God's Gym Read Free Page A

over her housedress, scooted down the hall, and knocked on your door cause where else you going to be. No answer so she hustled back to her place and phoned downstairs for the super and they both pounded on your door till the super said, We better have a look just in case, and unlocked your apartment. Stood there staring after she turned the key, trying to see through the door, then slid it open a little and both of them, Eva said, tiptoeing in like a couple of fools after all that pounding and hollering in the hall. Said she never thought about it at the time but later, after everything over and she drops down on her couch to have that cigarette she knew she shouldn't have with her lungs rotten as they are and hadn't smoked one for more than a year but sneaks the Camel she'd been saving out its hiding place in a baggie in the freezer and sinks back in the cushions and lights up, real tired, real shook up and teary, she said, but couldn't help smiling at herself when she remembered all that hollering and pounding and then tipping in like a thief.
    It might have happened that way. Being right or wrong
about what happened is less important sometimes than finding a good way to tell it. What's anybody want to hear anyway. Not the truth people want. No-no-no. People want the best-told story, the lie that entertains and turns them on. No question about it, is there. What people want. What gets people's attention. What sells soap. Why else do the biggest, most barefaced liars rule the world.
    Hard to be a mother, isn't it, Mom. I can't pretend to be yours, not even a couple minutes' worth before I go to pieces. I try to imagine a cradle with you lying inside, cute, miniature bedding tucked around the tiny doll of you. I can almost picture you asleep in it, snuggled up, your eyes shut, maybe your thumb in your mouth, but then you cry out in the night, you need me to stop whatever I'm doing and rush in and scoop you up and press you to my bosom, lullaby you back to sleep. I couldn't manage it. Not the easy duty I'm imagining, let alone you bucking and wheezing and snot, piss, vomit, shit, blood, you hot and throbbing with fever, steaming in my hands like the heart ripped fresh from some poor soul's chest.
    Too much weight. Too much discrepancy in size. As big a boy as I've grown to be, I can't lift you.
    Will you forgive me if I cheat, Mom. Dark-suited, strong men in somber ties and white shirts will lug you out of the church, down the stone steps, launch your gleaming barge into the black river of the Cadillac's bay. My brothers won't miss me not handling my share of the weight. How much weight could there be. Tiny, scooped-out you. The tinny, fake wood shell. The entire affair's symbolic. Heavy with meaning, not weight. You know. Like metaphors. Like words interchanged as if they have no weight or too much weight, as if words are never required to bear more than they can stand. As if words, when we're finished mucking with them, go back to just being words.
    The word
trouble.
The word
sorrow.
The word
by-and-by.
    I was wrong and you were right, as usual, Mom. So smile.
Certain situations, yours for instance, being a mother, suffering what mothers suffer, why would anyone want to laugh at that. Who could stand in your shoes a heartbeat—
shoes, shoes, everybody got to have shoes
—bear your burdens one instant and think it's funny. Who ever said it's OK to lie and kill as long as it makes a good story.
    Smile. Admit you knew from the start it would come to this. Me trembling, needing your strength. It has, Mom, so please, please, a little-bitty grin of satisfaction. They say curiosity kills the cat and satisfaction brings it back. Smiling. Smile, Mom. Come back. You know I've always hated spinach but please spoonfeed me a canful so those Popeye muscles pop in my arms. I meant shapeshifter, not weightlifter. I meant the point of this round, spinning-top earth must rest somewhere, on something or someone. I meant you are my