“She remembered being told all through her school career—and she believed all through her life—that I made way better marks than she did. When she found our report cards, her marks were better than mine. Not once or twice or in one subject. Consistently, across the board, Marilyn got higher marks than I did.
“We looked at those report cards, and she said, ‘That can’t be! Somebody must have changed them.’ She could not accept what she was seeing because she had had it drummed into her that she was second-class. And she wasn’t. She was better than I was.”
My father had wound up a rocket scientist. His sister, who was smarter than he was, became a farmer. I didn’t doubt that if we compared my report cards to Tatyana’s, we would have found that she outpaced me as Marilyn had outpaced my dad.
“You look like you’re fading so we can wrap it up. But there’s one last thing I want to share with you on the subject of misremembering. You talk a lot about the foreclosure.”
“Yeah. I mean, Dad, that was probably the biggest thing in my life. Bigger than the shooting, bigger than the divorce. To have the bank trick you guys into missing a payment and then take our home away from us, kick us when we were down . . . it’s so fucked up. It made me hate everything: you, Mom, myself, banks, money, capitalism, America, God. Yeah, it was big then, and it’s only gotten bigger.”
Dad shook his head.
“Mishka, there was no foreclosure.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m not sure if it’s something your mother told you or just something you pieced together in your head. Yes, they advised us to run late on a payment. Yes, they formally initiated foreclosure proceedings, but that was something they had to do in order to get us out of the mortgage. Think about it, Mishka. I was in Vancouver. Tatyana was in Colorado. You were at Simon’s Rock. And you all hated New Hampshire. We had to get rid of the house.
“The bank didn’t steal our home away from us, Mishka. They were very fair to us. In fact, they did us a favor. They took it off our hands.”
I felt physically exhausted when I finally turned off the recorder on my phone. We had gone deeper than I would have ever hoped, deeper than I had been prepared for. He had volunteered answers to questions I would never have dared ask him. Because he wanted to work things out.
I lay around the house in a stupor for the rest of the day, my mind unable to parse what had just taken place. Shortly after dinner, my dad and Theresa retired, so I went into my room and crawled into bed. Instantly, I was wired, my mind working furiously, like I was on acid. After a while, I got out of bed, put in my earbuds, and listened to the interview with my father.
It was no big deal, just my father and me talking. Then I noticed we had the same vocal tics—“I mean” and “you know.” Then my skin crawled like I was hearing some soothsayer’s prophecy about my life, recorded long before I was born.
Like me, he had resented his father’s attempts to steer his life. Like me, he had been terrified of failure. Like me, he had lied to himself, assured himself that the truth wasn’t true. Like me, he had woken up, halfway through his life, trapped in a nightmare borne out of his weakness. Like me, it had taken him a long time to work up the courage to surrender. Like me, when he finally accepted he had failed, he had brutally excoriated himself.
And his revelations . . . yes, we had petitioned at great length to leave New Hampshire. I had forgotten that entirely, but it rapidly filtered back to me. Yes, he had cared about us. I remembered hugs and pony rides on his knee and games in the public pool and my dad screaming his fool head off for us at our soccer games. In telling my dad to fuck off, that I was going to do my own thing, I hadn’t disappointed him at all. Rather, I had done exactly what I needed to do, exactly what he wished he had done, and I had given him every reason to be proud of me.
The Letter that I’d clung to as proof of my father’s infidelity, the unaddressed, unsigned one my mother had found in the back of a book he’d been reading, was probably a love letter he had forced himself to write to her because he couldn’t deal with the reality that his marriage had failed. The foreclosure—lasting proof that we were persecuted and doomed and that the world was out to destroy us, the betrayal around which I’d built my entire persona—not only had it never taken place, but the bank had been fair, generous even, in helping my parents dispose of a property neither of them wanted. Even the trivial detail of Princess comforting him when he broke the news to my mother . . . I’d imagined that Princess had hated him, and I’d even conscripted her death into my war against him. But Princess had loved him, and reluctantly but genuinely, he had allowed himself to love her. She had probably crawled into his La-Z-Boy recliner to die because she missed him.
