But there was no reaching her. She wanted the baby and what do you tell a teenage Dope Fiend who’s made up her mind?
Mom said it would be good for them, that becoming a father would force Tony to grow up a little because “young men like him” have spent their lives “acting out addictive impulses.” Bonnie thought she was nuts.
Dad said, “They’re going to do what the fuck they’re going to do no matter what anyone says,” and it’s been that way “since the beginning of time,” so everybody had better get used to it.
When the child came, when we got the call that the birth was uncomplicated and the child was a healthy baby boy with blond hair and blue eyes just like his dad’s, there was a moment of hope when anything seemed possible, when we said, “Hell, they might just make it and I hope they do!” because how could you fail to love something so beautiful? How could anyone turn away from this perfect child of the universe, to leave him to wonder if he is alone in the world?
* * *
I WAS ELIMINATED in the city quarterfinals on the pink tartan track at Birmingham High but mine was the fastest time on the team and the fastest mile time of any freshman in the city. I even broke five minutes. I spent the summer in Oregon running the country roads east of the freeway. Sometimes Jake would follow me on a bike, his sockless Florsheim shoes slipping off the pedals as he sang “Push” by the Cure or told me about his new girlfriend. Sometimes I ran alone at dawn before the sun came up. Sometimes I ran late at night, sneaking out of the house after Mom and Doug went to bed. There’s a blackness out beyond I-5, beyond the edge of the city as I slip down the country roads, the kind of night for which God created darkness, as if only to give a canvas to the light.
By the end of the summer, I am more horse than rider. I know my body, when to push, when to conserve, how to build up the sphere, how to let it loose. I imagine the races at Hollywood Park. I don’t want to be the jockey. I don’t even want to be the man who wins the bet. I want to be the horse.
Dad comes to all my track meets, sitting alone in the empty stands to cheer for me before walking the three blocks home. It’s a surprise to see him there, waving and cheering in the sun as I lean into the final straightaway. He seems warmer somehow sitting on his hands with a smile on his face. He has no idea about the room and the chair, the anger that propels my workouts. I wonder if I’ve missed something crucial. He seems to understand the feeling of fighting through darkness, of trying to find a way to deal with something difficult.
My report cards are all on the fridge now. Dad will point them out when people come to visit like trophies in a case. “That’s an A in AP Chemistry, folks. No joke, that class.” When I receive an academic achievement award and I stand in a line with forty other students, afterward he says, “The only line I ever stood in was in Chino! Ha-ha.” But he studies the award, shaking his head, fingering the embossed letters that spell out our shared name. Under his breath he whispers, “Them sonsabitches ain’t buried us yet.”
“What?”
“I’m just proud of you.”
At the end of track season I qualify for the L.A. City Finals for the class C mile. The race is on my sixteenth birthday. The whole family comes to the pink tartan track built for the 1984 Olympics at Birmingham High School. “The whole mishpucha is here,” Bonnie says with a laugh. There’s Grandma Juliette and Grandpa Nat and my aunts Jeannie with her new boyfriend, Marc, Nancy, Dad, Bonnie and Laura. I can feel their eyes on me as Getahun and I warm up and stretch quietly in the grass.
We stand tall for the starting gun. I feel a lightness, like my stomach is filled with dust, my legs bunched like loaded springs. I’m rested, hydrated. I flex my fingers, bouncing on toes, testing a body that still feels new to me. The crack of the pistol echoes out over the stands and we are off. I tuck in behind the lead pack, the boys from Belmont and Granada Hills with their big distance-running programs two hundred strong that dwarf our ragtag team copying workouts from odd books found in running stores.
By the middle of the second lap, I lose track of them. I can see their heartbreakingly perfect strides pulling away. Maybe I will never leave. Maybe it is hopeless to imagine anything could ever change. I lower my head, trying to control the sphere. Not yet. By the middle of the third lap, I am tucked in behind the lead pack again, staring at the green Granada Hills singlet in front of me. Passing the stands, I hear the family cheering. I wonder if I’m going to let them down, if they came all this way for nothing. The thought disintegrates into a fever dream of images: Dad, Tony, the room, the chairs, Paul and Minto-Brown, running alone in the woods behind Englewood School after he disappeared.
At the start of the bell lap, I stumble. My foot catches tartan and for a second I think I’m going to fall straight onto my face. But I catch myself, running wide out into the middle lanes. My legs go rubbery and my stomach sinks as I try to keep my feet under me. I hear the bell and there it is: the empty chair. The blue light. Breathe. Push. Dad’s face looking at me. Tony staring at the ground. The walls covered in shadows, the floor dirty and stained, the light falling on the empty wooden seat. I hold the sphere in my hands, feeling it shake as I draft down the far straightaway. You will never leave. You have no future, no future, no future. I look up and we are in the final turn, the three runners in front of me leaning into their closing kicks. The sphere bursts and there is that sudden anger, that abandon and fear and helplessness all turning into fury as I pull out into lane two, the lane of dreamers, the lane of high hopes.
I hear the scream from the stands, my aunt Jeannie loudest of all, “Go, Mick!” as the shards of glass fall around my feet, something like sticky hot tar in my mouth, my face pulled back into a grotesque grimace. Faster, shithead. Fucking run. I see the expression on my coach’s face as I pass by the long-jump pit. He looks curious. Almost sad. Maybe I imagine that. Maybe I’m the one who feels the sadness.
I pull even with the lead pack, the green singlet from Granada Hills to my left. My stride has turned to shit, all jutting knees with my head moving wildly. I close my eyes and I am two inches tall in my head. When did we imagine we were at the bottom of a well? I fall forward and feel the light brush of the white tape across my chest and I tumble down into the soft tartan like a drunk.
I land on my back and grab my knees. Please. I must breathe. Please.
The first thing I see when I open my eyes is Getahun. He is standing over me, his big smile, his round head, his thin, unsteady English, yelling out, “Heeeeeey, boy! Look at that! Don’t you know? You won it! Take a lap, boy!” He pulls me up and throws his arms around my shoulders and we jog down to the green of the infield.
There’s a quick medal ceremony and a picture that runs on the front page of the Los Angeles Times sports section. I walk up to the stands to hug Grandma and Grandpa and Bonnie and Jeannie and Nancy and Laura, who gives me a kiss. Dad puts his arm around me and all I can think is he doesn’t know. He doesn’t even know that I’m here because of the chairs and the room, because I don’t want to be like him.
Afterward, we go for a Chinese food birthday dinner at Fu’s Palace on Pico Boulevard. Grandma Juliette cracks jokes over egg rolls and sweet-and-sour pork. “Did you see him? That’s my grandson! I never saw such a thing! Who knew our boy was so fast?” Grandpa Nat raises a toast and we all join in with our glasses held. I catch Dad’s eye. He keeps looking at me, curious, as he drinks his tea and gives me a wink, gazing off into space with a faraway look, then studying the spotless blue ribbon hanging around my neck like he won it himself.