by Tom Murphy
Bridget walked quickly now toward the group, and she waded into the middle of two dozen elderly men and women as Steele and his cameraman followed. Then she lunged forward and hugged a severe-looking, broad-shouldered woman in a red coat and said, “Mom!”
Steele and his cameraman were all over the woman, whose husband, a tiny man in a leisure suit, tried to intercede, saying, “Hey, hey, hey!”
“Margaret Delaney, tell us about your marathon run,” Steele said to the woman in the red coat as her husband edged in to block him, but Steele’s cameraman pushed even harder and the poor man went flying back and skidded along the carpet on the seat of his pants.
Clinton worked fast with the gate agent to get the rest of the group, including Margaret, onto the plane. As she walked down the jetway, she turned to look back one last time, and she and Bridget met eyes again, and I could see tears in both their eyes.
Finally, the lady in the red coat and her husband were separated from Steele and his cameraman and the gate agent showed Steele that he had the wrong person.
“These are the Carvers,” the agent said, thrusting two boarding passes under Steele’s nose. “Mr. and Mrs. Russell Carver.”
Soon the plane was boarded, including the Carvers who huffed and puffed and threatened lawsuits, and soon the plane pulled from the gate. It rolled along the taxiway to take off as Steele dusted the dirt off his jacket and Roman walked over to Bridget.
“Nice move,” he said, a model of composure. “But so dumb.”
“No, the right thing.”
“We could have lined up exclusive rights and made a mint. But some people are wedded to their old fashioned values.”
The roundhouse punch Jack threw came out of the blue and though Jack pulled his punch at the last moment and did not strike Roman, still Roman staggered backwards and bounced against a wall, mussing his well-coifed hair, as his knees buckled.
“Some people are wedded to their over-inflated egos. But not enough for me to waste the skin off my knuckles,” Jack said.
Bridget smiled as Roman stood up straight again, smoothing his lapels. Then Jack took Bridget’s hand and the three of them—Bridget, Ellen, and Jack—walked to the tall broad window overlooking the runway and watched the plane to St. Louis speed away and lift off in the dark.
“I’m proud of you, Mom,” Ellen said after a long moment, and Bridget hugged her, with tears in her eyes.
“There are two times I wished you were mine,” Pop said. “The day you faced off against me at the finish line, and tonight, seeing what you did just now.”
“Can we be friends?” Bridget said.
He reached out his hand to her, and she took it.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Ellen sped around the track at Hyde Park High in the slanting light of the warm spring afternoon, as Pop kept the watch and Jack and Bridget leaned in for a look at her time.
“How’s she doing?” Jack said.
“Damn fast,” said Pop. “Good as she’s ever been.”
“Two weeks to go till Boston. We’ll let the docs know about this. See if they’ll give her a green light.”
“I don’t see why they wouldn’t,” said Pop.
I watched Bridget watch Ellen reduce her pace to a jog after her series of fast interval mile runs and I could see the thousand mile stare in Bridget’s eye, mixed with intense pride. I could only guess what she might be thinking. Like mother, like daughter, maybe?
It was Pop who broke the spell. “Why don’t you go to her?”
She looked at him, puzzled.
“She’s doing her cool down run. She needs company.”
Bridget kicked off her dove gray Ferragamo shoes and, barefoot, took off across the infield grass to catch Ellen on the far straightaway. Ellen saw her coming and opened her arms to hug her mom, and the two of them jogged together, their laughter carrying back across the infield grass to us.
“How do you do it?” I asked Jack who stared at his two ladies with a faraway gaze.
“Do what?”
“Your whole life you’ve let yourself be dangled in the middle between the two of them? How do you stay sane, man?”
He smiled a broad Irish grin.
