Girl in the Arena (17 page)

—I guess I didn’t tell you yet. I’m going to go on a date with Uber. To see.

CHAPTER 20

—To see? Allison asks cautiously, taking some tissue from her purse and blotting the lower rims of her glasses.

—If it would make any sense to spend some time with Uber. I’m not saying it would. It probably won’t. But I’ve decided to consider it. You know, objectively, I say.

Later I’ll make a call to Uber, of course, to see when he’s free, so she’ll never find out there wasn’t actually a date in the works.

—I guess it couldn’t hurt to give it a little objective thought, she says. —We could get Thad on a waiting list and hold off on actually placing him there until we see. But I’m still going to sketch out my business plans, get some input from Al. I really think I might be on to something.

I’m hoping her system won’t wind tighter until she springs into a real mood.

—You really need something new if you’re going out. And there’s a suit I was looking at. Right over there, she says, pointing to a boutique in an old brownstone across the way.

—Look, I don’t want you to feel any pressure here, she says as she holds her hand up in an effort to stop the traffic.

ah, no pressure.

—You’re just going out with him once maybe, she says as she bullies a limousine into stopping.

—You don’t have to see him again after that if you don’t want. You can even leave the date early if it’s insufferable. I’ll give you taxi money. This is your time, Lyn. It shouldn’t be about anyone else. That’s what I’ve been trying to say. I’ll do anything to put things right. How’s your head today?

—It still hurts, but not too bad.

She digs a bottle of Brain Freeze out of her purse and hands me two tablets.

—This morning I was looking at that TV station, she says.

—And they had a feature article about how young girls are suddenly shaving their heads and having initials tattooed into the backs of their skulls. You’ve started your first trend, she says, starting up the stairs to the shop. —Did I say I’m thinking about going on a diet? I don’t want to look wan, just lose five pounds. More than that would ruin my face. I was like you for years, you know. Always svelte. You’re such a beautiful girl. I hope you know that. I really do think I can get things right this time. For us. So I don’t want you to worry, if Uber... if you decide you don’t want to pursue this, she says, pausing at the landing.

Allison’s mind won’t stop running. She’s always been like that. Down the street, into the car, back up the stairs to see if Thad’s all right, out the door again to hand her husband the sword he left on the front hall table. If she could run after me all day to see what I get up to, she would.

—Are you going out to dinner? she asks.

—Too much conversation. Maybe the movies.

—The photographers might use their infrared cameras to track you. Remember Mabel Wong, Glaucous’s wife?

—I’m not sure.

—Glaucous wears blue chain mail. Anyway, the media planted a tiny camera in his wife’s popcorn when she went to the movies with a 
questionable 
male friend. They got a whole stream of intimate moments on film. But what they didn’t count on was her swallowing the camera. They had her on film down to her alimentary canal.

—You’re making that up.

—Well...

—You’re so bad.

At least manic brings out her sense of humor.

—You know he’s fighting a match in a couple of days.

—Uber? I thought his next match wasn’t until September.

—It’s a benefit for Children’s Hospital. I think you should go. You can raise some money for a good cause and it would give the media just enough, without giving them anything at all. Afterward, you could go out for a bite to eat with him.

Allison suggests I would make the more striking and photo-heavy statement if I arrived at the benefit match in simple black. So I let her tug me along, feeling like something fixed to the rear bumper of a car. Inside the shop, she goes to work.

—It should convey the right message, she says.

The message being that a woman can express grieving in good label stock.

I keep telling her I don’t care what I wear but she goes out of her mind about this stuff. I think she’s always found a way to contain the things she can’t talk about by fastening zippers, collars, cuffs, hooks and eyes, and belts.

I have to tell her several times that she doesn’t need to sit inside the dressing room with me to remove the dresses from the hangers. But she wants to be there, like I’m picking out my wedding dress or something. I’m going the limit to restrain myself and ride the mood.

