The start siren went off. A half mile in, I knew I’d made a mistake with the jacket. It created a heat envelope around me. So I stripped it off and stuffed it into the bushes in front of a motel, hoping that it would still be there when I came back. Freed from the jacket, I forged ahead. Mile 1 came, and I stepped over the urge to walk. I paced myself over the first bridge, and by mile 3, runners who went out too fast dropped back, just like they had the year before. I cruised over the marshes of miles 3 through 6, checking my Timex to make sure I was not going too slow. If anything, I thought, I was going too fast, clocking miles at an even eight-minutes-per-mile pace. But my lungs and legs sang in harmony, so I kept pushing ahead. Jason was nowhere to be found.
I started to falter when I crossed from North Wildwood into Wildwood proper. At mile 8, a woman I’d been trailing the entire race stopped and put her hands on her knees. I passed her, singing the lyrics of matt pond PA’s “Spring Revives” in my head over and over again to keep my mind off the pain. I turned up onto the boardwalk with volunteers cheering, “Go, runners! Go!” from the ramp, then I found the same concrete strip that I’d hit the year before. Turning around that last bend before Montego Bay was Jason, medal already around his neck. “Go, Jen, go, Jen! You’re almost there!” he yelled.
I didn’t crumple when I finished this time, but put my hands over my head. The humidity had stuck my shirt to my body, and I was gasping, but I had done it. I beat my goal. I ran a 1:19:55, more than sixteen minutes faster than the year before, and good enough for fourth in my age group.
I was proud of what I had done. Later, my friends at the local running store (we were friends now since I started hanging out there after I bought my shoes and shirts and socks) were shocked at how much I cut off my time.
But Jason had blown both of us away. In his first 10-miler ever, he ran just over an hour, and went home with a trophy.
“I didn’t hate it,” he said, holding his trophy in hand, then hugged me tight. This was perfection, I thought. He was everything I ever could have wanted.
(I did find my jacket. A kind soul hung it on a parking meter so I would find it.)
This was love, capital L-O-V-E, shimmering, bombastic, full-blown love, one that dusted us with rainbows and unicorns and gold foil stars. We went to my brother’s wedding that June, and all of my aunts swore we were next. We’d drive down the shore on Fridays—me going early to get some reporting done, him chasing after me when he left work at 5:00 PM to meet me in Sea Isle. We’d ring around the island—happy hour with half-price appetizers at the Lobster Loft while listening to a terrible duo cover band; then to Dead Dog, which required collared shirts (though you can rent one for a $10 deposit), “609” frozen drinks at Bracas, named after the town’s area code. I’d always wear a sundress, because after we’d stroll down the ocean-side promenade back to his house, grab a blanket out of his car, and keep walking down the beach until we found “our” spot, secluded next to a dune on an empty beach, and have sex, slow and deep, while we stared into each other’s eyes. After, we’d lie on that blanket, spent and warm and listening to the ocean lapping in front of us, and we’d talk about what our own wedding would be like. My dad, who had become an executive and part owner of the company where he worked and had a lot more money than when my parents split, said he’d pay a set amount of money toward it but nothing else. I wanted to use that money for home improvements because I didn’t see the practicality of that money going toward a party when it could be used for something that would last more than one day. But if those were dad’s rules, we wanted to use every single penny of it and have a small, lavish wedding.
“Let’s rent out Le Bec Fin. Shut the restaurant down just for us.”
“Let’s fly everyone to Tampa and have a black-tie wedding on the beach of the Don CeSar.”
“Let’s get married.”
“Let’s get married.”
In August, as a P.S. in a text message, Jason mentioned something about flying to Minneapolis for a few days. That was odd. He’d never been there before that I knew of.
“Why?” I wrote back.
“Job interview.”
If there was one thing that had stuck in my craw about Jason, it was money. Not that he was frugal or that he spent too much, but that he was laser-focused on making it. He didn’t grow up poor, but when he dropped back to being a part-time college student, his mother told him, over and over again, that he’d never make anything of himself. When he worked as a roofer to pay his way through school, she told him he was lazy and an embarrassment. When he started at the bottom rung at the advertising agency where he worked while still working as a server at a chain restaurant at night, she chided him for taking on an entry-level job.
Even when he moved up the ranks, he couldn’t shake this need to prove her wrong. He wanted to be wealthy and successful beyond her—not his—wildest dreams.
Despite hanging on to his job during the recession, which was a miracle given the number of jobs his company shed, he wanted more. A job over a thousand miles away offered it.
Don’t panic, I told myself. It’s just an interview. He may not get the job. Even if he does, he may not go. His family is here. His life is here. And I’m here. I didn’t bring up what would happen to us because I was sure—I prayed—that he wouldn’t leave, that they’d find a better candidate or offer him too little money or tell him there had to be someone back home who would object to him moving halfway across the country.
“His mother will never let him go,” my mom said when I told her why I was sitting in her kitchen on a Friday night and not down the shore with Jason.
“Would you let me go?” I asked.
“Of course. But I’m only a half-Italian mother.”
