The Gingerbread Girl.pdf

The Gingerbread Girl

–1–

Only fast running would do.

After the baby died, Emily took up running. At first it was just down to the end of the

driveway, where she would stand bent over with her hands clutching her legs just

above the knees, then to the end of the block, then all the way to Kozy’s Qwik-Pik at

the bottom of the hill. There she would pick up bread or margarine, maybe a Ho Ho or

a Ring Ding if she could think of nothing else. At first she only walked back, but later

she ran that way, too. Eventually she gave up the snack foods. It was surprisingly hard

to do. She hadn’t realized that sugar eased grief. Or maybe the snacks had become a

fetish. Either way, in the end the Ho Hos had to go go. And did. Running was enough.

Henry called the running a fetish, and she supposed he was right.

“What does Dr. Steiner say about it?” he asked.

“Dr. Steiner says run your ass off, get those endorphins going.” She hadn’t mentioned

the running to Susan Steiner, hadn’t even seen her since Amy’s funeral. “She says

she’ll put it on a prescription pad, if you want.”

Emily had always been able to bluff Henry. Even after Amy died. We can have

another one, she had said, sitting beside him on the bed as he lay there with his ankles

crossed and tears streaming down the sides of his face.

It eased him and that was good, but there was never going to be another baby, with

the attendant risk of finding said infant gray and still in its crib. Never again the

fruitless CPR, or the screaming 911 call with the operator saying Lower your voice,

ma’am, I can’t understand you. But Henry didn’t need to know that, and she was

willing to comfort him, at least at the start. She believed that comfort, not bread, was

the staff of life. Maybe eventually she would be able to find some for herself. In the

meantime, she had produced a defective baby. That was the point. She would not risk

another.

Then she started getting headaches. Real blinders. So she did go to a doctor, but it was

Dr. Mendez, their general practitioner, not Susan Steiner. Mendez gave her a

prescription for some stuff called Zomig. She took the bus to the family practice

where Mendez hung out, then ran to the drugstore to get the scrip filled. After that she

jogged home—it was two miles—and by the time she got there, she had what felt like

a steel fork planted high up in her side, between the top of her ribs and her armpit. She

didn’t let it concern her. That was pain that would go away. Besides, she was

exhausted and felt as if she could sleep for a while.

She did—all afternoon. On the same bed where Amy had been made and Henry had

cried. When she woke up, she could see ghostly circles floating in the air, a sure sign

that she was getting one of what she liked to call Em’s Famous Headaches. She took

one of her new pills, and to her surprise—almost shock—the headache turned tail and

slunk away. First to the back of her head, then gone. She thought there ought to be a

pill like that for the death of a child.

She thought she needed to explore the limits of her endurance, and she suspected the

exploration would be a long one. There was a JuCo with a cinder track not too far

from the house. She began to drive over there in the early mornings just after Henry

left for work. Henry didn’t understand the running. Jogging, sure—lots of women

jogged. Keep those extra four pounds off the old fanny, keep those extra two inches

off the old waistline. But Em didn’t have an extra four pounds on her backside, and

besides, jogging was no longer enough. She had to run, and fast. Only fast running

would do.

She parked at the track and ran until she could run no more, until her sleeveless FSU

sweatshirt was dark with sweat down the front and back and she was shambling and

sometimes puking with exhaustion.

Henry found out. Someone saw her there, running all by herself at eight in the

morning, and told him. They had a discussion about it. The discussion escalated into a

marriage-ending argument.

“It’s a hobby,” she said.

“Jodi Anderson said you ran until you fell down. She was afraid you’d had a heart

attack. That’s not a hobby, Em. Not even a fetish. It’s an obsession.”

And he looked at her reproachfully. It would be a little while yet before she picked up

the book and threw it at him, but that was what really tore it. That reproachful look.

She could no longer stand it. Given his rather long face, it was like having a sheep in

the house. I married a Dorset gray, she thought, and now it’s just baa-baa-baa, all

day long .

But she tried one more time to be reasonable about something she knew in her heart

had no reasonable core. There was magical thinking; there was also magical doing.

Running, for instance.

“Marathoners run until they fall down,” she said.

“Are you planning to run in a marathon?”

“Maybe.” But she looked away. Out the window, at the driveway. The driveway

called her. The driveway led to the sidewalk, and the sidewalk led to the world.

“No,” he said. “You’re not going to run in a marathon. You have no plans to run in a

marathon.”

