The Memory of Running (5 page)

bourbon and beer, and I kept getting a distracting little pain and rac- ing in my heart,
but I could still feel her, its true, feel her looking at me walk, as if she were behind
those venetian blinds in the dark.

Mom and Pop were at their best when it was worst. There was a kind of calmness, and it
would settle over our house. Wed spend so much time waiting for the bad part that it was
almost a relief when it came. We didnt have to wait in that edgy, nervous zone, because
what we waited for had come, and for a while we were rescued from it. From the waiting, I
mean.

I was sixteen when Bethany jumped off the Red Bridge. It was two days after Christmas, and
shed been great. Really. Church was wonderful, and Bethany had helped plan a caroling
thing with some of the other choir members. I didnt go because I went to Diamond Hill in
Cumberland, Rhode Island. Some kids I knew were going there to ski on the little hill. I
didnt ski, but Linda Overson was go- ing, and I just had to go because she was so
good-looking, and I wanted her to like me, which she never did. Bethany climbed to the
very top of the bridge, which connected East Providence with Prov- idence, adjacent to
Swan Point Cemetery, where the Ides go when they die. What I know about it comes mostly
from the Providence Journal, but some information I got from my pop, who didnt see it, but
some of the boys in the Brown crew who were rowing under the bridge at the time told him.

It was snowing and cold, but as long as the oily Providence River was open, the Brown crew
rows. They take rowing very seriously, which is good because of the timing of Bethanys
jump, but I think its stupid. But what do I know? I never went to college.

So it was snowing and pretty gray out. It takes a tremendous cold spell to freeze the
Providence River because of the oil and dry- cleaning fluid and crap that has poured more
or less relentlessly into it for two or three hundred years. This day, while it was cold
and snowing, it wasnt part of a prolonged cold and the crews were whipping through their
workouts, beginning with a two-mile run

from the campus on the east side to the boathouse a half mile up from the Red Bridge.

Bethany had a part-time job at Grace Church working in the thrift shop. The old ladies who
volunteered there were members of our church, and the work was pretty easy, so my parents
thought it might make a nice transitional situation for Bethany, either to a more real job
later on or maybe even another try at college. She also took a dance class at the YMCA,
and I think that later, the work she did in that class showed itself in the ever-growing
intricacies of her poses. They became amazing, not only in the absolute stillness she made
for herself but also in the astounding whirls and leaps. A madness almost forgivable.

My sister drove her little Renault Dauphine out of the church parking lot, through
Weybosset Square, and headed home via the Washington Bridge. We never can be sure of what
happened exactly, but it seems pretty likely that somewhere between the square and the
bridge, Bethanys voice got hold of the car and headed her away from the old Washington
Bridge and toward the rust red of the Red Bridge. She parked on the shoulder of the road.
The passenger door was open, but for no apparent reason, and Bethany could not give us one
either. The trunk was also open. It was a front trunk, as the en- gine was in the rear of
the car, and Bethany had taken off all her clothes and folded them neatly on the spare
tire, as if part of the plan was to return to get them.

The coxswain on the Brown crew that was heading toward the bridge was named Sheila
Rothenberg. Its the coxswains job, I found out, to steer the boat and keep a single rhythm
going by using a little megaphone. Racing boats arent set up for the rowers to turn around
and glance at what direction theyre going in. The rowers purpose is to row in an enormous
stretch and pull, and there is simply no time for worrying where the boat was headed. That
was Sheila Rothen- bergs job. She was a junior at Pembroke, which was really Brown,

but in those days it was considered classy to have a division of the college just for
women. At least thats what Sheila Rothenberg told me. Our family saw her maybe six times,
because Mom and Pop were trying to figure out what happened. I thought it was enough that
it had happened and they should leave it alone, but I surely liked this Sheila Rothenberg,
who had the nicest breasts I had ever seen and never wore a bra.

