Girl in the Arena - Lise Haines [28]
—I was trying to get the bracelet back, I say.
—I knew it was yours, she says.
I had forgotten about their new wall-mounted television—the kind with overkill magnification, 3-D icemaker, foot massager . . . I’ll stop.
Mark returns with a clean set of sheets and bandages, and his mother’s medical bag. We can hear the sound of the TV at the other end of the apartment.
—Dad’s up, Mark says.
—Now, let me understand this, Julie says. —You shrouded Uber to get your bracelet back?
—I was trying to distract him.
—You shrouded Uber? Mark asks.
He makes a low whistle and gets out his phone. He starts to scroll down the screen. When Julie gives him a look, he goes off to retrieve the boiling water.
—I told Uber the bracelet was the family’s.
—Ah, Julie says, setting out her syringes, her slim little saw, and plenty of clamps.
I explain the new rule and why I can’t get it back yet.
—He actually tried to tell me how much he loved Tommy, I say.
—That’s despicable, Julie says.
Mark brings the pot of water and sets it on a hot plate on the floor beside the bed. Returning to his phone, he says, —Are you shitting me?
He pushes the image in front of my face. On the New York Times web page there’s a photo of Uber in the arena. His arms upraised, his skin oiled, helmet off, hair in place, sunset cresting the stadium. The bloody red light, some call it. In a side-by-side photo, I’m seen entering the stadium last year, my head down like I’m being dragged off to jail.
The caption reads: 14 minutes ago. WHEN MUST A
DAUGHTER MARRY HER FATHER’S MURDERER?
—Allison’s going to drop dead, I say.
I am. I’m going to drop dead right here, right now.
When Mark’s fingers fly to the next screen of the article, there’s a picture of Allison and me when I was five or six. I’m wearing a flared skirt, waist-high jacket, and hard black shoes with buckles. Allison’s in a slender teal dress nicely belted, her hair swept up in back. We’re standing in front of the GSA amphitheater in Chicago and she’s holding my hand. I don’t even remember this picture. Not that I’m suspicious of its authenticity. There were just so many pictures taken every time we went to a stadium.
Mark reads aloud. The story spells out the Glad law that has me strung up—the solid fact that in Glad culture, I’m required to marry Uber because he looted my dowry bracelet.
I take the phone and skim over the journalist’s historical references to brainwashing. They always think Glads are brainwashed. There’s some analogy about the heiress named Patricia Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army. And there’s the business of how a group or sect can impair their children. The Mormons—they always parade the Mormons out—the Christian Scientists, the rabid polygamists. At least there’s some discussion about the film Sofia Coppola’s making on Glad girls in New York City. They say it’s beautiful, but maybe too beautiful. Sounds like envy to me. But now my head pounds so badly I have to stop reading and hand the phone back to Mark.
—It says the reporter went through a thousand photos of bracelets until he matched it with the one on your wrist. I’d say the guy’s a little slow, Mark says.
—We’d better call Allison, Julie says.
I look at Mark, his large sad face. There’s something about the way his jaw is formed or the way his goatee is trimmed around it, the quiet eyes, the stain of blue gel pen on his lower lip. Sometimes he makes me think of a buffalo or a bearded centaur, a quick Picasso sketch. And sometimes I know he has more than a brotherly affection for me, but we prefer to ride on the rim and avoid conversations on this topic.
—Allison might be asleep, I say.
Just then Lloyd sticks his head in the door, his hair pushing up every which way with that sleep-bent expression. When he sees Julie cleaning my wound, he exchanges looks with her.
—She’s on every major news program, Lloyd says, nodding in my direction.
—We know, Lloyd. Be a dear and get the chloroform off the