by Pamela Ribon
Doesn’t she get it? If I get up, I’m going to hurt myself. If I stay still people can just keep leaping over my body until it’s time to stop doing this. I will spend the rest of my time here pretending to be an object in their reckless obstacle course. I would rather be a bump in the road than have to try to take another step.
“Get up, or get off the track and go home!”
Wait, go home? Like a quitter?
Trash can’t know what she’s just done, but she’s said the secret words. Go home. What I’ve been struggling with all this time. If I can’t make it, I have to go home. If I can’t figure it out, go home. If I don’t know what else to do, I might as well just go home. Go home and accept things the way they are, that nothing can change, that nothing is worth fighting for. If you can’t hang here, then go home.
I’m not a quitter. Especially not when things are hard.
So I get up.
I get up and skate.
• • •
After what feels like a million attempts, I’ve almost been able to go an entire lap around the track without falling. But I am exhausted. My lungs are aching, my throat hurts. My lower back is clenched to the point where I might just snap right in half. I am panting around this hunk of plastic jammed between my teeth, and all I can think is Oh, God, when are we going to stop skating? How long can this last?
Trash’s voice booms over the loudspeakers. “For the next sixty seconds, I want you to skate as fast as you can and see how many skaters you can pass. Go on my whistle. Get ready.”
The whistle blows. It sounds like a thunderstorm is chasing me. For the next sixty seconds, I only have one goal: try not to get killed.
“Inside!”
“Outside!”
“Inside, baby girl!”
Aren’t these supposed to be the new girls? These are the rookies in training? They are whizzing past me. I must look like a windup toy worn down, the slowest girl on the track. I am a spinning top, wobbly like a dreidel at the end of its rotation.
I can’t focus on anything other than the pain. The muscles in my legs are yelling at me, calling me names. My stomach muscles are somehow all that’s keeping me from doing a face plant. My feet have gone numb.
A whistle blows. Trash screams for us to come down off the track. I’ve never been so happy to be yelled at in all my life. I thank the stars above that it’s over. I made it. I did it. I am a warrior. A weary, weak, pathetic warrior.
I stumble to the infield in search of my water bottle, which I find and then suck like a hungry baby. As I look around I notice I’m possibly the only girl here who doesn’t have a tattoo. The other women are fantastically multicolored, with dragons and symbols wrapped around their strong biceps, stars blazoned across the backs of their necks. I can see hints of tattoos peeking from underneath their fishnet stockings, streaks of color along their backs, their ankles, each girl marked uniquely but boldly. Where they don’t have tattoos, they have piercings. Hoops and pins adorn their noses and eyebrows, chins and necks. They’ve had needles jammed into all kinds of body parts. I look down at my pasty body and think I might not be as equipped as these other girls to deal with this level of pain.
The girl next to me is on her knees, stretching out her lower back. Her shirt has ridden up to expose a tattoo of the handle of a gun, as if her butt is the holster. Watching her stretch makes my body ache, because I recognize her pain in my own pain, the feeling that I’ve destroyed all of the muscles that attach my ass to my body.
“How long was that?” I ask, noticing there aren’t any clocks in the warehouse. “What, like an hour or something?”
She rolls her face toward me, sweat pouring down her cheeks. She laughs. “Dude, that was the ten-minute warm-up.”
“What?”
“Hey, you’ve only got an hour and fifty minutes to go!”
“Are you serious?”
She eases herself to her knees, her hands on either side of her butt gun. “I am,” she says. “Don’t worry; it’s not all on skates. Half an hour of it will be squats and crunches. Then some drills. And then, if you’re lucky, maybe we will play some roller derby.”
I groan, rolling forward to stretch out my back. It’s awkward sitting in all this gear. I feel like the Michelin Man.
She stands up and raises her arms over her head, stretching her sides. I see streaks of pink hair curling down from the edges of her powder blue helmet. She’s like an anime character, all taut muscle and neon coloring. “Good job getting up,” she says. “My first month here, I was a total Bambi.”
