The Memory of Running (28 page)

Aunt Paula and Count drove over early, and Count brought two boxes of special doughnuts.
Count looked great.

That was a false alarm, he announced about the most recent striptease heart problem.

Yeah, that wasnt what you call an actual attack. Doc called it one of my incidents. Im
fine. Jelly doughnut?

Upstairs Bethany and her attendants laughed and joked and squeezed into their wedding
outfitsBethanys gown and the maids floor-length creamy brown dresses. They all wore gloves
and wide, delicate straw hats. Bows were tied tightly under their chests, and Rebecca Coin
looked particularly wonderful and full. Normas mother had come over, but Bea came alone.
These days she always seemed a little angry at me, but that might have just been my imagi-
nation.

You look so handsome in your tuxedo, Bea said. Thanks, I said. Normas being silly. Maybe
you could talk her into coming over.

For Bethany. Poor Bethany. Shes going to be fine. I feel it. Im very happy. Go get Norma.

I left Bea with Mom and Pop in the living room and walked into the kitchen. I got down my
bottle of vodka and made a quick screw- driver. Then I made another quick screwdriver and
walked next door and down the driveway to Normas window.

Hey, Norma, I said, tapping at the window.

Norma peeked through the blinds, then raised them and the win- dow. I stepped back and put
both hands in my pockets. She just looked at me. A fine, misty rain blew around.

What? she said. Bea told me to come and get you. Bea told you?

Yeah. Hey, if you dont want me to come, Im not going to come! Who said I didnt want you to
come? I want you to come. All right, Ill come. Ill meet you on your porch. Why? Ill just .
. . you know . . . What? Push? You gonna push the cripple? Bea tell you I cant

come cause Im a cripple? Norma slammed down the window. I stood in the rain. She

opened the window again. Okay, meet me on the porch. I walked around to the back of the
house. Bea and Norma had a long screened-in porch, connected by ramps to the driveway, and
then to the house itself. I lit a smoke and waited. I had a feeling that I had better
remember the way things look today. This included the arrangement of yards and rooms and
porches. Then Norma came

out, and the feeling went away. How small and young in her wheelchair. She had made up her

eyes and had put pink lipstick on. Her hair was short, and the way it was cut made her
neck seem long and, I guess, elegant. Her dress was pink and satiny, and her white shoes
shined out from the hem. It startled me how very perfect she looked. Enchanting, I would
say if I could.

You look very nice, Norma, I said.

Push, she said. I stepped behind her, and we went down the ramp. I thought she said
something.

What? I said. I said you look beautiful. I said I love you. I pushed faster, out of the
Mulvey drive and into the Ides.

I had twenty-three dollars and some change. In a food shop inside a gas station, I bought
cough medicine, spring water, orange juice, and four instant chicken-soup cups that you
just add hot water to, and carried them back to my motel. I wanted to take a shower but
didnt have the energy. I took three aspirin, two teaspoons of cough medi- cine, a huge
drink of water, and sipped some of the chicken broth, even though I wasnt in the least bit
hungry. I got into bed and was too sick and tired to sleep. This happens. So I opened
Suzanne of the Aspens and read some more about her terrible first winter in the mountains.

One morning she looked out from her shelter and saw, walking across some newly fallen
snow, two Indians. An old man and an old woman clutching each other against the cold.
Naturally, being such a good woman and everything, Suzanne called to them and went out to
help, but when they saw her, they started to run away. It was a confusing episode for her,
but I fell asleep. That was about five in the afternoon. Needles, California.

I didnt even move until five the next morning, when I had to pee. I had more cough
medicine, aspirin, and water and slept again until eleven, when the front desk called and
reminded me that checkout was eleven-thirty. I showered, repacked my saddlebags, and went
down to the lobby. My call to Norma was the only thing Philip Wolsey hadnt paid for. I
walked out of the motel with $6.73. I felt a little hungry and pretty good.

I felt better once the rhythm of the bike and its pedals came back into me. I felt loose
and fluid across the dry country. I stayed on the adjacent smaller roads off 40. Into
Essex and then Amboy, where I spent the October 18 evening under a cactus, with my belly
full of instant chicken noodle soup and stress vitamins and Suzanne of the Aspens moving
slowly into spring.

