The Sweetheart Read online

  The bell rings. The wrestlers begin pacing panther-like in their suits, waiting for the other to blink. This will be a three-fall match, the first of which is over in a flash. Bonnie manages to get Mimi in a hammerlock, but Mimi gets out of it by ramming the amateur backward into the turnbuckle. The veteran spins out and deals an audible slap to the chest that knocks Bonnie to the ground and prompts you to flinch in sympathy. It is a real slap, not a staged one—you can tell from the sound and the color spreading across Bonnie’s collarbone—which cancels out any compassion you might have felt for Mimi. This woman has no vulnerabilities; she hardly needs your pity.

  “Come on, Bonnie!” you shout. “Look alive!”

  Too late. Mimi flops Bonnie to the mat and quickly pins her for the three, and you join the chorus of hisses and boos as the women head back to their corners to catch their breath for what soon amounts to the last round of Bonnie’s career.

  After the signal, the two women lock into the ref’s position and stay that way, neither making any headway until Mimi sweeps the girl’s leg out from under her. Bonnie crashes, twisted and awkward, to the mat. Peggy gasps; Brenda turns her face and covers her eyes. You, on the other hand, can’t tear yourself away. Mimi hasn’t yet registered what has happened; she is locked and loaded, primed to pin the girl and take both the fall and the match, when Bonnie’s scream stuns her to stillness.

  The ref rushes in, followed by Joe and the ring doctor. You crane your neck but can see nothing but the three of them hovering over the girl’s leg. After some debate, Joe climbs out of the ring and waits for the ref to slide the injured wrestler under the ropes and into his outstretched arms. He walks through the crowd, past you, with Bonnie’s arms wrapped about his neck, the girl sobbing openly as he carries her up the aisle and behind the stairwell, away from the crowd, the history books, and your life forever.

  When the ref declares Mimi the winner, the crowd erupts into venomous jeers. But she is impervious; she raises two defiant fists into the air and rotates around the ring, daring them to call her anything other than victor. Over all this noise, you hear Mimi’s own voice rattling around in your head: You don’t have to learn anything. You could just stay stupid. Eventually, Mimi turns in your direction and meets your gaze. You search her eyes for remorse, but there is none. Months from now, when you are at the height of your fame, you will be asked by a reporter to recall your initial impressions of Screaming Mimi Hollander. There will be many things you cannot say, but this question will provide one of the rare moments when you won’t have to choose between the truth and the script. When you respond, you will describe this moment and conclude by saying, “It was clear to me that I was looking at the meanest bitch that ever walked the face of the earth.”

  FOUR

  The sun is up but the moon is still faint in the sky the next morning as you drag your aching body across the grounds to the gym. Being awake at this time usually gives you the feeling that you have a jump start on the rest of the world, but not today. Here at the Pospisil School for Lady Grappling, there have already been plenty of comings and goings—mostly goings. It was still dark when an unfamiliar car rolled up to Mimi’s door, pausing only long enough to collect her and her suitcase before rolling back out. And at the first sign of light, Bonnie and Brenda, who had packed her bags along with her sister’s, drove off the premises. Even the girls who are still here are a few steps ahead of you: Peggy, the only other rookie left, and a few of the vets are already pushing against the exterior walls—right legs bent in front, left legs extended straight behind. You hurry toward them and follow suit.

  “What are we doing?” you whisper to Peggy.

  “Stretching,” she says. “Today we do roadwork.”

  “Today they do roadwork,” booms Joe, who strides toward you, a limp tangle of fabric dangling from his clutch. His presence is jarring enough, but seeing him dressed in the same gym attire as the rest of you—T-shirt and shorts—seems unreal. If it weren’t for the mosquitoes, you might wonder if you weren’t still in bed, dreaming all of this. “You and I are getting in the ring. You can join them next time.”

  “I thought—”

  “Don’t think. Bad habit.” He turns to the line of girls. “Well?” he shouts, visibly startling them. “Go on! Get out of here!” And with that, the four young women shuffle toward the shell road that leads to the highway. Peggy turns her head just enough to shoot you a sad smile and a wave, and then she is gone with the rest of them, leaving you and Joe alone.

  “Here,” says Joe. It is the bathing suit you handed over yesterday, the straps now reinforced with surgical tubing and the legs with strings of elastic, necessary measures, Joe explains, to ensure that all the kicking and clawing won’t result in any riding up or falling out. The industry is walking a fine line between titillation and obscenity, one that shifts depending on the state. Some have gone so far as to ban women from the ring. To the degree he can, Joe intends on keeping his girls on the right side of that line. “What are you waiting for?” he asks. “Get dressed and meet me in the ring.”

  It is quiet in the gym, not like yesterday. And while the dressing room is sufficiently private this morning, there is something uncomfortable about undressing with Joe just meters away. You shimmy into your suit as quickly as you can, pull the top up and the seat down, and, once you are as covered as possible, pad out in your bare feet, your arms crossed in front. There is a mirror before you reach the door, but you shy away from it. If you see how exposed you are, you won’t be able to leave the dressing room.

