The Breakaway(25)

At that point, the trip was nonrefundable. And so they’d discussed it and decided that Lily and Morgan would do the trip as a duo. Lily had agreed, thinking, privately, that the trip would be a chance for her to talk to Morgan, to find out what was really going on. She hadn’t wanted to explain to Don how hard being a teenage girl was; how a dozen different things could go wrong between the end of breakfast and the start of homeroom, and how many of those things had to do with boys and men. Morgan went to a private Christian school, a school affiliated with Don’s church… but bad things could happen, even there. This Lily knew from personal experience.

She’d been praying that the bike trip would help, even though cycling was something Morgan and Don did together. Lily could ride a bike, but her plan had been to pedal a few leisurely hours each day before hopping aboard the sag wagon and meeting her husband and daughter at the lunch stop or the hotel.

The morning after Don had gotten his phone call and they’d settled on the new plan, she’d gone to the garage to check out her bike, which she hadn’t ridden in… weeks? Maybe months, she decided. Her bike was slumped on two flat tires, with cobwebs ornamenting the brake levers. For a minute, Lily just stared, feeling like the bike was a version of what she’d become. Old. Forgotten. Sagging. Obsolete.

Lily knew that she looked fine for her age. She’d gained only a few pounds since she’d gotten married, but that weight had settled in her hips and thighs and belly, and not even the most stringent diet could budge it. Her hair had gotten thinner, her feet had gotten wider. The only glow her skin could boast, these days, came from cosmetics, and her breasts could only achieve their prematernity perkiness with the help of an underwire bra. Lily did her best to look nice for Don. She colored her gray hair, she exercised and watched what she ate, she wore clothes that were flattering and age appropriate without being matronly. Lily knew she looked good… but she also knew that she looked good for thirty-seven, while Morgan looked fifteen, like a rosebud still unfurling, its petals creamy and pristine. A flower, opening itself to the sunshine, certain that nothing in the world would hurt it.

Lily had wiped off the cobwebs, wrestled the bike into the trunk of her car, and driven it to the bike shop. There, the repair guy had inspected it, and her, without even bothering to hide his skepticism.

“So you’ll be riding, what? Twenty, thirty miles a day?” His scraggly, light-brown beard meandered from his chin toward the center of his chest. There were tattoos all over his arms, and rubber discs stretching his earlobes.

“Closer to forty,” Lily lied, trying not to stare. It was actually more like fifty miles most days, and even longer on a few, but the guy was already giving her a there’s-no-way-lady kind of look, and Lily didn’t want to risk him becoming even more skeptical or telling her that what she’d planned would be impossible.

“And the trip leaves when?”

“Next week.” The trip actually left in five days, but next week made her situation sound slightly less dire.

“Have you been riding a different bike?” the guy asked, with a dubious note in his voice. “Because that’s a lot of miles to start with if you haven’t been riding for a while.”

“I’m sure I’ll be fine.” She smiled brightly, feigning confidence. “I do Zumba, so I’m in pretty good shape.”

“Zumba,” the guy repeated.

“It’s like a dance thing,” Lily said.

“No, no, I know. My nana does Zumba. Hang on.” He lifted the bike up (effortlessly, Lily saw) onto a frame, where he clamped it in place and gave its rear wheel a spin. Even Lily could see it wobbling as it turned.

“Your wheels need to be trued,” he said.

“Of course,” Lily said, and nodded like she knew what he meant.

“Chain needs to be lubed,” the guy said. “I’ll want to take a look at the brake pads, and the derailleur. And the gel in your saddle looks pretty shot.” He stopped talking to himself and looked at her. “Any idea when your tires were last replaced?”

Lily shook her head. At the guy’s direction, she climbed aboard a stationary bike and let the guy take measurements and adjust her bike’s seat and handlebars. She sat on a cushion that took an imprint of her bottom (her sitz bones, the guy said, but it looked like her bottom when she got up, which was the last thing Lily wanted to see). She picked out a new saddle, a pair of padded, fingerless gloves, and three pairs of cycling shorts with pads that looked like Depends sewn into the crotch and made her waddle when she walked, shorts the guy promised were essential for rides longer than a few hours. “You’ll want this, too,” he’d said, handing her a tub of chamois cream. Lily was too ashamed to ask him where the cream was meant to go.

When she got back home, it was early afternoon. Morgan was still at school. Don was still at the church. Lily dabbed sunscreen on her face and cream on the bike short’s padding, per the Internet’s instructions, before putting them on, along with a tee shirt and the gloves. She wheeled her bike to the end of the driveway. You can do this, she told herself, swinging one leg over the top tube. It’s just like riding a bike. That first trip around the block had left her dismayingly exhausted, and the next morning she’d been so sore that she’d almost screamed when she sat down on the toilet. But she’d kept going, riding every morning and every afternoon, first five miles, then ten, then twelve. She had persisted. She was not going to let her daughter down.