The Runner

I commute every day, from Jersey to the city.

It’s not bad really, just a bit hard to wake up in the morning sometimes, but I can cope, as long as I limit my beers to two at night, I know I can wake up with a clear head and drive for two and half hours to my office in the middle of Manhattan. My office surrounded by a million of others offices, with the same blue and black panelling and the same smell of polyester and chemical solvents.

I don’t hate my job, I quite enjoy it actually, I am an assistant art director for a publishing company and it pays quite well. Sure, it’s not exactly what I had dreamt when I enrolled in art school. No, that used to involve a bohemian, open floor apartment and canvas strewn across the room and lovers decorated with paint and the bruising substance of my kisses and art galleries and Paris.

But I guess that would have not been enough to pay my mortgage and college for my two daughters.

Marriage had crept up on me, one day I was graduating, puking my guts out in front of a bar and two years later I was saying "I do" in front of friends and family, my hand holding Jessica’s and promising her the present and the future, all and forever together.

I love Jessica, she is beautiful, caring, devoted and she loves Gretchen and Katherine very much. I have a good family, a nice home and a bit of a beer belly, but my wife has put me on a diet and I think I shall be able to shed it by the end of the winter. I want to make her happy, even if it’s hard not to stop at Burger King for lunch, but I am trying and she appreciates it.

We are a good team.

The mornings are already dark in autumn and the road is quiet in the pre-dawn, arches of petroleum rainbows on the asphalt speak of rain and the wet quality of Jersey’s winters.

I like these mornings, these quiet hours with my little daughters all wrapped up in their blankets and my wife’s sleepy eyes across the kitchen, a cup of coffee in her hand and a tired smile, a smile I kiss out of habit and silent understanding of mutual affection.

I drive carefully out of my driveway, turn the radio on and listen to the news, the chirpy voice rattling about taxes, war, death, the price of houses in a perfect rehearsed litany of everyday life and monotone, suburban reality.

I am a creature of habit, all the artistic spontaneity had to be put aside the moment they told me I had two daughters. I don’t think I mind though, they have eyes green as Chartreuse and they smile like the world is theirs and maybe, maybe one day it will be. Habit has become a safety net, something to believe in, and something to rely upon to make sure that if I follow all the rituals I will be able to go back home, see my girls again and make sure they are all right.

Habit is a sign of my cowardice, but I ignore it, because I have a family and they love me and they need me.

It’s the end of September.

This morning is the 28th and I stop at the traffic light opposite Tamblyn Park, the radio is playing a commercial for a new Chrysler and the sky is lattice and shell pink and I am too tired, too scared, too old.

He appears at the entrance of the park, wearing a well-worn grey tracksuit.

He waits a second to see if any car is moving, his dirty sneakers thumping the cold ground, he looks left and right, and then crosses the street with a fast jog, long legs poised and stretched in a perfect stride, his eyes cast in light behind the lenses of his glasses.

The runner.

He doesn’t look a day older than seventeen, with honeycomb hair and high cheekbones, long legs and narrow hips, his skin overtly pale, a sharp drop of a long spine and a flat ass.

A life drawing class in motion.

I look at his fading silhouette until the light changes to green and the scenario turns, once again, the same as it has always been.

I drive and my motions are mechanic, but the colours are muted, the sounds discoloured and my mind goes back to him, dissecting small details: the tapping of his fingers on his left thigh and the blue logo of his shoes, the nervous, slender neck. I play with the image, assembling and dissembling the puzzle until I can paint him inside my head.

And at night I sit on my couch, in the safety of my own house, trying to breathe through all my fears, through all my longings, through all the things I had forgotten, all the things I had made myself forget and take out the image from my memory, playing with it till my mind is fuzzy and I am not sure if I had just imagined him or if he was really there.

I wasn’t expecting to see him again, I thought that, like many teenagers, he was not going to wake up that early, to run every morning; but it’s another day and here he is.

