by Lise Haines
—Lyn, how did you get injured?
This from a tall male reporter with chopped blond hair.
—People were cheering wildly for Tommy at the stadium, I say. —I think a bottle flew out of someone’s hands in the excitement.
—Do you think it’s possible that someone aimed it at your head intentionally?
I look up at the house again. Thad is pacing back and forth in front of his bedroom window now. He waves. I wave back. He motions frantically for me to come into the house.
—Glad fans everywhere have shown enormous respect for my family and thought Tommy G. fought heroically. Their loyalty is helping my family through this loss. It is, however, a rough sport. People do get killed. Though I should add that Caesar’s Inc. works very hard to ensure maximum safety to those who attend the competitions.
Mark whispers in my ear, —You’re good.
—Have you met with Uber? another reporter asks.
—No. Not yet.
—So you plan to?
—There are no plans at this time, I say.
—Do you dream of becoming a Glad wife?
Up in the house, Thad pleads with me to come inside. Cameramen and photographers push their equipment as close as possible now, closer. The soggy summer air presses in. And I realize that I’m right there, at the end of a perfect media moment. All I have to do is come up with something that rings with warmth, something that conveys hope to a million girls about the life of the GSA wife. Then I’ll be out of here, released into our home, into Allison’s mind, my brother’s predictions. But there’s something about this particular question. I think of the number of times Allison has been asked about any plans to become a Glad wife again. And suddenly my mind is thrown into reverse and I just toss off an answer, the first thing that comes to mind.
—Sometimes I dream of becoming a gladiator.
Questions fly now, boy. Lloyd whips into action, his arm around my waist, and with Mark at my other side, they draw me toward the house. CAMERA LIGHTS SHINE through my eyeballs all the way to the back of my head, and I bet the T formed by the stitches lights up. Reporters push in tighter and Lloyd and Mark elbow toward the front door. I let the questions dissolve into the air like so much insect repellent.
When we finally get into the foyer with its buckets and buckets of condolence flowers, I look at Allison and try to get some air. I have seen her through the loss of six husbands (I’d include my biological father but I have no memories there) and both of her parents’ deaths, but I have never seen her look this bereft. She presses me to her bosom and kisses my cheek and asks me to turn around so she can see the stitches. She reminds me that hair grows back. She tells me she’s sorry.
Exchanging kisses with Lloyd and Mark, Allison invites them into the kitchen to eat the sandwiches mounded on silver platters, the casseroles and salads, all from the neighbors. The plasma screens are on in the living room so she can see three news stations at once. There’s no doubt that she knows what I’ve said to the press. But she won’t take this up with me, not yet, not in front of them.
CHAPTER 11
I enter Thad’s room slowly because sometimes he stands inches from the door, eager to catch your energy before you get in the room, and a couple of times he’s been bruised across the forehead or nose this way until we figured out his patterns. But this time he’s crowded under his train table, the Lionel system in full roar, tiny milk cans loading onto a platform, people trying to get to Pasadena or Toronto or someplace in a great hurry. The boy who typically likes a low gradient of noise finds something comforting in the train table and that particular thundering.
I know turning the train set off without warning will create a crash in his mind so I call out to the conductor. —Bridge out! I’m hitting the brakes!
I ease the power knob to off and the trains come to a rest. Maneuvering my dress, I get down on the floor and lie close to Thad, who remains coiled beneath the table waiting for the repair crew. I tell him not to worry if he sees some bandaging on the back of my head.
Then, because he insists, I show him, moving this way and that until he’s satisfied.
—Did someone crack your head open?
—Just enough to let some pressure out. I’m okay, really. Julie put a few stitches in the back. I’ll show you when I change the bandages later.
—Do you have a Freeway bar?
I try to always have a Freeway bar for Thad but all I have left is a Bullet. I fish this out of my bag and peel back the silver wrapper. The lines in his forehead relax as he sucks the candy like a giant thumb. Thad is big on anime so there are posters everywhere around his cowboy bed and over the turtle tank. Sometimes he’ll take one of the posters off the wall and spend hours tracing a big-eyed girl with pink flowers in her hair, fighting a demon.
—I’m sorry about all the people in the yard, I say. —They’ll get tired of being here eventually and go home.
—You better watch out for Allison’s bed, he cautions.
I wonder if Thad’s on the prediction track again.
—I fell from the clothes tower, he says.
—You okay?
—I’m the most famous person you’ll ever meet, he says.
I run my hand over his hair.
—I remember that. But did you hurt yourself?
—I want a bandage like yours.
—Then we can match, I say.
—I want that.
—Me too. I’ll find one in a little while. You know, Mom’s feeling a little nervous right now, so she’s probably trying on too many outfits and they just kind of pile up on the bed. She wants to look good for the media. If you climb on the clothes, she gets worried.
—Something’s wrong with Tommy, Thad says, as if he’s just remembered he turned a pot on to boil three hours ago.
—We’re all feeling sad because we lost Tommy in the arena last night. Do you remember seeing him fight?
—He needs a safe job.
