by Various
So, then, one day, we're sitting in IHOP having breakfast, kind of talking, kind of not talking, and I'm sipping my coffee trying to figure out if I have enough quarters for the laundry, when he says, "The other day, my daughter did the cutest thi- " And he breaks off right in the middle of "thing," just like that, as if he could pretend that whole first part never came out of his mouth.
But even then, I'm cool. After all, we're adults. People our age have kids. "Oh, you have a daughter?" I mean, it's a little weird she hasn't come up before, but whatever.
Then I look at his face. His eyes are wide, like he's alone in the house and just heard someone else cough. His mouth hangs half-open. And I just know. The way you just know milk that sat out all day is going to be bad even before you smell it, I know it's more than a daughter.
"You have a wife."
He nods slowly, almost imperceptibly, like he and I are both discovering this terrible secret at the same time. It's possibly this stupid nod that pisses me off the most.
With as much dignity as I can muster, considering it's an IHOP and I'm in sweatpants, I get up and walk out.
I didn't hear from him for over a week, but the next Wednesday, he called and tried to explain himself and I listened because, well, I guess I'm a complete dumbass.
"I know what we did was wrong, but—"
"We? I didn't do anything wrong. I thought you were single. You're the liar and the cheat here."
"Okay, that's fair. I know what I did was wrong, but I just wanted to explain. I talked to my pastor—"
"Oh, no! You talked to your pastor ?" I'd only been in town six months and everyone was going to know I was a homewrecker. Nice. I only hoped it wasn't a Methodist pastor, as I didn't want the gossip winding its way through the denomination and getting back to my dad.
Larry went on like this for some time, offering up these statements that I'm sure sounded wonderful when he practiced them before he called, but which kept mortifying me.
Finally, he got fed up. "Betsy, Jesus has forgiven me. Why can't you?"
Did Jesus fuck you, Larry? Because if not, I don't think Jesus and I are in the same boat here. I didn't say that, because I'm not that clever that quickly, but when I thought of it twenty minutes after I hung up on him, believe me, I was tempted to call him back and get it out there.
But here's the thing. Jesus and I go way back. I've known Him since I was a kid, since my dad works for His Dad. So I was like, well, if Jesus is running around forgiving Larry for doing me and his wife wrong, I want to know why.
I went over to Jesus's house. Jesus isn't like you see in pictures or at the movies. He's short, like maybe five-three, if that. He's got brown, curly hair He keeps in a buzz cut and it's already really thin in the back. If He'd lived past thirty-three, you could imagine Him with just the fringe of hair around the sides of His head and a few wisps on top. He's built like a tank—solid as shit. Seriously, you don't want to punch Jesus because you will hurt your hand. Years of carpentry topped off by helping His fisherman buddies hauling in nets have left Him really strong.
I don't think He likes that "Footprints" poem, but we tease Him all the time that He could carry four or five of us, if He wanted to. He gets all embarrassed and is all, "Oh, I think I already carry this team enough as it is." He has this kind of Dad voice, like He can't help but be a little corny, even though He's trying to be cool.
"Hey, Bets," He said, "what's wrong?" He's Jesus, though, so He must have known. But He's a really good listener.
"Larry and I broke up." I sank dejected into Jesus's old couch.
"Why?" Jesus handed me a beer. "The wife?"
"Well, yeah," I said, "but also that he didn't tell me about her, but then he did tell his pastor about me."
"I heard," Jesus said. "That sucks. I'm sorry."
"Then why did You forgive him?"
"What?" Jesus's whole face scrunched up like He'd tasted something bad. "Larry never talked to Me about you at all, let alone asked for forgiveness. I mean, I would have told him to get right with you before worrying about getting right with Me. You know that."
"Yeah."
"I can't believe he dragged Me into this," Jesus said.
"He's such a jerk. We should totally kick his ass."
"Yeah," Jesus agreed.
"Hold on, Jesus, You can't be kicking people's asses," I said, even though the thought of turning loose two hundred pounds of righteous fury and solid muscle on Larry did appeal to me. "You're, well, You. You don't run around kicking people's asses."
"Tell that to the moneychangers." Jesus laughed, then took a long swig of His beer. "No, no, I'm thinking we should beat him in the ring."
