When the phone rings, you know right away who is on the other end. Only one other person knows where you are. You don’t feel ready to talk to Joe, but Sam’s not here to do the talking for you and you don’t want to put him off.
“Have you heard?” he asks.
“The cops were here. They said she had an operation, but she’s going to be okay.”
“And they told you that it wasn’t your fault?”
“Yes, they told me.”
“Okay. Now you tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“Say, ‘It wasn’t my fault.’ ”
Those words douse you like a wave—you had not expected reassurance from Joe—and leave you awash in gratitude. You have to press your eyes and your lips closed to stave off the emotions. When you regain composure, you say, “It wasn’t my fault.”
“Good. Now we have to decide where to go from here. I don’t think there will be any problem sanctioning a fight against Mildred, but if we are going forward, I will need to make my case to the commission soon.”
This shouldn’t surprise you. For your entire relationship, Joe has been coaxing you up off the mat only to urge you on. Yet this time it sets you upright. You thought you were coming in to safe harbor, but this has sent you adrift again. After all this time, you are still unsure whether to read Joe’s strategy as exploitation or as tough love.
“You still want me to win the belt?” you ask. “Even after what happened?”
“Well. I want someone to win the belt, and it’s not going to be Mimi now, is it?”
“No, I know, it’s just . . . people are going to feel differently about me now, aren’t they?”
Joe does not say anything else for a long time. Perhaps he is carefully choosing his words, or maybe he is hoping you will realize what is inevitable before he has to say it. “Yes. The next time you step into a ring, it will be as a heel.”
It is not until you hear that final word—heel—that you understand. If you intend to stay in the business, the only way forward is to capitalize on the assault, to build a new, reviled persona around it. The thought of this makes you ill. Being a heel was unbearable before—the ominous glares, the insults and epithets, and, most terrifying of all, the terrible silence before and after every match. Wouldn’t this treatment be infinitely more painful now for being deserved—a routine persecution for your crime?
But worse than what might lie ahead is what you must leave behind. What he is really saying is that the persona you have forged, the one on which you have gambled all of your relationships, is gone forever. No matter what you do next, The Sweetheart is dead. You are quite certain there is no way you can go into the ring without her. You need the love she inspires; you need the pulse and thrum of it. That sound that rushes in and fills the hollows inside you. Sure, it smells of kayfabe, but damn if it doesn’t feel like bona fide affection. Maybe if you were still at the beginning of your career, just stepping out of Joe’s DeSoto and onto the shell-strewn ground for the first time, your stars not yet drawn on a map but still twinkling above you, you could be different. Now you know what you want, and you know you can’t get it as a heel.
“I can’t do that, Joe. I wish I could. But I just can’t.” And then you put the phone back into the cradle.
The room is too quiet now, too full of your thoughts, so you turn on the radio for noise. This is not quite enough to distract you, so you open your suitcase in search of your book; but when you lift the lid, you find, piled on top of your clothes, the stack of mail Mimi gave you last night. Sam must have swept it off the desk into your bag. Surprising, you think, dumping the letters onto the bed and sorting through them, that he would notice it in his hurry and preoccupation. You certainly hadn’t. In fact, you forgot about the mail almost as soon as you threw it down; you hadn’t so much as skimmed its contents. You were focused, after all: your eye was on the prize.
Most of the pile appears to be fan mail, which you simply can’t stomach right now. You give each envelope a cursory glance before tossing it aside, stopping only when you spot your father’s handwriting. Thankful, you tear into the envelope, but right away, your heart sinks. The letter is largely a report on Harold and all of his adorable and hilarious antics. If this were not bad enough, he fails even to say that you are missed. He hardly mentions you at all, except to say this: I have decided to stop worrying about you so much. You have proven that you are happy and that you can take care of yourself. It is unclear if he means this with pride or sadness or even if he really means it—perhaps he is trying to convince himself—but you read it as a severance. You have drifted too far from the shore to swim back. You don’t know what you are going to do now, but one thing is clear: there is no going home.
After that, there is more fan mail, but at the bottom of the pile, there is a manila envelope. There is no address and no postage, only a name: Betsy Mahoney. The color of the envelope, its size, its heft: it’s all too familiar. Only the name is different. If there is any color left in you, the sight of that name would be enough to drain it off. You grab your room key to tear into the package. Betsy Mahoney. Another set, filed under another name. It had never even crossed your mind. There they are: the pictures, the ones you didn’t think existed anymore. Why are they here? How did they get here? Lucky break that Sam isn’t around. Lucky, too, that Mimi didn’t get curious. There’s no telling what she might have done if she knew what she had.
Or did she? I have done a lot for you, she said when she handed over the stack of mail two days ago. And last night, in the ring: I could have destroyed you. You turn the envelope over and inspect its closure. Sure enough, its security has been breached: the original seal has been broken and the envelope resealed with additional tape.
