by Don Calame
I’ve been toweling off for the past however long Valerie’s been talking to me. I only notice it now because my skin feels raw. It was something to do other than just stand here like a dork. “That’s great you have a job. I should probably get one, but I’m too lazy.”
“That’s not what I hear,” Valerie says.
“What do you mean?”
“Kelly told me you volunteered to swim the butterfly race.”
“She told you that?”
“She also said it’s the hardest stroke ever. I wouldn’t call that lazy.”
“Maybe just insane.” I drop my towel and start to put on my sweats. Something else to do.
Kelly comes out of the office carrying her green sweater. She walks over and smiles. “Hey.”
“Hey.” I give a quick lift of the chin.
Kelly shifts her weight and looks at me. “You come to the pool by yourself a lot?”
“Oh,” I say, and shake my head. “No. I was just getting in some extra practice.” I feel like I’m not in my body. Like I’ve stepped outside of myself and am being forced to observe just how much of a loser I am.
Kelly laughs. “I can’t believe you volunteered to swim the fly.”
“We were just talking about that,” Valerie says.
I shrug. “It’s no big deal. Someone had to do it.”
“Well, it’s pretty cool you stepped up,” Kelly says.
I smile. “Thanks.”
There is an awkward silence that balloons between us until Kelly pops it.
“Well . . . bye,” she says, and waves.
“Bye.” I give another quick lift of my chin. My smooth move.
Kelly and Valerie walk off. I try not to watch them, but I can’t help it. They’re talking to each other. I wish I knew what they were saying. They laugh. At me? I try to focus on putting on my shirt. I need to take my time. I want to wait until they are well out of sight before I leave. I don’t want to have to walk with them, next to them, with absolutely nothing to say.
I stand and collect my towel, goggles, and sneakers. I walk slowly toward the gate.
So much for quitting.
Now I’m really screwed.
I WASN’T LYING when I told Valerie I’m lazy. It’s been three days since Kelly told me she thought it was cool I volunteered to swim the fly, and while she’s made it impossible for me to back out now, I haven’t exactly upped my exercise quotient.
If I’m really going to do this, I can’t waste any more time. I have to get serious about training. And if I don’t make myself work out for a couple of hours every day after swim practice, I’ll just wind up watching my South Park DVDs for the umpteenth time and never get anything done.
It’s got to be around three miles to Orchard Lane Elementary School from my house. I figure I’ll jog up there to increase my endurance, then use the monkey bars and the ring trek and the chin-up bar to build my shoulder strength. I’ll finish off with fifty push-ups and a hundred or so sit-ups on the grass. If I do this every single day, by the time championships roll around in five weeks, I should be in pretty good shape.
I’m in my blue sweatshirt and my cargo shorts, sitting on the slate floor of the vestibule. I’ve got Bleedingtoe on my iPod while I pull on my old Nikes. They’re sort of trashed, the white leather cracking, the rubber separating from around the heel, but I don’t care. I’ll just pretend that I’m old school, that I have to get back to the hood. Back to my roots.
I’m out the front door and jogging down the driveway, the music blasting in my ears. I give a couple of air punches. A left and a right. I’m in the zone. This feels good. It’s different from running around the gym, feet dragging on the hardwood floor, wishing you’d forged a note from your mom.
There’s a reason for this. There’s a goal to be achieved. And the music is like a jet engine strapped to my back, rocketing me forward. I’ve got the song on at full volume, and I feel like I could run all day. All week even.
I turn the corner, off my street and onto Old Rockville Road. My heart is pumping. I feel the blood coursing through my body. I take another couple of rabbit jabs at the air. It makes me smile. I don’t care if anyone can see me. They have no idea what I’m about.
I bob and weave, pumping my arms hard, picking up my speed.
Which I figure out pretty quickly was a stupid thing to do.
After fifteen seconds, I’m completely out of gas and I’ve got a carving-knife stitch in my side. It’s like I’m failing the President’s Challenge Physical Fitness Test all over again.
