“He doesn’t need to know about this,” I told her.
“Why?” she asked.
“This thing will eventually fix itself,” I tried to assure her. “My parents are still hoping it’s a phase. I guess I am too. Besides, you know Curtis,” I reminded her. “He wouldn’t hesitate to confront my parents, and I don’t think he gets that it’s super-complicated.”
“Really?”
“They don’t know what to do,” I told her. “I know my parents feel crappy enough about this, and I think they’d feel even worse if other people knew about our situation.”
Mary was quiet. When she pulled into my driveway, we sat in the car a few minutes, watching Caleb at the kitchen sink washing dishes. He was talking to himself and laughing. He appeared calm.
“It’s a lot to carry on your shoulders, Leo,” she told me.
I thought about Caleb and about my father hauling him back to Children’s. “It’s going to get better. It just needs a little time,” I assured her before I headed into the house.
While I felt a little lighter for finally getting everything off my chest, I also felt ashamed. The last thing I wanted was Mary thinking of me as damaged goods.
31.
I KNEW THE NIGHT BEFORE when I set the alarm for six a.m. that it was only wishful thinking. Caleb had been jacked up all week and couldn’t wait.
So when I was awakened by the bright light and clatter of dresser drawers opening and shutting, I began having second thoughts about my great idea. The closet door was sliding and slamming against the insides of our bedroom wall, and I was beyond groggy, but I didn’t even bother making a fuss. I looked at my alarm clock: five in the morning, and outside our window it was still pitch-black. I reminded myself that at least it wasn’t a tantrum I was dealing with.
“Christ, Caleb. We can still sleep another hour,” I reminded him.
“WHAT TIME RACE START!”
“What time race start?” I asked him back. I went into parrot mode, despite having told him the race details at least twenty times last night.
“SEVEN THIRTY RIGHT! Race start seven thirty. Don’t be late. Right!
“HOW FAR RACE!”
“How far race?” I asked.
“13.1 MILES. HALF MARATHON. LONG DISTANCE!”
—
By mid-January Caleb had been logging close to ten miles a day, sometimes more. He’d head out the door after school and disappear for a couple of hours, and at the dinner table he’d retrace his routes with me, cataloging the street names and directions in meticulous detail. So I figured I’d maybe try and be a better brother and invite him to run a road race with Curtis and me.
I slipped my legs out from under the sheets and sat up and huddled beneath the warmth of my blankets, rubbed my eyes, and yawned. Caleb was now in pacing mode, stomping back and forth across the room, twirling his stick in front of his face. He was fully decked out in his new black warm-ups Dad had bought him.
“Not be late. Right! Race start seven thirty. Right! DON’T. BE. LATE!”
There was no choice now, so I hauled my sorry ass out of bed and made a move toward my closet and the warmth of my sweats. I knew he was excited as all hell about his first race, and I wasn’t about to let him down. “Let me put on my clothes and grab a cup of coffee, Caleb, and we’ll be on our way,” I promised.
As we headed out the door, I discovered that Dad had left me two twenties on the counter with the car keys. He never did that.
—
Curtis and I had started running road races on the weekends—hard tempo runs to build strength, and a welcome change of scene from our regular routes. While it sucked getting up in the wee hours on weekend mornings, it was also kind of cool to be blasting down empty city streets in packs with likeminded lunatics.
This morning was the Frostbite 10K and Half Marathon, an annual duo of winter races that looped through downtown, followed the river, and finished in front of city hall. Curtis and I had signed up for the 10K. When I invited Caleb to join us, Dad told me to put Caleb in the half marathon. “He runs nearly that distance every day,” Dad said. “Besides, it’s probably better if the two of you are in separate races.”
“It’s a half marathon,” I argued. “That’s a hell of a long way to run for a first race.”
“Your brother can run forever,” he assured me. “He could run through a concrete wall if he wanted to.”
“What if he gets lost?”
He dismissed that notion too. “Your brother’s sense of direction is better than yours, Leo. I think he knows every street in this city. Just get him on that starting line and he’ll find his way back.”