The same boy, the same pointy face, the same glasses, his long legs jogging on the spot. His hair is wet with rain, the darker strands stick on his high forehead, he has a blue tracksuit on and a brand new pair of shoes, a promise of a million more steps. He sprints in front of my car and his wrists are small, rounded, the bones sharp over that white, white skin.

There were days when I was younger when I used to dream of a boy like him. I used to wake up in the morning with another embarrassing secret to wash frantically in the bathroom, scared that the stain could tell my parents what I had been dreaming of.

There were days in school when my fingers ached from the desire to draw the sharps lines of a boy like him on the stretched canvas, ached from the need to give a shape to my feelings and my confusion.

I used to dream of a boy like him when I was a boy like him. All sharp angles and paralysing fear.

But days like those had been lost, lost forever, or so I had thought.

Life is so strange in its twist and turns; I have spent a good portion of it perfecting who I was supposed to be, trying to cancel those days in which I could feel the beauty and the calling of another boy, in which I used to seat in biology picturing the way the skin on Gregory’s chest would feel under my fingers.

I have spent thirty-three years in a body I don’t really know, as if protected by a bubble made by my own lies.

I wrapped myself up and I FedEx-ed my true desires somewhere else, somewhere I will never afford to travel.

My parents come to visit on Friday night, they coo at the girls and mama shares recipes with Jessica and my father and me, we watch the game I Tivo-ed and we drink a beer and they have no idea who I am. I have no idea who I am.

I only know what I have got.

My girls, my wife, my house, a mortgage and a schizoid cat.

Mom and pop and high blood pressure, a reliable car and a good job.

I am Mr Suburbia and it’s not a bad life.

It’s just that I was not supposed to be here, I am usurping a place, I am impersonating a character and I am depriving Jessica of someone with something more than a well-rehearsed comedy of errors.

Monday comes again and it’s October already, in few days my girls will turn four and I am in charge of buying them those ridiculously over priced dolls they have seen few weeks ago in the window of FAO Schwarz. Jessica has told me five times already and I am pretty sure there will be another reminder in my e-mail inbox at work when I arrive.

The light is green this morning and all I catch is a glimpse of the runner emerging from the gates of Tamblyn Park, I turn my head in the vain attempt at seeing his face, but there are too many cars and I am supposed to drive to work and buy dolls and order a cake and finish two projects and be the man I chose to live as. I have no time for that boy. I have no time to think about days in which I was myself, in which a boy like that was a mirror of all my fears.

The party is loud, the gathering of a dozen of pre schoolers should be classified as a hearing hazard, but my little girls are happy, their chubby faces flushed and smiling and that’s good. That’s something good I helped making, so I am not a total failure isn’t it? I am ok. I am a good dad, I didn’t forget the dolls and I blew up a thousand of balloons and drew portraits and played hide and seek.

It’s late when we finally finish cleaning and Jessica is calling me to bed, I look at her and I want to tell her, I want to tell her about the boy, about the runner, about the sharp slope of his nose, the glinting of his glasses and the roundness of his shoulders. I want to tell her how two days ago I saw his hazel eyes, and the way he had nodded at me for letting him cross after the light had already turned green. I want to tell her about his soft mouth, the long, pale column of his neck and the grace of his steps.

“Honey? Come to bed, it’s late.”

I want to tell her all.

“Coming…”

In November the mornings are at their darkest. All is quiet in a prelude of snow and bitter cold and I drive with extra care, warm inside the car, my clothes crisp on my skin, the faint smell of fabric softener still lingering.

Thanksgiving is in few days and there is a turkey to be collected at the organic farm, there is the unspoken truce between my mother and my wife about how to make the cranberry sauce, there is another family lunch with too many relatives and too many calories and too many lies.

There is another year I have to be thankful for, another year to say grace and another year to cut the turkey in small pieces for my little girls.

