by Tom Murphy
“Where is she?” I asked Bridget, whose eyes were glued to the TV, but she said, “Pop’s right, she’s OK.”
I blinked to make sure I had heard that correctly. Was that a compliment she had just paid Pop?
“I see her,” Kathrine shouted ten minutes later after Amby’s report on the men’s race and the coverage bounced back to her.
“I just saw the lead American with my binoculars,” Kathrine said. “Ellen Maloney, the one everyone calls ‘Comeback Gal.’ She’s three hundred yards back, not quite a quarter mile, running in 18th place.”
A camera picked her up along Fourth Ave. in Brooklyn and we got our first look at Ellen. She was moving with a sea of bodies, everyone with their heads high, chests rising and falling, as the colorful runners formed shifting patterns, like the images in a kaleidoscope. They came up the street in a steady stream, knees churning, arms swinging, feet crunching Gatorade cups, moving fluidly in comparison to the wild, pulsating crowd. Ellen looked comfortable in her red top and black shorts with her blonde ponytail swinging back and forth like a pendulum in perfect time across her shoulders.
I glanced at Bridget for more insight, wanting it badly, this being my first big race. I wanted some indication about what I should be feeling—positive or negative with Ellen so far back—but Bridget ‘s face was hard to read—seemingly devoid of emotion—but yet full of emotion, and she was too engrossed to talk.
“Don’t worry,” she said a moment later, a delayed reaction to my question. She took a pen and scratched figures on a napkin as the lead group of women—reduced now to seven—passed the eight-mile mark and plied through Williamsburg. I watched as Bridget performed a calculation taking the time off the screen, 44 minutes and 4 seconds, with Ellen 300 yards back, translating that into a split time at eight miles of 45:03 for Ellen.
“Good for you, Pop,” she said, under her breath and I stared at her. Was that another compliment?
“Ellen is not a fast starter,” she said, looking at me for the first time in nearly an hour—a time during which she had downed three more scotches. “I want her to run her own race, not the leaders.’”
“What did you mean, ‘Good for you, Pop?’”
“You know how I feel about Pop, but he knows his stuff. He’s holding her back till they get through Queens, till they come off the 59th Street Bridge onto First Ave. in Manhattan. That’s his plan, I’m sure, to hold her back, then have her pour it on, use the downhill coming off the bridge to drop in a fast mile or two and work her way back into the thick of things.”
“Get me on, get me on,” Kathrine shouted into her headset as the lead group of four women—the Kenyan, the Russian, a German, and an Ethiopian—came off the 59th Street Bridge onto First Ave. “I got movement in the women’s race!”
The camera cut to First Avenue and Ellen became visible suddenly, 50 yards behind the women leaders, as they made their way up the boulevard. She was unmistakable in her red top and blonde ponytail, and she was moving fast, eating up large quantities of real estate that separated her from the four in the lead.
The roar of the million-plus crowd, thickest on the East Side, offered a thunderclap for the first women, which included Ellen now, who continued to inch closer.
“She just dropped in a 5:09 mile,” said Bridget.
“Is that good?”
“Damn good! Come on, honey!” Bridget said, tapping the bar for another hit and Vinnie responded.
Ellen poured it on, and I gained a new appreciation for the term as she passed the runner in fourth, the German who flagged and continued to slide back. Over the next two miles Ellen moved into a tidy spot behind the trio in front where she let them break the headwind as the group navigated through the Bronx before making the turn back into Manhattan.
“5:11,” said Bridget. “Blistering again. So smart, so smart to save her strength for the end like this.”
Bridget’s excitement was reflected in Kathrine’s call on the race. Kathrine highlighted how rare it was for a runner to make up so much ground—giving Pop credit for training Ellen to be able to come back like this. Kathrine continued to tell and retell the story of how Ellen had, at one time, been the brightest young runner in America before hitting hard times.
“But as we can see from the signs along this course today, this crowd loves their ‘Comeback Gal!’”
