Signs of Life

by Natalie Taylor

  Are you polite to the pizza delivery guy?

  If it takes a while for the food to come, do you get antsy?

  Do you make good eye contact?

  At some point in the date, have you made some sort of effort to tell me that I look absolutely fantastic?

  When given the opportunity, do you talk about yourself, or do you ask me questions about me?

  When I tell you things about me, do you somehow reaffirm that I am the coolest fucking person on the face of the planet?

  Do you talk with food in your mouth?

  Do you seem intrigued about who I am and what I offer?

  Do you seem like you would impress my grandparents?

  Of course, Chris Harrison would be there to help me along with this process. He’d be the calm, guiding force, just as he is on the actual show. More important, he could be our score-keeper for Scrabble.

  I wish I could call this girl on The Bachelorette and give her some advice. My FMG could give her advice too. My Fairy Mom Godmother and I are sitting on the couch in the basement. We both are wearing our bathrobes, drinking a beer, watching the show. “Pick the guy who talks the least but offers to clean up after other people,” she says. “He’s a keeper.” She is such a genius.

  Moo calls again and tells me she officially has a Team in Training website for fund-raising. She asks me when I am going to start mine. I neglect to tell her that I promised a group of old people that I would take on this triathlon as my banner cause. I have rethought this decision since my last grief group. I was embraced by the moment, I made an irrational decision, and they’ll never know if I don’t end up doing it. Moo puts the heat on me. I get her off the phone by promising I’ll at least donate twenty dollars to her triathlon.

  Here’s the thing about my older sister: All my life I’ve wanted to do everything she did. I tried to pal around with her friends when we were little. I was thrilled when my dad said I was old enough to join the father-daughter group called Indian Princesses with her and my dad. In middle school I loved it when a teacher would see my name on her sheet at the beginning of the school year and say, “Oh, you must be Sarah’s sister.” When I had to make the crucial decision on whether to wear my backpack to middle school with both straps affixed to my shoulders or go for the one-strap look, I obviously consulted my older sister. I constantly stole her clothes in high school even though we went to the same high school. Sometimes she would have to leave early for school and I’d go running into her closet or her laundry basket looking for a cool shirt. She would find me in the hallways (I was a bad thief, as most ninth-graders are) and say something like, “What the hell do you think you’re wearing?” I would mutter something about finding it in the basement by the washing machine and I didn’t know it was hers, but all the while my main concern was making sure my friends and classmates could see me getting yelled at by my cooler older sister. Even in college my mom would call me and say, “What do you want for Christmas?” I would tell her to take Moo shopping and let her pick out clothes she liked and then just buy them for me.

  Moo has always been a person I want to be like. Even into adulthood the clothing just changes into another thing that she does or wears more gracefully than I could ever pull off. So when she calls me and tells me to think about something, I take her very, very seriously, but that still doesn’t make me want to do a freaking triathlon. I meet her halfway and sign up for a meeting.

  I recruit Maggie to go to the meeting with me. Maggie thinks of Moo in much the same light I do. We may only be friends so Maggie can be closer to Moo, which is fine by me. I’m 90 percent sure that’s the only reason I had any boyfriends in high school. Maggie is also a marathon runner. She’s done two in the last few years, so this is right up her alley.

  We find a Team in Training meeting at a local high school. On the way to the meeting I give Maggie a long lecture in the car about how we are not going to make a snap decision. We are not going to be the victims of efficient, manipulative (though it may be for a good cause) marketing. We are going to go to the meeting and think about it and not sign our lives away on the spot and then maybe, maybe, we will actually commit to doing this thing.

