Girl in the Arena

by Lise Haines

  If grief comes in waves, Allison is standing inside one of those waves, completely submerged as her eyes follow me out into the darkness. She’s learned to breathe water, to see through water. I think of telling Uber to wait, so I can run back inside to say something to her, to express anything, really, but I can’t find the thing to say. I know we better get out of here before the media catches on, so I remind myself to get Thad out tomorrow so she can have some time to go to the movies or get her hair done. We have always been good at repair.

  Keeping our heads down, Uber opens the back doors to the van and I climb in and crouch near the crates of empty plastic vases, some with water at the bottom. The windows in the back are blackened. Uber hits his head when he pulls the driver’s-side door open to get in.

  —Are you all right? I ask.

  —I’m great. Great, he says.

  He fires up the engine and gets the gate open. Despite his best efforts to fool them, the paparazzi swarm.

  CHAPTER 25

  Once we’re on the road, the water in the vases begins to crest and slop over the sides and I’m sitting in water and decide to take my chances in the passenger seat. Uber has his head cocked at an odd angle to see the road.

  —Do you like bowling or pool? he asks.

  —Sometimes, I say. —Maybe it would be a little tough with your eye tonight?

  —It’s not too bad but it does kind of cut down on my peripheral vision.

  He’s driving erratically, and I offer to take the wheel but he says his friend, the one who lent him the van, made him promise he’d be the only one to drive.

  One of the photographer’s cars, a small Dodge, suddenly pulls up on our right side. He has the usual complement of cameras around his neck, and he’s holding one out, shooting lots of photos. I recognize him from the time we took Thad to exercise at the club downtown, when we almost hit a wall. Just as I fasten my seat belt, Uber pulls into the side of the Dodge, the two cars grinding metal. I grab the dash as we’re pitched about.

  —You want me to drive? I shout.

  —No, that’s okay!

  Uber clips his opponent’s front wheel, then swerves.

  The guy tries to hold his car steady but a UPS truck comes to a dead stop in his lane. I hear the sound as the Dodge’s front end hits the rear of the truck.

  When Thad and I go to the movie theater, we test our skills at driving with a game called DRAG RACE out in the lobby. He likes it when I strap him in to the plastic seat, and I always bring lots of quarters. Although some people think the object of the game is to get to the finish line in record time without hitting other vehicles or signs, for Thad it’s about the pleasure of crashing and burning, watching the way his Ford GT can launch into walls, partitions, palm trees, flag men, and desert landscapes. I wonder if Uber has the same feeling about the game.

  —Don’t hesitate to let me drive, I say.

  —Sorry. He’s been on my tail for months. I’ve tried to get a restraining order. So let’s see. Would you like to see a movie? Hit the shooting range? Indoor rock climbing? Fortuneteller?

  —I’m afraid I get my fortune told more often than I’d like.

  I start to explain about my brother when a police car overtakes us, sirens and lights, and Uber pulls over. The officer looks like he’s done a little boxing in his time. He stands about five feet nine or ten. Cheerless. Uber hands over his license and starts looking around the glove compartment for the registration while the cop shines his flashlight on us.

  I’m trying to see this whole picture through his lens. A couple in flower delivery uniforms that clearly don’t fit, the woman with a bald head and the letter T stitched into the back of her scalp, the man with his head wrapped tighter than a mummy, with single-eye vision, and no flowers to speak of. The officer looks over Uber’s license, studies his half-shell face, and just as Uber opens his mouth ready to launch into an explanation that I would have paid to have heard, the guy starts to crack up.

  —Oh man, am I happy to see you. Do you have any idea what my girlfriend is going to do when I bring home your autograph? You don’t mind signing something for me, do you? She’s your biggest fan. And I’ve been in the doghouse all week.

  Uber removes his delivery shirt and underneath this is a button-down shirt that he also sheds and drapes neatly on the stick shift. Below this is a T-shirt he strips off, revealing his many scars, his recent cuts, and that fine torso. He stretches the T-shirt carefully over his lap and pulls a black marker from a leather bag, and scrawls his name.

