Going for Kona (5 page)

I pushed a strand of Annabelle’s hair behind her ear. “Honey, I need to go check on Sam, okay?”

“Yeah. I know you do.” She put her head down on the side pillow of the couch. I laid a blanket over her legs. How many times had her father done just that? God, how I wished I had been the mother she needed when she was a little bitty thing, so I could be more of what she needed now. Precious jumped onto Annabelle’s lap, a more than adequate substitute for me. Annabelle stroked her back.

I crept up the stairs with dread, feeling lightheaded and bone-weary. I found Sam curled up on his bed. Every article of clothing he owned was on the floor, as were a photograph of his district champion middle-school baseball team, his entire collection of J.R.R. Tolkien books, a Game Boy, and a week’s worth of dirty towels.

His fists covered his eyes and tears poured out from under his clenched hands. Anger radiated from him, floated in the air around him. He reeked, not of his usual teenage boy smell, but of the rank odor of grief. It was almost palpable, and I had to force myself through it. He let me slip onto the bed and put my arms around him, but he remained wooden.

In my imagination, the words flowed out of me in a soothing river. I could almost hear myself say, “Adrian loved you, Sam. He loved having a son. He’s not completely gone because he will always be in our hearts. Life includes death, and we never know when it will take any of us, but don’t be scared about losing the rest of the people you love, like Belle and your dad and me, because odds are it will be a long, long time before anything happens to us.”

In reality, I choked on my own sorrow and only got out, “Are you okay?”

He didn’t answer.

“I’m sorry, Sam. I know you’re very sad. I’m sad, too.”

No response.

Everything I could tell him, everything I could think of that I should tell him, felt hollow and false. I couldn’t tell him that it would be all right or that I would be fine, because I didn’t believe it. And I sure couldn’t tell him the one thing that he and Annabelle wanted most to hear: that this was all a big misunderstanding and that Adrian was coming home.

“Do you want to talk?”

“Michele?” Brian used a whisper tone at half volume. It carried softly from downstairs.

I patted Sam and slipped down the stairs, feeling guilty that I was relieved to escape. “Yes?”

“It’s eight thirty. Evelyn is here. I straightened up your kitchen and ran another load of laundry. Is there anything else you need?”

“No, Brian, no, you have been great to me, but my parents will be here,” I glanced at the clock, “any minute.”

At the front door, Brian touched the mezuzah again and kissed his fingertips. I closed the door behind him and the click of the latch falling into place seemed unnaturally loud. I stood in the entryway, listening. No sound from Annabelle, nothing from Sam. Outside was quiet as death, too, and it was all that I had left, this nothingness. The only sound at all was the beat of my heart crashing in my ears. I froze in place and felt time slow until it seemed to stop. I floated above myself, and then away to a place where everything was a dark, endless blue. A part of me remained in Houston and the rest of me slipped into that other dimension, a limbo from which I couldn’t move forward. The silence kept growing until it was louder than my heartbeat, until it shrieked in my head like a banshee. I clapped my hands over my ears and that untethered part of me fell back into the here and now, ripping and tearing my insides as it tumbled back into place. I didn’t know if I could take this, or if I wanted to try.

The doorbell rang. I glanced up at the clock in the dining room. Nine o’clock. Thirty minutes had just vanished from my life. I had lost time again. Still, I couldn’t move, and I stared at the door. It flew open and I blinked. My parents rushed in, my tall blonde mother filling the space around me and changing its shape. I opened my mouth but nothing came out, so I yielded to her force before she said a word.

Papa rushed in. “Itzpa.” He put his arms around me and tried not to let me see that he was crying, too.

The alarm on my phone didn’t know that Adrian had died, and it chirped at five a.m. “Adrian, Michele, get up! Time to train! It’s going to be a great day!” it seemed to say. I considered smashing it to bits.

What day was it? I counted back and realized it was only Sunday, but for the life of me, I didn’t know what had happened to Saturday. A kaleidoscope of gray images whirled in my head. Tears, Sam angry, sleeping, Papa’s hugs, Annabelle bereft, sleeping, and my mother taking care of all of us. Yes, that was Saturday.

