Fly Away Home (29 page)

DIANA

In the single yoga class that Diana had once endured, on a rainy day when all the treadmills were taken, the instructor, a dippy girl with tattooed hip bones, led them through an hour of twists and poses, until they’d ended up flat on their backs, legs spread to the edges of their mats. “Savasana—corpse pose—is the hardest pose of all. You would think, ‘What could be hard about lying on the floor?’ But the truth is that we, as humans, are not wired to be still and do nothing.”

“Tell that to my husband!” one of the women on the mats had cracked, and everyone had laughed, but Diana knew exactly what the instructor was talking about—to simply be still, to listen to her breath, was for her, by far, the most difficult part of the class.

Before she’d had Milo, she’d trained for a marathon. She’d loved it—not just the running, but planning her workouts, arranging her days and weeks to get her miles in, entering data in her computer and plotting graphs of her distance and her speed. She’d had a heart-rate monitor and a special watch that calculated pace. She’d been able to figure out how long the twenty-six miles should take her and was pleased that she finished within twenty seconds of her predicted time.
Right on schedule
, she’d thought, crossing the finish line.

Now, eight years later, she woke up in the mornings with her heart racing, her flesh clammy, as if she’d been sweating all night. Always, there would be a few seconds of confusion as whatever nightmare had had her in its grip faded away: Where was she? How had she gotten there? Then it would all come slamming back: not Philadelphia, but Connecticut; no marriage, no job.

She’d get out of bed and pull on her socks and her sneakers, all she needed, because she’d started sleeping in her running bra, a T-shirt, and tights. On her way down the stairs, she’d throw on a long-sleeved shirt, or a fleece vest, or a raincoat if it was raining. She’d gulp juice straight from the carton, grab a PowerBar from her stash in the pantry, gallop down the stairs to the beach, and run. In her marathon-training days she’d vary her workouts. She’d do long, slow runs and short, quick ones; she’d do intervals and tempo runs, careful to keep her heart rate in its appropriate zone. Now she just ran as if something was chasing her, the way she’d run that steamy summer day in Philadelphia when she’d gotten the news about her father and Joelle—all out, as fast as she could, until her breath burned in her throat and stitches tore at her sides, until she tasted blood, until she couldn’t go any farther. Her heels would send spumes of sand kicking out behind her, her arms would pump, her shadow would race ahead of her and Diana would try to catch it. Three miles, four miles, five miles she’d run, to the jetty that marked the end of the town of Fairview. When the tide was out she could run around it, but sometimes she’d have to plow through water up to her shins to skirt the rocks that stretched out into the Sound. Past the jetty, she’d keep on running, salt water squishing in the soles of her shoes, sweat stinging her eyes. Six miles, seven miles, eight, so fast that there was no room in her brain for thought, no room for anything but inhalation and exhalation and her body moving across the sand.

Eventually she’d stop, bent over, hands on her thighs, red-faced and gasping. She’d straighten up, lifting her arms over her head, do a few side bends, then touch her toes, and when her breath came a little more easily, when she didn’t feel as if she was going to hurl, she’d turn around and start running back home. She’d take a shower and collapse back into bed, sleeping like the dead until Milo woke her. Sometimes one run would be enough, but sometimes she’d need to go out again before dinner. Her second runs were on the street—for variety’s sake, she told herself, but really, it was because she was worried about people noticing her and talking, the way the moms at Milo’s bus stop had whispered about the obviously anorexic racewalker who’d pump her bony arms and pipe-stem legs for hours along the sidewalks. She’d race down the shell-covered driveway, pounding along Fairview’s narrow streets. It was three miles to the high school. She’d do sprints around the track until it got dark, then jog back home, jumping off the road if she saw a car approaching.

She was losing weight. Her running pants hung loosely on her hips, and she could see her ribs through her skin. Sylvie was worried. She’d cook all day—her mother, in an apron! In front of a stove! Diana wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes. At the dinner table each night there’d be bowls of mashed potatoes, plates of pasta, then, later, popcorn and hot chocolate, when Sylvie and Lizzie would sit together on Lizzie’s bed and watch movies on Lizzie’s little laptop.

“Are you all right?” Sylvie asked, with Milo standing behind her, staring at his mother with his eyes dark and huge in his pale face.