"I can't wrestle," I said.
"Eh, I can teach you," Jesus said. He got up and went into the kitchen. In a second, He came back with a cookie sheet and a folding chair. "Okay, stand up here." I did. "Turn your back to Me." I did. And then He whomped me with the flat side of the cookie sheet. It rumbled like thunder in a way I found satisfying. But it didn't hurt. "Chair works on the same principle," Jesus assured me.
But I can assure you, when that folding chair hit me, it hurt. Not as bad as I expected, though.
We spent weeks practicing—Jesus rounded up a wrestling ring and a small gymnasium from someplace and I spent all my free time training. First my falls, then my flips, then Jesus and I would tumble around each other, rolling from one of us almost being pinned to the other and then back again. Jesus talked Jacob into coaching us, though the old man still walked with a limp from his last wrestling opponent.
"You need a signature move, Betsy," Jacob told me. "Get up there on those top ropes and do something amazing." I had no idea what I was going to do and, if you know me, you know I'm not much for heights. But when both Jesus and Jacob are all, "Do it!" who's going to say, "No, not me?"
So up I went, right leg on the bottom rope, left leg on the middle rope, and my hands firmly on the corner post. Top rope. Jacob wanted me on the top rope. But I looked out and saw I was a good ten, maybe twelve feet in the air, and I admit, I had second thoughts. Who was I, some big old fat Midwestern gal, to be challenging the laws of physics?
But that was one of the things I loved about wrestling—watching these bodies do things you don't expect big, brutish bodies to do. Okay, so I got up on the top rope, kind of half-squatting to keep my balance as the ropes shifted under the weight of me, and I decided to go for it. I leapt up for all I was worth, just leapt like I fully expected to hit the ceiling and keep going. I spread my arms out like airplane wings and pointed my toes behind me.
For a second, though it felt like forever, I was hanging between heaven and earth. I felt like, if I could have figured out how to open my eyes just right, I wouldn't have seen that gym around me, but rather me and a million, billion stars, all falling through the night sky, falling and falling and never landing.
But it doesn't work that way. What goes up must come down. And bam, I landed with a thud right on Jesus's outstretched arms. Knocked the wind right out of me.
"Yep, I like it," Jacob said, as if he came up with that move himself.
We were ready to take on Larry. Jesus found out that he and another guy, Hanging Jack, were wrestling as a team down in Columbia on the 22nd. The way these smaller venues worked it in order to keep it interesting for the fans was to have a couple of locals be the good guys and then bring in dudes like Larry and Hanging Jack to play the heels. Then, when it was Larry and Hanging Jack's turn to do a local show, one of the guys who'd been the hero at home would come and play heel for them.
So Larry and Hanging Jack were fully expecting to wrestle some locals.
One of whom unexpectedly won a family vacation to the Indiana Dunes and the other of whom had a long-lost cousin he'd dearly missed suddenly arrive on his doorstep, and he was intending to spend the evening catching up, not sweating it out in a gymnasium on the other side of town.
That left a convenient hole for Jesus and me to fill. The card was set
. The match was fixed. We just had to show up, play convincing heels, do our signature moves if we had them, and lose after fifteen minutes. That way we'd be done in time for the main event.
I was the only woman wrestling that evening, so I got down to Columbia before Jesus, hoping to stake out someplace to change. There was a boys' locker room and a girls' locker room, but since they couldn't pay much, they let the headliners have one locker room and everyone else had to use the other. I needed to find a third spot to get dressed.
So I was kind of wandering around, looking for a women's restroom out of the way of traffic, when who should arrive but Larry?
"Betsy, holy shit, what are you doing here?" He grabbed my arm and led me off down a hall where we could talk privately. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again."
"Well, I still don't much feel like talking to you," I said.
"I am really sorry," he said and, when he looked at me, his big old hazel eyes glistening, I wanted to believe him, just for a second. He turned his head, like doing the right thing was taking all his strength. God, yes, I was being such a dumbass, yet again. But this shit worked on me! Just pretend like I'm the temptation you can barely resist. I eat that right up. After he gave the situation some thought, he said, "My pastor—"
"Oh, don't start in on him again."
