Running Against Traffic

by Gaelen VanDenbergh

  By the second night, Paige was delirious and Bryce was faring much better. He ate half of a sandwich and drank a glass of milk. Then he hugged Paige, gratefully, and threw up in her hair.

  This must be what new mothers feel like, she thought. It was one o’clock in the morning, and Paige had stripped down to her bra and underwear. Her back ached as she bent over the bathroom sink, rinsing the vomit from her hair. The smell seemed to hang around her in a sour cloud. She heard Al in the hallway.

  Mothers handle this every day, she thought, splashing water on her face to wake herself up before going back to work on her hair. Sleep deprived and slimed, they soldier on. And you don’t have a choice, it’s never a question, you just wash up and keep trudging through. But she was not Bryce’s mother. So why was she sleep deprived and slimed?

  Al poked his head into the bathroom. He looked her up and down. “Oh man,” he said. He hesitated, seeming torn between jumping her nearly-naked body and dry heaving. There was definite bodily confusion happening. After a few moments he retrieved a towel from the corner closet and moved to sit on the edge of the tub. He held the towel up to Paige, raising his eyebrows and shaking his head. “You look a mess.”

  Paige took the towel and wrapped it around her head. “I feel a mess. I don’t know how moms do it.”

  Al smiled. “You’re a good mom,” he said. “And you need some solid sleep. Take the rest of the night. I’ll check on him.”

  Paige felt herself sway slightly, and she lurched for Al like Frankenstein, both arms extended. He stood and pulled her to him, draping her arms over his shoulders.

  Is this what family is? Paige wondered sleepily, her eyelids dragging closed. She let them sink and melted into warmth and safety, strong arms there for her in a troubled time. It wasn’t a choice for any of them.

  Paige opened her eyes halfway as Al shook her lightly. “Come on, sleepy. Let’s get you to bed.” He hoisted her up and she wrapped her legs around his waist and allowed him to carry her to her room.

  The next morning, Paige woke at eight and called Mr. Hackney. She told him that she needed to take the week off. He grudgingly agreed to it, but complained that she was inconveniencing him greatly.

  “I haven’t taken real time off since I started,” Paige reminded him, surprised by her calm conviction. “I believe I am entitled to two weeks vacation.”

  “What do you need vacation for? You’ve got nowhere to go,” Hackney griped.

  “Alrighty. See you next Monday, then.” Paige hung up the phone. She could hear stirring upstairs and she hurried to the kitchen to see if she could find something bland for Bryce to eat. Something that would stay in his stomach. Having to change the bed sheets one more time would send her over the edge.

  She coaxed him to nibble a few bites of bread. He sipped water and juice and held it down. She asked him again about getting help.

  “Where are the meetings held, like Alcoholics Anonymous, or Narcotics Anonymous?”

  Bryce shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “How about the church? Does the church do any of that?”

  Bryce shook his head. “I’m an atheist,” he mourned. “These groups make you chant about God and letting His will take over. No, I can’t.”

  “Even if you’re an atheist, can’t you get something out of it, like take the higher power message to mean whatever you believe? An untapped power within yourself?” Paige fished around for something that he could accept.

  “No,” he said, with more conviction than she had seen him have the strength for in days.

  Paige left him sleeping and walked downstairs, fretting. She paced the length of the house. She opened and closed kitchen cabinets, took the broom out of the closet and swept the hardwood floors, paused to admire the shine, then kicked off her sandals and paced the smooth surface barefoot. The smooth, cool surface calmed her nerves and helped her to think.

  After a long, hard run to the park and then through the park along the river, she arrived back at the house with ideas zipping through her brain so fast that she needed to get them out before they zipped away.

  She collapsed into a chair at the dining room table and reached for her cell phone, her breath slowing back to normal.

  Darnell picked up after two rings. “Al’s right here, you want to talk to him?

  “No, I need to talk to you. Bryce needs help.”

  “That kid’s beyond help,” Darnell said.