I cut my speed by half and focus on my breathing. Try to get into a rhythm to keep my brain occupied. Once in through my nose and twice out through my mouth. Chugging, like a train. One breath in, two breaths out. One breath in, two breaths out. It keeps my mind off the pain.
There’s something exciting about taking control of your life.
One breath in, two breaths out.
Setting your mind and then following through.
One breath in, two breaths out.
It makes you feel powerful. Like you can do anything you want.
One breath in and —
Gack! Fthew! Goddamn it!
A bug just flew up my nose. And it’s buzzing like crazy. I exhale hard and a bee comes shooting out of my left nostril, flying off unsteadily.
I’ve lost my breathing pattern now, and the full force of how badly out of shape I am hits me. I’m doubled over at the curb. Dizzy. Nauseous.
There’s no way I’m making it to my old elementary school. Not today. I may have overshot a little with my expectations; I should probably work up to three miles. I straighten up as best I can and start walking back home. I’ll wait until this pain in my side eases and then do my push-ups and sit-ups in the comfort of my room.
When I get home, I head straight to the refrigerator. I grab the water jug, pour a full glass, and suck it down. I’m pouring seconds when Grandpa Arlo shuffles into the kitchen. He’s got on a lavender dress shirt tucked into belted jeans.
“There you are,” he says. “Christ, you look like hell. You just run a marathon or something?”
“Not exactly,” I say.
“Well, collect yourself. I need your help.” He’s polishing his glasses with a handkerchief. Ever since the funeral, I see Grandpa’s hankies in a whole different light.
“With what?”
“I need you to be Mrs. Hoogenboom for me.”
I’m taking a sip of water when he says this, and it goes down the wrong tube. I hack and cough and finally clear my throat before I can speak. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I need you to be Mrs. Hoogenboom. You know. Pretend to be her.”
“Pretend to be her? Why?”
Grandpa Arlo screws up his lips. “Don’t look at me like that,” he says. “I need you to role-play with me. Obviously my tactic after the funeral didn’t work out very well, so I need to refine my technique.”
I move to the fridge and put the water jug away. “What do you want me to do?”
“You’re going to be Mrs. Hoogenboom. I’m going to knock on your door and then I’m going to try to ask you out to dinner.”
“What am I supposed to say?”
“Whatever comes to mind. Like you’re Mrs. Hoogenboom.”
I feel my insides clench up. “I don’t know, Grandpa. I’m not really good at that sort of thing. Can’t you just practice in a mirror?”
“No. I need feedback. Look, it’ll be easy. You’ll see.” Grandpa Arlo grabs my shoulders and steers me out of the kitchen, through the den, and toward the entryway. “Now, I’m going to come up and knock. You’ll answer and I’ll try to get you to come out on a date with me. But I don’t want you to just say yes. You need to be cagey. Noncommittal. Make me work for it.”
“Like how?”
“You’ll figure it out as we go. Just think about Mrs. Hoogenboom and act how you think she would act.” Grandpa Arlo fixes me with his eyes. “You ready?”
I’ll neve
r be ready for this. But I nod.
Grandpa Arlo goes outside and shuts the door behind him.
I squeeze my eyes shut and try to get in the proper frame of mind. I’m a seventy-five-year-old woman. How do I feel?
I don’t know.
Tired? Yeah, that’s good. And maybe sore? Sure, old people are tired and sore.
I look around and see a throw blanket on the recliner in the den. I grab it and drape it over my shoulders like a shawl. I hunch over a bit.
Voilà! Mrs. Hoogenboom.
There’s a gentle rapping on the door.
I pick a piece of fluff off the throw.
Another knock. This one a bit harder.
I rub my sore, “arthritic” fingers.
Grandpa Arlo opens the door and sticks his head inside. “What the hell are you doing? Answer the door.”
“If I was really Mrs. Hoogenboom, I wouldn’t be able to get to the door that fast.”
“Oh, Christ.” Grandpa Arlo runs his hand down his goatee. “Just pretend you were near the door already.”
“Why would I be hanging around the door?”