Diana answered lightly, saying that she was thinking about doing another marathon in the spring, maybe even trying to qualify for Boston. Secretly, she thought there might be other races in her future, ultramarathons that went for fifty or even a hundred miles, twenty-four-hour time trials where you’d run all day and all night. How far would she have to go before she could outrun the mess she’d made, the way she’d laid waste to her own life? Would fifty miles stop the nightmares? Would a hundred miles bring Doug back?

A few terrible times each week, she’d have her hospital dream. In the dream, she would wheel her stool to the bedside of the girl whose face she could barely remember, the eight-year-old who’d come in semiconscious, with her insulin levels dipping dangerously low. She scribbled down the same incorrect dosage, only in the dream nobody caught the mistake, and she answered the phone in her kitchen to hear Hank Stavers telling her that the little girl had died. Then she’d wake up, covered in sweat, gasping for air, in the chilly gray of dawn, shove her feet into her sneakers, and go back to the beach.

She knew she was only postponing the inevitable. There were things that needed doing, tasks that required her attention. Gary was getting impatient with just talking to his son. He wanted to see Milo; he wanted Diana to bring him home, and, he’d said he’d hire a lawyer to make it happen if he had to. But somehow she was always either running or asleep. The living room couch loomed, as inviting as a lover’s arms, with that cashmere throw draped seductively over its back, and she’d think,
Just for a minute
, and wake up three hours later in a puddle of drool, with her mother, this strange, new, solicitous version of Sylvie beside her, asking if she wanted some lunch, if there was anything she could do. She’d eat half a sandwich, drink a glass of milk—little-kid food, the kind she’d had for school lunches when she was Milo’s age—and then, with barely a sentence spoken all day, she’d go running again.

She’d managed to take care of a few truly important things. The day after she’d arrived she called Milo’s school to let them know he’d be absent indefinitely. The secretary had faxed his records and mailed his textbooks to the house in Fairview, so that at least she’d have the option of enrolling him in school in Connecticut, if it came to that. For now, she’d assigned him homework—a chapter in each of his textbooks, plus independent reading and writing each day. Lizzie had elected herself his art teacher. She’d given him her digital camera and assigned him twenty minutes outside, taking pictures of the leaves, the water, the crushed-shell driveway. When he came back they loaded the pictures onto her laptop and talked about cropping and composition, shadows and light. In the afternoons, when his work was done, Milo would go down to the beach to stand at the edge of the water and throw his Frisbee into the waves until it got dark and Sylvie called him in to help set the table for dinner. Diana managed to rouse herself enough to read him a chapter of
Harry Potter
every night before he fell asleep. Then most nights she’d join her mother and sister in Lizzie’s bed. They would watch movies, she’d fall asleep.

She’d been desperately worried about her son—away from his house, his school, and his father. But as October slipped toward its end, Milo had proved surprisingly resilient. He loved Lizzie and his grandmother, and the truth that she’d never really wanted to acknowledge was that he’d never really liked school or the other kids there all that much. For him, Connecticut was a vacation. He could walk on the beach and look for sea glass and feathers and interesting pieces of driftwood. There were board games to play and books to read and marshmallows that his grandmother let him roast in front of the fireplace. Every night he’d talk to his father, carrying the portable phone into his bedroom and closing the door behind him.

The days blurred together—the gulped juice, the protein bars, the running, the sleeping, waking to nightmares and running again. Losing Doug was like going through withdrawal. She felt, she imagined, the same way an addict must feel when you cut off her supply. The only thing that kept her sane, that kept her from flying down the highway, back to Philadelphia, and begging Doug to take her back, was that tiny ember that had kindled in her heart when he’d not only rejected her but rejected, implicitly, her son. Milo was not expendable. Crazy in love as she might have been, she would never have foisted him on a man who didn’t want him.

One sunny afternoon, with the crisp tang of autumn leaves and apple cider in the wind, she sat at the living room window, looking down at the beach, watching her son as he tossed the white disk of the Frisbee into the foaming waves. Her whole body hurt. Shin splints, she thought. Plantar fasciitis. A sore hip. A sore heart. She wandered upstairs to her sister’s bedroom, where Lizzie was fussing with a tray Sylvie must have just brought up.

