Girl in the Arena (3 page)

Is he worried about aphids? Is his mind riddled with thoughts of bone meal and mulch? And the way he’s doing it—he goes at the whole process delicately, as if he’s trying to keep the dirt from his nails. But Tommy’s not a delicate man. He’s a gladiator. Maybe he has a fragile thought or two, but mostly I think of him as durable goods, tough as any industrial product. He seems to be in some kind of stupor. Maybe he needs some coffee.

I just don’t get it. If he thinks he’s going to die in the arena tomorrow, if that’s what this is about, I can’t imagine a dumber way to spend a last afternoon on Earth. Finally, Tommy leaves the flower beds and goes off to the shed.

But now he’s bringing out the antique lawn mower! Not the type the gardeners use on Tuesdays when they spring from their red pickup. A whole team of gardeners shaved the grass just three days ago in fact. Caesar’s Inc. arranges this service to keep Tommy focused on his game and he always leaves this work to them.

Tommy nudges the old push mower with the double-helix blade into the yard. He pulls his T-shirt off and throws it on a garden chair. Naked to his gym shorts, a bandana round his head, he looks like his own posters. He pulls his long hair into a ponytail. Already he’s sweating, and he hasn’t even started to mow.

I want to call down to him, to let him know Allison is trying to sleep so that he doesn’t make too much noise, but Thad has hidden the window cranks again. If I rap on the glass Allison might leap from her nap, thinking someone’s shooting up the house, in that way that one noise becomes another in a dream. I wave my arms over my head to get his attention, but he doesn’t look up.

*

By the time I get downstairs, Tommy has disappeared from the garden. He’s put on a fresh T-shirt and jeans, and I find him in the weapons room. I have to say he looks more like his old self now, pushing his wavy hair out of his eyes, his bare feet planted on the Oriental rug. He has an open book in hand. 
The Tao of Killing, 
one of those slim catchall volumes that says absolutely nothing about the sport or the life, but sells millions of copies. He shrugs, like I’ve busted him reading a tabloid at the supermarket, and tosses it on a pile of mail.

—What’s going on? I ask.

—Just reading some... chain mail.

—That’s so bad.

—Chain letters?

Sometimes he gets this way with me, as if we’ve just met and he has to find something clever to say and it comes out awkward. He leans into the sword rack now and offers me a chair. Hoping to let him off the hook, I ask if I can get him something to drink.

—Actually, I was just going to make a smoothie. You want one? How about strawberry mango? he asks.

Then he touches my jaw, cradles it for a moment. I can feel the familiar calluses made by the strap of his shield.

—You all right? I ask.

—Perfect.

While he breezes off to the kitchen, I sink into the easy chair and shut my eyes.

Frank, my first father, I can’t remember. He died when I was one. But I don’t think any of the others ever made a point of asking me to join them for refreshments the way Tommy does. Though Rolfe, my third father—Rolfe was a mess—once asked me to join him for a highball in the living room. I was eight at the time. I remember hiding out in my bedroom closet till Allison came home. At his funeral some of his family, who had come to pay their respects to Allison, remarked that they didn’t mind so much that he had been taken out.

Tommy is the one who’s always shown interest. He wants to know if my black eye means someone picked a fight with me at school (I’ve been ganged up on a few times, sometimes by preps, sometimes by jocks); how many pounds of fries I cook at my hyper-food job in one night (the answer is 
plenty
); if my friend Mark’s intentions are good; that kind of stuff. Tommy’s been around for five years now, though he and Allison didn’t get married right away. I never thought their relationship would last.

I hear the whir of a small blade churning up frozen fruit and yogurt in the kitchen, the blender set into the steel sink, the slap of his feet on the parquet floor.

He hands me a straw and we sip quietly.

—This is really good. Did you add a boost? I ask.

—Yes. Dope.

—Wuh?

—Made by Tour de France Ltd.

—You’re cracking me up today, I say, rolling my eyes.

—How’s 
A History of the Gladiator Sports Association 
going? he asks.

—I’m still on the American section. I really want to interview Joe Byers, but so far he won’t return my e-mails.

Many consider Byers to be the founder of Glad sport, but he’s a funny guy, never grants interviews.

—You know, you’d make a pretty good history professor. No, I’m serious, or a biographer.