It occurred to her—with that sense of brilliant revelation the obvious can bring—that

this was the essence of Henry, the fucking apotheosis of Henry. During the six years

of their marriage he had always been perfectly aware of what she was thinking,

feeling, planning.

I comforted you, she thought—not furious yet but beginning to be furious. You lay

there on the bed, leaking, and I comforted you .

“The running is a classic psychological response to the pain you feel,” he was saying

in that same earnest way. “It’s called avoidance. But, honey, if you don’t feel your

pain, you’ll never be able to—”

That’s when she grabbed the object nearest at hand, which happened to be a

paperback copy of The Memory Keeper’s Daughter . This was a book she had tried

and rejected, but Henry had picked it up and was now about three quarters of the way

through, judging from the bookmark. He even has the reading tastes of a Dorset gray,

she thought, and hucked it at him. It struck him on the shoulder. He stared at her with

wide, shocked eyes, then grabbed at her. Probably just to hug her, but who knew?

Who really knew anything?

If he had grabbed a moment earlier, he might have caught her by the arm or the wrist

or maybe just the back of her T-shirt. But that moment of shock undid him. He missed,

and she was running, slowing only to snatch her fanny pack off the table by the front

door. Down the driveway, to the sidewalk. Then down the hill, where she had briefly

pushed a pram with other mothers who now shunned her. This time she had no

intention of stopping or even slowing. Dressed only in shorts, sneakers, and a T-shirt

reading SAVE THE CHEERLEADER, Emily ran out into the world. She put her

fanny pack around her waist and snapped the catch as she pelted down the hill. And

the feeling?

Exhilaration. Pure pow.

She ran downtown (two miles, twenty-two minutes), not even stopping when the light

was against her; when that happened, she jogged in place. A couple of boys in a top-

down Mustang—it was just getting to be top-down weather—passed her at the corner

of Main and Eastern. One whistled. Em gave him the finger. He laughed and

applauded as the Mustang accelerated down Main.

She didn’t have much cash, but she had a pair of credit cards. The American Express

was the prize, because with it she could get traveler’s checks.

She realized she wasn’t going home, not for a while. And when the realization caused

a feeling of relief—maybe even fugitive excitement—instead of sorrow, she

suspected this was not a temporary thing.

She went into the Morris Hotel to use the phone, then decided on the spur of the

moment to take a room. Did they have anything for just the one night? They did. She

gave the desk clerk her AmEx card.

“It doesn’t look like you’ll need a bellman,” the clerk said, taking in her shorts and T-

shirt.

“I left in a hurry.”

“I see.” Spoken in the tone of voice that said he didn’t see at all. She took the key he

slid to her and hurried across the wide lobby to the elevators, restraining the urge to

run.

–2–

You sound like you might be crying.

She wanted to buy some clothes—a couple of skirts, a couple of shirts, two pairs of

jeans, another pair of shorts—but before shopping she had calls to make: one to

Henry and one to her father. Her father was in Tallahassee. She decided she had better

call him first. She couldn’t recall the number of his office phone in the motor pool but

had his cell-phone number memorized. He answered on the first ring. She could hear

engines revving in the background.

“Em! How are you?”

That should have been a complex question, but wasn’t. “I’m fine, Dad. But I’m in the

Morris Hotel. I guess I’ve left Henry.”

“Permanently or just a kind of trial balloon?” He didn’t sound surprised—he took

things in stride; she loved that about him—but the sound of the revving motors first

faded, then disappeared. She imagined him going into his office, closing the door,

perhaps picking up the picture of her that stood on his cluttered desk.

“Can’t say yet. Right now it doesn’t look too good.”

“What was it about?”

“Running.”

“Running?”

She sighed. “Not really. You know how sometimes a thing is about something else?

Or a whole bunch of something elses?”

“The baby.” Her father had not called her Amy since the crib death. Now it was

always just the baby.

“And the way I’m handling it. Which is not the way Henry wants me to. It occurred to

me that I’d like to handle things in my own way.”

“Henry’s a good man,” her father said, “but he has a way of seeing things. No doubt.”

She waited.

“What can I do?”

She told him. He agreed. She knew he would, but not until he heard her all the way

out. The hearing out was the most important part, and Rusty Jackson was good at it.

He hadn’t risen from one of three mechanics in the motor pool to maybe one of the

four most important people at the Tallahassee campus (and she hadn’t heard that from

him; he’d never say something like that to her or anyone else) by not listening.