In the eighth store, I lose it. The space is so small we knock knees when I pull my T-shirt over my head. Before she hands me the same dress I’m sure I’ve tried on in three different stores already—just like one she wore when she was twenty and turned heads—she checks the price tag. Allison makes a small but perceptible click with her tongue, which is, I know, her way of expressing weariness over the cost of a well-made outfit. And with this cost, the cost of everything else, because that’s the way it is with Allison. Things build exponentially and drop quickly. And though I understand, I understand, I understand, I can’t understand another minute.

—You have to stop! I yell. —You just have to stop! I don’t need your help. With anything!

As I try to take the dress off in that wedged space, all we can hear is the camera that’s mounted on the ceiling, moving back and forth, watching me undress. And when I finally get it over my head, I see that Allison looks as if she’s losing oxygen. She makes that face, like women in the other dressing rooms must be whispering about her. She stops removing dresses from hangers. She just lets the black fabric sit in her lap like a pet she doesn’t know what to do with.

Then she gets up and excuses herself, waiting outside the door until I finish dressing. Her mood shifts entirely. Like a funeral procession, we go back to the store where we had placed something on hold. When I think we finally have things sorted out, a dress bag in hand, she suggests we browse the makeup selection before heading back to the club—which is her way of normalizing, I guess.

—You really shouldn’t go alone, she says. —To Uber’s match.

I can hear it in her voice. A new panic has set in about my personal safety. We hit on this one frequently. I rim my eyes in sample eyeliner, tilting the counter mirror. She begins to work that theme about things being a whole lot different than they were when she was my age—how we can’t just go about freely anymore. Maybe she wants me to take her on my date with Uber? I don’t ask.

The lines around my eyes thicken.

—I’ll be fine, I say.

She almost laughs and then she quickly speeds through a catalog of people who could harm me in this world.

—Rapists, arsonists, hackers—don’t laugh, I’m serious—identity thieves, murderers, for Christ’s sake, Ponzi artists, biographers.

—You have to calm down, I say. —No one’s writing my biography. And I can always take Mark along.

The clerk, who has been waiting for an opportunity to interrupt, steps over to us with an ingenuous smile and asks if she can show us anything.

—Cotton balls, I say, indicating my botched effort with the eye pencil.

All of my fingertips are blue with color. From a drawer this woman puts three cotton balls into a tiny plastic bag and says that will be a dollar. I give her a look but Allison pays out before I can stop her.

—You’re not the parent, she tells me when the woman has gone. —Don’t tell me to calm down like that in front of other people.

The lines around my eyes smear badly as I work away. But I catch something of Allison’s expression in my peripheral vision and know I better look at her.

It’s obvious that she’s doing her best to keep it together.

—This rule, that you can’t marry anyone else, it’s obscene, I say.

Not that I want another father, certainly not another gladiator.

—
Uxor Totus, 
she says, almost in tears again.

—Do they just sit around someone’s back office down in New York and make this shit up by the hour? It’s probably botched Latin at best.

—It’s been harder lately, she says. —It’s been hard to believe I’ve made any good decisions at all. About anything.

—You’re fine, Allison.

—Look what I’ve done to you—this whole situation.

I hand her a clean cotton ball. She wipes her eyes. Threads of cotton stick in her wet lashes. I tell her to be still as I gently pull the bits of white out.

—I’ll take Mark with me to the match, and I’ve got the dress. Everything’s cool.

Sometimes it’s a toss-up as to who takes more energy, Allison or Thad.

—I’ve been trying to figure it out, how it happened, you know? I don’t mean the sequence of events but my complete lack of thinking. You know I always wanted to have a family. That was the important thing. That’s the one thing I can say I did right.

—I know that.

—And I didn’t go out and pick a Glad for a husband. You know that too, don’t you?

—Tommy kind of explained that.

—Tommy did?

She looks away, considers this, and continues.

—Things will work out, I say. —You’re just tired.

Maybe I say this to get away from the counter, from the store, the hunt.

I’ve started to have that feeling I get about Thad. I’ve called Julie three times already to check on him. But I just want to get home, make his favorite dinner, and watch something idiotic with him on TV.

