1

Gabriel
4H
On Memorys Road
What happened was this: I got an image in my head that never got out. We see a great
many things and can remember a great many things, but that is different. We get very few of the
true images in our heads of the kind I am talking about, the kind which become more and more
vivid for us as if the passage of time and the years did not obscure their reality but, year by year,
drew off another veil to expose a meaning which we had only dimly surmised at first. Very
probably the last veil will not be removed, for there are not enough years, but the brightness of
the image increases and our conviction increases that the brightness is meaning, or the legend of
meaning, and without the image our lives would be nothing except an old piece of film rolled on
a spool and thrown into a desk drawer among the unanswered letters.
The image I got in my head that day was the image of her face lying in the water, very
smooth, with the eyes closed under the dark greenish-purple sky, with the white gull passing
over.
That is not to say that I fell in love with Anne that day That came later. But the image
would have been there if I had never fallen in love with her, or had never seen her again, or had
grown to detest her. There were times afterwards when I was not in love with Anne. But the
image was there all the time, growing brighter as the veils were withdrawn and making the
promise of a greater brightness.
Jack Burden, in Robert Penn Warrens All the Kings Men

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,

But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself 52

I first really met Margot Steiner that day at the Bronx zoo. I had just realized that girls
were actually people and that you could approach them, and we met that day to go out of the city
for once. For all her world traveling, and there was much of it, I dont know quite how often she
had been out into the boroughs. There are different types of travel I guess, where you go and see
the whole world and only see some of it, or you go around your own city and see all of it. I guess
it's hard to call someone who lived in New Delhi for six months and stood on glaciers at the
bottom of the world sheltered, but perhaps that description is neither right nor wrong. Just not
applicable maybe. Either way, we were two different types of wanderers, but the fates aligned
and we got on the subway at 72nd street and ended up at the Bronx zoo.
I don't remember the first time I saw her. I can recall exactly how it probably was, but
probably not as it exactly was. It was the winter of 2011; the wind blew brutally cold that winter.
That was the winter I began running religiously, but I ran alone in my pursuit of lightness and
purity and speed, which is what all true runners are seeking despite the more trivial things we
may have to cite to explain our otherworldly devotion. That led me to Sean, a tall, impish, kind,
driven, and quietly inspiring coach in his late 30s, who saw me in my solitary pursuit and took
me into his rag tag group of ten or so fellow former lone wolf runners from a smattering of
private schools who all knew each other somehow or another through that exclusive network
which secretly connects the upper classes of New York City without our knowledge. Thats
where I met Stuart Scott, a burly, talkative 9th grade trust fund child who ran in one ratty
sweatshirt held together by duct tape, his best friend Max, a ginger who was quiet where Stu-Sco
was gregarious, Scott, who couldn't run more than three miles a day out of concern that he would
stunt his growth, movie star handsome Chris, whom Ive seen a dozen times since those years
and who refuses to acknowledge my existence, Hart, an odd combination of wannabe lax bro and

failed k-pop star, and Wyatt, the youngest son of Don Imus who couldnt really run, but trained
to keep up fitness for rodeo, and Margot Corper. And, there too, probably bantering with Sean
and Stu Sco like she wasnt the youngest there by a year at a stage of life when age means
everything, was Margot Steiner. It was a cold March day.
You can guess how the rest of this part of the story goes. March turns to April, April to
May, then June comes around. Boy meets girl and, like the approaching summer, boy and girl
begin to talk more. But only so far.
By June, nearly everyone had left on extravagant vacations, including Margot. Just Stu
Sco and I were there the last day. The last words I clearly remember Stu Sco saying were you
know it's hot out when your balls are sweating. Perhaps we said a more eloquent goodbye.
That was to be the last time I was to see Stu Sco or Max and the last time I trained with
many of the others; Stu Sco and Max went off to boarding school the next year, then Hart and
Scott and Chris all went their own ways, mostly to their school teams. Margot Corper stopped
running seriously; she joined the social runners, got a gym membership, looked great in yoga
pants when she was out for her mile run, and never spoke to me when I saw her in the park in the
years that followed. Wyatt left for the Imus dude ranch somewhere. When I returned in the fall of
2011, it was just Sean, Margot and I.
Margot. She loved to run in the rain and the cold. On the sunny perfect days, she was
indifferent. But once it clouded over and it started to drizzle or come down in sheets, she loved it.
I used to wear hat whenever it rained, and she always took it. I started wearing the hat just so that
she would take. Her favorite thing to do after it rained was to wait until we ran under a tree on
the bridle, then she would jump up and grab it and make the tree rain all over me. Did I expect
it? Of course; did I stop it no. No matter what direction we were running, she always had to be

