Until I Find You

by John Irving

  There was also a moon goddess in the Bathurst Street gym, and the so-called queen mother of the west--in Taoist legend, she has the power to confer immortality. And the Chinese character for double happiness, which Alice refused to tattoo on anyone; it was synonymous with marriage, which she no longer believed in.

  The old gym itself had once been a rug store. The large display windows, which faced the Bathurst Street sidewalk, attracted the more curious of passersby. In the neighborhood, the former Mr. Bangkok's kickboxing classes were famous. Krung, despite the chevrons emblazoned on his cheeks and the Buddha's Hand on one thigh, was a popular teacher. There were kickboxing classes for all levels. Jack was enrolled in a beginner class, of course; given the boy's age and size, his only feasible sparring partners were women.

  His mother had put him in Mr. Bangkok's able hands (more to the point, his able feet) so that Jack might learn to defend himself from bullies, which boys of a certain age--especially in an all-boys' school--are reputed to be. But Jack once more found himself in a situation where his most dangerous adversaries were older women. When the boy asked a Jamaican lady with a big bottom if she was acquainted with his friend Peewee, she said: "You keep your peewee to yourself, mon." Jack was relieved that she was too big to be his sparring partner.

  He was paired instead with a Portuguese woman in her forties, Mrs. Machado, who informed him that her grown children had moved away, leaving her unprotected from the random assaults of her ex-husband. According to Mrs. Machado, she was forced to keep changing the locks on her apartment. Her ex-husband still held her accountable for her wifely duties, even though she was no longer his wife. Because he repeatedly returned to her apartment, either to force sex upon her or beat her up, Mrs. Machado was learning to fight.

  For not dissimilar motives, the women in Krung's beginner class were particularly interested in mastering the high-groin kick. (In Jack's case, this meant that Mrs. Machado kicked him in the area of his chest and throat.) In the opinion of the former Mr. Bangkok, the high-groin kick was "impure"; yet Jack and the women in Krung's beginner class had reasons beyond the purity of kickboxing for mastering a high-groin maneuver. If he was going to be bullied by older boys, Jack was not opposed to learning a high-groin kick.

  Mrs. Machado was a challenging sparring partner. A short, heavyset woman with coarse, glossy black hair and pendulous, low-slung breasts, she blocked most of the boy's kicks with her ample thighs, or by turning sideways to him and receiving his kicks with her wide hips. And as short as she was, Jack was shorter. He was four feet, eight inches tall and weighed seventy-five pounds. Mrs. Machado was five feet two and weighed one-fifty. She could kick a lot harder than he could.

  "You'd be better off wrestling her," Chenko advised Jack. "You just don't want to end up underneath her."

  Chenko respected Krung and the more skilled kickboxers in the gym, but he had contempt for the women in Krung's beginner class--Mrs. Machado included. She was a hard kicker, but she wasn't very agile. In Chenko's opinion, Mrs. Machado could never defend herself from her ex-husband by kicking him. She would have to cripple him with the first kick; if she missed her mark, the fight would be over. Chenko thought that Mrs. Machado would be better off learning to wrestle.

  As for Jack's eventual self-defense, Chenko believed that the boy would have scant success defending himself--either kickboxing or wrestling--until he grew a few more inches and put on another fifty or seventy-five pounds. "I don't see that your mom is getting her money's worth yet," Chenko told Jack--this was when Jack and Mrs. Machado had been kicking each other for about a week.

  But wasn't it Mrs. Oastler's money? (She was getting her money's worth, Jack suspected.) Leslie Oastler would drive him to the gym on Bathurst Street before his mother was out of bed in the morning. Jack was there all day. He kickboxed with Mrs. Machado, he hopped on one foot for five minutes at a time, he stretched and stretched--the objective being to kick consistently above your height at shoulder level without losing your balance.

  Jack rolled out the mats with Chenko, and disinfected them, and wiped them dry. He brought clean towels, fresh water bottles, and oranges cut into quarters to the kickboxers and the wrestlers. When the Minskies came in the midafternoon, Jack sat at matside with Chenko and watched Boris and Pavel pummel each other. They were both about Mrs. Machado's weight, but lean--two very tough taxi drivers in their late twenties or early thirties. Chenko had the worst cauliflower ears, but Boris and Pavel had similar no-necks with little more than scar tissue for eyebrows, and the Minskies' ears were unmatched lumps of dough--barely more recognizable (as ears) than Chenko's.

