The Woman in Valencia by Annie Perreault (book recommendations website txt) 📗

shade equally, on my left looms the El Corte Inglés department store, massive and triangular, we’re about to turn right onto a street leading to the marina, I’ve memorized the beginning and the end of the course, the middle is more of a blur…

KILOMETRE 3

… I’ve been following this woman in the “Cancer Survivor” T-shirt for a while now, I almost feel bad passing her, I smile at her, nod my head in encouragement, she looks so strong and determined, it’s hard to imagine her succumbing to a disease, maybe some people are just tougher than others, everyone thought that my mother—who didn’t seem afraid of anything, who travelled solo and ran marathons—was stronger than she really was, but we were all wrong, so terribly wrong, you’d never have guessed how fragile she was to look at her, that’s what everyone told me, she was an expert at bottling up her emotions and masking her pain, even when she was on the verge of cracking, when she felt like she was being impaled by a cold, hard spear of anxiety through her chest, she ran a marathon full-tilt, finishing first among the women in her age category…

… yet, every time she held a knife to cut carrots for our school lunches, or drove on the highway, or ran over bridges, or stood waiting on the platform for the metro, or stared out the cottage window at the thin ice on the lake, she was thinking about death; she was gripped by anxiety attacks at all hours of the day, picturing herself dying from cancer in the next three months, imagining herself being run over by a car while out biking; she could hear the crackling of electricity in the walls, the buzzing of high-voltage power lines, she lived in fear of a short circuit that would burn down the house in the middle of the night; in her journal, she wrote that the feeling would most likely pass, that it was the incident in Valencia that was messing with her head, that she would never do anything stupid, that it would go as quickly as it had come, that it was best not to frighten her family and friends with her morbid thoughts, this too shall pass, she told herself over and over, keep going, no feeling is final…

… I was just as bad, I didn’t say anything, didn’t raise the alarm, it didn’t matter how often my father would say that I was just a kid, that I didn’t understand what was happening, I felt my mother slipping away from us bit by bit, I felt her melancholy penetrating my tender little girl’s skin, but I didn’t have the words to tell her any of this; sometimes, I’d surprise her while she was standing at the stove stirring a pot of soup, her eyes brimming with tears, sniffling discreetly…

It’s just the onions, Laure.

I cut up a hot pepper and rubbed my eyes by accident.

Oh, it’s nothing, I burned my hand putting something in the oven.

… I’m running toward the Valencia Bridge, toward the first of the aid stations, near the Veles e Vents building, I can see the four horizontal rectangles of the strange pavilion, I’ll have to turn left soon, it’s a shame the course doesn’t run along the ocean, which is right nearby, I think about that picture of you running on a beach in the Caribbean, your form is perfect, you’re gazing off into the distance, almost like nothing else exists but the movement of your body and the peaceful horizon…

KILOMETRE 4

… I spilled my drink all over myself, my tank top will dry, I look at my watch, so far, so good, I’m on pace, not tired, I’m breathing calmly, going with the flow, the picture of patience and determination,

the street is narrower here, the buildings create shade, I weave my way into a pack of focused runners, one of the men is breathing noisily in time with each stride, a gross-sounding wheeze that I won’t be able to stand for much longer, we move forward, all characters in the same story, in the same corridor of air and asphalt, wearing down our soles layer by layer, engaging the same muscles, sweating under the same sun, suffering from the same thirst and exhaustion, aiming for the same horizon, a few palm trees here and there, the odd pastel facade, I take it all in, but my concentration is focused on my arms and legs, I let myself be carried along, I don’t think about anything in particular, but I need to think about my mother, pay my respects, my mother, my mother, my mother and her motto, running = calm, she wrote it everywhere in her running journal, her entries would always start with a weather report…

Cloudy and humid today.

Ran to the mountain with M.

20 km and a bit.

We invented a new fartlek:

you speed up every time you pass another runner.

Oh my god, did we laugh.

No pain.

Just calm.

… I only just recently figured out what you meant, what the calm was that you were referring to; what I still can’t figure out is why you were so desperate for that calm…

KILOMETRE 5

… my mouth is dry, thank god for aid stations and sugary drinks, now we’re running past a fenced-in soccer field that feels never-ending, on my right I notice the tram tracks lying in an ochre bed on the ground, a long, slightly raised strip, I wonder if it’s the tram line that leads to the Valencia Palace, another shiver runs down my spine,

I can’t stand it when my skin crawls that way, maybe I should slow down a little… for a second, I catch a glimpse of the sea in the distance, then I’m forced to turn my back on the Mediterranean,

in a sudden flash, I see you screaming, your head pressed against the steering wheel, the moose on the snowy highway,