Running Against Traffic Page 7

  She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, and bounced in place a few times, timidly. The shoes were thickly cushioned and springy. Her own ruby slippers, ready for transport. She checked to see if they were sparkling, and in a way, they were.

  Paige bounced to the bathroom. Al had replaced the cracked mirror, and she looked into the new, whole glass. She pulled her hair into a tight ponytail, and started her usual conversation with herself. “Plaster a smile on your face,” she said, trying to sound encouraging. “Warm up, and just go. Don’t think about it, just go outside, and…”

  “Who are you talking to?” Al poked his head around the corner, causing her to scream and jump.

  “Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

  Al extended a clunky work boot. “Sneak? You didn’t hear me on the stairs? I think the neighbors heard me on the stairs.”

  “No. Now, if you’ll excuse me,” she said, squeezing past him through the doorway.

  “Hey,” Al said, leaning against the door frame. “I fixed the hole in the porch. Where you going? Is that my sweatshirt?”

  Paige could feel herself blushing hot. “I’m…I’m going running,” she said. Fake it, fake it, fake it…You big faker…

  Al raised an eyebrow. “I did not know you did that.”

  “Well, now you do. Bye-bye.” Paige darted down the stairs and out the door.

  When one first emerges from a hole where they have lived for most of their life, the sunlight can be blinding. Paige dove forward, her insides knotted, her body weak and trembling with panic. After a few blocks, however, the twisted knots began to shake loose, as her feet pounded out a rhythm against the road, and she tunneled in on trying to catch her breath, forgetting about her panic attack. Forced to focus on the pure physical, everything else melted away. She became enflamed legs, and ragged, burning lungs and the sweat dripping into her eyes. She let go of everything else because she had to, and it all floated off into the sky.

  When she had looped through town and back home, she limped up her driveway to her front yard and paused, doubling over and wheezing, her hands on her knees, ready to collapse onto the ground and wait for either her breathing return to normal, or for the cold clutches of death. Unfortunately, Al and Bryce were both standing on the porch, eyeing her up and down.

  Paige straightened up, twitching with random stabs of pain as if someone was jabbing at a voodoo doll made in her likeness. She smiled brightly, teeth clenched. “Hi guys,” she squeaked, hobbling up to the steps to hang onto the railing.

  “What in hell happened to you?” Bryce demanded, gesturing at her hair, much of which had come loose from the ponytail and was stuck to her burning face in sweaty gobs. “Ew,” he said, taking a step back. “You’re all gross.”

  “Am I? I hadn’t noticed,” Paige panted cheerfully, before pushing through the front door and crawling up the stairs to the bathroom to throw up.

  She ran herself a scalding bath in the chipped claw foot tub, locked the bathroom door and slowly lowered herself into it. Her aching limbs and every inch of her skin tingled, her body liquefying. Her mind buzzed as if filled with champagne, thousands of fizzing bubbles softly popping into sprays of giddy gold.

  Later Paige rubbed lotion into her steamed pink skin and dressed in a pair of soft, faded blue jeans and a fitted argyle sweater. She dug her make up bag out of her dresser drawer and found some red lip gloss and black mascara. Why not, she thought, quickly applying both. She surveyed her reflection. Having not had her hair cut or straightened, it tumbled around her shoulders in dark waves. Her bangs framed her light brown eyes more softly, and she pushed them aside and found herself looking at herself curiously, rather than through the eye of a guardian, keeping the watch for needed tweaks and pinches.

  She grabbed her purse and yelled to the boys that she was going to the library. Al yelled back that he would make dinner. Bryce yelled to her to bring back pizza and to take his bicycle. She was grateful for the offer, as it hurt to walk, though there was no way she could ride and balance a pizza. She also had no idea where to get a pizza. They would have to be brave and eat Al’s food.

  Peddling slowly through the darkening town, her legs burning even from this minimal effort, Paige listened to sounds of wildlife and watched the branches of the tall trees sway in lacy silhouette against the deep orange and gold sky that soared over the town. Yards were vacant, tricycles and hanging laundry abandoned for the dinner hour. Paige turned down another empty road and peddled past the local school to the single story brick library building on the corner. She parked the bike against a tree and made her way up the weedy path to the warm glow of the front picture windows.

