"I do like you, Bobby."
"Yeah?"
Her head tilted slightly and she looked into his eyes. Bobby let Carmelina take things wherever she wanted. He gave up control and didn't care. Her lips floated toward him. He closed his eyes. Wet and warm, she kissed his left cheek, dragged her tongue down to the curve of his jaw, then whispered something in Portuguese.
"You're different than I thought you'd be," Bobby said.
"What'd ya think...," she said, kissing his neck, "I'd be like?"
"Serious..."
"I am at the store," Carmelina said. "That's what the rich white ladies want. Just 'cause I live here don't mean I can't act like them. I can when I wanna." Then she softened. "Besides ... that's work."
"And now?"
"This is play," she said. "Beije-me."
She pressed her mouth against his, and they kissed. And held hands. And hugged. And found a secluded spot behind the swing set, where their hands wandered. There, against her feigned objections, Bobby unbuttoned Carmelina's blouse and lifted the bottom of her skirt....
Bobby opened his eyes. He heard his mother's Mercedes pull up the driveway. He tossed the comforter off, sat up, and scooted to the window.
He watched his mother step from the car, a mink coat draped over her shoulders, a Louis Vuitton valise tucked under an arm. She was an elegant woman, Bobby thought. An elegant woman who wore elegant clothes, drove an elegant car, and lived in an elegant house. She spent her days as one of the most successful real estate agents in town and attended all of the most important charity events in the area. Bobby admired his mother, her drive for success. Someday, he wanted to be as well-known in Short Hills as she was.
But she was changing. It had started at the end of the summer, perhaps earlier, though Bobby wasn't sure. Despite the familiar clothes, her hairstyle, the way she presented herself, she no longer moved around the house as if its queen. Instead she seemed indifferent, as if an occasional visitor.
She walked up the cobblestone pathway to the back door, glancing up at the house. Bobby leaned back from the window, then bolted from the bedroom, skipped down the stairs, and hit the foyer floor with a thud. When he reached the kitchen, he heard his mother fumbling for her keys. He opened the door.
"Oh, you scared me." She put her hand to her chest. "I didn't see any lights on."
"Sorry," Bobby said, giving her room to brush past him. She shrugged the mink coat off her shoulders and handed it to him, then unwrapped a silk scarf from around her neck.
"Did you put your workout clothes in the washer?"
"Not yet."
His mother was not happy. She looked at her watch. "I don't have much time. I assume you're hungry. I'll put some food together." She opened the refrigerator.
"That's okay," Bobby said softly, walking into the foyer. He was hungry—starving, really—but it wasn't particularly bothering him.
"Christopher should be dropped off by the Browns' in a little while. Make sure he gets to bed early. I have an appointment at the Paper Mill. For a benefit in January. Your father will be home later," his mother said, then added, "He's at the tennis club, I think."
Inside the foyer closet, Bobby switched on a light and grabbed a hanger. Peering between the hinges of the open door into the kitchen, he said, "How come you don't?"
"Don't what?"
"Play tennis anymore," he said, "with Dad?"
His mother stopped for a moment, as if to consider his question.
But Bobby wasn't sure he wanted to hear the answer. He hung the fur beside the other coats, turned off the light, and closed the closet door. He walked into the kitchen. "Got an A-minus on a calc test today."
"That's nice," his mother said. She spooned leftover broccoli and a chicken leg onto a plate.
"Wrestling's going well."
His mother gave him a cursory smile.
And then it seemed they didn't have anything else to say to each other. Bobby leaned on the countertop, hoping his mother would say something more. Anything. But she didn't. So he fingered, idly, the china figurines lining the kitchen windowsill.
"Be careful with those," she said.
Bobby pulled his hand away. "Mrs. Jones asked after you again."
His mother smiled. "I haven't spoken to Charlotte in such a long time."
"She said that."
"We were supposed to have lunch a few weeks ago. Right around Thanksgiving. I guess I got busy, then she got busy..." She slid the plate into the microwave oven and pressed the settings. A soft whirring sound followed.
