Girl in the Arena (21 page)

—I appreciate that you took the time. Maybe when you’re on your feet we could go for coffee or something, I say.

—My doc says I shouldn’t be long at the hospital. And my parents go back to Norway day after tomorrow.

—Oh, well, then, that’s soon... that we could have coffee.

I nod to Mark now, to say it’s time to go. Then I make a small effort and take Uber’s hand just for a moment and I’m struck by how warm it feels. When you’re in the stadium seats, the competitors are often bigger than life, even cartoonlike. It’s easy to imagine that their hands and faces, the waxy glow of their skin, that they’re somehow made of different material than normal people. You sometimes feel they’re going to leap into the air and fly around the city after a competition instead of just driving home, going over to their clubs, or stopping at the store for bread. You can even feel that about your own father at times. I can’t help but wonder what things would have been like if Uber and I had met in a different place in time.

*

Mark doesn’t seem to care if the fans follow us or not tonight, and pretty soon we’re riding along Memorial Drive in a fleet. The air just right, the light on the Charles, the slick sound of the wheels because the street washers have gone through. He turns the radio to a random station and I put my feet up on the dash and slink down in my seat so I don’t have to think about the paparazzi as they try to keep up.

—So Friday let’s do something, Mark says.

He names this expensive restaurant that has all these Buddhas and tiny vases with things not entirely flowers, cool lights at the bar, water sheeting down one wall.

—Are you asking me out on a date?

—Why not?

—Because we’re friends.

—Could be more.

—Sometimes I think you only get interested if someone else is interested.

—Are you accusing me of human nature?

—Yes.

—Girls like me, you know. He smiles.

—Of course girls like you.

And they do. Next year he’s supposed to sign a contract with the GSA and I already know that lots of girls want to cage Mark—I’ve heard some of them talking. And in time he will make the perfect Glad husband. Julie’s seen to that.

—I need to get my head clear right now, I say.

—You like me, don’t you?

—Stop.

—Just let me know if anything changes.

—I’ll let you know.

*

Allison gets over her peevishness about not being invited to the stadium that night when she learns I have plans to see Uber again. Though the ownership of the house is still as undetermined as the number of moods in her day, she goes out and buys flats and flats of new plants for the garden and has all the windows of the house washed, even the ones in the basement, which is her way of saying she can waste money again. She calls her tile man to get him started on the front steps, which already look perfectly fine to me. There are ceramic samples clustered around the house and out in the yard. I try to ignore this industry and work a little on 
A History of the Gladiator Sports Association
. Thad is happy to have us both around no matter what we’re doing.

*

On Saturday night, Thad and I are hanging out in the kitchen playing Chutes and Ladders. He has his own logic to the game and sometimes he takes my game piece and suddenly shoots it up a slide. When it’s his turn he likes to dawdle, angling around so he can see through our gates out to the street. Suddenly he calls out, —There’s a striped man!

Concerned that one of the photographers has climbed the fence, I throw the lights on outside.

Uber is walking across the lawn in a striped delivery shirt. He trips over a pile of tile samples out in the yard, a full half hour early. He’s clutching a paper bag. I’m reminded of that guy in 
The Invisible Man
, his head wound in bandages. Only one eye is exposed so I give Uber credit when he avoids a landing in the rosebushes. He rights himself and follows the light toward the kitchen.

Looking down at his chest, he tries to pull the two halves of his tiny shirt together. On the pocket the name 
Dave 
is stitched in carmine thread.

—A friend of mine has a brother who works for a delivery service, Uber says. —I was kind of hoping we’d be able to slip in and out without notice.

He explains that Allison gave him the code to the gate. I see the 
CONSTANT BEAUTY FLOWERS 
truck, backed in and pulled as close to the house as possible, almost shearing off Allison’s border of small crescent-shaped bricks. I put on the shirt he hands me over my tank top. But the cap keeps catching on my bandages so I decide I’m healed enough and rip the bandages off and get the cap in place.

—You think I’ll pass? I ask.

—You look constantly beautiful to me, Uber says.