  Paige nodded. “I disagree.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “He won’t go to traditional meetings. What if we ran our own, here at the house?”

  “Again,” Darnell said, his rich voice lowering, taking on a tone of warning. “What do you want from me?”

  Paige felt a bit faint. She cleared her throat and squared her shoulders. “I need you run them,” she said, in what she hoped was a commanding tone.

  Darnell didn’t reply right away. Paige could hear glasses clinking, and someone laughing in the background. It sounded like Al. “No,” Darnell said.

  Paige winced. “You have to,” she insisted. Then she sighed and focused, changing her tone to silky adulation. “Come on, you are the only one in this town who is qualified. He admires you. He looks up to you, like a father.”

  “Ease up with the bull, would you?” Darnell said.

  “And he’s not the only one,” Paige gushed on. “You’re a community leader. I’ve seen people pull you aside to talk to you, confide in you. Your community needs you! There are so many head cases around here…”

  “Enough, already,” Darnell said. “I don’t have time to run your meetings. Forget it. Now, I have to go. Patrons are waiting.”

  “Wait,” Paige said, sharply. She chewed her lip in dread.

  “What is it?” Darnell thundered.

  Paige squeezed her eyes shut. “If you don’t help me, I shall be forced to tell Al that you and Deirdre are, and have been for a long time, secretly…an item.” Paige flopped back in her chair. She was going to have to call David and beg him to take her back, or find some other way to move far away, she decided. She was a mother hen pecking at a grizzly bear. Unwise.

  Darnell hesitated, probably planning her demise. Finally he spoke, quietly. “Oh no you didn’t.”

  “I did,” Paige sighed.

  He emitted a strange noise. Then a low rumble of laughter. “Alright. Get over here and we’ll discuss it.” He hung up. Paige reached for her bag and attempted to stand on her wobbling legs.

  Sitting in the bar at a dark, corner table, Deirdre – after swearing Paige into secrecy – explained how Darnell ran a sort of charitable organization, with her help. For years now, Deirdre had donated food from her store to support the food “tabs” that Darnell would run for people who had fallen on hard times. These tabs would last for weeks and then mysteriously disappear when people tried to pay them back. Usually it would happen when they scraped together a small fraction of what they owed, and Darnell would not be able to find the actual tally, so whatever they could throw his way would just settle it up. In the meantime, these people confided in Darnell about family or friends or neighbors who were in trouble, either they were hungry, jobless, had no heat, or had an illness. Darnell and Deirdre would put together food baskets or hot meals. They paid visits, spent time, stacked firewood, ordered heating oil and paid for it. There were children in Pleasantville who went home from school on Fridays and wouldn’t eat again until Monday. Deirdre and Darnell sent Carmen to the school Friday afternoons to fill backpacks with food to send home with the children. Paige started to ask them, at one point, where they came up with the money to do all of this but Al kicked her under the table, and gave her a hard look that suggested she should never ask that question. She pressed her lips together and listened to Deirdre and Darnell talk, often looking at each other. Their eyes were full of life and light, looking at one another, talking about their work. Their eyes held hands. Their eyes hugged each other in a glance.

  It was beco
ming clear to Paige why she would catch people quietly talking to Darnell in corners. Paige remembered spying them at dawn, loading Darnell’s truck with boxes.

  The Life Support Group would be open to anyone, who wanted help with anything. In this town, they really shouldn’t limit it to just alcohol and drug abuse, they all agreed. Darnell was the natural choice for meeting leader. Paige would host the meetings in her back yard, as it was private and fenced in.

  Paige’s head was still spinning. “Wow, Darnell,” she said. “You’re like Robin Hood.”

  “Right,” Al said. “If Robin Hood was fat.”

  Darnell’s huge hand shot out and Al went flying.

  It was decided that the meetings should be anonymous, like A.A.

  “I think people are going to recognize each other,” Paige said.

  “It’s symbolic,” Darnell said. “There will be no judgment or gossiping about it later. What happens there stays there.”

  “Like Vegas,” Paige said.

