Red Bull for the Cure

The first thing I'd noticed about my dad's apartment when I got into St. Louis on Friday night was how clean it had gotten since my brother moved out. I remembered him telling me about it a few weeks before.

"Hey, remember all the grime and stuff that was on the faucet in the bathroom, and all the coffee stains that were on the kitchen walls? I cleaned it. I got back from the Race for the Sight at Union Station, and I was like, 'Ew, this has gotten really bad,' so I started cleaning the bathroom sink, and then the rest of the bathroom, and then the kitchen, and then four hours later I was done with it."

My mom cleans regularly to entertain herself. My dad does it on a whim after a charity race.

I sat in a chair while he continued pumping up the air mattress for me. He wore a t-shirt from a run for Polycystic Kidney Disorder. A decorative rug with dogs playing poker hung on the wall, partially covering the door to the garden in his closet. The Eco-Gro light was on and the fan on the closet floor made the reflective sheets of plastic that lined it flicker, creating my dad's version of the crackling hearth underneath the stately heirloom tapestry. There were trays and rollers on the newly-uncarpeted hardwood floor, left over from when he was experimenting with what to paint on the walls. At the time, he had a yellow branch with fuzzy black leaves springing from the twigs. It was a third attempt.

We pinned the numbers on the backs of our T-shirts for the Komen Race for the Cure so we wouldn't have to mess with them the next morning. With the shirts and numbers were pink pieces of paper saying, "I Run in Memory of______." Neither one of us knew anyone who had died of cancer. Dad said that he'd always done it for the chicks.

The next morning, we got a Red Bull for me at a gas station before heading downtown. He didn't want one, though last year he did because he'd given blood two days before the race. We munched on pieces of Mad Croc Energy Gum before I spit mine out after five minutes because it began tasting like crocodile-flavored vomit. Most of the time, we were next to an older man who was constantly coaching and encouraging his wife---or it could have been daughter. "You're doing great, keep it up. We can stop anytime you want. You're doing just fine, keep on running. Only a mile more; you can do this."

Our time was three minutes slower than last year, which I attributed to the lack of Red Bull in my dad's system. It gives you wings, you know.

We ate at St. Louis Bread Company after cleaning up, where my dad told me about his idea for a mint-chocolate cereal, then remembered a mint-flavored water he wanted me to try. We got bottles of that before getting my car tuned up, washed, and full of gas. I left St. Louis with two more cans of Red Bull and the air mattress that I slept on. The race is always around Father's Day. I want to be able to run it with him every year.