Here it is. The crew had passed under the Washington Bridge, where they did a wide turn
before they shot up and away from the Providence Harbor toward the Pawtucket line. These
boats fly, and the training for races, which they were doing, consisted of all-out,
full-blast rowing until the crew almost died. There were one-man crews, two-man crews,
four-man crews, and eight-man crews. Sheila Rothenbergs crew was eight-man, and, as I
said, they were flying up the river. Sheila was concentrating on straightening out the
heading by directing a stronger pull from her left rowers when she looked up and saw
Bethany. At first she thought it was a statue, because she was about two hundred yards
from the bridge and Bethany had gone into a pose. It must have been a good one, because
Sheila could not see any movement at all except her hair blowing. My sister once tried to
explain her poses to me. She said she was always trying to be com- pletely still. More
than completely, actually. Bethany told me that if she could stand so even her heart didnt
beat against her chest, every- thing, everywhere, would be all right. But, God, I hated
her poses. I hated them.

When Sheila got about seventy-five yards out, she could see it wasnt a statue but my naked
sister, and before she could yell, Stop rowing! Bethany flew out from the metal girder at
the top of the bridge and back-flopped into the icy, oily, polluted, horrible Provi- dence
River.

The clippings from the Providence Journal, December 28, 1962, say this:

Twenty-Year-Old in Death Leap Saved by Brown University Crew

A twenty-year-old East Providence woman attempted to take her life yesterday afternoon by
leaping into the Providence River. Apparently the young woman had removed her clothing,
climbed to the top of the old Red Bridge, and hurled herself into the freezing water.
Luck- ily, a crew from Brown Universitys rowing team pulled the woman to safety.

Then the paper quoted a couple of the guys and made them sound like heroes. The truth was,
though, that the crew had hurt her worse than the fall. Sheila had trouble getting out her
stop com- mand, and when Bethany bobbed to the surface, the boat popped her in the head.
It opened a huge gash over her right eye and broke her nose. Im not saying it was their
fault, because they did rescue her, more or less, but they became another link in the
chain of nice people who, trying to help, changed my sisters face.

My pop wanted all the facts. He became like a detective. He had to know when. When did she
leave the Grace Church Thrift Shop? He had to know why. Why did she make that turn off
Weybosset and over to the Red Bridge? All of it. Every night Pop would come home from the
tankers, drive Mom to the Bradley Hospital, where Bethany had to go again, and from there
start his rounds of investiga- tion. He spoke to each crew member, to the cops at the
scene, drove the route to the Red Bridge, parked his car, and walked to the spot where
Bethany had started to climb. To say that his beautiful girl was crazy was not enough.
There had to be more. There had to be an an- swer among the embarrassed college kids and
the matter-of-fact cops.

Most of the time I went with him. I suppose I was worried about him, but I didnt have to
be. Being the detective got him up and moving and pumped a lot of energy into him. Mostly
it was really good to see my pop like that. He was a guy who didnt need much of

anythingbaseball, a few beersand it was hard for him to be emo- tional, like its hard for
me, but I think including me in the investiga- tion was his way of saying he loved me and
stuff.

The last time we talked to Sheila Rothenberg was at a coffee shop on Thayer Street in
Providence. Thayer cuts the Brown campus in half, so its always packed with smart kids
walking around. Sheila was very nice to Pop. She smiled and told him there really wasnt
any- thing to add and that she sure hoped Bethany would be okay. Sheila had on a gray
T-shirt that said
??????
. Her nipples, I remember, were kind of pointing up, and her hair was pulled back in a
ponytail. In 1962 all the smart girls at high school wore ponytails, and it was won-
derful to see one on this pretty college girl. She was smoking a Marl- boro, and the
filter had lipstick all over it. I didnt smoke, but when my pop went to the bathroom, I
asked her if I could have one. I put it behind my ear, the side that my pop couldnt see,
and looked thin and cool. She told me that she understood how concerned Pop was, but she
had told him everything she possibly could. Six times. She wouldnt be able to meet with
him anymore and would I tell him later on? I said of course. Then I asked her if shed go
out with me. Sheila Rothenberg laughed so hard her coffee came out her nose.

Mom and Pop were buried in one grave in Swan Point. My pop had already had their names put
on his parents big marble headstone, so all I had to do was order the dates. Count kept
going on about how economical my pop always was, and how much sense it made to use one
grave, and what a terrific location my folks had. I kept think- ing how odd it was to see
the three-hundred-pounder standing over my pop.