I’d built a life in response to my father’s infidelity, to the evil in his heart, and to the bank’s bloodthirsty theft of our home. I had been wrong, and I had been wrong, and I had been wrong.
Luis enlisted my help to tackle the Vermont 100, one of the original hundred-milers, a race more than twenty years old. It was a hardcore race in every respect: hillier, hotter, and much more psychologically demanding. His goal was to “buckle”: to complete the race in less than twenty-four hours, thereby earning a silver belt buckle. It was only his second hundred-miler, and he’d run his first in 27:33. Buckling meant knocking almost four hours off his flat-course hundred-mile time . . . and doing so on a mountainous course with over 28,000 feet of elevation change. My job was to run the last thirty miles through the night with him and get him in on time.
Luis rolled into the Camp Ten Bear aid station at mile seventy shortly before 8 p.m. He was shirtless and slick with sweat, but he looked great. He was some kind of specific female fantasy—voluptuously chiseled physique, broad, easy smile, just poetry in motion. He was grinning and moving well and howled my name when he saw me. He gave me a quick high five, then yelled over his shoulder as he passed, “You ready? I want to be out of here in ten minutes.”
He got weighed by a volunteer and briefly inspected by a medic. He was on time, but just barely. No way was he going to buckle. I was already prepping my consolation speech to him: in a race this long, a finish is a win, and so on. My goal was just to get him across the finish line, no matter how long it took. That would have to be enough.
Having passed his physical, Luis flopped down on a cot while I tended to his needs. His hydration pack had to be filled with ice; he wanted some peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and some Coke and some of the big Medjool dates I had brought for us. His feet were bothering him in several places, and I could see blisters deep under his calluses. Not good. A volunteer fumbled with moleskin and a damp roll of thin tape.
A clueless volunteer had derailed his 100K attempt at Green Lakes, we had figured out later. The dude had pumped Luis full of salt on an empty stomach when he was already dehydrated. Not this time.
“You know what,” I said, “I have some better tape here.”
I pulled a roll of thick, waterproof fabric tape out of my bag and waved the volunteer away. I pulled off the tiny piece of tape the volunteer had used. No way that would hold on to a wet, spongy foot for another thirty miles. I dried Luis’s sweaty foot on my shirt and went to work on his left big toe. Two minutes later, we were on the move.
“Okay, we’re going to talk shop for a minute and then we’re going to talk about anything but running, alright?” Luis was in good spirits, but I could tell he was already in pain. “We’ve got eight hours left. If we can cover four miles an hour, I can break twenty-four hours. So that’s what we’re going to do.”
It sounded doable. I’d run thirty-two miles in less than five and half hours. You can almost walk four miles in an hour. But that’s on flat pavement. The last thirty miles of the Vermont 100 were supposed to be the toughest of the race. Vermont had hills as steep and sustained as any I’d seen around the country. Throw in a couple of chatty stops at aid stations and a couple of bathroom breaks, and it’d be easy to go over our allotted eight hours.<
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Luis already had seventy miles under his belt, and he had two blisters coming up deep under his calluses. We’d have to push his body to its limit to break twenty-four hours. Anything and everything could go wrong in thirty miles. One small problem, and we wouldn’t make it. He might not finish at all. Hell, we might end the night in the ER.
He started shivering. The guy never brings enough clothes. I pulled a shirt out of my bag, the same black shirt from Izgi that I had passed off to Luis at Virgil Crest when he’d had to leave me behind. The significance wasn’t lost on him. He nodded at me with a grin and then pulled it over his head.
We ran down a dirt road for a little while. He wanted to know how my day had been. While he was out running seventy miles in the hot sun, had I been able to find a nice, quiet place to work? Had I gotten enough to eat? How had I slept?
