On the Road to Find Out (19 page)

      Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;

           And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

 

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

      Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

           With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

                         Praise him.

 

—Gerard Manley Hopkins

 

PART THREE

 

1

Woke up.

Didn't get out of bed.

Didn't eat.

Didn't run.

Didn't go to school.

Didn't read.

Didn't play Snood.

Didn't get dressed.

Didn't wash my face.

Didn't want to live.

 

2

I slept in the second-floor guest room because I couldn't stand to be in my room.

I couldn't stop searching the floor for him, couldn't keep my eyes away from where he used to be.

When Dorothy wakes up back in Kansas, all the Technicolor is gone. She's back to a sepia-toned life with Auntie Em and a bunch of farmhands.

But at least she still has Toto.

I had no color left.

Mom and Dad asked what I wanted to do with Walter's cage and I told them to get rid of it.

 

3

How could I have been so stupid?

How had I not noticed he was getting old and sick?

How was it possible, with everything I'd learned about rats, that I didn't know how long they were expected to live?

How could I have missed something this big?

 

4

My parents let me take a few days off from school but then I had to go back.

I walked with my head down so no one could see that I was crying pretty much all the time. I hid out in the library during lunch.

In class I let Sam Malouf ramble on without contradicting the stupid things he said.

I wrote Walter's name over and over in my notebook.

Jenni had left me a million texts and e-mails, which I didn't read before I deleted them.

I silenced my phone after the third time she called.

 

5

REJECTED:

   
Yale

   
Harvard

   
Princeton

   
Cornell

   
Brown

   
Emory

   
Vanderbilt

   
Middlebury

ADMITTED:

   
Trinity

   
Bowdoin

FUTURE:

   
Uncertain

 

6

When I heard the knock on the guest-room door, I said, “Go away.”

“Al,” Jenni said, “can I come in?”

“No. Go away.” I added, “Please.” We hadn't spoken to or seen each other since the horrible birthday debacle the previous week. I knew she'd been in the house, knew she'd been talking to my mother.

I heard her slump against the other side of the door.

“I know how much you're hurting.”

I started to say, “No, you don't,” but then I thought about how she'd crumpled in the days after her mother died. We were just kids, but I remembered thinking that was when she had suddenly gotten older than me.

“Al,” Jenni said through the door. “He had a great life. No rat—maybe no one—has ever been more loved than Walter. You were his world, and it was a great world. At least he got to be old.”

I suspected she was thinking of her mom, who died so young.

Nothing she could say was going to make me feel better.

Nothing.

I wanted her to stop talking about him.

I said, “You can come in.”

When she opened the door, I saw she was carrying a bowl of Easy Mac and a diet A&W root beer. As soon as I smelled the cheesy goodness of the Easy Mac, I felt hungry.

I reached out for it, and when I remembered it was one of Walter's favorite foods, I started to cry.

She sat next to me on the bed. I couldn't control my body. It shook with sobs that erupted from deep inside. It didn't take long for Jenni to start crying and we held each other and cried and cried and cried.

After a while, I started getting a headache and said that we were going to get dehydrated.

Jenni said, “I was afraid we were going to be swept away in a pool of Alice tears.”

I surprised myself—and Jenni—by laughing.

Then Jenni laughed.

And then both of us were both laughing and crying.

 

7

When I made it into work it was clear that
someone
had tipped Joan off. She said, “I understand you lost a friend.”

I nodded.

“Let me know if there's anything I can do to help,” she said, and drew me into one of her tight hugs.

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 love 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.”