  Al shook his head. “Oh, it’s gonna be freakier than Vegas.”

  Chapter 23

  July in Wells Lake brought a few dinky fireworks displays, mostly bottle rockets and hunting rifles being fired off. It also brought picnics by the lake - to the delight of Dingbat and his girlfriend - more bugs, and second chances; or seventh, eighth, or twenty-fourth chances, depending on who was doling them out and to whom. Along with the sticky heat came reflection, and for Bryce it had to be put to paper in the form of peculiar poetry, written for and about Paige, perhaps in lieu of apologies, explanations, or rent. He taped them to her bedroom door. As disjointed as they were, often trailing off into stringy tangents, they seemed to be complimentary. Perhaps a tad grateful for her being in the world, or at least in whatever place she was in Bryce’s world. Sometimes they expressed concern, in very original ways, Paige thought. The words tumbled on the page like rolled dice or shaken salt.

  Paige ordered pizza for the household after the boys had spent their Saturday sanding and staining the new front porch.

  “Remember. Everyone needs to walk around and use the back door until tomorrow,” Al said, sliding a few slices onto his plate. “I love y’all but the two of you can be kind of absent-minded.”

  “Whatever,” Bryce mumbled, his mouth full. He was eating again, and enthusiastically making up for the recent stretches of eating nearly nothing.

  Paige faltered, Bryce’s recent poetry tumbling around in her mind. She wanted to mention it, perhaps to thank him for it? She wanted to know if he was writing it because of the bad and the ugly they had shared. She wondered if there was a volume of poetry out there written to Deirdre.

  “Paige!” Al reached over and poked her arm. “Pass your plate. See, this is what I’m talking about, the absent minded stuff. Don’t use the damn front door,” he warned, sliding a slice of pizza onto her plate and plunking it down in front of her.

  “I won’t,” Paige promised. Then she blurted “thanks for the poems, Bryce.”

  Bryce raised his head out of the trough. “How do you know they’re for you?”

  Paige faltered. “They say ‘To Paige’ on them, and they were taped to my door.”

  Bryce hunched over his pizza. “No problemo.”

  “You should keep going with that. Like, take some courses, try to sell your work to publications, you know?” Paige’s verbal brakes weren’t working. “Seriously, there’s a lot you could do with your writing talent. Lots you could do.”

  “I could, but will I?” Bryce tilted his head to one side and smiled patronizingly. “I think we all know the answer to that question.”

  “Seriously, dude, you call yourself an artist, take it more seriously,” Al said.

  “Why are you guys always trying to turn everything into money? Besides,” Bryce added, sagely, “It’s probably safer that I don’t have any cash right now.”

  Paige and Al looked at each other. The boy spoke the truth.

  Paige and Bryce sat together on rebuilt and freshly stained front steps of the house, Bryce and the porch finally dry, watching Al stretch and warm up for their morning run. Al had overslept by twenty minutes, and they were warmed up and waiting for the running group when he shot through the front door and into a flying leap from the porch to the grass, half dressed. Paige swallowed hard and tried not to gawk as he pulled on his tee shirt and flexed his biceps as he laced up his sneakers, apologizing for his tardiness.

  “Oh, that’s okay,” Bryce said. “Just move over this way so Paige can get a better view. Ow!” Paige punched him in the arm and felt her face flushed.

  Al ignored them, launching into a dramatic shadow-boxing routine. Bryce laid his head on Paige’s shoulder. Paige put her arm around him.

  “I’m sorry for everything, truly,” Bryce said.

  Paige squeezed his shoulder. “I know. It’s okay.”

  Bryce reached for his coffee cup without lifting his head. “It’s just hard, you know? But I think I’ve come a long way.”

  “Yeah, but how long are you going to rest on those laurels?” Paige asked.

  Bryce sighed petulantly and lifted his head. “I really hate running, you know?”

  Paige nodded, watching Al bob and weave.

  “But I feel so good afterward. Like I can do anything, and it’s no big deal, it’s not as overwhelming anymore. What’s that about?” he asked.

