Girl in the Arena Read Free

suggest that she go lie down and I’ll finish up. She stops crying and goes up to the master bedroom and stretches out on the Texas king bed, a moist washcloth over her eyes, her ear plugs in, the way she tries to fuzz out a few days before a match, when what she really wants to do is find a tall bridge, she’s so distressed.
    It’s much worse this time because Tommy’s fighting tomorrow—at the American Title fight against a guy named Uber—and she can’t accept the idea that she could lose him. Because that would mean, among other things, losing her seventh husband, the best one she’s had, bar none. He’s the best in all the leagues really, the one everybody loves. And if you follow the Gladiator Wives Bylaws, which Allison has as long as I can remember, you know a Glad wife can only marry seven times and then she’s done. So that’s where she’s screwed herself. She doesn’t want to be done. Allison can’t stand being alone.
    I know some people see it as a lack of affection, the way I call Allison by her first name. But when you have a mother who spends a lot of time trying to stay young so she can find that next husband—so she can take care of her children, the younger with special needs... She kind of messed up in the career department. And she asked me flat out to call her by her first name, so we could be  more like sisters  in a way. I’ve tried to go along. So it’s Allison this and Allison that.
    When I go upstairs to check on her, she cautions me to whisper. My brother, Thad, is curled around the mound of her feet under the coverlet, nesting, watching cartoons with no sound on. Even when he’s not supposed to be quiet, this is the way Thad likes to watch a show because there’s so much noise going on in his head all the time. That’s what the doctor told us. The Italian ex-pat pediatrician compared my brother’s internal sounds to the rushing, cursing traffic around the Colosseum—Vespas, taxis, micro cars. My eight-year-old brother is a boy of internal cacophony. Allison is patient where Thad’s cartoons are concerned, as she is with most things that keep Thad happy.
    Thad looks up at me. I stroke his hair lightly, and he returns to his state of mesmerization.
    Allison tells me how sorry she is.
    —I guess I’m pretty keyed up, she says.
    —I know, I say. —It’s okay.
    —How did he seem to you this morning? she asks.
    She’s talking about Tommy and I say, —Solid. Really solid.
    I go into her bathroom and get her  beautiful tranquilizers , as she calls them, and I bring her a glass of water as well. She kisses me on the cheek.
    —I’m going to get completely off these after this competition, she says.
    That’s her standard line, so I don’t know what to say.
    —I told you two years ago things would change. Now that you’re eighteen, you’re free game to the media, and...
    — And  I have such an  impressive  list of fathers.
    —Well, you do, like it or not.
    —Okay, Allison.
    —Things will go better than you think once you get used to the added attention, she says. —Why don’t you call the girls and see if you can get together with them this afternoon? Do something fun.
    This is Allison’s other kick:  the girls,  the effort to resuscitate my social life. Although I’ve always been kind of a loner, except for my best friend Mark, from seventh grade on I had two main girlfriends. Sam: the high-wire act who has her father’s broad shoulders, her mother’s practically bulging eyes, and a tendency to sometimes talk before her brain kicks in, and Callie: shy and smart and built like a support beam, willing to do anything Sam wants in order to be included. We were the only Glad girls at our high school—and we live in a culture in which most people think it’s fun to observe Glads and make jokes about Glads but not mix with them—so we clung fast.
    We were all about the things threes produce, sometimes tight and inseparable, sometimes weirdly triangulated and