Girl in the Arena

by Lise Haines

  Then she got up with this drowning expression on her face, saying she was going to convince her friends to change their reservations to air travel at once. How they would avoid the ocean, if they were on their way back to New Jersey, I had no idea. But in either case, it’s hard to put much faith in floatation cushions.

  I thought about checking the news that week to see if a party of friends went down over or in the Atlantic, but I didn’t. Even though I know he can be off at times, it’s easy to get spooked by his oracles. This aside, I had good times in Rome with Thad, telling him stories to make the animals come to life in the Colosseum, expressing how beautiful it once was with the velarium fluttering overhead. We toured the baths and he liked this because he and Tommy often took baths together out in our converted garage, though he did keep asking where the water was. Of course Allison was all about Palatine Hill and talked a lot about the tile work and reincarnation, trying to decide which empress she must have been.

  —It’s possible I was more than one, she said.

  I sent a message to Mark about my favorite temple in the Forum built by the Emperor Antoninus for his wife, Faustina. In the eleventh century AD workers found it impossible to pull the columns of the temple down in order to put a church on the site, so they built the church around the columns. I thought this said something about love. Mark said I should watch my romantic backside. I said, —Okay, okay.

  But you really have to surrender that entirely when you enter the Pantheon.

  Allison was off shopping for a handbag that afternoon. Standing outside the Pantheon, the great doors wide open, I collapsed my umbrella and saw that it had begun to rain inside. I would have to lie down and die to describe the quality of rain as it drifted down from the Oculus, that perfect round hole in the ceiling. Typically, Thad’s a little distressed by rain. But Tommy took his hand and slowly pulled him toward the centermost point of the room, whispering gently to him the whole time. I have been in buildings with leaky roofs, lived in a couple of those when Allison was between husbands, but I had never been in a building designed to invite the rain in, and if it isn’t overreaching I’d say it was miraculous standing there like that. I took Thad’s other hand and we let the rain pour down.

  Looking up toward the Oculus Tommy said, —Isn’t this the best thing that’s ever happened to you?

  It’s not often that Thad looks directly into your eyes. So you know that something’s coming when he does. He stared for a long time into Tommy’s wet face and finally said, —You have a year left.

  Unlike the hard liquor of his predictions that get no mixes or sodas to soften them, Thad said with unusual generosity, —I’ll miss you, Tommy.

  And in that rarest of rare moments, Thad began to cry.

  I swear it wasn’t just the rain. And Tommy had a look, as if he were trying to read his own obituary in four-point type. He made an effort to smile, to comfort his stepson. Then Thad hiccupped loudly. Funny how I’d forgotten most of this until now. Of course I’d never taken to writing down all the predictions, though maybe I should have. And sometimes forgetting can be the best way to keep from getting depressed. Although some people take this concept too far and then they think the Holocaust should disappear before their sick little eyes. If you try to forget too much, those buried memories work like worms in your brain, eating up your psyche.

  Tommy kissed Thad on the top of his head and said, —So let’s have a hell of a good time while we can.

  When Thad’s hiccups came in quick openmouthed bursts we had to leave the Pantheon. We were just cracking ourselves up, and quickly found Thad a large limonade, which cured everything. Neither Tommy nor I talked about what Thad had said and then we were swept up in a crowd and pretty soon Tommy was signing autographs and I snapped pictures with a lot of other people’s cameras and phones so they could all get into shots with Tommy. He got stopped a lot on the streets of Rome and recognized in museums, and asked to sign gelato cups and backs of knees and straw wrappers. He was pretty popular over there because they knew him as the real thing and not some guy in America waving a plastic sword around, rapping about the glory of Rome. It didn’t hurt of course that his mother was half Italian. And there were, among the little crowds that gathered, many women.

  We had a beautiful hotel near the Spanish Steps. I shared a room with Thad, and Tommy and Allison were by themselves in another, of course. There was one morning when Tommy was feeling under the weather and the rest of us had gone off to Palazzo Borghese, where we were scheduled to take a tour. We had gone early to enjoy the park and hoped to wind Thad down a bit before entering the museum. When we realized Allison had left the tickets in the room, I volunteered to take a taxi back to the hotel so we could make the tour on time.

  I figured Tommy was asleep when I arrived at the hotel because I had to knock three times. Finally he came to the door, but opened it only a crack. The smell of drugs wafted my way.

  —We forgot the tickets, I said.

  His eyes were bloodshot and he looked apologetic and half-witted. Busted for doing one of those things he kept telling me never to do.

  —It’s all right, I shrugged. —I don’t care.

  —All right? he said, looking confused.

  —People at school smoke.

  Then the sound of running water started up. The kind of pounding water that fills a tub in a hurry.

  —How did you do that? I said, but I was already starting to get it.

  —Do what?

  —Oh, I don’t know. Start the water in your tub while you’re standing here not letting me into your room?

  Tommy was used to me saying exactly what I had to say. He made an act of contrition out of his face.

  —I better get those tickets, he said.

