by Atticus Lish
“My mother. She was angry because my dad had just divorced her.”
“So, this is not a nightmare; this actually happened.”
“Yes, unfortunately.”
“How old were you?”
“Like five. My parents had just got divorced. I guess I made my mother mad.”
“So she put the mask on…?”
“To punish me.”
“How did she do that?”
“She came into my room and acted like a monster.”
“But she did something else, didn’t she? Something physical. What did she do?” Leonard pressed.
“She had a pair of scissors.”
“What did she do with them?”
The physics student sighed.
“Does it depress you to talk about it?”
“It’s not happy. It’s a bummer. I mean, I’m mad. I could kill her.”
“Well, she did something…”
“I have homicidal thoughts about her.”
“Just to be clear, she had a pair of scissors, and she threatened you physically. She threatened to…”
“To castrate me, yeah.”
“And now you wear a cup and have nightmares to this day.”
“Yes.”
Adrian felt boundless gratitude to Corey’s father for eliciting this tale of childhood trauma. He was better than a trained psychiatrist, Adrian insisted.
Later that month, a group of female students were gathered in the common room behind his back making comments Adrian was meant to overhear. One said, “That guard’s a creep.” The young man turned around and replied, “No, he’s not. I think he’s a saint.”
The team’s hardest conditioning workouts were led by a former college wrestler. He had a crewcut with a slice in it, a coiling dragon on his arm. His front teeth were missing, and when he didn’t have his plate in, he looked like a vampire. He said to start the running. Their bare feet pattered around the mat. He called for bear crawls. They hit the deck and scrambled on all fours. Corey ran on all fours, seeing the heels of the man ahead of him.
The wrestler’s drills were based on lifting your opponent off the ground. When you weren’t lifting another man, you were lifting yourself. He had them doing jumping split lunges, bunny hops, springing down the mat throwing Superman punches, leaping up and throwing jump knees. “Ong Bak that shit!” He was a small-framed man, but he believed in strength at any cost, even if you had to take steroids to achieve it. He was the athlete of power, the antigravity fighter leaping off the earth.
Corey had to give a piggyback to a full-grown heavyweight wearing a compression shirt with a dagger of white silk-screened down the front and a bow tie at the throat like a tuxedo. It was mechanically impossible to lift the man’s legs high enough to get his feet off the ground; Corey needed higher shoulders. The heavyweight raised his feet himself while Corey ran. No sooner had Corey dropped him than the call went out for High Crotch Carries. The guy said, “Let’s go, pick me up,” and swung himself sideways into Corey’s arms. It was like running with a fire ladder. The man’s weight pressed on Corey’s heart. His body slopped with sweat. The hairs on his shins were plastered to his skin in patterns left by running water, like fossil traces in a riverbed. The man did the work of hanging on to him; Corey’s biceps failed. The second lap he had to walk. When he dropped him, the heavyweight stepped out of his arms with his long legs and walked away, a much bigger life-form leaving a smaller one, who was bent and gasping.
* * *
—
Sparring turned ugly all the time. Real fighting was encouraged. You had to wear a mouthpiece. You had to wear a cup. The wrestler, who had been in combat sports since childhood and was working on a pro career, said that one time he forgot to wear a cup and someone kneed him. Later in the shower, he felt a sting. The end of his penis had been split.
“I woulda healed up faster, but I had to get me a little somethin’-somethin’.”
The listeners, who were fighters, winked. Corey tried to show the right reaction, which was no reaction.
A blow to the groin could result in injury to the genitals, rupture of urethra or testes. A hard enough blow can smash a testicle, render it necrotic. One could get Thai-kicked in the leg so much in a bout—think of a leg being smashed over and over with a baseball bat, inflicting hematomas and then bursting these same bruises—that a gap opens in the flesh, the entire thigh fills with pus like a rotted orange—this is called compartment syndrome—and has to be drained. One could get a finger in the eye, deep in the eye, fingernail tearing the cornea; a torn cornea or detached retina. If you were mounted and punched with your head against the canvas, your skull could absorb impacts in the neighborhood of a thousand foot-pounds, depending how hard your opponent hit. Broken nose, jaw, orbital. You could get heel-hooked and wreck your knee. You could get double-leg slammed or suplexed, land on your head, and break your spine. Taking repeated blows to the head could cause dementia pugilistica or, as has been coming to light in football, make one prone to a neurodegenerative disease like ALS.
