Girl in the Arena

by Lise Haines

  Replays of the American Title match are on all the giant screens as I move down the street. One bar called Steamers projects the fight onto a thick wall of mist. Steam jets embedded in the sidewalk shoot straight up into the air, another series of jets come off copper piping above. The replay action appears to be taking place on the sidewalk—a regular Disneyland effect. And then I’m walking right through their weapons, through Uber’s legs and Tommy’s chest and life being one second and death being the next. And when I’m on the other side, and I look back down the sidewalk, it’s just so much steam and colored lights, and I feel hollow as a tree that’s been gutted by lightning.

  And suddenly I want someone to come up to me and say, I loved your father. Tommy was the man.

  Because then I could say, He should have won. Or, His fans meant everything to him. But when I play these conversations all the way out, they’re full of self-pity and I really have to get off the street and take care of my head.

  Even if I could look away from the pictures of him fighting in every bar—in slo-mo, in flashplay, psychedelic patterns and Warhol color grids—the audio is cranked so loud I hear every last sound that comes out of his chest as if my head is leaning against it. I hear his effort to turn things around and win, at least to stay alive—I know he wanted that.

  Then the way the crowd calls, —UBER, UBER!

  And just before I duck into the subway, I see that Visigoth reach down and pick up my bracelet again.

  CHAPTER 9

  Mark’s family lives less than a block from the subway, on a high first floor, directly across from a lighting shop that’s always ablaze. His family saves a lot on electricity. They have no shades or curtains on their windows. It’s just light pouring in at all hours, the feeling of wattage—and I’ve never been happier to be anywhere.

  I let myself in with the key above the door frame and go past his parents’ bedroom. Lloyd, his father, or maybe his mother, Julie, snores within. Julie’s a total Glad wife and the best stitcher in the city—a veritable surgeon. She met Allison when they were both freshly widowed from their first husbands and Mark and I were toddlers. Mark doesn’t remember his first father, but his second father, Lloyd, is one of those Glads who managed to run his contract out. He got through a whole year of competition with only a small dent in his forehead. Then Julie had a dream one night that he would lose his nose and both his ears if he signed up for a second year. Since Lloyd refused to wear a helmet with face gear, like Tommy, she found herself investigating face grafting online. Pretty soon she couldn’t sleep at night, thinking about loving one man with another man’s face. And the day she woke up from a dream about Lloyd having some dead man’s face, she convinced him to become a trainer.

  Sometimes she teases him that he’s too quiet to be a good trainer, and that he really should be more upbeat. But that’s Lloyd. He’s Head of Instruction at the Boston Ludus Magnus Americus and he’ll see a pension one day and maybe keep more than a few guys from losing their extremities, because he really cares about his boys.

  Mark opens the door before I knock, like he knows I’m there. We do that kind of thing. The second I see him I lay my head against his chest, my face pressed into his pajama buttons. Mark is a good six inches taller than I am and he has large, nicked-up hands and smells of cigarette smoke and gel pens. When he runs a hand down the back of my head I flinch. He turns me around the way his mother does if she’s looking for a confession about something. He’s the kind of guy who will confess to almost anything if it makes her happy. Of course, we’re all like that with Julie.

  Mark makes me sit on his unmade bed now with its stale sheets, and he disappears into the hallway. A minute later he’s back with Julie. She’s wearing her monkey slippers and robe. On another occasion I might crack a primate joke, but I really have to lie down.

  —Tell me what hurts, Julie says.

  —My heart?

  I can feel my chin quiver. She holds it for a moment, kisses my cheek, and says, —I know. All of us love… we all loved Tommy.

  Then she starts in, asking me to follow her pen, shining a flashlight in my eyes, asking me to squeeze her fingers. She tells Mark to boil some water. While I lie down she quickly braids her hair so it will be out of the way. In Mark’s bathroom she scrubs up to her elbows, keeping an eye on me in the medicine cabinet mirror. Then Julie dries her hands and examines the back of my head, shifting the clumps of matted hair about as gently as she can though each movement makes it throb more.

