The Memory of Running (2 page)

Thats great, I said. Dr. Rosa is Jans physician. Great. Ill be at the desk if you need me.
As soon as she left the room, I adjusted my shorts. I sat for about

twenty minutes as Mom tilted, and then I got up. Im going now, Mom. What Im going to do is
go back to the

camp and pack up the stuff and drive up and get a room or some- thing. I wont be gone
long. You rest.

I waited in the lobby for Trooper Anderson, and after a while I figured he was busyso I
took a cab back to Bridgton. It cost seventy-four dollars. My old Buick was already packed
with our summer stuff. The folding chairs, coolers, tackle boxes, et cetera. I cleaned the
cabin quickly, then paid Pops friend who owned the cabins, asked him to return the rented
boat for me, and drove back to Portland in the deepest Maine dark ever.

I was a running boy. Thats what our next-door neighbor, Ethel Sun- man, called me. I went
from one place to another like a duck some- body was shooting at. I made beelines.

In 1958 my pop bought me a new maroon three-speed Raleigh English bike, and I became a
running-wheel boy. I would ride every day after school, and on Saturday I usually took a
long eleven-miler to Shad Factory in Seekonk, Massachusetts, which is one county over from
East Providence, Rhode Island. Even in winter, if the roads were clear, Id ride to Shad.
Nobody ever went with me. No- body ever went to Shad Factory eitherthats why it was my fa-
vorite. There were no houses or anything. The Palmer River, on its way to the Atlantic
Ocean, formed a lake above the Shad Factory waterfall. The fishing above and below the
falls was terrific. Bass and pickerel above the falls, bluegill, perch, and hornpout below
in the keep holes formed by the falling water. It looked perfect for trout, but there was
always a little salt, just a bit, that backed in from the ocean, so only the tougher fish
lived there. They changed in the brackish water. Bluegills got metally looking, and the
perchs belly got even deeper orange. Id fish no matter what time of year, so long as the
water wasnt frozen over. In winter Id take a small path across a footbridge and into the
crumbling factory. It used to make metal rims for wagon wheels. Id build a fire and have a
day camp.

When Bethany began posing in places other than our house those times when she was away
from us, and hours would pass, and she didnt come home from school or from one of her
friends houses when she said she wouldwed fan out and look for her. I think thats why Pop
got me the Raleigh. I had a pretty good Ameri- can bike, but it wasnt light and fast, and
Id usually just run, looking, and Im sure Pop figured that riding a good bike would be
faster in a Bethany search.

A lot of the Bethany searches run together in my head, but some of them I remember
clearly. These are the ones I think about or talk to myself about. I talk to myself after
I have some drinks. It helps to get it all in some order. For a while anyway. I may say,
Jesus, Bethany, cmon, youre getting Mom and Pop all upset. I always said that when I found
her. Id say, Cmon, Bethany, stop standing like that. Put your jeans on. Cmon!

Now, my sister was never a dirty person, or lewd or anything, but this thing inside her
would tell her to take off some clothesand shed do it, or shed talk right out loud, like
she was answering some- body. It was strange. Crazy, really. Mom and Pop took her to about
every doctor there was, but after the Bradley Hospital, Bethany said if they took her any
more places, shed kill herself. She wouldnt, though. My pop wasnt a profound man in the
way he talked, but I remember once, right after Bethany was brought home by Winnie Prisco
and she had been saying shed kill herself and stuff, I remem- ber Pop sitting at the
kitchen table with Mom, putting his arm around her and saying, Life expects a lot more out
of some people than it does out of others. Then he grabbed Bethanys arm, put her in the
Ford wagon, and drove her back to Bradley.

About a week later, we brought her back home. We needed Bethany in our little house.
Theres always unfinished business when somebody you adore is sick. I cant explain this,
but you know what I mean. We had a great four or five days. Then she didnt come home
again. My parents drove to the high school and started looking there. Pops plan was to go
to the school, then drive up and down Pawtucket Avenue, which ran from Riverside Terrace
to the Seekonk line. My plan was to ride around our plat, yelling Bethany. I started
looking around four in the afternoon, and I heard her crying un- der the water tower in
Kent Heights about seven. I remember it was March, and there was some snow. I dropped the
Raleigh and ran to where my sister was crying.

