The Housekeeper: Love, Death, and Prizefighting

by Josh Samman

  I sold pipes too, and different paraphernalia. I still threw parties for money. My spending habits exceeded my income, and I had no help from my parents to pad my ignorance. Within months, I was broke again. I called my Orkin and asked him to sign me up for another fight.

  “How ‘bout next week?” He said. I hadn’t anticipated that response. My last three fights had months of preparation beforehand. It wasn’t just Izzi that I was eager to impress, but Orkin too. I told him I’d accept the fight.

  The fight was in Atlanta, Georgia, against a sub .500 Franz Mendez. I was 1-0 as a pro and thought I was invincible. Any dominance I’d shown in previous fights was absent, as he took me down and smashed my nose with his elbow in the first minute. I remember being on bottom and hearing it shatter. I reached up instinctively to set it straight, and he immediately rearranged it sideways again. I couldn’t breathe. Blood was filling my mouth from the back of my throat, as well as from the outside. I’d fought grown men before, but this was not what I’d signed up for. He took my back and forced a submission before the end of the first round, and in an instant, my facade of indestructibility vanished.

  I’d brought friends to this one too, although neither my mom nor Izzi were there. I remember that being the only thing I was relieved about. I went back to the locker room and hung my head. Theresa, my friend’s mom, barged in, furious. She wanted Orkin’s number so she could call him to give him a piece of her mind, signing a kid up for a fight like that. The whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth, blood included.

  I looked at my phone. Several missed calls from my mom, and a text from Izzi.

  “How did it go? I prayed for you.”

  57.

  “That's the shit I remember: wonderful stuff you know? Little things like that. Those are the things I miss the most. The little idiosyncrasies that only I know about.. Oh she had the goods on me too, she knew all my little peccadilloes. People call these things imperfections, but they’re not. Ah, that's the good stuff.”

  -Good Will Hunting

  “Lots of blood tests for the next few weeks, then if everything looks good we start in May.” She was back in Tallahassee and had gone to see her doctor.

  “May? That’s the earliest you can start?”

  “Yes, and I need you to be sensitive about this stuff. It doesn’t make me feel good to have to be doing it. Don’t be hurtful please.” There was a maturity in her request.

  “Ok. Well when do I see you again?” I asked.

  “When do you want to see me again?”

  “Whenever you want to come down.”

  “I could come this weekend maybe,” she offered.

  “Yeah? I’d like that.”

  I was excited for her to see my new home, and I wanted to make a good impression. I was never much for scrubbing and polishing, but I did my best to clean the house. I went to the store and bought ingredients to cook; steak and shrimp with her favorite bottle of Pinot Noir, a dozen roses, and a dozen candles.

  I got wax everywhere, and felt silly trying to clean it up as she walked in. I had the same familiar boyish love feelings I always did on her arrival. The hours of preparation was worth it when I saw her face. The lights were dimmed, candles lit, flowers in a vase, wine poured, dinner perfectly timed and on the table.

  “You did all this for me?” she said, leveling me with a smile. She stood on her tippy toes and gave me a longer than usual kiss. It felt good, succeeding at being romantic.

  When we woke the next morning, we began a practice that became a fixture of our day. Each wake was spent in one of two ways. If I was facing to my right, I was woken by Juice, tail wagging, goofy dog smile from ear to ear, hot panting in my face. I didn’t mind the dog breath, because if Juice woke me, it meant Isabel was still asleep. I’d turn and see her looking peaceful, lost in dreams. Most times she’d have a bit of drool just under the side of her mouth, and conditioned herself to wipe her cheek when she woke up, just incase.

  If she got up first, it was different but equally lovely. She’d tiptoe to the kitchen and get us both a large glass of room temperature water, because that’s what the doctor told her to do in the morning. She’d then crawl back to bed and cuddle, and wake me with kisses. They weren’t aggressive, just light and gentle. She was the only girl I’d ever dated that didn’t complain if I hadn’t shaved in days.