“I don’t think of it as ‘dangled,’ son.” He paused to watch Bridget and Ellen continue their run together. “I’m not a scholar, but the Jesuits had me at Boston College and there’s one thing I remember from my 8 am classes after a long night bending the elbow at the Tam. Dostoevsky said ‘Hell is the absence of love.’ Maybe that’s what love is, embracing the dangling. And you’re OK with that, the loss of control, because that’s what it takes to meet the other person’s need. Who knows, what do you think, Pop?”
I looked at Pop, who nodded.
My mom was right. We all have diamonds inside us, waiting for us to discover them. We muck our diamonds up over a lifetime, that’s for sure, but we can uncake them if we choose to make ourselves vulnerable.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
By all measures, the 2000 marathon was one of the most successful Boston Marathons ever, largely for the attention paid to women runners and their achievements.
Nearly all the exhibits at the Marathon Expo at the Hynes Auditorium that weekend celebrating a new century for the marathon carried tributes to the women who had blazed the way for the thousands of women runners entered in that year’s contest.
Women champions, from Uta Pippig in the 90s, to Ingrid Kristiansen, Joan Benoit and Allison Roe in the 80s, to the stars of the 70s, including Gayle Barron, Miki Gorman, and Kim Merritt. They, along with the earliest pioneers, Sara Mae Berman, Roberta Gibb and Kathrine Switzer, signed autographs in booths up and down the packed aisles which featured exhibits showcasing the latest in shoes, clothing, and dietary supplements.
One of the most popular events, and most heavily attended, was a panel discussion organized by Gloria Ratti, VP of the Boston Athletic Association, featuring the “women pioneers,” as they were billed. This was the group most directly involved in the struggle with Jock and Pop, including not only Bridget, who served as moderator, but Switzer, Berman, Gibb, and several of the early winners, Nina Kuscsik and Jackie Hansen.
“Why?” asked a young man in the audience during the Q and A. “Why did it take so long for women to be given a chance?”
The panelists looked at Bridget, and several said, “Do you want to handle that?”
“Because men were afraid of us, though they had nothing to fear,” Bridget said. “Beyond that I don’t have the foggiest.”
The panel discussion concluded with a video presentation offered by Guy Morse, B.A.A. director, showcasing the history of women’s running at Boston. Regarding the Runner in Red, the film acknowledged the long-standing legend that there had been a female runner in 1951—the graphic showed Freddie Norman’s photo of the hooded figure climbing Heartbreak Hill—while the narrator intoned, “It is believed that a woman in a red hood ran the race in 1951 before women were permitted to compete, and it’s been contended that the woman may have been Margaret Delaney, mother of Bridget Maloney, a champion from the 1970s. But doubt remains since Margaret Delaney has never been found and the story has never been authenticated. Thus the ‘Runner in Red’ remains an urban legend and an unsolved mystery today.”
Questioned by young girls in the audience, Bridget acknowledged the likelihood that the legend was true, but concluded by saying, “I’ve never met my mother.”
A male reporter tried to push the point, “Do you know if anyone ever found her?” but Bridget said, “People are still looking, I’m sure,” and the discussion turned to modern topics involving women runners, including the accomplishments of African women, especially the Kenyans. Then questions were raised for the panelists about diets they had employed while training, and just like that, after all the struggle and heartbreak, the issue faded, like the dew on leav
es as the sun rises.
I thought of Roman who had failed to get what he wanted on so many levels, and I was happy to see the Maloneys become a functioning family again. As they gathered—Bridget, Jack, and Ellen—I went outside for a walk to collect my thoughts.
Boylston Street, the busy Boston thoroughfare in front of the Hynes, hummed as workers hammered snow fencing into place to create the race’s final long straightaway. Pedestrians ambled about without cars to impede them, while runners from around the world in colorful sweats created sinewy paths through the assembly under a blue sky. I merged with the crowd, permitting myself to be borne along until I came to a spot in front of the Prudential Building that had served as the race’s finish line until the mid-1980s.
That’s when the John Hancock organization assumed sponsorship of the race and moved the finish line to the place in front of the Public Library where Ellen and I had convened one night.
