Running Rings

by Ruth G Juliano

  “I think my first love would understand. He’s an amazing man in how simple he is and how he can separate his feelings from mine. I’ll never meet anyone who is just like him. I still really want to find out what happened to him.”

  “And what are you doing about it? Are you still looking for him?”

  “Yes, but I’m not obsessing about looking for him like I was before.”

  “No luck on social media?”

  “Um, I’ve never tried social media.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Verity, you’re supposed to be a businesswoman, aren’t you? Social media is everything. Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in, all of those and more, he’s probably on there. Why aren’t you on there? People put up campaigns all the time to find missing people and missing pets and people they met on overseas holidays. Fuck. You probably would have found him already if you’d done that.”

  Verity sighed, “I didn’t think about it, but, Nicky, it’s not something I want to discuss with the whole world. It’s private. I don’t want to splash my heart all over the internet, especially if I want to be a professional.”

  “You could at least have profiles in all of these things and see. He might be on there. You might be able to send each other a message or something.”

  “Okay, I’ll look into it. There’s something else I want to do first though.”

  “Good luck, baby. I’ll be sending you an invitation to my wedding soon.”

  Chapter 27

  Verity admired the houses as she they passed by. They weren’t exactly familiar but there was something comforting about them. They were totally different to anything she had seen in a long time. She looked out the window of the taxi as it stopped. “Um, could you wait here in case no one is home?”

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks,” Verity said, stepping out the back door. She looked at the house and smiled. It was a wonderful Christmas break they had spent here. They were laughing with his family, and playing games, and making the most of the yard. In the night they were kissing and cuddling and having sneaky sex. She smiled and took some pictures of the house. It was a pale blue wooden house, and supposedly built in the early nineteen hundreds but still standing strong. She walked to the front door and took a deep breath before she knocked. She heard someone coming and thought her heart was going to beat out of her chest.

  A young man wearing only jeans appeared and looked at her. “Yeah, what do you want?”

  She tried to assess his age through the dirty old screen door, “Um, Bob?”

  He shook his head, “I think you have the wrong house.”

  “Sorry, I’m looking for the Vale family,” Verity said, “They lived here before.”

  “Oh,” he nodded, “Hang on… Mum! There’s someone at the door.”

  A woman appeared in the netted view, wiping her hands on an apron. “Hello, love. Are you selling something?”

  “No, no,” Verity replied, “I’m looking for the Vale family.”

  “They moved out a good while back. The only Vale still in town is Vince.”

  “That’s his dad,” Verity smiled, “Yes! Where in town does he live, do you know?”

  “He’s in the nursing home, love, there’s only two. He’s in the Garden Wall. It’s up in Wood Street.”

  Verity felt excited, “Thank you so much, so, so, much.”

  “No worries, have a good one,” the woman said, closing the front door.

  Verity smiled and looked at the ceiling over the porch. This was incredible. She wished she’d thought of doing this years ago. She hurried back to the taxi. “Thank you so much for waiting. I need to go to Wood Street now.” The taxi driver said it was no problem and did a U-turn across the road. Verity looked at the old houses in the quaint little town. He’d grown up here, swimming in the water by the falls, spending summers on the small beach, walking into town with no shoes, coming home late from playing in the yards of neighbours. Verity couldn’t get the smile off her face. She felt closer to him than she had in a long time. He’d taken her around to all of the places he went as a child and the high school he had graduated from before they met at university. They’d made out in the park he used to play in and kissed as they paddled in the creek. Verity wanted to cry. She wished again that she’d done this years ago.

  The taxi driver announced they were in Wood Street and Verity said that she needed to find the Garden Wall nursing home. He drove another fifty metres and there it was. She paid the taxi driver and he told her that the director of nursing, Bea, could phone him if she wanted to go anywhere else. Verity thanked him and took her handbag and her backpack from the backseat. She pushed the door closed with her bottom and smiled. The building was old but beautiful. The rounded pillars and rendered façade were pretty, as were the gardens leading to the front door of the facility. She rang the bell and waited. A woman in a nurse’s uniform came to the door and opened it with a smile, “Come in, we love visitors.”

  Verity smiled, “Thank you. I’m here to see Mr Vale.”

  “Oh? Are you a relative?” the nurse replied.

  “Sort of,” she said.

  “He’s not much company. He’s a bit hard to understand sometimes, but if you keep guessing he’ll tell you when you’re right. I’m happy to take you to his room. Just sign the guest book.”

  Verity picked up a pen and looked at the book. Name? Verity Sharpe. Here to see. Vince Vale. Time In. Two fifteen. Time Out. “I don’t know yet.”

  “Sorry?’ the nurse replied.

  “No, I was just noting that I don’t know what time I’m out yet. I’m so excited to be here.”

  The nurse looked at her like she was insane and gestured for her to come with her. Verity followed the nurse through the nursing home. It was very quiet, and Verity commented on it.

  “Most people are having a little afternoon nap,” the nurse replied, “His room is the one at the end of the hall on the left.”