I shake my head, confused.
“Bambi. Like this.” She breaks into a jittery scramble, hands flailing, eyes wide. “A baby deer on wheels.”
I drop my head to my knees. For a moment I’ve forgotten about the gear, so I end up slamming my forehead into the hard plastic of my knee pads.
“Ow.”
“Stick with it. You’ll be surprised how fast you pick up everything.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m serious. What’s your name?”
I don’t know if I’m supposed to give my real name, but I don’t have any other one. I’m not going to have these people call me “Char,” and the only other nickname I’ve ever had is when my dad calls me “Bunny.” So I tell her my real name.
“I’m Bruisey-Q,” she says, patting my helmet. “Welcome to the Wheelhouse.”
I spot Francesca on the other side of the track, laughing and joking with some of the other skaters. Her face is flushed, and her bangs are plastered across her forehead, heavy with sweat. She looks destroyed, but she also looks happier than I’ve ever seen her.
19.
The next morning I wake up in agony. Every muscle I have feels swollen inside my skin. It’s like I could grab my hamstrings and rip them from my femurs.
I hurt everywhere.
Today’s plan: find the strength to kill Francesca.
I gramma-walk over to my cell phone and punch up her number.
“Morning, Charlie,” she says, all sunshine and rainbows.
“You fucking bitch.”
“Aspirin,” she laughs. “And take a bath.”
My wrist is purple, and there’s a bruise streaking across my right thigh like I escaped a monster in my sleep. There’s a blister on the inside of my left foot, right at the bunion. It’s not just swollen—it’s filled with blood. My shoulders ache, and there’s a scrape across the inside of my right elbow.
“I’m so broken,” I say. “Someone ripped out my arms and then shoved them back in again, but they didn’t do it right.”
“I’m really proud of you for hanging in there last night.”
“I was too scared to go home. Those tough girls would have found me and beaten me up in the parking lot.”
“That’s not why you stayed. I think you might have loved it.”
I try to flop back onto my bed, but my stomach muscles are so wrecked I actually see stars for a second. I ease myself back down instead. “What are you doing today?” I ask her. “Because I think we should immediately go to the spa, get massages, and sit in a Jacuzzi for about six hours.”
“Can’t,” she says. “Jacob’s flight gets here in an hour and I plan on spending the entire weekend in bed with him. Besides, don’t you have to go buy your mom a birthday present?”
I have given up wondering how it is that Francesca can stay on top of so many people’s schedules at once. It’s one thing to know exactly where her boyfriend is at any point, but she often remembers not only what I’m supposed to do over a weekend, but exactly what I was doing this time a week ago. This is Francesca’s weird superpower. She says she’s been this way her whole life. When she thinks of people, a mental calendar appears around them, like they are surrounded by their own day planners. When I first marveled at how much this must come in handy, she told me it was more like an annoyance. Friends of hers over the years have accused her of being a creepy stalker, when in fact she can’t help that she remembers h
ow the last time you were at a sushi restaurant with her you ordered a rainbow roll, two spicy tuna hand rolls, and shishito peppers extra spicy.
“I would love to have that part of my brain used for something important,” she once told me. “Or at the very least for my own personal memory storage, but I don’t have a say in it. Do you want to know what my best friend in third grade was wearing the first day of school? A green jumper with big yellow buttons and two white bunnies embroidered on the front with a carrot between them. Why will I remember this forever? I don’t know. But I will.”
She might be tortured by her semiphotographic memory, but right now I’m thankful for it. Otherwise I probably would have wallowed in my pain all day until I gave in to a bottle of wine sometime around three, completely forgetting my mother’s birthday. I’m aware that this makes me an even worse daughter than I’ve already admitted to being, but then again it’s not every morning I wake up with my body completely stiffened with pain and regret.
“See, I still think your stalker memory is helpful,” I tell her now.
“As long as someone thinks so. I’ll see you at practice on Sunday?”
“No.”
“Yes, I will! My stalker brain can already see you there.”
