Serious by Rebecca Morey                                                                           Bookmark and Share

 

           
           I was twenty-three when my father asked me to run the Boston Marathon with him. “It’s always been a dream of mine, Jenna,” he told me in a carefully written letter. “We’re the same, you and me. We’d make a great team.” 


            His cursive words were wiry and tight, like his body had been during my visit in June. It was September then, and in the photo my father included with his letter he was still thin, but not gaunt like when he and my mother were married. His latest girlfriend had taken it. On the back he wrote “Dad, pulling up the garden” in thick ink. As though I wouldn’t recognize his curly hair, long and wild as wool, or the three-acre plot of soil where all of my childhood sustenance had been organically grown. Like I could forget those longMaine winters of preserved strawberries, jarred beets, five-gallon buckets full of dirt and carrots in the cellar.

            
            In an email, I agreed. Having lived directly on its route for two years, I knew the Boston Marathon wasn’t until April. By then, I might get in shape and lose all the weight I’d gained, working at the bakery, or my father would be onto some new fitness fad, like glacier hiking. Either way. Maybe I didn’t take my father very seriously. When I told her, my mother recited the warning I’d heard before, that my father is a very serious person and not just about diet and exercise (though those were the areas where he tended to go overboard). Growing up, in the time before Mom and I moved to Connecticut, I was often afraid to ask my father to sign a field-trip permission slip or to drive me to a friend’s house for the afternoon, because I knew his face would go tense with worry. I won’t give you money for McDonalds, he might say. Or:  Just remember what I told you about Coca-cola. But things were different now. Despite what my mother thought, I believed my father had softened with age, and I had grown into a woman who ate French fries and was no longer scared. If my father wanted me to run with him, I would not say no.

            
            The next morning, Saturday, I got out of bed before dawn while my boyfriend, Finn, continued to sleep. Remembering my father’s exercise ritual from when I was young, I drank one cup of black coffee and a glass of warm water with honey and ate half a slice of dark bread. I performed the Sun Salutation. I put on two pairs of socks and my old sneakers that hadn’t been worn since college. I stretched my calves against the wall, and then I went running. The cold air felt sharp in my chest. My thighs rubbed together, chafing, and a mile on, my diaphragm cramped. I limped home, blisters on my heels, and when I came in the door Finn looked up from his beanbag in front of the TV where he was playing video games and said, “What the hell, Jenna?”   

            Sunday I tried again. I waited until the sun was bright and the air had warmed. Running hurt more the second time, but I pushed myself for almost two miles, and on the way home I stopped at a health food store and stocked up. It felt like when I was eight and my father would take me jogging down to the river, and then give me a bowl of bulgur and brown sugar if I had kept up with him the whole way. Back at my apartment, Finn occupied with “Halo” in the living room, I followed a Pritikin recipe to make pancakes—all whole wheat flour and no fat. My father always idolized Pritikin, even though my mother said the diet guru was a zealot.


           While I stirred the batter, I found myself humming “Maggie’s Farm,” the song my father liked to play on his guitar those dark evenings during our last years together as a family, after he had taken us off the grid so we didn’t have electricity or phone service. Only fascists plugged into the Man, he had said. I mouthed the words “ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s pa no more,” and spread the thick flour mush into circles in my frying pan. The scent of cigarettes drifted in from the other room. I rummaged for a spatula, trying to ignore Finn cursing at the Xbox, and when I flipped the pancakes, two of them crumbled, but I scooped them onto my plate and sat down to eat, tapping my foot to the song in my head. The pancakes were like sawdust in my mouth, nothing like the pastries I ate at work. After a few bites, I had to get out the butter. I dug into the refrigerator, around a case of beer, an empty jar of mayonnaise, brown bananas, a single piece of American cheese and a half eaten pizza, and retrieved the stub of butter, wrapped in crumpled wax paper. I spread it on, thickly. The butter melted over my pancakes, and as I watched it soak in, I suddenly felt shamed for needing it. If my father saw me, I knew what he’d say:  Impurity breeds impurity. Isn’t that what we believe?


           Through the fall and into the winter I ran each morning, before I went to my job at the bakery. My father emailed every few weeks to ask of my progress, and I told him what my mileage was and how much weight I was losing. He said he was pleased with my discipline. I felt as though I was making up for those rough years after the divorce, when he refused to leave the house and grandma had to move in and turn the electricity back on and make him eat. He wrote that he had gotten us sponsored by Dana Farber so we could enter the marathon without pre-qualifying, since I had never run a marathon before. Even though my father had competed in several, he said he didn’t care if we started the race in the front with the qualifiers, or in the back with the others. It was about finishing, not winning. It was about togetherness. During those months, I cooked every meal according to Pritikin, the way my father would have. I stopped eating doughnuts at work and canceled the cable subscription at home. I gave away the Xbox. Finn started spending his time elsewhere.

            
            For Christmas, I went to my mother’s house. When I arrived, she gave me a worried look and told me she didn’t like to see me so thin. Then she put her hand to her eyes as though blocking out a painful light.


