Nana surprised me. “I’m not sure I do, either,” she said. “But I do believe in people being good to each other.” She squeezed me again. The top of my head rested against the softness of her cheek. “That’s what I’ve always loved best about you, Rachel,” she said. “You have a kind heart.”
“Yeah, a kind, messed-up heart that doesn’t work right and is probably going to kill me, like, tomorrow, so my mom better wrap me up in bubble wrap and never let me out of the house.”
Nana pulled me close and kissed my forehead. “You make me proud,” she said, which, as far as I was concerned, was a lot better than I love you. “Now get dressed. You’re missing your own party.” I went to the changing room, slipped into my miniskirt, and ran down the hallway, feeling, still, not like a woman but like a little girl.
Andy
1990
Hey there, Flash!” called Mr. Sills. His front tires bumped up over the curb onto the sidewalk. He muttered something, threw the truck into reverse, and succeeded in backing it into the spot, then opened the passenger’s-side door so that Andy could climb inside. It was a steamy August morning, eighty degrees already with highs in the nineties. Andy wore shorts, sneakers, his lucky ’Sixers jersey, and carried a soda bottle that he’d filled with water and left in the freezer overnight.
“You ready?” asked Mr. Sills, putting the truck back into gear. Andy nodded. “Nervous?”
Andy shrugged.
“Talkative as ever,” Mr. Sills observed, and drove them off toward the freeway, which would take them eventually to Franklin Field.
On that terrible day before Christmas when Andy had thrown the new coat away and had smashed someone’s windshield and gotten picked up by the police, Mr. Sills had been the one to come down to the station and called Andy’s mom. For the second day in a row, Lori had left work early and had come down to get him. In her tight black shirt and bright-red lipstick and a Santa hat perched on her head, she’d charmed the desk sergeant and even the cop who’d picked Andy up. As soon as that guy, Officer Nash, had learned that Andy was just ten—a lie that Lori told while she’d rested her hand on his forearm and let her breasts just brush his shoulder—he’d agreed to let Andy off with a warning. “But he can’t get in trouble again,” he’d said, and Lori had smiled sweetly and promised that he wouldn’t.
Sitting in the passenger’s seat of her old Nissan, Andy had been ready for anger or even for her terrible, silent, helpless tears. But Lori had surprised him.
“This can go one of two ways,” she’d said. Her voice was very calm, and her hands were steady on the wheel. “Either you keep getting angry and you keep getting in trouble and you end up in juvenile detention or reform school or jail, or you figure out something to do so you don’t keep getting in trouble. My suggestion is that you run.”
He wanted to ask her how that was supposed to work, how running was going to keep him from fighting, when she said, “If you want to hit someone or you want to throw something, I want you to run first. I want you to run until you can hardly lift your legs and your arms. Run until you’re exhausted, and then, if you still want to hit someone or throw something, you just wait ’til you’ve caught your breath again and then go for it. Try it,” she’d said, holding up her hand and stopping his “But, Mom” before it had gotten out of his mouth. “Try it for one month, and if it doesn’t work we’ll think of something else.”
Maybe it was her advice that had helped him, or maybe it had been the paper route he got that spring, the one he’d taken so he could pay back his mother, who’d paid for the windshield’s repairs.
Mr. Sills had been there the first Sunday morning that spring when the Examiner truck had dropped four bundles of papers on the sidewalk in front of Andy’s house. Andy was leaning over the bundles when Mr. Sills emerged from his house on the corner, puffing fragrant smoke from his pipe. Andy wondered if the noise from the rumbling delivery truck had woken him up.
“Lot of papers there,” Mr. Sills said, crossing the street.
Andy nodded.
“Don’t suppose you’ve got a bike?”
Andy shook his head. He was still saving, even though some days he didn’t think he’d ever get enough money for even a used tricycle.
“Talkative fella.” Mr. Sills reached into the pocket of his loose khaki pants, pulled out a short, curving knife, and popped the twine that held one of the bundles of papers. “So you’re just gonna what, exactly?” he asked.
Andy indicated his backpack, emptied of schoolbooks, plus the two canvas totes the Examiner had given him. He’d worked it all out, in bed the night before, how he’d do two runs, carrying a dozen papers in the bag on his left, keeping as many more as he could fit in his backpack and the bag on his right, so that he’d be able to reach across his body to grab and throw the papers while he was on the move. “I’m going to run.”