I’m aware of my mother’s voice again as if she’s calling me from the far end of a hallway.

—You think you’ll ever be able to forgive me? she asks.

I’ve thought about what it would be like if she told me one day that she had screwed this whole business up. But I assumed she’d be eighty or something. Allison looking back. Allison’s work of creative nonfiction. And when I anticipated her atonement I thought I’d be relieved, that I’d have a sense of clarity or peace. I imagined saying I understood because in many ways I do and I feel nothing but sad for her. But now that she wants me to say this, my throat feels dry and I start coughing.

So we stand there with our eyes completely messed up in this stupid store on Newbury Street. I’m hacking away and she’s sealing and unsealing the bag that holds the last cotton ball. After a while I stop coughing and I can see she’s given up waiting for me to say something. Her arms kind of go slack and she hoists her purse up on her shoulder again.

And if I were to ask Allison to forgive me for something? Maybe it would be about cracking my head open and letting the monster out of my skull—the one that doesn’t want to be her. I don’t even want to pretend I do anymore. And that’s shearing right through the cord that binds us.

—We better pick up Thad, she says.

CHAPTER 21

We train in secret every night at five unless it’s just impossible to shake the media. Today I put on a pair of tight pink jeans, white wig, lime green blouse, and red sunglasses in order to leave work, hoping to pass for Avon, the girl who mans the register. I take off at a clip in five-inch tiger skin heels—the way she does—running down to the subway with my other clothes in a couple of value meal bags, just as the paparazzi careen into the drive-through looking for me.

Most of the time I tell Allison I’m still salting fries when I’m already in gear—building strength, not burgers. She mentions the change in my physique, and I tell her I’m doing more weights and less cardio when I work out, because I read something about osteoporosis and don’t want to get it. She gives me a funny look and then goes off to find Thad.

I had to tell Lloyd what I’m up to—that I’m trying to see if I could compete—so he’d agree to train me. Always one to promote the women’s leagues, Lloyd loves the whole concept. He dug up this beautiful silver and copper breastplate for me to train in and promised not to tell Julie. On the first evening, Lloyd tears up, saying he wants to see that moment when the daughter of seven gladiators steps into the arena. Later, Mark said it was like watching DeNiro’s La Motta in 
Raging Bull, 
to see his father carry on like that.

I wanted to say, 
This is about survival, Lloyd, that’s it, nothing more. 
But after a while, standing there watching him choke up, I felt pretty awkward and said maybe we should start and he said, 
Yeah, okay sure. 
And I went straight for the dummy’s small intestines, not because I was angry at Lloyd, just at a lot of stuff that Lloyd wouldn’t understand.

When I get down to the subway platform, I stop being Avon. I pull off the wig and sunglasses, get my Glad boots on, and throw my leather jacket around my shoulders. The minute I get on the Red Line, people begin to stare. Some people always stare, a lot of them at my boots because they have as many straps as the sandals, and are therefore undeniably Glad.

The air rushes hard now where I sit and there’s a Ring Bearer at the far end of the car working away with his blowtorch—one of those people who practices complete nonviolence, except to subway cars, I guess, and has 108 piercings on their bodies that they fill with tiny rings.

A couple of years ago when the city got sick of all the graffiti, they got really efficient at stopping taggers. But then it became a fiscally unsound policy as we entered our current epoch, to spend all that money on sandpaper and baking soda and labor to keep the graffiti off. So the cleanup slowed and they pulled back to study the problem, and the bogus report that came out—I believe it was as streamlined as 
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
—stated that Ring Bearers do most of the tagging. So the next guy who was hauled in for tagging around the city—who just happened to be a Ring Bearer—was actually ordered by a judge to remove all of his rings for one year. No one could quite match the punishment with the crime, and I remember Allison saying how crazy that was, paying a probation officer to check a guy’s empty piercings. —They should be checking for empty stomachs, she said.

Allison has a legitimate thing about hunger. She was really poor when she was growing up—I mean barely-any-food poor—which explains a lot of things.