AMANDA RYERSON LIVED three doors down from me in a rural area of the city. She was attending university in town and still lived with her parents. She was a beautiful, cheerful, twenty-three-year-old woman. She ran every morning; dressed in her running gear and a sports bra, earbuds in, and moving at a pace I could no longer maintain at my age of forty-two. She had lovely brown hair cut short the way I admired and a perfect complexion.
I had been imagining having sex with her for a couple of years. She looked energetic and exciting. She filled my fantasies from time to time.
My wife passed from cancer two years ago. It was horrible and excruciating and I still woke in a sweat remembering the worst of her days. Cancer is horrible. It robs you of all your dignity. Now, when I try to remember how my wife looked I can only see her in the hospital bed, gaunt, ravished, and a sliver of who she had been in life. I can no longer see her as the vibrant woman she was and so full of life.
She died on a Monday at three-thirty-three in the afternoon. She had been unconscious and heavily sedated for the week leading up to her death and never woke. I never said goodbye. Later, the neighbours said it was fortunate we didn't have kids. It was a horrible thing to say; it was something people said when you are divorced and not burying your life mate.
We had wanted kids so badly, but I couldn't make it happen. I was sterile with no swimmers. I think my wife hated that about me. I couldn't give her what she had most wanted in life. And then she died. Childless.
The following week, the neighbourhood held a celebration of life for her. It was fine, except I didn't know the neighbours. I didn't even know their names. My wife did, and she had socialised with them on the street, talking about this and that. She would tell me later, but the words would flow through me. Instead, I worked, watched baseball or hockey, and did little else. The neighbours were strangers to me. It was at the celebration of life that I met Amanda in person for the first time. Everything had been a blur that day, but she had swum into view, said some kind words, and left me standing there with a glass of warm red wine. When I think on that day, I can only remember Amanda talking to me for that brief second.
I started running the next day. I suddenly wanted to live a better life. I could lie to you and tell you my wife had made me promise to have a better life after she was gone, but that's Hollywood crap. She got cancer of the bone. It spread to her organs, and she was dead five weeks after her diagnosis. We never talked about my life after. That was too hard to bring up and it would have been selfish. Also, that conversation would have confirmed she was dying and right up until the end we were in denial about her imminent death. That's reality and that's life.
So I started running. And I quit smoking. And drinking coffee. In my inconsolable grief, I never noticed how hard it was on me to do all that at once. My misery outweighed the muscle pain, the need for nicotine, and the horrible mood swings that came with having no caffeine in my system. I ran through it all. When I ran, my mind would go blank. I craved that solitude and serenity. It was an escape.
I ran for fifteen minutes the first morning and then hacked my lungs out for an hour. I ran fifteen minutes every day for weeks, and then suddenly it was twenty minutes, and then thirty. Today I ran for at least an hour and a half. I could run forever, it seemed. I ran races whenever I could. It kept me running and focused. 10Ks and half-marathons were my norm. I now had a closet full of running shirts, medals, and racer tags.
The running is important to this story. It's what tied everything together.
Six weeks after my wife died, Amanda ran past me on the path in our area. It's a lovely path, shrouded in trees to keep the summer sun off, and it winds along the river. Few people use the path and I am almost always alone, except for the odd asshole on a bike hogging the path and trying to pass by me as close as possible as if it's a game.
Amanda ran past me and then looked back in surprise. She slowed down and I caught up to her. She pulled her earbuds free and smiled at me.
"Hi, Mr Peters. I didn't know you ran!" She didn't appear to be breathing hard and I resented her for it.
I was huffing and puffing. I had only been running for five weeks at that point and was only able to run for about twenty minutes. I was at minute fifteen and was ready to call it quits. Now I knew I had to socialise with Amanda. I'm terrible at meaningless conversation. My wife did that and told me who people were. I missed her so much.
I had nothing in common with Amanda. I didn't even understand the new generation. My wife and I had lived in our own youth and experiences. Without kids we had been stuck in that world.
I smiled at Amanda with difficulty, and around my need to breathe, and pulled out my own earbuds. The sounds of Dave Matthews Band song
Crash Into Me
, faded. I had only recently figured out the song was about orgasming with your lover. I liked it.
"Hi, Amanda." It pleased me I remembered her name.
Amanda slowed to my pace and ran beside me. "How long have you been running?" she asked, seeming genuinely surprised and pleased.
"Not long. A few weeks."
"That's great! How far are you running?"
"Far? Not far. I go by time. I'm up to twenty-minutes now."
"Twenty minutes?" she seemed bewildered.
"Yeah, pretty good for an old guy," I struggled to say. Speaking and running was almost impossible for me at that point in my training. I couldn't seem to draw in enough oxygen.
"Old guy? You look pretty young to me. You wanna run together?" she asked.
I knew she was being polite. She could run circles around me. I also liked the solitude of running and didn't want a running partner. I shook my head and gasped. "No. I'll only slow you down. You go on ahead. I'm ready to turn around."
She seemed disappointed. "Okay, if you say so. I'm happy to run with you anytime." She looked around at the scenery and then back at me. Dammit, she can even look around and run in a straight line. I would have veered off the path and into the river. "I can come by and give you some pointers. Exercises and the like. It's hard when you start off running. I had a teacher and really benefitted from her. Want me to come by?"
I just wanted her to leave me alone and so I nodded, now completely unable to form words.
"Super! See you later, Mr Peters!" she exclaimed with far more enthusiasm than I could believe. Like the roadrunner running away from Wiley Coyote she disappeared down the path and around a corner. I could almost hear the bleep, bleep.
As soon as she was out of sight I stopped, bent over, and hacked up a lung. I walked and limped home. The image of her beautiful ass was burned into my memory. I could see the lower part of her ass cheeks with her short running shorts. I was surprised her dad let her leave the house dressed like that. It wasn't proper. But it was nice to look at, I admitted and then chastised myself.
I got home, stopped coughing, drank an orange Gatorade in one long chug, and staggered upstairs to the bathroom to shower. All my wife's stuff still lay all over the counter. I couldn't touch it. It made me think she was still there. Still at home. Still alive.
Sometimes the best part of running is the long, hot shower afterward. I basked in the strong stream and hung my sweaty, bald head and let the water flow over me. I took long showers after my runs. I was still in there when I heard the doorbell ring.
I looked up in surprise. I couldn't tell you when the last time my doorbell had rung. I got out of the shower cursing, turned off the water, and grabbed my bathrobe. I ran down the stairs wincing at the muscle pains in my legs and opened the front door, angry.