  She headed straight for the front desk where a plump and wide-smiling librarian was playing with a toddler seated on her desk. Paige asked what sort of books they had on running. The young woman handed the toddler a puppet from a box on the floor and tapped her keyboard. “Let’s see,” she chirped. “We have The Complete Book of Running, The Running Guide for Idiots, Beginning Running, and Country Running.” Paige tapped her fingernails against the counter and considered the size of her shoulder bag. “I need a library card,” she said, “and if you could please reserve those for me, I’ll come back tomorrow for all.”

  Chapter 10

  Al dusted off a section of hardwood from the top of one of the thick plastic-covered piles in the living room and held it out for Paige to examine. “We’re doing the floors today,” he said. “What do you think?” Paige wiped the dust from the wood with her sleeve and ran her fingers down it. It was smooth as glass, and the color was light, but warm, reddish brown. “I love it,” she gushed, realizing that she didn’t have to fake that. What is it?”

  Al was clearly delighted with her delight. “Red oak. It’s nice, isn’t it? It will lighten the place up like you won’t believe, but won’t look washed out like some of the other light colored woods. It’s prefinished, so once it’s in, it’s done.”

  When Paige returned home that evening, she opened the front door and was greeted by the most beautiful expanse of floor that she had ever seen, a sea of shining red oak that swept from her feet through to the kitchen doorway. The boys had put away all of the tools, and wiped away the dust. Paige got down on her knees and pressed her hands against the smooth, cool wood. She crawled through to the empty dining room and lay on her back, giggling. Bryce came down the stairs and walked to where she was sprawled.

  “What are you smoking? Give me some,” he said, standing over her. She looked up him. “These floors are so amazing,” she said, to explain her horizontal state.

  Bryce looked around. “Never mind, I have a stash.”

  Paige sat up. “Should you be…”

  “I’m not drinking, right?” He walked away. Paige lay back on the floor again and closed her eyes. She moved her arms out and back to her sides, as if she was making a snow angel. This had to be one of the happiest days of her life.

  Bryce returned with the quilt from her bed. A joint was hanging from his lips. He spread the quilt and they moved to lie on it. Bryce lit up the joint and inhaled deeply. “Here,” he said before exhaling smoke into the air. Paige sat up and took the joint from his fingers.

  “Did you live with Deirdre too, when you were a kid?” she asked, taking a drag. The smoke burned in her throat.

  Bryce propped himself up on one elbow and nodded. “My mom was always partying. Meth, coke, whatever she could get her hands on. She was really young,” he added, as if to excuse her. “And totally bipolar. When she wasn’t drugging she was whoring for the drugging. Know what I mean?” He spoke as if everyone had someone in their life that lived this way.

  Paige tapped the joint on the edge of the soda can ashtray the Bryce had provided and rolled onto her back to stare at the ceiling. “Was she ever home? Who took care of you before you moved to Deirdre’s?”

  Bryce shrugged. “Who took care of you?”

  “Nannies. Then Chloe, my aunt’s housekeeper.” She remembered t
he afternoons she and Chloe had spent together in the attic, her favorite room. They had arranged a lounge area up there with an old sofa, blankets and throw pillows. Chloe found Paige up there often, and took to bringing up snacks and soft drinks. They dug through the boxes of books in storage and read, or chatted, until Chloe had to get back to her duties.

  Bryce nodded, squinting at her. “I thought as much.”

  “What did you think?” Paige asked, handing him back the joint.

  “I thought we were the same.” He reached for her hand and picked it up, holding it for a moment before letting it fall.

  Paige tried to clear her head. “But, who took care of you when your mom was off…doing her thing?”

  “Other family members and neighbors would feed me and pay our bills. Then Al started bringing me with him to Deirdre’s. I started staying over, most nights, but one night I got worried about my mom, because she would call me, sometimes. Al stayed to watch Carmen, and Deirdre brought me home. My mom was there, OD’ing right in front of us. She had a seizure.”