  “Open your eyes,” she’d finally whisper if I took too long. Many days I was already awake, pretending I was still asleep, feeling her lips on my face.

  We laid in bed that first morning until we’d made up for lost time, and I got up to go to the gym. “Can I go with you?” She asked. I liked the idea of her being excited about being active. I bought her a membership her first day there.

  As we walked out the door, she asked me to look at something on her car. “It started flashing a funny light last night,” she said. I turned the car on and looked in the dash. It was an exclamation mark blinking inside a wheel, indicating faulty tire pressure.

  I checked the PSI on her tires. The recommended pressure was 35 lbs/PSI on her Honda Civic. Two of her tires were 30, one was 45, the other was 15.

  “Babe, what the fuck? Who did these tires?”

  “I did! They looked low so I put air in them on the way down.”

  “Do you know how to measure air pressure in your tires?”

  “How do I do that?”

  “You’re 22 years old and no one’s showed you how to do this yet?”

  “I’m sure they tried and I wasn’t paying attention or something. Stop being mean about it.” She felt like she was being scolded. I tried to explain but she became defensive, and I dropped the subject.

  When we got to the gym I went to sit in the sauna, a routine I’d done for years. Isabel asked to join there too. The location was co-ed, allowing her to come with. I opened the door for her, and she took a seat on the bench closest to the heating element. I sat on the one above her.

  “Come next to me, butthead.” she said.

  “You come up here, it’s hotter.”

  She rolled her eyes and climbed up.

  “How long do we sit in here?”

  “As long as we can.”

  “Well, how long is that?” She’d never been in a sauna before.

  “Usually, Matt and I have a contest to see who can sit the longest. The rule is you don’t leave before someone who came in before you.”

  She thought for a second. “I came in first.”

  “Right, so I can’t leave until you leave.”

  “I can sit in here longer than you,” she said competitively. I told her I’d been doing it for a long time, that we had sauna contests to see who could withstand heat the longest. The whole practice we did was to get better at cutting weight, and to condition ourselves to discomfort. I was good at it, I told her, and that there was no way she’d beat me.

  “Okay.” She said defiantly.

  While we were there, I had something I needed to confess. The Ultimate Fighter was nearing the end, and in a few weeks, my fight with Kelvin would air. Until that moment, everyone still assumed it was Uriah and me in the finals. The only people that knew that Kelvin beat me were my mom and coaches. I felt like I had misled Isabel, and needed to tell her before she watched me get choked out on TV.

  “I have to tell you something,” I said, as both of us broke a sweat.

  “Oh Lord,” she said sarcastically. “What now?”

  “Hush. It’s nothing bad. Not too bad anyway.”

  “Okay, well what?”

  “I get beat in the last episode, against Kelvin.”

  “Phhhhh. Baby.. You think you needed to tell me that for me to know?”

  “What do you mean you already knew? Who told you?”

  “No one needs to tell me anything about you. I can tell from how you talk to people that it didn’t go how you wanted. I was wondering when you were going to tell me, brat.” She’d always had a read on me, knew if something was bothering me, or if I was in thought,
sometimes even exactly what it was I was thinking about. I realized it was one of the things I loved most about her.

  “I don’t care about any of that stuff. I’m proud of you, and I love you no matter what.” Her words were endearing.

  “I love you too. I really am gonna sit in this sauna longer than you though.”

  “We will see,” she said, sweat dripping. We sat, and sweat, and sweat some more. The temperature was 180 when we got in, and nearing 200 around the 20-minute mark. Most grown men didn’t last 10 minutes. I was impressed.

  200 degrees became 220. 20 minutes became 30. Me being impressed became me starting to wonder if my girlfriend who had never stepped foot in a sauna was going to beat me in a sauna contest.

  “Are you sure you’re feeling alright?” I asked her.

  “I’m feeling fine,” she said, seething with moxie.

