Fast Girls

by Elise Hooper

  Betty continued to live at home with her parents, so after a year of working, she had nearly paid off her debts. She socialized with a couple of the other secretaries from work, friends from her school days, and, of course, Caroline and Howard, who were expecting their first baby sometime the following fall.

  Jim worked near her office as a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, and when the weather obliged, the two would meet for lunch and sit outside in the main quad. On an afternoon in late May, they sat enjoying the balmy sunshine from underneath the lacy leaves of the honey locust trees in Dan Hall Garden. Betty inhaled the sweet fragrance of the clusters of light green flowers on the trees and placed her chicken salad sandwich on its butcher paper wrapping. Her gaze traveled over the gray limestone architecture surrounding them. “I love the Gothic stonework of this place. It reminds me of Amsterdam.”

  “It does feel like Europe,” Jim agreed, his jaw tightening.

  Jim never spoke of the time he spent overseas serving in the Great War. He and Jean married shortly after he came back from Europe. Betty remembered little from when he returned home because she had been so young, but she could still summon sober-faced conversations between Jean and her parents in the days before the wedding and the word shell-shocked being whispered repeatedly.

  “I suppose our experiences in Europe must have been very different,” she said.

  Jim stared through the park, lost in thought. “Say, what would you think about trying to run again?”

  “No.”

  “You won’t even consider it?”

  Betty shook her head. Since ending things with Bill, she had tried to push all thoughts of running from her mind. “I don’t run anymore.”

  “But maybe it would be good for you. I’ll help. We can go out together in the mornings before we leave for work.”

  Suddenly Betty felt overwhelmingly tired. “Jim, simply getting to the train every day is a struggle. Everything still hurts. I can’t.”

  “But what if it makes you feel better?”

  Betty let out a strangled laugh. She shifted in her seat and her spine made a cracking sound. “Haven’t you noticed? I’m trapped in the body of an eighty-year-old.”

  “I know it might hurt at first, but maybe getting those muscles moving again could help. You’ve had a tough go of it, but you could run again if you put your mind to it.”

  Betty was about to snap at him, tell him to mind his own business, but something held her back. About two years ago, Dr. Minke had told her she might never walk again, but he had underestimated her. He’d also told her she’d never run again, but what if he was wrong? She lifted her legs from the ground in front of her, flexed her toes, and then pointed them, feeling the tendons along her calves and shins contract and elongate. What was the worst thing that could happen if she tried?

  She looked up at Jim and found him watching her. “Think about it,” he said. “I’ve got to get back to my office, but I’ll see you later.”

  THAT EVENING WHEN she climbed into bed, she couldn’t stop thinking about what Jim had suggested. He had planted a seed and its roots were already threading through her, tendrils curling around her insides like pea vines. She could practically feel her mind rewiring to consider the idea, but risking the disappointment of failure scared her. She fell into an uneasy sleep.

  A persistent knocking at the door awakened her. It was dark, the house quiet. She lifted her head from the pillow, looking around her bedroom in confusion.

  “Mother?” she whispered.

  From outside the door, a scuffling sound.

  “No, Betty, it’s me, Jim.”

  Jim? Even in the foggy recesses of her mind, this was the last answer she expected. She rolled to her side, wincing at the pain that shot down her hip toward her feet. Inhaling deeply, she swung her legs off the bed to plant her feet on the floor. The first few steps of the morning always challenged her the most. The stiffness and tenderness of her lower back tended to render her speechless at first. She pushed to standing, grimacing with the pops and cracks in her joints as she straightened and then staggered toward the door and opened it to find Jim standing in the hallway wearing a gray sweat suit.

  Betty smoothed down her hair. “What happened? What’s wrong with Jean? Are the girls all right?”

  “Nothing’s wrong. I’m here to jog with you.”

  “To jog with—” Betty shook her head and rested a palm against the wall to steady herself. “I thought I was supposed to think about it.”