An arrow pointing to the left on a yellow pie plate tacked to a post directed us off the road and onto an inclined jeep trail. We hiked up the muddy, rocky ruts in silence broken only by the labored sounds of our breathing. Luis was lagging behind. I couldn’t imagine how he was feeling.
It was beginning to get dark. Once we reached the top of the hill, we stopped so I could pull my headlight out of my bag. Luis was already wearing his, and he reached up to switch it on.
“Fuck.”
He pulled the headlight off, flipping the switch several more times.
“Dude, it’s not fucking working.”
I flipped on my headlight and handed it to him. He put it on without a word, and we began to run.
The terrain was a narrow, rocky, and root-ridden trail through the woods. Occasionally, it was wide enough for us to run side by side, but more often than not, we had to run single file. The headlight was bright and showed the trail in high relief: golf-ball-sized rocks, thick roots protruding from the ground, tiny, steeply angled ravines in the earth—all perfect hazards on which to catch a toe and go face first into the dirt or, worse, roll an ankle and do enough damage that you’d be immobilized. Luis and I had done a fun run with our pal Jerome in which the two of them, running side by side, hit an ice patch. Luis was fine, but Jerome broke his ankle badly, had to be carried a mile out, and couldn’t walk for six weeks.
The light was so bright that, after illuminating the path for Luis, it made my path behind him seem that much darker. I tried watching the shining path in front of him to memorize it when I went over it. That didn’t work. I tried not looking at the illuminated spot in front of him, just staring at the blackness behind him so my eyes would adjust to the dark. That didn’t work either. Finally, I realized that the only way to do it was to run in front of him, zigzagging back and forth so my own shadow wouldn’t block out the hazards of the terrain in front of me.
We wove our way through the woods, following the glow sticks that hung from the trees every hundred yards or so, like we were on some mystical quest. It was a beautiful night, the moon high and full, its light glinting off the dew on leaves as we ran past. As the night wore on, I did everything I could to distract Luis, telling him the worst, most offensive jokes I could remember, unfolding debauched stories from my life on the road, singing Elvis songs, doing everything I could to take his mind off his pain and exhaustion. Mostly he suffered in silence and just kept moving relentlessly forward.
Twelve miles from the finish, we were incredibly still on schedule. At the final weigh-in, we saw a man of probably fifty sitting at a picnic table. He looked hollowed out, a total zombie. I knew that he, like Luis, was trying to buckle. He looked finished.
“Dad,” his daughter waved a cell phone at him, “I just got a text from Mom. She said no way can you beat twenty-four hours.”
He looked dazed, unable to respond.
“Hey, Dad,” I said, catching his eye, “I think you can do it.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah,” he turned to his daughter, “you tell Mom to stuff it.” He wobbled to his feet and stumbled off with his pacer. Luis wolfed down some fruit and some more Coke, and then we were moving again.
We passed UltraDad, he passed us, we passed him, he passed us. Step by step, Luis started to fall apart. I put my arm through his to help him up the hills. At one point, his head dropped to my shoulder. He had fallen asleep but somehow kept walking.
Luis was such a good man. He’d served his country without complaint. He was a good friend, a good son, a good father. I hope to never find myself in a foxhole, but if I do, I want Luis by my side. It amazed me that he wanted to be friends with me, a low-rent, druggy, drunken, useless piece of shit.
My friend asleep on my shoulder, I looked back at all the petty failures in my life. At every fork in the road, I had taken the coward’s path. I had lied to my friends. I had stolen. I had cheated. I had made excuses. I had deceived. I had hurt people who cared about me. A long list of people would never speak to me again. In no way was it remarkable that my father and Tatyana had walked away from me. Time after time, I had defaulted to anger and pain and let weakness dictate my choices. Amazingly, against common sense, against the burden of evidence that I was unsalvageable, my mother and Tashina had never given up on me. I had rewarded their unwavering faith with disappointment after disappointment. It was all darkness, impenetrable.
The night had gone on too long. Luis was exhausted. We’d never make it. I should just let him sleep by the side of the road. Then I could run off into the bushes to cry about what a fucking failure I had been.