  “We can get out whenever you’re ready.”

  “Right after you.” I realized this was one of those times where she was reading me, and I was hurting.

  She got quiet for a bit, staring into I’m not sure what. It reminded me of the plane before we were about to jump, nonchalant and indomitable. I wondered where it was she went in her mind during those times.

  After long enough in the heat, reality becomes an alternating wave of euphoria and discomfort. We were beyond that point. I wondered how the hell she was still sitting there. I was expecting her to burst out of the room at any moment because that’s what I wanted to do.

  Did she really not mind it? Was she just waving her masochistic feathers, taunting me? You think this is hell? Was she teaching me a lesson about everything in life boiling down to how bad we want it? Was she even human?

  She was likely just showing the competitive capacity of a girl who grew up with three older brothers, but I was nearing hallucinations and decided it had gone on long enough. I told myself it was for her safety, to protect my ego.

  I ran out of the sauna gasping for air after 40+ minutes. It was the longest I’d ever spent in there. I sat on the chair outside, dizzy, recovering. She had a satisfied, smug smirk at my concession of defeat, strutting out after me. It seemed like a trivial event, nothing more than a funny story. It would come into play one day though, right when I needed it to.

  58.

  Fall, 2007

  The Mendez fight showed me an ugly side of the sport, one that I knew was there but never wanted to be on. The bout wasn’t even sanctioned, and wouldn’t be counted on my record, but I didn’t know that at the time.

  I had a badly broken nose, and my whole face was swollen. I couldn’t train, wasn’t in school, and drank every day for weeks. Izzi didn’t like this version of Josh. I’d sometimes wake up after drunk nights with several outgoing calls to her. It made me cringe. She came around less often, and I cycled through other girls when I was lonely.

  One came and didn’t want to leave. She was a blonde girl, named Jacky. I didn’t even like blondes. She was a close friend of Beth’s, and I was never able to take her seriously, because of her not caring about her friend like that. Self-righteous, I know.

  Beth had been long gone, headed to mortician’s school. It shocked me when I’d heard what she wanted to do. It took a special kind of person to handle the dead, and to deal with their families on the worst days of their lives. She and I talked every now and then, but I knew she harbored resentment.

  People noticed that Jacky was sticking around, even when I didn’t want her to. They joked that she was going to kill Izzi and me in our sleep. Jacky heard about the jokes of derangement, and it made her complex worse. If life was still imitating art, it had turned into Vanilla Sky, with the part of Cameron Diaz being stolen by Jacky, and Izzi into Penelope Cruz.

  Izzi made most girls jealous, but Jacky was the only person I’d ever met that actually didn’t like her. She would say bizarre things about Izzi when she got upset. Sorry I’m not like little Ms. Perfect. She’d come to parties, and make things uncomfortable.

  Izzi never had to compete with a girl before and had no interest in doing so. She shared her brothers’ passiveness; it was the only character trait in them that frustrated me. She was intimidated of Jacky being older and had a million other boys to choose from anyway.

  Whenever I wanted Izzi to come back, I’d have to go a few weeks without seeing Jacky. I did, and she agreed to come to a fight, the first one since I’d lost.

  It was the most nervous I’d ever been. I got my hands wrapped, and walked outside to see Izzi and my mom while the earlier bouts were going on.

  “Should I kiss them for good luck?” She said, pointing to my wraps with superstitious charm. It sounded like a lovely idea. I went back to the locker room, my nervousness subsided, as I let my mind get swept in the superstition with her.

  I wanted to try using my kicks in the fight. I’d been working on them in the gym, but never used them well in the cage. A training partner was holding the pads for me as I warmed up. In the locker room, folks have a bit of an unsaid contest, to see who can kick the loudest. We were winning.

  Out of nowhere, he flared his arm as I kicked, and my foot landed directly on his elbow. It stung, and when I tried to put it back on the ground, I fell under my own weight.