Bethany?

Hook! she cried, running over and hugging me so hard I couldnt breathe.

Cmon, huh? You got Mom and Pop all upset. Oh, Hook! she cried again. She called me Hook
because she said I never stood up straight,

and I was the skinniest human being she ever saw. I didnt like to eat, and I was a runner.
It was true.

Cmon.

I took all my clothes off. Im a monster, she said, all slobbery. Bethany looked so
beautiful-sad when she was crying. When she didnt cry, she was pretty.

No, you didnt, Bethany. Youve got your clothes on.

Bethany loved kilts. She had a black-and-green plaid one on. I re- member her clothes. No
one dressed more like she ought to. She was a girl who ought to wear plaids and kilts.

After school I was going to ride home with Pat Sousa, and I was over at her car. There
were a whole lot of kids around, and every- body was being nice, and Bobby Richardson had
a new Vespa motor scooter his father bought him, and he was giving people rides and . . .
oh, Hook . . . it told me to take all my clothes off. It said it would be good to do it.

I hate your voice! I shouted. I took my clothes off. I took all my clothes off. Did
anybody hurt you? Oh, Hook. Cmon, Bethany. Pat just drove off. Everybody laughed.
Everybody laughing at me

and pinching me . . . Its all right, Bethany. Cmon. Everybody laughing . . . Another thing
about love that I remember. Its good and bad, but

sometimes when you love somebody so much, you just cant forget how they are when theyre
hurt. When Bethany was hurt, when she

cried and hit herself, it was kind of, I guess, complete. All of her hurt. When I got
taken to the hospital in Thailand before I got flown to Fitzsimmons in Denver, I saw
things. But I never saw things so complete as Bethanys sadness.

Its not you, Bethany. Pinching and . . . Cmon. She held my hand, and we walked out from
under the gray water

tower to where I dropped my bike. It had some snow on it, and the lights from the Kent
Heights plat looked pretty and clean.

You can ride the bike, Bethany, Ill run alongside. Youre a runner, Smithy. I guess. Dont
ever stop running.

I wont. You will, I know it. She did, and I did.

I was staying at the Tidal Motel, pretty much in between Portland General and Biddeford.
Goddard gave me an unpaid leave and trusted another guy with the SEAL Sam arms quality
control. The night I pulled into the Tidal from Bridgton, I called the hospitals and left
my number. It was about two in the morning. I had some beers and some vodka, smoked some
cigarettes, and made a list like Mom always did, because I wanted to be sure that,
somehow, things were okay.

1. Call Bea Mulvey about picking up the folks mail. (Bea was our neighbor forever.)

2. Call Mr. Lowrey at Goddard. (He was my supervisor.) 3. Call Aunt Paula and Uncle Count
(Moms sister and her hus-

band). 4. Call Grace Church (their church). (Its what Mom would have

done.)

I made one more vodka and orange juice and went to sleep. I dreamed I had just done
something wonderfulit wasnt clear whatand a girl I liked in high school kept calling me on
the phone because she was in love with me. Bethany was perfect in my dream, and she would
say, Smithson, I think its Mags on the phone. My pop would say, Va-va-voom. In my dream I
never touch Mags, but I let her tell me how wonderful I am. Ive had that dream a lot since
then.

Hospitals are hard. Everything is hard, really, but hospitals have a special rockiness
about them. I never got used to the ones I was in, even after Id been in them quite a
while. The only way I made it through was by simple ugliness. I was awful to
peopleespecially when they tried to be nice and sympathetic. It surprised me, my nas-

tiness. At least Portland General and Biddeford were more pleasant than the others, even
though, as I said, Portland had the feel of dried clay.

