The Memory of Running (3 page)

Norma Mulvey, our neighbor Beas daughter, was four years younger than me, and because
there werent a lot of kids her age in the plat, she used to always want to play with me.
When I was eleven or twelve, I guess it wasnt so bad, but as I grew up and shed sort of
just be everywhere I was, it drove me nutty. Not that Norma wasnt nice when she was a
girl. Norma was very nice, and quiet and shy, but still, a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old
shouldnt have a kid following him around.

Norma adored Bethany, too. Shed just show up. Wed be having supper, and my pop would have
the Red Sox on the radio, and, no knocks or anything, in would walk Norma.

Hi, Smithy! shed shout, and sit next to me, all pigtails and nine and grubby.

Uh, Id say. Hi, you cutie. Norma Mulvey is my fave, Bethany would say. My mom was just so
nice. How about a little bowl of macaroni

and cheese? Oh, boy! Oh, boy! Norma would say. Whats the score, Pop?

Norma called Mom Mom, and Pop Pop. She kept it simple. Fivefour, good guys. Yayyy!
Everybody laughed but me. I was thirteen. She made my crew cut

itch. One time I remember, in that clear way that stands out in my

memory, there was a puppet show that Norma wanted to have. Shed seen one on Captain
Kangaroo, and it was all she could talk about and sing about and dream about, so Bethany
got this empty refrigerator box and cut out a hole about halfway up for a stage. Bethany
came into the house and brought me outside. I was, I think, fourteen then, so Norma would
have been ten. It was Bethanys last year at school.

Look what Norma and I made. What is it? Its a puppet show! Norma screamed. We need
somebody to be a guy puppet, my sister said, seriously.

Norma wants to do a show about a princess in a tower and a knight rescues her.

Thats stupid, I said. Is not! Norma screamed. Careful, Hook, my sister said. You have to
do things like this,

or youre gonna end up a fat-ass with no friends. Im gonna be Roxanne, Norma said,
oblivious to us. She held

up a little girl doll with black hair and eyes that closed when you put her down, and she
handed me a boy doll. She had put a little hand- kerchief around him like a cape.

Im not gonna play with dolls.

Theyre not dolls, theyre puppets. Hes Rex. Rex saves Roxanne. I love you so much! Norma
screamed.

Norma loves Smithy, my sister sang. Im going. Rex cant go! Norma cried. You cant go. If
you go, youre going to end up a fat-ass like Un-

cle Count, and youre not going to have any friends. Thats your stupid voice. I dont know
what youre talking about. I love Smithy this much! Norma screamed, holding her skinny

arms apart. Go home, you little creep. Careful, Hook. Stupid little creep. Stop following
me everywhere. Norma just stood there and started to scream and cry together.

Bethany hugged her and glared at me. I glared right back. I was four- teen and had made
the ninth-grade basketball team, and I was sup- posed to play with dolls? Bethanys eyes
were lime green.

All right. If shell stop that stupid crying.

Norma rubbed her eyes red and said she loved me. I felt so stupidbeing Rex, of course,
being sort of bullied by my sister. But I rescued Roxanne even though Normas Roxanne kept
kissing Rex with big, stupid, smacking sounds.

In 1963 a guy named Wa Ryan bought a used Volkswagen and fixed it up. Wa had almost
finished high school in Bethanys class, but he was one of the dumb guys about school. It
was cars for Wa. He lived three streets down with his mother, who had emphysema and used
to exercise by walking incredibly slow, almost in slow motion, up the main street, holding
an unlit cigarette. Wa would always work on the Volks on the front section of his narrow
driveway. All the driveways in East Providence are narrow, just like all the houses are
small, with two, sometimes three small bedrooms and small yards with, usually, small
vegetable gardens. Theres a sameness, I guess, thats nice. Theres a comfort, I guess, in
not beating each other. But Wa, like I said, pulled the bumpers off, raised the body with
truck springs, put a simulated Rolls-Royce grille on the front, and removed the mufflers.
Then he painted it bloodred.

You could hear Wa coming. He didnt race around like a nut or anythingthats not part of the
culture of fixed-up Volkswagens. He drove normally but very loud and very pleased with his
creation. He loved people to admire his handiwork, never once stopping to consider that
most people thought he was just another guy with a crazy car.

It was the first Saturday in April. I remember that because my pop and I never missed
opening day of the Rhode Island trout-fishing season. We always got our stuff ready the
night before, loaded up the car with sandwiches and soda and night crawlers and fly rods.
Open- ing day was not a day for flies, even nymphs that bounce low. The trout wanted meat,
so we made sure we had on long, light leader and split shot to get the bait down where
they werein the deep, slow pools of Wood River. We always got up real early, sometimes
four or four-thirty, so we could get to our spots before sunrise, when the season would
officially begin.