  Paige shivered. “How old were you?”

  “Seven or eight.”

  “Did she die?”

  “Oh hell no, that was like life number three out of her nine. Deirdre called 911 and took me back to her place as soon as the ambulance came. She wouldn’t let me go back except to visit, after that.”

  Paige turned her head to look at Bryce. As if watching a movie, she saw the seven year old, holding Deirdre’s hand, watching his mother dying on her apartment floor.

  Bryce pushed himself up and sat cross-legged, pulling his curls into a short ponytail using a rubber band from around his wrist. “I’m starving, are you starving?”

  “Yes, really, really starving. What can we eat?”

  Bryce considered this for a moment. “The neighbors keep chickens.”

  Over a picnic of bread slices dipped in barbecue sauce, potato chips and a gallon of lemonade, Paige couldn’t stop asking Bryce questions, fascinated by what she considered to be his declaration of their bond. Bryce told her he did pretty well, turning tricks at the University, eventually buying himself a used car with his income and renting out one of Deirdre’s rooms at the boarding house that she lived in and ran.

  Paige must have been wearing a pained expression because Bryce churlishly clapped his glass down on the floor and retorted “Cut the prudish princess shit. It was just some students, and a few professors. Educated people, stuck in the closet. Not like I was drumming up business at the bus depot. Anyway, you think I’m cute now? You should have seen me at eighteen.”

  “Weren’t you worried about your safety?”

  “I only got smacked around a couple of times. Mostly by homophobes, who still hired me, mind you, over and over. And once or twice you get caught in some redneck hate. Some asshole punches you in the face for being who you are and them being drunk at the same convenience store. And what, what were they really afraid of? Themselves! The truth!”

  “I blame your mother for all of this,” Paige said.

  “All of what?” Bryce looked at her, his eyes narrowing but his face inscrutable. He seemed to be about to speak, but instead, he looked ahead and the thought visibly left him. “I’ll bet if we had just socks on, we could slide all the way across the house,” he said. Paige heard the seven year old boy saying I’ll bet if we had enough balloons, we could fly over those trees. She realized that she was very stoned.

  Bryce kicked off his boots and hopped to his feet. “We need music for this,” he cried, making a mad dash for the stairs. Paige stared after him, and was still staring at the stairs when he returned a few minutes later after much crashing about overhead. “Big Bad Voodoo Daddy,” he said, plugging his CD player into the wall and hitting play. The kicking beat of the swing music started and Bryce cranked up the volume to full blast and slid across the floor in his socks. Paige eagerly kicked off her shoes.

  Al threw open the front door a few hours later and stood watching them with his arms folded across his chest, feet planted wide. Paige and Bryce skidded into each other and stood staring at him, wide-eyed, clinging to each other like guilty children.

  “I have a message from our neighbor,” Al said. “Stop smoking the Devil’s lettuce, and go to bed.” Bryce flicked off the music and they slunk sheepishly upstairs.

  Paige lay awake in her bed. She couldn’t fall asleep, though she was so tired the walls were moving. The moonlight was bright and lit up her bed like a spotlight. She hated being in that spotlight, the ring of a circus.

  Paige thought about people who were a part of her life, how she has lost touch with the few friends she ever had, and David had become her only real connection. No matter what happened between them, he was someone in her life who was obligated to sit up and talk to her at two a.m. Not that she would have asked him to.

  She sat upright and hugged her knees. Who could she talk to now, she wondered. Al, she could wake up Al and talk to him if she needed to. He would get up and talk to her. Al was her best friend. That’s what best friends do, after all.

  Relieved, Paige grabbed her pillow and crept across the hall to Al’s room. His door was slightly ajar, and she pushed it open and tiptoed to his bed. She stood looking at him for a moment, not sure of what to do. He was lying on his back, his lips parted, softly snoring.

  “Al,” she whispered, loudly.

  “Mmm.”

  “Al, can I sleep in your bed?”

  He opened one eye. “Say what?”

  Paige looked down at her toes, embarrassed. “I need...I need company.”