  “Okay,” Verity said. The nurse stopped walking half way down the corridor and turned around. Verity looked in the direction she had gone and back down to the end of the hall. She took a deep breath and when she reached the door on the left at the end she saw that it was open. She took another deep breath and knocked. There was no answer. She stepped into the room, “Mr Vale?” There was no answer. Verity walked further into the room and found a man sitting in a chair looking out the window. “Mr Vale?”

  He turned his head and looked at her.

  She moved further around in front of him, “Hi, Mr Vale. I don’t know if you remember me, I’m Verity Sharpe.”

  “Kay.”

  “Kay? Oh, Kate, yes, Kate. I know you had trouble getting Verity right. That’s right. I’m Kate.”

  “Broh.”

  “Yes, yes, that’s why I’m here. I’m trying to find him.”

  “Gone.”

  Verity nodded, “He’s gone. I know he’s gone, but I don’t know where he’s gone.”

  Vince shifted his head to the right. Verity looked at him. He did it again. Verity looked to her left, which was Vince’s right, and saw pictures on the wall. She walked closer to have a look. It was pictures of Vince with his family, and pictures of his individual family members. She looked at one of the pictures and tears came instantly to her eyes. She took her phone out of her handbag and took a picture of the photograph. She wiped her eyes and checked to see if the picture had come out clearly. She took another two pictures, just to be sure. It was her with the family that one Christmas she had spent with them. She was on the wall. She was part of the family. More tears came down her face. She took pictures of the other pictures and went back to Vince. She took a tissue from the table beside him. “They’re beautiful pictures, Mr Vale, but they don’t tell me where he is. I want to be with him if he’ll have me. I love him.”

  Vince smiled with the right side of his face, “Goo gal.”

  Verity sniffed back, “Did you say ‘good girl’?” Vince nodded and put his hand out. Verity took his hand in hers. This wa
s the closest she’d been to a Vale in a very long time. “I love him, I do, I still love him, Mr Vale, but we lost each other. I need to find him and make sure he’s okay.”

  “Don cra.”

  “Don’t cry? I can’t not cry, unfortunately. Without him there’s a hole in my heart. I’m so relieved to see someone from his family. I wish you could tell me more. I wish you could tell me why he didn’t come to his graduation and where he is now.”

  Vince swallowed and nodded. His mouth was moving and he finally said “Cindy”.

  “Cindy? Do you mean Sydney?” Verity asked, sniffing back.

  Vince nodded.

  “That’s where I live. You mean he’s in the same city as me? He's in the same city as me and over four million other people. Okay. Okay. Well, that’s something. I know he’s alive. He’s alive. That’s so good.”

  “Big money,” Vince uttered.

  Verity laughed, “He’s earning the big money? I’m so happy for him. He’s brilliant, Mr Vale, he always was and you must be so proud of him.”

  “Furs bun.”

  “Yes, he’s your first born because he’s the best. He used to tell me that all the time. He used to say that he was the best and that’s why he came first.” Verity was joyous and pitifully sad at the same time. She spent another hour in Vince’s room doing the best she could to have a conversation with him. She reached over and hugged him. Only his right arm moved to the embrace but he held her as tight as he could.

  “Maryam.”

  “Marry him? If he asks me to marry him then I’ll say yes,” Verity said, “I’m going to keep trying to find him. Thank you so much for spending time with me.”

  “Family.”

  “Thank you, Mr Vale. I’m honoured to be part of your family. Good bye.” Verity left his room and took a deep breath. She avoided looking in the other rooms as she went back to the front door of the nursing home. She needed to speak to the nurse but there didn’t seem to be anyone around. She knocked on the closed glass of the reception desk. A venetian blind lifted up and a nurse slid the glass back and asked if she could help.

  “Hello, yes, I’d like contact details for Mr Vale’s family,” Verity said.

  “I can’t give you those,” the nurse replied.

  “I’m not dangerous or anything, I just desperately need to get in contact with Mr Vale’s oldest son. Please?”

  “I can’t give out any details we have on file, they’re confidential. I wish I could help you but I can’t.”

  “Fine, I understand, but can I give you my details? Can I write down my name and number? And if any of his children or his wife come in or call, can you tell them that I was here and give them my details?”

  “Sure, I can do that, that’s fine.”

  “Thank you,” Verity breathed. She took a pen and notebook out of her handbag and wrote down her mobile number and address. “They can call me any time, night or day, any time at all. Please let them know I was here and that I want to speak to them.”

  “Sure,” the nurse said, looking at the piece of paper, “Thank you for visiting.”

  “Do they visit often?”

  “Not really,” the nurse said, “He’s had a stroke and doesn’t say much. It’s not clear how much he understands. We believe that his comprehension is quite poor.”

  “I think he understood everything I said, and I could understand him. He used to be a school teacher here in town.”

  “I didn’t know that,” the nurse said, “I’ve only lived here for a year and he was here when I came. He had a massive stroke a few years ago apparently. He’s no trouble at all. He’s not cantankerous like a lot of our old men.”

  “I think he’d like something to read. Even if he has impaired cognition, like you said, I think he’d be happier if you put a newspaper in front of him or something,” Verity said.