Im not clear about what we caught, but we usually had our limit of six each by noontime,
and Pop usually fell in or got water over his boots by ten. I do remember that we ate a
couple of tuna sand- wiches Pop made. Lousy ones, because he didnt take the time to mix
the tuna and mayonnaise good, and then we drove back to East Providence.

When we brought the trout into the kitchen, Mom was sitting at the table crying. She had a
way of crying that was so restrained it was truly awful. Pop and I thought the same thing
at the same time.

Wheres Bethany? my father said, holding the stringer of trout. Mother waited a moment to
get herself under control. Want some water, Mom? Bethanys at the hospital.

Oh, Jesus, my father said, closing his eyes tight.

Shes fine, Mom said, Bethany is fine. Its our little Norma. She was walking to Sunshine
Bakery, and she got hit by Wa Ryans crazy car.

Oh, Jesus, my father said again. Was Bethany with her? No, she went to the hospital the
second we found out. Poor Bea. Oh, Jesus. I wrapped the trout in waxed paper and put them
in the fridge.

Pop and I changed clothes. Then we all drove to Providence. Rhode Island Hospital sits on
a small rise and overlooks the little- used Providence Harbor. In 1938, an unbelievable
hurricane shot over Block Island into the ConnecticutRhode Island coast and up the
Providence River. A lot of the damage is still there. You could see it out the emergency
rooms waiting-area windows. We asked for Norma, and they sent us to Intensive Care on the
fourth floor of the

new hospital wing. Bethany sat on a window ledge in an alcove that had been set

up as a kind of rest area. Bethany ran and hugged Mom and Pop and me.

Wheres Bea? Mom asked.

They took her down to the emergency room because she passed out. I was holding her hand,
and she just passed out. Oh, Mom! Its so awful. Poor Norma. Poor little Norma. Bethany
began crying, and Mom did, too.

My pop lit a cigarette and shook his head. Oh, Jesus.

Bethany calmed down. She has pressure behind the ear. She has all these broken bones and
cuts. When the doctor told Bea they were going to have to operate to stop all the
pressure, Bea just passed out.

Thats what I was thinking about. Our family at the hospital with lit- tle Norma. I dont
know why. Maybe its because we all sat together for a while and concentrated on exactly
the same thing. That could be it. Like how everybody becomes one person for a little bit
and how the tiniest thing affects everybody in almost the exact same way. A pretty
comfortable share, if you absolutely have to share, in a Wa Ryan souped-up-Volkswagen
tragedy. But now it was my pop and

mom and other hospitals. I called Polly at the funeral home and told her there would be two

in the funeral, and Polly said that at least they were together. I called Aunt Paula and
the Count and told her that Mom and Pop had gone, and then I went back to the motel,
loaded up the car with the rest of my stuff, and drove to Rhode Island.

I drove right to my parents home, instead of my apartment near Goddard. Moms 1971 Karmann
Ghia, all rusted out on the front end, was in the garage. It was dark, but I found Pops
spare key on the nail in the garage. It was behind a pile of paint cans. I walked into the
screen porch and opened the back door. It smelled like Worcestershire sauce. That was our
kitchen smell. We loved Worces- tershire sauce. In meat loaves and hamburgers, and you
know what else gets this nice tang with Worcestershire sauce? Codfish cakes. Its

an all-around sauce. I sat for a little while in the kitchen without turning on any lights
and thought of pot roast and turnips and cab- bage and even corned beef with shots of
Worcestershire. I lit a ciga- rette and took two beers out of the fridge. I drank them
fast and took out a couple more.

I went to the kitchen sink and splashed a little cold water on my face. There was a moon
and stars out, and a nice damp, cool night breeze came in when I opened the window above
the sink. The Mulveys house was next door, and there were no lights on, but it was very
late. Sometimes I would be at Moms kitchen window do- ing the dishes, because when I would
drive over from my apartment for dinner, Id help clean up, and when I stood at the window,
I would see Norma, on the side of her window, looking at me, I think. I would, I think,
catch her, just looking, and then shed turn away as if she wasnt looking.

After she had been so hurt with the Volkswagen, we visited the hospital a lot, and when
Bea brought her home in that wheelchair, wed go over, but Norma was so sad and she cried
so much and Bethany had started hurting herself with fists and fingernails, so we sort of
stopped going over. Sometimes Id see her getting into the special van the state used to
pick up those kids, those hurt kids, to go to the school in Pawtucket that was, I guess,
for handicaps. Later on, with Bethany and everything, it was as if little Norma and her
little wheelchair were never really there. For us anyway, the family of Bethany. It just
gets so hard to go over, and the more you say to yourself to go over and then dont, it
actually becomes so hard it seems impossible. So except for that glance at the sink, her
sort of peeking out behind Beas blinds, I guess I hadnt seen Norma, really, for thirty
years. I wondered if she saw meall of me, the weight, the cigarettes, the cases of beerand
knew I wasnt a runner anymore. You think odd things in your parents house.

