Girl in the Arena - Lise Haines [44]
She gets up and pulls the trundle out now. When Thad slides down onto the little bed, he has those big eyes going and I know he might be in this expressive state—staring at me—for hours. She kisses him several times in that gentle way he likes, and she says good night.
When Allison’s heels recede down the hall, I tune in to the sounds of the media outside. They call my name in the thick summer air like a pack of cicadas, asking me questions, asking me what I’m going to do.
When I think about what I’m going to do, it’s hard not to think about the way she did things. Of course Allison had no idea what she was getting into when she met my first father, Frank. That was before the GSA existed. Frank was a podiatrist who had the respect of his community and a strong desire to find a second wife, as his first had died young of a malignant tumor. And Allison was a new patient with a deeply embedded ingrown toenail. He was, it turned out, the head of his local GSE chapter, something Allison found out several months after they married, when I was well on my way. There was a large collection of booties and onesies stacked in my nursery, waiting, when he sprung this on her. I think her fear of being a single parent allowed her to accept the news of his secret life with anguished calm.
Frank went out on a Thursday night to Glad—that loose transitive verb that never adequately describes those first bloody competitions—and his body was found that Friday morning outside the local cemetery, as if his spirit had walked for some distance and had waited for the morning guard to come along for a proper burial. Someone must have dumped him there the way people will take a dog and throw it out of their cars by the side of the road, expecting whoever lives nearby to take it in.
A week later a man and woman showed up at my mother’s door. No doubt I was clutched in her arms, pulling hard at her hair. She thought they were missionaries and intended to send them away, then FBI agents when they showed her Frank’s photograph. But they were official GSE comforters. The woman had lost her own spouse to the competitions, and she explained that the other families had put money into a helmet for Allison.
Reluctantly, Allison let the man and woman in and fed them cherry coffee cake—one of Frank’s favorite boxed recipes—and listened to what they had to say. They showed her a short soundless film of her husband dressed in a homemade outfit, which made him look like a field-hockey gladiator. Then they presented her with an envelope full of cash. Mouse, the male half of the comforters, had only been in the sport six months. He had a compassionate disposition, spoke to her tenderly, and before he left he asked if he might stop by again, unofficially. He always arrived with armloads of groceries, bags of disposable diapers, hammer and nails to make any household repairs Allison could use, and a level of tenderness she had a hard time resisting.
When Allison married Mouse, of course, there was no secret about his activities. Shortly after their honeymoon in Atlanta, he was sent to the Boston area to start a new branch, and Allison, not one to tolerate being alone for more than a few hours, accepted his love and a copy of the gladiator laws and bylaws. The organization was changing, and she was asked to sign a paper saying she understood her commitment to her second husband and his society, which she confessed to me she never even read. Then she settled into a life, taking me to see the Swan Boats on Sunday afternoons, the Freedom Trail, the Charles River, in every way attempting to express normalcy and optimism.
CHAPTER
17
Thad’s snoring cracks the air, and I give him a little nudge and he rolls over and quiets. Then his legs push against the covers of the trundle as if he’s running down the street. He never leaves the house without one of us so I’m curious to know where he’s headed. I think about that often, where I’d go if I were Thad and had my freedom.
My guess is he’ll become a professional psychic one day. I don’t mean