—
By the time we arrived at the race, the weather had turned to crap. A cold sleet pelted us like tiny knives as we dashed from the car to the registration tables to pick up our numbers. Just as I predicted, Caleb and I were among the first there, so we nabbed our race bibs and dashed back to the car to stay warm and dry until race time.
“How far run?” he asked again.
I hit my resend button: “How far Caleb run?”
I knew it was nervous energy, so I indulged him with the repetition and familiar script. I didn’t need anything that might trip his wires and set him off.
“HALF MARATHON. RIGHT!”
“13.1 miles, Caleb. A long way.”
“Half marathon thirteen miles. Long distance. Right!”
“Too far for me,” I confessed.
“CALEB LONG-DISTANCE RUNNER!”
Two loud thumps on the rear window signaled Curtis’s arrival before he climbed into the backseat. “As ol’ Gorsky would say, it’s colder than a well-digger’s ass out there. This has the potential to be truly brutal, Leo.”
“Colder than well-digger’s ass,” Caleb repeated, laughing. “Right!”
“Thank you, Curtis. My mother will certainly appreciate that new phrase in our house.”
“My pleasure.” Curtis’s teeth were chattering. “Mellow out, Leo. Help me pin my bib onto my shirt. I can barely feel my fingers.” He dropped four safety pins into my open palm, and I leaned over the front seat and secured his race number to his jersey.
“You ready to kick some ass today, Caleb?”
“Run half marathon. Right!”
“You’re a braver man than us,” Curtis told him. As the patter of sleet grew louder on the car’s roof, Curtis turned to me and whispered, “I would say let’s bag this, but I get the vibe that’s out of the question.”
“Not a chance,” I warned him. “Don’t even think about it.”
The sun had yet to appear, and the sleet was now coming down harder. Caleb pointed at the clock on the dashboard. “RACE START TEN MINUTES!” he announced.
I did my best to sound cheerful. “Then what are you waiting for?” I opened my door and stepped into the frigid rain. “It’s race time!”
I got Caleb situated among the other half marathoners, then left him alone in a crowd of runners, talking to himself about breakfast cereals. Curtis and I headed to the 10K starting area and stood in the sleet for five minutes. We were drenched and frozen before the race even started.
Even with the hard pace, our teeth still chattered and our quads were numb after two miles. We settled in with a pack of similar gluttons for pain and managed to hammer out 5:30 miles and cross the finish in a little over 34:00—not bad given the miserable conditions. As soon as we got to the finish, Curtis continued toward his car. The sleet had subsided, but the cold rain was now coming down in buckets.
“Mind if I don’t stick around for Caleb’s finish?” he asked.
“No worries.”
“Seriously, Leo, I feel bad, but if I don’t get under a hot shower soon, there’s a serious chance I’ll never see my testicles again.”
“Remind me why that would be a problem?”
“Go to hell, dipshit,” he said, climbing into his car. “That’s the type of workout that will callus you and make you stronger. Trust me.”
I stood at atten
tion in the downpour and saluted as he started his car. He rolled down his window as he pulled away. “Tell Caleb congrats,” he yelled. “He’s certainly a better man than us today.”
“Enjoy that hot shower!” I yelled.
I bolted to my car, pumped the heat full blast, toweled down, and got into some dry clothes. By my estimation, Caleb wouldn’t be crossing the finish line for over an hour. A good brother would probably have gotten his butt out of the car and backtracked the half-marathon course and run the final portion with him for support, but there wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to step back into that cold rain. I drove the car to a vantage point where I could see the incoming runners, flipped on the radio and windshield wipers, and left the engine running.
