Girl in the Arena Page 2

  That’s her standard line, so I don’t know what to say.

  —I told you two years ago things would change. Now that you’re eighteen, you’re free game to the media, and…

  —And I have such an impressive list of fathers.

  —Well, you do, like it or not.

  —Okay, Allison.

  —Things will go better than you think once you get used to the added attention, she says. —Why don’t you call the girls and see if you can get together with them this afternoon? Do something fun.

  This is Allison’s other kick: the girls, the effort to resuscitate my social life. Although I’ve always been kind of a loner, except for my best friend Mark, from seventh grade on I had two main girlfriends. Sam: the high-wire act who has her father’s broad shoulders, her mother’s practically bulging eyes, and a tendency to sometimes talk before her brain kicks in, and Callie: shy and smart and built like a support beam, willing to do anything Sam wants in order to be included. We were the only Glad girls at our high school—and we live in a culture in which most people think it’s fun to observe Glads and make jokes about Glads but not mix with them—so we clung fast.

  We were all about the things threes produce, sometimes tight and inseparable, sometimes weirdly triangulated and full of drama. We finally broke apart over the asinine junior prom. Sam’s boyfriend Dirk had gotten his boy Adam—one of the popular Glads—to ask me to the prom and I had thanked him but said no. Adam was this moron who spent his days and nights watching fistfights on Jerry Springer. He was always taking cheap shots at everybody he could think of with his little BB gun mouth. And there was Sam, acting as if I was supposed to embrace all things Glad.

  —I can’t believe you said no to Adam, Sam said. —Does anyone around here know how high up Adam’s father is in the GSA?

  I didn’t say that my father Tommy outranked him. She knew that.

  I watched her turn to Callie, who swallowed hard, as if she were washing her own little self down her throat.

  —I wouldn’t have said no, Callie squeaked.

  —Exactly. No sane girl would.

  Sam couldn’t stand it when I just looked at her as I did then, waiting to see if she’d calm down. She had me pressed against a locker room stall. I was still slick from volleyball.

  —Go ahead, screw up your life, she said.

  —When he comes out of the gym, he smells like a Dumpster on a warm day, I said, hoping to put an end to the conversation.

  —That’s disgusting, Callie said.

  Sam gave her the eyeball and she was about to launch in again when I said, —Besides, the prom is a stupid waste of energy. All those silly little gowns and corsages and stuff.

  —What are you, some kind of women’s power person? Sam asked.

  —Wow, the curse of Cain, I said.

  I didn’t say I think this whole concept of being a Glad wife is 1950s at best, because she’d tell her mother, who would call my mother. And it’s not that Allison doesn’t know how I feel, but she tries really hard to keep up appearances, and I have no reason to make things more painful for her. I know that gladiator sport blindsided her and that she stayed for survival’s sake.

  —You know what my mother says? Sam went on, pointing her French manicure at me.

  —I have no idea what Martha says, but I bet it’s good.

  —She says Allison’s crazy and that it’s probably hereditary.

  Then I lost it and said what I had been thinking for months: that I never had any intention of going to the GWC with her.

  The GWC, or Gladiator Wives College, in Modesto, California, is where young women learn in two intensive years to be perfect Glad wives. At one time the three of us had talked about going together and sharing an apartment. Sam’s mother, Martha, who’s a lot younger than my mother, was one of their first graduates.

  Sam shoved my shoulders against the metal stall. That was about the time when I first realized I might be a pacifist, so I kept myself from pushing her face in.

  We stopped talking after that. Callie wouldn’t answer my calls because she was a hundred percent Sam’s now. My friend Mark asked me to prom at the last minute, thinking that’s what I secretly wanted. But I told him I just wanted to go paintballing and he was down with that so we suited up and drove over to Somerville. I never told Allison what Sam said, and how things unraveled. When she asks I just say we’re all pretty busy.

  Allison holds out hope that I’ll come to my senses and pack my bags next month for the GWC. She says she’s talked to the president of the college, and that they’ll take me late because of Tommy’s standing.