           “Whatever,” she said. “It’s your choice now. I’m done with all this.” 


           My father sent me more gifts than I’d ever received from him:  new running shoes, socks, warm-up pants, a water bottle, sunglasses, three cans of his beets, and a five pound bag of organic barley. For New Year’s, I drove to Maine and spent two days with him. We went running on the snow packed roads together each morning, our strides matching exactly. I thought, see?  We are the same, he and I. After so many years apart, we were finally together, close in the way I had always longed for. I tried not to worry about the shadows etching into my father’s cheeks or the serious gaze from his eyes.  

            
            Then, in late February, Finn moved out. I came home from a run and he was gone, his side of the closet bare and his frayed toothbrush absent from the top of the bathroom sink. The apartment was silent. The rooms felt lifeless and bare, though looking around I saw that nothing had actually changed. My training magazines, dumbbells, and yoga mat still cluttered the living room; my beets and barley and health food continued to fill the refrigerator and spill out onto the counter. In the bedroom, my running clothes were scattered across the bed, hung over the mirror on my bureau, and piled onto the scale on the floor. No wonder Finn left, I realized. There was no space for him here. That night, while I was washing my face, I stared into the mirror at the shadows in my cheeks and the darkness under my eyes. My reflection looked different somehow, more hollow and serious. It looked like my father. In the morning, after my first night alone, I wrote my father an email. “I have the apartment to myself, now,” I typed. “Why don’t you come down the night before the marathon and stay with me?”  I imagined the two of us making a big spaghetti dinner in my kitchen, threading laces through our sneakers and discussing strategies for beating Heartbreak Hill. I waited almost a week for his reply, during which I felt too tired and anxious to run. When I saw my father’s email, bold and new, in my inbox, I was gratefully relieved, but as I started reading the letter my chest tightened, and I began to feel sick in a way that was both familiar and desperate. “Don’t think it would be a good idea,” was all he said about my invitation. “But keep training.”  I deleted the email. After that, I didn’t run again.          


***


           On race day, the spring weather was overcast and cool, and showers were predicted. In Maine, my father woke up at four a.m. and drove two hours to my house. I waited for him outside; he’d said we’d have to rush to make registration. When he saw me, for the first time since New Year’s, his eyes took a minute to adjust. I was eighteen pounds heavier and probably weighed at least ten pounds more than he did. In shorts, my legs looked doughy and pale. I didn’t have to tell my father that I hadn’t trained in two months, that I had forced myself to start eating and behaving like a normal person again, and that every pound I had gained made me feel both guilty and victorious. My father knew. He did not look at me for long.


           “Get in,” he said. “There’s a coffee here for you.”


           The rain began while we were waiting with the crowd at the starting line, the Dana Farber logo pinned to our backs.


           “Good,” my father said, his eyes darting at the other runners. “Rain gives us an advantage. Nobody likes the rain, but it keeps you cool. Are you wearing double socks?”


           “Yes,” I answered. I wanted out, but I was terrified to say the words. “I’m getting cold,” I mumbled instead. “I don’t know if I can do this.”


           “Of course you can.”  He looked away. “You trained, right?  This is the test, here. This is where the hard work pays off.”  He turned back to face me. “You’ll do your best,” he said.


           I blushed. “Okay, Dad,” I said.


           The runners in front of us started to move, and then the pack opened up, and we jogged forward.


           “Keep it even, Jenna,” my father said. “Don’t rush it like those fascists.”  He gave me a wry smile, and I had to laugh. Maybe we could do this.


           I kept my stride short and my arms loose. My father stayed close to my side, his eyes fixed on a distant point I could not see. His breath went in and out, slowly. But mine was growing ragged.


           “Pace it,” he said. “Eyes up. Shake out those fists.”


           We went on like this for six miles. A couple of times I’d start to cramp, and my father would make me double over and cough hard until the stitch went away. He seemed tireless, but I was in no condition for a marathon. After the eight mile marker I got another cramp, this one in my hamstring. I slowed to a walk. My father looked at me, alarmed, his hair frizzing around his face.


           “You okay?” he asked. “Need a water break?”


           I shook my head. “I can’t do it, Dad. I’m done.”


           “That’s ridiculous!” he said. While I stood, my father jogged in place, visibly disturbed by the time we were losing. Groups of people ran past us. He motioned for me to continue. “We’re not even halfway!” he insisted.


           I rubbed my leg, though it didn’t really hurt as much as I wanted it to. “I’m done,” I repeated. “Sorry.”  Rain drops thickened and broke onto the pavement.


           My father smoothed a hand over his hair. “Well, if that’s what you want,” he offered and waited for my response. I nodded. “Then I can’t stop you,” he said. His eyes met mine, and I saw that he was not angry, he was not disappointed. He was just serious.


           “I’ll wait for you at the finish,” I said, and then walked to the side of the road, pushed through the onlookers, and climbed a grassy embankment. When I turned back to wave, my father was already out of sight.