There is this morning in the dead of the winter with the accident on the road to Tamblyn Park and the traffic is stuck and there is a bike with a small guy with dark hair and he is smoking a cigarette, his lips almost blue in this cold, cold morning and he is waiting. I can see it in his posture; one of his feet is on the ground and the other on the pedal to balance the bike up.

He waits, we both do.

I wait for another day to jump-start me toward the city and my job and my responsibility.

He waits for a boy.

The same boy I see every morning.

The boy that breaks the barrier of this morning’s mist and appears at the gate with a rush of white, cloudy breath and red, flushed cheeks.

The traffic is sluggish, but we start moving and I watch on my rear-view mirror as the boy smiles, a large mouth, generous and beautiful and the other one brings his head back and laugh, long and happy, the cloud of his breath an elongated sound I cannot hear. I am not allowed to hear.

I am tired today.

I had four beers last night and my eyes are bloodshot and droopy, my skin sallow and pale and I can see the disapproval in my wife’s eyes, the silent sigh she exhales when she hands me the Tylenol and the way she quickly pulls away when I kiss her lips.

“Be careful ok?”

“I will.”

It’s almost December and my beer belly is still in place, Jessica is not happy and neither is my doctor, apparently my cholesterol is too high and I should really switch to a low calories diet. I am trying, I really am, but sometimes I cannot sleep and sometimes I cannot look at my body without thinking about how much I hate that it is hiding so much of who I really am, that it is hiding a secret that has never been revealed, a story that has never been written.

Sometimes I wish I could go back to that day in 10th grade when Gregory had looked at me on our way home and had asked me if I liked him. Sometimes I reply the scene in my head and my words are quiet, like his had been and I don’t say something stupid, pretending I didn’t understand the meaning of his question. In my head I don’t hesitate. In my head he smiles and I say”A lot. I like you a lot.” and he smiles back.

Gregory and I were never friends after that day. We drifted apart and he moved to Chicago and I never did tell him, never did apologise for lying to him.

It did snow last night and I am driving carefully, the snow chains clicking on the frozen road; it’s a corner of Riverside Street that I see him, the same dark haired guy on the bicycle, he looks barely awake, his nose red and a yawn stretching a plush mouth. He pedals fast and I know where he is going, I can almost see the eagerness in his face, the desire and the joy buried under his tired eyes. He is going to meet up with the runner and I cannot help but feel a stab of melancholic joy in my heart, because they are so damn young and so beautiful, both of them.

Tamblyn Park looks like the perfect winter wonderland and the overgrown edges are covered in snow and shining icicles, the runner appears few second later, a black silhouette dressed in heavy thermal gear and that big smile blossoms on his face as soon as he sees the other boy barrelling down at breakneck speed.

The light is green today. I need to go.

It’s three days to Christmas and thank the Lord today is my last day before the holidays, one day to make sure all the presents have been bought, all the food have been purchased all the relevant relatives have been invited and politely so, in order to try and avoid another fight. It’s my last day before a week with my children and days of leftover turkey sandwiches and my mother’s potato salad, a week for making snow angels and taking Gretchen and Katherine to see Santa’s grotto and buy them caramelised apples. A week with the ghosts of my past and future Christmases taunting me to tell another lie, to kiss Jessica under the mistletoe. A week with this present of muted desperation, mitigated only by the image of the two boys and their smiles, by the perfect knowledge of their courage for being who they are, for living the life I was too scared of even dream of.

I can already see them from a couple of hundreds yards, they are standing really close today and the taller boy is not running and the dark haired one had dropped the bike on the pavement and when I stop the car and the light is red I can see their faces, close, so close and there is just a second of hesitation and then they kiss, quick and tender, a hint of embarrassment maybe, but I can see the pink tip of the dark haired boy’s tongue as it touches the other’s boy lips and the air around his mouth is hot and white.

I shiver in the well-heated comfort of my car and drive away.