I opened two more beers and walked through their house in the

dark, into the parlor. Sitting there, on Moms green couch, I tried to focus on my
responsibilities for the next couple of days, tried to or- der exactly what I should be
doing. I smoked a couple more ciga- rettes, finished the beers, slept on the couch. Too
cold to get comfortable, too drunk to get a blanket.

You have to learn to look at someone you truly adore through eyes that really arent your
own. Its as if a person has to become another person altogether to be able to take a hard
look. Good people protect people they love, even if that means pretending that everything
is okay. When the posing and disappearing became a way of life for Bethany, wed take on
this almost casual attitude in our searches. As if we were trying to convince ourselves it
was not a bad thing. Even the running into walls had that unintentional fog about it,
after it fil- tered through my parents conversations. But once Bethany had graduated from
high school, her voice began to throw away any sub- tle signs of self-destruction.

My sister stayed home after school. Shed been accepted at a Catholic girls college, St.
Regina Teachers College in Bristol, Rhode Island, and for a while my parents thought that
a perfect situation for her was living at home and commuting the twenty-five miles to
Bristol. That way she would still be sort of independent, but Mom and Pop could watch her.
My pop bought her a neat little blue used Renault Dauphine. We all had such a wonderful
feeling about our college plans. It was euphoric, and this lightness fell all over my
parents and, I suppose, me, too, as if there was sun coming out or something.

Bethany had gone through the long summer working at Peoples Drug Store. Her job was a huge
success in the Ide house, and Mom and Pop never stopped complimenting her on how nice she
was to customers and how hard she worked. I was mowing lawns when I could get the mowing
jobs, but mostly Id get my fish gear and ride the Raleigh to Shad Factory. I was going to
be sixteen that fall and already had a drivers permit, but driving wasnt something I
thought was so great. As long as I had my bike.

In the summer, especially in August, the lakes would evaporate

quite a bit. Streams that fed or were fed by lakes also shriveled. Shad Factory was
particularly low the summer of Bethanys senior year, but it had a certain kind of beauty
in its black water and how it con- trasted with the countryside, which went stick brown.

A fisherman did not have to be an expert to see that catching some good ones had to do
with getting the bait down low. I used weighted orange-and-black woolly worms that my pop
and I used to tie. They were pretty good for spring trout, which Pop fished for, and
absolute killers on the pickerels, bluegills, and fat perch that lay in the holes beneath
Shad Factory falls. The bushes on the bank were thick and dry, and even when I took off my
sneaks to wade in, a back cast with that big old nine-foot glass fly rod of mine was out
of the question. You had to roll the woolly worm or the nymph up above, into the falls,
and let the current bounce it into and around the holes and the edges of the big rocks.
This is the only way to fish below the falls. I dont have fishing equipment anymore. I
dont think Id remember how to tie that terrific orange-and-black woolly worm, but Id sure
know enough, if I ever found myself up against a falls with nothing but a fly rod, to
throw the fly right up into the churning water.

It was about the middle of August. I had gotten up early like I usu- ally did, because a
runner almost never sleeps, and anyway I wanted to mow Mrs. Lopess lawn and still have a
full day at Shad. I was sweat- ing like crazy when I got there, what with the yard work
and the bike ride, so I took off my clothes and swam a little in the lake, then waded into
the stream below, throwing my woolly worm as I went. Casting is hypnotic. The roll cast,
the one I used on the flies, is only perfect about once every fifty throws, but by the
time you hit that first perfect roll, theres not a thought in your head, so you dont no-
tice that big, round traveling loop.

I caught some beauties, hard and full of colors and, of course, fat, because of all the
bugs and minnows that rolled over the falls and

into their mouths. I like the perch the best, so I kept a few, cleaned them good, and let
pickerel and bluegills go. I always felt successful with a creel of perch. My pop liked to
say that not only was I an ex- pert fisherman, but nobody could fry up a perch better than
me. He was right. I could catch them and cook them perfectly. The secret, I remember, was,
instead of bread crumbs, I used crushed cornflakes.

The best ride home from Shad Factory was past the turkey farms of Rehoboth. It added a few
miles onto the trip, but there werent a lot of cars on these old roads, and the turkey
smells that people found so disgusting I thought were kind of nice. Its hard to think
their crap smells nice, but what I mean is the turkey itself is so interesting, even
beautiful, in its odd way, that you have to get above its smell. Any- way, it made for a
satisfying ride home. In the late afternoon, breezes over the small farm ponds cooled
everything off, and when I got into an easy pedal, it was like the roll cast. Hypnotic.