For all these fears, you wore a cup, you wore a mouthpiece, and moved your head. You tried to be skilled. As for your opponent, there was not so much you could do about him. You didn’t know how good he’d be until you felt him in the cage.
There was one thing you could do. You could ensure you were in fighting shape, which meant you were conditioned to struggle even when your air was being taken away.
Green wind feeding red muscle in a never-ending Taoist cycle—Corey thought. Red muscle making motion. A calligraphic line cooling into green. A body swirling to arouse the wind—a Wu Li dancer, a flashing quantum body breathing air. He had strange thoughts in training when he was being crushed and couldn’t breathe: “I’m dying into being Vairocana,” and, when he had held out long enough to break free of a bad position and reverse it: “Break through and go the distance—out of chaos—the Grand Tour!”
* * *
—
“Okay, ladies,” said their coach. “Get a drink and get your gloves.” The young men ran for their gear. “You have one minute.”
The bell rang and sparring started. A fight broke out between Robert, the tuxedo wearer, and a visitor to the gym, a pale fellow with a deep voice, it was said, from Macedonia, who spoke plodding English. He swung his fist like a bolo at Robert’s head. Rob leaned back and kneed him in the stomach. The Macedonian instantly fell on the ground and made a sobbing noise. His diaphragm was in spasm. The point of the knee had hit him in the solar plexus.
“World Star!”
Corey put his hands down, thinking they should see if he was okay. The coach said, “Keep fighting, ladies! The round’s not over.”
Tonight, Corey’s sparring partner was a twenty-five-year-old named Francisco, a recent immigrant, now living in Plymouth, who had trained in jiujitsu back in Brazil for the last ten years and had a brown belt under one of the leading São Paulo schools. When their bout went to the ground, Corey received a merciless grappling lesson. No matter what he did, Francisco slid over him like an anaconda, squeezing his ribs, riding his abdomen, asphyxiating him before he even got to his neck. To get starved for air when he was working as hard as he could—when he had just done the equivalent of sprinting up four flights of stairs with a human being on his back—was excruciating. Corey’s lips turned blue. He gave up submissions just to make it stop.
By the end of the night, he could barely function. His face had been scraped raw by the man’s stubble. The bridge of his nose was bleeding. His arms and legs appeared fragile, as if he’d used his body up. He was five pounds lighter, bruised all over. When he peeled off his kneepads, his knees were skinned and macerated. He stank like kerosene, ammonia, aldehyde, sweat. His waterlogged clothes looked like he’d been dunked in the ocean. Foreign hairs from the mat were sticking to his skin. His arm was hyper-exte
nded. His toes were jammed. There was a pull in his back. His head ached. Water nauseated him, yet there wasn’t enough water in the world that he could drink to satisfy his thirst. His brain had shrunk inside his head. He could hardly think or talk.
Francisco slapped him on the arm.
“Keep it up. You should fight.”
“I will. I am.”
* * *
—
Corey saw Adrian after signing the contract for his next fight, which was going to be held early next month. As soon as he had signed the contract, he wanted nothing more than a vacation from fighting; so, for a vacation, he called Adrian. His friend agreed to meet him that Saturday. Adrian suggested they meet at Boston Common, since it was closer for Corey than going all the way to MIT. But the real reason, Corey realized later, was that Adrian liked the Park Street–Downtown Crossing area—there was something there that attracted him, though Corey never knew what. And there was the Common itself, which, like the Esplanade, was a park. Even though it wasn’t sunbathing season, Adrian liked to walk around the park, in among the trees and benches, inspecting things and laughing.