“I don’t know. You just are.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. It’s not like I was expecting you.”
Grandpa Arlo sighs loudly. “Just answer the door.”
I think a moment. “Maybe I was going out to do some gardening.”
“Fine. Whatever. Let’s try this again.” Grandpa Arlo steps back outside and closes the door. He knocks again.
I pad toward the door and open it. “Oh. Hello, Arlo.”
Grandpa Arlo holds one hand inside the other. He can barely meet my eyes. “Hello, Edith.”
“I was just going out to do some gardening. That’s how come I answered the door so quickly.”
Grandpa smiles shyly. “May I come in?”
“Oh, um, yes. Why don’t you come in?” I move aside, and he steps into the house. I close the door behind him.
“So, uh . . . How are you?” I say.
“I’m very well, thank you. And yourself ?”
“Me? Oh . . .” How am I? “I . . . uh . . . Well . . . I guess . . . My husband just died. As you know. So. I’m still kind of sad about that. But otherwise, I’m good. The gardening helps.”
Grandpa Arlo rolls his eyes skyward. “I must say, you look positively radiant this morning, Edith.”
“Oh, well, thank you.” I pull the blanket tight around my shoulders. “This is just my old gardening shawl.”
“All right. Enough with the gardening crap.”
“But it’s my motivation. You said —”
“I said be Mrs. Hoogenboom, not Robert De Niro.”
“Okay. Sorry.” I take a breath, resetting myself. “Oh, this old thing? I’ve had this shawl forever.”
Grandpa Arlo smiles. “It suits you. It matches your eyes.”
“That’s, uh . . . very kind of you . . . I . . .” I have no idea what else to say. “That purple shirt . . . looks good on you, too. It matches . . . the blood vessels on your cheeks.”
“Nice,” Grandpa Arlo says.
“What?”
He pinches the bridge of his nose, scrunching up his eyes.
“I told you I was bad at this,” I say.
Grandpa Arlo opens his eyes. “So, Edith,” he says, “I was wondering if you might care to join me for dinner this evening?”
“Oh, yes,” I say. “That sounds wonderful.”
“No,” Grandpa Arlo scolds. “I told you to be evasive.”
“Oh,” I say. “Right.” I swallow. “I . . . Um . . . No, I don’t think I can.”
“I just thought it might be nice to get out of the house.”
“I don’t feel much like going out.”
Grandpa Arlo nods. “Okay, well. Maybe I could come over and cook my world-famous beef bourguignonne for you.”
“Mmm, that sounds delicious. I’d like that.”
Grandpa Arlo scowls at me.
I wince. “But . . . I couldn’t.”
“It’s my great-grandmother’s recipe. You’d really enjoy it. The meat just melts in your mouth.”
“I see. Well . . .” Grandpa Arlo slowly shakes his head at me. “To tell you the truth, beef gets stuck in my dentures. I’d spend the entire night picking it out of my teeth. So, I’m sorry but I’ll have to say no.”
“Can I at least invite you over to my house for some tea? I make a mean Darjeeling.”
I look at my grandpa for some indication of how he wants me to answer, but he just stares at me all doe-eyed. I decide to continue along the same path. “No thank you,” I say. “I’m just not up to it.”
Grandpa Arlo glares over the top of his glasses.
“What?”
“It’s tea. You’re telling me she wouldn’t even come over for a goddamn cup of tea. What am I, a leper?”
“I was just doing what you told me. I thought you were going to keep trying.”
“What the hell is there to try after tea?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“Exactly. Which is why you should have accepted the invitation.”
“Well, I’m sorry. But it’s not like you were very convincing. I mean, all you did was make the dates less and less interesting. Dinner out, a home-cooked meal, and then tea.”
“I was trying to be nonthreatening.” Grandpa waves at the air. “You know what? Forget it. This was a dumb idea.” He storms by me and heads toward the kitchen.
“Grandpa, wait. I’m sorry. How would I know what Mrs. Hoogenboom would say?” God, I feel terrible. “Grandpa?”