My pop died of pneumonia ten days after the accident. It was about ten in the morning when
I got there, and some young doctor and the fat nurse intercepted me before I got to his
cubicle.

Well . . . the doctor said.

Yes? I asked quietly. Hospitals are places your instinct tells you to be quiet in. The
army hospitals were loud, but that was different. Bethanys hospital, Bradley, was awful
loud, too, but Bradley wasnt a real hospital. It was for a different kind of thing.
Portland General said quiet and meant it.

The young doctor, I forget his name, was a skinny blond guy who talked in a deep voice. It
was as if he wanted everything to sound im- portant and serious, so that if he told anyone
bad news the words wouldnt leap out like snakes, all over the poor patient. He could say
coffee with the same weight as cancer, and It may snow with equal importance to You are
going to die.

My name is Dr. Lapham. Im the neurologist assigned to your father.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Are you at all familiar with the brain? No, Im not. Well . .
. the brain is sort of our command center. Did you see

the movie WarGames? Uh . . . no, no, I didnt. Hunt for Red October ? No. Star Wars? I saw
Star Wars, I said, happy to be helpful. I loved that movie, the fat nurse said. I loved
how you always

wanted everybody to be all right and not be killed by Darth Vader.

The doctor held his hand up to the nurse but looked at me.

Do you remember how Darth Vader had a place in the spaceship that ran everything? That was
totally in command of everything?

I nodded yes, but I only remembered how I knew that wasnt really him talking, right off. I
didnt remember the other stuff.

Well, the place on the spaceship where Darth Vader ran every- thing was, to his space
fleet, you see, as your fathers brain is to the rest of his body. The heart. The lungs.
The stomach and so on.

Okay.

Now, do you remember that scene at the end of Star Wars when Luke lobbed a photon bomb
down the chute and there was a com- puterized picture of this red blip running all around
until it got to Vaders command room?

And Han Solo saved him by shooting the emperors fighters that were sneaking in behind him,
the fat nurse added excitedly.

Yes, the doctor said, so Luke Skywalker was saved by Han Solo, but what about Vaders
command center?

It . . . blew up? I asked, pretty sure I was right.

Exactly, the doctor said in his deepest voice. He ran his white fingers through his short
hair. Exactly, he said again.

Darth Vader escaped by jettisoning in the emperors fighter. He was in the other movies,
the nurse volunteered.

But what good was the fleet without the command room? He could, like, read minds. Maybe he
had I could tell that the doctor was getting mad at the nurse. The point is, its the
command post thats like Mr. Ides brain.

Once the photon explodes in there, its very bad. My pops not doing good? The only section
of the brain thats showing any electrical activity

at all is the brain stem. The brain stem really has one purpose, and that is to regulate
breathing. Its a very mechanical thing, breathing.

But hes breathing.

Yes, he is. But the command center is gone. Gone? I repeated. The photon bomb, added the
nurse, as she squeezed my arm. My pop went about an hour later. The bed had stopped
tilting,

and most of the big machines were gone. Pop had a lot of conges- tion, and his breathing
was a struggle. I held his hand, and his eyelids fluttered, and then he stopped breathing.
I put his hand down, and I was all right, but then I said, so soft I could barely hear
myself, Bye, Pop, and I cried. I didnt let them see me cry. I waited until I had it under
control, then splashed some cold water on my eyes and went to the nurses station.

I called a funeral home in East Providence that Aunt Paula had told me about. I talked to
a woman named Polly who said she wanted me to know I wasnt alone. That was part of the
service this funeral home offered. She said she would send a man up to Maine for Pop, and
we could finalize details tomorrow. I thought it sounded odd that somebody comes and gets
somebody and takes them for their funeral. When you think about death, theres really
nothing else like it.

I packed up the Buick with some stuff and told the motel guy I was keeping the room but
was going to be gone for a while. Then I drove over to Biddeford to fill Mom in on my
plans to go back to East Providence for a few days, without telling her that Pop was gone.