With my toe, I edged back three feet from the spot in the road in front of the Prudential where the tape had stretched in 1971, a spot long since erased, and I found the place in the street where Pop had blocked Bridget.
I saw him in my mind’s eye, arms flailing, and I saw Bridget—“chest rising and falling, hair matted, exhausted after coming all that way,” as news accounts had described it—and I felt the electricity of that moment, undiminished by the years.
I felt the emotion that had marked their relationship and had driven Pop and Bridget apart, a misunderstanding of intentions that had poisoned Pop’s life and had soured Bridget’s, until she found it in herself to save herself from bitterness, pride, and regrets.
And that she did! She had let Margaret go, giving up a chance to touch her, and thus she had disproved those who said, “Bridget thinks only about Bridget.”
It was an oldies song about miracles by Jefferson Starship that had made me think of Bridget that day in the storefront. I had answered her call and followed her, and she had offered me a miracle. She changed my life. And so it was that another song came to mind as I stood on Boylston Street, running my toe along the abandoned finish line, three feet short of the spot where Bridget might have gained a world record: “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”
I thought an additional line should be added to the song for Bridget: “But sometimes you get paid back for doing good.”
The next day at the Boston Marathon Bridget got something back for sublimating her need to meet the greater need of another.
We dropped Ellen off at the start at Hopkinton on Monday, race day. Doctors cleared her to run, and she was eager though she knew in her heart—and we knew as well—that her accident had cost her valuable training time and she might be missing her edge.
But we did not talk about that, and we drove to Newton after dropping her off at the start, where we found a spot under the big oak tree on Heartbreak Hill where Freddie Norman had spotted Margaret running with Tim Finn. We carved out a place for ourselves, Jack, Bridget and me, to watch the race and be ready to cheer for Ellen when she passed on her way up Heartbreak Hill.
The radio captured the crack of the starting gun as it sounded at noon in Hopkinton under a blue, unmarred sky seventeen miles away. People of all ages and sizes lined Commonwealth Avenue in Newton, creating a corridor, waiting for the leaders and the legions of runners yet to come.
“Hey!” a man called to Bridget as he passed. He recognized her and she smiled, but for the most part spectators were focused on their needs, which included finding Sammy or Susie, checking to see who had the picnic basket or most importantly, finding a good spot to watch and wait, and as such we moved about in relative anonymity.
I was the first to spot the dark sedan as it pulled to the curb across the street. Through an opening in the crowd, I saw a woman, long and reed-like, get out of the back. She wore a red scarf and navy coat, but it was her blue eyes, set wide in her wrinkled face that attracted my attention, and I saw a man in a jean jacket with a gray ponytail, Tim Finn, get out of the car on the other side.
He took the woman by the hand, and he pointed toward us. I looked at Bridget, who chatted amiably with an elderly man who told her he had watched her in 1971 “speed by like the wind,” and she thanked him. Then she called to Jack who was not listening because he was focused on the woman in the navy coat and red scarf as she walked toward us, and at that moment I realized Jack was in cahoots with Tim Finn.
Margaret Delaney came walking tenuously, picking her way left then right through the crowd, and when she reached a point directly across the street from us, she stood facing Bridget, who turned.
Suddenly the chasm that had separated mother and daughter through time and space had been compressed to twenty feet, and I saw a tear appear in Margaret Delaney’s eye as their eyes met.
Spectators crossed Commonwealth Ave. back and forth in advance of the runners yet to come, and Jack stepped into the street with them. He took Margaret’s arm on one side as Tim Finn took her other arm, and they led her to her daughter.
The two stood face-to-face, mother and daughter, before either of them spoke. Then Margaret ran a finger along Bridget’s cheek, as Bridget closed her eyes, and when she opened them she was crying.
“Dearest,” Margaret said.
“Mom,” Bridget said, and she hugged her mother.
“He made it possible,” Margaret said, and she gestured back across the street to the sedan where the Governor sat in the passenger’s seat with the darkened window half rolled up. “Your uncle talked to Mr. Clinton.”
