She refocused to the reflection of her closed closet. Time to complete another ritual. In three steps she opened the door, reached for the brass canister on the top shelf, and returned it to the dresser where it would spend another day. If it hadn’t been for the urn’s contents and all it represented, she might have plucked the card and made a phone call, but as it was, she glared at the square box of her father’s remains. She lost track of how many times she had carried out the ash-scattering ritual over the past six months. Whenever she visited a new place, she unwrapped the ashes, made a deposit, and looked forward to the day when she would fulfill the least of her promises. But the ritual was not the immediate burden; it was what to do with the urn of remaining ashes in the meantime that presented her with the most uncomfortable dilemma.
She didn’t put much weight in theories of an afterlife, but since so many seemed convinced of it, she didn’t think it safe to discard the idea entirely. In fact, it only became a concern each night before she climbed into bed. Uninterred human remains in the very same room, perhaps watching, contributed to her restless nights. Her discomfort had given birth to her nightly ritual—placing the canister in the closet in the evening and setting it back on her dresser each morning.
Leila straightened the urn and then turned her back on it, again scanning her room. This was where her father had slept when they lived here briefly about ten years ago. Her father’s best friend—her other dad—Joe, used to sleep in the downstairs apartment with his old man, Artie.
Leila hadn’t minded the sofa when she was little. She had slept in so many places that anything better than blankets on the floor was bliss. Besides, she hadn’t been the only one who’d had uncomfortable accommodations. Poor Joe, all six feet, three inches of him had to sleep on a cot in Artie’s closet-sized spare room, competing with a lifetime collection of music memorabilia. But most of the time Joe hung around in their upstairs apartment with Leila and her dad, Marcus. Both Joe and Leila had complicated father-child relationships. Even now, Artie didn’t hear from Joe a whole lot. Neither did she.
Leila dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. Twenty minutes later, after a quick cup of tea, she trotted down the enclosed, exterior staircase that emptied onto cracked concrete. Bright light filtered through her squint as morning humidity filled her lungs. Turning right, she followed a short path to her landlord’s front door, although, in the strictest sense, Artie was not her landlord at all.
She tapped his front door as a formality, more of a courtesy to warn the elderly man of her arrival, as if he weren’t already waiting.
“Good morning, Artie,” she called out. She would find him at the kitchen table with his cup of coffee and Newsday, as always.
“G’mornin’, Angel,” he said, two rows of straight teeth securely in place and gleaming white against his black skin and peppered chin.
“Anything I can get you this morning?”
“You know I got everythin’ I need,” he said, same as every morning. “You just be careful and don’t talk to none of them fools on the corner.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t,” she said, same as every morning. “I’ll be back by eight.”
In reality, hardly anyone hung out on the corner by the convenience mart at the hour Leila passed by, and after a short time, word had already spread that she was the white chick living over Artie’s place, which meant she was hands-off. She’d heard rumors of explosive racial tensions in the recent past, but given her upbringing, being raised by a black and a white man—prejudice against what might have been perceived as a homosexual relationship aside—Leila had a skewed sensitivity, or insensitivity, to discrimination. She had grown up surrounded by an array of prejudices—class prejudice, new-kid-at-school prejudice, pretty-girl prejudice —and so the whole issue was murky from her viewpoint. She’d grown to ignore it or at least blend—better yet, become invisible when possible. Just the same, she did wonder how many of her black neighbors she might see in school come September. How many knew she played blues with a bunch of old men from various ethnic backgrounds?
Setting those concerns aside, she started off slow. By the end of the street, concrete blurred beneath her feet. Bitter exhaust filled her lungs. Jogging in place, she waited for the light to turn, and then continued toward the overpass. In a short distance, she quickened her pace, hoping to beat the tremulous clanking of the Long Island Rail Road. Of course it was safe to run beneath it, but all that thunderous weight above seemed a defiance of bad odds that always caught up. With the railway behind her, the next few blocks passed quickly.