  That’s when I noticed a skirt and blouse draped over the desk chair. A blouse Allison wouldn’t be caught dead in. As soon as he realized I was looking over at the clothes, he said, —Hold on, and closed the door on me.

  I wanted to take off but I had to tough it out, for the tickets. A minute later, Tommy opened the door again and handed them to me. The water had stopped. The clothes had been removed. I could tell he was trying to figure out what to say.

  —Allison might have come back to the room for these, you know. You get that, don’t you? I said.

  He made a fist with his right hand and rubbed it into the palm of his left. All the cuts. The man was a walking scar.

  —Not a very heroic moment, is it, Kitten?

  —She calls me that and I don’t really like it from either of you, I said.

  I turned and started down the hall, heard the door click shut. That’s the way I’ve always been when there’s nothing left to say. I walk. I drive off. I part the sea and run, as far and fast as possible. But this time I turned around, strode back down the hall, and knocked hard. Again I waited for him to open up.

  —You have no idea what we’ve been through! I shouted at his dumbstruck expression. —NO IDEA! Allison drives me crazy, but she’s always been there for me and she hangs in with Thad while everyone else goes off to work or dies or goes to school or the club or gets lost.

  Someone had to defend her. I hoped the people down at the front desk would hear me, the women bent over cleaning the rooms on the floor below, the wait staff in the small café.

  —Allison knows, he said quietly. —This woman is no one. But it was wrong to bring her here. It will never happen again.

  —Screw you, I said.

  Then I realized I had to run and find a taxi or get into a whole thing with Allison. That was Rome. Messed up Rome. If you ever wanted to spear love through the chest, this was it. I don’t mean I had romantic feelings for him, but Allison did. And anyway, I’m talking about the whole idea, the whole rotten business of love.

  After we got through the museum and had some lunch and saturated our cork brains on ART until they could no longer float, Allison said it was time to take Thad back to the room. I told her I wanted to do some shopping, so maybe she co
uld drop me off. I was seventeen then, had my phone. She wasn’t keen on the idea, but she had her hands full and said yes.

  I went to the nearest American Express, converted some travelers’ checks to Euros and asked this man at the desk to help me look up the location of the GSA training school in Rome. I don’t think anyone recognized me there, and no one seemed to think twice when I signed up for a training session. I didn’t do it to be something—I had no thought of being a gladiator—I just wanted to get back at Tommy, and maybe at Allison for always going along. I knew it would mess with their heads if they found out.

  The place was pretty well cleared out. I didn’t know they don’t practice on Saturdays in Rome. But there was one guy hanging out. A lean Italian man named Giancarlo, maybe six or seven years older than I, and he offered to put me through some paces. We were the exact same height, and he was all about the eyes. He showed me some moves, and talked about how to psyche an opponent, how to manipulate a shield. In some ways, I felt happier than I had in a long time that afternoon. Because I began to get why people do marathons, triathlons, kick boxing, I don’t know. It’s this thing of finding a quiet zone, and then breaking out from that place in bursts of concentrated energy—that’s how Giancarlo described it. He told me I was a natural, and that made me fight harder.

  We used blunt wooden swords, yet my body bruised up and even bled a little. When I got back to the hotel room, I went straight for a bucket of ice, and made sure Thad didn’t see me fresh from the shower. If anyone called Tommy to let him know I was over at the school, I never heard.

  Giancarlo called the next day to see if I was coming back for my next training session. I told him I had a pretty busy schedule. He begged me to do Rome at night on his Vespa, to join him in his garret. After a few calls, I found some excuse to slip away. We kissed. We walked through the Jewish district back toward my hotel. We walked around more ruins and embraced. I told him someday I might come back and find him at the school. He coaxed and coaxed and we had lunch together and he explained many things: about ancient brickwork, columns, coffering, loggias. Giancarlo had wanted to be an architect, but his father died when he was a boy and he had taken on the role of provider from an early age.

  Just before it was time to meet up with Allison, I would quickly dash into a store and buy something to show that I had been shopping. Insisting she see my purchases one day, Allison said I should be more discriminating. And rather than make a thing of it, I asked her if she thought I should return anything. She was so pleased that I was asking her advice. So then I had to return things, retracing my steps—which would take some time, of course—which was about tucking the items back into my suitcase or tossing them out. That’s how I bought more time in the tiny arena of the training school, and enjoyed Giancarlo’s company. I thought I never wanted to leave.

  My parents would have died if they had found out, but everyone had their secrets, it seemed. And after that, I began to reconsider Allison’s husbands, gathering up events and gestures I had pretty much thrown away, explained away, and I thought of them differently.

  It took me some time to lose my anger with Tommy. But it was hard not to soften after a while, living in the same house like that. I know Allison was confused, since he and I had always gotten along so easily and he kept apologizing in different ways, though we never talked about it directly again. Sometimes I wish we had and other times I know it was their business, not mine, and I just didn’t want to know.

  Then I realized that Tommy had begun to treat me like someone old enough to look behind the curtain. He told me about Allison’s faux deaths. He told me what we should watch out for—which included her being too manic, too low, too detached, too doting. He told me to hang in with her, no matter what. He said he always would.