But he doesn’t say anything more. He just turns the corner, and a moment later I hear his bedroom door slam.
Part of me thinks I should go talk to him, but the other part says I’ll just make it worse. I have no choice but to leave it for now and get on with the rest of my workout routine.
I kick my sneakers off and fling them into the coat closet with my toes. There’s a crash, and a bunch of canisters roll out onto the vestibule floor. It’s Mom’s latest NutraWorld containers, which she’d stacked at the bottom of the closet. I start collecting them up, when I notice that there are two different colored cans here, blue ones and red ones. The blue ones say NUTRAWORLD ORGANIC FIBER LAXATIVE and the red ones say NUTRAWORLD ORGANIC MUSCLE-BUILDING PROTEIN POWDER. Normally I don’t pay too much attention to the products Mom brings home, but this protein powder catches my attention.
I grab a red can and read the back. It says how protein is essential to the building of muscle mass and that one NutraWorld shake a day provides all the protein you need. I’m sure Mom wouldn’t mind if I took one of the cans. They can’t be too expensive; I bet one week’s allowance will take care of it.
I carry the canister with me to the kitchen; I might as well get started right away because, as my pathetic run this morning revealed, I need all the help I can get.
The directions call for two scoops of protein powder to be mixed with a glassful of skim milk. We don’t have any skim milk, so I decide to just use water. I’m sure it won’t taste much different; skim milk is pretty tasteless to begin with.
The label says that results should be seen in eight to ten weeks. I need results a lot sooner than that, so I dump maybe a quarter of the can into my glass of water.
It’s a bit of a mess because the heaps of powder cause some of the mixture to seep over the sides and drip all over my hand. I stir and stir with a spoon but there are still big clumps floating around in the glass. I try to squish the lumps of wet powder against the sides of the glass but this just makes more of the drink spill. I can’t afford to waste any of this, so I give up and just slug back the shake the way it is.
It’s got the consistency of batter. I have to sort of chew it more than drink it. Also, it tastes pretty awful. Kind of orangey and chalky. Sort of like a baby aspirin.
It’s impossible to get it all down without retching. I have to force myself to think about something else. I settle on Kelly, and ho
w beautiful she is, and how she thinks it’s cool that I volunteered to swim the fly.
This works pretty well until the last, thick glob unsticks from the bottom of the glass and slides right down my throat. I gag a little, and a pasty orange bubble forms in my mouth. My whole body shudders as I try not to heave.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, I send Sean a text to let him know I’m at his front door.
Come in, Sean texts me back.
It couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds after I’d just choked down the last of my protein shake when Sean called, all excited, like he’d just discovered a gold mine in his backyard or something. I’d told Sean I was busy, but he said I had to meet him at his house immediately. Coop was already on his way.
“There’s only a small window of opportunity,” Sean had said, then hung up before I could ask him what the hell he was talking about.
I open his front door and am immediately nosed in the balls by Tug, Sean’s hog-shaped brown Lab.
“Nice to see you too, Tug,” I say, pushing the dog out from between my legs.
When you step into Sean’s house, you’re hit by a squall of animal odors so strong it makes your eyes water. His family has more animals than anyone I know. They have four more dogs besides Tug, and I don’t know how many cats, and a parrot who’s always cursing at you. Besides all the animals that they actually own, the Hances also foster pets for rescue services, which is nice and all, but I have to say, I could never live here. Sean says you get used to the wet circus smell and the noise and everything, but I’d rather not.
“We’re upstairs,” Sean calls out. “In my sister’s room.”
I walk through the family room, and the other four dogs come out of nowhere and surround me. Yipping and panting and leaping, and wagging their tails. There’s a small hairy white one, and a bigger bristly brown and black one, and there’s a collie, and some sort of German shepherd mix. Don’t ask me their names. I only remember Tug’s name, because every time I come by, Mr. Hance is always saying, “Tug, no. Tug, no. Stop that, Tug. Tug, no. Tug down. Tug off. Tug, Tug, Tug.”
I give each dog a little pat as I push through the pack, so none of them will feel left out.
