The Fighter (29 page)

"Any
way you can." Manning crossed his arms. "Anywhere but here."

Seven
minutes later Reuben and Tommy were in the backseat of Fritzie Zivic's Cadillac
El Dorado. Zivic's foot was tromped on the gas pedal and cold night air
whistled through seams in the frame. Tommy's head was wrapped in towels; Reuben
had cut holes over the nose and mouth so he could breathe. As the miles clicked
off, the towels became redder and redder until Reuben's lap was soaked.

Six
minutes later Tommy was strapped to a gurney wheeled through the Emerg doors at
Mount St. Mary's Catholic hospital. The admitting nurse was Helen
Jack—bespectacled Frankie Jack's youngest daughter. She told Reuben to calm
down and tell her what happened.

"Tommy...
he fell down a flight of stairs."

She
shook her head. "Oh, Reuben."

Twenty
minutes later, after an X-ray revealed the base of Tommy's skull to be severely
shattered—the medical term an eggshell fracture—the beeper of a Buffalo-area
neurosurgeon went off. Tommy received a blood transfusion. The towels were cut
from around his head with surgical shears. His eyes stayed open the whole time.
Heart rate: forty beats per minute. Tommy's HMO coverage was inadequate but
Helen Jack was able to hustle the paperwork through.

Thirty-seven
minutes later a bonesaw cut a window into Tommy's forehead. The portion of
skull covering his frontal lobe was removed to allow his brain room to swell.
His gray matter turned a creamy shade of pink from oxygen exposure. Tommy's
face remained serene; a vague smile touched his lips. EEG readouts indicated
brain function next to nil. Cerebral blood flow a trickle. Neurological
activity proportional to a Stage 3 coma victim.

Rob
was in his bedroom when the telephone rang. Racing downstairs to the kitchen,
he caught it on the fourth ring.

"I'll
be there in fifteen minutes."

"I'm
not calling from Macy's, Rob."

His
father had never called him Rob before. Not once in his life.

A
gypsy cab dropped Rob off at St. Mary's Emerg entrance. Reuben stood shivering
under a cone of blue light near the doors.

"What
happened?" Rob's dread was such that he could hardly breathe.
"Tommy—?"

"He's
alive." The past hours had shrunk Reuben, cored and hollowed him; Rob was
afraid to touch his father for fear he'd crumble to dust.

In
the Emergency room they sat on orange plastic chairs bolted to the wall. Reuben
explained. Rob couldn't quite wrap his head around it. In his mind's eye he
still saw his uncle as he'd been earlier that evening: shadowboxing the fridge,
dancing on the tips of his toes with a loaf of Wonder Bread clasped to his
chest. Rob could not conceive of Tommy as he was at this moment: in an
operating theater five stories above, strapped to a steel table with a
precision window carved in his skull.

"Who?"
he wanted to know.

"I
don't know," Reuben said. "Some guy. A kid. Never even seen him
before."

"What
do we do?"

"Nothing
else to be done. We wait and see."

The
hospital surged: nurses hustled down the halls in response to code greens and
yellows and blues; orderlies ran cases of blood mixture to the dialysis ward; a
janitor guided a doodlebug over the floor. Few paid any mind to the man and boy
sitting on the bolted orange chairs. Their tragedy, whatever it might be, was
unexceptional.

The
taxi eased through the wrought-iron gates, following the drive up to Paul's
parents' house. A taste of early spring: stalactite-thick icicles dripping on
the eaves, patches of brown lawn under the melting snow.

Last
week a letter from a local barrister's office was delivered to the boxing club.
Paul's uncle Henry had passed, it informed him; the will was to be read next
week at his parents' estate, and could he please attend.

He
checked himself in the cab's side-view mirror. A twisting slash on his cheek
was healing badly, its puffed edges the same blue-black as a dog's gums. He
hadn't slept well since the fight, suffering nightmares in which he fought
great shadowy shapes the height of power poles that came at him with
barbed-wire fists.

Three
people sat in the living room: his father and mother, plus a young man dressed
in wool pants and sweater. The estate lawyer, Paul assumed. His parents held
recipe cards, as if they'd prepared speeches.

The
young man motioned to a straight-backed Tiffany chair. "Paul, please take
a seat." "It's a shame about Uncle Hank," Paul said, sitting.
"What got him— high blood pressure? Lord knows he loved his salty
snacks."

"Your
uncle is alive and well." The young man spread his palms, an apologetic
gesture. "Max Singleton, Paul. I'm an interventionist."

"Oh,
this is cute."

"Calm
down." Singleton's air was that of a scientist handling a highly unstable
element. "We're just here to talk, Paul."

"Does
Uncle Hank know about this subterfuge?"

"That's
neither here nor there," Max the Interventionist said. "Your parents
are worried, Paul. The situation is grim, maybe, but not beyond hope. This
afternoon you're in range of death; tomorrow you can be in range
..."—dramatic pause— "... of
life"

"Seriously?"
Paul appealed to his folks. "This guy is serious?"

"We're
here to help, Paul," Singleton went on. "Will you let us do that,
Paul—will you let us help?"

Paul
didn't care much for the constant repetition of his name; must be a tactic they
taught at the Interventionists' Academy. "Ah, what the hey."

