by Fields, MJ
If there were a referee here now, he’d rule her down by contact.
“You won’t get paid, and you can’t afford not to get paid. Your back taxes are…” I lean my ear closer to Liv and wait for her to fill the number in.
“Just under fifty-two,” she says, clearing her throat as she sets one more paper on the table for Angela to consider.
Her mom lets her eyes drift down long enough to get the gist of what’s on that page. Most of it was from memory, but the scary numbers are what they are. She’s been nose-deep in those books for weeks. This bill was coming due whether she or I were here or not.
“He wouldn’t do that. Ange, he’s testing us. He needs us; don’t even fall for this shit,” Leo says, stopping his wild pacing just long enough to point at me a few times and attempt to convince himself that he still has a card to play.
“I don’t need you, Leo,” I say, looking him in the eyes just long enough to let him see just how serious I am. “You taught me what I need to know. I’m grateful for the knowledge. And that is all. I can’t even stomach the sight of you.”
My eyes move back to Angela because that last part wasn’t a lie. They both deceived me, and I detest them for the part they played. But of the two, I spent hours every day with one of them. I gave him a piece of me—I gave Leo trust. I won’t make that mistake ever again.
The room grows smaller somehow, everything in the gym looming with shadows. The doors are locked and the sign is out for a temporary closure. Angela didn’t want interruptions. She didn’t want an audience here. That means somewhere deep down, she knew this wasn’t going to end the way she wanted. The twist, though, is she still gets paid. She expected a fight over that, but there won’t be one. It’s the price paid for my freedom.
“Done,” she says, and a beat after Leo punches a metal plaque hung on the wall, his knuckles instantly busted open and red with his own blood.
“Sign…right…” Liv leans forward and draws a line along the page of terms, “here.”
She hands her mother the pen, and Angela scribbles out her name, then passes the pen and page to the left for Leo.
“I’m not fucking putting my name on that. I don’t care. He’s not getting you. I worked too hard. I made you. No, I’m not signing.” Leo leans into the wall again and holds his wrist, his injured hand likely throbbing now with pain.
I glance to Liv, and she shifts her eyes to mine and nods once. We both stand, leaving the paper and pen on the table for Angela to force on Leo. He’ll sign it. He has no choice. If he doesn’t agree, then this place will be forced into bankruptcy, and that’s not something they can survive.
We leave the two of them alone, and the second the gym door shuts behind us, the shouting begins. Liv doesn’t utter a word, she just slips her hand in mine and pivots her body in front of mine, lifting herself up on her toes to place her lips on mine. Her other hand rests on my cheek, and when she falls away, I hold my hand over it, keeping her close.
“It’s done,” she says, and I breathe in deeply. I believe she’s right. There’s a nagging thing I need to deal with before I can close the door here mentally, though.
“I have to talk to him one more time,” I say, looking toward the porch just behind her.
Her hands are warm, and they wrap around mine and squeeze tightly until I lower my gaze back to her. She shakes my palms a few times, brow pinched and lips somber as she stares at me. She’s asking me if I’m sure I need to do this. She’s asking without words, and probably because she’s been in my shoes too—not for the same reason, but for the same man.
Her chest sinks as her shoulders lower, and her eyes flit to my chest then to our hands. She nods while looking at our feet.
“Okay.” Her hands offer one more squeeze and she slips around me, heading toward the trailer where she’ll wait for her mother to reluctantly deliver a signed paper that probably wouldn’t hold up in court. Thing is, Liv owns Angela and Leo. She knows what they owe the government, and sometimes that’s more powerful than knowing where bodies are buried.
I’ve only been in Angela’s side of the duplex a few times, and it always strikes me how homey it is when I enter. If I didn’t know the neighborhood that was outside, and the people living here, I would think I stumbled into a loving grandmother’s house, cookies in the oven and yarn in a basket by the sofa. The illusion is masterful and it makes me laugh to myself seeing it now in broad daylight.
The reality becomes more apparent with each step up toward Archie’s room, where canes and walkers to assist him are propped against the hallway wall just below the hole I made with my fist. When I first came here, I thought it was strange that a man like him—a god, really, of his sport—was kept in a dark room up a set of stairs he probably wouldn’t be able to get down quickly if there was a fire. I get it now, though. Angela was just hoping this place would burn down one day.
He’s exactly where he was the last time I saw him. I push open the door completely, and his neck shifts enough for him to catch a view of me sideways. His body slumps into his bed, the top half bent up during the daytime. I wonder if anyone bothers to lower it at night.
His eyes struggle to look at me from the side as I enter, so I close the door behind me and move to the chair next to his bed. He looked excited the last time I visited with him, though it has been nearly two months. This man—his expression—is far different this time. He isn’t afraid. I don’t think Archibald Valentine knows fear. I think if this house were to catch on fire, he’d take on the flames, even in his condition.
A fighter to the bitter end.
“I don’t even know what I am right now,” I begin, leaning forward in the chair to rest my elbows on my knees. I rub my hands together as I think, and Archie’s eyes follow the movement.