Those last weeks of August took on the quality of a long, sex-fueled good-bye. Nothing was set in stone, I thought, looking at him as he slept beside me on weeknights when he stayed at my house, as he dozed on that blanket in our beach spot on weekends. He would not make this choice.
He did make that choice. He got the job and was gone by Labor Day.
I broke a little inside. I thought I had found the one, and he had acted like he felt the same about me, and he was just leaving? I didn’t tell him that. I was too stunned by his decision, and his nonchalance about it. I should have ranted and raved. I should have grabbed him by his shirt and screamed, “Why are you leaving me? Why are you giving up on us?”
Instead I wept quietly and said that I hoped it would work out, adding that I thought it was giving our relationship a raw deal.
“I can’t give up this job,” he told me on our last weekend down the shore. “It’s too big an opportunity,” he said, careful not to use the word “promotion” because it technically wasn’t one. He thought, though, that he’d have a better chance at a promotion after this lateral move. We had run the Captain Bill Gallagher 10 Mile Island Run that Saturday night. I’d had surgery on my shoulder a month before and had barely run since, but I still slogged it out on a hot and humid night, 10 miles over sand, because it was one of the last things I knew I’d do with him.
“But think of what you’re giving up,” I said that night on the beach, referring of course to me.
“It’s not as important.” I hoped he wasn’t referring to the same.
I tried to talk to Jason about setting up a timeline of where our relationship would progress—like if we made it this many months, I’d move there. If we made it this many months, we’d revisit the marriage question. But he wanted to keep things flexible and see how our relationship worked long distance, if at all. I flew out to Minneapolis in September, and we always had a delirious, almost honeymoon-like time. We ran along the banks of the Mississippi River and marveled at how different it was from the Schuylkill, biked to the Mill City Farmers Market to watch peppers roast in a big metal cage. We went to Nye’s Polonaise Room, a polka bar, and bars in former speakeasies, in former banks. On another trip, he took me to a play because it seemed like a sophistica
ted thing to do. When he worked, I explored that city, and St. Paul, on foot. I found out about a wine stomping event, so we went; we didn’t stomp ourselves, but instead watched and tasted wine that had been made that way the year before. I started to think that maybe—maybe—I could fall in love with this place, as long as I was there with him.
Jason never brought up me moving there again, but I thought the concept, as long as we kept trying to hold the relationship together, was inferred. I could see us living in some swanky condo by the river, and then, because our careers were both steamrolling ahead, a lake house. I had stopped taking bottom-feeder jobs and fired clients who mistreated me, delayed payment, failed to pay, or just annoyed me. Instead, I focused on finding quality assignments for quality clients, and my bottom line grew. So by the time we unwound this knot, I thought, we’d also be able to afford a house along one of the state’s ten thousand lakes, and settle into the life that I was supposed to live: marriage, babies, and doing what my mother did, which was shipping ourselves out to our vacation spot for the summer while Jason stayed behind during the week and joined us on weekends. Except in this vision, I perfected the situation my mother had been in by continuing to write and work, with maybe a nanny to help, because by then, I pictured, I’d be an in-demand journalist and author, and I’d be able to afford everything I ever wanted. It was a very pretty, sun-dappled, lakefront, golden-sunlight dream—even if it was in Minnesota.
When the weather turned colder (oh so much sooner there), we’d challenge ourselves to not walk outside, instead using the skyways that link up buildings in the city, including his apartment building. We’d snuggle deep down into his bed, and I would try not to think about what was coming next. He bought a web cam so we could talk and see each other. But it wasn’t the same. He was building a life there, and I tried to get on with mine at home.
We were pulling apart, like taffy. Our two ends stuck together, but the bond between thinned and frayed. I was pulling apart too. To cope, I repeated my process from after the Stephen debacle: I signed up for a race. This time a half marathon.
Today, the half marathon is the second most popular race distance in the U.S., beaten out only by the 5K. From 2000 to 2013, the number of participants in half marathons grew 307 percent, according to Running USA. No, I didn’t forget a decimal point there. Three hundred and seven percent.
I came in right at the biggest expansion of the race. In both 2009 and 2010, half marathons grew by 24 percent. I ran my first in 2009.
I picked the half for the same reason a lot of people do: It’s a good challenge, but it doesn’t require the same amount of training, time, dedication, and sheer terror as running a full marathon. After two ten-milers, I was confident that I could cover the extra 3.1 miles.
The Philadelphia Half Marathon stood out for two reasons: First, it was close, and second, it was also in the news every year since it’s connected to the Philadelphia Marathon. Another bonus: The race took place the Sunday before Thanksgiving, which meant I didn’t need to dedicate my summer weekends to long runs.
Jason pushed my running forward. Buoyed by those once-a-week runs with him, which had forced me to pick up the pace, I started running more and running faster. I posted some of my fastest times in 2009 by not walking during races and by building up race experience. I knew when to press and when to pull back, and how much pain I could take, so I brushed up to that edge. Not only did I blow away my past Ocean Drive 10-Miler time, but I also PRed again in the 10-mile distance that May, running the Broad Street Run ten-miler 34 seconds faster.