  As I back out of her room now, certain that the tranquilizer is starting to work, I shut the door without latching it so the snap won’t make her jump. She has a terrible startle reflex.

  I know I have to move out soon, get my own place, my own life. But I stick around as long as I can for my brother Thad. I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately because they say tomorrow’s fight is the toughest one of Tommy’s career, and every time I think about that, I feel somehow displaced.

  CHAPTER 2

  Often, I’m at my fast-food job on Friday nights serving trans-fat to the masses. But my boss, Sidney, is very big on Glad sport and Tommy in particular. He gave me a raise of fifty cents an hour the first day on the job when he figured out who I was. And this week he gave me the whole weekend off to be with my family after I gave him two tickets to tomorrow’s American Title match.

  Once I tuck Allison in, I head for my bedroom and turn on La Boehme. While I send Mark an IM, I thumb through Glad Rag magazine, look at the crawl on a silent CNN, check the weather, download some tunes, and watch a couple of videos on YouTube. Allison can’t stand that I do so many things at once, but that’s her burden.

  Finally I settle into the window seat, where I try to work on A History of the Gladiator Sports Association. But really it’s about waiting for Tommy to appear in the backyard so I can see if he looks ready to fight.

  For several days leading up to a match Tommy does a series of limbering exercises on the lawn each afternoon. After that he lifts some weights and soaks for a while in the cool, warm, and hot baths we had built in what used to be the garage, so when he isn’t working he can feel like he’s hanging out at a Roman bath.

  On something like cue, Tommy steps from around the side of the house. Allison worked very hard on the garden this spring so everything’s in bloom: the forsythia, the pink ladies, and the hollyhocks. And suddenly I’m having this horrible thought that if Tommy dies tomorrow we’ll have thousands of flowers for the funeral, because everything she plants has a high yield. And that means her sorrow as well as mine.

  I think about going downstairs and talking with him, but I’m afraid I’d just make him nervous. He spent all morning sharpening his swords in the kitchen. While I slathered the toast with preserves and ground the coffee beans, he spun the whetstone, pulling one of his favorite swords across its rough surface. He seemed uneasy. Usually he looks pretty tough before a fight. I wanted to say something then as well, but we both kept grinding.

  Tomorrow afternoon he’ll take his car in early so he can suit up in the locker rooms of the amphitheater in Boston, Romulus Arena. Allison, Thad, and I will follow an hour later. We’ll sit in our usual box and hope to God he makes it, because if he does he’ll only have two more matches to fight and then he’ll get out of the business for good and maybe we can start to have a normal life the way Allison always promises.

  I told Tommy once, when he first dated Allison, that he would make a good trainer. I stopped short of saying he’s too smart to fight for the GSA. But Tommy takes his responsibilities seriously, that’s the way he is, and it turns out he had already signed his contract.

  Now he’s pulling the long hose out into the yard and he has to stop to untangle it. He turns on the spigot and starts to water the hydrangeas—a bizarre thing to do the day before a fight. He always spends his time in preparation, even if this means sitti
ng in the swivel chair in the library with his eyes closed, thinking about how he’ll take down his opponent. Tommy says it’s essential to see exactly what you’ll cut, precisely where you’ll strike, the way a professional golfer visualizes a ball arcing down the fairway, sailing toward the cup, the effortless hole in one. Tommy has a lot of discipline to see that kind of thing in his head—how he’ll sever a man’s arm or rip into his face. I couldn’t do it. When I’m up in our box and someone gets injured, I typically look away.

  Tommy holds his thumb over the end of the nozzle and a fine spray of water hits the flowers. Maybe he’s worried they’re going to succumb to the heat? I’m trying to imagine when he began to care about Allison’s garden. As soon as he’s finished, he goes down on his haunches and pulls at a few weeds, inspects the undersides of leaves.

  Is he worried about aphids? Is his mind riddled with thoughts of bone meal and mulch? And the way he’s doing it—he goes at the whole process delicately, as if he’s trying to keep the dirt from his nails. But Tommy’s not a delicate man. He’s a gladiator. Maybe he has a fragile thought or two, but mostly I think of him as durable goods, tough as any industrial product. He seems to be in some kind of stupor. Maybe he needs some coffee.

