Cinderella Man (11 page)

Mae's fingers clenched, her nails digging groves into her palms. She tried to keep her voice steady, her fear and anger under control. “Jim, we got off easy
when you broke that hand. It's not that I'm not proud or grateful. I am. But what if something worse happened? And you can't work?”

Mae couldn't bring herself to paint the sign any clearer. She expected her husband could read it in her eyes.
What if you become a cripple, Jim Braddock? You've seen it happen to other men. What if you go and get yourself killed!?

“What happens to us?” challenged Mae. “To the kids again? We're barely managing now.”

Jim shook his head, disappointed at his wife's reaction. He gestured to their pitiful, rundown surroundings. Couldn't she see? Didn't she know? He was already killing himself—and for what?

“Yeah, Mae,” he replied. “If I can't do better than I'm doing, we're not going to make it. Kill myself every day for a couple coins, and every week we slip behind a little.”

Mae stepped closer. “We got out of it. We're back to even now.” Her tone turned desperate. “Please, baby. I'm begging you. We don't have anything left to risk.”

Jim wanted to reach out, take her in his arms, but he stopped himself. He couldn't give her what she wanted. There was so much at stake for their kids, their future, he didn't dare give in to her fears.

He touched her cheek with gentleness, but when he spoke again, his tone was unbendable iron. “I can still take a few punches, Mae. And I'd rather take them in the ring. At least you know who's hitting you.”

He turned from her then, and Mae's hopeful expression crumbled. She stood there, feeling helpless as she watched him stride away from her, across the yard and
into the dark doorway. But Mae Theresa Fox Braddock was far from helpless, and she knew it.

This isn't done, James Braddock,
she promised.
No, it is not. Not by a long shot.

 

The next morning, Jim rose at dawn and left the apartment house, not for the docks but for the gym. Mae left the apartment house too. She took a bus to her sister's, dropped off the kids, and rode a ferry across the mighty Hudson, toward the silver spires of Manhattan island, determined to storm one of its castles.

Mae's destination was a section of New York City known as the Upper East Side, a relatively small piece of property that displayed the grandest, most majestic apartment buildings and houses ever constructed in the United States. Elegant bluebloods, tycoons, and solid citizens resided together in these blocks amid exclusive clubs, luxurious penthouses, grand hotels, and stately museums. Millionaires Row was here, a Gilded Age playground along the east side of Central Park, where Carnegie, Astor, and Vanderbilt spent fortunes mixing periods and tastes in a line of sumptuous Fifth Avenue mansions resembling English castles, Italian villas, and French chateaux.

Two avenues over, on Park, the ostentation was less pronounced—“filthy rich” descending to merely “terribly moneyed.” But it was still one of the broadest thoroughfares and most beautiful streets in New York. Two lanes of traffic were divided by a wide swath of well-tended grass, flower beds, and shrubbery. Trucks were banned from this gracious artery, but buses, cars, and drays constantly rolled up and down its lanes.

At one time, seven-and nine-story elevator build
ings had lined Park Avenue, but after the World War, skyscraper apartments were constructed in their place. Mae had read somewhere that they'd been built on stilts to keep them free from the vibration of the New York Central railroad yards hidden below.

Walking north, Mae gaped at Villard House, a group of brown sandstone mansions surrounding a court and first owned by Henry Villard, a German-American railroad magnate. The ornate cornices, windows, and details had been fashioned to resemble an Italian Renaissance palace. Next came the opulent athletic facilities of the Racquet and Tennis Club, one of the most fashionable sports associations in the city. Mae remembered reading in one of the gossip columns that the two tennis courts inside with slate foundations had cost more than $250,000 to construct.

A pair of gentlemen in tennis whites, speaking earnestly about financing and real estate, burst out of a hired car and nearly ran her over in their haste to cross the sidewalk and enter the building.

Mae leaped back. “Goodness.”