So she had seen them. And then she gave them to you; she just handed them over without ultimatum. She could have easily assured herself a victory last night if she had used the pictures as blackmail. You wouldn’t have hesitated to job the match in exchange for them. Everyone, yourself included, might be better off if only she had used her discovery as leverage: not the emotional leverage of gratitude, which she hadn’t been above using—and which, had you realized what was in that envelope, would have been enough—but real leverage that would have left you without options. Years from now, she will tell you this was her original intention, but after her encounter with you in the lobby, she couldn’t pull the trigger. She might have acted like a heel, but when it came down to it, she played it straight. And you put her in the hospital. This knowledge burrows inside of you and lodges itself so surely that it will never be extracted. For the rest of your life, you will wish that you had understood this sooner, that you had acted differently not just on that infamous evening but so many other times.
You gather up the photos and the rest of the letters, sweep them into the bottom of your luggage, and then curl up on the bed. You pray that Sam will take his time, get stuck in traffic, get lost for a while. You don’t have the stomach for the comfort he will surely want to offer.
• • •
The key in the door startles you out of what might have been slumber. How long have you been asleep? Not long, surely; Sam is just returning. He nudges open the door with his toe, precariously balancing a paper bag and a cardboard box holding four cups of coffee, and you jump up to help him.
“Where’s the black-and-white?” he asks.
“Gone,” you say, taking the box from him and setting it on the nightstand. “More coffee for us, I guess.”
You give him the same news the cops gave you, in the same flat tone.
“She’s okay, then?”
“As okay as can be expected.”
“So, that’s it? You’re free to go?”
“I guess so. Let me see that paper.”
Sam seems to be carefully considering what he should do or say next. You fish the newspaper out of the bag yourself. It is al
ready turned to the page you want. The article is barely a column and is not accompanied by a picture. Positively criminal, you read. You sink onto the bed and hang your head between your knees.
“What now?” Sam asks.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” you say to the carpeting.
“Should I call Joe?”
This is not the time to feel the old resentments. Still, you can’t help but stiffen when he says I instead of you.
“I’ve already talked to him. He still wanted me to fight on Saturday.”
“And?”
“And I said no.”
You do not look up to see Sam’s face when you say this, but you can imagine that it is as neutral as he can make it. After a long silence, he ventures, “Then what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t gotten that far yet.”
“I guess you know what I would like you to do.”
“You still want me to come with you?” you ask, finally daring to lift your head.
“Of course,” he says. “You’re still my sweetheart. That’s all I care about.”
You do not deserve Sam’s second thoughts, and yet here he is. It is both humbling and burdensome to be the object of such certainty when you are so unsure of yourself. But it is also an enormous relief. Everything else is up in the air, and yet he is still here.
It is too much. You have to wipe your eyes with the heels of your hands.
Sam stays where he is, gives you the space and time to have this moment, pays just enough attention to assure you that comfort is available should you want it. When it seems you’ve pulled yourself together without this, he says quietly, “Just think about it, okay?” After you nod your assurance, he politely steers the conversation toward lighter fare.
“Coffee’s getting cold.” He examines the four cups, selects two, and hands you one. “This one’s yours. I hope it’s got enough cream for you. I told her to go heavy.”
Sam hops up to take a seat on top of the dresser and blows across his coffee. “Let’s just stay here for a little while, okay?” he says. “I don’t have to be home for a few days. We don’t even have to leave this room if you don’t want.”
“You don’t have to stay.”
“I want to stay.” Sam jumps off the bed, grabs the paper bag, and reaches inside, pulling out a pair of MoonPies. “Hungry?”
Not only did he make sure your coffee was prepared the way you like it, he also brought back a favorite treat. You think of Patricia, the way she talked about that pot of stew your father made, with new understanding. You take one of the MoonPies and open the wrapper. “You thought of everything. What else you got in there?” When he seems to hesitate, you try again. “Don’t hold out, Sam. What else?”
“Just some smokes and—” He pulls out a small box and hands it to you. Gold, with a little crown on front. Miss Clairol Hair Color Bath, it says. Sable brown. “There was this beauty salon next to the corner store, just opening up for the day, and it occurred to me. I just thought you might want to look a little less . . . conspicuous.”
You stare at the box in one hand, the MoonPie in the other, for a long while before putting both down on the bed. Can this really be necessary? If it is, it means another piece of you is gone, that you are steadily disappearing. But maybe this is a way to pay penance—by getting rid of The Sweetheart, bit by bit. You can hardly expect to absolve yourself with a bottle of hair dye, but you need to make a gesture, and for now, this is all you have. “Let’s do it,” you say. “Now. Before I change my mind.”