Three miles south, at the fringes of Millville’s lower village, mature hardwood trees canopied the streets, giving the neighborhoods a cooler feel than the newer, northern developments, but better than that, she disappeared into the whiteness of middle-class South Millville.
Turning a corner onto another shady lane, her pace slowed at a yard-sale sign. A small, wood-framed drawing table near the sidewalk stood out amidst household bric-a-brac. She stopped and ran her hand over it. Perhaps this table had made a difference in a former artist’s work. She envisioned the patinated wood in the corner of her apartment, and pictured herself sitting at it with her watercolors. Perhaps they would flow better upon such a serious and well-worn foundation.
“How much?” Leila asked.
The householder squinted. “You run past here every day.”
“That’s right.”
“What’s the tag say?”
“Says fifteen. Will you take eight?” Leila asked, handling a pair of size-eight sneakers, lightly worn.
“I don’t know ….”
Leila stroked the table again. “There wouldn’t happen to be any art supplies that go along with this, would there?”
“Yeah, just behind it.” The woman pointed to a shallow wooden case with brass latches.
Leila’s heart leapt, beating faster than at a full run. She lifted the lid as if it were a treasure chest. At the sight that greeted her, she could have heard an angelic chorus. Tube after tube of Windsor Newton pigments lined up alongside a dozen or so half-pans of watercolors and a neat bundle of brushes—rounds, flats, fine point. She pulled one and held it to the light. Kolinsky sable. Putting on her best poker face, she prepared for a stare down.
“I’ll give you fifteen if you throw in the box and the sneakers.”
The woman smiled. “You paint, do you?”
Leila shrugged. “I try.”
“You plan on carrying all that away right now?”
Leila pulled a small wad from her sock, peeled off five ones and another bill. “I’ll give you ten now and five when I pick it up in an hour.”
The woman’s mouth twisted as Leila’s gaze intensified. The woman flinched. “Deal.”
Leila smiled all the way down the dead-end street. Perhaps her streak of bad luck had ended.
She slipped through a severed chain-link fence onto the Millville Memorial High School athletic field and track where she ran another two miles.
Chapter 3
Twenty minutes before Sam Goody’s record store closed for the night, Leila glanced at the clock as she restocked LP records. She worked as many hours as she could before September when school would start. She needed the money, but it had also occurred to her that if Ian happened to shop at the mall and ever came looking for more music, the long shifts increased her chances of seeing him. The fact that his card indicated he lived in Millville only heightened her hopes. On the other hand, she didn’t need the complication of an older guy—or any guy. Besides, by the end of her long days, she was too tired to even entertain the thought of a real-life romance. Tonight was a case in point. She had worked a twelve-hour shift. Her eyes burned and her feet ached. She wanted only to go home and climb in bed—not cook a romantic dinner and pry some guy off her. Of course, that didn’t mean she wouldn’t indulge a fantasy, but even then, her fantasies culminated with imaginary conversations about art and life, not sex.
Leila grabbed another stack o
f LPs while monitoring the mall’s dwindling traffic. Outside the store, a few giggling teenagers tripped past, followed by a brown-jacketed man. He slowed. Oh, please keep walking. She yawned and refocused on the jazz and blues titles, tucking one album behind the next. When she raised her eyes, brown corduroy headed down her aisle. Terrific. She nudged a heavy box aside, allowing the late shopper to pass. He did not. He hovered nearby, one hand tucked in his jeans pocket as the other flipped LP after LP to the front of the bin. He grumbled, rubbing his unshaved jaw. Frowning, he glanced at her. The sooner she offered assistance, the sooner he would be gone.
“May I help you find something?”
Two permanent creases extended from between his brows to his forehead. He folded his arms across his blazer and then removed his glasses to better glower as he read her nameplate.
“Lee-lah,” he said, mispronouncing her name.
She sensed facetiousness and should have let his blunder ride. Instead, she smiled. “It’s Leila, as if the ‘ei’ were a long A. Like the song.”