From my cozy confines I watched the endless trail of incoming runners slog their way to the finish, and I started wondering about why Caleb ran. Did he get a high like I did when he ran for miles at a time? Did he feel the same release and escape I did when I put on my shoes and bolted out the door? Or did he simply thrive on the repetition and routine? Was it no different from twirling a stick in front of his face for hours, drawing endless lines of train tracks, or building piles of grass? Maybe it was simply the self-inflicted pain he craved, like when he punched his own head or slammed his fists into the wall when he was angry. I wished that I could talk about it with him, and it pained me that I could never be part of his inner world, and that he would never enter mine.
At the 1:58:00 mark, I spotted Caleb’s unmistakable gait, the awkward lope of the left leg and the skip of his right. He crested the final, gentle ascent and was approaching the long stretch to the finish. Despite the rain, I bolted out of the car and started sprinting toward him, yelling at the top of my lungs. “You’ve got this, Caleb! You can break two hours if you push!” He responded and began increasing momentum, his lope turning into a gallop, his right-legged skip becoming something more like a hop.
I was now beside him, running stride for stride. “C’mon, Caleb! Break two hours! You can do this!”
He looked over at me, then looked forward and focused on the large ticking clock above the finish line.
I ran beside him, pumped my fists at him, and began a running commentary: “Caleb Coughlin might just do it, ladies and gentlemen,” I yelled. “In his debut half marathon, this runner might just break the two-hour barrier!”
I used to do this when we were younger, recounting his basketball stats as he shot hoops from the same spot on the driveway again and again. It made him laugh.
“He’s going for it, ladies and gentlemen!” I shouted. “Caleb Coughlin might just pull this off! This is an outstanding performance!”
Caleb’s right arm cranked upward over his head, and his left pounded downward. God, it looked painful, but he focused like a laser on those large red digital numbers ticking away on the clock beside the finish line, and somehow he accelerated.
“Caleb Coughlin is going for it, but he’ll have to push his limits to crack two hours!”
He gritted his teeth and sped up once more.
“He might do it, folks! He can do it if he pushes!”
With a hundred meters to the finish, I stopped and stood still in the cold rain and hoped.
“Go for it!” I yelled one final time, then watched him churn out the final paces and cross the line in 1:59:56. I looked around me for another spectator to celebrate with, but there was nobody, just a slew of weary, wet runners plodding their way toward the finish.
I met up with him as he was passing through the finish-line chute. He wasn’t even out of breath. He had some poor volunteer at the finish confused because Caleb was asking the guy all about the birth and death dates of his grandparents. When Caleb exited the finish-line area, a finisher’s medallion around his neck, he was beaming.
“LEO VERY PROUD OF YOU!”
“That was amazing, Caleb! Congratulations,” I said as we exchanged a high five.
“TAKE CALEB IHOP. Want pancakes. See Miss Shelly.”
—
The IHOP was a long haul clear across town to our old neighborhood, but I didn’t give a rip. I tuned the radio to KEZK, Caleb’s favorite, and listened to him rattle off the street names and makes and models of all the automobiles he saw on the half-marathon route. This was the best day I’d had with him in a long time, and I was going to make it last.
When I parked the car at the IHOP, Caleb bolted from the car before I even turned off the engine. He was darting for his Sunday-morning seat at the counter to chat with Shelly. I just knew her by her name tag, but Caleb knew her as “Miss Shelly,” and of course he knew her life story. By the time I made my way to the counter, she had already placed two tall glasses of water before him, two ice cubes in each. Caleb was leaning over the counter, lifting his medal from his chest, and pulsing it three inches from Miss Shelly’s face.
“Who run half marathon, Miss Shelly?”
Shelly had a soft, round face and wavy blond hair pulled back by a headband. She smiled and winked at me. “Oh my goodness, Caleb! Did you run that far?”
“LONG-DISTANCE RUNNER! RIGHT!”
“That’s wonderful, Caleb. With my bunions, I don’t think I could even run across that parking lot,” she told him. “You must be hungry, sweetie. What can I get you?”
Miss Shelly knew the routine.
“Chocolate chocolate chip pancakes!” Caleb stated, before reading the menu description verbatim: “Four rich, chocolate-batter pancakes filled with chocolate chips and topped with powder sugar and whipped topping!”