The service at Grace Church was nine-thirty that Thursday morning. Then we proceeded to
Swan Point for the burial, and then everyone came over to Mom and Pops house for a sort of
informal luncheon and jokefest. Aunt Paula had come to the house and woken me up around
five so she could get ready. I had gotten very drunk after the last viewing of Mom and
Pop, so I wasnt much help, but Aunt Paula really didnt need much. Shed brought a sliced
ham and a sliced roast beef, and a big pile of potato salad, and deviled eggs, and
mushroom salad, and macaroni salad, and Swedish meat- balls, and pasta salad, and rye
bread, and Jell-O with bananas, and her famous light brown butterscotch brownies with
almonds instead of walnuts. I drank some beers so I could clear my head for the service.

The Count was master of ceremonies. Hed told everyone at the church and everyone at the
cemetery that after the graveside prayers were recited, there was going to be a
get-together at the house. Maybe sixty or seventy showed up. Count was beside himself.

Great turnout, he whispered to me. Let me get a head count. This is great.

Some members of the Socony local baseball club came. The catcher, Billy Pierce, and Junior
Bobian, who was probably the most famous infielder in Rhode Island history. A division of
the East Providence Little League was named for him. The Junior Bobian Di- vision. Armando
Fecabini came, too. He was my pops best friend,

and its hard to even think about him, because in New England, and in our home, it was
good, very good, to keep things inside. Your emotions were contained. That was why God
gave us skin.

But Armando Fecabinis emotions were uncontainable. He was desolate. I can see him sitting
in front of my pops little TV in the kitchen watching old Bilko shows and wailing, while
all around him people listened happily to the Counts endless stream of Irish, Portuguese,
Italian, black, Puerto Rican, Chinese, women-with- huge-breasts, men-with-twisted-dicks,
and girls-that-could-suck- bowling-balls-through-garden-hose jokes.

Can you get that guy outside? the Count asked me quietly. Hes mourning. I know hes
mourning. Im mourning, too. Only Im mourning

quietly and not ruining it for everyone else. Hes upsetting your aunt.

I knew Armando Fecabini, and his sobbing was not upsetting Aunt Paula. If Count didnt
upset her, nothing would. Count looked at me, then pointed to Armando.

Its too much, he wheezed. Then he turned around to Mr. Al- matian, my pops insurance guy.

So they put this donkey schlong on this old man in Miami. . . . I took Armando outside
onto the screen porch. How are you holding up? he asked me. I stood there, 279 pounds and
three six-packs into the party with

that damn pinch in the middle of my chest. I lit a smoke. Im really, really good.

Im going to miss them. I know. Your father was the best. The best. I dont know. We stood
on the porch, like men do when they talk to each other,

looking away at some imaginary horizon. I wondered where Bea and Norma were.

What do you hear from your sister?

I dont hear anything from my sister.

When I went back to the party, Bea had arrived alone. Her eyes were still beet red. I went
downstairs into the new part of my pops basement, where he had put linoleum tiles and
knotty pine walls, and poured some vodka into my beer glass, because the beer was getting
me kind of logy. I sat down on the old pink couch and stretched my legs and drank my
drink. I smoked a little, and then I suppose I dozed off, because when I finally stood and
went upstairs, most of the guests had gone except for Bea, Armando, Father Fred from Grace
Episcopal, and the legendary Junior Bobian. It was almost six when the last one left. I
helped clean up, looking out the sink win- dow for signs of Norma. Then Aunt Paula and I
loaded up their sta- tion wagon with her bowls of leftovers, and the Count piled in for
the ride home.

The big fifty-incher. The color console. Any plans for it? Count grunted, getting
comfortable behind the wheel.

I dont know. I guess I dont have any plans. Well, if you dont want it, Id take it. Aunt
Paula got a little teary, and then they were gone. And the

others were gone, too. Armando Fecabini was the last to leave, and I walked him to his car.

Me and your father sat on the big rock where the Riverside Nursing Home is now. Then there
was nothing, except it was high and you could look out over the beginning of the bay, and
me and your father sat on the rock and watched the big hurricane come into East
Providence. Riverside first. Our mothers used to push our car- riages side by side. I
remember stealing cigarettes, me and your fa- ther, out of your granddads shirt pocket.