  —Mind? Uber says, and hands the supplies over to me.

  —You’re her, aren’t you? the policeman asks.

  —That would be me, I say.

  —Damn, he says.

  I add my signature above Uber’s. Meanwhile Uber fishes in his wallet and produces two front-tier tickets to his next competition.

  —You guys need an escort anywhere?

  —We’re cool, but there’s a Dodge back there that could use a little help.

  *

  After I’ve heard all the date offers again—water polo, nighttime boat ride, hot stone massage—I tell him what I really want is to just sit and talk for a while. So we head over to Peking Duck. Peking Duck gets a number of personalities that eat there regularly, like talking-head attorneys and owners of large car dealerships who star in their own bad commercials. No one ever bothers them. They never bothered Tommy or Allison either, so I figure we can eat a quiet meal.

  Uber buttons up his shirt and I de-uniform. Once we’re seated inside, I watch Uber order cashew chicken, beef chow mein, spicy dumplings, and hot and sizzling soup with a side of sautéed eggplant and shrimp fried rice. He explains that his trainer wants him to bulk up for the next match. I try not to choke as I order mushu vegetables with thin pancakes and plum sauce.

  —I was afraid you were going to take me up on one of those scary activity dates, he says.

  —I was waiting until you got to apple caramelizing.

  —I’m not very good at that, but I can show you something about napkin folding.

  I laugh and say, —Prove it.

  He tries to make a swan out of a napkin but keeps making a small tugboat instead, and when he starts anew he knocks the soy sauce over. He quickly rights the container and we both throw our napkins over the soaked spot in the tablecloth, and our busboy comes over and remakes the table linens and we start again.

  —I don’t think anyone has ever made me this nervous in my entire life. I’ve always been a little clumsy but this is nuts, he says.

  —Why do I make you nervous?

  —I like you. Which is, apparently, turning me into a complete idiot.

  The food arrives just then. The waitress fills and rolls the pancakes and serves the other dishes in a way that makes you want to meditate on the food and not just wolf it. Once she’s poured our tea, I look at Uber. I mean I really look, instead of veering off. I want him to see that I have every intention of staring right into his eye until he gets something or I get something that we’ve both been circling around.

  —You know I’ve been… learning how to be an ideal Glad wife. And I can’t blame all of that on Allison. When I was little, I really wanted to know how to act at a ceremonial dinner and how to maintain the swords if my father needed help. And I could sit here and recite every single rule and bylaw. For a while I was so particular about the way I dressed that if Allison slipped up and bought me a pair of bargain sandals with fourteen straps instead of fifteen, I wouldn’t wear them.

  —I sensed that about you, he says, stuffing a forkful of fried rice in his mouth. —I mean that you would know everything there is to know.

  —Not everything, but I wanted to learn, that’s the thing. Then I started to change and my mother began to push the idea of that Wives College on me and I looked at this introductory video and I saw how shallow the women were, because everything, every last little thing, was about their future husbands. I mean, I already knew this, but seeing so many women like
that, all talking the same… They didn’t have anything else going, they didn’t want anything for themselves, for the planet. Then Allison began to have these complete panic attacks thinking she was going to lose Tommy and end up alone again. Maybe she knew.

  Here it’s difficult to look at Uber, and I don’t even try. I just stare into my water glass.

  —And suddenly, or not so suddenly, this thing she built, this whole life, was starting to kill her. And ever since Tommy died, I’ve been thinking about how I’m going to make sure Thad never has to see another fight. And how I really think I want to write about it, not be in it anymore. The problem is if I’m no longer part of if it, then my family suffers. God, I’m sorry. I usually don’t talk this much.

  Uber pushes his chow mein into his eggplant.

  —So you’re saying you’d make a lousy Glad wife?

  —That’s what I’m saying.