  When I loosen the blanket and let it fall to the bed, she stops and studies the pattern of blood on my T-shirt and gives me this look. A lot of women caged Lloyd when he was active Glad.

  —I was trying to get the bracelet back, I say.

  —I knew it was yours, she says.

  I had forgotten about their new wall-mounted television—the kind with overkill magnification, 3-D icemaker, foot massager… I’ll stop.

  Mark returns with a clean set of sheets and bandages, and his mother’s medical bag. We can hear the sound of the TV at the other end of the apartment.

  —Dad’s up, Mark says.

  —Now, let me understand this, Julie says. —You shrouded Uber to get your bracelet back?

  —I was trying to distract him.

  —You shrouded Uber? Mark asks.

  He makes a low whistle and gets out his phone. He starts to scroll down the screen. When Julie gives him a look, he goes off to retrieve the boiling water.

  —I told Uber the bracelet was the family’s.

  —Ah, Julie says, setting out her syringes, her slim little saw, and plenty of clamps.

  I explain the new rule and why I can’t get it back yet.

  —He actually tried to tell me how much he loved Tommy, I say.

  —That’s despicable, Julie says.

  Mark brings the pot of water and sets it on a hot plate on the floor beside the bed. Returning to his phone, he says, —Are you shitting me?

  He pushes the image in front of my face. On the New York Times web page there’s a photo of Uber in the arena. His arms upraised, his skin oiled, helmet off, hair in place, sunset cresting the stadium. The bloody red light, some call it. In a side-by-side photo, I’m seen entering the stadium last year, my head down like I’m being dragged off to jail.

  The caption reads:

  14 minutes ago.

  WHEN MUST A DAUGHTER MARRY HER FATHER’S MURDERER?

  —Allison’s going to drop dead, I say.

  I am. I’m going to drop dead right here, right now.

  When Mark’s fingers fly to the next screen of the article, there’s a picture of Allison and me when I was five or six. I’m wearing a flared skirt, waist-high jacket, and hard black shoes with buckles. Allison’s in a slender teal dress nicely belted, her hair swept up in back. We’re standing in front of the GSA amphitheater in Chicago and she’s holding my hand. I don’t even remember this picture. Not that I’m suspicious of its authenticity. There were just so many pictures taken every time we went to a stadium.

  Mark reads aloud. The story spells out the Glad law that has me strung up—the solid fact that in Glad culture, I’m required to marry Uber because he looted my dowry bracelet.

  I take the phone and skim over the journalist’s historical references to brainwashing. They always think Glads are brainwashed. There’s some analogy about the heiress named Patricia Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army. And there’s the business of how a group or sect can impair their children. The Mormons—they always parade the Mormons out—the Christian Scientists, the rabid polygamists. At least there’s some discussion about the film Sofia Coppola’s making on Glad girls in New York City. They say it’s beautiful, but maybe too beautiful. Sounds like envy to me. But now my head pounds so badly I have to stop reading and hand the phone back to Mark.

  —It says the reporter went through a thousand photos of bracelets until he matched it with the one on your wrist. I’d say the guy’s a little slow, Mark says.

  �
�We’d better call Allison, Julie says.

  I look at Mark, his large sad face. There’s something about the way his jaw is formed or the way his goatee is trimmed around it, the quiet eyes, the stain of blue gel pen on his lower lip. Sometimes he makes me think of a buffalo or a bearded centaur, a quick Picasso sketch. And sometimes I know he has more than a brotherly affection for me, but we prefer to ride on the rim and avoid conversations on this topic.

  —Allison might be asleep, I say.

  Just then Lloyd sticks his head in the door, his hair pushing up every which way with that sleep-bent expression. When he sees Julie cleaning my wound, he exchanges looks with her.

  —She’s on every major news program, Lloyd says, nodding in my direction.

  —We know, Lloyd. Be a dear and get the chloroform off the top shelf in the pantry, Julie says. —Then call Allison and let her know Lynie is in safe hands.