  Shit.

  Within seconds, it was swelling and discolored. The fight before mine was just starting, meaning I had 10-15 minutes before I was supposed to walk out. I sat there, told everyone I was fine, and mustered mental strength I didn’t know I had. I thought of Izzi outside, and everyone else I’d brought.

  I didn’t walk out for my fight. It was more of a hobble, trying to put any semblance of awkward bounce in my step to hide the fact that I was hurt. When the fight began, I didn’t do any kicking. I dragged my opponent down, put all my weight on him for five minutes, and limped back to my corner.

  When the second round began, I did more of the same. I landed on top of him and passed into a mounted position. Something in my mind screamed urgency. The last round had been boring. This wasn’t what I’d brought everyone here for.

  He was covering the front of his face with both forearms, leaving his temples exposed. I don’t know what it was, but something told me to hit him with both hands at once. It worked, well. I felt how powerful the impact was. It was loud, with a sick, wet, packing noise. I did it again, and again. The guy fell asleep, and the referee stopped me.

  I surged with adrenaline, doing a victory lap around the cage. It wasn’t until they announced the winner that I even remembered my foot. I looked down, and it was the size of a softball.

  “You are something else kid,” Orkin said, shaking his head.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you’re a fucking maniac. One moment I’m looking for a commissioner to tell them you broke your foot and can’t fight, and the next minute you’re in, there smashing heads with both hands.” He had a huge smile on his face as he cut my wraps off. He handed them to me, like usual. I’d overcome a hurdle, used an obstacle to show character. It felt good to have impressed him.

  59.

  "She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together."

  -J. D. Salinger

  “Why you so good to me?” There was thick twang on the other end of the phone as I answered. It was a quote from Forrest Gump.

  Isabel had several voice impersonations that she did. She could replicate any of our friends’ accents on a dime, and had other go-tos that she liked. She could be the Queen of England, or her friend Shaquita from jail. The one she was talking to me in today was Jenny, the female heroine from Forrest Gump.

  The finale of TUF was nearing. We were the first season to have every cast member receive a UFC contract, and we’d been told to get ready to fight, though we didn’t yet know who we’d be facing. Isabel didn’t have money to buy a plane ticket, and I knew she wasn’t going to ask me to get her one. She was still headstrong, trying to be independent.

&nbs
p; I knew there was no way I wasn’t having Isabel there, although she didn’t know it yet. I didn’t ask if she wanted to come, I didn’t ask when she could leave, I just bought the tickets and sent them to her, including money to buy new clothes with. Her Jenny impression was the response when she’d received it.

  In the package was another gift, a pair of movies; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Fountain. Eternal Sunshine was one of Jim Carrey’s serious films, in which a couple undergo a procedure to remove painful memories of each other. In the film the procedure is botched and all their memories are irreversibly removed. Through their loss they still manage to find themselves at the end of the movie, reunited; a “what is meant to be will be” story. Truth be told, if I were given the option to erase some of my memories of Isabel, I would have, plenty of them. But there we were, together in the end.

  The Fountain was a film directed by Darren Aronofsky and composed by Clint Mansell, both of whom I was fans of. In it, three stories over separate timelines intertwine into one, all telling the same tale of a man trying to immortalize the woman he loves.

  The first timeline portrays the hero, a Spanish conquistador, searching for the Fountain of Youth so that his queen can live forever. The scene opens on a piece of jewelry made from the queen’s hair, before the Spaniard is sent on his mission. He goes to travel across the world to Mayan ritual grounds, where he fights tribes of men before climbing the final tower, to wage his ultimate battle. In the end, he finds the fountain he’s in search of nestled right below the Tree of Life.

  The second story portrays a modern age doctor searching for the cure for his wife’s terminal illness. During his long nights at the lab, his wife pens a book, before finally telling him that he has to finish it, moments before she passes away. He’s haunted by his inability to save her, and the incompleteness of her story.