  “Your brain is producing chemicals that make you feel good,” Paige said. “Like dopamine.”

  “I do like dope.”

  Paige patted his knee. “Now you don’t have to buy it.”

  Bryce nodded. “Too bad I can’t sell it.”

  Paige gazed down the road, shading her eyes with one hand. The club, now at least thirty strong, was jogging up the road. “I think you already have,” she said.

  “What are they wearing?” Al asked, squinting at the group moving closer, all in yellow tee shirts with black writing. “It looks like a swarm of bees headed our way.”

  When they reached the yard, Paige could read the writing on the shirts. Wells Lake Running Club.

  Bryce smiled. “Deirdre never misses an opportunity.”

  After their run, Paige left Bryce and Al in the front yard to shoo the group back to town after a group stretch, and she slipped through the gate to the back to check on her garden. The fragrant tomato plants had been studded with marble sized green tomatoes the week before, and now, as she pushed aside some of the lanky branches, she saw flashes of orange and red. Paige lunged for them, and picked four oddly-shaped nearly ripe tomatoes. She poked around and found a couple of yellow and green peppers, and an eggplant that looked like a shiny black banana.

  The herbs in the planters had thickened and spread, filling every inch with fragrant green of varying size, shape and texture. She picked handfuls of all, not quite sure how to differentiate, and carried them in her shirt, along with the harvested vegetables. With her shirt rolled up and filled like a sling with her bounty, Paige stopped to check the zucchini plants, which had rapidly morphed into huge, strong-looking bushes shortly after they had been planted, but were producing lovely yellow flowers the week before. Paige took a quick step backward when she saw the flowers were gone, and in their place was an alarming number of what looked like swollen green baseball bats. She turned her back and walked quickly to the kitchen door. The zucchini plants were clearly on their way to taking over the world, and she decided she had better let them.

  Paige unloaded her shirt onto the counter and surveyed her vegetables proudly. She felt empowered and thrilled. She had made all of this happen. She had never made anything happen before, least of all growing life-sustaining food from the ground. She decided to put her new power to good use, and whip up a fresh, organic dinner for the boys. After all, Al was making steady progress on the old house. The kitchen was the last major project that she couldn’t afford, and then the walls needed spackling and painting, but that was all that was left to renovate.

  Bryce had managed to stay
clean for a month, and attended Life Support meetings regularly. Paige quickly regretted offering to have Darnell hold the meetings in her back yard, but at least it left Bryce with no excuses for why he couldn’t make it there.

  The boys deserved this for their hard work. She darted inside to find her journal.

  I’m a new woman. I can make food grow from the ground. I have flair, and creative passion, that will translate naturally into culinary panache! Fresh pasta, and hand crafted marinara using freshly picked vegetables. If all goes well, I might have to have friends come over for dinner parties. Good thing I only have four friends.

  Paige hung back from the stove, afraid of the hissing and burping splats her sauce was emitting against the lid that she had clamped over it in fear. She had discarded the recipe that she had printed out at the library from the Food Network website, it’s unwieldy rambling list of ingredients far too daunting, much less the several paragraphs of cooking instruction that followed. She decided she could remember enough tips and techniques from the shows she had watched to throw together a simple marinara. After all, she had grown the vegetables and herbs. That was half the battle, at least.

  Herbs…Paige glanced at the bunches of herbs that she had rinsed and thrown onto a cutting board. She forgot which were which, and she wasn’t sure which should go into the sauce. She wasn’t sure if all of the vegetables she had thrown in the pot earlier belonged in a marinara sauce, either. What the hell was a marinara sauce, anyway? She only knew that it was tomato based. Holding her head high, she marched to the stove, opened the lid to the pot and quickly tossed all of the herbs into the spitting sauce. It looked thin, and angry. She remembered seeing a chef on television adding tomato paste to thicken a sauce, once. She had no tomato paste, so she squeezed half a bottle of ketchup into the pot and left the lid off the pot to help the sauce thicken.