by Rachel Toor
And that was it. She didn’t try to give me advice or tell me what I could expect to feel. She didn’t say she was sorry, or that he was only a rat. She held me close and when she let go she swatted my back and said, “We got a big shipment in and I’ve been hopeless in trying to get things organized. You know me,” she added with a shrug and a smile.
As I moved toward the stockroom Joan said, “Miles has been asking about you. Said he hasn’t seen you on the boulevard.”
I said nothing.
Miles was the last person I wanted to see. I didn’t want to have to explain that my world had collapsed because someone he didn’t think could be a sympathetic character had died.
“Not running?”
I shook my head and went toward the messy pile of boxes.
After a couple of hours sorting through new pairs of shoes, checking them off in the computer inventory, getting price tags on three boxes of new shorts and shirts, I emerged from the stockroom just before closing time. Joan was tidying up the START wall.
I didn’t know what to say and I didn’t really want to go home yet, so I asked the question I’d been wondering about.
“Do you have a number up there?”
“Sure do,” she said, and pointed to a race bib way up in the corner. The number was 1. Across the top it said: U.S. Olympic Trials.
“My last race as a competitive runner. The most important day of my life. That race made me who I am today.”
Could she be referring to the same race Miles had told me about? The day she failed?
“It’s funny. I haven’t thought about it for a long time. I don’t know if you know anything about my running history.” She looked at me and grinned. “I used to be a fairly good runner.”
“Yeah, I’d heard that.”
She turned back to the wall. “I’m sure you did,” she said with a soft chuckle.
Then she put her hands on her hips and looked back at me.
“Hey, since we’re about to close, do you want to go out for a little jog?”
Even if I had been running every day—which I hadn’t—I certainly wasn’t fast enough to run with Joan. As I started to say no she said, “It’ll be slow and easy. And I’ll tell you about the trials and what happened after.”
I wanted to hear, but wasn’t sure I wanted to run.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s do it. There are some stories that are better told while moving forward.”
So we did what we needed to close up the store. I swept and vacuumed and emptied the trash and Joan put the cash from the register in the safe. She’d encouraged me to keep an extra set of running clothes and shoes in the stockroom for those times when, as she said, “You just have to go for a run.” After we’d both changed clothes, she flipped over the sign on the door that said GONE RUNNING, and we headed out.
Joan took short, quick steps. It was beautiful to see her legs in motion; she moved like a ballet dancer. I was able to notice because I hung back and ran behind her for the first block. She turned, jogging backward, and said, “Come on, Alice. I know you can keep up.”
I didn’t know that I could.
By the time I got to her I was panting. She just kept going, her arms at right angles to her body, her movements efficient and smooth.
Daylight saving time had started the week before and it was still light out, would be for another hour and a half or so. The air felt heavy but not too cold.
We ran without speaking for a while and then Joan said, “I went into the trials that year with the fastest time. I always had the fastest times. I was perhaps the most competitive person you’ve ever met.”
I snorted, because my mother was the most competitive person I’d ever met.
Joan continued. “I’d been racing for a long time, and I always raced to win. Usually I did. I spent hours—sometimes days and nights—before a race throwing up. My whole identity was wrapped around my times, my trophies, my wins. I’d get so hyped up I was barely human. I yelled at everyone, including Ricardo, the man I’d later marry. I knew once I stepped up to the marathon, I had to go to the Olympic Games. It was what I wanted more than anything.”
It felt strange to be running again. I’d not gone since Walter died and it was like my body had forgotten how. I tried to imitate Joan’s short stride and found that when I did, I went faster and it was easier. Miles had been right.
When we got to a traffic light, I kept jogging in place because I thought you were supposed to—I’d seen people doing it. Joan stood still while we waited for the light to change, so I felt embarrassed and stopped my calisthenics.
When the green man signaled GO, we ran across the street.
Joan went on. “All I had to do was place in the top three. I knew the other girls, and knew I could beat them. But I also wanted to take it easy and not tax myself. I had been dealing with some nagging injuries and I didn’t want to get hurt before the games.
“The pace started out slow. I didn’t want to push it, so I sat on the heels of the lead pack and let them do the work. We ran together in a tight bunch. Some of the girls were chatting, talking easily in the first few miles about this and that. I was focused. I never talked during races.”
Then she laughed. “Now you can’t get me to shut up on a run.”
I oinked out something to let her know I was still listening.
“I kept waiting for someone to make a move, to pick up the pace. No one did. I knew I could go a lot faster, but I didn’t want to run by myself and was afraid if I threw in a surge, no one would come with me. It’s hard to lead a race. It takes more physical effort and it’s mentally fatiguing.” Her voice, usually soft, had taken on an edge I’d never heard in it. For the first time, I was able to imagine her as a fierce competitor.
“But the pace was too slow. If you run too far off your natural pace, you’ll affect your form. I had to make small adjustments in my stride and ended up with blisters, horrendous blisters, about nineteen miles into the marathon.”
As she said this, I thought about the first day I came into the store. She’d warned me about wearing cotton socks because of blisters.