“Hey, Diana. Want some tea?” Lizzie lowered her voice. “It’s Constant Comment. I hate that stuff. Mom made me a smoothie, too.”

Diana sat on the edge of Lizzie’s bed. She picked up the mug of tea and wrapped her hands around it. Her wedding ring hung loosely on her finger. Lizzie, in contrast, was plump and curvy, glowing with good health in spite of her back pain.

“I’m sorry about what happened this summer,” Diana muttered. She knew she owed her sister an apology, and this seemed as good a time as any to deliver it.

“It’s okay,” said Lizzie. “Probably I would have thought the exact same thing if I were you. But just so you know, I wasn’t using anything when I was taking care of Milo. I would never have gotten in a car with him if I wasn’t safe to drive.”

“I know,” said Diana, realizing, as she spoke, that she’d known it all along. Lizzie, even at her worst, would not have put a child’s life in danger. No, she thought, that was what she did. “I screwed something up at work.”

Lizzie got very still. “What happened?”

“Nothing. Thank God. One of the nurses caught it. I wrote down the wrong dosage for a little girl—a diabetic. She needed insulin, and if they’d given her the dose I’d prescribed …” She stopped talking, unwilling to even speak the words
she could have died
. Down on the beach, Milo’s Frisbee had gotten away from him. It bobbed in the waves, a tiny white dot, Milo stood at the water’s edge, shoulders slumped, looking as defeated as his mother felt. “I took a leave from the hospital. I’m on leave from everything, I guess.”

Instead of gloating, instead of sneering, Lizzie rolled over and patted her sister’s knee, as tentatively as if she was checking to see whether a pan of Jell-O had set. “It happens. People make mistakes.” She gave Diana a wobbly smile. “I guess I’m, like, exhibit A of that.” They were quiet for a minute. Then Lizzie asked, “What about that guy I saw?”

“That’s over,” Diana said. No need to go into detail on that front.

“And what about Gary?” Lizzie’s voice was so kind, so far away from the needling, sarcastic tone she usually used when the subject was Diana’s husband.

“I think probably we’ll get divorced,” said Diana. “I think I kind of lost my mind.”

“You and Dad,” Lizzie murmured.

Diana wrapped her hands tightly around her mug. “It wasn’t like Dad. Or at least, it wasn’t like my understanding of how things were with Dad. It wasn’t like, ‘Ooh, there’s a cute guy, let’s hook up.’ It wasn’t about feeling entitled, or being tempted all the time.” She took another sip. “I was lonely.” She set the cup down on Lizzie’s nightstand. “And I was tired. Tired of working so hard, tired of pretending everything was okay when it wasn’t, tired of being unhappy with Gary, and disappointed with what the marriage turned out to be, tired of being the one who took care of the house and the shopping, and Milo, and …” She closed her eyes and flopped back onto her sister’s bed, feeling so exhausted, so enervated, that she couldn’t imagine ever running again, could barely imagine moving her body to the dinner table. “Everything.” Lizzie nodded. Diana went on, “I think Gary’s going to give me a hard time about the house. He thinks if I’m the one who was cheating and if I’m the one who wants out of the marriage, then I should be the one to leave. So I did. I just left.”

Her sister’s reaction was gratifyingly swift. “What? That’s crazy! That’s Milo’s house! He’s going to kick out his own kid?”

“I don’t know.” The house, she thought, seemed like the least of her problems. Her own broken heart, Milo’s having to survive his parents’ divorce, her having to find a new job, a new place to live, a new life for herself … she shut her eyes. It was all too much.

“What can we do?” Lizzie was asking—Lizzie, who’d never done much of anything in the years that passed for her adult life, Lizzie, who’d always needed someone to do things for her. “We can’t let this happen. That’s your house! Yours and Milo’s.”

“It’ll be okay,” Diana mumbled. The only thing she wanted was to close her eyes and sleep.

“And you don’t think …” Lizzie spoke carefully. “There’s no chance you and Gary can work it out?”

Diana shook her head. She couldn’t imagine loving him again. At this point, from where she stood (or, more accurately, from where she lay, curled up and probably fragrant in the running clothes she hadn’t changed out of), the thing to do was to acknowledge that, between them, they’d produced a remarkable, if socially awkward, little boy, and to move on as best they could.