From the cupboard, Bobby pulled out a pewter baby cup engraved with his initials. It held four ounces, ideal to keep from drinking too much. He filled it with seltzer. The first cup went down quickly. So did the second. His limit.
His mother chopped celery and carrots on a wooden cutting board, then broke up a head of lettuce and tossed it all in a bowl. After a minute, the microwave bell sounded. She pulled out the dish. "Set a place at the table."
"That's okay," Bobby said. "I don't want anything."
"Did you eat already?"
"No."
His mother set the plate down hard on the countertop. "This is starting too soon," she said, her lips tight. "Every year you start earlier and earlier."
"What?"
"Your dieting."
Bobby rolled his eyes. "Wrestlers don't diet, Ma. They cut weight. We all do it. It's simple. Practice. Run after practice. Don't eat. Run. Practice some more. We do it and do it, again and again."
"Don't be a wiseass, Bobby."
"I'm not."
"You can't just starve yourself."
"I've been doing this a long time."
"And didn't you get sick twice last year doing the same idiotic thing?"
"No."
"Oh, you didn't?"
"No," said Bobby. "It was something else."
"Something else," his mother said. She laughed dismissively and shook her head. "I rush home. Rush to put food on the table. All I ever do is rush."
"I didn't ask you to do anything."
"Oh, that's right, I forgot, you can handle everything."
"I can," Bobby said. "And I do."
"Don't raise your voice to me," his mother said.
"I'm not raising my voice."
His mother's eyes narrowed. "Shut your mouth. Shut your goddamn mouth right now."
"I'm—"
A wooden spoon slammed against the countertop. "If I tell you to shut your mouth, young man, you'll goddamn do it." She waved the spoon wildly in the air. "You better start showing some respect. I'm not your little Puerto Rican—"
"Portuguese," Bobby snapped. "Carmelina's Portuguese."
His mother pointed the spoon. "I don't give a damn what she is," she said. "You watch yourself with her. And understand this, young man. I'm not a slave here. I work all day and have to come home to this house and make food for you and your brother and your father. And you can't even do a simple thing like put clothes in the washing machine and turn it on. I can't do everything in this house, do you understand that?"
"You're hardly ever here," Bobby said.
"Excuse me?"
His anger flared. "Why aren't you—" But he held back.
"What?" his mother said.
And his anger flared more. "Why aren't you around more like—"
"Like what?" she baited him.
Then his anger exploded. "Like a mother's supposed to be."
In the moment between when the last word left his lips and when his mother wilted, Bobby's throat squeezed and he was suddenly dizzy. A wound was torn open.
His mother sighed. Deeply. Suddenly she looked exhausted. But not from working too many hours or sleeping too few; from something else. Bobby had seen it before, in the eyes of opponents who knew, even before they stepped out on the mat, that they had lost. The look of resignation.
"Ma..."
She raised a hand. "I need to go in my bedroom for a while," she said, rubbing her eyes. "It's bee
n a long..." She didn't finish. Instead, she put down the spoon and walked past him, out of the kitchen, into the foyer, and silently toward her bedroom door.
"Ma, can we talk?"
"There's no reason to say any more," she said. "Is there, Bobby?"
He watched his mother walk into her bedroom and close the door. She didn't slam it, just a simple quiet click of the lock. Bobby stood alone in the kitchen. A swirl of steam rose from the chicken and broccoli, then dissipated. He listened. The house was empty and silent. And lonely.
8
It was well past ten o'clock. Textbooks, spiral notebooks, and pencils covered the bedspread. Propped up on an elbow, Ivan looked on absently as Shelley explained an algebra equation. "Understand?" she said, tapping the page with her finger.
"Yeah, sure," Ivan said.
"You're not into this."
"I am."
Shelley smiled. "No, you're not. Try to listen for a few minutes," she gently pleaded. "I can't help you otherwise."