  The wrestling Jack learned was rudimentary--much of it defensive. A Russian arm-tie and front headlock, a three-quarter nelson and a cross-face cradle. On top, Boris had a mean cross-body ride; from the feet, Pavel had a good duck-under, a better arm-drag, and an outstanding ankle-pick. Chenko was a high-crotch man, but Boris and Pavel preferred an outside single-leg. Chenko liked the lateral drop, but only if your opponent was close to your height. There was no one Jack's height in the Bathurst Street gym. In wrestling, he had no actual opponent--he just drilled the moves repeatedly with Chenko, Pavel, and Boris.

  Occasionally, after Mrs. Machado had landed her best high-groin kicks in the area of Jack's chest and throat--especially when she'd knocked his wind out--he could persuade her to "roll around" with him on the wrestling mat. She was the wrong height for the lateral drop, but Jack could ankle-pick her all day, which Mrs. Machado found frustrating--and when he managed to get her down on the mat, he could keep her down with a cross-body ride. She couldn't get away from him.

  To be fair, Chenko taught Mrs. Machado a snap-down; when she snapped Jack down on all fours, he couldn't get away from her. (She would just lie on the boy with her seventy-five-pound weight advantage, breathing heavily.) "Ha!" she would cry, when she got him down--the exact same exclamation Mrs. Machado favored when she landed her best high-groin kicks.

  If Jack was making any progress in defending himself, he had no accurate means of testing it. At the end of the day, Emma would relentlessly attack him--on the living-room couch or rug, or in her bedroom or one of the guest bedrooms, two of which Jack and his mom occupied for the summer. Now seventeen, Emma was both taller and heavier than Mrs. Machado. Emma could destroy Jack. Nothing he had learned worked with her, which was a sizable blow to his confidence.

  In mid-June, Mrs. Oastler sent Emma to what she described as a weight-management program in California. "The fat farm," Emma called it. Jack never thought of Emma as fat, but Mrs. Oastler did. Emma's self-esteem may have been further undermined by Alice's slim and attractive appearance, although Alice was by no means as small as Leslie Oastler.

  It was a two-week weight-loss program--poor Emma--during which time Mrs. Machado was hired to give Jack dinner and be his babysitter until his mom and Mrs. Oastler came home (usually long after Mrs. Machado had put the boy to bed). Thus Jack's kickboxing sparring partner and occasional wrestling opponent became his nanny--Lottie's unlikely replacement.

  At his appointed bedtime, Mrs. Machado and Jack would spar a little--no full contact, "no finishing the moves," as Chenko would have said--and Mrs. Machado would put him to bed with the door to the guest-wing hall open, and the light at the far end of the corridor left on. Before he fell asleep, Jack often heard her talking on the telephone. She spoke in Portuguese--he assumed to one or another of her grown children, who had moved "away." They must have been living somewhere in Toronto; given the length of these conversations, they were surely local calls. Not infrequently, the calls ended with Mrs. Machado in tears.

  Jack would fall asleep to the sound of her crying, while she padded barefoot through the beautiful rooms in the downstairs of the Oastler mansion--her feet occasionally squeaking on the hardwood floors as she pivoted sharply on the ball of one foot while raising her kicking foot above shoulder level. At such times, Jack knew that Mrs. Machado was kicking the shit out of her imagined ex-husband--or some oth
er assailant. After all, he was familiar with the exercise--including the sound of the footwork.

  On one of the first warm nights of the summer, near the end of June, Mrs. Machado was crying and pivoting and kickboxing loudly enough for Jack to hear her over the ceiling fan. (The Oastler mansion was air-conditioned, but not the guest wing--Jack and his mom had ceiling fans.) For the warm weather, Alice had bought Jack several pairs of what she called "summer pajamas"--namely, his first boxer shorts. They were a little big for him.

  The boy got out of bed in a checkered pair of boxers that hung to his knees. Fittingly, the checks were gray and maroon--the familiar St. Hilda's colors. He followed the light to the far end of the guest-wing hall, and went downstairs to offer what comfort he could to Mrs. Machado. Jack could see her in the front hall, circling the grandfather clock as if the clock were her opponent. When she balanced on her left foot, he was impressed by the perfect, bent-knee position of her kicking leg; her elevated foot was held at a right angle to her ankle, like the flared head of a cobra.