  We walk in a little late. Maggie and I have to sit on opposite sides of the room. (In retrospect, this was clearly a well-constructed marketing tactic on their part. I swear this thing is run by the same people who operate Mary Kay cosmetics.) They hand us a pile of information. Maggie, Moo, and I would be potentially competing in the Nation’s Triathlon. The Nation’s Triathlon is the weekend of September 15 in Washington, D.C. It is an Olympic distance triathlon. Olympic distance means it’s a 1.5-kilometer swim (just under a mile), a 40-kilometer bike ride (roughly 26 miles), and a 10-kilometer run (6.2 miles). There is no way I can do this. If I ever swam a mile, I would have to take a three-hour nap afterward. Who in their right mind could get out of the water and bike, then run? Insane. I try to get Maggie’s attention to signal that this is a “no go.” She is engrossed in her literature on the opposite side of the room.

  In addition to all of this, all members of the Nation’s Triathlon Team have to raise a minimum of thirty-nine hundred dollars. If you fall short of that amount, you have to pay the difference out of your own pocket. Where on earth would I find the time to train, let alone time to fund-raise? Forget it. This is way more of a commitment than I thought. I look over at Maggie again. She is circling things on her sheet. She can’t be seriously considering this.

  A woman in a white Team in Training shirt opens the meeting. She introduces herself, tells us about the organization, and then introduces the first speaker. Bruce did a marathon in Vancouver with TNT (that’s their acronym). He is a tall, slender guy who looks like his body may be prone to marathons. Bruce tells us this was his first marathon. He’s never been a runner. He just followed the workouts, ran with the group a few nights a week, and met some great people. He trained with one woman who was a single mom of three kids. He said it was amazing to watch her. She was able to do it because she made time for it in her life, because she cared about the cause and achieving her goal.

  I look back down at my sheet and read over the numbers again. If this woman could do a marathon with three kids, why couldn’t I do a triathlon with one kid?

  After two more speakers, they start a movie. It’s this nice video with inspirational music and clips of people clapping and cheering and running out of the water in wet suits, the usual. Then they start talking about honored heroes and patients affected by the money raised. They show a clip of a little girl, probably younger than five years old, who has leukemia. I put my forefinger under my nose because I can feel myself start to tense up. One time I heard that putting your forefinger under your nose will keep you from crying, but then I remember that maybe it prevents you from sneezing. So I start to get tense and I hold my body in the same position to try to keep myself from getting upset. It suddenly occurs to me that not every child is born completely healthy or stays completely healthy. I am sure I knew this before in some capacity, but Kai is so perfect in every way, I can never imagine having to go to the doctor for anything except checkups and immunization shots. I look at this little girl who may not survive because she has cancer. I lost my husband almost a year ago and I thought I had the worst situation in the world. I don’t.

  The lights go back on. The woman running the meeting says something about an initial payment of sixty dollars to activate your fund-raising website and to register you with a team. Before she even finishes, I am vigorously writing out a check. I don’t even own a bike.

  I call Moo. She is excited we are all training together, even though she’s fifteen hundred miles away.

  After worrying about a bike, I remember that Josh’s old touring bike has been sitting in the basement, upside down, collecting dust for eleven months. I go downstairs to find the bike. I get a towel to wipe off the dust. He would be so sad to know a bike of his ever collected dust.

  I’ve found my horse with harness bells. I gu
ess it’s time to get moving.

  june

  Changed, I headed back through the mud. I was drenched; anybody could see it was time to come in out of the rain.

  —GENE FORRESTER IN JOHN KNOWLES, A SEPARATE PEACE

  triathlon training is a bit more challenging than I thought. First of all, I was under the impression that swimming freestyle was similar to walking in that it was a natural, automatic combination of movements for the body. I thought I would jump in the water, throw my arms one in front of the other, and I’d be off. Turns out this is hardly the case. I had a similar experience when I decided to summit a fourteen-thousand-foot mountain a few years ago with Josh. I had zero experience in mountains and was convinced that hiking was merely walking on an incline. Let’s just say the day ended in tears.