  I’m not religious at all. But I took a class in high school on world religions. And my teacher explained the story of Job this way: it was the point at which Job got truly pissed at God that his relationship with God matured and his faith deepened. I don’t mean Tommy was a god, though some people thought so. He was just some guy Allison met when she needed to figure out her next move, her way of keeping faith with survival. He was a gladiator born and bred, a high-paid neo-Glad who had a soft spot for Thad.

  When we returned home, Giancarlo and I Skyped and e-mailed constantly and I had a hard time showing up for family meals because I didn’t want to pull away from the computer. He said he was going to come visit me in America. He said I was the only girl he could ever love. But then, after a few weeks, I think he met someone else. His e-mails slowed and then stopped. It really kind of screwed me up for a while.

  CHAPTER 19

  —Uber called, Allison says. —I couldn’t find you.

  I watch her apply her lipstick and then throw the tube back into her purse. Thad and I are tucked in close in the backseat watching the fans waiting on the other side of the gate. I can see they’re making Thad nervous.

  —Okay, I say.

  Before we go anywhere Allison rides up and down for a while, adjusting her seat. She’s waiting for me to show a little interest. She looks at me in the rearview mirror. Up and down while I look at a text.

  Sam wants to see if I can get together with her and Callie. I guess she’s feeling remorse at losing a suddenly high-profile friend. I keep writing back: Return to Sender. She pretends it’s a joke and chats away.

  —Is Thaddy’s seat belt right? It looks twisted around. By the way, Uber asked me to tell you he’s sending the crown off to a restorer. He’ll bring it back as soon as it’s ready. Then he apologized of all things. I think this really says something about his integrity, don’t you?

  —Hold on, I say.

  I’ve shut Sam off and I’m trying to help Thad. I tell him we’re going to wear sleep masks today, and put one of Allison’s blue silk ones on him. I worry that once we pull out of the drive all the flashes going off will send him into convulsions. It’s a steady stream of blinding wattage now as Allison backs up. I’m reminded that when you see a picture of a celebrity on TV or in a magazine, grinning to their gums, they aren’t smiling at anyone, because they can’t see anyone. They’re smiling into a wall of painful light.

  Allison hits the switch, the gates open, and the car inches forward. The photographers push against our car doors now. They angle across the windshield and throw themselves at our rear window. I won’t let Thad take the mask off until we’re headed into Boston.

  —Please drown them out, I say.

  Allison reaches over and blasts a morning show on the radio. The weather will be fair, not too hot, not too cool.

  —Not too hot, not too cool, Thad says.

  A few dirty jokes, money giveaways, the traffic blocked up at the Lever Connector, talk and laughter, and we’ve finally pulled away. I get out of my seat belt for a moment, stretch into the front seat, and push the CD button. Mozart’s Così fan tutte fills the car.

  Although she and my succession of fathers have drawn varying degrees of attention from the media, this level of interest is different. Every time they shout their questions at me, about whether or not I’m going to marry my father’s murderer, I feel like someone who’s been shot up in a mall or wedged into a well unable to move, without a rescue crew—somewhere between dead and stuck. I can’t tell exactly how Allison feels about the fact that the focus has shifted to me because she has her personality face on, that expression that lets the media know she’s self-possessed and plans to stay that way. In either case, she’s dropped the topic of Uber for now.

  I never know how she does it, but Allison is pretty good at sloughing off the paparazzi when she’s determined to get her car through physical space—though I’m certain she rolled over a photographer’s foot getting out—and eventually we’re moving toward downtown, with only a few cars and motorcycles tailing us. As we enter Storrow Drive, one of them pulls up alongside the car. Questions are screamed at me, mouthed, pantomimed. My name is called. My name, my name, my name. Tommy’s name.
Uber’s blessed name.

  I wait for Allison to go into that tenuous place where she could be one way but she could just as quickly be another. She might suddenly realize, as we slip over the BU Bridge, that there’s money to be made in writing her autobiography. And this could trigger an anxiety that she’ll get a contract but that writer’s block will set in. And then she’ll start to think that if she suicides, someone will write a biography instead and screw it up, screw her up, her children. Ever since Tommy told me about her faux deaths, I’ve chronically looked for the warning signs.

  I wait to see if Allison will crash us just to get the pressure off. But maybe she’s okay.

  She turns off Mozart and the soft voice of the GPS kicks on. I take the sleeping mask off Thad, who loves that voice and sometimes repeats everything she says. For several miles this dial-up woman tells us how to steer around bridges, neighborhoods, derailed trains. Tommy bought it a few months ago for Allison’s birthday and mounted it in the dashboard to make it look factory built. It has kept us from dead-ending or taking the wrong road I don’t know how many times.

  —Where are we going? I ask.

  —You’ll see, she says.

  I whisper to Thad, telling him we’re playing a guessing game today—It’s called: What’s Our Destination?

  I make up random bits to the game as we go because I have to do something.