"No, it's important. He said it's important that I confess and make amends. I want to do that." He dropped his shoulders. "Aw, damn it. Can you just give me a half an hour? Meet me back here in a half an hour and let me explain."
"Okay, fine. I guess."
He turned and headed toward the front entrance. I went a little farther down the hall and found that out-of-the-way women's bathroom I'd been hoping for. I got in there and I locked the door and fished out my leggings and my singlet. I'll spare you the details of how it was as much of a match wrestling myself into them as what was to come later, but it was unpleasant. I felt like a stuffed sausage. But I had these awesome boots—black vinyl that came up to my knees, with bright yellow laces. And then, in the bottom of my bag, was a mask.
Well, duh, it's not like Jesus and I could just go out there and wrestle as ourselves. But man, you know what smells funky? The inside of someone else's wrestling mask. Blegh.
Okay, so imagine it. There I am, head-to-toe in shiny black fabric, broken up only by my bright yellow laces, my face covered with a black mask rimmed with bright yellow around the eyes. I guess you could see my hair hanging out the back of the mask, all scraggly and dripping from where I had to wet it down to get the mask over my head. I come out of the bathroom unrecognizable even by my own mother, feeling both like I am the coolest chick on the planet and like I'm living out that nightmare where you're wandering around school naked. I turn to go down the hall, back toward civilization, back toward the pending match, and I've got a bit of bounce to my step and a little more straightness in my spine than usual. I'm not thinking about anything besides what it's going to be like to just stand there in the ring, doing this beautiful thing I've seen done so often.
So I almost ran into them—the tiny, gorgeous woman with the baby in her arms and the little girl whose hand she was holding. I stopped short, because I'd forgotten all about meeting Larry, but suddenly I had a feeling I knew who this woman was. She confirmed it a second later when the little girl tugged on her hand and asked, "Mommy, when can we go?" and she said, "In a minute. I want to meet your daddy's friend. I just want to see her."
Here's the thing. And I'm not saying this to put myself down—I'm cute enough in my own way. I just want you to understand the situation. She was gorgeous. Probably the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen in real life. Physically, she was practically my opposite—small, thin, blonde—and she had the sweetest face. Plus, did you get the part where she had a baby? A new baby? The whole time Larry was carrying on with me, this woman was growing him a child.
I'm going to tell you right now that I didn't admit who I was. Not only because I am a craven coward, but because I knew she would never understand. Hell, I didn't understand it. She was everything she was supposed to be, all the things I'd been told I should be if I wanted a man. And she was still standing in a hallway half-hidden by a popcorn machine, waiting to meet the woman better than her. I wasn't better than her. Not in the bullshit terms our society sets up. And not in any of the ways it truly mattered.
And screw him for telling her where to find me but not having the balls to be there for the meeting. Was there anything he would not weasel his way out of? Leave me to face his brokenhearted wife? No, I was not doing his dirty work for him.
So I left my mask in place and walked on by.
Thankfully, Jesus had arrived by that point. So I filled Him in and He got this expression on His face I've seen a few times where He looks like He's about to laugh or cry or maybe both. But, instead, He just breathes out hard, like He's trying to clear something out of His head, and says, "Larry."
Jesus's outfit is similar to mine, except that He's in silver from head to foot. I shouldn't say this, probably, but the metallic sheen of His outfit gives Him the look of a walking fire hydrant. I wonder if He'd look better with a cape.
We hung out in the locker room through the first three matches and then we were up. When I heard the announcer say our names, I vowed to never let Jesus pick our tag-team names again. The Power and The Glory. I wanted to be The Millersville Mystery. That's a good, old-timey wrestling name. Right? But I was stuck with The Power.
The match was ordinary for the first part. I was in first, against Hanging Jack, who was a good six inches taller than me, which put him a whole foot over Jesus. Hanging Jack was pushing fifty and had been wrestling forever, so being in the ring with him was more like dancing than fighting. He'd pull me to him, whisper our next move. Then, if I was supposed to run into the ropes and use the momentum to clothesline him, when my outstretched arm reached his chest, he would crumple so expertly it looked as if he'd been hit by a train instead of barely touched by me. When it was my turn to suffer, when it had to look like he was about to pin me and he rolled me way up on my shoulders, he slipped his arm under my back to give me a little more support. When I kicked out, he moved away from me as easily as a dancer avoids his spinning partner.