“Uh-oh,” I said. “Are you going to get blisters from this?” I gestured outward, meaning running now, here, with me.
She patted me on the shoulder and said, “No. It really only happens in long races. Running with you is a pleasure, Alice.”
She thought for a moment and said, “In a way, all races are about managing pain. I’d always been able to run past the point when most people want to stop. When they put me on a treadmill to measure my blood lactate I got it higher than anyone could believe. I was used to the pain of pushing my body hard. But the blisters—a whole different thing. My stride was messed up and I could feel my socks filling with blood.”
“Ick,” I said, and then realized that was probably not the right thing to say. But Joan was in her own world. She just kept talking and I kept trying to keep up with her.
“After taking the lead and feeling strong, I had to drop way back because of the blisters. I was able to hold on and finish fourth. I realized how tough I was. Like Miles’s hero, Pre, I believed I could take more pain than anyone. I was proud of myself, even though, to the rest of the world, I had failed. And, of course, I had. I broke the most important rule: I didn’t run my own race. I waited for the other girls and let them set the pace. I was too scared to go out on my own. I had failed in the most awful, public way. Fourth at the Olympic trials.”
Out of the corner of my eye I could see her shaking her head.
“I’d never dropped out of a race before and I didn’t that time. I endured. Afterward, I didn’t want to talk about it.”
She was quiet for a while.
I heard my own breathing and my heavy footfalls. Like Miles, Joan ran without making a sound. I was glad we weren’t facing each other. I was afraid of what I would see on her face as she remembered that difficult time.
“Then Ricardo asked me if I still loved running. Did I l
ove running? It was what I did. Who I was. Yeah, he said, but do you love it? I realized I took no joy in winning, only vague satisfaction in not losing.”
Her hand went to the gold chain around her neck. I’d often seen her fiddle with it at the store, as if she needed to make sure it was still there. “I’d just met Ricardo.”
We got to another traffic light and when we stopped she turned toward me. Her eyes were wet but she was smiling. “He loved everything he did; he loved the world. He was happy being outside and didn’t care how fast he was moving. When we’d go for a run, he’d want to stop to tell me the names of the flowers and the trees. He’d spot a hawk slicing through the sky overhead, or point out scat from a moose or fox.
“What I had to admit was that I didn’t love running anymore, and hadn’t for a long time. I was addicted to being good at it. It was like a job I didn’t know how to quit, because I didn’t know how to do—or be—anything else.”
I was so busy listening to her I didn’t think about how far we had gone or how fast we were going.
“Ricardo brought me to a playground and made me watch the children dashing around. ‘Remember how it feels to run like a kid?’ he asked. I didn’t. I knew how to train, how to make myself run when the weather was crappy, knew how to do two workouts a day and nap in between. Until I met Ricardo, I’d never slept in on a weekend morning, never lounged around in bed with the Sunday paper and sipped coffee.
“After the trials, everyone thought I quit racing because I had failed. I didn’t give any interviews, didn’t tell anyone about my blisters or talk about the fact that I had chickened out. Ricardo encouraged me to run with him—at an easy pace—and on those runs he would ask me what I wanted, what I cared about. I hadn’t ever thought about anything other than winning. I wanted to learn to love running. I had a natural talent, and I’d taken it as far as it was going to go. I had been able to find out how resilient I was. I could get through the bad spots. What I wanted to recover, and Ricardo helped me do this, was the joy, the delight you see in those kids on the playground.”
I snuck a peek at her. She looked lighter, like a kid.
“So we came up with the idea for the store. I wanted to be able to serve the runners who were serious, for whom shaving minutes off a marathon time was a big deal. Ricardo wanted to help people learn to enjoy running. Getting to the start line of the Olympic trials marathon was my big achievement. He said I needed to remember that. I wanted to help others get to the start.
“A couple of weeks after the trials Ricardo gave me this”—she touched the necklace—“and said, ‘If you had won gold at the Olympics, you would have taken the medal and locked it away in a safe somewhere. But after the trophies have been awarded, after the times have been posted, what matters is feeling that there is more to come. That you have more to do. You’re a link in a chain. Connect to other people and connect them to each other. That will last.’”
After Walter died, I thought I had no more tears left in me.
I was wrong.
Joan said, “I found joy in running, and I found a job that was perfect for me, and I found my partner in life. Even after I lost him—” And she stopped.
She turned and looked at me hard, and by then both of us were silently crying. “—I knew as much as it hurt, and it hurt more than anything I have ever experienced, I would be able to keep going. Running taught me that. Running got me through his illness and his death. It keeps me going still.”
8
I studied for the AP exams that were coming up next month because it was easier to “Analyze the cultures of the Mediterranean region during the period circa 200 CE to 1000 CE” or to “Select a single pivotal moment in the psychological or moral development of the protagonist of a bildungsroman and write a well-organized essay that shows how that single moment shapes the meaning of the work as a whole” than it was to think about anything else.
Mom wore the face that said I’m worried about you, and she tried to get me to talk about which college I was going to pick. I had until May 1 to make a decision. That didn’t leave me much time to decide where I wanted to go.