  “Sometimes thinking too much can be . . . come on, let’s just try this. Get changed. It’s dark outside. No one will see us. We can start slow.”

  Insistence was etched into her brother-in-law’s face. She glanced back into her room, her eyes resting on her closet door. A couple of years ago, her old sweat suit from Amsterdam had been folded in the third drawer of her dresser. Every time she’d reached in to pull out a sweater, she would see the sweatshirt, and it would bring back a flood of memories. Sometimes she’d lift it out and burrow her face into it, seeking out the smell of sweat, a trace of her hard work, but only the scent of Ivory laundry flakes would waft over her. After the accident the sweatshirt had comforted her. It reminded her of all that she had accomplished and inspired her to work harder on her walking, but as the months went by, she wanted to see it less and less, so she had stuffed it into the back of her closet and tried not to think about it, telling herself it was lost.

  But she knew exactly where it was.

  She could put it on.

  She could go outside with Jim.

  She could see how it felt to run again.

  With a sigh of surrender, she said, “Fine. Wait while I get changed.”

  She closed the door but didn’t turn on the lights. Maybe if she dressed in the dark, she could pretend she was still sleeping and wouldn’t realize what she was doing, what she was risking. She opened the closet door and reached for the top shelf, her hand feeling its way along some wool sweaters until it reached a soft, thick cotton. She yanked it down, tugged off her nightgown, and pulled on underwear and the sweatshirt and pants before her mind could register too much and protest.

  Betty glanced over her shoulder at her unmade bed. All she wanted to do was to climb back into it, face away from the door, and forget about all of this running nonsense. Instead she removed her old track shoes from inside the closet where they had been hidden in a shoebox. Don’t think, don’t think, she repeated to herself dully as she laced them on to her feet and lurched for the door.

  Minutes later, she and Jim stepped onto the sidewalk.

  He pointed to a streetlight in the distance. “We can walk this block to warm up, but then we’ll try a light jog on the next one. We can take it block by block and see how you feel.”

  Betty murmured in agreement and they started moving, a slow walk at first. Each step ricocheted barbs of pain up and down her legs so she focused on the sensation of breathing.

  In and out. In and out. One step. Another. How about one more?

  When they reached the next block, Jim broke into a jog and turned to urge her along. “Come on, give it a try.”

  She increased her pace to a slow jog. Pain flared in her hips, but by the end of the block it was more of a steady burn. Did that mean progress? Jim slowed to a walk, but momentum kept Betty jogging. If she stopped now, she wouldn’t start again. After several more blocks, her lungs and heart felt dangerously close to combusting, but she kept going. Jim led her on a twenty-minute loop around the neighborhood and soon they were back at the house.

  Jim stopped jogging and picked up his foot behind him to stretch one of his quadriceps, but Betty simply stood, watching the vapor of her breath rise and spread into the air. A blush of morning light gave a faint glow to the yard. In between heaving breaths, she said, “It’s pretty at this hour.”

  Jim stretched into a lunge.

  Betty bit her lip. “Why are you out here with me?”

  “I’m not getting an
y younger. I could stand to lose a few pounds,” he said, bending over to stretch his hamstrings, his gaze downward.

  Betty considered this. Jim, tall and lean, had never been at risk for being overweight. Even his fingers stretching toward the flagstone walk were long and thin.

  She tried again. “Why does this matter to you?”

  He unfolded and looked at her, his expression serious. “When I came back from the war, I wondered what the hell I was doing. Nothing here had changed, but I felt like a completely different person. Everything seemed pointless. How could I just settle back into normal life after what I’d seen? After what I’d done?” He paused for a moment, gazing down the street before turning back toward her. “But slowly, I came back to remembering the man I had been. I gave up thinking I’d ever be him again, but I just wanted to feel a connection to him again and move ahead in a new way that felt meaningful, that honored the old me and the new me. Being a husband to your sister was the thread that brought me back.” He chuckled. “This probably sounds pretty crazy, huh?”