She continued her walk, aware no other street in the world came close to the amount of wealth concentrated among these buildings. Her sister had told her that apartment rentals here averaged as much as $1,500 per room annually—an obscene sum. She also knew farther uptown was the Frick Collection, a museum that housed important old paintings. And two avenues away was the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of the greatest and most important museums in the world.

She vowed to take Jay, Howard, and Rosy to those museums for a visit someday—but not today. Today, she had business on Park, and she continued her trek
between the double row of tall apartment buildings with all the intense determination that her husband displayed in the ring.

On the scrubbed sidewalk, she passed dignified men in white smocks—house servants—exercising pedigreed dogs or carrying armloads of parcels. Under each canvas-awning-framed entryway, she passed uniformed men, some simply standing guard, others hurrying to aid impeccably tailored gentlemen and ladies in their journeys from foyer to car, car to foyer.

On the small, dog-eared map of the city that she'd borrowed from her sister, Park was shown to stretch all the way to the uncovered railroad tracks at Ninety-sixth, where it transformed itself into a slum tenement street in an area known as Spanish Harlem. But Mae wasn't going nearly that far.

When she arrived at the limestone building she sought, she tilted her head back, holding her little straw hat to keep it from tumbling. She tried to guess how many floors high the skyscraper went, but she couldn't even see the top.

Girding herself for what came next, Mae approached the door. Beneath the awning, the uniformed doorman, his brass buttons shining, tipped his visored cap and with a white gloved hand pulled open the beveled glass. Mae walked through, into an elegant lobby of rare marbles and dark wood. Framed oils hung on the walls and bronzed sculptures and potted plants sprung up from the waxed and gleaming floor.

Aware her shoes were broken down, her dress threadbare, her straw hat a sorry beaten-up thing, she nevertheless lifted her chin and walked toward the elevator door. The operator was dressed like the doorman.
She told him the floor she wanted as she moved inside and ogled the large, walnut-paneled car, deciding it was only slightly smaller than the entire basement apartment where all five Braddocks now made their home.

“Good day, Mrs. Reynolds.”

“Good day, Johnny.”

A matron stepped into the elevator behind her wearing a smartly tailored green summer suit, highly polished T-strap shoes, and an ostrich-feathered toque over perfectly styled curls. She seemed startled to see someone like Mae in her building, and, as the operator closed the door and the car ascended, the woman looked her up and down.

Mae felt her cheeks growing warm. Self-consciously she straightened her tattered clothes and nodded nervously. The matron nodded back with politeness, but Mae didn't miss the horrified expression in her gaze. It was the sort of look usually reserved for car accidents. Bad ones.

A few minutes later, Mae was standing on the fifteenth floor, digging inside her purse for a scrap of paper. She moved down the line of apartment doors until the number on the door matched the one she'd scribbled down.

Straightening her threadbare dress one more time, she raised her hand and knocked. Hard. She heard movement inside, saw motion at the keyhole. Then nothing. Just stillness beyond the portal.

Mae frowned and knocked again.

Still nothing.

“Open the door, Joe,” she called politely. She waited ten more seconds, and when no one answered, she cocked back and let go—

“Joe, open the damn door! You're not going to hide in your fancy apartment and make my husband your punching bag all over again. We're starving and you're taking him from his work like some short little blood-sucking leech and I won't let you get him hurt like that again, do you hear me? I will not let you!”

The door opened a few inches. Joe Gould stood staring at her. “I guess you better come in.”

Mae pushed past him and entered, as she moved inside, however, her steps slowed and the righteous anger drained out of her. She'd expected a space like the lobby or even the elevator—tasteful wallpaper, old English furniture, marble statues, framed oils, potted plants. But there was none of that. There was none of
anything
.

The apartment was completely empty. Just a wide expanse of polished wood floor and high bright windows. In the middle of the empty apartment stood Joe's wife, Lucille.

“Hello, Mae…We…we weren't expecting you.”