on my right; or, rather, she always liked to have someone on her left shoulder in the days
since then, I've had other training partners, and I've always subtly noticed that I run faster when
they're on my right; a void I need filled.
And I guess this next part of the story really is self-explanatory. Talking a bit, then talking
more and on and on in the age old progression. A couple of other runners joined our number:
Vaughn, with whom I went to pre-K, was a fully developed, long legged running machine at 13
with an inexhaustible ability to speak about great runners and esoteric math problems, and Max,
for whom running was a panacea for his mild Aspergers and general absentmindedness
although one day he just kept running and nearly gave Sean a heart attack when he didnt show
up again for another hour but there were still plenty of days where it was just Sean, me,
Margot and the run. That took us to January 2012.
That's when, for not the first nor the last time, Margot disappeared from my life. It was a
cold day, threatening rain. Her favorite type of day. She ran off with my hat. I didnt count the
days until her return; I didnt think of her like that yet, though I missed her.
She came back five months later from New Delhi with a tan, more stories than we ever
got to, no running fitness, and certainly no hat. Then we hit that crucial juncture when boy and
girl decide to meet outside of their mutual scheduled activity time. And that is how I ended up at
her doorstep with a MetroCard and my Snoopy T-shirt on, waiting to visit the gorillas.
With our first step on the 2 train began the part of my life you could call my life on the
town with Margot. I had spent years living in the greatest date city on earth, and had never
effectively taken advantage of it. This time perfectly coincided with the first inklings of true
independence from childhood and perhaps that makes it more magical in my memory than it was
in reality. For the first time, I could dial a number on my phone or, rather text someone, for

this story is not that old decide on a time and place, and simply go, albeit with a curfew and
limited funds. Still, a MetroCard could get me from Van Cortland Park to Far Rockaway if I so
desired, so my excitement was limited by only my imagination and a city kids sense of which
neighborhoods you didnt visit. Wherever we went, I always walked on her left.
When we met that first time, Margot had two grab and go Nutella packs.
I couldnt let you go on in ignorance for any longer, she began, continuing a previous
conversation about my relatively limited food experience, so I got you Nutella. Of all the foods
she had tasted, and at that point she had been to five continents, lived abroad twice perhaps
her stories are the ones I should be telling the one that she felt vital to my knowledge of the
world was Nutella. Go figure. I enjoyed it.
After managing to get off at the right stop, not so easy a task in the Bronx back before
google maps actually worked, we got to the zoo and we hit our first roadblock.
ID please, said the surly woman standing at the front gate. I, figuring I was about to get
a student discount, handed over my ID, and was quickly asked my age.
Yall cant come in here unless youre 17 or with someone who is 17.
Apparently in their infinite wisdom, city officials, who, clearly, have nothing better to
think about in a city where a third of the neighborhoods are de facto off limits and all the
serviceable housing stock is priced like a 5th avenue penthouse, decided to write rules that would
keep truants like Margot and I it was spring break away from city parks, so that, having
taken the trek up there, we would be barred from the park and left to wander around west
Belmont.
Considering ourselves crafty, we walked a mile north from the main entrance to the car
entrance we were too smart to pull this at the gate where we had been denied where we