“I have so many questions, and the hardest part…the thing I think I’m angriest about…is you can’t fucking answer them.” I choke up a little, my words hanging in my suddenly dry throat. I cough the feeling away, pushing it deep, but it still burns.
I shift my gaze from my hands to his eyes, and he’s still not looking at me directly. He can’t—not while I’m talking about something so raw. This is his defensive move, and I can wear him down as much as I’d like and he’d still outlast me. He’s had years of practice holding things in.
“Was he a good man?”
The room is quiet, and I swear I can hear my own voice asking this question over and over, somehow echoing off the piles of junk and dusty articles framed on the walls. Archie’s eyes dart in short movements, and I’d think he were truly heartless if they weren’t glassy. I’m patient, and eventually he nods shakily.
My father was a good man, or at least so says a rotten one.
“Did he ever want me?” My tongue pushes at the back of my teeth and I mash my lips together tightly fighting the shaking sensation in my chest. I am not impenetrable, and these wounds are fresh and old at the same time.
Archie’s eyes pass mine on their search around the room, pausing for just a breath. They’re so fucking sad. He nods again, the movement bigger than before.
I nod in sync with him as I gaze down at the floor, short carpet stained with ink and medicine. Angela brings her puzzle books in here sometimes to waste time while she visits. I wonder if she’s broken pens in anger and frustration, or maybe Archie has in a fit, trying to pull it from her hand and force her to look at him.
I wonder…can Archie write?
I glance to the left to the side table for the bed. It’s covered with medications, filled Sudoku books and a plate with half-eaten eggs and a cold piece of toast. I take one of the puzzle books in my hand and flip through the pages in search of something blank, finally settling on the inside cover. I crease it and fold it inside out before pulling open the small drawer and fishing through dozens of shortened pencils and broken eraser pieces. The first pen I find doesn’t work, but deep in a corner, I feel a marker. It’s fat, and black, and permanent—not ideal for a man who likely lacks ha
nd control, but I take it in my hand along with one of the sharpest pencils.
There isn’t much room on Archie’s bed, so I drag the chair close and sit on the armrest, holding the folded book in my palm like an easel. Archie’s eyes widen slowly, every movement he makes delayed in response. I’m already forming his fist around the pencil when he looks down to where our hands touch.
“Tell me something. Here, on this paper. Tell me the most important thing. I know you can’t give me what I want, but just give me something—one goddamned piece of him. Something I can take with me anywhere. Just…ahhhhhh…just…”
I grit my teeth as I grow frustrated. Archie’s hand isn’t able to hold the pencil well, and the sharp end snaps off leaving splinters of wood on the paper.
I let my hands fall away and hold the folded booklet against my leg while I breathe—first in…then out. My heart is racing with rage, and I have to calm it. I’m dizzy and sick.
“I just want something,” I whisper, feeling the soft edge of the book’s pages with my thumb. I rub it fanatically until it bends so much it’s rounded.
“Pe….ennnnn.” The sound creeps from deep in his chest, rough from his dry throat and awkward out of his mouth that only works on one side.
With wide eyes, I shift my focus to his chin that he’s fighting to tuck to his chest so he can better see the marker I left in his lap. His hand crawls slowly along his blanket, over the crisp gray sweatshirt that practically swallows his frail body whole. Quickly, I move my palm over the top of his hand as he struggles to curl his fingers around the marker resting on one of the sweatshirt folds. Once it’s caught in both of our grasp, I pull the cap away and throw it to the foot of the bed, holding the book back where it was before, just beneath the tip of the felt from the marker.
The ink smells strong, and our hold together is uncomfortable. The black draws lines along the sides of both of our fingers, but Archie doesn’t stop. His tongue is pinched between his teeth and lips on the right side of his mouth. He nods with each mark he makes on the page. It takes minutes for one word—HIS—and I start to worry we’ll run out of room. I’ll rip away more book pages, tear down old articles from this wall if I need to for him to finish with this message. Everything feels desperate, and I grow restless the longer it takes, afraid that someone will come into this room and put a stop to it, destroying the little he’s been able to write.
His fingers shake, but he nudges me away, my hand falling just under his wrist for support as the black ink drizzles as if it’s coming off a feather. More minutes pass, and another word comes into view, and after almost half an hour, his message is complete. The marker falls into the bed, staining the sheets, so I pick it up and toss it opened into the drawer.
HIS BIGGEST REGRET
It’s nothing earth shattering, yet it is so deeply what I needed to read. My father wrote those same words in his diary, but when the truth came out, I began to doubt he meant any of it. I started to think Angela and Leo made it all up—his words, the bike, the birthday cards. I knew deep in my heart that it was real, but their selfishness made me doubt it all the same.
Archie’s hand slides toward the edge of the bed, brushing into my leg, and I look away from the words he wrote to his hand. I stare at it for long seconds because that hand is many things. It’s pitiful, for certain. It’s also capable of killing a man, even if it was in a ring where that man went willingly. And that hand is repentant. It’s strong enough, even in its weakest state, to communicate to the little boy in my soul, who is more hungry and desperate than the fighter standing in this room.
I take his hand in mine briefly, squeezing.
“Thank you,” I say, moving it up to his chest and leaving it there. It’s all I can give him, and I’m still not sure if he deserves more or less. But that is something.