When Corey met him, this is what he did—wandering in willful-child fashion hither and yon, directing Corey’s attention to details that had meaning only to Adrian and connecting them to the abstruse subjects he was taking at MIT.
Tiresome as this was, it took Corey’s mind off his fight. It wasn’t as unpleasant as what could happen at Bestway on any given sparring night.
But after an hour or so, Corey would take no more. It was late afternoon. Dusk was setting in. By now, they’d walked over the bridge to Cambridge and had arrived at MIT. He hadn’t been here since his friend had started college and was curious about the place. He asked Adrian to let him see his dorm.
At first, Adrian didn’t want to take him, but Corey goaded him, saying, “What are you afraid of?” Finally, Adrian gave in, but he wasn’t happy. He insisted this was a bad idea. “It’ll be fine,” said Corey.
They were walking towards his dorm when Adrian stopped in his tracks.
“Oh no.”
“What is it?”
A woman in a wig was coming towards them.
“Adrian,” she said, “you haven’t been answering your phone.”
Adrian went to confront her, saying, “Now just a minute. What evidence do you have?” He parleyed with her in the cove-shaped parking lot from a dueling distance of ten paces beneath the security lights, not letting her approach.
She said, “I had radiation. You’re not allowed to ignore my calls.”
Corey backed away. Snatches of their discussion reached his ears. Mrs. Reinhardt wanted to take her son to dinner at Red Lobster. Adrian said he was busy. “With what?” she asked. He began listing his courses and assignments.
“I have your schedule, Adrian. Don’t lie to me.”
Adrian headed into his dorm. His mother made a move to follow.
“I thought we agreed on boundaries.”
“Oh, Adrian!” She tried to hug him.
“Stay back,” he said. “You’re radioactive.”
He disappeared inside. Mrs. Reinhardt vanished too. Corey saw her getting in a minivan. Annoyed and bothered by the episode, he went home to Quincy.
The event had a postscript. Days later, when Corey was icing his arm—he’d tweaked it during training—Adrian called him to complain, again, about his mother. Corey realized his friend was somehow under the impression that he took his part. He decided it was time to set him straight.
“I don’t care what she’s done to you. She’s your mother. You don’t call her radioactive.”
Adrian said Corey had no idea what he was talking about.
They wouldn’t talk again until April after that.
Gloria only left the house on five mornings that November. On each of these mornings, Corey helped her get dressed. He fit her skeletonized hands into the orthotic gauntlets, strapped them tight, strapped on her ankle braces, as if readying her for a Thai fight; then put on her hat and boots and winter coat and walked her to The Ride. Her disability had come through from the state. Under its terms, she would receive full pay for working forty hours a month. She was finally on her way to being liberated from her job.
At her office, they allowed her to sit there and do little. Her employer, having no choice under the law, assented to this arrangement but was unhappy with it.
If she was staying home, Corey poured her coffee, plugged in her laptop and then he left her.
“I’m going to learn something today,” she said as he was leaving. “I saw a Sanskrit course online.”
He wore his hat, gloves, winter parka, sweatshirt, long johns, double socks, drove to Quincy High and sat through class with his gym bag between his legs and thought about his mother.
Once, he had a fear premonition and went outside and called her. The call was disconnected. He hit redial. No answer. He was about to drive home. Finally, she picked up.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I just had trouble with my hands.”
After school, he drove to the academy, wrapped his hands, put on his headgear, groin protection, mouthpiece, shin guards, and got in the cage to spar. At five, he took off his gear and rolled with the jiujitsu class, and at six he put the hand and foot wraps back on and trained Muay Thai. Twice a week, he stayed late and lifted weights—a conditioning circuit whose goal was to make him throw up. Sometimes it was successful. Lying on his back, he performed leg raises while someone smashed him in the belly with a Thai pad. Every weekend, he took a long slow run along the shore, wearing his down coat, his body getting leaner and lighter under his sweats. The ocean detonated on the gray beach. He listened to it as he jogged. He ate tuna fish and frozen broccoli and weighed himself.