I had sworn up and down that I would never run a marathon, but it was on the periphery of my vision as something to maybe do in the future. I knew that if I ran a 1:37:00 in the Philly Half—a 7:24 pace versus my 7:56 pace in the Broad Street Run—I could skip the lottery and earn guaranteed entry into the New York City Marathon, the largest marathon in the world.
I turned back to Hal, but instead of doing the beginner schedule, I bumped up to intermediate, which brought back things like 400-meter repeats, weight workouts, and tempo runs (this is a word with a different meaning for everyone, like pornography—for Hal, it meant a run that builds throughout the workout to a 10K pace).
This was the first time I used running pain as a release. Sure, running 6 or 7 miles at a time was hard in the Stephen recovery, but that was more about standing on my feet and moving for a long time. This was different. I beat myself up through hard workouts. I wanted to hurt.
I tried to push down those feelings of rejection with laps pounded out on the goose poop-covered Haddon Township track, and pace runs and weights thrown around while dripping sweat onto the weight bench because I’d run on the treadmill just before. Maybe through running, I’d run out the clock on our problems and he’d come to his senses and either move home or have me move there. I didn’t need to talk to him about it. I still couldn’t talk to him. I didn’t want to risk a fight. I never wanted to be that couple, screaming at each other. If I just ran and waited, waited and ran, things would all work out. My punishing schedule lined up with that frustration. I trained well, and I trained hard. My paces in those runs had me optimistic about qualifying for the New York City Marathon.
The Philadelphia Half Marathon was on November 22. On November 5, I was at the Pete Yorn concert at the Electric Factory in Philadelphia. When the show started, Pete ripping into “Can’t Hear Anyone,” I snapped my head to the right. Something was wrong with the sound system, I thought, because only half of the speakers made any noise. I looked around to see if anyone else would notice—surely someone would notice—but no one did. I had felt cruddy that morning but still went to the show. It turned out to be a nasty head cold, one that curdled into a sinus infection that stuffed up one ear, and then the other.
My younger sister’s wedding was two days after the concert. I’m not sure why she asked me to be in it, let alone the maid of honor. We never really clicked in the way that sisters are supposed to. I told her that she was rushing the wedding, which her fiancé took as a sign that I didn’t like him (he wasn’t wrong). When she asked me if I’d be her maid of honor, I asked, “Are you sure?”
Jason was supposed to go. We swapped flight prices, worked on logistics, talked about what he would wear, and I RSVP’d for a plus-one. Two weeks before the ceremony, he said that he couldn’t come because of work—some big proposal for a new client he had to push through.
“I want to be there, but if I leave, I’ll be fired,” he said.
Before the rehearsal dinner, I saw that his brother posted a selfie of them at Nye’s Polonaise. Jason wasn’t working. He was barhopping. I called him as soon as I saw his brother’s post. He hadn’t wanted to tell me the real reason he couldn’t come, he said, but his brother had decided to visit that week, and booked the ticket before checking in with him.
“If you can’t fucking come to my sister’s wedding, then we’re done. We. Are. Fucking. Done,” I screamed—finally—into the phone.
So on the day of my sister’s wedding, I was pumped full of antibiotics and steroids with a nasal spray my doctor said to take only before the wedding and never again because frequent use would lead to addiction. My eyes ringed red from crying. In the pictures, I look like I felt: half-dead, like I had pulled myself into my own grave, purple shadows under my eyes and face bloated by steroids. I had three packs of tissues in my purse and hoped that, if I had to wipe snot from my nose during the ceremony, people would just think I was crying at my profound joy that my sister was marrying some guy I didn’t think she knew well enough to make that kind of lifelong commitment.
The ceremony was a blur. I don’t remember the procession or the vows, just that I managed to stand upright through the entire ceremony.
Then I got rip-roaring drunk.
I remember watching the groom-bride dance. I remember watching the father-daughter dance. I remember trying to dance and look like I was having fun, and retreating to tables with my family to talk to aunts and uncles an
d drink red wine. I remember my sister having trouble going to the bathroom because she could not get her dress off. Then I remember her husband telling me, “You’re just jealous because no one will kiss you.”
I drank more. The next thing I remember is puking into a bush at a gas station while my dad filled up his car.
Then I woke up on the daybed in one of my dad’s guest rooms. The combination of hangover, exhaustion, and sickness kept me in that bed until 3:00 PM. Drinking too much and getting sick is one thing. To do so at your sister’s wedding and then puke into a bush while your dad is driving you back to his house is another—especially when your grandparents and your new stepmom are in the car.
My dad came to check once to make sure I wasn’t dead, and bring me another box of tissues. Then around lunchtime my grandmom came in.
She married young and had my dad when she was nineteen years old. I’d always admired her for what she did: she still worked, became a claims adjuster at a major insurance company in New Jersey, and took no shit from anyone.
She came into my room, sat on the edge of my bed, leaned down and hugged me.
“Jenny, no man should make you feel like that,” she said with shaky voice. I had never seen my grandmom cry, ever. I had heard her say “shit” once when I was ten years old, and I still hadn’t quite recovered. “He’s not worth it. You’re so much better than that. If you don’t want to get married, don’t. You don’t need him,” she said. I cried harder, and she hugged me harder, then she let me go back to sleep.
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