  I just don’t get it. If he thinks he’s going to die in the arena tomorrow, if that’s what this is about, I can’t imagine a dumber way to spend a last afternoon on Earth. Finally, Tommy leaves the flower beds and goes off to the shed.

  But now he’s bringing out the antique lawn mower! Not the type the gardeners use on Tuesdays when they spring from their red pickup. A whole team of gardeners shaved the grass just three days ago in fact. Caesar’s Inc. arranges this service to keep Tommy focused on his game and he always leaves this work to them.

  Tommy nudges the old push mower with the double-helix blade into the yard. He pulls his T-shirt off and throws it on a garden chair. Naked to his gym shorts, a bandana round his head, he looks like his own posters. He pulls his long hair into a ponytail. Already he’s sweating, and he hasn’t even started to mow.

  I want to call down to him, to let him know Allison is trying to sleep so that he doesn’t make too much noise, but Thad has hidden the window cranks again. If I rap on the glass Allison might leap from her nap, thinking someone’s shooting up the house, in that way that one noise becomes another in a dream. I wave my arms over my head to get his attention, but he doesn’t look up.

  *

  By the time I get downstairs, Tommy has disappeared from the garden. He’s put on a fresh T-shirt and jeans, and I find him in the weapons room. I have to say he looks more like his old self now, pushing his wavy hair out of his eyes, his bare feet planted on the Oriental rug. He has an open book in hand. The Tao of Killing, one of those slim catchall volumes that says absolutely nothing about the sport or the life, but sells millions of copies. He shrugs, like I’ve busted him reading a tabloid at the supermarket, and tosses it on a pile of mail.

  —What’s going on? I ask.

  —Just reading some… chain mail.

  —That’s so bad.

  —Chain letters?

  Sometimes he gets this way with me, as if we’ve just met and he has to find something clever to say and it comes out awkward. He leans into the sword rack now and offers me a chair. Hoping to let him off the hook, I ask if I can get him something to drink.

  —Actually, I was just going to make a smoothie. You want one? How about strawberry mango? he asks.

  Then he touches my jaw, cradles it for a moment. I can feel the familiar calluses made by the strap of his shield.

  —You all right? I ask.

  —Perfect.

  While he breezes off to the kitchen, I sink into the easy chair and shut my eyes.

  Frank, my first father, I can’t remember. He died when I was one. But I don’t think any of the others ever made a point of asking me to join them for refreshments the way Tommy does. Though Rolfe, my third father—Rolfe was a mess—once asked me to join him for a highball in the living room. I was eight at the time. I remember hiding out in my bedroom closet till Allison came home. At his funeral some of his family, who had come to pay their respects to Allison, remarked that they didn’t mind so much that he had been taken out.

  Tommy is the one who’s always shown interest. He wants to know if my black eye means someone picked a fight with me at school (I’ve been ganged up on a few times, sometimes by preps, sometimes by jocks); how many pounds of fries I cook at my hyper-food job in one night (the answer is plenty); if my friend Mark’s intentions are good; that kind of stuff. Tommy’s been around for five years now, though he and Allison didn’t get married right away. I never thought their relationship would last.

  I hear the whir of a small blade churning up frozen fruit and yogurt in the kitchen, the blender set into the steel sink, the slap of his feet on the parquet floor.

  He hands me a straw and we sip quietly.

  —This is really good. Did you add a boost? I ask.

  —Yes. Dope.

  —Wuh?

  —Made by Tour de France Ltd.

  —You’re cracking me up today, I say, rolling my eyes.

  —How’s A History of the Gladiator Sports Association going? he asks.

  —I’m still on the American section. I really want to interview Joe Byers, but so far he won’t return my e-mails.

  Many consider Byers to be the founder of Glad sport, but he’s a funny guy, never grants interviews.

