Lunches in Hollywood / Madeline Grossman

Lunches in Hollywood

Madeline Grossman

Content Notes: addictive behavior & allusions to eating disorder

I was suffocating inside, hiding from the chaos which had ensued just days earlier from the announcement of a nationwide COVID lockdown. The week before, I had been in Massachusetts, immersed in college life in the Berkshires until we were told to return home for our own safety. Home was Richmond, Virginia: former capital of the Confederacy, sliced in half by the muddy James River, home to a mediocre minor league baseball team, five universities, giant sycamore trees and craft breweries. Everyone knows everyone in Richmond, people say. But I’m not sure that anyone ever knew me.

When I was 15, I spent my lunch periods running in a cemetery. As soon as the clock hit 11:55 a.m., I was rushing to stand, to shove away my books, and get to the door first. I would drop my bag in the basement, slam my locker shut and rush outside, dodging teachers and students. I was racing the clock, my hands fumbling to tie my shoelaces and pull my hair back, knowing that if I made one wrong move, if I lingered for one too many seconds, then catastrophe would strike. So, I would hurry down the sidewalk, resisting the urge to break into a sprint because I knew people could still see me from the first floor classrooms. Upon reaching the corner of Idlewood and China, my feet, seemingly of their own volition, would begin to strike the ground in the familiar pattern: left, right, left, right. Keep your legs light and fast. You can fly, if you put your mind to it. My mind would relax, the fear and pain not gone but instead pounded into the pavement until they were too tired to fight back. I would pick up the pace, heading up the hill on Cherry, then making a sharp left turn down the path to Hollywood Cemetery. Past the old undertaker’s house, a creaky Victorian dripping with cobwebs and peeling purple paint. Past the cars parked on the hill, waiting for their mourners to return. Past office workers on their midday break, thinking to themselves, “What is she running from?”

That first hill was always the best, its sharp descent filling me with a strange power. And I’d run on in silence, gripping my phone tightly in my right hand so that my index finger fit perfectly in the groove on the side. I’d run on, up the hill, past the train tracks, until I crested the bluff overlooking the James River. I would think to myself, “Most people would stop to enjoy the beauty here, I’m sure. But I don’t have time for that.” So I would continue, dodging bikers and walkers and funeral processions, past the mausoleum, cool marble filled with lives half-forgotten. I would force my eyes down, arms tightly tucked to my sides as I passed the construction workers, making my way down the hill past the Smiths and the Donovans, past the statue of a beloved dog, and the stone tree trunk marking the death of an infant. I would double back at Jefferson Avenue, retracing my footsteps of the past 10 minutes, fearing the wrath of some greater power if I skipped this ritual.

And I’d make it all the way to the Confederate Pyramid, a huge stone structure commemorating a lost cause, and all I could think about was how I only had two hills left. I would wind my way to the sunken field at the base of the hill, running under the oak trees withered and dark, not stopping to wonder what things they’d seen. I would attack that final hill leading back up to the street, thrusting myself forward, just one more step and then another. And I’d sprint back to school, head down, slowing to a walk at the corner of South Pine and Spring to avoid suspicion. I would wipe the sweat from my face, dart inside, holding my breath, waiting to be questioned about where I’d been. But the questions never came, although I’m sure peo- ple wondered what exactly I was doing during all those lunch hours. I held the secret of Hollywood Cemetery in my heart for years, never wanting to expose the inexplicable drive I once had to run, run, run while my peers were busy eating and flirting and crying and living, not dying.

At 18, I resented being thrust unceremoniously back into the place where I’d been a moody pre-teen, a volatile adolescent, a problem child, a silent shell. I didn’t want to relive my parents’ divorce, didn’t want to chat with neighbors who had watched through the kitchen window as I screamed my throat raw, protecting myself from that slice of bread, that spoonful of peanut butter that would ruin everything. I just wanted to stay in Massachusetts, safe in my anonymity, safe in the knowledge that I wasn’t that sick person anymore. I had gotten myself out; that had been my goal for the 10 years I’d spent in Richmond. Just get out, I’d think, it’s the city that’s causing this. We wouldn’t have lost everything if we had just stayed put in Boston all those years ago.

