The Manager Read Free

out of her hand before she could put it on the shelf. Even more than leprechauns and teachers, Tina hated the articles in Seventeen – stuff like “Ex-boyfriends: Can You Still be Friends?,” “What You Can Tell From Your Boyfriend’s Palm,” and “How to Make a Macramé Purse in One Afternoon.” She said it was crap.
    Tina preferred worn-out, filthy old copies of The Ring that had been passed around by every guy in the gym and read on buses, on lunch counters and on toilets. They’d been used as place mats under chili (you could tell from the stuck-on kidney beans), folded into a tube to be used as a megaphone during training and had big holes in them where somebody had torn out ads for muscle-boosting vitamins or cures for balding. To me, every cover looked the same: some man, naked from the waist, holding up his fists and looking like you’d just insulted his mother. Tina said it was the “bible of boxing” and besides, where else could you find articles on Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano and the Sugar Rays – Robinson and Leonard. I said it was no way to treat a bible.
    Part of the reason why Tina didn’t buy magazines and satisfied herself with these beat-up copies was because she was trying to save money. The pittance of an allowance our father gave us had to be used for clothes, so anything extra we had to earn ourselves. The two of us delivered newspapers, and we helped Azalea in the store whenever she asked us. I liked working for Azalea – and I wanted the money, too – but more often than not, I let Tina have the job because she needed it more than I did. And even though I strongly doubted she’d ever have enough saved, she remained firm in her conviction that one day she would be able to afford the surgery that was going to make her taller.
    It was called the Ilizarov procedure, after a Russian physician. I didn’t know who this Dr. Ilizarov was or from what school of masochism he graduated, but the whole thing sounded barbaric to me.
    The procedure wasn’t being performed in Canada yet, but in Boston, researchers had begun trials at a medical centre associated with Harvard University. It was Dan Campbell who suggested it to Tina in the first place; his uncle was working with a team of orthopedic surgeons trying to perfect the technique. But there was no way our father would pay for it, so all Tina could do was hope that one day she’d win the lottery or find buried treasure.
    My sister couldn’t be cajoled into seeing her life in a positive way – she resented being a dwarf. And hers was not a feeble little stick-out-your-tongue sort of resentment, but a deep-seated, I’ll-make-you-and-everyone-I-know-miserable-because-I’m-miserable kind of bitterness. And there was nothing I could do to change her mind.
    I tried to talk her out of the Ilizarov procedure, but trying to talk my sister out of anything was like trying to swim at the edge of a whirlpool. Probably the longest series of operations ever devised, the technique required using a saw to cut through the bone and screws that are turned every day while new tissue grows and a horrible frame worn on the limbs and an endless period of recovery. I couldn’t stand the thought of my sister’s limbs being cut like that and the excruciating pain that must be the result.
    She told me that physical pain, no matter how much agony it entailed, was only temporary. I guess what she was really trying to say was that the other kind was endless.
    â€œTina?”
    â€œOh, for God’s sake, Ellie, go to sleep,” she snapped.
    â€œWhat was it like, drinking beer with Mickey O’Shea?” I propped myself up on my elbow.
    She rolled over to face me.
    â€œIf I tell you, will you shut up?”
    I nodded my head.
    â€œIt’s like this. We’re both used to being gawked at every time we walk in a restaurant, every time we cross the street – hell, we