“Well, then my blood type is B-negative. I feel like you should know that before I go there again. Seems like it’s going to be important.”
“Bye, Charlie.”
I take a deep breath before gingerly going about getting out of my apartment to find my mother a card that reads, HAPPY BIRTHDAY. PLEASE DON’T ASK WHERE MY HUSBAND IS TONIGHT.
20.
Charlotte Goodman is at her mother’s fifty-fourth birthday dinner party with her best friend, Andy, who’s filling in in the role of significant other for the evening. Charlotte’s mother, who is well into her second vodka martini, has found Charlotte’s choice of dinner companion to be, in fact, significant.
“I just don’t like how you’re making all these excuses for him,” Elaine Goodman says, hands waving in the air like a dealer finishing out her shift at the blackjack table. “Your husband should want to be a part of your family.” At this point she pauses in her lecture to swallow something that’s suddenly demanding attention at the back of her throat. When she’s sure that’s been handled, she continues. “I don’t know what you’re doing that makes him want to stay away, but I hope you figure it out soon. I would hate for you to find out it was something easily fixable.”
Charlotte Goodman doesn’t think she looks like either of her parents, even though everybody comments that she has her father’s dark, worried eyes and her mother’s soft, too-small chin. She’s always admired her mother’s mouth, how she looks perfect in any shade of lipstick. Elaine Goodman has the ability to appear frail and powerful at the same time, like a French movie star. People always want to help her, to see gratitude in her round, glassy eyes, but they are afraid to do anything she hasn’t expressly requested, for Elaine’s death glare can stop a person cold.
Abe Goodman has more of a welcoming, friendly face. He looks like he’s supposed to be giving directions, either in an emergency or on a forest trail. In fact, strangers often turn to him in amusement parks or malls, grabbing him by the crook of the elbow, saying, “Excuse me, but could you help me?” This is how he met his wife.
She was looking for her Biology 310 class, and he was lucky enough to have just stepped outside the science building when she actually needed someone. Since that moment, Abe has had his hands full helping his wife and therefore doesn’t have time for all the lost strangers. He tends to keep his head down to avoid eye contact, for he cannot help how approachable he seems. Even in sunglasses, he looks like someone who knows how to locate an exit or turn you back onto the right path.
Charlotte wishes she could find an exit to this conversation, in which her mother is relentlessly tearing apart Matthew. Elaine has no idea how much her daughter would love to join in, but Charlotte knows if she says even one word, she will say the rest of them, and this dinner will turn into The Discussion.
This is still not the time to face the truth. Charlotte knows her parents will be disappointed in her, and she knows she isn’t strong enough to hear what those words will be. If there has to be any kind of conversation about Matthew, at least right now it’s about what’s wrong with him.
“I mean, shouldn’t a husband want to be with his wife?” Elaine Goodman asks, round dark eyes wide with disbelief. Her eyeliner has smudged a bit in the outer corner of her right eye. Charlotte is jealous of her mother’s ability to look more beautiful the more damaged she seems. “Tell that Matthew his job can’t be more important than his wife. Have you told him that? Have you let him know that you need to come first, before the job? How are you supposed to make grandchildren for us if he’s always at work?”
Under the safety of the table, Andy’s hand finds Charlotte’s and squeezes it. His other hand finds his mouth to rub his chin. Charlotte recognizes this action instantly; it is what Andy does when he gets excited, when he’s about to mess with someone. Before Charlotte can stop him, he speaks.
“Elaine, I’ve been telling this one for months now that she should just divorce him,” he says, using an overdramatic, sarcastic Mister-Man voice, invoking the kind of character who would refer to her as “the little lady.”
Andy barks a fake chuckle, one that makes Charlotte’s father look down at his plate, grinning and nodding. Andy always was good at entertaining her parents, and was a welcome addition at their Thanksgiving dinners when Andy’s own fractured family stopped insisting on celebrating a holiday that ultimately created more drama and conflict for his relatives than they could handle.
