Running in Circles

Maggie found her at the old baseball field behind the abandoned elementary school, the one where they'd watched their sons play Little League a lifetime ago. Elena was sitting on the bleachers, her signature blonde hair now a stiff, unnatural copper—a desperate attempt to claw back the years they'd both left behind.

"I'm running a new venture," Elena said, before Maggie could even sit down. Her voice had that rehearsed enthusiasm, the kind that masked exhaustion. "It's not a pyramid scheme, Mags. It's a multi-level marketing opportunity. Health supplements. Anti-aging."

Maggie thought about the running shoes in her car, how she'd taken up jogging at forty-seven because sitting still made her hear her own thoughts too loudly. She thought about the prescription bottle in her purse, the antidepressants her doctor said would help. She thought about how Elena's husband had left her for a twenty-five-year-old last winter.

"Elena, you texted me at eleven on a Tuesday night. You haven't spoken to me in three years."

"I know, I know." Elena's composure cracked. "I just—I saw you running past my house last week. And I remembered... God, I remembered how we used to sit right here, with our coffees, complaining about the coaches and the homework and how tired we were. And I thought, maybe... maybe you need a way out too."

The baseball diamond was overgrown with weeds now. Home plate had rusted through. Their sons were in college now—Maggie's in Colorado, Elena's avoiding his calls because he'd taken his father's side in the divorce. They were fifty-two years old, and they were sitting on splintering bleachers in the dark, pretending they hadn't ruined everything.

"I bought your starter pack," Elena whispered. "Three hundred dollars. They say if I recruit two people, I break even. Five people, I make profit. I just—I need to believe something can work."

Maggie reached over and took Elena's hand. "I'll buy something."

"You don't have to—"

"I want to." She squeezed her friend's fingers. "But not the vitamins. I want what we had. I want to sit here with you and complain about how hard it is, and how nothing works like they said it would, and how we're still here anyway."

Elena started crying, and Maggie held her while the wind picked up, carrying the smell of autumn and endings and the faint, impossible echo of boys calling out from a baseball field that hadn't hosted a game in ten years.