—Groan. We better hurry, I say.

I go over and give Thad a kiss on the cheek and grab my purse.

—Lyn’s going to figure everything out tonight, Thad says to Uber.

I don’t know why this makes me blush. I excuse myself and call up the stairs to let Allison know we’re leaving now. She wants us to wait so she can come down and say hello, but I shout that we’re late and kiss Thad again and hurry into the garden with Uber. Then I look back for a moment.

Thad appears to be a little lost, motionless, already waiting for my return. Allison has rushed downstairs and is waving to us now in one of her Chinese robes. She swoops an arm of billowing silk fabric around him with great affection, the way she always holds Thaddy. And suddenly I’m aware of how old my mother looks standing there. I don’t mean culturally old, throwaway old, liver spots and crow’s-feet old. I don’t mean that she should cut and shift her face around to be younger and therefore more 
likeable
. She’s a beautiful woman and always will be. But what I mean is she looks worn thin.

If grief comes in waves, Allison is standing inside one of those waves, completely submerged as her eyes follow me out into the darkness. She’s learned to breathe water, to see through water. I think of telling Uber to wait, so I can run back inside to say something to her, to express anything, really, but I can’t find the thing to say. I know we better get out of here before the media catches on, so I remind myself to get Thad out tomorrow so she can have some time to go to the movies or get her hair done. We have always been good at repair.

Keeping our heads down, Uber opens the back doors to the van and I climb in and crouch near the crates of empty plastic vases, some with water at the bottom. The windows in the back are blackened. Uber hits his head when he pulls the driver’s-side door open to get in.

—Are you all right? I ask.

—I’m great. Great, he says.

He fires up the engine and gets the gate open. Despite his best efforts to fool them, the paparazzi swarm.

CHAPTER 25

Once we’re on the road, the water in the vases begins to crest and slop over the sides and I’m sitting in water and decide to take my chances in the passenger seat. Uber has his head cocked at an odd angle to see the road.

—Do you like bowling or pool? he asks.

—Sometimes, I say. —Maybe it would be a little tough with your eye tonight?

—It’s not too bad but it does kind of cut down on my peripheral vision.

He’s driving erratically, and I offer to take the wheel but he says his friend, the one who lent him the van, made him promise he’d be the only one to drive.

One of the photographer’s cars, a small Dodge, suddenly pulls up on our right side. He has the usual complement of cameras around his neck, and he’s holding one out, shooting lots of photos. I recognize him from the time we took Thad to exercise at the club downtown, when we almost hit a wall. Just as I fasten my seat belt, Uber pulls into the side of the Dodge, the two cars grinding metal. I grab the dash as we’re pitched about.

—You want me to drive? I shout.

—No, that’s okay!

Uber clips his opponent’s front wheel, then swerves.

The guy tries to hold his car steady but a UPS truck comes to a dead stop in his lane. I hear the sound as the Dodge’s front end hits the rear of the truck.

When Thad and I go to the movie theater, we test our skills at driving with a game called 
DRAG RACE 
out in the lobby. He likes it when I strap him in to the plastic seat, and I always bring lots of quarters. Although some people think the object of the game is to get to the finish line in record time without hitting other vehicles or signs, for Thad it’s about the pleasure of crashing and burning, watching the way his Ford GT can launch into walls, partitions, palm trees, flag men, and desert landscapes. I wonder if Uber has the same feeling about the game.

—Don’t hesitate to let me drive, I say.

—Sorry. He’s been on my tail for months. I’ve tried to get a restraining order. So let’s see. Would you like to see a movie? Hit the shooting range? Indoor rock climbing? Fortuneteller?

—I’m afraid I get my fortune told more often than I’d like.

I start to explain about my brother when a police car overtakes us, sirens and lights, and Uber pulls over. The officer looks like he’s done a little boxing in his time. He stands about five feet nine or ten. Cheerless. Uber hands over his license and starts looking around the glove compartment for the registration while the cop shines his flashlight on us.