Precious didn’t know that Adrian had died either, and I could hear her helpful meow outside the bedroom door. She took her role as morning drill sergeant to the Hanson family seriously, and she enjoyed it in a restrained manner befitting her felinity. She allowed no deviations from schedule. Her claws clicked on the tile and I could picture the agitated swish of her caramel tail as she paced back and forth.

I pushed snooze. I hadn’t planned for this moment. The melatonin and Benadryl I had taken the night before were still fogging my head. My heart lay inert inside my chest, and my brain processed with the efficiency of a plate of scrambled eggs, but my body tingled and itched to get up and
do
it. It was Sunday, and it was time to train. Ah, paradox, go to hell, I thought.

Maybe it was the right thing to do, though: stay in my routine, drain my anxiety with exercise, and take care of myself. It was normalcy. It was moving on.

Maybe it was, except that it felt wrong to be alive, much less doing our things without Adrian. And really, I didn’t want to move on. I wanted to stay in bed, under our sheets that smelled like my husband, and pretend he was still there with me.

The alarm blared again. Without further thought, I gave in to the habit, the obsession, in a way that Adrian would have understood and applauded. I dug in my workout drawer in the dark for a pair of bicycling shorts and a jog bra, then snuck into the living room with the water bottle I kept at my bedside.

La Mariposa, my beautiful orange and black bicycle, was waiting for me in the darkness on its training stand. When Adrian gave it to me, he’d caressed its custom paint job and said, “Let’s see you fly, little butterfly.”

I had pictured the little bicycle racing over a country road, wheels barely touching the ground. “It’s perfect. Where did you find it?”

“My imagination.”

I pushed the memory away and tucked my locket on its long chain into my sports bra. I slipped on my bicycle shoes, hopped on and cleated in, then set the timer on the Garmin 310XT training watch that I never removed. For the next two hours, I pushed with my right leg and pulled with the left. I concentrated on my form, on my cadence, on not thinking at all. The spin of the pedals and wheels soon matched the spin in my head. Whursh whursh whursh whursh whursh. Faster and faster they spun, and my mind with them, into a trance. Whursh whursh whursh whursh whursh. I didn’t turn the TV on or listen to music like I normally would. I just stayed there with the sound of my own breathing and the bicycle going nowhere at eighteen miles per hour.

A thought broke through my trance state. No, not a thought, more like an image that became Adrian’s face. Then a sound: Adrian’s voice. The image grew vivid, the sound grew louder, and they transported me back to a moment like I’d never left it.

“Get your speed up, and then lay yourself over, one arm at a time. Don’t get in a hurry about it. Like this.” Adrian had laid his own body flat and steady into his aerobars. We were out near Waller on a farm road with less shoulder than I liked, and he was teaching me to use the new aerobars on La Mariposa. They would help me ride farther faster by reducing wind resistance, only they required me to stretch forward and balance my weight in the armrests over the front wheel, and they scared the crap out of me.

“I’m off balance, Adrian. I’m going to fall.”

As I looked back on it, I could see myself overreacting to the subtle balance shifts. When a red Chevy Silverado zoomed past, the surprise and wind gust nearly knocked me over. I’d squealed.

“You should probably sit up when cars pass us, for now.”

I snapped at him. “I can handle it.”

He chuckled. “Yes, I know you can.”

I had snuck a glance at him then, and I froze the memory of his face in my mind now, lingering on each laugh line and the whiskers he had missed in his hasty pre-ride shave. Oh, Adrian. Adrian.

Precious hopped up on a bookshelf and watched me like she expected a conversation. Adrian’s image flickered and died. Reluctantly, I turned my attention to the cat and spoke to her in short bursts between breaths.

“You’re the only one I didn’t tell, aren’t you, Precious? I’m sorry, you’re part of the family. You have a right to know.” Tears mingled with the sweat dripping off my face. “Adrian is not with us anymore. He’s not just on a trip. So don’t be mad at him.” Precious didn’t like us to break routine and stay away from the house, and she would bite our ankles for days after we returned. “I’m going to need you to snuggle Belle and Sam. Remember that dog in Peter Pan? Nana? Well, you need to be like that dog. Love them.”