  Hales swam in high school and she lifeguards at a local pool, so I crash their swim lane when it’s not busy. When she’s not on guard duty she gets in the water with me and gives me some pointers. She tells me to roll my shoulders and extend my arms to make my stroke as long as I can. I swim fifty meters and turn and look at her through my goggles, already out of breath. “How was that?” I yell from the deep end. She squints. “Um …” Hales is the most positive person in the world. Her trademark characteristic is to overcompliment everything, even highly mediocre material (she once said The Lizzie Maguire Movie changed her life), so when she says “Um,” I know I’m in trouble. She says I need to close my fingers, relax my neck, and not pull my head up so high to breathe. I swim another fifty. I pull my goggles off.

  “Was that better?” I yell to her. She yells something back.

  “What?” I hold my hand to my ear.

  “Kick! You keep forgetting to kick!” Kick. Right. I’ve got to remember that.

  On the running front, things are going fine except for the fact that I am working with about a nine-minute-mile pace. Actually, let’s just say it’s somewhere between nine and eleven minutes. Every now and then I get Kai to go in the jogging stroller, which is awesome training. If I can push a twenty-pound baby for three miles, then maybe I’ll be able to finish six on my own.

  I was looking forward to getting on Josh’s bike. Ever since Josh died, seeing cyclists on the road has always bothered me. Josh was an avid cyclist even after his trip across the country. When I see cyclists from a distance, they all look the same. For almost a year my heart has jumped every time I’ve seen riders fly down the street. I always think it’s Josh. It drives me crazy that this happens to my brain, and I really, really want it to stop. Somehow I believe that if I become a cyclist I can eradicate this problem.

  So far biking has been fun. Actually, I can’t say I’ve been out cycling yet, but I have taken Josh’s bike out for a few rides. I really do enjoy doing something that I know Josh loved. I feel like we get to have a conversation that we never had while he was here. Or at least it’s as close as I can get.

  But something else has happened in the last few weeks. Ever since I took the bike out of the basement, I feel like I’ve reawakened the whole house. It’s like that scene in Hocus Pocus when the kids light the right candles and the witches appear, or when Aladdin moves the lamp. Something has changed. Now that I’ve turned the air-conditioning on, the house smells different. It smells the same way it did last summer right before I left for Miami. Things hit me unexpectedly during the day and I’m finding it harder and harder to keep it together. The Red Wings are in the Stanley Cup finals again and last night during game five, I cried during the first period. Who cries during the first period of a hockey game? But I could see Josh sitting on the couch in his Pavel Datsyuk jersey. We would have been in the basement together for every game.

  The other day I got a letter from Dr. Harnish, the minister who officiated at Josh’s funeral. It was short. I opened it and read the first few lines: “First anniversary—Josh’s death.” It said that the next year may not be easier, but if I’ve made it through one year, I can certainly make it through the next. I just sat there and cried with the letter in my hand. I know this day is coming soon, and for some reason it hurts just waiting for it.

  Every day I think about what I was doing last year at this time. What were we doing in June of last year? June 8? June 9? And we had no idea those were his last days.

  The first Tuesday in June is the last staff meeting of the year for Berkley High School. I decide to make an announcement about my triathlon and let people know how they can donate money. I am nervous about this whole thing for a number of different reasons. First of all, I am a horrible salesperson. I hate asking people for money and I hate pushing a product. If I ever did go into sales, I know I would end up telling people, “You know, you make a good point, and now that you mention it, you really don’t need our product. No really … I totally get it.” Even this time around, I’m pushing a cure for blood disease and I still get nervous about asking people for help.

  Second, even though my job as a teacher includes the skill of standing in front of a group of people and delivering important information, I am horrendously nervous about public speaking in front of my staff meeting. I have a hard time talking in front of adults as it is, but I know that the idea of the triathlon and my brief explanation will conjure up serious emotions in my brain and I don’t know if I can hold it together. It may be my grief group breakdown all over again. Over the last week, I’ve been practicing my speech relentlessly. I say it in the shower, I say it while I rock Kai to sleep. I say it while I fold laundry and empty the dishwasher.