—I know, I say, thinking I’ll wait for a better time to explain. He tends to fuzz out on the worst aspects of reality until he’s ready to grapple with them. I reach out and take his hand.
—Tommy’s going to miss us as much as we’ll miss him, I say.
—You love Tommy, Thad says.
—We all do.
—But you’re going to lose your head.
Thad is more than still now, looking circumspect.
—Ah. I see. Did you let Mom know this? I say, and touch my throat.
—I said Lynie’s going to lose her head.
—Okay. That’s okay. So look, I’m going downstairs to talk with Mom for a while. I think your favorite show’s on soon. Will you come down and watch it with me?
—You’re my favorite show, he says, looking at the rough wood of the train table, touching my name in blue marker there. Sometimes he likes to write my name on surfaces. I hug Thad lightly because I don’t want him arresting suddenly and bashing his head on the table.
—I love you, Thad.
—I love you, Lynie.
*
I’m headed to my room to change when Allison calls me to come downstairs for a minute. I stop and get a scarf out of her top dresser drawer and tie this around my neck, feeling the Marie Antoinette chill in the air. The thing is, Thad’s not always right about his predictions and even if it is true, it might not happen for another fifty or sixty years, and by then maybe I’ll be grateful to lose it.
Allison calls a second time from the library. We have, thanks to my first father, Frank, one the best collections of books on gladiators and ancient Rome in the United States. Some in English, some in Italian, French, and so forth. Many are illustrated. I spend a lot of time hauling volumes up to my room, poring over them, and as much as Allison hates it, taking them into the tub with me.
There’s a Living experience that Allison loves, based on an old television production of Jackie Kennedy’s tour of the White House. And when Allison invites Jackie into our home, so to speak, she c
omplains bitterly that the press has never done a program on our house, on our remarkable library.
—They could shoot it in a similar style to your tour, Allison likes to tell her. —I could wear my large sunglasses. I know our home isn’t as big as the White House, but it is impressive.
—You’d want to give them the history behind the collection, Jackie always says, turning her teacup so the lipstick print faces away from Allison. —How the first book was purchased, what it means to you personally, how each husband enlarged upon or codified the collection. Why don’t you visit us at Hyannisport this summer and we’ll discuss this at length?
In many ways, I think it has been Allison’s most simpatico Living experience—sitting with the president’s femme like that—because Jackie was frozen in a particular slice of time with Jack, and Allison could relate. Sometimes Allison mimics Jackie’s honey-on-melon voice. Coming home from school, I’ve walked in on her giving the tour to the walls. If Allison could be frozen in time, I don’t know which husband she would have about. I suspect Mouse. I imagine she still retained a hopefulness about things then.
Now I drop into an overstuffed library chair across from hers and she hands me one of the bottles of water with Tommy G.’s name printed on the label. It has an illustration of Tommy pouring water over his head, fresh from competition, streams of diluted blood finding his abdominal muscles—the deeply quenched look. We have about three thousand bottles in the basement up on shelves in case it floods.
we know not what we do.
—Mark and Lloyd left, she says, and runs her hands along the arms of her chair, up to the edge and back again.
—Thad told me he took a fall.
—Barely a scratch. But he was pretty startled. Have you had lunch? she asks.
She looks into her glass, clinks the ice cubes together.
—I’m fine.
—You’re always fine, but have you eaten? she asks.
—Yes.
Though now that I think about it, I guess I haven’t.
—Do you think Thad’s predictions are getting a little worse? I ask.
—It’s possible he needs his meds rebalanced.
—Maybe he needs to get off his meds.
God, she’s even dressed like Jackie today, in one of those straight, trim suits, belted at the waist, a smart little jacket. Black, of course, for mourning. She looks as weary as I am.
—Don’t start, she says.
—Okay, well… I wanted to tell you I’ve decided to get a full-time job. To help out, I say.
—I spoke with the president of Wives College again. Their doors are wide open and she’s assured me they could offer you a full scholarship. You and Uber could have a long, protracted engagement. That would give you time to think things through.
—I already know how to dress a wound. I know the bylaws, how to comport myself in public.
She unpins her pillbox hat and puts it down on the table next to her.
—How to comport yourself in public? Like making insane statements about wanting to be a gladiator?
—I got tongue-tied. Can we just let it go?
She rubs her fingers into her face as if the deep musculature is in pain.
—I meant to say wife, gladiator’s wife.
—No you didn’t, she says.
—How do you know what I meant to say? All I can think about right now is Tommy.
—I just do, and yes, that’s all any of us are thinking about.
—Okay, well, maybe if it’s a choice, I’d rather fight for something than have it carved out for me.
I ache when she picks up the hat and spears the stiff fabric with the pin. I know she’s at the outer limits of frayed, but she insists on talking.
—You make my entire life sound ridiculous, she says.
—You chose your life. And that’s a whole lot different than someone assigning a husband to you because of some obscene rule. And by the way, it was your husbands who taught me how to use a sword.
—What are you talking about?
—You don’t remember the plastic sword and shield Mouse gave me, with the vinyl belt and greaves? I was six, Allison.
—That doesn’t sound like Mouse.