As if catching a whiff of something unfamiliar but not altogether repugnant, he flinched.
“Well, Leila,” he repeated correctly but with irate emphasis. “It’s obvious you don’t carry Robert Johnson.”
“Yes, I know. It’s a shame really, some of the lesser-known or short-lived artists kind of get overlooked.” She cast a glance over her shoulder as if about to divulge top-secret information and said with some disgust, “We don’t even stock Artie Sparks.”
His ice-blue eyes squinted. “Oh, and I suppose you’re Sam Goody’s Delta blues expert, are you?”
His remark struck her as funny, though she sensed it best not to let on that she knew far more about any genre of blues than she cared to—more than any teenage girl ought to be burdened with.
She kept her smile pasted in place. “I’m just the new hireling, low-girl-on-the-totem-pole, so I suppose that makes me a blues expert of sorts.”
He squinted harder and let out a snort. The bridge of his nose disappeared into an ominous hedge of eyebrow. His pale eyes gathered swirls of stormy gray. Her confidence and smile thinned as he towered over her.
“I’d be happy to put in a special order for some Robert Johnson,” she said, turning toward the checkout before he could shoot a rebuke. “It would be here by Friday.”
“Fine, then. Do it.” He turned and headed toward the exit.
“I just need your name and phone number,” she called out after him.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be back.” His words landed like a threat.
Leila submitted the order, fabricating a name and phone number. Just for good measure, she ordered whatever else Robert Johnson had released. Even if her cranky customer never returned, Johnson should have his rightful place amongst his peers.
On Friday, when the tall, disgruntled man returned, asking for her by name, Leila retrieved the albums and he purchased them all.
“Thank you,” he said with his usual scowl. He did not have altogether unappealing features for a middle-aged man, though if he smiled occasionally he might even be handsome, sort of the way Vincent Price—host of Creature Features—might be considered handsome in real life.
Leila hoped never to lay eyes on Disgruntled Man again. Unfortunately, he returned week after week, asking for her by name. He no longer mispronounced it, but that was poor compensation for speaking in little more than grunts and snorts. She wished he would ignore her, but the way he focused on her—on searching out her eyes—demanded her attention and creeped her out. If he was trying to intimidate her, she would not back down. She had learned that much from her father. “It’s all in the eyes,” he would say, “if you look away, you lose.” She had even practiced the arch of her father’s brow, just for effect. The ambiguity of a polite smile was her own twist.
More times than not, she had to place a special order, doing so under his assigned pseudonym, Farty Limburger. She never bothered to ask for his real name. In fact, she found him more tolerable with his ridiculous alias. Ornery as he was, at least he broke up the monotony of her routine. Their encounters usually ended in a standoff—his stare devolving to a glare while her polite, unyielding eyes smiled. The day she presented him an out-of-production Artie Sparks album, an almost-smile chinked his curmudgeonly armor.
Chapter 4
Piano scales undulating from rooms with doors that shut, leaving Leila in a crowded hall where faceless bodies swirl around her. A voice from behind. Half clothed and disoriented, she spins in a vacuum of white light, unable to breathe.
That dream—not quite a nightmare until the end—recurred during the early morning before Leila’s first day of school. She half-expected it even though she had prepared everything ahead of time, from transferring school records, to acquiring her class schedule, and making arrangements to shower in the gym locker room after her run to school. Even with all the anxiety of attending a new school, the classroom setting and school routine had become a stabilizer in her otherwise unpredictable life. As much as she wished to be free of it, she craved its framework.
Leila rolled out of bed. In two steps she entered her living room and passed her small sofa. Three more steps landed her in front of her efficiency range. Ten minutes later and sipping tea, she stood in front of the table beneath a large window that overlooked Artie’s front yard. In another five minutes, she dressed and twisted her hair into a knot, securing it with a bamboo chopstick. She then checked off her list: brush teeth, stock backpack—notebooks, lunch, clean towel and change of clothes. Counting off each step down the stairway to Artie’s apartment, she continued her morning routine.