But here I was, in Richmond for the foreseeable future. I was sad and lonely, scared of getting sick, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I found myself trembling with the need to get out of that house, away from those choking walls. So one day, I started to wander. I roamed the city, starting from the Fan and moving through the Museum District, down Broad Street past the banks and the hookah lounges, across Monument and into Shockoe Bottom. I searched for alley gardens, pockets of green in the midst of concrete, with benches and roses and early lettuce crops. I looked for cats in windows, making up stories about them, naming them Chloe and Patrick and Jimmy. I found a chalkboard on Floyd with a different question every day: What is your biggest fear? Who makes you smile? I waved to people on their porches, always checking over my shoulder, crossing my fingers and praying that no one from high school would see me.

One day, I walked down Randolph and, on a whim, took a right on Main Street. I turned left onto Cherry and continued straight for a few blocks. I was studying the irrational pattern of chipped bricks in the sidewalk, admiring the way the weeds pushed through the smallest of cracks, when I glanced up. A massive wrought-iron gate stood in my way with the words “Hollywood Cemetery” arching over the top. I stopped, feeling the weight of memory crashing over me. My breath caught as I remembered the never-ending panic at the thought of being caught running instead of eating lunch. I remembered the sweat dripping from my hair onto my neck, felt the scar on my knee from the time I tripped and fell, sprawled in front of the World War I memorial. I stared at the sign, at the path before me. And then I walked forward.

At first, I followed the same path I had always tread on those desperate midday runs. But when I reached the bluff overlooking the Hollywood Rapids, I stopped. I watched as a kayak the color of the sun drifted almost lazily down the river. I noticed the way the water curled around the boulders, the way the silty shallows almost let you see the bottom. A raindrop landed on my wrist and I watched it slide down my arm. And I walked on. This time, I took a right at the mausoleum, continued up the hill and stopped again to read the names of the dead buried there: Charles and Frank, Sandra and Adam, Sarah and Louise. I continued on, singing to myself as I walked. I heard a train pass the cemetery behind me, and wondered where it was going. I meandered my way through paths I’d never encountered before, greeting the squirrels and the souls of people long gone. When I finally reached the bottom of that massive entrance hill, I was overcome with a strange desire to sprint up it. I started to run, feeling that old burning in my chest and my legs, climbing my way out of the cemetery one step at a time. When I reached the top, I stood panting for a minute, staring vacantly at the faded sign painted on the brick building across the street: Van’s Laundromat, 5 a load!

I remembered how I used to feel, after that mad dash through Hollywood Cemetery. I remembered how I used to feel, being 15 and obsessed, obsessive–my whole world revolving around the completion of this run. The gravestones, weathered and worn, heavy and somber in their reminder of what I would inevitably become–and I ignored them. It’s curious, really, to think of how much time I spent in that graveyard when I was so far from alive. At the time, I would have argued that I was alive; after all, couldn’t I run seven miles during lunch? Couldn’t I feel my heart beating, too fast? Couldn’t I see my chest heaving?

But, living is more than existing; it requires awareness, demands it. Living is savoring colors, watching people love, touching, holding, tasting wine. Living is watching the stars flicker and hearing the caw of a crow and wondering who he’s calling out to.

At 15, 16, 17, I was so confident in the staying power of my youth, so confident that I wouldn’t regret wasting my life on numbers and times and miles run because life was infinite. I was infinite. But somehow, some day, I can’t recall exactly, I must have stopped running. I must have rested my head against the wall and thought, maybe this body deserves to sit. I must have taken a good look at the night sky, or a tree turning scarlet in October, or the way my sister’s eyes crinkle when she laughs, and thought to myself, oh how lovely that is. I must have realized that I’d been running so fast that I had left myself, my body, in the dust.

At 19, I left Richmond for good. I backed my white Subaru out of the alley behind Grove Avenue, cautiously edging my way around parked cars and creeping out into the narrow street. I had pictured this moment for so many years, had scoffed at the idea that I could ever be anything but overjoyed to leave. After all, what had Richmond ever done for me? But that was before I was 18 and living, really living, in Richmond for 16 months. That was before I let myself be curious about the city, before I laid on the river rocks and pretended to be one of the art school kids, high on life. That was before I took sunset drives across the Belvedere Bridge, before I did my homework in Scuffletown Park. That was before I confronted Richmond, before I confronted myself and who I used to be, before I stumbled upon Hollywood Cemetery for a second time and rediscovered what it is to be alive. I glanced at my sister in the passenger seat, then to the cobblestones quickly fading behind us. And then, I drove on.