—I don’t think my being a girl, or a gladiator’s daughter, even occurred to him. If he had played ice hockey, he would have slapped blades on my feet and pushed me onto a rink.
—He was just having a little fun with you. Mouse could be a great kidder, dear.
But my memory is vivid here. While we trained in the backyard Allison stood by the kitchen window, her hair thinning and dropping to the linoleum like needles off a Christmas tree. She did her best to go along with Mouse, however, to hold on to her second husband as long as she could. I explained that he padded my sword arm with a manicae, that he told me repeatedly that I was to stab, not slice, if I planned to take out my opponents’ organs, if I intended to win.
—He used to shout, Don’t decorate your opponent! ELIMINATE her!
—He got a little carried away sometimes, I know.
But at that age, with nothing more than the pole of the basketball hoop to strike, the sound clanging in my head, it didn’t feel like he was just getting carried away. Right now, all I can do is look at her.
—Now I remember. I gave that set away to one of the boys down the street after Mouse died. Funny, the things you forget. I know you were spending a lot of time in the library then.
It’s true that I became more content to study weapons than play with them, to learn about Caesars and slaves, the meaning of bread and circus, the Forum…
—And then Truman… I say, referencing her fourth husband.
—What on Earth did Truman do?
So I began to tell her that one day in fourth grade, I was pig piled in the girls’ locker room.
—You aren’t serious, she says.
—Um, that’s what they do to Glad girls.
—Then I must have gone in and talked to the principal, she says, looking nervous.
I explain that the girls were careful and hit my torso and upper thighs only. So you couldn’t tell there were bruises under my school clothes.
—God, who would do that to you?
—Monica and her friends.
—But Tommy got Monica’s parents a discount on season tickets to the amphitheater, what, three or four years running? I’m going to call them right now.
—This was in fourth grade.
She starts to rise and I motion for her to keep her seat.
—Truman took me over to the Ludus Magnus Americus and he had this woman train me so I could stand up for myself.
Allison tilts her head to one side and I look to see if her brains will spill out, because there doesn’t appear to be much holding them in place now.
—Go on.
—Truman gave me this safety-orange tunic, and a fiberglass shield about half my height. Then he matched me up with a wooden sword and shield from the equipment racks. There was a young trainer named Leona who worked there.
—You’re scaring me.
I didn’t say that Leona had a tattoo of Nero on one arm.
—Leona set up a dummy for me.
In its first incarnation, early in the sport, the Glad dummy was a scarecrow to the slaughter. Just a couple of crossed wooden poles held together by leather straps, a shirt, and sometimes a hat stuck on top, to indicate the approximate location of the head. Later it looked more like a seamstress’s form with chest armor and helmet. But I had the current generation, like a padded crash test model with all the gear. It had mechanical arms that flailed about to mimic some kind of crazed in-battle motion. Once Leona had set it up, she and Truman gave me a few basic instructions.
Then a bell sounded.
This particular dummy needed work. It sounded like a cat in heat each time it raised its left arm. And maybe eliminating this sound was on my mind more than anything when I went after it. And maybe, I mean it’s even possible, I saw myself doing battle with the
girls at school who had signed me up for this whole business. But mainly I wanted to try and do a quick, neat job and avoid embarrassing myself in front of the attendants who had all pretty much stopped their work to watch the gladiator’s daughter. Stab, don’t slice, and get out, I thought. I knew about joints, I knew about weak spots. I brought my sword down hard enough to knock the right arm out of its socket. I watched it fly a good fifteen feet as the crew cheered. I delivered a second blow and the left arm flew.
Leona slapped her six-pack abs, and told me to go for the gut—the one area that’s never protected. Then she reattached the dummy’s arms and repadded the chest. She turned the speed up a little, adjusting several controls. I wasn’t a pacifist then as I am now, and I meant that innocent dummy no harm, but when the bell rang again, I suddenly had the whole crazy life up on the register, all the things kids had said to me about being the daughter of savages. I don’t tell any of this to my mother, of course.
—The weird thing is, I turned out to be really good at it, I say.
—Good at fighting a dummy?
—Yes, I was.
With the short sword, I peeled back the dummy’s shield and went up under the ribs and into the heart, which popped out of its chest like a biscuit flying off a Teflon pan. The trainees who watched joked around, some gave me kudos. I felt a heat gather in my bones. A bead of sweat ran down the outside corner of one eye. Taking over, Truman said I should try the net and trident this time. Something Mouse hadn’t taught me, and I thought: Good, I’ll make a complete clown out of myself. Then Truman will be happy to head for the car, and we’ll be done.
But once I took a stance, I felt the weight of the chain in my hands, the balance of the trident. I whipped the net out, like snapping a dishtowel, and in one shot I detached the chest armor. Then I plunged the trident into the guts.
Of course I don’t burden Allison with these details either.
—There is such a thing as beginner’s luck, she says.
That’s what Truman claimed all the way home in the car. He had the kind of bruise that settles into the ego.
—But what if it’s hardwired in my circuits? I’ve actually thought about that sometimes, I say.