  —Good. Because I don’t want to be with someone who could pass Wife 101. My mother was her own woman. Always. They had their fights, but in the end, I think my father liked having a real partner. And then when he got Alzheimer’s, it was a good thing that she’s so resourceful. She used to read a ton. We had a big library like yours. She had first editions of Faulkner, Wharton, Steinbeck… I think that’s how she made the whole thing bearable. I’m sorry you didn’t get to meet her.

  I express my anger again that Caesar’s used his parents that way.

  —Caesar’s told them they were surprising me with this special day in my honor. It wasn’t until after they arrived and a rep talked with them in the car on the way over to the stadium that they learned what was actually planned. They were then told that my competition load would double if they didn’t go along. My mother knew I was eager to get out, so she went along. I didn’t find this out until afterward.

  —They’re like the worst of the government now, the worst of the military, I say.

  —What I was trying to say the other day, about taking off, I think you could say I have renewed conviction.

  Uber fills our cups with tea and pushes a fortune cookie my way that I decide to take home for Thad because he loves the way they snap open. We talk for a while about growing up Glad, the strange mix of admiration other kids sometimes expressed and the feeling of never fitting in—the constant need to defend what our parents did—the times we wanted to be like everyone else, the times we didn’t, the fights people picked with us just to see if we’d do something crazy and pull out a sword on the playground. And when we didn’t produce those weapons we were liars, we weren’t real Glads.

  He tells me about his first memory of seeing a fight in the arena and I tell him that most of that was erased from my brain except for the blue benches and my mother’s slow undoing. We had both known mean teachers at our schools who treated us differently than the other kids. We had both tried to date non-Glads but never found it worked very well.

  I think he’s holding up better than I would with all that bandaging. But we finally start to wind down and he says, —I’d really like to see you again, and he reaches out and takes my hand. And for some dumb reason, I don’t pull away.

  —Even if Tommy’s death wasn’t between us… Allison married seven men and each one of them told her they were eager for the time they could stop fighting and lead a normal life. I think… I won’t go there.

  —If I could get out of my contract early, say, if I were done, you might consider seeing me?

  —I have to take care of my family and get my head on straight and that’s all I can think about. God, it sounds like I’m holding a press conference. But I do have to take care of us. My mother’s always been a little wobbly. She’s really a mess now.

  —I’ll work on my end. Maybe we can check back in a while, see how it’s going?

  I don’t say no, and then we both agree that we’re going to have to put Caesar’s off for a while, so they think we’re considering a Glad marriage.

  When we leave the restaurant, it’s really pretty late and we decide to drive over and take a walk by the Charles. It’s a relief to feel the cool evening air.

  Eventually we get back to the van and circle round to the cabstand so I can avoid showing up at the house again with Uber. He puts the transmission in idle and I thank him for dinner. And then I just kiss him full on the mouth, the taste of gauze and aftershave and spicy dumplings and strong tea around the edges. And if we were in a crowd of reporters they’d ask if he tastes like my father’s blood and then I’d probably just go home and maybe I’d cry a little but probably I’d look for Thad and see what he needed, because it’s a whole lot easier to think about his needs than anything else.

  But we didn’t have any witnesses and I said good night and flagged down a taxi.

  CHAPTER 26

  On the ride home I’m thinking about Uber and how it was too easy to talk with him and how much I don’t want to be grilled by Allison tonight. I have the driver pull up to the back gates with his headlights off and I start to think I should carry a baseball bat. I hope the paparazzi aren’t waking Allison as they swarm and shout at me, and tonight I have absolutely nothing to say.

  One of the guards escorts me and sees that I get in through the kitchen and I go upstairs and tiptoe past her room, the lights blazing under her bathroom door, the TV on full blast in her bedroom. She’s been waiting up the way she always does when I go on a date. I have to break her of that habit.

  I decide to check on Thad first.

