Bridge of Clay(101)

Not Monday.

Never Monday.

And Clay?

Clay should have gone back.

He should have been on a train that night—back to Silver, to the Amahnu, on his way to finish a bridge, to shake our father’s hand—but he, too, was at The Surrounds, and she came with a rustle of feet.

And us?

We can’t do anything.

One of us writes, and one of us reads.

We can’t do anything but me tell it, and you see it.

We hit it, like this, for the now.





As we watch them both walk toward it—The Surrounds, the very last time—the past tucks close inside me. So much of that time would lead them there: to each approaching footsteps.

There was Zone and then the Regionals.

Anniversary and State.

There was Tommy’s quadruple animals.

As New Year passed into February, there was Clay and the nuisance of injury (a boy with broken-glass feet), and the promise, or more like a warning: “I win State and we’ll go and get him, okay?”

He was referring, of course, to Achilles.



* * *



—

I could go in all sorts of orders here, in many kinds of ways, but it just feels right to start there, and thread the rest toward it: How it was on the anniversary.

A year since Penelope’s death.

In the morning that day in March, all of us woke up early. No work that day, and no school, and by seven we’d been to the cemetery; we’d climbed up over the graves. We put daisies down in front of her, and Tommy looked out for our dad. I told him he should forget it.

By eight we started cleaning; the house was filthy, we had to be ruthless. We threw out clothes and sheets. We stamped out knickknacks and other crap, but preserved her books and bookshelves. The books, we knew, were sacred.

    There was a moment when all of us stopped, though, and sat on the bed, on the edges. I was holding The Odyssey and The Iliad.

“Go on,” said Henry, “read some.”

The Odyssey, book twelve: “From the flowing waters of the River of Ocean my ship hit the open sea…where ever-fresh Dawn has her dancing lawns, and the sun would soon be rising….”

Even Rory was silent, and stayed.

The words plowed on and the pages turned; and us, in the house, and drifting.

That bedroom went floating down Archer Street.



* * *



—

In the meantime, Clay stopped competing barefoot, but hadn’t been wearing shoes.

In the training, we’d kept it simple.

We ran the early mornings.

400s down at Bernborough.

In the evenings, we watched the movies.

The beginning and end of Gallipoli—Jesus, what an ending!

The entire Chariots of Fire.

Rory and Henry claimed that both were boring as bat shit, but they always came around; I caught their captured faces.

On the Thursday before Zone there was a problem, just two days out from racing, because kids had got drunk at Bernborough; there was glass all over the track. Clay hadn’t even seen it, and he didn’t notice the blood. Later, it took us hours to pick the pieces out. In the process I remembered what I had to—a moment from a documentary (and one that we still had at home): Olympic Highs and Lows.

Again, all of us were in the lounge room, and I pulled out the old footage, of the amazing but tragic race, in Los Angeles. You might know the one I mean. Those women. The 3,000 meters.

As it is, the athlete who won the event (the awesomely upright Romanian, Maricica Puic?) wasn’t as famous for that race, but two of the others were: Mary Decker and Zola Budd. We all stared on in the darkness—and Clay, especially, in horror—as the so-called controversial Budd was accused of deliberately tripping Decker in the jostle, on the straight of the Olympic stadium. (Of course she did no such thing.)

    But also, and most importantly:

Clay saw.

He saw what I hoped he would see.

He said, “Pause it—quick,” and looked closer, at the legs of Zola Budd’s running. “Is that…tape there, under her feet?”



* * *



—

The scars were healing nicely by anniversary day, but since we’d started taping his feet up, it was something he’d loved and maintained. As I finished up the reading, in Penny and Michael’s bedroom, he was rubbing them, in and away. The soles were calloused but cared-for.

At last, our parents’ clothing was gone; there was only one garment we kept. I walked it through the hallway; we found its rightful resting place.

“Here,” I said to Rory, who opened the lid to the strings.

“Hey, look!” said Henry to all of us. “A packet of cigarettes!”

And first I laid the two books down, and then the blue woolen dress. They belonged for now to the piano.

“Quick,” said Rory, “shove Hector in!” but even he couldn’t summon the strength. He placed a hand down gently, on the pocket and button within; she’d never had the heart to mend it.



* * *



—

In the lead-up—in January and February that year—I realize there were hardships. But there were good times, there were great times, like Tommy and each of his pets.