Barb
Harris, demure in a black silk blouse, snatched a Kleenex from a box on the
coffee table. "Don't be so flip, Paul." Jack Harris sat beside her in
a charcoal-gray suit. They looked like a couple of funeral mourners.

"Mr.
Harris," Singleton said. "Start us off."

Jack
shuffled his recipe cards and swallowed. Paul noted the sunken rings around his
father's eyes, the four-day growth of beard.

"Son,
I always thought we were decent parents and made the right choices more often
than not, but clearly we've let you down in some critical way. I've watched you
fall apart and cannot for the life of me figure out why. There seems to be
nothing I can do to help—you won't
let
anyone help. I'm afraid for you,
Paul. Deeply afraid."

"Oh,
come on—"

"You
seem to believe I wanted you to follow in my footsteps... and maybe, thinking
back, okay, I did want that. But I don't care now— you don't want to work at
the winery, fine. Do anything you want, just so long as you're safe. I mean
that. Absolutely anything."

"But..."
Singleton prompted.

"But
you've got to quit this self-destructive quest you're on. This... jihad. You
need help, son. A car is outside—will you let us take you someplace so you can
get better?"

"What,
you got the paddy wagon waiting? Men in white coats ready to chase me across
the lawn with butterfly nets?"

Singleton
made a motion as though he were tamping down a patch of soil—
calm down, Paul, calm down.
"Mrs. Harris," he
said, "you go on."

"Paul,
I want to let you know how much I love and admire you. But I'm scared that if
you don't stop this abuse and turn yourself around you will not be with us much
longer. I can't stand thinking you are not in a safe place; whenever the phone
rings in the night I'm terrified it is about you, telling me you're dead. So
please, Paul, give me back the wonderful and caring son of whom I've always
been so proud. A car is waiting outside—will you please accept the help that is
being offered and get treatment today"

"This
car," said Paul, "where would it take me?"

"The
treatment center is top-notch," Singleton assured him. "A secluded
country estate, rambling meadows, cool valley streams, a four-star chef
..." Paul thought Singleton would whip out a brochure."... the best
specialists trained in the treatment of various mood disorders—"

"Are
you gay?" Barb blurted. "Is that it, Paul? You feel passionate for
men?"

"What
your mother's trying to say," said Singleton, "is that sudden
interest in hyper-masculine activities is frequently indicative of a latent
homosexual drive."

"The
posters in your room," his mother went on. "Those ...
surfing
posters."

"So,
what, being gay is a
mood disorder
? Are you gonna cart me off and
straighten me? Would it be better if I was gay—I mean, would it make this any
more palatable? Okay, fine, I'm gay. Gay as a French foreign legionnaire!"

"See?"
Barb spread her hands, apologizing for her son's behavior the way she might for
a senile dog with a penchant for biting the mailman. "It's like I
said—he's disturbed."

"Oh-ho-ho!"
Singleton gave a ghastly chuckle, the chuckle of a man who'd just witnessed a
ten-car highway pileup and was trying to wring a drop of hope from the tragedy.
He cast his soothing gaze upon Paul. "Nobody's disturbed here, are
they?"

"What
do I know? You're the professional."

"That's
right—I'm the professional. And I say nobody's disturbed."

"I'm
sold," Paul said amiably.

"Why
are you doing this?" his father wanted to know. "Why take punches
just to prove you can? Why suffer just to suffer? That's how animals do it,
Paul—no, animals have more sense."

"Because
. .." Paul was staggered a bit by his father's question. ". .. people
need to suffer. People need to feel pain and experience want and get smashed apart
if only to fix themselves."

"Do
you have any idea," Jack said, "what you're asking of us? A son
asking his parents to let him go through hell in hopes he might come out of it
a better man? Who says you're going to come out better— who says you don't come
out scarred and irreparable? We can't let you do that. It goes against every
single parenting instinct; it goes against basic human nature."

"And
is it our fault?" Barb said. "Our fault you didn't suffer enough?
What should we have done—daily beatings to strengthen your constitution?"

"Mrs.
Harris—"

"No,
really, I'd like to know. Would you have rather we'd locked you in the root
cellar, fed you bread and water—would that have been suitable?"

"Let
your parents know how you're feeling," Singleton told Paul. "Let them
in; together we can help."

"Do
any of you remember that killer whale, Friska?" Paul said after a moment's
consideration. "She performed at the amusement park down in Niagara Falls.
This animal-rights group held a rally to free her a few years ago. A bunch of
protesters chained themselves to the park gates, and they had this giant
blow-up whale with a lead ball and chain clapped to its dorsal fin. The park
agreed to set her free; they drugged her to the gills and flew her to Vancouver
Island and dumped her in Queen Charlotte Sound. But the thing is, this whale,
she was born and bred in captivity. Her whole life she's fed, cared for,
protected. She was out of shape, bloated, and sickly. She didn't know how to
protect herself. Her life was this tiny pointless world where all she'd ever
done was perform tricks when the trainer's whistle blew. Maybe she dreamed—if
whales dream at all—about her natural place in the world, the ancestral sea.
But even so, would she really have understood?"