  Jack should have said something, or at least cleared his throat, but Mrs. Machado was concentrating so fiercely that he was afraid he might startle her if he spoke. She was also breathing too hard to hear the boy's descending footsteps on the stairs--her breaths catching on short, choked-back sobs. Tears bathed her face, she was sweating, her black tank top had become untucked from her powder-blue gym shorts, and her heavy, low-slung breasts swayed as she rocked back and forth on her left foot, which Krung called "the pivot foot"--her strenuously maintained point of balance.

  Mrs. Machado must have seen Jack's partial reflection in the glass door of the grandfather clock--a half-naked man, her height or a little taller, sneaking up on her from behind. Jack was still two or three steps upstairs from the front hall when she saw him, which is why Mrs. Machado misjudged his height. (And maybe it was just like her ex-husband to take off most of his clothes before he attacked her.) The sharp squeak of her pivot foot froze Jack on the stairs. Her high-groin kick would have made Mr. Bangkok proud--notwithstanding Krung's purist disapproval of such kicks. Because Jack was standing on the stairs, Mrs. Machado's aim was a little lower than he expected; her full-contact kick caught him in the balls. "Ha!" she cried.

  Jack crumpled like a pair of boxer shorts with no one inside them. He lay curled in a fetal position in the front hall. His testicles, which he imagined were suddenly the size of grapefruits, felt as if they had risen to the back of his throat. "Oh! Oh! Oh!" Mrs. Machado was crying, still hopping on one foot.

  Jack wanted to die, or at least throw up, but neither option for relief was forthcoming. "I am coming queeckly to the rescue with ice, lots of ice!" Mrs. Machado was calling from the kitchen.

  She then helped him to his feet and half carried him up the stairs; a plastic bag full of ice cubes dangled from her mouth. "Jack, Jack--my poor dahleen Jack!" Mrs. Machado managed to say through her clenched teeth.

  She spread a bath towel on his bed and made him take off his boxers. Having shown the little guy to Emma and her friends, Jack was more anxious about the ice than he was embarrassed. However, Mrs. Machado seemed agitated by how small his penis was. Maybe she'd had daughters. (Or if she'd had sons, perhaps it was long ago when they'd been little boys; maybe Mrs. Machado had forgotten the ridiculous size of their balls and penises.) "Ees eet smaller?" she asked in alarm.

  "Smaller than what?"

  "Smaller than eet was before I keecked you!"

  Jack quickly took a look himself, but everything appeared to be the same. His balls ached, his penis throbbed, and the little guy might have been shrinking at the thought of the ice, which Mrs. Machado packed around Jack's balls and penis as he lay on his back on the towel. "It's cold. It hurts more," he told her.

  "Eet will hurt more for just a few meenutes, Jack."

  "Oh. How long do you ice it?"

  "Feefteen meenutes."

  That seemed long enough to freeze a penis, Jack was thinking. "Have you ever iced a penis before?" he asked Mrs. Machado.

  "Not thees way," she answered.

  His penis was so cold that Jack started to cry. Mrs. Machado lay down beside him and rocked him in her arms. She sang a Portuguese song. In ten minutes, Jack was still shivering, but his teeth had stopped chattering. To make the boy warmer, Mrs. Machado stretched out on top of him; her breasts felt like a sofa cushion wedged between them. "I can feel the ice, too, you know," Mrs. Machado told him, after a minute or two. "Eet's not so bad." The pain had subsided; his balls were numb and he couldn't feel his penis at all.

  After fifteen minutes, Mrs. Machado removed the bag of ice. Jack was afraid to look at himself in case he had disappeared. He listened to Mrs. Machado pouring the ice water and the remaining cubes into the bathroom sink. She came back to the bed and sat beside him. "Eet's very red," she observed.

  "I have no feeling. I think it died," Jack told her.

  She gently patted the little guy with the towel. "I theenk eet will come back to life," Mrs. Machado said, holding the towel against his penis. Jack could feel the heat of her hand through the towel. She sat in profile to him. Her coarse, glossy black hair was pulled back from her face in an unruly ponytail--her "fighting hairdo," Mrs. Machado called it. Jack could see that the skin under her chin and on her throat was loose and sagging, and her breasts drooped to her thick waist. She had never been pretty. But when you're ten years old and a woman is holding your penis, nothing else matters.

