Running Barefoot (25 page)

Even his sense of touch was affected. He couldn’t tell hot from cold - it was as if the signal triggering sensation was off somewhere in his brain. One day he washed his hands under scalding water, not knowing he was burning them.

During the week he spent in the hospital right after his stroke, I called the Dean of Admissions at Brigham Young University, as well as the director of the music department whom I’d met with upon accepting my scholarship. After briefing them on my situation, both had been truly kind and told me that the scholarship would be deferred until the following school year. As I hung up the phone I knew I wouldn’t be using it.

I stopped playing the piano after my dad’s stroke. The first weeks after he was able to come home I was too tired to do anything but see to his needs. I fed him, bathed him, and took him through the exercises I’d been shown that would help him to regain the strength and mobility he had lost. And of
course, the long hours in rehabilitation took up the months that followed. Every once in a while I would finger the keys, waiting for that familiar pull in my veins, but the music that had once been forever dancing in my thoughts was strangely silent. I didn’t let myself dwell on it. I don’t know if it was exhaustion or just an unwillingness to face what was happening to me.

Then I stopped listening to classical music when I ran. Instead, I borrowed Tara’s ipod and listened to Tim McGraw and Kenny Chesney – according to Tara they were ‘real men in cowboy hats’. My dad had always loved George Straight and Johnny Cash. I found it occupied my thoughts while I ran and left my heart untouched - which was just what I wanted.

When my dad was well enough for me to leave him for any length of time I started teaching piano lessons. Financially we were in trouble, and I needed to work. But the lessons were noisy and our house was small and not conducive to a recovering stroke patient who needed a great deal of rest, so the bishop of our church gave me permission to use one of the rooms in the church to teach my students. By that time, it was summer and school was out, and I could schedule my students around my dad’s rehab schedule. But when school started, my students would not be able to accommodate me as easily, and I needed an additional source of income that still had some flexibility. I had to do something else.

Tara had gone to beauty school and graduated the year before with big dreams and blue hair. One evening she made an off-hand suggestion that I could take classes at the Beauty College in the hours my dad was doing his rehabilitation. I decided that cutting hair would be as good a way as any for me to stay close to home and pay the bills. Jared lived in Provo, about ten minutes from the hospital, and when I wasn’t out of class in time to pick my dad up, he would pick him up and take him to his house until I was finished with classes. Somehow we stumbled through that year and, unlike Tara, I graduated with my hair color mostly intact, and no dreams to speak of.

Tara had wanted out of Levan and had gotten grunt work in a pricey salon in Salt Lake City, hoping to learn from the best and work her way up. I’m sure Louise would have like her to come work with her at Ballow’s ‘Do – but wasn’t surprised at Tara’s need to do her own thing. Tara’s lack of interest in the family business helped me, however, because Louise let me work in her shop. I was able to cut hair in the day and teach piano students in the evenings, and dad and I limped along, financially and otherwise.

Tara was the kind of stylist who experimented on everyone who knew her - with mixed results. My hair went through several different shades and cuts before Tara’s mom pulled Tara aside and kindly but firmly told her she was to experiment on someone else. I was a perfect guinea pig as I had
absolutely no interest in how I looked. In beauty school I had practiced on her as well, with much more conservative results, and though I would never be as creative as Tara was, I was conscientious and precise. My loneliness made me a good listener, and I was able to give customers what they wanted, rather than what I thought would bring out their inner sex kitten, as Tara was prone to do.

Every once in a while, I’d find myself contemplating how different my life was from the life I’d dreamed of. There was a time when I had dreamed of attending a Performing Arts High School. I never told my dad about that, although I’m sure he would have tried to make it a possibility. The tie that bound me to my home was much too tight, much too strong. Then, there was Kasey, and all thoughts of leaving had fled. I remembered the days when Sonja had mused that I would perform with the Utah Symphony. But Sonja never made me feel guilty about my choices. She understood what held me. However, I knew she ached for me, worried that I would bury my talent in duty and then someday try to uncover it, only to find it had rusted with time and inattention.

Sonja had aged. The spry 70-year-old of our first days together was suddenly 80. She had started getting more forgetful, wandering off, not remembering where she was or how she got there. A year after Dad’s stroke, Sonja was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Doc called me and asked me to come see her. Sonja was devastated, and I
was distraught but somehow unfazed. Life seemed to have become one tragedy after another, and I had gotten good at coping.

Sadly, Doc’s health had deteriorated as well. His mind was sharp, but he was physically ailing. They hired a live in nurse, so they could remain in their home for as long as possible.

It was for Sonja that I started playing the piano again. I would ride my bike up the hill around sundown every day, just like I had for my daily lessons years before, and play for her. I played music that demanded great skill, but that didn’t engage my soul. Somehow, Sonja seemed to crave the cascading scales and the pounding chords, and never complained that I spent too much time courting the ‘beast.’ The disease that was slowly robbing her of her personality and her very spirit would cower in the face of my musical onslaught. It was as if the neurological synapses and pathways in her mind that had once been forged by her intense musical study were regenerating and re-firing as the music reminded her confused brain of its intricate knowledge. My fingers would fly, and I would pour all my energy into a frenzy of furious music.

After I played, she would be almost normal, invigorated, without a quirk or slip. This was the only kind of playing I ever did. No beautiful Beethoven or dreamy Debussy, no heartbreaking concertos of love and loss. I played only the technical, only the difficult, only the demanding.
She was my sole audience. For most of the next two years, she was coherent and healthy enough to remain at home.