The next day I reached Ludlow early and spent the last of my money on hot dogs and french
fries. These are foods that do not have the right idea about them, especially if youre
thinking about energy and goodness and healthfulness and that, but the feel of the food is
important, too, and hot dogs and french fries have a very good feel. After food I cut down
through the tip of Twenty-Nine Palms Ma- rine Base, onto 247, then through Lucerne Valley
to Victorville and Route 15. Outside of Apple Valley, I pitched my tent under an apple
tree.

For some reason that night I was overwhelmed with a feeling of loneliness and sadness. I
curled up in my bag, and a small rain cloud moved across the field and showered me, and I
thought about big spaces and empty spaces. I wished my pop were in the tent with me so
that I wouldnt be afraid, and then I wished I werent afraid. I only know about America,
and really not all that much, but I know its not a place to let down in and be lonely in
and, of course, frightened in. There is something about my country that never lets you be
truly comfortable, really belong. At least for me. I thought of Tony Ama- ral, one of the
guys at the lounge in East Providence. He was the nicest guy, but every now and then hed
get all tense and say, What are you looking at? or What are you laughing at? and youd feel
how threatening and how ugly he could be. I feel like that about my country sometimes. I
really felt that under the apple tree. Also, I felt hungry.

I moved my heartbeat up to my shoulders, but it wouldnt listen to me. Its something that
requires concentration, and I was feeling so hopeless that my hopelessness was all I could
concentrate on. Its a big country and its me. Maybe bicycles and men arent good, even
though most of the time it feels like a good combination. I curled lower into the bag,
holding myself against my unhappy thoughts. Sorry to be alone, angry to have spent my
fortune on hot dogs. My stomach rumbled, and I ran my fingers over the space where sixty or

seventy pounds of guts used to rule. I was going back, I knew, and the swish of breeze
through the apple boughs knew it, too. In the morning there would be Silverwood and
Ontario and Pomona, and later in the day, right before dark, there would be Cheng Ho, on
the Venice colonnade. But first this difficult night.

Bethanys marriage to Jeff Greene was a smooth example of how a wedding ought to be.
Nothing went wrong. Dave Stone and his ush- ers kept the seating flowing, and the organ
music that my sister had selected was perfect. Love, Be in My Understanding wasIm not just
saying thismagical. When Bethany walked down the aisle with my pop, I thought the Ides
might burst. Sharon Thibodeau and her maids of honor were positively angelic. On the steps
of Grace Episco- pal after the ceremony, Byron Lapont, from Lapont Photography Stu- dios
in Barrington, took about two hundred shots. Bethany and Jeff. Bethany and Jeff and Dave
and Sharon. Bethany and her maids. Jeff and his ushers. Me and Pop and Mom and Bethany and
Jeff. They were wonderful pictures, and we would put them everywhere, and later Pop would
spread them out and look for clues.

We left the church in a caravan, two limousines leading the way, and crossed the George
Washington into East Providence, taking the Taunton Avenue exit to Agawam Hunt Country
Club. In the Hole in One Room, Bethany and Jeff and their attendants were an- nounced, and
we ate from a huge buffet table set up by Shroeders Delicatessen and danced to the rhythms
of Armandos Hideaway, a six-piece band fronted by Tony Chambroni, who wasnt half bad.

Norma had driven Bea over. She got herself out of the van and wheeled to the stairs. One
of the valet parkers, a nice old black guy, backed her up the stairs, and she came into
the Hole in One. Bethany ran over and hugged her and twirled her around. Norma wasnt self-
conscious or anything. All you had to do was look at the way she smiled at Bethany and you
understood history. When she saw me watching her, she arranged herself taller in the chair
and looked seri- ous and tough. There was a bank of floor-to-ceiling mirrors behind the
buffet table, where golfers could examine their swings. I examined

my new belly, hard and round, and my ass and my snug tux. I undid my jacket button and had
my fifth or sixth glass of sparkling wine.

Count squeezed in between Jeff and Dave and launched conspira- torially into one of the
classics:

Couple of Jews, by mistake, walk into St. Pats. . . . Were Jewish, snapped Dave. Count
looked at Dave, then Jeff. Okay, couple of coons, by mis-

take, walk into St. Pats. . . . Count finished the joke to chuckles from Jeff and cold
stares from

Dave and spotted Father Solving standing alone next to the gift table. Count was five feet
away from him when he joyfully launched into it again.