“You got it, Caleb.”
“Miss Shelly’s husband Ryan birthday next Thursday.”
“Oh my goodness,” she said, glancing in my direction in awe. “Thank you for reminding me, Caleb.”
“How about you, honey?” she finally said to me. “I apologize, but I can never manage to remember your name. I’ve got hundreds of customers, but none like your brother. That boy has a mind like a steel trap.”
“It’s okay,” I reassured her. “I’m Leo. I’ll have an order of the original pancakes and some coffee.”
“Well, you two just sit tight. I’ll be right back in a few minutes. By the way, Caleb, my children just loved those brownies you made for them. I’m going to make sure that the cook makes you an extra pancake.”
Caleb was beaming. “Thank you, Miss Shelly!”
Besides candy, Caleb spent some of his cash on Betty Crocker instant brownie mix, usually the Original Supreme, and baked batches of brownies. He charged me a dollar a brownie. The rest he loaded on paper plates and wrapped with several layers of plastic wrap and gave to his favorite people, usually women—the woman who cut his hair at Supercuts, the woman behind the desk at the YMCA, and some of the women at the grocery store. It was at times like these that I realized Caleb had a unique ability to make people happy.
When his chocolate chocolate chip pancakes arrived, he doused them in a thick layer of blueberry syrup, then smiled and laughed through the entire meal. He reminded me several more times that he was a long-distance runner before tapping into some of his other favorite conversation topics, notably the times in my past when I had gotten into “big trouble.”
“Who broke jar of zucchini relish at Grandma Grandpa’s?”
“I did.”
“Long, long time ago,” he began with a laughing whisper, “who went bathroom behind curtains on Colgate Avenue in University City?”
“I don’t remember it, exactly, but apparently I did,” I confessed.
“Leo got in big, big trouble!”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“Who broke Mrs. Swift window with baseball?”
“That would be my bad,” I agreed.
When I pulled the car into the garage, part of me was relieved the morning was over and it had gone off without incident, and part of me wanted the time to continue. When I turned off the engine, we sat a moment before heading inside the house.
“Thank you, Leo!”
> “Thanks for what, Caleb? That was a blast.”
“Thank you for long-distance runner!”
Sometimes I tried to correct Caleb’s grammar, but this wasn’t one of those times. Besides, I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant, but it felt like it was something good, something that didn’t need correcting.
32.
WHEN I SAT DOWN AT THE kitchen table on the following Saturday morning, Mom reminded me curtly that Grandma and Grandpa were due for arrival any moment. She ordered me to dust the living room and dining room. I rolled my eyes and sighed. That didn’t go over too well.
Mom’s birthday was on March 6, a Monday, so my grandparents decided it was the perfect time for a visit. It also meant I was in for one lousy weekend.
“Listen, mister,” Dad said, slapping his newspaper sharply on the table, “you’ve got a few minutes before your grandparents arrive to change that attitude of yours.”
“C’mon,” I said to him. “You don’t like them either.”
Dad started laughing, but it wasn’t a warm laugh. “Leo, you’re going to meet a lot of people in this world you don’t like. But learning to fake it is a necessary life skill.”
“Quiet, both of you!” Mom hollered. “I’ll dust the damn furniture myself,” she muttered as she stormed out of the room.
“Your mother is a little stressed at the moment,” Dad whispered.
“You think?” I said.
My father tried to fold the paper neatly and place it on the table. He then arranged the salt and pepper shakers and wiped his place with a napkin. That was his idea of helping Mom out. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m not too excited about your grandparents’ visit, either. Your grandfather is fine, but your grandmother,” he told me, “well, she never quite approved of me from day one.”
“I’ve picked up on that, Dad. What exactly did you do?” I asked.
“The hell if I know. I can’t do anything right in her eyes.”
“I can’t, either,” I told Dad.
Dad laughed. “Nobody can, Leo. Just smile and try to keep a low profile this weekend. Hang out with your grandfather.”
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