Girl Runner by Carrie Snyder

Author:Carrie Snyder
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2014-09-04T16:00:00+00:00

SMART, CORA. Suddenly, in her ninety-eighth year, at the home of her birth, New Arran, Ontario. Respected daughter of Robert and Jessica Smart. Affectionate sister of Olive and Aganetha, and half-sister to eight. Predeceased by all but Aganetha. A faithful nurse to many, she will be remembered. Think not of the coming night, but of the days we shared.

12

Homecoming

VOICES DRIFT AROUND ME. This is how memory works. I could be looking intently at the tiniest detail and not realize it, losing sense of the larger landscape in which the detail rests.

“Remember when we tried to build a fort out of these scraps? We were always building forts.” The young man digs around in the debris. “Remember when I was babysitting you, and you cut your hand on a nail and it was bleeding, and I wrapped it up in my shirt. I paid you two dollars not to tell Mom, and I threw out the shirt because I couldn’t figure how to get out the blood. Like it was a crime. We worked on that fort the whole summer. Bet it’s still here.”

“Two dollars!” The girl laughs. “I kind of remember that. Not really.”

“We came over here all the time. Looking for treasure.”

“Did we find any?”

Rustling noises. “I think the fort was over here.”

“What do you think she remembers—Mrs. Smart?”

“She’s clear, sometimes.”

“Don’t you feel sorry for her, Max?”

“Why should I?”

“She was this amazing runner, amazing—and look at her now. I can’t even imagine.”

Slowly I open myself to her, to him, I let them leak through my skin, her pity and her need, his camera lens, their youth.

I’ve known my body well enough to recognize its limits, and this chair is only the most recent diminishment in a long descending line. You never run again like you run as a child: without pain. Later, you reach a point at which you’ve run the fastest you will ever run—the pinnacle that goes unrecognized at the time. I remember whispering the word indestructible as I ran or as I approached a great grief, but I only chanted it because I knew I wasn’t. I never ran because I was strong, if you see what I’m saying. It wasn’t strength that made me a runner, it was the desire to be strong.

I ran for courage. Still do, if only in my mind.

Why do you run?

“Did she say something? Mrs. Smart?”

“Why do you run?” I pronounce each word as if it were standing by itself.

“She’s talking to you, Kaley.”

The sunlight is particularly piercing and cold.

“Why do I run?”

“Excellent question, Mrs. Smart!” The young man and his camera approve. “Why do you run, Kaley?”

The girl is struck silent.

“I don’t know,” she says slowly.

“Are you trying to run away from something?” her brother asks, genuinely curious.

“I don’t think so.” Very slowly.

“Then you’re running toward something?”

“Well, obviously, I’ve got goals. I want to break the Canadian women’s marathon record. I want to make the Olympic team. Obviously. But—” She stops altogether. She looks at the camera, then at me.

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