  “Thanks for the advice,” the nurse said, “Should I call a taxi for you?”

  “No, that’s okay. I’m just going to walk back to the station. Thank you.”

  The nurse nodded and slid the glass window closed again. Verity opened the front door and walked outside. She took pictures of the flowers in the garden and of the building, and walked down the street imagining him running around there as a child. This was his home town. This is where he was born and raised. His trip to Victoria to attend university was the first time he’d really left and he was amazed by the size of the city and how different the night sky looked. It didn’t surprise her that he was off in the city to earn the ‘big money’. She now wondered if ‘Cindy’ was ‘Sydney’ or ‘city’. Maybe Mr Vale had said city not Sydney. He nodded to Sydney. It didn’t matter. It was a start. She knew for sure that he was still alive and that Mr Vale considered her family.

  Chapter 28

  The sun was shining, the birds were singing and Verity wanted to tell them to fuck off. Fuck the birds, fuck the sun. She had been searching again in every way she could to try to find him and it had been futile. He was obviously unlisted. He wasn’t on social media and he wasn’t in the phone or business directories. Maybe he didn’t want to be found. Maybe when the nurse gave him her number he threw it away. Verity was on her way to work and she’d been looking for a new job. This job was going nowhere and it was boring. She’d been doing it for twelve months and she’d had enough. She walked unenthusiastically into the building and sighed as she got into the elevator. “Insert happy face here.” When Verity walked through the office doors on the fourteenth floor she was ‘Kate’. Everyone knew her as Kate, which was her middle name, but due to a processing error in HR that’s who she was now.

  When she walked through the door she had to funnel by Jason Arturo’s office, as everyone did, and if his door was open he was always looking out it. When you left the office he always looked at you and made you feel like you shouldn’t be going anywhere. He was an overweight, self-absorbed man who had a propensity for stealing other people’s ideas and passing them off as his own. Verity had learned that very quickly and hadn’t shared any ideas with him since. There was nowhere to go in this organisation. The next step down from him was a woman who had been with the organisation for thirty years, and was rarely in the office due to attending a lot of meetings. She wasn’t leaving until she retired and she was currently only fifty five. The next step down from that was Brian Ferris. He wrote policies and looked at legal aspects of the provisions for the company. He seemed like an affable man with a long supply of jokes that he was very keen to tell.

  Working in an open-plan office meant that you had no choice but to be polite to everyone around you and to offer a level of camaraderie. It wasn’t that being nice was a particularly onerous task, but Verity had grown weary of people. In this organisation they all seemed to be clique-orientated and to be overly excited about every inane detail of their lives, and their children’s lives, and their love lives and their pets. She was tired of people asking if she had a boyfriend. She was tired of people telling her to get a pet. She was tired of people asking her when she was going to have children. She was tired of people.

  She was about to lean down and turn her computer on when, in a rare turn of events, Jason arrived at her desk. “Kate, I’m letting you use the spare office so that you can get these done without interruption,” he said, “We need all of these budgets sorted by the end of the week.”

  Verity looked at the large pile of paper and back at him, “Thank you. I’ll get them done as soon as I can.”

  He nodded, “Log out of your phone and computer here and log in back in there. Shut the door if you need to shut it. The area in front of the offices is a high traffic zone. I get fed up with people gawking at me while I’m trying to work.”

  Verity thanked him again and watched him walk away. It would be weird to be in an office. She had always dreamed of having her own office, but it hadn’t come up as an option yet. This was temporary, but it was something. She could really focus in there. Out here people were avoiding their work by chatting to each ot
her and surfing the internet. In the privacy of the office there would only be one determined woman and a pile of budgets. Verity picked up her handbag and the pile of paper, and went to the office five doors down from Jason’s. She turned on the light and looked around. Whoever had designed the office had unusual taste. There was a desk made up of three rectangles, one in front, one on the side and one behind. She sat in the chair and turned to the three sections of the desk trying to work out their practicality. She looked down at her feet and they weren’t on the floor. She adjusted the chair’s height until it was comfortable, and rearranged the computer and phone. She turned the computer on and logged into the phone.

  She looked at the pile of paperwork and the handwritten budgets estimated. She needed to enter the data into the computer, check the figures and approve the budgets if they were correct. She pushed her sleeves up and got started.

  Verity looked at the time on the bottom corner of the computer screen. It was already eleven fifteen. She’d been working non-stop for over two hours. She decided she should probably have a break and a stretch, and maybe get a coffee. She clicked on the icon to ‘save’ the budget she was working and looked up as the door opened.

  “Hi, Ryan,” she said.

  He walked into her office and closed the door. She looked down at the keyboard to give the file a name and looked back at Ryan as he hadn’t spoken. She noticed that he had three files in his hand. She wondered if they were related to what she was working on. He put them on the desk and smiled at her. She was waiting for him to say something but he didn’t. He walked around to her side of the desk. She was now surrounded by three rectangles and a Ryan. He looked down at her again, still smiling.

  “So, are those files for me?” she asked, looking over at the files.