Her hand brushed his. She sometimes did that. She'd touch his arm, or hand, or shoulder. Sometimes she'd hug him. Maybe it meant something; maybe it didn't. Ivan wasn't sure. But he always wanted that hug to last for hours, not moments, the way her smile stayed in his mind long after she went home.
"I know you understand this," she said.
"I'm trying..."
Ivan thought he could finish the problem, probably even get it right. Why, though? Little math was needed on a wrestling mat. Takedowns and reversals were two points; escapes, one; back points, two or three. Short of a pin, the wrestler with the most points won. Pretty simple. More importantly, if Shelley thought he didn't need the help, she might not stay as long. He was not going to take that chance.
"I'm just a little tired," he said.
"Me, too."
Shelley turned to her side and reached her arms above her head, which pulled the bottom of her shirt from the waist of her jeans. Ivan couldn't help but stare at her slender stomach. It had been a wonderful two hours laying beside Shelley, following the curves of her ears, the slope of her neck, breathing in her perfumed scent whenever she'd sweep her hair off the pages or turn quickly to say something.
"You're lucky," she said. "My parents watch over me all the time. Every project, every paper. Have to do my homework perfectly, have to get the perfect grades. You'd think they'd trust me." She looked at him. "Let's take a break."
She closed the textbooks and notebooks, pushed them into a pile, then jumped to her feet. "Your papa won't be home for a while, right?"
"Yeah."
"Working?"
"Yeah."
"Your papa's a nice man," Shelley said. "My dad says that about him all the time..."
Ivan sat up. "And?"
"Nothing."
"Tell me."
"I don't know. It's just that I worry about him," Shelley said. "And I worry about you."
"Worry?" Ivan said. "Don't worry about me."
"But I do."
"Don't," he said, irritated for reasons he didn't quite understand. He suddenly felt like lifting weights, or running, or beating the hell out of some guy on a mat.
"I just want everything in the world to work out for you, Ivan," Shelley said. "Always have. Ever since we were kids. Even more since your mother..."
"Died," Ivan finished.
"Yes," Shelley said. "There's nothing wrong with that, is there?"
Ivan said nothing.
Shelley turned and walked over to the dresser, flipping through a stack of unopened envelopes from college athletic departments. She held one up. "They spelled your name wrong. You'd think they'd get that right."
Ivan moved beside her.
"Have you started any essays?" she asked.
He shook his head.
Shelley picked up a quarter-sized bronze medal discarded in the corner of his bookshelf, turned it over, and read the etching on the back. "Bloomfield Summer Wrestling Tournament, fourth place." She handed him the medal.
Ivan rolled it in his fingers. "My first tournament. They took the four littlest kids and threw us together. Got my ass kicked." He flipped the medal on the shelf, where it skittered under dog-eared copies of Amateur Wrestling News and W.I.N. Magazine. "I keep it out as a reminder."
"Of what?"
"Getting my ass kicked."
Shelley looked around the room. "Where are the rest?"
Ivan tapped a bottom drawer with his foot. Then another drawer.
Shelley knelt down and pulled one of the handles. Gold trophies lay stacked, one on top of the other, with dozens of medals littering the bottom like coins in a treasure chest. She picked up a fistful of medals. "AAU freestyle qualifier, first place. District seventeen championships, first place. Most valuable wrestler, Old Bridge Wrestling Festival." She looked at Ivan. "Do you remember winning these?"
"A few," Ivan said.
With a sigh, she pushed the drawer closed. "You're so hard to understand."
"Hard to understand?" Ivan said.
"You're better at wrestling than I am at anything."
Ivan shook his head. "Doubt it." He didn't want to hear this. It didn't matter what Shelley or his father or the newspapers said about how good he might be. There were only results. He had only placed third in the state last year. Not first. Not state champ. There was no consolation prize for almost winning. There was only winning. Or losing.
"You're good at the piano," Ivan said.
