Late Air

  PRAISE FOR LATE AIR

  “Late Air is a story of the world of elite female athletic performance like no other novel I can think of. In her debut, Gilbert is alternately a miner, a sculptor, a guiding ghost, but always a virtuoso—showing us the athlete’s body as a perfectible object, a vessel for obsessions, a target, and a site for the recuperation of the athlete’s humanity.”

  —Alexander Chee, author of Edinburgh, The Queen of the Night, and How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

  “Gilbert’s shatteringly gorgeous debut is part Megan Abbott in its can’t-take-your-eyes-off-the-page depiction of the competitive world of girls’ running and part Elizabeth Strout in the way she so deftly explores and understands her characters, all of them desperate to love even in the face of ruin. A deeply original look at how tragedy shape-shifts a marriage, and so rich and alive, it’s impossible to believe this is a first novel.”

  —Caroline Leavitt, author of Cruel Beautiful World and the New York Times bestsellers Pictures of You and Is This Tomorrow

  “In this mesmerizing debut, Jaclyn Gilbert has given us a deep and nuanced study of the ways that loss can ravage a marriage, how passion becomes obsession, and the body as a site of devastation and healing. Gilbert’s prose is luminous and hypnotic, so finely wrought it cuts. This book riveted me, broke my heart, and revived me.”

  —Melissa Febos, author of Whip Smart and Abandon Me

  “To read Late Air is to be deeply immersed in the inner worlds of beautifully complex characters torn apart by time, memory, and trauma. Gilbert gracefully resurrects wisdom from the smallest details, each moment as finely wrought as the last, showing us who we are and how we love. A truly impressive debut from this gifted writer.”

  —Marian Thurm, author of Today Is Not Your Day and The Good Life

  “Late Air breathes some welcome oxygen into the modern novel. The characters, both major and minor, are created with great care, and the story is moving and extremely readable. Jaclyn Gilbert is up and running!”

  —Richard Cohen, author of By the Sword, Chasing the Sun, and How to Write Like Tolstoy

  “Jaclyn Gilbert’s Late Air is an exquisite meditation on marriage, loss, and the redemptive power of distance running. Gilbert’s gloriously complex characters circle each other at arm’s length, swallowing words when they should speak up, turning away instead of reaching out, even as they crumple beneath the weight of their desire for connection. In exploring the many faces of grief—and of resilience—Gilbert has delivered a wise, nuanced, and utterly unforgettable story.”

  —Kirstin Chen, author of Bury What We Cannot Take and Soy Sauce for Beginners

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2018 by Jaclyn Gilbert

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material: Camille T. Dungy: Excerpt from the poem “Notes on What Is Always with Us,” Trophic Cascade by Camille T. Dungy. Wesleyan University Press: 2017. Reprinted by permission of Camille T. Dungy.

  Published by Little A, New York

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Little A are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503903586 (hardcover)

  ISBN-10: 1503903583 (hardcover)

  ISBN-13: 9781503903579 (paperback)

  ISBN-10: 1503903575 (paperback)

  Cover design by Emily Mahon

  First edition

  For Jared

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  PART I

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  PART II

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  There are things I do not want to say . . . Except the not saying won’t return anything you love.

  —Camille T. Dungy, “Notes on What Is Always with Us”

  PART I

  ONE

  Late August, Monday

  5:33:05 a.m.

  “Remember our goals,” Coach Murray said. He and his number one runner, Becky Sanders, were in his car headed to the campus golf course. Through the darkness, the empty streets, Murray relied on his headlights. He tuned the radio to a clear station: the Doors.

  “We’re aiming for 5:10 pace,” he said.

  “Okay.” Becky was peeling a small blood orange, one long sheath unfurling on her lap. At 5′2″ and ninety-five pounds, she reminded him of his two-time cross-country All-American Sarah Lloyd. As a senior, Sarah had set a course record of 16:23.14 in the 5K. Becky was only a sophomore, but Murray believed she had even greater potential than Sarah; he saw Becky winning Nationals this year, maybe even competing in the Olympics one day.

  Murray hadn’t showered or shaved in three days. It was humid in the car, and the gray stubble around his long mustache felt damp.

  He hadn’t always had a mustache. In his youth, Murray was clean shaven, but he’d worn his blond hair a little long through his own college running days. He’d run on full scholarship for the University of Scranton. Growing up in Luzerne County, he’d gone by his first name, Samuel, but on Scranton’s track, the chant Mur-ray had sounded best—especially at the age of twenty-seven, when he’d qualified for the ’84 Summer Olympics in the 10,000-meter run.

  Now, almost four decades later, Murray was sixty-two and no longer ran. His two knee replacements made walking so difficult that at the golf course, he’d have to use a cart to get around. He couldn’t miss a split.

  At a red light, Murray noticed as Becky carefully removed two strings of pulp from the orange, then divided out the first quarter section. She raised a sliver to her lips and bit in slowly.

  Murray’s breakfast sandwich still lay warm on his lap. No cheese, just ketchup and egg. He smelled oil and toasted bread, and then the juice misting the air as Becky’s thumbs pressed down.