  Betty stared at him. She understood completely.

  “Since your accident, I’ve watched you go through a lot of the same sense of dislocation and figured I could help. Maybe running could be the thread that connects your new life to your old . . .” His voice trailed off and he studied her closely, looking for a sign of agreement.

  Tears flooded Betty’s eyes.

  “Aww, geez, Betty, I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m sorry,” he said. “You’ve done a swell job at coming back from everything. Forget what I’m saying.”

  She shook her head. “No, no, that’s exactly it.” Now she was crying and she sniffled. “I’m sorry, I never knew you went through all of that.”

  “You were just a kid when I got back. How would you have known?”

  “Still . . . thank you.” The inadequacy of her words horrified her. “I don’t even know what to say.”

  “You don’t need to say anything. We can just run.”

  She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. Someone had understood her all along.

  34.

  March 1935

  Fulton, Missouri

  THE ICY AIR STUNG HELEN’S LUNGS AS SHE RAN DOWN the track’s straightaway at Westminster College. Coach Moore had decided to train her here, away from the scrutiny of the high school, since the college men didn’t give a whit that Helen was a girl. They were just pleased to have their level of competition intensified by her arrival and treated her as they would a younger sister, except she was a younger sister who could run fast. In fact, she beat the men at every distance.

  And she wasn’t just fast.

  She proved to be phenomenal at field events too. At Westminster, she tried the discus and javelin and discovered she could throw them stunning distances. She tried the broad jump and high jump and proved to be a natural in both of those events too.

  But as she huffed her way along the track, she wasn’t thinking about field events. She wanted to race in the National AAU Championships being held in Missouri at the end of the month. Coach had brought it up with her and then the topic languished. Did he think she wasn’t good enough? With that worry gnawing at her, she increased her pace and ran the last half of the final lap at a faster clip. A cool northern breeze buffeted her as she sprinted the final stretch to where Coach Moore waited with his clipboard, stopwatch in hand.

  “How’d I look?” she asked, sailing past him. She slowed herself to a jog and circled back to him.

  “Why did you take that last two hundred so quickly?”

  “To see if I could.”

  “Huh.” Coach Moore turned his attention back to his clipboard and stopwatch as the rest of the runners glided over the finish, talking among themselves. The young men remained in a pack and drifted over to their head coach, who walked with them to the field house.

  “So, Coach,” Helen said as the other runners moved out of earshot. “What about the National AAU Champs? You gonna send me to it?”

  “I haven’t forgotten. I’ve had several meetings with the superintendent about it.”

  “Several?” Helen groaned. “What? He doesn’t want me to race?”

  “Let’s just say that he hasn’t been the biggest fan of the idea, but he’s finally agreed. And so have your parents. You can go and represent Fulton.”

  “Holy smokes.” Helen put her hands on her hips and breathed in and out heavily, still recovering from her run. “How about the entry fee? Is the district paying?”

  “Don’t worry about those details. Focus on running.”

  “You’re paying it, aren’t you?”

  “Don’t think about that stuff.”

  She balanced on one foot, stretching her quadriceps. If the district wasn’t paying—and she was pretty sure her parents weren’t paying—there was only one other option. She glanced toward Coach’s old rattling Model A parked by the side of the track. He could hardly afford the two-dollar entry fee, but who else would be paying it? “Hey, thanks for sticking your neck out for me.” Her voice sounded thick with emotion, but she dug in for the last part. “I promise I’ll make you proud,” she croaked.

  “You already have. Now let’s get you back to your boardinghouse because I know you have homework. What’s happening with Macbeth?”

  “Lady Macbeth is the one running the show. Macbeth would never have killed Duncan if not for her urging. She’s bloodthirsty.”

  “And power hungry too, right?”

  “Yep. Once you murder someone, you’re on a slippery slope.”