He sat in his big old boat of a car and rubbed his eyes. Well . . . he said. Better hook
up your safety belt. Yeah. Im never gonna go anywhere without my belt hooked up. I walked
down the asphalt driveway to the back porch. Smithy,

Norma called, rolling out of her driveway, into the street, and into my driveway.

Hi, Norma. Everybody leave? Yes. I waited until everybody left. Is that okay? Sure.

I brought the mail, she said, nodding to her lap and two weeks worth of Mom and Pops mail.

Thanks. Do you . . . want to . . . eat something? Like what? Theres lots left. Salads and
meat and stuff. I was still a little drunk, and I was worried that my breath smelled

old and stale, so I kept brushing at my mouth. Norma looked at the steps onto the porch.

I dont let people lift me and my chair. Ive got my house arranged so I dont need any help.

I didnt . . . Ramps and pulleys. I do for myself. I could . . . bring something outside. I
could . . . Id let you lift me onto the porch, Smithy. I suppose I could have pulled her
up the stairs, but I was drunk

and stupidly bent down and lifted her, chair and all, in a kind of alu- minum embrace. I
pushed open the screen door with my butt and swung Norma Mulvey onto the porch. It was
filled with chairs, and all of Moms plants were set in a far corner, where Aunt Paula felt
they would get sun and be easier for me to care for.

I stood for a moment, maybe longer than a moment, with my arms full of Norma and her
chair. Somewhere across the backyards of the side street, a dog barked. I remembered our
embrace. I real- ized that Norma was looking right at my fat face, and I thought of my
breath and quickly put her down.

The porch, she sighed. I remember helping Pop put the porch

on. He gave me a pencil to stick behind my ear for measuring, and he gave me a piece of
wood, a hammer and nails, and said, Hammer those in, Norma. And when I finished, hed give
me another piece of wood and more nails.

I remember, I lied.

Your mother would put ice cubes in the salad, and sometimes wed sit out here and have hot
dogs and beans and salad and listen to the Red Sox.

I needed to brush my teeth. My old breath was burning me. Maybe theyre playing now, I
said. You think so? I went into the house. When I turned the corner and was out of

Normas sight, I ran upstairs and brushed. I ran back downstairs, grabbed Pops radio off
the kitchen table, and plugged it in to the porch outlet.

I follow the Sox, Norma said, rolling to where I fiddled with the dial. I dont know if
theyre on tonight. Try 620.

I could barely hear her, because my heart was pounding from run- ning up the stairs, but I
got 620, and the game was on. Norma smiled and backed up a foot, as if that would allow
her better listening. It was the top of the eighth inning, an afternoon game that ran into
the night. Their afternoon games often ran into the night. Its not a put- down to say our
Sox have been in a stall, more or less, since 1919.

Romero takes forever on the mound, Norma said between pitches. He adds forty minutes to a
game. Clemens just throws. One, two, three. I love Clemens.

We listened for a minute. I wasnt the fan I should have been. I knew enough to talk to my
pop about the Sox, but after some beers its all the same. I played the game, too, for Pop,
I suppose, but as a distraction mostly, and I was pretty good for a high-school beanpole.
I had this real deceptive throw from third base, which was my posi- tion. I had the look
of a kid who couldnt reach first, but I had real zing on the seed.

One of the things Id like to do is go to Fenway and see a game in person. I had a chance
to go last year, with the architectural com- pany I was doing some drafting for, but . . .
I dont know. I figured it would be a big hassle for them and ruin their Sunday.

You should have gone, Norma. Yeah? Sure. They wouldnt have invited you if they didnt want
you

to go. I dont know. We sat still for a while and listened to the play-by-play and the

crowd murmuring in the background. After a while nobody came, Smithy. I looked at Norma
sitting in her chair next to me, looking straight

at the radio. Ellis Burks popped to third. Sometimes Id look out the window therethe one
you can see

from the porch, with the venetian blindsand Id see Pop sitting here listening, and I wish
he would have come and got me.

