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 Puica) 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.
We loved Agamemnon’s antics, the so-called king of men; and sometimes we sat and watched him, headbutting the glass of his tank.
“One…two…three,” we’d count, and by forty only Rory was left.
“Don’t you have anything better to do?” I’d ask.
“No,” he’d say, “I don’t.”
He was still on the road to expulsion, but I gave it a shot, nonetheless. “Homework?”
“We all know homework’s useless, Matthew.” He marveled at the goldfish’s toughness. “This fish is the bloody best.”