  He’d grown accustomed to their prolonged silences. In fact, he’d come to welcome them. Becky never challenged his insistence on their two-a-day practices, the first of which always happened in the morning, and the second later in the afternoon, when he held practice for the whole team. Murray had started this precedent in ’01, when he’d been named head coach—the year after Sarah Lloyd had joined his ranks—and he had groomed at least a dozen other phenoms since then, each as hungry as the last to qualify for Regionals, then Nationals, to earn the elite status Murray had tasted in college too. Every record Murray had set depended on running before daylight, the darkness an ideal time for finding focus, this protected space where he could demand only the best from his girls.

  Becky warmed up at the fairway of the first hole. She did some form drills: high-knees, butt kicks, some rabbit hops. The sun had partially risen, mist clouding the first hi
ll a soft, dusty green. Becky’s father, Doug, was an ardent golfer, and he had met Murray for eighteen holes the summer he’d started recruiting Becky. It was then that Murray had told Doug about his recruiting plan to help earn Becky’s admission to Yale, given her slightly subpar grades and test scores. In the end, she’d chosen him over all the other coaches vying, even those offering full scholarships. The pressure for her to keep up academically remained high, but he felt assured by her 3.6 average last year, when she was still a freshman.

  He marked a tall elm as the start line and read her target splits from there. He told her to focus on her foot strike, keeping her weight centered. She’d have two minutes of rest between sets. “Four of them,” he said.

  Becky rolled her neck around. She jounced her knees. When she readied her stance, he began his three-second countdown, stopwatch tight by his thumb. He clicked hard, and she bounded forward, her stride chiseling the mist. Her tan calves parted as they pushed into the fairway grass. Her thin, muscular arms sliced the breeze.

  To Murray, Becky would always be like a Belgian warmblood, this magnificent breed he’d once bet on as a child, with his father, at the Erdenheim Steeplechase. The horse had a pinwheel brand on its left thigh. Becky had a scar, too, but on her right shoulder.

  Last year, Becky had placed third at Regionals. Murray had taken her to a diner for a pancake breakfast to celebrate. It was there, her fork circling tiny slivers of pancake, that she told him how she’d been burned by someone’s still-lit cigarette. She’d been walking with Doug on Atlantic City’s crowded boardwalk when someone brushed her hard. She hadn’t really eaten any breakfast that morning, so Murray had finished the pancakes for her, a heaviness in his stomach he’d disliked; it was the hunger he longed for, the exertion that earned it.

  Murray watched Becky in the distance as she hooked around the first bend, the quarter-mile mark.

  Her forward lean looked good, legs kicking back nicely. Gravity was taking her, he thought. She let gravity take her.

  He lumbered over to his golf cart but had a difficult time lifting his right leg and stepping in; even more cumbersome was crouching down into the seat.

  Just two minutes to get to the finish at the base of the fairway on the second hole. He turned the key and floored it. He kept one hand steady on the wheel, the other over his notepad. A breeze cooled his face and the sweat that had gathered along the back of his neck. He focused on the bluish grass unspooling beneath him.

  At the finish point, he pushed hard on the brake. He checked his watch: 4:55.16. He squinted his eyes, waited for a sign. Checked again: 5:10.39. Where is she?

  5:25.16. He slammed hard on the pedal and careened up a side path. He called her name several times, but nothing came back.

  It wasn’t until several minutes later, in the distance, that he saw the white of her T-shirt, shapeless and crumpled. The closer he approached, the more he could discern of her body: fetal, motionless. He checked his stopwatch—10:23.57—and clicked stop. Frantically, he thrust his body forward, shoulders jerking unevenly to make up for his wobbly stride. He bent over where she lay in the grass. A dark purple bruise marred her right temple. He squeezed two fingers together and touched the side of her neck. A pulse. He lowered to his belly, met her at eye level. With a middle finger and thumb, he peeled the right lid open. It was dilated. He leaned in toward her mouth, careful not to move her head. A difficult angle, so he had to drag his cheek over the grass. Her warm breath emanated, but it was ragged and shallow: one deep inhale followed by two seconds of apnea.

  “Becky.” He spoke close to her ear. “Blink if you can hear me.” When there was no movement, he shouted, “Please, Becky! Blink!” He waited three more seconds, close to her mouth, monitoring the warmth, and then he was fumbling for his cell phone, fingers pressing for 911; he was shaking. He heard himself on the phone, specifying Becky’s head trauma as severe, maybe a level 6 if he went by his years of sports medicine training. A first responder asked him to keep close watch of the time, to note any changes in her vital signs. He reminded Murray to stay calm and—above all—not to touch her neck. Estimated wait was seven minutes.

  Murray dropped his phone into his pocket.

  Last night he’d called ahead to the clubhouse; no golfers had been scheduled. They were on a slope by the woods. Could the ball have rolled? He thought he saw a shadow moving from behind a tree. He called out, asking if anyone was there. But no one answered: there was just his own voice resounding, and then the deadening silence after that.