"'Yeah, sure," Shelley said, rolling her eyes. "I'm okay, one of a zillion people who are okay at the piano. I can play at the holidays for my aunts and uncles; I can play at school sometimes." She held her fist to her chest. "It's just not in me. Not in me like wrestling is in you. What you have is special. Can't you find any satisfaction in that?"
He didn't answer.
Shelley stood. She leaned her shoulder against his. "It's late," she whispered.
She seemed tired—tired of doing her homework, tired of prodding him to do his. Ivan wanted to kiss her and have his body naked next to hers. He wanted to make love to Shelley, though he didn't know what making love felt like. And, it seemed, she might want that, too.
Then Ivan simply erased those thoughts. There wasn't time to be boyfriend and girlfriend. That complicated life and would certainly steal his focus from wrestling. He wouldn't allow that. They would always be friends—best friends—but Wrestling had to come first.
Always.
9
Sun streamed through the kitchen windows, bathing the room in a warm morning haze. Bobby walked in from the foyer, anxious and quiet. At one end of the breakfast table, his father sipped coffee as he thumbed through a stack of legal briefs, jotting notes and separating the papers into piles. At the other end, Christopher shoveled cereal into his mouth, humming along with a Saturday morning cartoon on the television. His mother, dressed for an afternoon open house, stood at the counter, spooning bran and fruit chunks into a blender.
Bobby waited for one of them to notice him and acknowledge that this wasn't a typical morning—that he was just a few hours from the first dual meet of the season. But no one said anything to him, or to each other. They were like total strangers, he thought.
"It's hot in here," he said. He put down his gym bag, walked to the counter, and kissed his mother's cheek.
"I made some ham sandwiches," she said. "They're in the fridge." She returned to preparing her breakfast.
His father, looking over his glasses, asked, "How's your weight?"
"Close."
"A problem?"
"No."
Hunger did claw at his stomach, and his lips and tongue were dry, but Bobby would not put an ounce of food or a drop of liquid in his body until after weigh-ins.
His father tapped the top edge of a handful of pages, making them flush. He secured the pages with a paper clip, then set them in his briefcase. "I have a few more things to look at here. I'll drive you to the school in a—" He stopped and stared down the table. "Christopher, turn t
he television down."
"But—"
"Turn it down!"
Bobby turned. The kitchen was silent. His mother stiffened as she glared toward the table. Christopher reached out to lower the volume.
"Bobby," his father said, "have you heard of—"
The blender churned, cutting off his words. From the corner of his eye, Bobby saw a hint of a smirk on his mother's lips. She and his father exchanged seething looks.
His father raised his voice above the noise. "Ever hear of Ivan Korske?"
The blender stopped.
"Korske?" Bobby said. "From Lennings. Took a third at 129 last year. Lost a close one in the semifinals. Everyone was talking about it. They said he got ripped."
His father pointed toward a Star-Ledger on the counter. "There's a write-up on him."
Bobby opened to the newspaper's sports section and the headline: KORSKE SEEKS ELUSIVE STATE TITLE. Bobby scanned the article, catching parts of Korske's modest background, the death of his mother, and the prediction that no one would score a takedown on him all season. Bobby looked for just one thing and nodded when he found it.
"He's going 135 this year. Can't say I'm disappointed."
"You can beat him," his father said.
"Yeah, well, I'll just worry about today's match."
"You can beat anyone. You just don't believe it yet."
Give it a rest, Dad. How about worrying about our family? Bobby snatched his gym bag and direw on his varsity jacket. "I'll be in the car."
His father pulled the Jaguar onto Joanna Way and rounded the end of their property, then rushed down Lake Road. Bobby stared out the frost-coated side window, clutching his gym bag. This was not how he wanted to start the morning. Part of him wanted to yell something at his father, but he couldn't come up with anything meaningful. And when he did, he thought better of it.
"When's your match start?" his father asked.
"JVs go at ten," Bobby said. "We'll start around eleven."
"After I drop you off, I'm going home to finish some work. I'll drive out to Morris Catholic with Christopher," his father said. "How are college applications coming?"
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