No.
I’d duped myself before, duped myself for most of my life. No more. Yeah, I had been that bad man. But I forced myself to do an inventory of my current life: I’m a good roommate. I’m a good friend. I’m a good brother. I’m a good son. I had even been a good boyfriend to Izgi. Was it possible that now I too was a good man? It seemed impossible, but the facts were plain. But if I was a good man, I had sure as shit better get out of my own head and focus on the task at hand: getting my friend in on time.
“Lou,” I said softly, waking him up. He groaned and lifted his head from my shoulder.
“Oh my God, I am so tired.”
Again, we began to run. Again, we passed UltraDad and his pacer.
“This is it,” I said. “Late-night blood pact, one of my specialties. Everyone gets in under twenty-four. We’re committing now. All of us.”
The other runners grunted their assent. UltraDad looked like he was about to fall over. No way he was going to make it.
Finally, we made the final aid station: an unmanned picnic table with only water.
“This is it, Lou,” I said. “Two point two miles. Now you empty the tank, bro. You’re going to run a couple of miles for your daughter, Lou. Run it in for Isabella.”
I headed out first, into the darkness. Every time we came to a flat or a downhill, I called back to Luis: “We’ve got a decline coming up. Open it up now!” Suddenly, there were glow sticks in empty gallon jugs on the ground on either side of us: lights placed by the race organizers to light the last stretch. As we whipped through the glowing gates, I allowed hope to bubble up. Were we actually going to make it?
I ran down a soft, pine-needle-padded trail, the makeshift green lanterns on either side of me blurring into each other. Then I saw it—a huge wooden arch in an open field, with “FINISH LINE” in glowing red neon at the top. I hauled ass out of the woods and ran around to the other side of the finish line and started calling for Luis to bring it in, come on home, baby.
I’d gotten a ways ahead of him and couldn’t see or hear any sign of him. I heard the officials muttering about the time. God, it would be such a heartbreaker if he didn’t make it. Then I saw a light bobbing through the trees, like some will-o’-the-wisp. I screamed Luis’s name as loud as I could.
I was answered by a long, desperate, wordless howl, pained and joyous at the same time, a wail from the bottom of the well of human endurance. Luis burst out of the trees, running hard, and flew across the finish line to wild cheers and applause, then toppled to the ground, groaning an
d laughing.
“We did it,” he said. “Mishka, gimme a hug.”
I looked at the clock: 23:55. He had started at 4 a.m., traveled one hundred miles, and made it home at the moment of darkest night. He had done it; we had done it. Then, incredibly, Luis sprang back to his feet.
“We gotta get Dad in!” He sprinted off into the woods from which he’d just emerged, calling, “Dad! Dad!” like a lost child.
Minutes passed. They felt like months. It was a valiant effort by Luis, but no way was UltraDad gonna make it in. Then, blinking through the trees, I saw Luis’s headlight and another dimmer light. Oh God, it was going to be close. No way could they get in before the twenty-four-hour cutoff. Wobbling but running hard, UltraDad emerged from the woods and unsteadily crossed the finish line. I immediately looked at the clock: 23:57:58. UltraDad had made it. He had beat twenty-four hours by just two minutes and two seconds. John Lacroix, UltraDad, was the last person to buckle.
I helped Luis up to our campsite by a tiny dugout. While he cleaned himself up in his tent with baby wipes, I stripped off all my clothes and dove into the freezing water. When I surfaced, the sun was just coming up, its glorious pink-orange creeping up into the cold sky, still shot through with stars. We had taken a journey through the darkness and emerged, whole but transformed, on the other side.
CHAPTER 12
The New Life
After Shipwrecked had finally fallen out of the top ten, Dave Blum invited me to lunch so we could talk about my next Kindle Single. The next one? I hadn’t had any ideas for the first one. Still, I couldn’t turn down a free lunch, even if it meant braving the wasteland of Midtown.
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