  He has plenty of stuffed animals tucked under his covers, some dropped to the floor. I can tell he’s had his hair washed by the smell of his shampoo and the slight dampness on the pillow. I bend to kiss his temple. He will sleep for hours. I turn his TV off and shut his door, and brace myself for Allison.

  Outside her bedroom I realize I’m staring at a photo of my first father, Frank, with his plastic trident and the padding of a hockey goalie. That’s how he dressed in those early Glad days. I touch the glass over his face. He had the slight cleft chin I have, and we shared the small gap between our front teeth, as if we both had something that was trying to split us down the middle. There are no audio recordings of him, and I have no memory of his voice. He doesn’t speak directly to me in that way that dead people sometimes offer persistent advice or ridicule once they’re gone, a little comfort. And I suddenly have this feeling that I haven’t asked the right questions about him. So I don’t know if I got my rebellious nature from him—if there’s a logical excuse in the blood. Maybe he got lost in history books the way I do. I decide I’m going to quiz Allison for more details. She loves it when I ask about my fathers. I think those nostalgic moments assuage a lot of guilt. And maybe it will keep us off the topic of Uber for a while.

  I think I hear her calling me from the bathroom but maybe it’s the TV—it’s SO loud. I knock on the door and when she doesn’t answer I knock a few more times. After a while I push on the door and it comes open.

  She’s slumped near the toilet, head down, her back to me. All I see is the form of her curved spine in her lemon-colored nightgown and her legs sprawled out. My heart drops away, my head, my stomach, everything drops, and I think she could be doing one of her faux deaths, so I’m calling to her loudly. Maybe she’s taken a small combination of alcohol and prescription drugs that have put her in a stupor. She did that once before, and she slumped just this way.

  I don’t even see the blood at first. Everywhere and I don’t see it. I don’t know how that can happen. The lights are those kind that last for months. And I wonder, did I just think that, about the lights? I can’t imagine I’d think about that.

  And then I realize a phone receiver is pressed against my ear. It occurs to me that I’ve dialed Tommy’s private number like he’s working out at the gym or took his car in for a wash where they have brushes the size of small fir trees and soap that changes colors as it activates—things Thad loves. Maybe I was thinking if Tommy heard my voice pushing to get out of my chest—trying to tell him about Allison—that he w
ould rush home from wherever he is and cover her up so I don’t have to be the one to do this.

  But I’ve got it now. Tommy’s dead and he can’t do a thing about Allison.

  I’m still here holding the receiver against my ear, right outside Allison’s bathroom now, thinking I should find some Kleenex and blow my nose and maybe go downstairs and wash my face and put the receiver down, all of those things in some logical sequence so I can get the dial tone to stop ringing in my head. I don’t think I’m trying to call the police. I wouldn’t do that unless she had a pulse.

  The walls that she had once painted a mushroom color, the white sink and ceiling, the toilet cover she has washed and bleached by the woman who comes in to do the twice-weekly cleaning, the towels Allison has made sure to replace as soon as one thread comes loose or the smallest drop of makeup won’t scrub out, those things are all covered in blood. I can see that now. When I crouch down, I say her name softly so she won’t get mad at me. As I move around her, I finally see her face.

  I have to step into the sticky blood to hold the wrist without the gun and feel for a pulse. I realize, as I back out of myself and float up to the ceiling, that there is no hurry to call anyone. I take a clean towel from the shelves and cover her head. Another towel over her legs where her skirt has risen up.

  And I think about how every three or four months she gives those imperfect towels to the woman who cleans—the woman Caesar’s sends—it seems they’re always changing these women, and before they change we send them off with everything we’ve got: old towels and clothing, toys and magazines, plastic containers, old television sets.

  Sticking out of the wastebasket is one of her personal note cards with her embossed initials at the top. It’s a letter she’s started to me. So I pull it out of the trash even though my hand is crazy with shakes. And I look at Allison and I tell her I’ll read it later. I tell her Thad and I are going to be all right. You’ll see. We’re going to be all right.