The cat’s expression didn’t change, but she didn’t break eye contact either. She swished her tail once and laid it to the side of her.

“I don’t think I’m going to need your help, though. I’m strong. I’ll be fine.” A knot in my throat strangled the last few words. “Really, I will. I will be fine. I will be fine. I will be fine. I will be fine.” I kept whispering the words over and over, a fast tempo in time with the pedal strokes.But I knew it was a lie.

I smelled Chanel No. 5, and a hand touched my back. I yelped in mid chant and half-jumped off the saddle.

My mother. “Good morning.”

I glanced at my watch and pressed the backlighting: 6:15. Even in the predawn light I could see her pressed turquoise velour tracksuit and bright red Clinique smile. My mom gets up at six each morning, no matter what, to conquer days bulging with causes to support and First Baptist Church events to chair. Like tightly wound mother, like tightly wound daughter. She disguises it with a veneer of Southern charm, but I am the carnival version in a funhouse mirror, garish and misshapen next to her razor thinness, perfect bearing, and cool composure. Or I was until Adrian. He had made it easier to be me. He made it
all right
to be me. I was not ready to let him go.

“Good morning, Mother.”

“You’re up early.”

Ah, here was the tricky part. Did she mean it was good that I was up early, or bad? Was she empathetic? Approving? Critical? You could never tell with her, because no matter what she said, she delivered it with a smile. I chose the most positive interpretation.

“I couldn’t stay in bed.” I lifted the corners of my mouth, trying for self-deprecating although it felt like a rictus on my face. “This makes me feel,” I paused and searched for the words, “less bad.”

She looked at me for several beats without blinking. “You are your father’s child.” Her emphasis on “are” made it clear that I could choose a less positive interpretation this time. “I’m going to make coffee and breakfast, then I thought we could work on the final to-do list for Adrian’s service.” She turned to go, then stopped and looked back at me. “I know it’s hard, but we have things to do, Michele, and you have to pick up Adrian’s parents at noon.” She headed toward the kitchen.

Today was a compromise date for the funeral. When we made plans Friday night, my mother insisted that we had to hold the service within the week out of propriety (her version of it, at least), but I refused to have it on a weekday. I had kept my reasons to myself, but I didn’t want to give people time to find out and come. I wanted to be as alone as I could in my anguish.

A light broke the darkness at the doorway into the kitchen, and I pedaled on in the living room alone.

Adrian’s parents were great people, but I hadn’t spent much time with them. They had Adrian late in life and never shared his zest for adventure, preferring to stay put in their quiet little town on the Oregon coast, and between the demands of work, training, and teenagers’ activities, we had only visited them twice. Something to add to my list of regrets. I called them Friday night, then booked tickets for them to come to Houston on Saturday.

The weight of their emotions, of the emotions of all the other people who loved Adrian, pressed down on me. I didn’t have the strength to carry theirs and mine, too.

***

An eternity passed before I arrived with my in-laws to meet my parents and kids at Crosspoint Church. I wish I could say we attended regularly, but people really knew
of
us more than they
knew
us. Long Sunday workouts took precedence over organized religion in our lives. Still, it provided a great place for a runaway Baptist girl to celebrate Easter and Christmas.

We walked into the vestibule with me on one side of my wobbly mother-in-law and my father-in-law on her other side, each of us holding one of her arms. I could still hear the whursh whursh whursh of bicycle-like static, background music to the cacophonous anti-melody of the voices around me. How could I have thought people wouldn’t find out about our rushed service and show up in droves? Adrian’s death had made the news in a big way: Internet, newspaper, and television. ESPN ran a segment on it every hour all weekend, with the picture of Adrian swooping me over backwards at the book launch last Thursday night, a lifetime ago. Now people came at me from all sides, but none of them Sam, Annabelle, Papa, or my mother. The interlopers hugged me, said wonderful things, cried, and wrung my hand. Some of them clung to me as if I could somehow bring Adrian back, some of them people I barely knew.