hoped to find a group with whom to sneak in. Margot approached the first family we saw, asking
them to let us walk in with them. The mother was flustered when she heard that we were not
allowed in, and, luckily for us, they were members, and they got us in for free, saving me $20 in
the process later to be spent on admission to the gorilla exhibit. Take that bureaucracy.
I dont remember what we talked about. It doesnt much matter. Animals, who were right
there, or people who were in our memories and our future. We were there for hours. She was
with me but she also wasnt. Maybe she was doing this the whole time, but I remember when we
were walking out, she showed me the conversation she was having with a guy at her school. It
had a lot of emojis.
When we returned to the upper west side, we didnt want to leave each other, so she, in
her continuing efforts to educate me in the culinary arts, walked through the giant fairway on
Broadway and 74th marking down all the foods that I had to eat. Over the years, Ive checked off
most of the items, though I am yet to have eaten dates, edible flowers, broccolini, fro-yo, and
several others (Im about 33 for 47). We departed with a hug, only to meet the day after for
practice.
And that was the beginning. But it was again the end, for the summer of 2012 was upon
us, and she was off to lord knows where. We ran once again before we went our separate ways
for the summer. I spent that summer sailing on the south shore of Long Island, in the same town
where my brothers had sailed, and where my family always summered. Being the master of wind
and water always seemed to me the purest escape from the land and its impurities; though
perhaps it may be better to say that in my 13-foot boat I am more a channel through which the
power of wind the water can flow to create pure motion and speed, a speed which I pursue upon

the land, a pursuit which led me to Sean, and then to Margot, and to the water when I was not
absorbing miles on foot.
My entry to Regis in the fall of 2012 marked the end of my regular running with Margot,
for outside coaches were not welcome and certainly I could not be caught cutting practice to run
with an 8th grade girl as a big shot high schooler though I did anyway. That was the general
end of my running relationship with her, and the beginning of the year and a half stage of our
wandering, to which the day at the Bronx zoo was simply the prelude. We could not often meet
that year, between my adjustment to high school and the loss of our tri-weekly meetings.
Our schedules aligned in February, and we took off again. A little known fact about both
Margot and I is our museum maturity. The museum is often just an excuse to be together inside
for an hour or two without the rude interruptions of someone kicking your chair or an
inconsiderate movies noisy dialogue at the cinema, but for us it was, to use the Nicene
formulation which she, good Kosher law abiding Jewish girl that she is, might frown on
fully date and fully museum experience. This time the city led us down to one of its lesser known
gems: The National Museum of the Native American, all the way down at the Battery. There
turned out to be a simple reason for the lesser known status of this particular museum: it was,
especially to the two of us who have been spoiled by the Met and MoMA and the Museum of
Natural History and to her who had seen the world, shitty. Its hard to show that Native
Americans were more than just the enemy in John Wayne movies while still acknowledging that
part of their culture, but this museum failed on both ends. Still, we were there, and this time her
phone was away, so what can I complain. We walked out of the museum north, and ran smack
into the Wall Street bull. Her mother worked in the building across the street; Margot called her:
she didnt answer. We kept walking north, looking for somewhere to eat. Margot was quite a

walker, and specialized in that no nonsense New Yawk stride which sends tourists and pigeons
scattering in remarkably similar patterns, so the miles and miles of training I did finally paid off
practically as we made our way through the financial district into the lower east side. I could
really go for some dim sum, she mentioned at the first sign of Chinese characters on the
awnings.
Dim what?
Dumplings she replied, remembering that I had neither the travel nor culinary
expertise she possessed.
I know what those are. My brother knows a great dumpling house around here.
The crazy one with the Russian girlfriend she was up to date on my brothers; as
crazy as they are and confounding as it can be to be related to them, they have given me plenty
of fun stories to tell who lived in China? If he recommends it, it must be good.
No, he could tell you about that statue and his role in the Opium wars, I replied,
pointing to the severe looking bronze Chinaman we had just passed, but he doesnt know
anything useful. It's the biker brother with a bit of street sense. I called Brendan, and we
meandered into Vanessas the one on Eldridge, not on 14th street; dont go there...that one is
for the guilos and ordered a score of piping hot, fresh, authentic dumplings in a cramped,
bustling, one-step-above-a-streetcart of a restaurant. We sat across from each other at one of the
beat up, boil scorched wooden tables, eating the best dumplings in the city a judgement later
corroborated by my Chinese and Chinese speaking friends and that is when she held my hand.
I forget why, I think she was excited about something, but I dont recall anything other than the
feeling of her hand in mine. It was, in that moment, as I always thought it would be. Simple,
unspoken, natural, and, well, right. Right hand and left, fitting together, not electrically, but