  "Ha!" Mrs. Machado said, removing the towel. "Meester Penis has come back to life with beeg plans!" The little guy was unused to being treated with such respect. (Mister Penis was more familiar with expressions of disappointment--even disparagement and reproach.) Clearly flattered by Mrs. Machado's attention, the little guy had more than recovered from the high-groin kick; Jack's penis rose to the occasion with the stiffening determination of a war hero. "My goodness, Meester Penis!" Mrs. Machado exclaimed. "Are you just showing off, or ees there something you want?"

  Of course there is always something penises want--not that Jack, at age ten, could articulate exactly what his penis wanted. But Mrs. Machado must have been a mind reader. "What ees Meester Penis theenking?" she asked the little guy.

  "I don't know, Mrs. Machado," Jack answered truthfully.

  When the back of his hand brushed her hip, the contact was incidental--but it was no accident that Mrs. Machado pressed her hip against him, pinning Jack's hand to his side. She reached behind her head and undid her ponytail in one quick motion, her hair hiding her face as she leaned over his penis. The little guy could feel her breath. "I theenk I know what Meester Penis wants," Mrs. Machado said.

  Jack felt the weight of her breasts on his stomach as she slid his penis into her mouth. Looking back, Jack would concede that Mister Penis had been a bit reckless ever since. The corresponding movement of Jack's hips was involuntary, but his excitement wasn't entirely pleasurable. (The boy was afraid that Mrs. Machado might swallow him!) "What's happening?" he asked her.

  Perhaps Chenko had been wrong to assume that Mrs. Machado wasn't very agile, because she shifted her weight and changed her position so suddenly that Jack was unable to respond with any movement of his own. Surely Mrs. Machado was not a magician, but Jack didn't see her take off her tank top or her bra--and how she managed to remove her powder-blue gym shorts and her panties would remain a mystery to him. He got only a glimpse of the huge hairy place between her legs--that is, huge in comparison to his earlier sightings of Mrs. Oastler's and Emma's places of business. And if his mother's tattoo of a Rose of Jericho was artistically consistent--that is, the flower within the rose was always the same--Jack realized (at the moment Mrs. Machado mounted him) how the real thing was remarkably different in each case. On the irrefutable evidence of these formative examples, it would be Jack Burns's unfortunate fate to believe that every vagina was unique.

  When Mrs. Machado straddled him, holding his hips between her thighs, he asked again but more urgently: "What's happening?" Jack
would have been more frightened (when she guided the little guy inside her) had he not been so familiar with those intricate folds of the flower hidden in a Rose of Jericho. At least he knew where he was going. The boy's remaining fear was that all of him would somehow slip inside Mrs. Machado--he felt that small.

  His hips still suffered the involuntary urge to move, but he couldn't move with Mrs. Machado's weight on him. A rivulet of sweat ran between her breasts, which surrounded his face. "What ees happening, my dahleen Jack, ees that Meester Penis ees going to cry."

  "Cry how?" he managed to ask, although his voice was muffled between her breasts.

  "Tears of joy, leetle one," Mrs. Machado said.

  Jack was familiar with the expression, but its application to his penis was alarming. "I don't want Mister Penis to cry," he said.

  "Eet ees happening any meenute, dahleen. Don't be afraid--eet won't hurt."

  But Jack was afraid. (Hadn't Chenko warned him about ending up underneath her?) "I'm scared, Mrs. Machado!" he cried.

  "Eet's almost feeneeshed, Jack."

  He felt something leave him. If he had tried to describe the feeling to The Gray Ghost, she would have told him that he'd lost his soul. Something momentous had departed, but its departure went almost unnoticed--like childhood. Jack would imagine, for years, that this was the moment he turned his back on God--without meaning to. Maybe God had slipped away when Jack wasn't looking.

  "What was that?" he asked Mrs. Machado, who had stopped grinding against him.

  "Tears of joy. Eet's your first time, I theenk."

  Not his first time, in fact. (The first time, Jack's tears of joy had hit Penny Hamilton in the forehead.) "It's my second time," the boy told Mrs. Machado. "But the first time I forgot to breathe. This time was better."