But the truth was, I didn’t want to go anywhere.
Or do anything.
A couple of times Mom suggested getting another rat. I shut her down fast.
Jenni tried to get me to go out with her and the stud muffin for pizza, invited me along when the Brittanys went to the movies, and even once offered to run with me.
Dad suggested we make our pilgrimage to the bookstore.
I said no to everything.
When I showed up at the store, Joan left me alone. She’d always have mindless and absorbing work for me to do: counting, unpacking, checking, restocking, vacuuming. She left gifts for me: one of those water-carrying belts with four small bottles, a pouch to hold my keys, a container of Kool-Aid-like drink. She said they were overstock and maybe I could use them. While my parents would have bought me anything I needed, the things Joan gave to me I treasured.
I thought about the story she’d told me on our run and wished I could be more like her, but I didn’t have her strength, her endurance. I didn’t think I could keep going.
9
Two weeks after Walter died I filled the bottles with water, poured in some of the powdered electrolyte mix, and strapped the belt on. I hoped not to run into Miles and Potato—I didn’t want to have to explain what had happened—and I didn’t.
I had become a creature of habit during the short time I’d been running. I liked always going the same way, always knowing how far I’d traveled and how much farther I had to get back. There were certain landmarks I looked forward to passing. I knew I’d usually be cold or creaky until I got to the capitol, but after that, I’d be warmed up and feeling loose. For some reason, I always held my breath when I ran by the power plant.
I hadn’t done much exploring. My neophobia was acting up.
Since nothing felt good anyway, since there was no Bengay balm for the ache in my heart, no ointment to take away the sting, I decided that instead of turning around at my usual point, I would keep going.
The boulevard follows the Kanawha River. As I got farther from downtown, the path had more cracks in it; tufts of grass and spring flowers pushed their way through the asphalt. Then it got narrow until it was no longer paved and was just a dirt trail. I kept running. The earth felt good under my shoes. I couldn’t go as fast—less traction, more friction, some physics principle at work—but I didn’t care.
Even though the ground was uneven, instead of looking down as I normally did, paying attention to where my feet were landing, I held my head high. I thought about Walter, about how he was always looking up. His approach to the world was, “Hey, what’s that?” never, “Oh crap, now what?” He got excited whenever I brought anything new home. Especially paper bags. I think he loved the sound he made when he ran around in a paper bag. He also liked to climb on my running shoes whenever I got back from a run. Sometimes he’d just settle into one of them and sleep there.
I could see the 35th Street bridge in the distance. The trees were bursting with light green buds and white flowers. I could smell the dirt, heavy and rich.
I ran easily. I noticed how many birds were flitting around in the trees and I heard the sounds of the river. I felt fluid, strong. I picked up the pace, pumped my arms harder, made my lungs and legs and heart strain.
I got to the bridge and ran up the curly stairway that twisted to the pedestrian walkway. I ran across the bridge, feeling the heave of the cars as they zoomed by.
I hadn’t brought a watch and had no idea how long I’d been out. I thought I should drink, but I wasn’t thirsty.
I kept going.
There was no one around. It wasn’t like running on the boulevard. On this side of the river I felt completely and totally alone.
Dogs barked in the distance, which made me think about Walter. Silent Walter. Walter, who never complained, never worried, was always in a good mood, even when he
was old and sick. Walter, who hid his discomfort until he couldn’t anymore. The vet had said rats have incredible capacity to handle pain. Walter, so sweet and gentle and so tough, so very tough. Once, early on, not long after I’d gotten him, he had fallen from my shoulder. I was terrified he had broken something. He shook himself off and commenced grooming.
I couldn’t stop thinking about him, and a slideshow of pictures flashed through my head. I saw him when I first got him, the only time he was ever timid. I’d put an empty tissue box in his cage and he hid in it. He’d pop his head up, like the Whac-A-Mole game at the fair. I’d pet him on the white diamond on the top of his head and he’d duck back down. Seconds later, he’d pop up again. It turned into a game called Toaster. I’d hold my hand over the opening on the box and he’d stay down until I took it away. Then I’d remove my hand and say, “Ding!” And he’d spring up like a perfectly toasted bagel.
We also played Tarzan, where he’d grab on to a pencil I’d hold out parallel to the ground and would swing from it. “What a great ape,” I’d say to him. “You are the very small King of the Jungle.”
On my hands I had tiny scars where he had accidentally scratched me. I loved those scars. I hoped they’d last forever. Thinking about that, worrying that the scars would fade, that I would stop being able to remember him, made me start to cry.
Running and crying was more difficult than just running. I could see the downtown bridge ahead and was surprised at how much ground I’d covered.
Then I couldn’t run another step. My legs wouldn’t go. I could barely swing my arms.
I slowed to a walk, and then just had to stop. This must have been what Nikki meant by “hitting the wall.” I could not take another step.
I sat on the bank of the river and took one of the bottles off the belt. I glugged down a slug of jock juice and coughed it all back out. I kept coughing.
For a long time I sat on that rock and cried.
I didn’t know how I was going to make it home.