The lead group of three entered Central Park at 102nd Street with Ellen one stride behind them. The group ran three abreast and Ellen showed signs she wanted to make a move, but she did not.
“Smart, honey,” Bridget said. “Hold on, just a bit more!”
“What do you say, Pop? Can she overtake them?” Kathrine asked.
Pop, who sat beside her in the motorcycle, his white hair blowing, said, “You know the rules. I can’t coach her out here like this, but she knows what to do.”
And it was as if an oracle had spoken because suddenly Ellen moved and a great cheer rose from the crowd along the winding path through Central Park. They cheered lustily as Ellen swung left on the narrow road and moved off center, off the blue line that showed the way, and edged around the other three women, taking them by surprise as she grabbed the lead.
“Oh, we’ve just had a move by Ellen Maloney!” Kathrine said. “But, wait, the other two are answering.”
Nita from Kenya and Turgenov from Russia, the two favorites, gave spurts and caught Ellen again as the Ethiopian fell back. Now Ellen was running three abreast with her two main rivals, her blonde ponytail flapping frantically.
“Oh, what a race for the ages,” said Kathrine. “We’ve never had a women’s race as heated as this.”
Then as the trio exited the Park onto Central Park South—a mile and half to go—the Kenyan and Russian made a move, as if in concert. They edged closer to the curb, forcing Ellen who was on the inside to shorten her stride. Ellen took a stutter-step, missing a beat, and she fell back two yards behind Nita and Turgenov, who—again, as if acting in concert—gave it gas and opened another two yards, then five yards, as the group passed the 25 mile mark with a mile and 385 yards to go.
“Now, she’s third, Ellen Maloney, and oh, it looks like she’s fading,” said Kathrine. “She may be out of gas after her hot pursuit over the last ten miles.”
I looked at Bridget, her face jammed with emotion, but holding herself in control.
“Is she OK?” I said, totally out of control.
“Will be,” Bridget said, taking a hit on her scotch. “Come on, baby!”
And Ellen was OK. As the trio turned off Central Park South at Columbus Circle and entered the Park and the final straightaway, Ellen swung wide off the blue line again, gave it a spurt and made an effort to circle around the two who ran shoulder to shoulder and catch them by surprise.
“Oh, what a move,” said Kathrine. “Where, oh, where did Ellen Maloney get the energy for that little engine blast?”
Turgenov and Nita missed it, and Ellen moved into the open space and widened her lead as the crowd went wild. She continued to stretch her lead as the throng leaned in from both sides, looking like a political convention with all their “Comeback Gal” signs being thrust up and down in the chill gray air.
Then with two hundred yards to go and Kathrine calling this the greatest finish ever, Ellen appeared to trip, just slightly, but enough that Nita and Turgenov took advantage, and they pulled even again.
With one hundred yards to go, the trio ran three abreast and all the easy action of their arms and the steady piston-like motion of their strides vanished. It was a mad dash as Nita moved out front first, then Turgenov followed, and Ellen struggled to hold on down the final stretch, fifty yards, thirty, ten, five, and that’s how it ended: Nita, Turgenov, Ellen, one, two, three.
Nita, the winner, Turgenov, second, and Ellen Maloney third, all of them in a time of 2:25.05, as Kathrine shouted into the mic:
&nbs
p; “Oh, you’ll tell your grandkids about this one, folks, because today you just saw a finish for the ages!”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Vinnie was the first to speak.
“Wow, that’s gotta be a heartbreaker. They all finished in the same time, but it’s gonna be hard for the girl who got third to live with that. I better go check on the dining room.”
Bridget sat stiller than stone, staring into space, and I sat beside her without saying anything, letting the impact of Ellen’s loss sink in.
“You folks ready for brunch?” Vinnie said when he returned from the dining room. “Things have thinned out nicely in there.”
“What time is it?” Bridget said.