“I’ll send Mariette in to clean the house,” he said.

“Dad, you don’t need to do that. I can clean.”

“I want to,” he said. “A total top-to-bottom is overdue. Damn place has been closed

up for almost a year. I don’t get down to Vermillion much since your mother died.

Seems like I can always find some more to do up here.”

Em’s mother was no longer Debra to him, either. Since the funeral (ovarian cancer),

she was just your mother.

Em almost said, Are you sure you don’t mind this? but that was the kind of thing you

said when a stranger offered to do you a favor. Or a different kind of father.

“You going there to run?” he asked. She could hear a smile in his voice. “There’s

plenty of beach to run on, and a good long stretch of road, too. As you well know.

And you won’t have to elbow people out of your way. Between now and October,

Vermillion is as quiet as it ever gets.”

“I’m going there to think. And—I guess—to finish mourning.”

“That’s all right, then,” he said. “Want me to book your flight?”

“I can do that.”

“Sure you can. Emmy, are you okay?”

“Yes,” she said.

“You sound like you might be crying.”

“A little bit,” she said, and wiped her face. “It all happened very fast.” Like Amy’s

death, she could have added. She had done it like a little lady; never a peep from the

baby monitor. Leave quietly, don’t slam the door, Em’s own mother often said when

Em was a teenager.

“Henry won’t come there to the hotel and bother you, will he?”

She heard a faint, delicate hesitation before he chose bother, and smiled in spite of her

tears, which had pretty well run their course, anyway. “If you’re asking if he’s going

to come and beat me up…that’s not his style.”

“A man sometimes finds a different style when his wife up and leaves him—just takes

off running.”

“Not Henry,” she said. “He’s not a man to cause trouble.”

“You sure you don’t want to come to Tallahassee first?”

She hesitated. Part of her did, but—

“I need a little time on my own. Before anything else.” And she repeated, “All this

happened very fast.” Although she suspected it had been building for quite some time.

It might even have been in the DNA of the marriage.

“All right. Love you, Emmy.”

“Love you, too, Dad. Thank you.” She swallowed. “So much.”

Henry didn’t cause trouble. Henry didn’t even ask where she was calling from. Henry

said, “Maybe you’re not the only one who needs a little time apart. Maybe this is for

the best.”

She resisted an urge—it struck her as both normal and absurd—to thank him. Silence

seemed like the best option. What he said next made her glad she’d chosen it.

“Who’d you call for help? The Motor-Pool King?”

This time the urge she resisted was to ask if he’d called his mother yet. Tit for tat

never solved anything.

She said—evenly, she hoped: “I’m going to Vermillion Key. My dad’s place there.”

“The conch shack.” She could almost hear him sniff. Like Ho Hos and Twinkies,

houses with only three rooms and no garage were not a part of Henry’s belief system.

Em said, “I’ll call you when I get there.”

A long silence. She imagined him in the kitchen, head leaning against the wall, hand

gripping the handset of the phone tight enough to turn his knuckles white, fighting to

reject anger. Because of the six mostly good years they’d had together. She hoped he

would make it. If that was indeed what was going on.

When he spoke next, he sounded calm but tired out. “Got your credit cards?”

“Yes. And I won’t overuse them. But I want my half of—” She broke off, biting her

lip. She had almost called their dead child the baby, and that wasn’t right. Maybe it

was for her father, but not for her. She started again.

“My half of Amy’s college money,” she said. “I don’t suppose there’s much, but—”

“There’s more than you think,” he said. He was starting to sound upset again. They

had begun the fund not when Amy was born, or even when Em got pregnant, but

when they first started trying. Trying had been a four-year process, and by the time

Emily finally kindled, they were talking about fertility treatments. Or adoption.

“Those investments weren’t just good, they were blessed by heaven—especially the

software stocks. Mort got us in at the right time and out at the absolute golden

moment. Emmy, you don’t want to take the eggs out of that nest.”

There he was again, telling her what she wanted to do.

“I’ll give you an address as soon as I have one,” she said. “Do whatever you want

with your half, but make mine a cashier’s check.”

“Still running,” he said, and although that professorial, observational tone made her

wish he was here so she could throw another book at him—a hardcover this time—

she held her silence.

At last he sighed. “Listen, Em, I’m going to clear out of here for a few hours. Come

on in and get your clothes or your whatever. And I’ll leave some cash for you on the

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