book, the author comes to life. You feel like he’s talking to you, directly to you, answering your questions and thinking your thoughts, even though that seems nutty. Good books feel personal. Even, I guess, cookbooks. Reading is a cure for loneliness.”

  “Yeah,” Miles said. “I know something about that, being an only child who lives in the sticks.”

  “Plus,” I said, because I really couldn’t stop now, “I love how much I learned about food and cooking. I like books and movies where I get to learn stuff in a way that feels fun. I don’t like to cook or bake but I like knowing you can tell a good bread by the sound the crust makes. I like to know you have to have a ‘clean station’ when you’re working in the kitchen.”

  We were running faster now, and I think it was because of me. I was fired up. “Plus, it’s beautiful. I mean, it’s a piece of art. The movie is art and the food they show in the movie is art.”

  I also wanted to say that they got the rat movements exactly right. The way rats run and jump and leap. The way they stand on their back feet and are able to lean forward at an angle without falling over—it was clear to me that the animators had spent time with actual rats. But I didn’t mention any of that.

  While I felt ashamed about betraying Walter by thinking of him as something embarrassing, I was afraid Miles wouldn’t understand.

  21

  After I finished babbling on, Miles was quiet for a while. I worried that now he would definitely think I was the freak of all freaks, but then he said he felt the same way about running—that there are so many things about it that he loves, and that in some ways, a race can be like a work of art. He quoted this guy named Steve Prefontaine—“Pre”—a track star back in the ’70s who said something like, “I don’t race to find out who’s the fastest. I race to find out who has the most guts.”

  I’d never thought of running like that, about the need to be fearless. I remembered what the winner of the Red Dress Run had said about Joan, that she didn’t have the guts. I asked Miles what that was all about.

  “The trials,” he said. “Thirteen years ago.”

  “Was she arrested?” I couldn’t imagine Joan doing anything that even stretched the law.

  He made a playful jab at my shoulder. “No, dude, the Olympic trials. For the marathon. It’s the race before the Olympics that determines who gets to represent the U.S.”

  “A marathon before the marathon?”

  “Yeah, it’s held about six months before the games. First three in the race earn their Olympic berths, so you’re racing for position, rather than time. That’s kind of what did Joan in.”

  It was like we weren’t even running, just chatting like normal people. While we were running! Not having to look at him actually made it easier to talk. Potato cruised along and then he stopped short.

  He’d found a tree he had to pee on.

  We waited for him to put his leg back down and then started floating along again.

  “Joan went into the trials with the fastest qualifying time that year. She was a lock for the team. But she didn’t go for it. She played it safe and stayed with the lead pack. Barely held on for fourth place, which, in the trials, is as good—or as bad—as last. People thought she had wimped out, said she didn’t have the guts to run by herself.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  He was quiet for a while. We listened to each other’s breathing. Or more likely, he listened to me panting.

  Finally he said, “Yeah, I guess. It seems like a gigantic washout. She never raced again.”

  Failure seemed to be the theme of my life right now. Not something I wanted to discuss, so instead I said, “This is a long run for me.”

  “You have a nice easy stride,” Miles said, looking me up and down. “And good form.”

  I got all embarrassed and said, “Tell me what I’m doing wrong.”

  “Nothing. Not a thing.”

  “No,” I said, too loud. “Help me.”

  “You don’t need help. You’re doing great.”

  “You know there’s always something that could be better. I hate not being good at things.”

  “You’re just beginning. You don’t have to be good yet. You just have to keep at it. Build your strength, increase your endurance, and eventually get around to adding some speed.”

  “Tell me something that will help.”

  He sighed. “Maybe try to relax your shoulders, and don’t clench your fists.”

  I had rolled my fingers into a tight ball.

  “Shake out your hands,” he said, and acted like he was trying to get the blood back into the tips of his digits. “When you’re running, pretend you’re holding two fistfuls of potato chips.”

  When he said “potato,” the little guy turned around and looked at him. “Excuse me. Chips. Pretend you have chips in your hands. You don’t want to crush them.”

  “What else?”

  “Well,” he said, drawing the word out. “Don’t swing your arms past the midpoint of you
r body. If you think about rotating your thumbs out, that can help.”

  “Okay,” I said, and thought about my imaginary potato chip–filled hands with the thumbs turned out. I might have looked like a hitchhiker with arthritis. “What else?”

  “If you want to speed up, shorten your stride.”

  “Take smaller steps?”

  “Yep. It’ll increase your turnover.”

  “Okay. Good. What else?”

  Miles laughed and said, “Look. Running is the most natural thing in the world. It’s the act of catching yourself before you fall. If you pitch your upper body forward, your leg will shoot out. Can’t help it. Sometimes you might fall. I go down all the time on the trails. But you brush yourself off and keep going. Running is just a controlled fall. Kind of like life.”

  “Deep,” I said.

  “I know, right?” he said.

  “Seriously. Thank you,” I said.

  Then he did something crazy. He put a finger against one nostril and blew a wad of snot out of his nose.

  “WTF?” I said.

  “Snot rocket,” he said.

  That might have been more than I needed to know. I remembered seeing the book in his backpack at the race.

  “So do you like to read?” I said like a gigantic nerd.

  “Read all the time,” he said. “Right now I’m digging The Things They Carried.”

  “Really? I love that book so much.”

  He nodded, as if there could be no other response, and continued. “My all-time fave, though, is Catcher in the Rye.”

  “No way,” I said.

  “Kind of cliché to love it, right?”

  “Are you kidding me? I hate it. Hate it. Hate it.”

  He didn’t do that thing people sometimes do when I express a strong opinion—or express the same opinion three times—and say, “Why don’t you tell us how you really feel?” I hate when people say that. Why would we be having a conversation if I wasn’t going to tell you how I really feel?