Then one day I rode my bike up the hill to the house, only to have her nurse tell me she was unwell, and sleeping. I came back every day for a week. Sonja refused to see me. When I finally insisted on seeing her, she seemed fearful, her lip quivering and her eyes filling with tears. She wailed at me to go home. I went to her piano and played desperately, trying to coax her back. For once it didn’t seem to help. She locked her door, and I could hear her sobbing behind it when I knocked. Her nurse said arrangements needed to be made to put her in a home. Doc and Sonja had made some inquiries and crafted a detailed plan. When it became necessary for Sonja to go to a convalescent home, Doc went with her. Doc passed away in his sleep two months later. Sonja was physically quite healthy, but the spiritual Sonja, her
self
, was gone - hidden away somewhere, leaving me to grieve as her body lingered to unintentionally mock and remind.

I visited her often at her convalescent home, and she seemed to enjoy the CD’s I brought. But she never ‘woke up’ to the music, although she seemed to favor the mellow and the melodious now, shunning the powerful pieces of the last two years for the sweeter nocturnes and serenades. I read to her, as I had done many times before as a young girl. She also enjoyed this, but liked
Nancy Drew
in
lieu of
Pride and Prejudice
. I tried reading her beloved Wuthering Heights only to have her fling it across the room as I had done in her sitting room so many years earlier. The medication she was on made her less fearful, but I could tell she was always relieved when I left. After all, I was a stranger.

14. Reprise

August, 2007

It had been threatening rain all week, dark clouds rolling in, the sky grumbling, only to roll out again without relinquishing a single drop. The horses would stomp and whinny, the air would crackle with static, and then ....nothing. It was late August, and the summer had been especially brutal. We’d had little moisture that summer, and we’d had a fairly mild winter as well. We needed the rain desperately. Still, a week had gone by, and the clouds remained stubbornly full.

That morning I had gotten up at dawn, pulled on my running shoes and walked out to find the skies thick with gray storm clouds. Again. I debated going back to bed, laying under my covers, and listening to the rain. I scoffed a little. I knew it wouldn’t rain if I went back to bed, and I would miss my run. The early morning was relatively cool, the darkness of last night having scared off the heat of yesterday. It was perfect running weather, and I wasn’t going to waste it.

I was three miles into the run and just starting
to swing back towards home when Mother Nature decided to have a little laugh at my expense. The air grew eerily still, and then there was a mighty crack. Lightening pierced the sky and the thunder boomed. Rain gushed out of the heavy clouds, pounding the dirt road like an overzealous drummer. I squeaked and picked up my feet, flying towards home.

There is nothing like a summer downpour, and I didn’t even mind being caught in it a mile from home. I flew down the road, arms pumping, hair streaming out behind me, shoes squishing. I might have blisters on my feet from the friction, but for now the squishing wasn’t enough to slow me down or put a damper on my gratitude.

I was nearing the place where the dirt road meets the black top, and knew from experience that the blacktop could be slick. I was watching my feet as I rounded the corner, speeding down the homestretch. A sudden whinny and a “Whoa!” had me looking up in alarm, arms flailing and feet flying, trying to avoid running right into the rear-end of Don Yates chestnut mare, Charlotte.

Charlotte did a skittish two-step, and I slid right by her prancing feet, belly down, hands sliding through the gathering puddles. I processed a few things as I slid - Charlotte didn’t have a rider, and I wondered if she’d jumped the corral again. The horse was notorious for escaping. I’d found her in my garden a few times, curling her horsy lips around my carrots. But I had distinctly heard a
male voice say “Whoa!” and knew Charlotte had been apprehended sometime before I almost ran face first into her ample rump. After coming to a complete stop, and ascertaining that I was not seriously damaged, I pushed myself up to my hands and knees, palms stinging, but otherwise unscathed. My lifelong klutziness had taught me a thing or two about falling.

“Josie?” There was astonishment in the deep voice above me. “Are you okay?” Strong arms reached down and gripped mine, pulling me to my feet.

A large hand smoothed my wet hair off of my face and out of my eyes as I wiped my muddy palms off on my sopping shorts. The rain was starting to abate, and I tipped my face up against the slowing torrent to apologize to Don for my clumsiness, and found myself face to face with Samuel Yates.

I hadn’t seen him in almost seven years. Stunned, I drank in his familiar face, so dear, and yet, so different. My old friend on the cusp of manhood was gone. In his place was a grown man, confidence in the set of his mouth, awareness in his observant black eyes. There was a greater resemblance to his father’s family, or maybe he just wasn’t as desperate to disguise it anymore. He was still lean, but definitely brawnier, his neck thicker, his shoulders wider. The long black hair that had once been a symbol of his individuality was short now, almost hidden under his cowboy hat. His hat
kept the wet from dripping into his face, but I had no cover, and the water kept running into my eyes. I swiped at the rain impatiently, not quite believing he was there, standing right in front of me.

“Josie?” he’d started to smile, although his black eyebrows were drawn together in question. “Are you okay?”

I realized I’d been staring at him, smiling, but not saying anything. “Samuel.” I said it softly but with great pleasure, and felt a sweet nostalgia flood my soul with warmth. His lips quirked tenderly, making his eyes crease at the corners, and I saw that he shared my emotions.

I became aware all at once of my very wet behind and the hair that had fallen from my ponytail and was dripping down the sides of my face. I was completely drenched, and my t-shirt and knit running shorts were plastered to my skin. I shivered and pulled self-consciously at the clinging cotton. His eyes widened slightly as he took in my unintentional immodesty.