After that, I tagged Jesus in. He and Hanging Jack did their thing for a few minutes and then there they were, face to face, Jesus and Larry. At first, I didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Kick, stomp, spear, clothesline, one's down, then the other, then the first, repeat. But when they're on the ropes by me, I heard Larry plain as day saying, "Okay, you flip me over your back next, and I'll sit down and pull you over mine."
Jesus answered, "I love you."
I saw Larry shake his head, just a slight movement, like he almost didn't mean to make it. He thought Jesus was trying to rattle him. And maybe He was. Every time the two men put their heads together, Jesus would say to Larry, "I love you."
I was trying to concentrate on what was going on in the ring, because even though it's all planned out, things can go wrong. You have to watch. But still, I stole a glance at the audience to see what they were making of it. They looked only half-interested. I imagine the loss of local boys to root for had soured their feelings on the match. They didn't appear to notice the proclamations of love coming from Jesus.
Now, the end of the match was tricky. It called for all four of us to be in the ring together. Larry and Hanging Jack were supposed to be ganging up on Jesus, both whaling on him while the ref is distracted or out cold or something. I forget. It doesn't matter. The point is, that's when I do my thing. Everyone's back is to me and I climb up on the top ropes in the corner and launch myself onto the two men pummeling my partner. But then I'm supposed to act like I'm knocked unconscious and Hanging Jack will pin me for the win. Finally, I'll unmask myself and Larry will see that it's me, which will prove…what, exactly? I don't know. Honestly. "Ha-ha, you beat me," isn't much of a victory speech.
But it was a step up from, "You made a fool out
of me."
Okay, so it starts off according to plan. The ref is not in the picture. Larry and Hanging Jack are beating up on Jesus. I'm climbing the ropes from the outside of the ring. The crowd is actually paying attention. The little kids down front are straining to see what's coming next.
Just as I'm stepping onto the second rope, I see Jesus lean in and whisper to Larry. I think we all know what. And then I'm pulling myself up onto the top rope, precariously balancing as it shifts back and forth under my weight. Larry pulls away from Jesus and says, loudly, "Shut up, you fucking faggot." The crowd goes nuts. Some of them are cheering, some of them are booing. A plastic cup whizzes by my head and hits Hanging Jack in the back. It's about to turn ugly. I still have one hand on the rope. I could just climb back down.
But I stand up, just as Jesus removes His mask. And now a hush falls over the whole place and, since Larry's half-facing me, I can see that he's in mortal terror. He is what the Bible calls "sore afraid."
Is Jesus going to smite him? Do the whole crowd like that fig tree? Everyone is waiting to see.
Everyone but me.
I bend my knees, just slightly, and push off. Every inch I'm crossing as I fly through the air seems to take five minutes to go by. I am the highest person in this building and, from this perspective, I can see everything. I see a look of disappointment on Hanging Jack's face. I see the swallow perched on the scoreboard at the far end of the gym. There are two girls in the crowd, one with new braces, the other with a black eye, who are sharing a bag of popcorn. Larry's wife is sitting in the middle of the bleachers, her hair like a golden halo, and she's crying. So is the tiny baby. I realize that Larry doesn't know what love is. Not when it's his Lord and Savior whispering in his ear. Not when it's his wife giving him beautiful children. Not when it's me, believing in some best, fake version of him. And if he doesn't know what love is, then he doesn't know what it even means to be sorry. Not really.
That's what I think as I'm slowly, so slowly, floating over toward him. I see every detail of him, his dishwater-blond hair hanging loose, his stormy hazel eyes, that scar on his shoulder that could be road rash, could be a burn, the confused look as he realizes the match isn't over, that I'm still coming. He turns instinctively toward me, reaches out to break my fall, and I slam into him. We tumble to the mat. Someone's supposed to pin me. I'm sure of that. But no one else in the ring makes a move. So I just lie across him, still out of breath from the force of my landing. Eventually, the bell rings, so I guess I won.