Mom? I said sitting close and touching her shoulder. Mom, its Smithy, Mom. Everythings
good, and Pops doing good and every- thing, but I have to go back to East Providence for a
couple of days. Goddard called and stuff. So I can water plants and things. But Pops okay.
Really.

Mom seemed to be shrinking into her huge bed. I never realized how tiny she was. She
always seemed so completely powerful. Theres too much history to tell, really, about all
of us and how wed do

things like hike and how she loved that I ran so much. There is ab- solutely too much,
because Im looking to understand the whole thing and not a part of things. Mom was
wonderful, and my pop was wonderful, and thats it, really. After Bethany disappeared the
final timethat was almost twenty years nowmy parents never-say-die attitude died. I think
Mom knew that time that the voice had Bethany, finally, all to itself.

I kissed my mothers forehead, which felt dry on my lips, and walked out of her room. I
think she heard me. Her eyes were glassed in haze and half open, but you hear with ears.
At least thats what I was always taught.

I had reached my car when Toni from Intensive Care caught me. Mr. Ide, she called, we need
you, pronto. We jogged back to the hospital and up to Mom. I felt a pain in my

chest, like a pair of pliers had gotten a hold of something important, and sweat poured
through my denim shirt. If it was a big heart at- tack, it was probably one of the best
places to have it. I actually thought that. I actually almost said it out loud. My belly
lived like another man, all itself. I followed, thats all, and my heart was an en- gine
that drove both.

An Indian doctor was in with Mom. This is Dr. Deni, Toni said. Ahhh, he said, all smiley,
the boy. Dr. Deni was short and wiry, with long white hair. He wore a

beautiful suit, double-breasted, I think, and it fit nicely. There was a stethoscope
around his neck.

I am Dr. Deni, he said. I shook his hand. Thank you, thank you so much. He put his hand on
my arm and brushed his fingers against me. Now Mother is going to God. In her hurried
little breaths, you

can hear her prayers. I didnt hear a thing. Her breathing was as tiny as she was. What

was he saying? I started to ask something, but the little Indian cut me off.

We call this the sepsis syndrome, and it is an old enemy of the trauma. Mother was
responding, but now sepsis is here for her.

Toni translated for me.

In a sepsis situation, the brainor something in the brain; we dont know whatorders the
body to begin fighting to stay alive, but that just shoots the temperature sky high, and
we cant get it down.

Here is how stupid I could be. Here. Mom used to give me a tepid bath. Have you guys tried
that? Have you tried the tepid bath?

Sepsis stops when it wants to. It doesnt want to. Mother is going now. Come and sit. Shall
I stay? I sat. Uh . . . no . . . Im okay. Thanks very much. Well be at the nurses station,
Toni said. Mom looked the same, except, like Dr. Deni told me, I could hear

her little breaths. Puffs, really. Her eyes were still open a little, but I knew she
couldnt hear me. I pushed her thin hair onto the pillow with my fingers.

There, I said.

I concentrated on Moms breathing and told myself that they were small but powerful
breaths. Small and powerful, like Mom, and when she got home, I would tell everyone how
this Indian doctor had told me she was going to die, but her breathing got more and more
pow- erful, and her body cooled right down, and she lived.

But she stopped breathing. I never felt so stupid. Mom. I went to the nurses station.

I think my mom has stopped breathing.

Toni and another nurse, an older man, walked into the room, and I followed them. They
closed Moms eyes, took out the IV, and left. All of the engines and monitors were off. I
stood, then sat, then re- membered my dead pop and how I had lied to her about him. It was

reasonable to lie, because Mom was so tiny and that news was so big, but I have learned
you dont want to lie to your mother at the mo- ment of her death. It seems to never stop
bothering a person. A lie like that is one of the main reasons I talk out loud when Im
alone. I say, Mom, Pop died over at Portland General, but everythings still okay.

A person doesnt get over a family.

Sometimes things happen that make a person feel like standing up is just too much. Its the
knees then. Legs. Heart. I put my face under Moms until I could stand up.