The Governor saluted with a finger to his forehead, but he remained in the car so as not to call attention to himself.
“Do you have to leave again?” Bridget said. “Can you stay?”
Margaret shook her head. “I promised Mr. Clinton I would return tonight. He wants to start his process with me all over again.”
“Why does it have to be this way?”
“Those with harmful intent might take out their anger on anyone I touch. The children in that poor, suffering country. Maybe even on you, or Ellen. I can’t take that chance.”
“And so this is your choice?”
“Yes, it is the right thing.”
“You’re happy with that choice?”
“No, but it is the right thing to do.”
“Will I ever see you again?”
Margaret smiled, a thin smile. “This is our moment, small as it is.”
“I have so much I want to ask you.”
“And I have so much to tell.”
“I have waited for this moment longer than you can know.”
“As have I. Our lives spin away from us, beyond our control, once we step from our prescribed paths.”
Bridget touched Margaret’s arm, as if to reassure herself that her mother was real. “Do you remember this place, nearly fifty years ago?”
Margaret turned to look at the street. The soft breeze buffeted her red scarf and she smiled. “I do. I remember everything about it. Which is why I brought you something.” She reached into her coat and removed a felt cloth, which she opened to reveal a diamond. “I have kept this for you, waiting for this moment, if I ever had the chance.”
“What’s this?” Bridget said.
“It’s the diamond, from the medal Pop gave me in 1951. I removed it after you were born. I gave the medal to your mother, Pop’s wife, to keep for you. But I kept the diamond so I would have something for myself.”
“You kept this, all these years?”
“Yes, a link to you. But now it’s for Ellen, so the three of us can be connected. Will you give it to Ellen for me?”
“Why does it have to be like this?” Bridget said, as she wrapped the diamond in the felt and put it into her pocket.
“We can’t control what happens to us. We can only control our response.”
“Can you stay long enough to see her pass?
”
“I told Mr. Clinton that was my requirement.”
Bridget smiled, and it wasn’t too long before a huge buzz rose from the crowd signaling that the first men were about to arrive.
Four of them—two Kenyans, a Mexican and an Ethiopian—sped by in a blur and the crowd cheered.
“Where is she, Jack?” said Bridget, and Jack turned up the volume on his radio so we all could hear the report from Kathrine Switzer.
Kathrine, riding in the cab of a motorcycle covering the women’s race, said, “The women leaders, Nita and Turgenov, have just turned off Route 16 onto Commonwealth Ave. and have begun their climb up Heartbreak Hill. Behind them a pack of a dozen women, including hometown hero Ellen Maloney, trail by a quarter of a mile. But now, wait, three women, two Kenyans and a Japanese runner, have moved out of that pack and have started to chase the two leaders.”
“Where’s Ellen?” I asked Bridget, but Kathrine answered the question.
“Ellen Maloney did not make a move with the three who just broke away. She is hanging back, much as she did at New York, but there has to be some concern that the injury she sustained when she was hit by a car six weeks ago is becoming a factor.”
Several minutes later Nita and Turgenov (with Kathrine in a motorcycle sidecar beside them) sped by as the crowd cheered. They were followed by the three women who had broken from the pack, running in a tight knot.
Soon a large roar rose from the crowd and we did not need the radio to know that Ellen was coming!
Arms shot into the air all along the curb where spectators stood ten deep and cheered for Ellen, the hometown hero. Margaret stood next to Bridget, her hands cupped over her mouth in awe as Ellen passed.
Blonde ponytail flapping, she wore red shorts and to our surprise she must have found Pop’s treasure chest because she was wearing Tim Finn’s yellow D.A.A. singlet from the 1951 race for a top. As she climbed Heartbreak Hill in a pack with half a dozen other women she looked for us under the tall oak, as we had planned, and she broke out in a broad smile as she picked Bridget, Jack and me out of the crowd.