Boggs was still with them then. They all loved him, and they all hated him. The announcer
described his at-bat. I couldnt take my eyes off Norma. She had on a jogging suit with a
huge sweatshirt and hood that hung off her neck and over the back of the chair. Her lips
were a little apart, and I could see her teeth.

You . . . if you asked him, Norma, Im . . .

Norma shot out her hand and grabbed my left fat, sweaty paw, so hard it hurt. She held it,
and she held her look at the radio. I didnt move, even though I was amazed at how strong
she was. I looked at the radio, and when I looked back, a tear was rolling out of her eye.
She let my hand go and rubbed it away.

Ive got to go now, Smithy.

I didnt say anything, stupid or otherwise, and lifted her back to the driveway. As soon as
she was on the ground, she began to quickly roll away.

Im sorry, she said.

No, Im . . . I dont . . . Mails on the table, and she was gone. It was a warm night, not
unusual for the end of August, and when

I went back in and shut off Pops radio, the crickets were already working. I lit a smoke
and grabbed some beers out of the fridge and drank. An hour later I was pretty shaky, but
I managed to get down to the basement and bring the vodka upstairs to the kitchen table,
where I made a big screwdriver. Then I remembered the mail.

I dont enjoy reading as an adult. Theres something about it now. But I had read until I
fell asleep almost every night in this house, and I read fast, too. Good books that often
I would hate to finish because they took me into their lives and let me out of mine, for a
while any- way. I thought about what I read then, but these days I read the same page over
and over, and of course theres beers. Sometimes I miss reading, but I still dont do it in
my adulthood.

So I dont get magazines and things sent through the mail to me. Just some bills, thats
about it. But Mom and Pop loved the maga- zines. They subscribed to Time, U.S. News &
World Report, Sports Il- lustrated, Field & Stream, National Geographic, the Sporting
News, and the Red Sox Quarterly, which not only had profiles of the ballplayers but
included favorite recipes and original poetry. There were two magazines in the batch of
mail Norma had dropped off. I separated them and placed them neatly on one section of the
kitchen table. Next I put the bills in a separate pile and letters that looked personal in
another pile. Most of the mail was junk, so I threw it away.

Wouldnt you think when a person dies there would be a thats it kind of thing? I think
that. I think that when somebody dies, there ought to be a process where everything about
them, like bills and taxes, stops. They dont even slow down. As a matter of fact, they
seem to come quicker and louder. In my parents pile of bills was American Express, two
separate phone bills, Mobil gas, Woods Heating and Oil, Visa, a Travelers Insurance
premium, and a pledge

card from the East Providence Rescue Squad. They do not stop when you die.

Aunt Paula had set up an appointment with a lawyer she knew who was going to help me sort
out my parents estate. I love that what they had is called an estate. Mom particularly
would have en- joyed it. The lawyer was going to tell me how to get the bills and things
to stop, because Mom and Pop had stopped, so I put a rubber band around the bills and
would just give them to whoever the lawyer was when I met him after work on Tuesday. That
left only the letters that looked personal. There were two from friends of Moms who were
visiting England with a church tour, one from Pops rotis- serie baseball commissioner, and
one from the City of Los Angeles Department of Health. This was the only one I opened. I
knew the rotisserie league was to do with his efforts to get Roger Clemens on his fantasy
team, and I didnt want to read the letters to Mom. I opened the official-looking one from
Los Angeles. It was addressed to Pop:

In response to your letter of the twenty-sixth of July, it is with regret we inform you
that Bethany Ide, 51, died from complications of exposure. Her date of death was June 4,
and she has since that time been in the Los Angeles Morgue West. The inclusion of Ms. Ides
dental records with your inquiry was extremely helpful in the identification procedure.

I felt a shortness or an absence of breath for a second, and this weird feeling of panic
spread out of my chest and covered me. I stood up from the kitchen table and walked out to
the porch and air. I found some, and I breathed it. Then I walked back to the kitchen and
the Los Angeles letter. I read the first part again, but I was too drunk to finish it, so
I folded the letter, put it in my pants pocket, and walked back to the porch. Thats when I
saw her again. She was in the garage in front of Moms Karmann Ghia, and she was in her