Sam proves to be surprisingly adept with hair color, his gloved hands carefully separating your locks and then brushing them, root to tip, with the dye. When, finally, it is time to rinse, Sam issues a few directives as he eases you beneath the tub spigot, but the rest of the operation is mercifully silent. He does not speak again until after you have toweled off and gone to the mirror to examine his handiwork. “You look beautiful,” he says, talking to your image as he stands behind you, gripping your shoulders. It is not only how he sees you but also how he wants you to see yourself, which he further demonstrates by stooping to kiss you on the temple, but it does not make you feel any better about the woman who stares back at you. It’s you, all right, but it is not any woman that you know.
“Beautiful,” you say, “but not gorgeous.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
The next day, late in the afternoon, you ease your way down the hospital corridor—long but not nearly long enough—a pitiful bouquet of daisies in hand, approaching Mimi’s room with more than a little trepidation. There was talk of doing this yesterday, and then again today, but you resisted it, put it off, until finally, there was no more time. Today’s visiting hours are winding down, and tomorrow, Sam has to start driving back to Cleveland. If you are going with him, this is your last chance. He would be by your side if only you had let him; instead, he is waiting in the parking lot, as you insisted. This is something you have to do alone.
The door to the room is cracked open. The scene you find is much like the one you have imagined: Mimi draped in a gown and lying, eyes closed, in a hospital bed, a doctor’s clipboard with all of its horrific details hanging from its foot. There is another bed in the room. The sheets are rumpled but it is empty; for the time being, she is alone. You set the flowers on the nightstand and pick up a pen to leave a note—you shouldn’t wake her—but she opens one eye and then the other.
“What happened to your hair?”
Right. You are a brunette now. It still catches you by surprise every time you pass by a mirror. “It wasn’t my idea.”
“Hmm.” It is hard to know what she thinks about it, if anything. She may simply be groggy from all the medication.
“I didn’t know about the pictures,” you say. “Not until after.”
Mimi laughs and then winces. “I guess not.”
“How did you get them?”
“At the wake, when I was getting Junior to sleep. I dropped something on the floor—I don’t even remember what—and it rolled under the bed. I found the box and had a hunch. I just meant to be nosy. I wasn’t even looking for you. But then there you were.”
There is enough room on the side of her bed for you to sit comfortably without disturbing her. This is your first instinct—to put yourself in this spot, to close the space between you—but you resist it, choosing instead to hover by her feet. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Me neither.” She takes a few shallow breaths before her face slackens.
“Can I do anything?” You mean for it to be an earnest question, but, in your nervousness, it sounds stiff and meek: a formality.
“You’ve done enough, thanks.” Her eyes dart over to the bedside table and settle on the plastic pitcher. She props herself up on her elbows and rolls toward it, but you are already there, filling the cup. When you offer her the straw, she puts her mouth around it, albeit grudgingly, and sips. “Oh, I’m all right,” she says. “There’s nothing wrong with me that won’t be better someday.”
“They told me you won’t be able to have children.”
Mimi shrugs her shoulders. “That doesn’t make any difference.”
But of course it does. However unlikely or undesirable motherhood might be for her, it used to be her choice to make, and now it’s not.
“We’re back,” booms a man’s voice, and you turn around just as Johnny storms the doorway, a diaper bag hanging from one arm, Junior held aloft with the other. He doesn’t recognize you at first, but, after a double take, he makes a face. He cuts his eyes at Mimi, nods toward you. “Should she be here?”
“It’s okay.” Mimi presses the fingers of a hand against one eye, then the other. “She’s leaving soon. Why don’t you walk Junior around the floor one time.”
“Yeah, sure.” Johnny picks the baby up, tosses him, howling, into the air, and catches him. As h
e walks past you, Junior slung roughly over his shoulder, he says quietly, “She’s tired,” and waits for you to nod your understanding before he leaves.
When Johnny is well down the hallway, Mimi says, “He’s been like that the whole time. You should have seen the fight he put up to get me this room. It was one for the books.”
In these words, you can hear the pride, but also the tender feeling—not just devoted, but resolved. You aren’t sure whether this is a result of the accident or something that happened before, but when you hear her say this, you understand that she has made a decision: she will not walk away from Johnny after all.
“So go ahead,” she says now. “Say whatever you need to say.”
For the past two days, you have rehearsed the various ways you might ask for forgiveness, all of which, you now realize, are lacking. A new thought comes to you. It does not have the beauty or depth you would like it to have. It will not restore her; it will not redeem you. But it is true, and, as the tears you blink away will attest, it is a thing you need to say.
“I’m a heel.”
Mimi raises an eyelid. Her mouth settles into something of a smile, and it seems like she is going to say something, but then a serious-faced nurse pops in to check Mimi’s vitals. By the time she is gone, the moment is, too. Instead, Mimi says, “Joe tells me you’re not going to wrestle Mildred. You know that don’t help me any.”
Yes, you know. It also doesn’t help Joe, and it definitely doesn’t help Mildred Burke, who is destined to lose the belt to June Byers if she can’t job it to you. “You think you’ll keep wrestling then?” you ask, heartened by the prospect.
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