—Wouldn’t Allison love that, I say.

—Not at first.

—I think my head-on-a-platter would express it.

—She wants you to be a Glad wife because that’s what she knows. I’ll work on her, Tommy assures me.

He rubs the scar that divides the apple of his right cheek into two half spheres, the horizontal line where the pigmentation disappears into an equator. There’s a drop of pink on his chin.

—You know, your mother’s been kind to me. Good. Kind, he says, as if he has to stumble for the right word.

It sounds like one of those random comments he’ll land on. I’m used to letting those declarations hang in the air. Sometimes I wonder if all they have is a marriage of convenience. Nothing would shock. I point to his chin and he wipes it clean.

—We should talk about a couple of things, he says.

His voice hits that low register that makes my intestines bunch up.

—Let’s go for a walk. We have time, he says, looking at his watch. —Bring the 
History 
along.

So I stuff my computer in my backpack and we head out. We live just off Brattle Street in Cambridge, where wealthy people loyal to the crown once lived before the Revolutionary War. There are placards on fences and brickwork, stating who lived in various homes, along with titles, significant activities, that kind of thing. Wood frame, lots of shutters, sweeping lawns, unending shade trees—everything Allison wanted. You hear about occasional vandalism, but I haven’t seen a week when the garbage built up around here.

We walk awhile before he opens up.

—Look, I don’t want to make too big a deal out of this but Uber’s on the fast track and so far he hasn’t left any of his opponents standing. If I go down in the arena tomorrow...

—You’re not going down, I say.

—But if I do, he says.

—You’re going to knock Uber’s head off in the first two minutes.

You say that kind of knowing stuff when you’re the daughter of a gladiator. You grow up saying knowing things the way your mother does. It doesn’t matter what you know or don’t know. Or if your mother spends her whole existence telling lies and you’re just reproducing them.

Always lend ineffable confidence to the gladiator, 
Bylaw 29.

I’ve read the fifty-seven Gladiator Conduct Regulations to Tommy, more than once, so he could work on his memorization. Gladiators have to be prepared for frequent pop quizzes. The GSA loves that kind of thing. A hearty fine goes to the Glad who fails a pop quiz. You can lose your transportation, your whetstone, everything.

—I guess I just want to make sure someone’s going to be there for Thad, he says.

—He’s good with us, I say. —Don’t worry.

As if I’m worry-free.

—I’ve been watching the tapes of Uber’s last six matches, Tommy says. —The fact that he’s a lefty doesn’t help.

—But if you know that, you’ll be prepared.

He doesn’t say anything.

Tommy and I have this way of keeping pace when we walk. Though I’m the taller one, his stride is quicker. I have a hard time walking with Allison even though I’m only two inches taller than she is. She likes to start and stop and comment on everything. She’s obsessed with each yard and who’s planting what. And Thad, well, he takes you on a moonwalk you have to gear up for.

As we near the park, I slide my bracelet off my wrist.

—For good luck, I say, pushing it his way. —Not that you’ll need it, of course.

—Your dowry bracelet?

—This girl in San Francisco, they say her dowry bracelet saved her father’s life. I read it online last week.

The steel band was made for my first father by a famous sword maker in Japan. It’s in the man’s style and it’s always been large for me. And Tommy’s a little guy, only five seven, so even though he has thick hands it slips easily onto his wrist. He says something about wearing it proudly, he’s even a little choked up, so I don’t get all the words.

He reaches into a pocket in his jeans and holds out a scrap of paper to me.

—I wrote down a name and number for you, he says.

—LeRoy Gastonguay? New York? And he would be?

We head down a short street where we usually turn. In the middle of the block is a park. A single-family lot given to the neighborhood by a wealthy family. There are two benches and a small fountain. The trees offer shade on a hot day. We take a seat.

—He works for Caesar’s Incorporated. He’s down in the New York headquarters. If you’re ever in a bad strait, this is the guy.

—I don’t want this, I say, trying to hand it back to him.

—Just hold on to it. And look, the other thing... He pushes the nose of one of his shoes into the wood chips packed around the bench. —Don’t feel like you have to come tomorrow.

—No, I want to be there, I say.