  Julie begins to make a tear in the bottom hem of my T-shirt so I won’t have to pull it over my head, telling Mark and Lloyd to turn the other way.

  —But… but you can sell that! Mark gasps, meaning the T-shirt. —All right, I’ll shut up, he says.

  He turns around as Julie rips it up to my neck and snips the collar and sleeves. It feels like every last thing I have is being cut away from me.

  —We’re going for total bravery tonight, Lynie girl. After I get you washed up, I’m afraid I have to shave part of your head.

  —Just shave it all, I say.

  —They come not single spies, Mark says.

  —Get your father’s electric razor, Shakespeare. And hurry, love.

  CHAPTER 10

  I feel as if I’ve slept a thousand years since I heard the low hum of Lloyd’s electric shaver against my skull. My head feels breezy, exposed. Mark brings a glass of water up to my chin, angles the straw into my mouth, and tells me, —You missed some stuff.

  —My hair?

  —She did a really clean job. And this you’ll like. The stitches form the letter T. She said when the hair grows back, you’ll still be able to feel the place where the knots were. An homage—to Tommy.

  I try not to tear up.

  —I listened in when she was on the phone with your mom last night. Allison and Thad are staying put for now. The press are ten deep around your house.

  —She probably likes that.

  —Actually, she sounded pretty unhinged.

  —I better get home.

  Then Julie swoops in to check on me while I’m brushing my teeth with the new brush she unwrapped for me. She and I are close enough in size. Through the foamy toothpaste, I ask to borrow a T-shirt and jeans—she’s thrown mine in the wash and they’re still soaked, she tells me.

  —Dress for the cameras today, dear.

  —I’m not entirely Allison’s daughter.

  —People will be watching, and whether you like it or not, you represent Tommy today. That’s what will be foremost in their minds.

  I would argue the point, but I know it’s useless with Julie. And the only thing she’ll loan me is this blue silk dress with a bodice and a skirt so long it trains. To make it worse, she fishes around until she finds the nearly sapphire necklace she wore when she married Lloyd, and fastens this around my neck. I look like a dark blue bride. I get some makeup on my face, which is kind of weird because once your hair is gone, where does your face begin or end?

  When she pads down the hall to make breakfast, Mark asks if he can draw a skull and crossbones on my head. This has something to do with the new semi-erasable tattoo kit he’s purchased.

  —I don’t think so.

  —I could do a sword and shield above your brow.

  —Maybe later?

  —The Colosseum?

  —You’re insane, I say.

  He’s sweet to try and make me laugh. He settles for putting his arms around me. His beard tickles my head and his T-shirt smells of burgers. I slip out of his arms and go over and look behind his closet door at the full-length mirror.

  —You’re as beautiful as Portman in V for Vendetta, he says. I know better.

  —Allison and Julie don’t really want me to marry Uber, do they?

  —They think you should consider it… under the circumstances. And I think you should run away with me to Saskatchewan.

  —I don’t think the Canadians are wild about Glads.

  —We could bring our ultralite lances to impress them. Mexico? I don’t care. The happiest place on Earth? There has to be one small hiding place the infrared cameras can’t penetrate.

  —I have to see how Thad’s holding up.

  —Bahrain? New Orleans? I don’t want you to marry this jerk!

  *

  Lloyd drives me home in his mercenary van. Mark volunteers to sit in the seatless back, rolling around with the loose nunchucks and brass knuckles. I sit shotgun. I’d feel better if we had a gray New England sky, but the day is so much sunlight and full-blown trees and rasping insects and heat. I fish a pair of sunglasses out of the glove compartment that sort of fit if I push them up and tilt them to one side. The lenses are pretty scratched.

  —Check this out, Mark says. He gets up and lunges forward, so I’m just able to grab his phone before he pitches into the back again.

  —What am I looking at?

  —The List.