  Becky’s hands were curled tight and close to her chest. Like an infant—silent, spine tucked into her mother’s womb. He thought he sensed a blue light passing overhead, lucid and wavering, then this slow ascension of her body.

  Murray refocused his eyes, took several breaths. He felt again for her pulse. Still there, but the skin on her neck was growing paler. She was chilled, goose pimpled and clammy.

  He waited five minutes, seconds like droplets, before ambulance lights flashed in the distance. He’d specified the second hole, but he worried it was too difficult to locate. He didn’t want to leave her side for a moment, so he flailed his arms as high and wildly as he could. When the truck saw him, it tore off the main path. Two technicians ran out. One heavyset, a white duffel slung across his chest, the other a slim woman with Paramedic printed on her badge.

  She shouted, “Closed trauma,” and then “Upper-right contusion.” The EMT was still catching his breath. Murray was sure his lack of fitness would delay the process. Murray scrutinized the man’s thick fingers, how awkwardly they grasped a thin ballpoint pen for recording essential information. He was relieved by how swiftly the paramedic worked in comparison.

  “Is she in a coma?” Murray stayed close as the paramedic flashed light into Becky’s pupils, noting a sustained dilation of the right one, yellowing around the sclera. The left pupil hadn’t dilated, but from what he could tell, it was equally unresponsive to light.

  “Open the airway!” the paramedic shouted. Immediately, the EMT performed a jaw-thrust maneuver, one Murray remembered learning about in his training class. The only method that would protect Becky’s cervical spine from further harm.

  He watched a mask grip Becky’s face, and then he began praying for a miracle as a steady supply of oxygen flowed into her mouth through a clear plastic tube that looped a small pressurized tank.

  He tried not to think about the color of her forehead, which was turning a grayish blue. Livid. A blackish raccoon ring was already forming around her right eye. The EMT might have noted both as signs that the skull was fractured, capillaries ruptured, Becky’s brain swelling more with each second.

  “Blood pressure skyrocketing. Pulse low at forty.” The paramedic was testing a radial artery, while the EMT fastened a pulse oximeter to Becky’s finger. Splinting material crowded her neck.

  As they worked, Murray estimated fifteen minutes since the time of injury. “Maybe twenty—shit, I don’t know!”

  The paramedic wanted his help in holding Becky’s head while they eased her out of the fetal position and lowered her, safely, onto a longboard. After they shuttled her into the ambulance, Murray tried to leverage himself into the truck, but his hips wouldn’t let him lift his legs. He asked for help, but the paramedic just shook her head. “Not without clearance.”

  Murray collapsed off the bumper, then recovered himself and reached the driver’s side before the paramedic could close the door. He thrust his hand out, gripping the hinge. “Please!” he said.

  “You’re holding us up!” she cried. He relaxed his hand, and the door closed. Lights flashed on, bleating, as the truck sped away.

  His hands shook as Murray dialed campus administration. He left a message for the athletic director, Rick Warner, even though Rick wouldn’t be in until after 8:30.

  The grass stank of bitter chemicals, making it harder for Murray to breathe. Sirens still rang in his ears.

  The main lobby of the hospital was fluorescently lit
, with high white ceilings and shiny linoleum floors. Murray sat facing the reception desk, watching the minute hand of the clock. 8:03 a.m. Almost two hours he’d been waiting. Becky’s parents had driven from their home in Danbury and were with her in the neuro ICU. They wouldn’t answer his latest calls. He’d already tried them seven times and asked the receptionist repeatedly for help, but she wouldn’t let him use the hospital line.

  Murray kept seeing Becky’s ponytail bob. Even in the morning haze, it had been this clear, lustrous ebony. Her face vivid. Cyanotic had been written on the report. Murray shivered, picturing the same gray-blue of her skin.

  There were at least a dozen other people waiting there. A few seats to his left sat an Indian couple, wife dressed in a traditional sari, husband in a white T-shirt and jeans. They weren’t holding hands.

  To his right, a man waited alone. He wore a red cap and loose-fitted jeans. He slumped low in his seat while he checked his phone.

  Directly across from him—Murray couldn’t help but stare—was a mother with her son. The mother’s hair had been dyed platinum. She had gray slivers for eyes. He couldn’t tell if they were real, or colored contacts.

  “What are you looking at?” she asked, her accent thick, maybe Brooklyn or Yonkers.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Long morning.”

  She nodded. She had small wrinkles around her mouth that broke through heavy pinkish-white compact powder. The woman kissed her child’s head. Bangles clinked. Her boy uncurled his thumb.

  To test for responsiveness, the paramedic had had to rub forcefully over Becky’s sternum. Her clavicle had protruded through translucent skin.

  “I want a donut,” the boy whined. “I’m hungry.”

  “Danny,” the woman said, “this isn’t the time.” The boy burrowed close to her chest. Then she looked back at Murray. “Why are you here?”

  “An accident,” he said, glancing at his stopwatch. Somehow the numbers had started running again. The time read 2:15:27. His fingers trembled. He wanted to, but didn’t click it off.