I’m trying to see this whole picture through his lens. A couple in flower delivery uniforms that clearly don’t fit, the woman with a bald head and the letter 
T 
stitched into the back of her scalp, the man with his head wrapped tighter than a mummy, with single-eye vision, and no flowers to speak of. The officer looks over Uber’s license, studies his half-shell face, and just as Uber opens his mouth ready to launch into an explanation that I would have paid to have heard, the guy starts to crack up.

—Oh man, am I happy to see you. Do you have any idea what my girlfriend is going to do when I bring home your autograph? You don’t mind signing something for me, do you? She’s your biggest fan. And I’ve been in the doghouse all week.

Uber removes his delivery shirt and underneath this is a button-down shirt that he also sheds and drapes neatly on the stick shift. Below this is a T-shirt he strips off, revealing his many scars, his recent cuts, and that fine torso. He stretches the T-shirt carefully over his lap and pulls a black marker from a leather bag, and scrawls his name.

—Mind? Uber says, and hands the supplies over to me.

—You’re her, aren’t you? the policeman asks.

—That would be me, I say.

—Damn, he says.

I add my signature above Uber’s. Meanwhile Uber fishes in his wallet and produces two front-tier tickets to his next competition.

—You guys need an escort anywhere?

—We’re cool, but there’s a Dodge back there that could use a little help.

*

After I’ve heard all the date offers again—water polo, nighttime boat ride, hot stone massage—I tell him what I really want is to just sit and talk for a while. So we head over to Peking Duck. Peking Duck gets a number of personalities that eat there regularly, like talking-head attorneys and owners of large car dealerships who star in their own bad commercials. No one ever bothers them. They never bothered Tommy or Allison either, so I figure we can eat a quiet meal.

Uber buttons up his shirt and I de-uniform. Once we’re seated inside, I watch Uber order cashew chicken, beef chow mein, spicy dumplings, and hot and sizzling soup with a side of sautéed eggplant and shrimp fried rice. He explains that his trainer wants him to bulk up for the next match. I try not to choke as I order mushu vegetables with thin pancakes and plum sauce.

—I was afraid you were going to take me up on one of those scary activity dates, he says.

—I was waiting until you got to apple caramelizing.

—I’m not very good at that, but I can show you something about napkin folding.

I laugh and say, —Prove it.

He tries to make a swan out of a napkin but keeps making a small tugboat instead, and when he starts anew he knocks the soy sauce over. He quickly rights the container and we both throw our napkins over the soaked spot in the tablecloth, and our busboy comes over and remakes the table linens and we start again.

—I don’t think anyone has ever made me this nervous in my entire life. I’ve always been a little clumsy but this is nuts, he says.

—Why do I make you nervous?

—I like you. Which is, apparently, turning me into a complete idiot.

The food arrives just then. The waitress fills and rolls the pancakes and serves the other dishes in a way that makes you want to meditate on the food and not just wolf it. Once she’s poured our tea, I look at Uber. I mean I really look, instead of veering off. I want him to see that I have every intention of staring right into his eye until he gets something or I get something that we’ve both been circling around.

—You know I’ve been... learning how to be an ideal Glad wife. And I can’t blame all of that on Allison. When I was little, I really wanted to know how to act at a ceremonial dinner and how to maintain the swords if my father needed help. And I could sit here and recite every single rule and bylaw. For a while I was so particular about the way I dressed that if Allison slipped up and bought me a pair of bargain sandals with fourteen straps instead of fifteen, I wouldn’t wear them.

—I sensed that about you, he says, stuffing a forkful of fried rice in his mouth. —I mean that you would know everything there is to know.

—Not everything, but I wanted to learn, that’s the thing. Then I started to change and my mother began to push the idea of that Wives College on me and I looked at this introductory video and I saw how shallow the women were, because everything, every last little thing, was about their future husbands. I mean, I already knew this, but seeing so many women like that, all talking the same... They didn’t have anything else going, they didn’t want anything for themselves, for the planet. Then Allison began to have these complete panic attacks thinking she was going to lose Tommy and end up alone again. Maybe she knew.