  So I pull that little window up and stretch it and squeeze it and scroll forward and back, looking at The List, his new Web site. It begins with: The Last 24 Hours, today’s date near the top. He has a tally going of ruthless events: bombs—car, suicide, and pipe; triggered land mines; people who starved or went hungry because a dictator or junta wouldn’t let humanitarian aid into their country or because the stateside lunch programs were cut; those who succumbed to AIDS; wars, insurgencies, takeovers, and crackdowns; rapes, incest; road rage incidents; collisions; the number of elderly beaten for their social security checks—they even went after a 101-year-old woman for thirty-three dollars.

  And pretty soon I find my thoughts are adding to the types and methods of violence and cruelty. He hasn’t covered half the TV shows, the stabbings over in England, and you know, we’re all just savages. But I have to shake this mood off.

  I hand the phone back to him.

  —You have a sick mind, I say.

  Lloyd gives me a sideways glance and nods in agreement.

  Our house, the house we’re about to lose, if you put your faith in Caesar’s and my oracular brother, looks like a crime scene. The media are thickly settled over the lawn and deep into the flower beds that Allison spent three years bringing to full zeal. Some of the reporters stand about with coffees or microphones held like limp appendages. Many are on their haunches or spread out picnic style. There are TV vans and camera people in droves. As Lloyd pulls close to the house, the swell reminds me of an inflatable toy suddenly getting air pressure.

  —Drive around the block, Dad! Mark insists.

  But it’s too late, the van is swarmed. And though Lloyd is a fierce driver and could probably run a large crowd over with ease, he’s not really like that and we’re solidly wedged in. The press shouts my name while Mark pushes in between our bucket seats. Reaching over, he cracks my window.

  —Let her get out of the van!

  Lloyd slides around me now and gives my door a solid shove. Then he pushes his way into the throng. He’s wearing one of his shrunken T-shirts that conveys his work on both his major and minor muscle groups. Everyone pulls back just enough and Lloyd opens the door for me. I step out, my glasses sloping off my face, and I catch my foot on the hem of my dress. Camera lights blind me as I straighten out the material. I lean over and whisper in Mark’s ear, —I just want to stroke out.

  I’ve never understood why anyone wants to be famous.

  Mark gives me this look that tells me that at least one other person on the planet Earth gets what’s going on. Voices fly at me again and Lloyd puts a hand up and says, —One at a time. One at a time.

  —Do you plan to honor the Gladiato
r Sport Bylaws and marry Uber? a short leathery reporter asks.

  Every bit of GSA information I’ve ever read or considered, loved or hated, pools in the bottom of my skull like spent motor oil. As other questions fly my way, I’m trying to wrap my mind around this one idea: Do I plan to marry my father’s murderer? I cling to the image of Allison in one of her cocktail dresses and five-inch heels, talking to the media. She rarely gives anything away she’d rather not and she’s very good at weaving in the things she intends to convey. She is the embodiment of spin, though she’d hate to hear me say this.

  —I’ve just lost my father, I say, feeling the words travel out of my mouth in that same slow register at which everything around me continues to move. —I plan to see how my mother and brother are doing, and then take things from there.

  I stare off at the living room windows. I wonder if Allison is peeking through the curtains or watching me on TV, or attempting to do both at once.

  —Will it be your mother’s decision? Will you marry Uber if your mother agrees to the marriage?

  —Allison has always encouraged me to make my own decisions.

  —Did you shave your head in protest—are you hoping to get out of this wedding to Uber? a reporter in a boxy jumpsuit asks.

  —I took a blow to the back of my head and received…

  I have a quick whispered consultation with Mark.

  —Twenty-two stitches, I say.

  —Why have you hired bodyguards? another photographer asks, nodding to Mark and Lloyd.

  Lloyd pushes his way toward the mic. —We’re family friends and we’re only too happy to lend our support.

  —Lloyd, you’ve fought in the GSA, you’ve trained some of America’s finest. Has Lyn asked your advice about Uber?

  —I’m afraid I’m better at discussing swords and tridents.