“Not yet 2,” said Vinnie. “Wow, what a finish. You guys ever seen anything like that?”
Bridget didn’t answer, instead she said to the open air, “Jesus, I’m polluted!”
“You know when our car will be ready?” I asked Vinnie.
“Dexter says tomorrow about noon. But there’s a bus to Manhattan that leaves out front at eight tonight if you need to get back to a city that bad.”
“You got a room?” Bridget said, as she stood, doing an imitation of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
“Actually, we do. One just opened up next to the couple from Brooklyn. With foliage, we’ve been so slammed.”
“I gotta lie down,” Bridget said. “You got a nightgown?”
“We have Weathervane t-shirts. Some people use them that way. If you take a large size and stretch it.”
“Gimme,” said Bridget, swaying. “Where’s the room?”
Vinnie grabbed a key and a t-shirt and showed us the way up the stairs. “Wow, what a race,” he said again. “But oh, that poor girl who got third!”
“I’m hurting Colin,” Bridget said, as I held her arm and we followed Vinnie up the stairs.
“You’ll be OK,” I told her.
“I lost my mother and now I’ve lost my daughter.”
“She’ll understand.”
“She’ll throw a hip-shits that I wasn’t there.”
Vinnie looked at me for an interpretation.
“She means a shit fit.”
“Oh,” he said, and he kept climbing, but Bridget paused to catch her breath and we all stopped.
“She’ll never forgive me for missing that, Colin.”
“She already did a hip shits on you, at the news station—you’ll be fine.”
We arrived at the door to our room and Vinnie opened it. He gave me the key and Bridget made a beeline for the bathroom after Vinnie gave her a Weathervane t-shirt.
I waited for her, half expecting to hear heaving, but the woman was an iron lady, and all was quiet. Until she came out, dressed in her Weathervane t-shirt, her gorgeous legs on full display. She went right for the closest of the two beds and lay down. Crashed is more like it. She cut a still figure, but hardly a serene one, with her legs curled up under her in a fetal position. I sat down on the bed beside her, but she was gone, passed out, and I engineered the covers deftly to get them out from under her legs and slide her in between the sheets.
“Colin?” she said, waking up as I pulled the covers over her shoulders. “Will she always hate me?”
“She doesn’t hate you.”
I tried soothing words, but it was like throwing seed on rock as she shook her head, resisting my attempts to comfort her, then she passed out again, and I took her hand as she slept.
It was about half an hour before the knocking on the wall began, and I wondered if it was pipes, until I realized the couple from Brooklyn had shifted into high gear.
For several hours I sat beside Bridget, watching as the wall next to us vibrated and the sky turned darker out the window in stages, waiting for 8 pm and the bus. I used the time to think back over all my experiences with Bridget, from the Runner’s World she had brought to the office in Philly, to her parking her car across from me on the street in Dorchester the night she told me she wanted me to work with her on Runner in Red, to “run with her,” as she had called it.
But my favorite Bridgetism? Hip-shits!
How could it not be!
Soon the clock on the desk showed five to eight, so I tucked her in one more time, tight as I could, and I ran for my bus to New York and hopped on as it pulled to the curb outside the Weathervane.
It was after midnight by the time the milk-wagon of a bus made all its stops and arrived in Manhattan, and another half hour by the time I made it from the Port Authority Bus Terminal to the Sheraton on Seventh Ave. where Jack had reserved a suite for Ellen, Pop, and himself. Since the hotel was near Central Park, I took a detour and checked out the marathon finish line. A few bikers and kids on roller blades breezed by over the big word, “Finish” painted in the street. All was dark at that hour, but the energy of what had happened in this spot earlier that day and the thousands upon thousands who had streamed over the spot following the dramatic finish in the women’s race remained, and I soaked in the majesty of that energy and Ellen’s gutsy achievement before going to the hotel.
Jack let me in. I had called from the bus and left him a voice message that I was coming, and he greeted me at the door with a big Irish hug.