I don’t really, now that he’s got me so spooked. And I told Allison a couple of years ago that I wouldn’t be coming as much to the games. But it would be crazy not to go to his match. I know my mother needs me there.

I can tell he’s wrestling with things, and maybe my eyes are kind of filling up.

—So let’s hear it, he says, indicating my computer. I pull it from the backpack, open the lid, and bring up the file. I hold the screen out to him.

—No, read it aloud, he says.

Tommy stretches his arms along the back of the bench and closes his eyes to listen. He leans his head back. I see the stubble he missed on his neck. And though I don’t want to, I think about the fragility of a neck.

Nothing’s worse than a Glad going into a fight this way, with a clear lack of confidence. The whole thing scratches at my throat. I have an impulse to tell Tommy that he’s the only father I’ve ever loved, but I don’t want to make an idiot of myself. So I let it go.

—Are you awake? I ask.

Tommy cracks one eye open. —Would you start reading already?

—Okay. Okay.

*

I get to the last sentence.

—Eventually Glad sport, though not always a fight to the death, certainly offered this possibility.

Then I turn off my computer. Tommy nods.

—That’s as far as I’ve gotten, I say.

—You’ve nailed it, he says.

—You haven’t told Allison about it, right?

—You asked me not to.

—She’d just freak again about college and stuff.

—She does have that solid panic reflex, he says.

Then he makes this face, like it’s just something we have to go through with Allison, the way we have to put up with metal dust in our soup from his sword sharpening in the kitchen and the fact that I tend to leave the flat iron on in my bathroom and have almost burned the house down six times. But I know her fretfulness digs in, that his patience with her can get as thin as mine.

—Allison said something the other day... that you’re reading up on nonviolence? he says.

—Which she finds thoroughly humiliating.

—You might want to try Thomas Merton. He’s pretty good.

I always stop myself, at moments like this, from asking him how long he’ll hang in.

CHAPTER 3

Thad and I have this ritual. We like to go to the Museum of Science on the Friday evenings when I’m not working, after it turns dark. As soon as Tommy and I get back to the house, Allison makes a light dinner for Thad and then I help him find a clean T-shirt and comb his hair for him.

GSA women wear a certain kind of boot made from Italian leather, sometimes sandals with at least fifteen straps—not the pseudogladiator style you see everywhere now—and tunics on occasion. But I wear jeans and T-shirts mostly. Sam and Callie and I used to wear these cutoff 
stolas 
of our mothers’—the layer that goes over a toga—but that’s when you get really annoying comments so I stopped doing that. Of course Sam’s the kind of girl to wear barrettes dipped in the blood of gladiators, which she claims they did in Imperial Rome, and this, I think, kind of encapsulates her personality. The most I’ll do now is wear a few bloodless beads, a little gold—my beat-in leather jacket always. I really couldn’t care beyond that.

And sometimes it’s almost easier to be in uniform. At my fast-food nation job, it’s really hot and you have to lift heavy boxes of frozen food substance and you get spattered with sizzling grease. But you have this uniform and this cap and you’re just one of the underpaid and completely marginalized jerks like everyone else and no one asks if you come from seven types of men—you just fry and salt and squirt and slap and wrap and bag.

I get Thad settled in the backseat and we drive down Cambridge Street to avoid as much rush hour traffic as possible, past the medical facilities, the library, the tattoo parlor, restaurants, the Garment District, the courthouse where Allison has always managed to avoid jury duty, and God-knows-what shops. You can get a freshly killed chicken on Cambridge Street.

Thad’s anchored by his seat belt but each time he sees neon lights he ducks. My friend Callie used to go with us, and her presence made for less wear and tear on Thad.

—We’re almost there, I assure him.

—We’re almost there, he repeats, in his self-soothing way.

Finally we hit the upscale condos, the Cambridgeside Galleria, and the parking ramp to the museum. Inside, we get a locker for our jackets and Thad and I use this machine where we turn a penny into a thin piece of copper with a T. rex imprinted on it. This he will rub for hours between the thumb and index finger of his left hand, because that’s what Thad does. He has long eyelashes and soft downy hair that people admire. But he’s a big guy, nearly twice the height of his classmates at school, and he has a solid girth, so even though he’s only eight sometimes he’s mistaken for an older boy and there’s a lot of confusion about his behavior.