 

“How is it?” asked Joe.

Lucille, an attractive woman with a genuine smile, nodded at her husband and took another sip from her bone-china cup. “Too sweet per usual.”

Joe smiled back at his wife. The two of them and Mae were sitting on folding chairs in the middle of the empty living room, sipping hot tea that Joe had prepared. He glanced at Mae. “Yours?”

Mae nodded without speaking, still feeling off balance. She'd come here expecting a knock-down-drag-out, but Joe and his wife had been warm and civil. And
their circumstances had left her in a mild state of shock.

“Sorry,” said Joe, gesturing to the door. Clearly, he felt badly about not answering the door right away. “But you just don't want folks to see you down is all.”

“I didn't know,” said Mae, her voice not quite there. “I thought…”

“Yeah,” said Joe fingering the lapel of his dapper, fawn-colored suit. “That's the idea. Always keep your hands up.”

Mae's eyebrows arched. She realized that had been Joe Gould's philosophy all along. Keep up appearances. And never let the opponent get to you.

Joe shrugged. “Sold the last of it two days ago. So Jimmy could train.”

Mae took a moment to absorb this. She'd always figured Joe Gould for a cagey opportunist. Not a man who'd risk his last few possessions on her husband's second chance.

“Why?” she asked.

“Sometimes you see something in a fighter. You don't even know if it's real, you're looking for it so bad.” Joe glanced beyond the tall glass of the high window. “You can't have no hope at all. I guess Jimmy's what I hope for.”

Mae's eyes widened. It stunned her to hear Gould express exactly what she felt for her own husband.

“He's really something, Mae.”

She shook her head. “This is crazy. You don't even know if you can get him a fight, do you?”

“I'll get him a fight,” Joe promised. “Last thing I do, I'll get him a fight.”

Lucille reached over, lightly touched her husband's arm. “Honey, get us some more tea, would you?”

Joe rose, smiled at Mae. “I know who wears the pants.” Then he winked and headed into the kitchen.

For a moment, the two women sat in silence. Finally, Lucille sighed, gestured to the empty room and said, “It's not the way I imagined it either.”

Mae nodded, frowned at the floor. She knew Lucille was in as deep as Joe now, but she felt compelled to explain why she'd made the trip here.

“It's just that…I hated it. Every day he walked out that door for a fight. I even hated eating the food it bought,' cause it was like it came right out of him.”

Lucille said nothing, just listened.

“We lost something when he stopped fighting,” Mae admitted. “But I guess we got something too.”

Lucille smiled but her eyes were sad. “Can you ever stop yours?” she asked. “When he sets his mind to do a thing.”

“No. I wish I could. No.”

“I never know who it's harder on, them or us. We have to wait for them to fix everything. They have to do it. And every day it seems like they're failing us. But really it's just the world that's failed, you know?”

“It's…” Mae's voice trailed off as she realized they could say more to each other, and probably would, but there really was nothing more to say. Outside, a passing cloud dappled the sunlight across the gleaming floorboards. Mae smiled. “This is a lovely apartment.”

“Thank you,” Lucille replied.

Then they continued sipping their tea.

On Braddock's first day back in training, Joe Jeannette met him at the top of the creaky wooden steps of his Union City gym. The smell was the same—a combination of motor oil and gasoline from the garage below, mustiness from the gallons of sweat dumped daily into the air, and the distressed leather of punching bags and boxing gloves. The sound, however, was different. Absent was the usual noise of gloves smacking against bags, the slap of ropes on hardwood, and the grunting of fighters warily circling each other. At this early hour, the gym was empty, save for Joe and a corner man hanging a bag on a stout hook.

Braddock felt his adrenaline begin to pump the moment he set his foot on that first creaky step. When he saw Joe Jeannette's grin and the heavy leather bag just
waiting to be smacked, his muscles actually twitched beneath his skin.