Twenty-One
Liv
Being grilled by both sides of a legal battle makes a person start to question which side is right and which one is wrong. It messes with my head; makes me feel abused. Enoch’s defense team is strategic, and their questions come out in such a way that it’s almost impossible to counter or poke a hole.
“Yes, I did take those documents to this building, and no Enoch…I mean Mr. Rostram…was not present when I did that.”
“No, he did not request that of me directly, but his secretary reports…”
“Oh, you didn’t ask that.”
“No, he did not request that of me directly.”
“Yes, I took those to the agency alone.”
“No, I do not have any copies from him.”
The jury must know, though. They can strike things from records and ask people only to consider so much when they’re making a decision, but is that really how they act? Could those people really see me struggling for ways to say what I really knew—that Enoch was at the helm of every decision that ultimately robbed those people of millions—and then ignore it completely when trying to assign some sort of number that these victims are owed?
I don’t think they can.
I’ve been in Washington for a little less than two days, and already I’m afraid that my mom and Leo have somehow managed to wiggle their way into Memphis’s life and turn him against me. Paranoia’s greatest ally is experience.
My fears are irrational, though. I know they are. I’ve talked to Charles twice. Memphis is working out of a different gym, one on the east side of town, in a space borrowed by an old friend of Charles’s who also happened to be screwed over by my mom and dad and uncle.
I spent the entire night trying to find a way to be there—a way to get to Vegas today. There weren’t even seats on a bus, and by car, I’d never make it on time. I was close to trying, but Memphis told me not to. An eighteen-hour drive in the dark on my own with very little rest would not keep him calm, he said. He has plenty of extra noise in his head thanks to my family. This isn’t how a fighter walks into a challenge.
Instead, I had to settle for the hotel business office, where for the last hour, an older gentleman named Gary has been trying to fax vacuum cleaner orders he got during his trade show to the main office in Kansas. I’ve become Gary’s IT administrator, and in return, Gary promised to listen to the fight as I stream it on my phone and somehow try to talk to Miles at the same time.
My space has been set up for a while now. I got here early to make sure nobody else had ideas of taking the only chair in here or sucking up the Wi-Fi connection for their stupid multiplayer phone games.
“It’s up!” I align my chair with my screen, my phone resting against a hardwired one I doubt anyone has used in a year.
“Your friend call yet?” Gary hovers over my shoulder, and I’m so nervous that I don’t even mind the smell of day-old coffee on his breath.
“I need to call him. I’m just so nervous,” I say, giggling through the words.
I sit on one hand and press my fingertip from my other hand on my phone screen, minimizing the video to get to my contacts. Memphis insisted that Miles be there. I think in his mind, he’s as close to a dad as he’ll ever have. I think Miles is okay with it, too. A healthy codependency. Something shifted in Miles’s perspective when he learned the truth about Memphis’s dad. His heart broke a little along with us all, and maybe he’s more willing to leave behind that tree and the life that goes with it.
Maybe he’s ready to heal.
I press to call Miles, and it rings a few times, ratcheting up my nerves because without Miles on the phone with me, I’m going to feel helpless when I see Memphis take a punch. No offense to Gary, but he’s already said a few things to indicate to me he has no idea what he’s about to see.
“Hello, hello…Olivia? You there?” I can almost imagine Miles cupping the phone to his ear.
“Yes, I’m here! Miles…can you hear me?” I left him a pair of earbuds, and I hope he brought them, because as loud as that arena is now, it’s about to quadruple in decibels.
There’s some sliding noises and a little static as the p
hone moves around, so I wait and check my screen to make sure I still have the video feed up. It buffers every few minutes, but only for a second or two. I hope it doesn’t cut out when…no…I won’t think that way. It won’t cut out, and there won’t be anything scary to see.
“Liv, you there?” Miles comes in clearer this time, but the noise of the crowd is still thick behind him.
“I’m here. Can you hear me?” I’m shouting, and it echoes in this tiny room, drawing the attention of people walking by in bathing suits on their way to the pool.
“I sure can. Damn, lady…these headphones you gave me are nice!”
I laugh and run my palms over my face, my lips numb and my teeth pulsating with this uncontained energy I can’t seem to dodge.
“How does he look?” I move both hands under my thighs and I rock forward in the seat, trying to make out everyone on the screen. They haven’t announced his entrance yet. This was always my dad’s favorite part. He liked the pomp and circumstance of hearing someone call him The Heavy, and the cheers from the crowd. He loved the fight, but that jolt of testosterone that came from having a crowd root for him to knock someone else down was the real drug.
“He looks like a champ, Liv. Just like a champ. You don’t worry, okay? This next part is all just formality so he can brag about it. I’ve seen this one already, and let me tell you how it turns out—Memphis wins!”
Miles laughs so hard he starts to cough, and my knees begin to bob nervously under the table, causing my phone to slide flat onto the desk.
“Shoot,” I say, sliding it back up.
Gary rips a piece of tape from the dispenser on the guest desk and rolls it into a ball then lifts my phone a little to squish the tape underneath and stick my phone in place.