Couple of Jews, by mistake, walk into St. Pats. . . .

Like at the rehearsal dinner, there were toasts by everyone, and I thought it was terrific
how people could come up with such mean- ingful and loving remarks of good luck and happy
life, until Dave Stone quieted down the crowd by whistling.

Ladies and gentlemen, he said, like a big-deal, in-charge kind of guy. Ladies and
gentlemen, if I can have your attention, please. As you all know, the wedding of the
fabulously handsome Jeff Greene and the perfectly beautiful Bethany Ide was a harbinger of
great things to come for these two terrific people. So before they change for their
honeymoon . . .

Oooohs and laughter from the crowd.

I think its appropriate to ask Bethanys brother and Jeffs brand- new brother-in-law,
Smithy Ide, to offer the final toast.

Like in a movie, the group of people parted, and I stood alone next to the buffet table.
At first I had forgotten I held two glasses of wine. I am a person who does not do well
with anyone looking at me, let alone a roomful of people all wearing those goofy wedding
grins. I put one of the wineglasses down on the buffet table and held the other glass with
both hands.

I hope, I said, I . . . I hope that a whole lot of happiness and really good things happen
for my sister.

I thought for a second or two. . . . Oh, and Jeff, of course. Really, really good things.
Everybody laughed at my oversight, and their laughter turned into

applause and Jeff and Bethany gave each other a little kiss and a click of their
wineglasses. Mom and Pop kissed, too. Norma had wheeled close to me and stared at me. I
wished I had clinked glasses with her then and kissed her, too. But I didnt. I finished my
wine. Then I fin- ished the other one, and then I had some more.

By the time a slice of orange sun was hitting me, I had ridden three hours. I had gotten
myself too upset to sleep. Being hungry probably had a lot to do with it. I put this
stretch of road into Los Angeles as my most unhappy. Doubt is terrible. Not that I had any
doubt about my own stupidity, to do what I was doing. I was pretty confident I was in an
idiot world of my own. But to have come to my middle age without any idea at all about
anything . . . I tried to listen to my heart rhythms, to move them as I rode, but my brain
was pedaling in another direction. Finally I settled on the road itself, and I followed my
sisters flight over the San Gabriel Mountains.

I came out of the night and kept to the roads adjacent to the free- ways. Here is another
thing I find disturbing about how I look out at the world. I see the walled-in
communities. I see parking-lot free- ways. I see a western city spread left to right and
not up, and I say to myself, This is not Rhode Island. As if there is a common thing go-
ing here I cannot understand. I needed food. I was exhausted. I could no longer see my
sister in the sky. Both of my tires blew out at the exact same time.

I walked backward for a hundred yards or so, trying to discover what could have ripped up
my tires, but I couldnt find anything. I walked on until I came to a gas station. There
was a woman filling up a car with gas.

You work here? I asked. Do I look like I work here? She topped off her tank and walked
into the station. I followed

her, waited while she paid, and then said to the teenage attendant, Do you fix bike flats?

Bike flats? Uh-uh.

I could smell the coffee on the counter over the shelves of break- fast pastries. Any bike
places around?

The kid got out a piece of paper and drew a map. Youre here. Okay? If you go right on
Forest, past the cow place, about, uh . . . about seven or eight miles, theres Lippit
Exxon station run by this guy, and he does bikes and boards and that shit. Okay?

Thanks.

I took the piece of paper. I started out, but the coffee and the doughnuts wanted me to
look at them. How much is the coffee and the pastries?

Dollar. Dollar? Each. Any bananas? Behind the chips. Apples. Oranges. Whole thing. What do
you

want? I dont have any money. I was so stupid the other day, I spent all

my money on hot dogs. The kid stared at me like the bum I must have looked like. Im

on a bike ride from Rhode Island. Im not a bum or anything. Lis- ten, Ill give you a
lightweight blue tent with fiberglass poles and stakes and fly in perfect condition that a
doctor in Indiana paid two hundred and seventy dollars for if youll give me some doughnuts
and bananas and spring water and maybe a couple of apples.

For a second the kid didnt say anything. I watched his face, and then I watched his pimply
cheeks.

Let me see the tent, he said.