  “Come on, come on,” Joe calls from the ring. “I don’t have all day.” Dutifully, you hurry across the gym, hop on the apron, and thread yourself through the ropes. After he leads you through a series of stretches, he jumps to his feet and claps his hands together. “Now. Last night you saw what can happen if you don’t know how to take a bump. So we’ll start there.”

  For the next half hour or so, Joe shows you how to go down in a way that is supposed to lessen your chances of injury. He models a dozen or so falls, his figure seemingly suspended in the air before he hits the mat with a loud clap, and then, in testament to the effectiveness of his technique, quickly rolls on his side and jumps to his feet. The trick, he says, is to “level out”—to distribute your weight over your whole body, to flatten yourself into a plane rather than attempt to break the fall with a limb. “Pretend the mat is a bed of nails,” he tells you. “You got to hit ’em all at once, or it’s going to hurt like hell.” On top of that, you have to “work loose” to keep your muscles from tensing.

  “Go ahead,” he instructs. “You try it.”

  As you soon discover, falling is more difficult than one might imagine. The first time isn’t bad; the lesson is fresh and you are in your prime. But as soon as your body hits the mat, it begins to have the real experience of pain. Even with all of this working loose and leveling out, you are still a falling body crashing into a solid surface, and every subsequent fall is preceded by less capability and more fear. You fall again and again, but rather than get better, you get clumsier and fall harder. It probably doesn’t help that you can’t quite shake the self-consciousness of wearing so little. Every time you hit the mat, Joe kneels down beside you to offer his critique, pointing to the places where you hit (the small of your back) and where you should have hit (the whole of your back), or, even worse, physically moving your body into the correct position (feet flat, palms up). Work loose? Fat chance. Whenever he makes contact, you turn to stone. On your final attempt, the back of your head ricochets into the canvas hard enough for you to cry out.

  “You’re thinking too much,” Joe says, standing over you, hands on his hips, elbows cocked. “You can’t think it; you have to feel it.”

  You might have managed one good fall if he had just given you an inch of space. You remain flat on your back with your hands fisted and your neck throbbing. You would stay like this for the rest of the day if y
ou could, but after a while, it becomes clear that Joe is not going to budge until you respond, so you roll onto your side, push yourself up—this much of the drill, you can manage—and say, “I’ll work on it.”

  When you are upright again, Joe grabs you by the bicep and jerks you to attention. This time, his grip is more than intrusive—it’s downright menacing. His face is close enough for you to see the hairs missed during his morning shave, just under his nose. You understand that he means for you to meet his eyes, but that is asking too much, so you stare instead at the hairs.

  “Was that sass?” he spits.

  “No.”

  “Because it sounded suspiciously like sass. And I will not tolerate sass. Is that clear?”

  “Yes.”

  Joe throws down your arm and nods toward the locker room. “Go on. I think we could both stand to take five.” He climbs out of the ring, grabs a clean towel from the top of a stack, and dries his hands while you silently rub your arm, your feet glued to the canvas, your eyes on the exit.

  • • •

  Here is the sad truth about lady wrestlers, Leonie. Their careers are roughly the same length of time as the average life span of a fruit fly: four weeks. Will this be your fate as well? You have been here less than two days, and already, two friends are gone, the prospect of injury has become frighteningly real, and your boss is just plain frightening. So far, all signs point to yes. You could just cut your losses and follow Brenda’s skid marks out of here, but for that, you will need to enlist Joe’s help. That would mean initiating a conversation with him, and you will have to summon a lot more courage before you will feel ready for that.

  The next week is the most physically grueling of your life. Joe’s program includes hours and hours of weight training, calisthenics, and roadwork. But it is the time in the ring that is truly punishing. Joe works with you for an hour every day. During a typical session, he might show you how to work the ropes safely, or he might teach you a simple hold or two—a hammerlock, a wristlock—and make you practice on Peggy or Mildred, a spring-loaded wooden dummy with stubby, offset arms. But mostly, you fall. On your back, on your front, after a flip. For the next several days, you practice falling over and over again, attempting to disconnect your brain not only from your muscles but from everything around you: the remoteness of this place, the nakedness of your body, the fear that grips you every time Joe wrenches your arm behind your back or easily breaks free from your hold. These sessions burn off all of the physical and emotional fuel you possess and then some. As a result, you eat ravenously. Each morning, you drink a glass of milk with two eggs stirred in along with your breakfast, and at night, you have an extra scoop of potatoes with your dinner, and then you head back to your room to soak your sore muscles in the tub before falling into bed, having neither time nor energy for anything else. On Friday, when you climb into the ring and Joe asks, “Ready?” it is all you can do to nod your head.

  “Good,” he says. “Let’s see what you got.”