“Suit up and let me see how much you've forgotten,” Jeannette told him. When Jim returned from the locker room, wearing boxing shoes, black trunks and six-ounce bag gloves, Joe Jeannette whistled. “You been training, Jimmy. Don't know where, but you haven't been training here.”

“I've been working, Joe. Not training.”

“Work? You mean to tell me you built that left from working? Show me.”

“Huh?” Braddock grunted.

“Show me what you did when you were working.”

Braddock shrugged. “Well, after I busted my right hand, I took a job at the docks. Heavy lifting, mostly. Moving freight around with a tie-hook.” As he talked, Jim demonstrated his technique to the seasoned trainer—a swift punching motion with his left arm that sank the hook into a bale, which enabled him to lift and carry his end of the heavy freight. “After the cast came off, I started switching hands. But went to my left a lot anyway…out of habit.”

Jeannette nodded. “That's because your right is your weaker arm now—but don't worry about that. You were always a hitter and we can fix your right in a couple of weeks.”

“And my left?”

“That move you showed me with the hook, it's the perfect punching exercise. Your forearms—” Jeannette held them up. “You can see that the left is bigger, thicker than your right. You've been developing a lethal left and you didn't even know it. You were always
right-hand crazy. That was your weakness. But you had a power punch so it didn't matter. But now—”

Jim lowered his arms, ducked into a fighting stance and threw a few air punches.

“Still got your old form, your old stance,” Jeannette noted. “Guess we'll have to work on that, too.”

Braddock straightened. “What's wrong with my stance?”

“Nothing,” Joe replied. “For a boxer who's right-hand crazy. But you've got the potential to become an all-around fighter now, so you better start to train like one.”

Jim moved around in a tight circle, throwing more jabs.

“You went hungry, too,” Jeannette said softly. “I can tell.” Jim flushed crimson. “No shame in that,” he added. “Not these days. Good news is that all that hard work and no food has made you slim and chiseled and tough as nails. You're lean and lethal now, Braddock, no question about that. But I'm gonna make you even better.”

Jeannette slapped Jim on his naked back. “Now lay into the bag. We'll see what we have to do next.”

In the ensuing weeks, under the coaching of Joe Jeannette, Jim Braddock built up his right, increased his stamina, and put on a few pounds of solid, rock-hard muscle. After all those months of toiling for a living—at the docks, the rail yard, the coal shuttle—training with Jeannette seemed like a vacation. But nothing Jeannette taught him came easily. The man pushed Jim hard, and every week there came a new exercise, a new brace of skills and techniques to practice and absorb.

One afternoon, as they were working on Jim's timing in the center ring, a visitor crept up the rickety stairs and lurked in the shadows of the doorway. Joe Gould quietly watched as Jim Braddock pounded a punching bag to the rhythm of Joe Jeannette's banging tambourine.

“Faster, Jim. Pick it up! Come on…”

Jeannette cracked the instrument even faster, making it clang right behind Braddock's ears. Jim redoubled his efforts, delivering a fast flurry of powerful, alternating blows that dented the heavy leather bag and set it swinging on its hook despite the best efforts of the corner man to keep it steady.

Gould grinned and stepped up to the ropes, moving among a collection of lean, tough-looking youths in boxing gear who were also watching the action.

Jim spied Gould and paused. Jeannette smacked him on the back of the head with his tambourine. “Okay, okay, you got your left back. Big deal. Don't lock the knee. And you gotta be quicker.”

Jim Braddock placed both gloves on the bag and pummeled it. As he threw, he tossed a glance at his manager. “You get me that fight yet?”

Gould smirked. “I tell
you
how to do
your
job?”

“Yeah.”

Gould nodded. “A point.”

Jim slapped the bag around a few more times, then caught it. The fighters outside the ring were moving closer to the ropes. Jim looked at them, then at Jeannette.

“Now what I got here is five pure fools thinking it would be an honor to get their heads beat in by you,” said the gym owner.