  Al groaned and propped himself up on one elbow, rubbing his eyes. “Paige, you’re still baked, aren’t you?”

  “Um. Lil bit.”

  Al picked up his pillow and hauled his feet over the side of the bed to the floor. “Come on, let’s get in your bed, it’s bigger.”

  Paige woke the next morning feeling toasty warm and cozy. Al’s back was to her and she moved closer to him and put her arm around him, pressing her face to the back of his tee shirt. He stirred, and then turned over, his eyes half closed, coming into focus. They looked at each other for a long while through eyes thick with sleep and something else that made Paige’s breathing shallow. She held her breath, not moving a muscle as his hand moved in the air over her face as if to smooth back her hair, and then it dropped to the blanket. He threw back the covers. “Okay, Snoop Dog, up and at em. We all gotta work today.”

  Autumn blew by in a cold gust, and with it blew the crunchy brown leaves, and the cool temperatures dropped sharply and suddenly. Paige gasped as she opened the front door on a November morning and was enveloped by the raw chill. She slammed the door shut again and ran upstairs to Bryce’s room where he was still sleeping. She yanked back the blankets and leapt over him and into the bed, pulling the covers back over both of them, shivering.

  “Mph,” Bryce murmured. “Lady, whaddya want?”

  Paige’s teeth were chattering. “It’s so cold out! And this house is freezing. Warm me up!” She burrowed against him.

  “I’m going to have to charge you if you keep this up. Turn on the heat,” Bryce mumbled, patting her back. “Do aerobics. Get creative.”

  “I don’t know if the heat works. We’ve only been using the woodstove.”

  Bryce groaned and rolled upright, dragging his legs over the edge of the bed. He rubbed his eyes and blinked a few times. “Okay,” he finally said, reaching up to pat down his curls that were standing up on end like springs. “Here’s what we do. We wake up Al and make him deal with it, and then we go drink some caffeinated beverages in front of the wood stove. Now stop groping me and go make a fire.”

  Al flipped a switch on the thermostat on the wall of the dining room and they all huddled together like meerkats, peering this way and that. After a minute a great thumping and clanging seemed to shake the house, and they all flinched and shrank back, eyes on the ceiling.

  After listing to the noise for a moment, Al straightened and exp
elled a defiant harrumph. “Don’t worry,” he said, hooking his thumbs in his belt loops. “The pipes are fine, I checked them myself.”

  “That makes me feel a lot better,” Bryce said, rolling his eyes and moving to hunch over the wood stove again.

  “Seriously,” Al said, “that’s just the way it sounds in these old houses when the hot water is coming into the pipes. I should probably check the oil tank, though. Anybody got any money in case it needs to be filled?” He and Bryce turned to look at Paige.

  “Oh, great,” She said. “I have to pay for that too?”

  “Don’t look at me,” Bryce said. “You made me quit my other job.”

  Paige sighed and slid over the arm of the sofa to lie face down. This was true. Bryce had temporarily given up hooking, at her urging, probably just to shut her up, but the end result was what mattered. “I’ll see if Hackney got anywhere with David,” she mumbled, her face in the couch cushion.

  Apparently, Hackney had gotten somewhere with David, because the following week a substantial check arrived in the mail. Paige eagerly deposited it into her parched bank account, called the oil company for a delivery, and made a beeline for the liquor Store. The owner was actually awake and at the register. Paige selected a bottle of vodka and a bottle of white wine. Hoisting her bag over her shoulder and re-adjusting her scarf, Paige decided to pay a visit to Deirdre.

  The sleigh bells on the door of Carmen’s Grocery jingled cheerfully and brightness and warmth spilled out as she opened the door and pulled her inside. Carmen was on a ladder, tacking strings of paper pumpkins and turkeys to the wall. Deirdre popped out of the back room and smiled at the work that her daughter had done. “Paige, how do like this?” she called. “Very festive, don’t you think?”

  Paige nodded, realizing with a sick feeling that the holidays were indeed around the corner, and she had no one to spend them with. How ironic, she thought, that she never needed anyone until they were all gone. This was a definite down side to the whole coming-out-of-the-hole thing.