“Ellen and Pop are sleeping,” he said, as he invited me into the dark room. “But I set the couch for you.”
As I lay on the couch, curled inside a thick comforter from the closet, I lay awake listening to the quiet, punctuated by muted car horns on Seventh Avenue far below and I wondered why Bridget and I were so alike. Why did we both hold life at arm’s length? It was not a thought that came immediately, but one that crept into my brain as I floated suspended between consciousness and sleep, the hum of the heater droning on, and after a while I was dreaming, or thought I was, when I sensed a warm figure kneel on the carpeted floor beside me.
“Colin?”
“Huh?”
“Can I come in?”
“Uh huh,” I said, and I moved over on the couch.
“Thank you for coming,” Ellen said.
“Oh, hey, yeah. By the way, you did great.”
“I’m still not ready, you understand, don’t you?” she said, whispering, as she slid in under the covers beside me and touched my cheek. “Not yet, OK?”
“Uh, huh,” I said, still half asleep. “Stay back, stay back.”
She chuckled, then she said, “Sorry I was such a bitch the other day.”
“You were fine.”
“Hold me?”
“Yes,” I said, and I pressed back against the couch to make a bigger space for her in my arms. She wore a t-shirt, one of Jack’s white t-shirts with nothing under it, and I could feel how warm she was. “Your mother watched you today.”
“She did?”
“Every second of it, glued to the TV.”
“Thank you for doing that.”
“No, it was her, Ellen. All her.”
“Will you wait for me?”
“I’ve got a question. Do you like me for me, or because I can be helpful to you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“That day on the river, you said I could be helpful to you with your mom. Do you like me because I can be helpful, or because I’m me?”
“I carry your baseball card in my wallet, does that answer your question?”
“I’ll wait for you, long as you want.”
“Thanks for coming tonight,” she said, and she kissed me squarely on the lips, moist. I held her tightly one more time, then she slipped away out of my grasp, and a moment later her bedroom door closed. I lay in that spot a long time, pressed against the back of the couch, the impression of her breasts against my chest a warm sweet memory.
And I convinced myself, as the car horns played softly on Seventh Avenue below, that her visit had not been a dream and Bridget had be
en right: She was falling in love with me.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
After replaying the tape of the dramatic finish, the host of the Today show, pulled up a chair to face a couch with the three top finishers of the women’s division. He congratulated Nita and Turgenov, then asked Ellen if she minded falling just short.
“No, because it was a great race.”
“You appeared to stumble in the last hundred yards or so. Was there a pothole? Did the City fail to fix a hole on the course?”
“No excuses, it was a great race.”
“Do you have any plans for the future?”
“Certainly.”
“I mean races. Have you picked your next race?”
She patted Pop’s knee, who sat on the couch beside her. “My grandfather and I are going to win Boston in April. That’s our big one, I want to win it for him. I look at yesterday and my contest with these two great ladies as a tune-up for our next match.”
“So there you have it,” the host said, turning to the camera. “Ellen Maloney. A true champion from the old school. She runs because she loves it and she knows where she going.”
The Klieg lights went off and the host made small talk with the group as a gaggle of technicians helped Ellen off with her wires and she gave hugs to Turgenov and Nita. I stood to the side, planning my day deciding what roads I would take back to Boston, especially now that I had been asked by Jack if I would take the car and drive Pop home while he remained in New York with Ellen.
Roman blew in at that point with a dozen acolytes in tow, including ponytailed men and big-haired women, all in power suits. I watched them come through a side door, and I watched Roman signal to them to wait. As he stepped gingerly toward Ellen, Jack glared at him, but Jack did not block him, though I thought he might and certainly could have.
I couldn’t hear what Roman was telling Ellen, who listened politely, but he was highly animated—pointing to his group who all waved in unison—and she nodded, awkwardly yet politely still, and I assumed he was outlining some big PR plans since I kept hearing “L.A. this, L.A. that.”