  Coach Moore laughed. “That’s an understatement.” At the field house, they parted ways. “I’m going to take care of a couple of things in the office, but go get changed and I’ll meet you out here in a few minutes. You can tell me more about Macbeth’s nefarious plans on our ride back to town.”

  A COUPLE OF weeks later, Helen met Coach Moore outside the high school’s front door beside John and D.W., two boys from the high school track team.

  “You ready?” Coach Moore called as Helen trotted up the walkway. “Don’t use up all your energy.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ve got plenty,” Helen said, laughing, as she shouldered the strap of a canvas sack filled with a change of clothes, and they all walked toward Coach Moore’s old Ford. Mrs. Moore leaned out the car’s window and waved.

  D.W. pointed at Helen’s navy-blue sweat suit. “Huh, you look like a real athlete.”

  “I even have track shoes too, courtesy of the fellas over at Westminster. They loaned me today’s whole kit,” said Helen as they loaded into the car. “I can’t show up looking like a hayseed, isn’t that right?”

  “You could dress up like the Queen of England and everyone will know you’re still a hayseed,” John said, giving Helen a light punch to the arm.

  Helen leaned forward toward the front seat. “Miss Schultz, I mean, Mrs. Moore—I still can’t get used to calling you that—anyway, you sure are a sight. Fulton High isn’t the same without you. Rumor has it that the new music teacher is a real crumb.” She’d seen the new teacher, a thin young man with glasses that appeared to be about an inch thick.

  “Don’t believe all the gossip you hear. I’m sure he’s doing a fine job,” said Mrs. Moore in a stern tone, but from the twinkle in her green eyes, Helen had the feeling she enjoyed hearing how everyone missed her. The district’s rule that women had to resign their teaching positions once they married seemed like an awful waste.

  While they spent the next few hours motoring east toward St. Louis and talking about school, Helen tried to keep her mind off the upcoming races. She had no idea what to expect. When they pulled up to the St. Louis Arena, she couldn’t ignore the thoughts any longer, and her nerves started up. It felt as though a bunch of grasshoppers were let loose in her belly.

  “How many people are here?” gasped John, his face pushed up against the glass.

  “More than you’re capable of counting,” Helen said.

  All three of them in the
back seat cackled with laughter as Coach Moore guided the automobile into a parking spot. They exited the car to join the throngs of people swarming the entrance to the stadium. Inside, rows of bleachers appeared to go all the way up to the high ceiling. Voices boomed over the loudspeakers, a frenetic energy pulsed through the crowd, and a sense of vertigo overcame Helen.

  “How about I take the boys off to find some refreshments?” Mrs. Moore suggested.

  “Good idea. Helen and I will head over to the athletes’ area and get organized,” Coach Moore said.

  “Helen, do you want anything?” Mrs. Moore asked.

  Helen shook her head. The grasshoppers were back in her stomach. She had never seen so many people in one place before. The idea of eating anything made her feel ill.

  John said, “If you’re feeling too chicken, I can always stick on a wig and race for you.”

  “I’m fine,” Helen said, feeling far from fine.

  Mrs. Moore wrapped an arm around her shoulders and held her close for a moment. “You know what I used to tell my music students before shows? Breathe in and out slowly. Try to count to five on both your inhalations and exhalations to steady your nerves. Focus on the counting to distract yourself. And here’s the other thing: Being a little nervous is good. It keeps you sharp. You’ll be great, got it?”

  Helen bit her lip.

  “Good luck,” D.W. called as he started snaking his way through the crowd behind John and Mrs. Moore.

  Helen swallowed and stuck close to Coach Moore as he found the check-in booth for the competitors and talked with an official. A small dark-haired woman sauntered past. Her brown eyes, ringed with dark circles, bored into Helen.

  Coach Moore hastened over to Helen, holding a numbered bib made of paper. “You’re going to need to wear this while you compete.”

  Helen bobbed her chin toward the glaring woman who now bounced on the balls of her feet, stretching her thin, muscle-bound arms overhead. “Who’s that?”