“He has, actually,” Charlotte says, finding her voice. She grips Andy’s hand tight enough to make him wince. He kicks at her ankle and she kicks back.
“In fact,” Andy says, emboldened by Charlotte’s desire for him to stop with this half-kidding character, “I think a divorce is exactly what Matthew needs in order to be a better man to your daughter.”
“Bite your tongue,” Charlotte’s mother says. “We don’t talk about divorce in this house. Do we, Abe?” She reaches across the table to pat her husband’s arm, as if reminding her daughter what a spouse looks like when he’s doing his job.
“We aren’t home,” is all Abe says, but the look he gives his daughter from across the table jolts Charlotte to the base of her spine. It is the look that has seen through Charlotte her entire life; that knew when she was out with a boy when she said she was at the mall, the look that forced her to come clean on stealing money from her mother’s purse, to admit to throwing up a six-pack of Zima in the backyard behind the tulip mound on a Sunday morning. It’s possible Abe Goodman immediately saw through Andy’s jokes and knew the truth about his daughter, but also knew an Olive Garden was not the place to discuss such matters. For now, a look will suffice. A look that makes Charlotte feel about five years old.
Andy must sense that something has transpired between father and daughter, because he finally changes the subject. “Elaine, what are you and those crazy women reading in your book club this month? Remember last time you said you all got together, drank wine, and tried to read the Bible, and I told you that’s Drunk Church, not Book Club?”
“I stopped going,” Elaine says. “People weren’t taking it seriously enough. And I still think it’s a good idea to read the Bible, even if you aren’t religious.”
“Amen,” Andy says, reaching for a breadstick.
“there he is!”
Charlotte watches as a man engulfs her mother’s head and shoulders from behind, leaning down into her hug. She cannot believe what she’s seeing in front of her. Inverted and embraced in her mother’s arms is Matthew Price.
Charlotte’s husband is here.
From beside her, Charlotte hears Andy’s quiet, rather irritated, “Hunh.”
“Sorry I’m so late,” Matthew says, disentangling himself from his mother-in-law’s grip and easin
g himself into a chair that has been quickly placed between Charlotte’s parents.
It has been more than a month since Charlotte has sat in the same room as her estranged husband, and she finds herself now having to remember that this is what he actually looks like. She recognizes his green eyes, his scars and moles, the way his hands stay moving, always moving. She recognizes the slope of his wide shoulders, the small patch of dark hair under the curve of his left jaw that he always misses with his razor. She knows that haircut, and if she could put her face to his scalp and inhale right now, she would know him molecularly, she could recognize him purely by the reaction in her own body. This is the man she fell in love with, whom she swore to spend her life with; this is the man she calls her husband.
This is also a man she does not recognize, who has a Facebook page and is too busy to return a text. This is a man who has been avoiding her, who walked out on her, who gets confused when she says she’s lonely in his arms. This face has been absent from her reality but has remained the dominant figure in her mind. This man she tells herself might not be the one for her, who might be on the way out of her life forever, this person who has hurt her deeply and shattered her ability to even make it through a day without having to plan it out mentally before she gets up in the morning—this man has done what he always does, what he might continue to do, for as long as Charlotte wants it.
At the very last moment, when she is releasing her last fingertip grip of hope, this is when Matthew rushes in. He saves the day. He comes home. He shows up. He plays the hero. And indeed, right now, at her mother’s birthday dinner, he has done it again. Despite the humble backdrop of the Olive Garden, despite what might be considered the rather tame audience of her parents and closest friend, despite the fact that he is too late for dinner and isn’t going to even consider picking up the check as both an apology and a gift and is checking his cell phone even now, sending off a quick text as he listens to Elaine fill him in on the past few months of her life—despite all of this, the simple act of showing up works on Charlotte. It always does. Her faith gets somewhat restored, enough to regain a firmer grip on hope, and her head rushes with images of possible happy endings. This could be the start of where everything gets better. Her happy ending only needs to find its beginning.