Braddock sized them up. They were all big, strong heavyweights and light heavyweights with lean, hard
muscles—some outweighed him and some had a longer reach. All were younger than Braddock by at least five years, and none of them looked like they ever skipped a meal, let alone stood in a long soup line to get one. Jim nodded. “Good.”

He climbed out of the ring and shook his glove at Jeannette. “But I want a welterweight too. One with some spit and polish.”

“That would be George,” said Jeannette, directing Jim's attention to a compact fighter sparring on a mat in the corner. His fists were a blur, striking with a speed the wind would envy. George paused and saw Jim Braddock staring. Braddock lifted his glove, pointed with it. “Him.”

George locked eyes with Jim Braddock, then looked past him to Jeannette. “He's still gonna have to pay me,” George warned. “Even after I whup his ass.”

Braddock smiled, knowing Jeannette had chosen the perfect sparring partner.

 

When Joe Gould left Jeannette's gym and climbed into his roadster, he was grinning too. He was still smiling an hour later when he waltzed into Jimmy Johnston's office at Madison Square Garden and planted himself in an easy chair across the desk from the busy promoter.

“You're going to sanction a bout between Jim Braddock and John Henry Lewis,” Gould said.

Johnston looked up from the papers he was signing. The big man sighed and dropped the pen, leaned back in his chair. “Now what am I going to go and do that for?”

“You saw the papers.
News
had to run extra copies day after Braddock's fight.” Gould flashed a confident smile. “People are sentimental.”

“Yeah,” Johnston replied. “So, tell me why I care.”

Gould offered a bit of sympathy. “I get it. You're still sore over the way Braddock took down Griffin. Fine. I can understand that. It was a heartbreak. But look…”

Gould reached into his jacket and produced two fresh, expensive Cuban cigars. He carefully slid one across the desk toward Johnston, unwrapped his own.

Gould began his pitch. “You got guys fighting an elimination series over who gets a shot at Max Baer for the championship next June…”

It wasn't a question, and Johnston didn't deny or confirm the rumor that had been racing through fight circles all over the country.

“John Henry Lewis is your number two in line after Primo Carnera,” said Gould. “And Lewis already beat Braddock once in San Francisco.”

Gould leaned across Johnston's desk, offered him the flame from a sputtering Zippo. “Now, say you put Braddock back in the game against Lewis. Lewis wins, you get your revenge on Braddock, and your boy's had a top-flight tune-up with full publicity before Lasky, so what happens?”

Johnston puffed silently, staring into the corner. Gould slapped his desk. “I'll tell you what happens.
You
make some money.”

Jimmy Johnston sat back, blowing smoke rings and considering the fading circles.

“Now, say by some minute, infinitesimal chance, Braddock beats Lewis,” Gould continued. “You got a sentimental favorite to go up and lose against Lasky, and what happens? You make
more
money. Either way, you're richer with Braddock back in the ring than if
he's not. And we both know the name of this game…” Gould rubbed finger to thumb—sign language for what every promoter in this game loved. “And it sure as hell isn't boxing.”

This time it was Gould who sat back in his chair and silently puffed on his Cuban, savoring the smoke.

Johnston shook his head in awed dismay. “They should put your mouth in a circus, Gould.”

“Yeah. So what do you say?”

 

Mike Wilson was sitting in the bleachers watching Jim Braddock spar with the welterweight named George when Joe Gould returned to the gym. Gould strolled up to the ropes as the fighters traded punches, distracting Jim long enough for George to land a blow to his chin. Braddock stepped backward and shot his manager a curious look.

“I got you a fight,” Gould announced.

Jim lifted his gloves to stop the bout. He walked to the ropes and stared down at his manager.

“You're gonna fight John Henry Lewis again,” said Gould.

Braddock climbed between the ropes and landed on the hardwood. “I could kiss you.”