quietly and lightly. We left Vanessas behind, and I took that feeling with me, though the physical
symbol dropped. Wandering up Second, she decided it was time I had a plum, and we stopped at
a deli on 1st street, which does, in fact, exist even though it wallows in irrelevance even as it
marks the beginning of the rest of the city, and shared a plum. I put a check next to plum on the
Gabe Food List. Still walking at a mad pace, we found what we must have been looking for the
whole time: Daveys Ice Cream. Their strong coffee was the strongest coffee we had ever tasted,
the brunch flavor smacked of Sunday morning, and the pistachio was unbelievable. I dont know
what was so Mexican about the Mexican chocolate, but Ill take their word for it. We both got the
pistachio. From there, we made our way over to Union Square, and made our last stop at the
Strand. If you take a girl past the Strand, and she doesnt have the patience to go through the
used book shelves, she aint the one. I found a book on the intellectual history of early America
on the dollar cart; I bought it.
Thats when Whitman came up. I, being who I am, proclaimed my firm belief in the
vastness of Whitmans self. She chuckled and called him absurd and verbose, citing her
grandmother who taught American literature at Harvard. I retreated for a moment, not wanting to
lay siege to that particular fortress, though I am still biding my time, waiting for the day when I
will send her an anonymous copy of the deathbed edition of Leaves of Grass or perhaps the
1855 edition would more staunchly resist the Emersonian attacks of her Harvard pedigree. Then
it was six oclock, and she had to go. I said goodbye outside her six story townhouse in the 70s,
and went home to go out for my run; she went out to her dinner with the New York City students
admitted to Andover.
Andover. That was the shadow that hung over our heads for the next months. We went to
the Brooklyn museum later in March, ran here and there in the spring. Spring turned to summer,

10

and we dove into our own summers. We met in August for a long run, and swore to keep in
touch. But then she disappeared. Again. As she always did, and apparently always would. When
she came back, we ran in the rain once and went around the city as we always did, but it was not
the same. There was a barrier where there hadnt been one. One day, over winter break when we
had agreed to meet, she didnt call back...she texted me a month later; she had been in Antarctica.
From anyone else, I would have laughed and known that it was over. But, having known her, I
knew she really was with the penguins. So, I let it be known that I had been turned down from a
date for Antarctica.
I saw her once more in late April. Pink and red set Central aflame. It was cherry blossom
season. As I approached the gate on the bridle from the north, the wind blew a blossom into my
hand. I twirled the delicate flower between my fingers, totally absorbed. I looked up, and there
she stood, contrapposto in the middle of the path, moving in the very act of waiting. Flower in
hand, I grinned sheepishly. She laughed. Whos that for? Who else but you? She took it,
smiling. Then, we ran. I never saw her again.
That is not to say she has left me. She did, yes, but she has done that before. But she left
me with that memory, the memory that holds the truth. Every moment I think of her, and it is
more often that I care to admit, I see her as she was standing in that moment when I looked up,
after I saw her but before I recognized her. That cherry blossom was the only gift Ive ever given
her.
I do not know if I love her, or if I ever did. But she is the source of my writing, and my
strength, and my hurt, which are all three the same. Every time I write of her, I think that I have
dipped my pen into the well of our past for the last time, but I never have. I look for her in every
book I read; I search for her on every path I run; I keep coming back and back to the past. I miss

11

her terribly sometimes. Whenever I run, she is standing at the finish line as she used to do at the
end of workouts when I was running alone, cheering me on. I break the plane, exhausted, and she
is not there. I am uncomfortable running with anyone taking her spot on my right, but more
uncomfortable with no one there.
I do not know if I love her, or if I ever did, but I know that there was something in that
moment that must have been True, or else she would have faded, bittersweetly, into my past with
the others I have loved. But, with her, there is always more to say, and every time I try to say it,
one more veil is uncovered from that moment. I am desperate to see the light at the center, so I
always come back. I endure the deep ache in my chest from missing her and the stiffness of my
muscles from running and the bleary eyes from writing until I fall asleep, hoping uncover the last
veil. I believe, no, I know that If I run fast enough, if I write eloquently enough, if I attain true
speed and pure flight of body and mind she will be there, waiting for me, perhaps not as she was
then, or not even as she is now, but as the Truth that is hidden in that moment.
He was running in a way that they had never seen. His strides became lighter and
lighter, harder and harder, and more and more perfect. He seemed to be readying himself to shed
the world. -Mark Helprin, Winters Tale