Taunton Avenue unofficially divided Rhode Island from Massa- chusetts. It wasnt a border,
or in some spots even close to a border, but the old TauntonTwin Pike had a sovereignty
that you had to live around to understand. I think of it as a kind of asphalt river. I
turned onto Taunton Avenue just past the last turkey farm, Amaral Turkey Land, and headed
into East Providence. Sometimes on the Seekonk-Rhody border Id stop for a soda at the Chip
n Putt and, if it wasnt too late, play a round alone. Theres no other way on the Chip n
Putt. I liked it me against me. But this day it was getting dark, so I skipped the soda
and the game. I rode past the new bowl- ing alley with the automatic pin boys, the Bay
View Drive-In Movie where there were no bay views, and up the big hill where the famous
Rendini car crash took place in 1951, when eleven members of the Rendini family from North
Providence hit an oil truck from Penn- sylvania. My pop played ball with a couple of the
Rendini boys. He said they had good arms and were quick to the bag. All dead in 51.

After the Luck Is All Trailer Park at the top of the hill, it was only

about ten minutes home. Instead of turning up Pawtucket Avenue for our house, I rode
straight on Taunton for the little shopping cen- ter where Bethany worked in Peoples Drug.

There were two police cruisers, doors open, engines running, parked outside of Peoples.
From my bike I could see a crowd in the back right corner of the store, where Mr.
Allenizio, who managed the drugstore, kept a small soda fountain and magazine rack. I got
a tightness in my stomach and I realized that the day had turned into gray dark. I smelled
autumn even though dust kicked up in the park- ing lot. I put the kickstand down, dropped
my creel over the handle- bars, and walked inside.

Mr. Allenizio had stocked a huge supply of summer stuff, and because it was now August and
a lot of it hadnt sold, he had moved it up front in two sale aisles. It was a good idea,
except it made the store seem cheesy, with plastic floats and cheap sunglasses. But it
wasnt a cheesy store. It was actually classy and, I guess, sophisticated in Mr. Allenizios
filing system for prescriptions and credit system for billing. At least Bethany said it
was sophisticated, and she had, when it was a good time, a great sense about such things.
Now she was pinned on the floor by Bill Poland from the EP Police and an- other cop.

Give us some room, folks! Bill bellowed. He was a big man with a huge signature belly.

There were three or four other customers in the place, and they drifted out of the store.
Mr. Allenizio stood over Bethany and the two cops holding her, and hugged himself.

My legs were heavy, but I moved them silently past hair spray and cosmetics to where my
sister lay. Bill Poland was looking around as if there were an answer on the walls.

Call her folks, he said to the other cop. Maybe we better just call an ambulance. Call her
folks, Bill said again. Ide, on Brightridge Avenue. The cop went to the phone by the cash
register. I couldnt see

Bethany from the waist up, blocked as she was by the great belly of Bill.

Bethany? I called softly.

Bill looked away from her and saw me. Hed played ball with Pop for years and sometimes
even gave us rides home from the games in the blue cruiser.

Jesus, he said almost to himself. Why dont you stay over there. Shell be all right.

What . . . ? She had a spell. I think it was a spell, volunteered Mr. Allenizio. Shes all
right, Bill said. Dont worry, kid. One minute shes showing a woman a new facial cream, and
the

next minute shes talking some odd language. Shes screaming things. Shes saying chay and
chee and dampers, and she runs to the back of the store and climbs up on the counter and
takes her fingernails

Dont worry, kid, Bill said. Dont worry. Shes a good girl. Were calling your old man.

Ide? the cop by the phone yelled. Ide! On Brightridge Avenue! Bill yelled back. Bethany
had been quiet, but now she whispered my name. Hook. Oh, Hook. She sobbed quietly, trying
to catch her

breath. Im here, Bethany, I said, moving toward her. Kid, please, Bill said holding up his
hand. Im all right, I said. Bill released his grip on Bethany slowly, then stood up. Hook,
she sobbed again. Im right here, Bethany, I said, moving to take Bills place. I stood over
my sister and wobbled. I closed my eyes tightly, then

opened them again and felt my head blur. I knelt down next to her and brushed her black
hair away from her face, back toward the floor. She opened her eyes and looked up at me.
She actually smiled a little smile.

Hook, she said.

I smiled back to my sister, and that beautiful, sweet face, ripped and torn by her
fingernails. The jagged scores bone deep. The amaz- ing quantity of blood such little
veins could carry.

Im here, Bethany, I said. Hooks here.