Christmas morning finds me bleary eyed and exhausted, but my girls are so happy that I try to ignore the fact that is just six am and that I went to bed after three bottles of red wine.

They dive right for the pile of well stacked presents and I forget about the thumping between my eyes and just watch them squealing in delight at the sight of toys and candy.

Jessica is already in the kitchen, cooking, the smell is warmth and ginger and cocoa and coffee and it’s perfect.

Perfect.

A week passes shortly and it’s just two days to New Year’s eve and I am not looking forward to another resolution, to another promise I will try so hard not to break, but that will make me even more of a liar, even more of a coward than I already am.

I drive towards Tamblyn Park with a flutter of anticipation in my stomach, I smile at myself and at the situation I am in and it’s a smile of regret and self deprecation, something sad that makes my face looks even older than I already am, older than I already feel. I pray for the light to be red, like when I was a kid and I wanted to delay a dreaded day in school, only I am not a kid anymore and this life, this reality, cannot be escaped and the light is green and the only boy I see is the small, dark haired one, his face stony and pained, the cigarette dangling, unlit, from his luscious lips.

January is wet and dark and the hardened sleet cuts my face like a cold, cold razor.

It’s pitch black and I made another promise, I felt into this entrapment of well meant lies and told Jessica I am going to lose weight and we are going to try for another child.

”Maybe this time will be a boy.”

She had looked at me with so much hope in her eyes and I had said yes, yes of course. Whatever it is I will love them. I will. I already do and they are not born yet.

I will love them; I am bound to love them.

She had smiled then and took me upstairs and I touched her warm body and she had lied in my arms, quiet and soft and I told her I loved her and she said it back.

I just want to make someone happy.

I haven’t seen the runner in few days, I keep missing him, I only see the guy on the bicycle, but he never smiles and he looks as if he is waiting, but his shoulders are slumped and he never lights his cigarette, never looks through the gates, tapping his feet on the frozen ground to get warm. He just stands there and looks lost.

It’s Friday and I haven’t seen the runner in eight days, Jessica is talking on the phone with a friend and the TV is on with a murmuring of sport news and local time reports, I hear her gasp and look up, she is shaking her head and then hangs up.

She looks a bit shaken and she comes and sits by me, curling her body on my lap, taking my hands and her fingers are cold and bony and I rub them slowly.

“What’s wrong?”

“Do you remember Phyllis?”

I don’t, but I nod anyway and I let her continue with her story, my fingers still moving over her skin, trying to warm her up.

“She is in my book club, short, with blonde hair, dark eyes…”

I nod again and her eyes fill with tears.

“Jessica?”

“She has… had a son. A teenage boy, he was… “

Her voice breaks and she starts to cry and I feel this dreaded weight settling in my stomach and I shiver and she doesn’t know, nobody does, nobody and I hold her and she cries and I wait, I wait for her to tell me, to make it real. Because I know, I already know.

I am never going to see him again.

I will pass Tamblyn Park a million of other times and he will never be there again, never cross the road, never run in front of my car with a graceful, powerful jog. He will never smile at the other boy; never kiss his frozen mouth, never again.

I will never drive my car in the morning with that spark of hope igniting my heart, waiting to see them both, the two boys that I have dreamt of being all my life.

There won’t be another morning for him, no time for one more kiss.

There won’t be any more of my selfish daydreaming.

There won’t be anything left of him or me. Of what he was and what I could have been.

“Oh God… he was just seventeen, he was such a good student, a track athlete… they were even talking about US trials and… he was run over last Sunday, just outside Tamblyn Park, a drunken driver didn’t stop at the traffic light…”

She keeps crying and I don’t say a word, just hold her and let her talk, let her express sorrow for her friend and fears for our own little daughters and I don’t speak. I keep moving my hand on her back and she stops crying and I hold her some more and she says she loves me. I kiss her soft mouth and we sit in silence, the TV casting a sickly glow on our faces.

I cannot feel a thing.