With asphalt underfoot, she picked up her pace, slipping into an altered state, a place where physical exertion—pain even—displaced her emotional torments. Distance was her goal, not speed. Distance between her and some thing, some obscure shadow that took on the face of doctors, nurses, and hospice workers, the intrusive teachers and well-intentioned busybodies. Leila knew nothing of endorphins, neither was she swayed by self-help rhetoric and anti-drug advocates. She only knew running eased the pain, if not masked it altogether.
As Leila rounded the high school track a final time, her life gradually caught up. Her pounding heart had little to do with exertion. Despite all her preparations, apprehension rushed in as she snatched her backpack from the bleacher. She sucked in confidence as she hurried toward the building and pushed through double doors to the back corridor, and then entered the dark alcove at the back of the gym.
In an adjoining cubicle-of-an-office behind glass, Ms. Thorpe, head of the phys ed department, leaned against her metal desk, twirling a whistle on a lanyard. Her official red-and-gray athletic attire expanded to their limit, clinging like plastic wrap but without a hint of cellulite. When she stood erect, nothing jiggled. Even the Warriors insignia that stretched and distorted across her voluminous bust dared not joust. So much woman packed into barely five feet.
Thorpe stepped into the doorway, consuming most of it. Her black skin merged into the shadow of a silhouette. She met Leila’s gaze. “Make sure you clean up after yourself, Sanders.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” Leila hurried into the locker room.
She arranged her clean underwear on the bench and hung a plain blouse inside the locker. Re-securing the bun atop of her head, she stepped into the stream of hot water. Gym shower stalls were all alike. Small monochromatic tiles. A white curtain separated her from all the uncertainties outside. Her lily-of-the-valley-scented soap mingled with the antiseptic odor of bleach, until its floral aroma permeated her shower stall. It reminded her of running in New Hampshire, of shaded roadside patches where the dainty flower grew.
As she stepped out, the scent trailed. With time to spare, Leila dried, dressed, and extracted the stick from her hair that unfurled to her waist. She brushed the thick handful back and twisted it up and behind into a knot, then reinserted the stick. Giving her padlock a spin, she checked her watch. No hurry.
Intent
on making a good impression, she veered toward the office and poked her head inside.
“Thank you again for letting me come in early to use the shower,” she said.
“You’re welcome.”
At first, Leila didn’t notice the other person standing at the back corner of the office, at a door adjoining another room. In fact, she might not have noticed him at all if he hadn’t shifted his weight. With that one quiet motion, he caught her eye. He wore his hair in a ponytail with no hat, but it was him—the man who had changed her tire.
“Leila Sanders, this is our track coach, Coach Brigham,” Thorpe said.
Leila’s heart pounded.
Ian Brigham’s mouth opened and then closed as his complexion drained color. His eyes darted. He offered only a nod.
“Hi,” she said.
He tensed, returning a neutral, “Hello.”
Both glanced at Thorpe who appeared oblivious to their conflict, which had in seconds mounted to unbearable.
“Well, I gotta run,” Leila blurted and turned away. She glanced back at Ian through the glass-encased cubicle. He looked as if he had just been slapped in the face.
~
Caught in the girl’s gaze, Ian Brigham stood dumbfounded. He wanted to acknowledge their acquaintance but couldn’t. Hell, he could scarcely look her in the eye, let alone own up to having hit on a seventeen-year-old. As his metabolism stabilized, every implication of Leila’s presence rushed at him.
Ever since he changed her tire, Ian had hoped to see her again, which was unlike him—a date that didn’t pan out was forgotten. Yet, he had even frequented the Blues Basement on the chance she might show up. Likely, she would have remembered him, though he didn’t take that for granted. And yet now, there she was, walking away after fully recognizing him. In some prolonged sleight of time and motion, a summer’s worth of fantasy exited through the double doors into the corridor.
Portrait of a Girl Running Page 2
