“We all have snacksidents. It happens,” Maureen admits, and shrugs without a hint of humiliation before taking off her glasses, blowing on the lenses, and then rubbing them against her leggings for cleaning.
“Not me,” Daphne interjects, pulling her braids back into a low pony.See? There you go, Maureen.Most women can ward off the call of calories, but I’m not one of them, which is nothing other than pathetic at my age. “I have Big Maccidents. Never met a McDonald’s I didn’t like.”
“Callie, your worth is not defined by what you put in your mouth. And punishing yourself with bargains of new food rules, outrageous restrictions, and overworking your body is only going to make things worse. And you’re risking injury.”
“Plus, it’s such a tired conversation,” Daphne adds with another yawn.
Maureen says, “I don’t know about you, but I’ve broken every bargain I’ve ever made with myself as a form of punishment, and then I just ended up feeling worse. It’s a pattern as old as time, and guess what? People never win that shame game. Now I just chalk it up to one unfortunate moment, and then I move on to all the fortunate ones to come. Can’t think of a time beating myself up for the past did anything to better my future.”
I knew there was going to be a Maureen sermon in there somewhere, but admission of her own shortcomings with food was not the one I was expecting.
“So we are going to cheer on Chap’s kids, drop off Eric’s dish, and go get brunch, is that right? And I swear, Callie, if you sit there and drink lemon water and not order a meal, you are kicked out of the Heart and Sole Running Club for not being kind to your heart or to your soul. Again, tired,” Daphne repeats.
Though I am still deep in my sugar hangover, I begin to see that years of punishing myself over what I have consumed has never forwarded any cause other than continued complaining, which is, as Daphne called it, tiring and tiresome.
“B-but the wedding,” I stutter.
“What about the wedding? One night of carb consumption is not going to determine what happens the first time you see Thomas since he left. Are you going to let last night’s stale Pringles control the rest of your life? I hope not. It happened. It’s in the past. Nothing to do but let it go. And speaking of going, Chap’s boys are stepping up to the start line, so we’ve got to get over there. Because, Callie ...”
“Oh, sweet little baby Jesus, Maureen, please don’t say it.” Daphne rolls her eyes, but we both know it’s coming because it’s how Maureen signs off on all her emails and texts, and how she ends every Heart and Sole gathering.
“Every day is a new start line.” Maureen smiles wide at the two of us, awash in the satisfaction of being right, grabs our hands, and charges the three of us toward the actual start line.
Chap jogs over to us, and I can’t help myself—I suck in my stomach. I hope Maureen doesn’t see.
“Man, did you see my boys off the start? Did just what I told them to. Go out strong, but not too fast. Tuck themselves into the front half of the pack and draft off the other runners to conserve energy.” Iactually know what Chap is talking about; I find myself drafting off Eric often. “When we see my boys in the light blue make that turn over there for the final mile, at least three of them should start kicking it into high gear and passing other kids because they’ve saved their energy for that exact moment.” On Wednesday nights, Chap projects maturity to not come across as the youngest in the group, but today that effort gives way to boyish enthusiasm as he rattles off his strategy that he is beyond excited to see his athletes apply. Chap is simultaneously a man and a boy, both sides of him equally compelling and attractive.
“I’ve been watching out for your uncle, but I haven’t seen him anywhere,” Maureen reports, covering her eyes to gaze in the same direction as Chap as he looks on for his first Regis runner to come around the bend.
“Ah, he was here early with me to set up for the meet since Regis is the home team. I wanted him to stay, but he took off. Said he was meeting a group of students to tutor who need help with their five-paragraph essays. I told him five-paragraph-essay writing is dead.”
“Let me guess: He bit your head off, promising an early death if you made one more disparaging remark about the art of writing.”
“Something like that.” Chap chuffs.
“Guy never changes.” Maureen chuckles alongside Chap.
“He sounds like he needs to get a life,” Daphne chimes in.
“Something like that,” Maureen muses as Chap nods, entertained.
“Have you not met him?” I ask Daphne. I assumed since she was part of the inner texting chain, she was in on Chap’s family too.
“Nope, but he has recommended a lot of great reading to me to help the slow nights pass at Mercy when I’m covering the graveyard shift.” All three of us snicker, recognizing Daphne’s terrible choice in words when referencing her work in a nursing home.
“Your uncle is determined to make sure every student athlete is truly a student first. You have to give him credit for that.” Maureen has quickly pivoted from poking fun at Chap’s uncle to defending what, I can only ascertain from a few snippets about him, is a life of mentorship, like Maureen’s. Maybe Maureen does, in fact, have a long-standing crush on him.
Chapter Twenty-Three
December 1992
“Callie, there’s someone here to see you,” my mother announced, sticking her head through my slightly open door. For five days, Quinn and I had been eating our way through the leftover Russian tea cookies, fudge, and peppermint bark from my parents’ annual Boxing Day open house. It was the one day a year my father tolerated my mother claiming British roots, though, on her side, we hail from an Eastern European and Bavarian mix. Helen was a bona fide Anglophile, and part of my father’s Christmas gift to her each year was that he played along. I found that the cookies paired perfectly with profound heartbreak. I had taken to my bed for repeated viewings of the movieFather of the Brideon the VHS player I received as a Christmas gift instead of a plane ticket.
“Quinn, dear, why don’t you come help me in the dining room. I need you to climb up the step stool to put away my serving dishes on the top shelves.”
“Mom, can’t it wait? This is the best part of the movie. The bride’s about to play basketball in the driveway with her father the night before the wedding,” I whimpered and clung to Quinn, my emotional-support person.
My mother rolled her eyes and pulled back my duvet. The woman loathed anyone not dressed by 9:00 a.m. and despised watching television during the day, judging it to be the ultimate waste of sunlight. I had personified both descriptions my mother hated every moment since I returned home from limping my heartache and muddled brain across the fall semester finals finish line. Mom was over it.