Gould backed away. “Say I was to beg you not to?”

Jim frowned. “Isn't Lewis one of Johnston's boys? And isn't John Henry managed by some racketeer named Greenlee these days?”

“You let me worry about that,” Gould replied.

Braddock grinned knowingly. “No wonder you won't pucker up. Bet you're all kissed out already.”

Mike hopped down from the bleachers, approached the pair. “Lewis? He killed us in 'Frisco.”

Gould raised an eyebrow. “
Us
? Who's this? Who's
us
?”

“Hey, Mike,” said Jim, raising a glove. “No shifts today?”

“Lewis hasn't been beaten in ten fights,” said Mike, ignoring the question.

“Joe Gould, Mike Wilson,” said Jim by way of introduction. Gould looked at Mike, opened his mouth to speak—then shook his head. He reached around Braddock's broad shoulders and steered him to a corner.

“I ain't gonna bullshit you. Right now you're fodder, Jimmy. Fodder,” Gould told him, eliciting a wince from Braddock. “But you win one and I can get you another. Win again and things maybe start getting serious.”

Jim nodded, appreciating his manager's candor, if not his tact. Without a second glance, Braddock moved toward the heavy bag.

“Jimmy,” Gould called.

Braddock turned back, saw the old fire in his manager's eyes.

“Win,” said Gould.

The two men exchanged looks, and Gould departed. Braddock watched him go, then called over his shoulder. “Hey Mike, come hold the bag for me.”

 

Jim placed his boxing shoes and his trunks into a paper bag on the bed. Golden light from the autumn sunset spilled into the room from the low windows. The paper crackled, and Jim stood in thought for a moment, already beginning to prepare mentally for the fight ahead.

Braddock turned to face his wife. Mae's face was pale as she folded the children's clothes, trying to hide her anxiety.

“I know this isn't what you wanted,” Jim said softly.

Mae looked up from the laundry. Jim shifted on his feet, glanced at the floor, then into her eyes. “But I can't win if you're not behind me.”

Mae set the clothes aside. Then she stepped up to her husband and leaned against him, her lips brushing his. “I'm always behind you,” she whispered, holding him close.

As they embraced, Rosy signaled her brothers that the coast was clear. Jay and Howard escaped the apartment and raced quietly into the hall. Moments later, Rosy joined them, and they followed her out to the street. On the sidewalk, the children wormed their way through a crowd that had gathered in front of their building.

The trio burst into the butcher shop a moment later. Sam was weighing up some ham when the tinkling bell over the door interrupted him. He peered over the counter, to find Rosy—flanked by her stoic bodyguards—looking up at him.

“Rose Marie. Jay. Howard,” said Sam suspiciously. “What can I do for you today?”

Rosy, her pale face pinched with concern, spoke. “My daddy's fighting a man who beat the living bee-Jesus out of him last time. What kind of steaks you got?”

Down the block, Jim emerged into the perfect fall evening to enthusiastic yells and a smattering of applause from the tenement neighbors gathered around his front stoop. As he stepped onto the sidewalk, the ragtag group clustered around him, slapping his back, pumping his hand.

“We're rooting for you, Jim,” said an old man with stooped shoulders, eyes glistening.

“Take him down, champ!” cried another, from the back of the mob.

Then a familiar figure stepped in front of the rest. “How you doing, lefty?” said Mike Wilson. They clasped hands.

“How's Sara and the baby?”

Mike sidestepped the question. “It sure gives the guys a lift,” he said. “You getting back into it, I mean.”

Jim, unsure how to deal with praise, shrugged it off.

“I put two bucks on you, Jimmy,” Mike continued. “Don't let me down, now.”

Jim's expression darkened. “Mike, Lewis is favored five to one.”

But Mike just smiled, demonstrating more confidence than Jim felt. “How else am I gonna get rich?” he asked, spreading his arms. “You know, maybe I could come along. Do you need some help in your corner?”