  —You know, you’d make a pretty good history professor. No, I’m serious, or a biographer.

  —Wouldn’t Allison love that, I say.

  —Not at first.

  —I think my head-on-a-platter would express it.

  —She wants you to be a Glad wife because that’s what she knows. I’ll work on her, Tommy assures me.

  He rubs the scar that divides the apple of his right cheek into two half spheres, the horizontal line where the pigmentation disappears into an equator. There’s a drop of pink on his chin.

  —You know, your mother’s been kind to me. Good. Kind, he says, as if he has to stumble for the right word.

  It sounds like one of those random comments he’ll land on. I’m used to letting those declarations hang in the air. Sometimes I wonder if all they have is a marriage of convenience. Nothing would shock. I point to his chin and he wipes it clean.

  —We should talk about a couple of things, he says.

  His voice hits that low register that makes my intestines bunch up.

  —Let’s go for a walk. We have time, he says, looking at his watch. —Bring the History along.

  So I stuff my computer in my backpack and we head out. We live just off Brattle Street in Cambridge, where wealthy people loyal to the crown once lived before the Revolutionary War. There are placards on fences and brickwork, stating who lived in various homes, along with titles, significant activities, that kind of thing. Wood frame, lots of shutters, sweeping lawns, unending shade trees—everything Allison wanted. You hear about occasional vandalism, but I haven’t seen a week when the garbage built up around here.

  We walk awhile before he opens up.

  —Look, I don’t want to make too big a deal out of this but Uber’s on the fast track and so far he hasn’t left any of his opponents standing. If I go down in the arena tomorrow…

  —You’re not going down, I say.

  —But if I do, he says.

  —You’re going to knock Uber’s head off in the first two minutes.

  You say that kind of knowing stuff when you’re the daughter of a gladiator. You grow up saying knowing things the way your mother does. It doesn’t matter what you know or don’t know. Or if your mother spends her whole existence telling lies and you’re just reproducing them.

  Always lend ineffable confidence to the gladiator, Bylaw 29.

  I’ve read the fifty-seven Gladiator Conduct Regulations to Tommy, more than once, so he could work on his memorization. Gladiators have to be prepared for frequent pop quizzes.
The GSA loves that kind of thing. A hearty fine goes to the Glad who fails a pop quiz. You can lose your transportation, your whetstone, everything.

  —I guess I just want to make sure someone’s going to be there for Thad, he says.

  —He’s good with us, I say. —Don’t worry.

  As if I’m worry-free.

  —I’ve been watching the tapes of Uber’s last six matches, Tommy says. —The fact that he’s a lefty doesn’t help.

  —But if you know that, you’ll be prepared.

  He doesn’t say anything.

  Tommy and I have this way of keeping pace when we walk. Though I’m the taller one, his stride is quicker. I have a hard time walking with Allison even though I’m only two inches taller than she is. She likes to start and stop and comment on everything. She’s obsessed with each yard and who’s planting what. And Thad, well, he takes you on a moonwalk you have to gear up for.

  As we near the park, I slide my bracelet off my wrist.

  —For good luck, I say, pushing it his way. —Not that you’ll need it, of course.

  —Your dowry bracelet?

  —This girl in San Francisco, they say her dowry bracelet saved her father’s life. I read it online last week.

  The steel band was made for my first father by a famous sword maker in Japan. It’s in the man’s style and it’s always been large for me. And Tommy’s a little guy, only five seven, so even though he has thick hands it slips easily onto his wrist. He says something about wearing it proudly, he’s even a little choked up, so I don’t get all the words.

  He reaches into a pocket in his jeans and holds out a scrap of paper to me.

  —I wrote down a name and number for you, he says.

  —LeRoy Gastonguay? New York? And he would be?

  We head down a short street where we usually turn. In the middle of the block is a park. A single-family lot given to the neighborhood by a wealthy family. There are two benches and a small fountain. The trees offer shade on a hot day. We take a seat.

  —He works for Caesar’s Incorporated. He’s down in the New York headquarters. If you’re ever in a bad strait, this is the guy.