  Finally, co-workers are such an intimidating group for me. They know what happened and they’ve all been incredibly supportive, but the hard part is that nobody ever has a profound conversation or connection with a co-worker. I do not like when people at work try to hug me or touch me; it makes me really uncomfortable. Adequate proximity, both emotional and physical, is a must in the workplace. Two years ago Dennis, my fellow English teacher, gave me a hug right before winter break and it was a horrible experience. I turned bright red and left awkwardly afterward, and he spent all of his Christmas vacation thinking he had done something wrong, probably because my posthug expression was similar to that of a boy who had just been made to pull his pants down for a stranger. The worst part was, after Christmas break Dennis approached me and we had to have a conversation about the Christmas hug. I had to explain that he had not done anything wrong, that I was just a really awkward person. He said he felt so guilty because he could sense that I was uncomfortable. We never talked about it again.

  Everyone is always a little on guard at work. I, for one, have never really opened up to my colleagues, except through thank-you cards, but at school, it’s just not the time or place to make an emotional connection with people. But in my little speech, which is about three minutes, I have to say certain things. I fear one reaction: I will cry. I cannot cry.

  The meeting arrives. I go last, right before we do “good of the order.” I’ve been thinking about my speech the entire meeting, so by this point I am sweating. Right as I stand up I start to wonder if I smell too. Despite my perspiration and potential body odor, I start to talk. I tell them I’m doing an Olympic distance triathlon and raising money for the Leukemia Lymphoma Society. Then I have to get personal. I take a deep breath.

  “Last summer I really needed help from other people.” My knees start to shake. They are visibly wobbling. Shit. “I needed help and hundreds of people, people I didn’t even know, did everything they could to get me through a very difficult time in my life. The people in this room are no exception.” My face is red hot. I can feel it. I look around the room. I am starting to make people feel awkward. Shit.

  “This summer I’d like to do something to help other people.” I stop and swallow. My voice is about to break. Swallowing is the first sign that my nerves are slowly creeping up my body into my throat and mouth. If I don’t finish this soon, the high voice is going to break through. “Which is why I’ve decided to do this triathlon for the Leukemia Lymphoma Society.”r />
  I tell them that by tomorrow morning they will have a donation form and official letter in their mailboxes. Checks can be written to the Leukemia Lymphoma Society. I sit down as quickly as possible. I feel someone pat me on the back. I need to get out of here before the patting escalates.

  I am relieved once the meeting is over. I run out the door in fear that people will want to talk to me, which I can’t really handle right now. I feel embarrassed that I still have a hard time talking in front of people about things that aren’t even directly about losing Josh. I go back to my room to pack up my stuff.

  Paul, our athletic director, walks in the door. “Excuse me, Mrs. Taylor.” He always calls me Mrs. Taylor even though I’m one of the youngest people on the staff. I look up. He is holding a pen and a checkbook. “How do you spell leukemia?” He writes a check for one hundred dollars, hands it to me, and walks out of my room.

  • • •

  My juniors are currently writing their college essays. At the end of every eleventh-grade year, each student’s final writing assignment is to find a prompt from a college that he or she would like to apply to and write the essay. I see it as a starting point. In the fall of their senior year, they will revisit their essays with their twelfth-grade English teacher and hopefully continue to improve the essay. Some of them won’t use the essay they write, but it’s still good practice. Secretly, this is my favorite assignment to read.

  I tell my students that I will not be grading in the traditional sense. I will be brutally honest with my feedback, but I won’t “grade them down” for a mediocre piece. If they make the necessary changes, they get full credit. The idea is that the lack of a numerical score will help them be a little more creative and edgy. These are honors students, so most of them are used to asking the question, “What are you looking for?” They excel at following a format and analyzing a text. But the college essay is the opposite. In answer to the question, “What are you looking for?” the college essay would answer, “We are looking for the essay that doesn’t ask that question.”