Many I did, though. A large contingent of the lean and sinewy, people from the many triathlon, bicycling, running, and swimming groups Adrian supported had come. They stood out. So did Scarlett, who had accented her mourning black with a scarf that matched her nails. I’d tried for invisibility in my black knit dress, but it didn’t work. She spotted me. I wanted to clasp my butterfly with both hands and click my heels together and let my magic locket fly me someplace quiet and private, someplace I could cry with no one watching.

Scarlett made her way over to me. “Oh, honey, I am so sorry,” she said. She kissed me on the cheek and swallowed me in an embrace. “If there’s anything I can do, anything.”

“Thank you.” I pulled back to make introductions. “Scarlett, these are Adrian’s parents. Mr. and Mrs. Hanson, this is Scarlett Thomas, the publicist for the book Adrian and I wrote.”

They shook hands all around. Scarlett leaned in and whispered in my ear. “This really isn’t the time or place, but later, soon, we need to talk about your TV interview this week. Because they still want you. Even more now. I’ll call you tomorrow morning.” Before I could reply, because she had left me a bit speechless—more like aghast, really—she leaned away from me and said at normal decibels, “Hey, is that Apolo Ohno?” and pointed at a short man in dark sunglasses.

“I can’t imagine why it would be,” I said.

Of course, I knew it was Apolo. Adrian had written an article for
Multisport
about the speed skating and
Dancing with the Stars
champ’s training for Kona. Thus began an unlikely but genuine friendship. Apolo even took us to dinner once when he was in Houston. Adrian ran with a coterie of celebrity friends, but he didn’t publicize it. Apolo dipped his head at me and ducked into the sanctuary.

Scarlett stared after him. “Well, okay. And I’ll call you.” She kissed me again. “Nice to meet you both, Mr. and Mrs. Hanson, and I’m so sorry.” She left.

“Is there a place I could sit for a moment, dear?” Mrs. Hanson was swaying a little. She shrank more every time I saw her, and she made me look big. Beside us, Mr. Hanson with his white hair and beard towered like a polar bear.

“Of course,” I said. I led them to some leather club chairs flanked by tables jammed with floral arrangements. Lilies as far as the eye could see, on every flat-topped surface in the lobby. I hate lilies. I hate their sickeningly sweet smell, I hate their drooping white petals, and most of all I hate that they are the flower of death. They shouldn’t be here, I thought. Adrian should.

I patted Mrs. Hanson’s shoulder. “You’ll be fine here until we go in.”

“Thanks.” She squeezed my hand.

Mr. Hanson crumpled into the chair beside her and his voice quavered. “It’s a lot for us. The traveling, losing Adrian. We never thought he’d go before us.”

Me either. I nodded, my lips pressed together, and made a show of studying the flowers. Through my fog I couldn’t help but notice a large arrangement stuck off to the side. Not lilies. Bright flowers, gerbera daisies and tulips. It drew me in like a lost bee. I excused myself from my in-laws to look at the card and almost smiled. It was from Katie Connell, one of my roommates from Baylor Law School. She had seen the ESPN segment and left me a distraught voice mail message earlier, explaining that she couldn’t make the service. But her personality certainly had. I kept scouring flowers and cards, my back to the crowd.

“There you are.” Sam’s voice said whining but his eyes said relief.

I lifted my arm to drape it around the waist of my much taller son. “You’re here. Good.” He cleaned up nicely in the shiny black suit he’d insisted we buy for last spring’s baseball banquet. It looked a little short at the wrists and ankles.

“Gigi dragged us here an hour ago.” He tugged at his blue striped tie. “When can I take this off?”

“After the service.” I reached for his hand, pulling it away from his tie. “Where’s Belle?”

Sam’s eyes were on his phone, which he’d pulled out of his pants pocket. He couldn’t carry it when I needed him to, but he had it out at Adrian’s funeral?

“Can you put that away until we get home, please?” My voice sounded tight. I flexed my jaw several times and swallowed.

Sam glared at me and shoved it back in his pocket.

“Thank you.”

“Mrs. Hanson?” I turned around to see a large shiny pompadour walking toward me on short, thick legs. I gave my head a tiny shake. It was the funeral director, and he was a normal middle-aged man, except for his hair. “We’re ready to seat the family now.” He touched my back and applied gentle pressure to guide me toward the inner sanctum.