His skin burned constantly from chafing, and he went to Walgreens and bought skin lotion and it relieved him. At night, after training, he soaked his board shorts and compression shirts in white vinegar and hot water to kill staph, ringworm, herpes gladiatoris, and on weekends he took his and his mother’s laundry to the coin laundromat next to Point Liquors and washed their clothes in Era Plus. While they dried, he fell asleep. He took them out of the dryer, cleaned the lint off the filter because he liked the soft, warm feltlike feel of the lint, and carried their clean clothes out in a plastic hamper to the old red hatchback, which his mother had started driving when she was a kid at Lesley College.
One of his Craigslist jobs took him to Central Square, to a residential development not far from MIT. He assembled Ikea furniture for a pair of girls who lived in a brand-new three-floor house with hardwood floors and a brick patio in the back. One girl had a conference call with a finance company, which she took in the bathroom, while he was working. She was still there when he was leaving. He flagged down her roommate, a blonde in her pajamas. “Oh. You need to be paid.” She got her purse. “It was twenty, wasn’t it?”
“Actually your ad said twenty-five.”
Riding home on the T, for the hundredth time, he thought about quitting high school and getting a full-time job.
Every morning he woke up, the fight was a day closer. His opponent was with the Gracie Barra fight team. Corey looked him up online, saw his record. He didn’t want to think about him any more than he had to. Once a day he thought whatever was going to happen in the cage would eventually happen no matter what he did and then it would be over.
While he was away, Gloria, alone in their house in Quincy, put aside her online Sanskrit lesson and left her bedroom and used her walker to make her way to the front door, which she somehow managed to open with her gauntlets. She stood on the top step of the stairs outside her house, which she was unable to descend on her own, and stared out at the seawall, clutching her walker.
* * *
—
The fight was going to be in his moth
er’s hometown of Springfield, Mass. Three days beforehand, on December fifth, an arctic wind raced down from Canada and crashed into a warm surge boiling up from the Gulf of Mexico. Low, dark clouds rushed across the skies of Boston. Within minutes, the daylight world turned eerily black and a storm hit. Hurricane-force gusts bombed through the streets. Hail drove down violently. Trapped in the house in Quincy, Corey felt like a sailor on a tiny ship at sea. Beyond his windows, he could see nothing but a churning, impenetrable darkness that blotted out everything and had a frightening sulfurous cast.
He let the blinds close and went to the bathroom and found the clippers. While hail rattled the windows, he buzzed his hair off. Shorn and tense, he looked in the mirror.
“Ding!” he said. “The bell rings. I come out, I take my time…”
He moved through the house, throwing punches in slow motion.
“What do I do if he gets my back?”
He got down on the floor and bridged. “Handfight, handfight, handfight—respect the choke—kick the leg out—free that leg—don’t let him mount—turn into him—payback time.”
While he was twisting on the floor, his mother’s wheelchair came by UPS. The weather had abated just enough for trucks to drive, but the driver and the shipping box still got soaking wet. Corey ran out to help the driver get it up the steps. Rain flew in when the door was open. He broke the box open with a razor-knife. The chair was folded. He pulled the sides apart and locked the bolts in place with a wrench and fit the custom-made cushion in its sleeve.
His mother was distressed. She had him hide the wheelchair in the corner and drape it with a bedsheet.
Corey put on a slicker and went up to the city, to the North End, the old Italian neighborhood. He bought her a license plate that said Mafia Boss and brought it home and wired it to the axle.
He knew it would offend his father. That may have been why he did it. The next night, his father walked in just after dinner. Corey heard him talking to his mother as if they were still a family. When Corey came out of his room, he saw Leonard sitting on the futon, reading a Committee to Protect Journalists book called Attacks on the Press, and Corey knew he’d seen the license plate.