  And with that, he fires his forearm into your chest hard enough to knock you straight down to the mat. Joe hits you, you hit the canvas—there is no time for thought between these acts. You are pained and dazed, but still in one piece, still able to roll over and jump to your feet, so you must have done something right. But just as you begin congratulating yourself, you are promptly thumped again. This time, you go wheeling backward, gasping for breath. You manage to grab hold of the ropes and bounce back, a maneuver that you might be able to put to good use if you knew what you were doing. Since you don’t, you catapult yourself straight into Joe’s awaiting clothesline and go down like a brick. You are still seeing stars when his shadow crosses your face.

  “Not bad,” he says. “Now that I know you can take it, I’ll teach you how to deal it.”

  In the tub that evening, you press the fingers of one hand into the darkening bruise on your chest while the other holds aloft the first letter from your father, a brief note that amounts to little more than a few jagged lines, hastily dashed off on a sheet of browning stationery. You are missed, it says, not I miss you, but coming from such a reserved, stolid man, it feels like a substantial outpouring of love. It’s enough to make you want to lace up your Keds and run straight up the East Coast and into his arms. For all his faults, he has never laid a hand on you. Never. Not once. You read his letter over and over, until you are pruned. When you are ready for bed, you tuck it into your pillowcase, pull up the covers, and turn the radio knob until you settle on a familiar crooner. You close your eyes and wish that you were back at home, listening as the song drifted into your bedroom from the other side of the closed door.

  • • •

  At least you are not the only one in this foxhole. Every day you thank your lucky stars for Peggy. This whole enterprise would be intolerable if she weren’t there to crack wise during roadwork, moan and groan over the day’s extra reps and additional weights, and swap complaints over cold shakes and hot fries. And when Sunday, the day of rest, finally rolls around, and all the girls who aren’t off to paying gigs have been rescued by their dates, she is there to keep you company. In the afternoon, you smear each other in Coppertone and lounge on the dock, your ankles cooling in the river as you flip through last month’s Confidential, Peggy arguing that Marilyn should ignore her boss and marry Joe.

  “That’s what I’d do, at least,” she says.

  “You mean you’d give up all this?” you say, waving an arm. “For a ballplayer?”

  “Oh, no, not this. A studio contract, sure, but not this glamorous life.” Peggy laughs, and then combs your hair with her fingers, begins working it into a loose braid. “I’m telling you, Leonie, for all that Joe’s put us through, we better end up with fur coats and rings on every finger.”

  “And ragtops,” you say, one eye toward the unpaved road.

  The next day is Monday, a roadwork day, and since all but you and Peggy are on the road, Joe decides he will go along, joining you for stretches before leading you both off of the grounds. This is the only part of the program you genuinely enjoy. Running allows you to pull deep inside yourself, your most familiar and comfortable environs. You would be happy to wear down the rubber on your Keds (The Shoes of Champions!) on the endless highway, but Joe says, “Let’s change the scenery,” and turns right, toward town, where you usually turn left. Before long, you are on the waterfront, running past the seafood houses, the pier, and the marina, where there is decidedly more to pull you out of yourself: the ripe, salty air; the pelicans standing sentinel on pylons from a long-destroyed pier; the glares and whistles from the shrimpers and oystermen. At the public dock, a couple of boys around your age load an ice chest into a boat. One takes notice, slaps his buddy in the chest with the back of his hand, points at the two of you.

  “Hey, you!” he shouts. “You with the curls! What’s your name, sugar?”

  The smile on Peggy’s face makes it clear she’d like to tell him, but she looks ahead anxiously, gauging the distance to determine whether Joe is in earshot. Even though he is well ahead, she seems reluctant to test his hearing, or his temper, so you do it for her, cupping your hands around your mouth and shouting, “Her name’s Peggy!” She gives you a playful shove, and you shrug in mock innocence: What did I do?

  “Peggy!” he calls, his voice growing more distant with each syllable. “Where ya going, Peggy?”

  An emboldened Peggy opens her mouth to shout her answer, but she clamps it shut again when Joe spins around and shoots her a look that chastens you both. Reflexively, your head snaps down, your eyes fix on the asphalt in front of your toes. When the boy yells, “You can’t run from me, Peggy Lee! I know where to find you!” you risk only the quickest of glances, which is just enough to see her reddened cheek, an upturn at the corner of her mouth.

  Peggy normally grumbles through roadwork, but for this last mile, she is jubilant, occasionally jarring you out of your thoughts a
nd braving a question. “He was cute, right?” “Do you really think he’ll try to find me?” Even back at the gym, when Joe tells you both to clean up and meet him in the ring, she is still bobbing around on another plane: humming a tune while she showers and dresses in the locker room, checking and rechecking her hair in the mirror before she walks out. Only when you’re all in the ring and Joe says, “Okay, ladies, let’s see what you got,” does she plummet back to earth.

  “I’m sorry. What do you want us to do?” she ventures.

  “What do you mean, what do I want you to do?” Joe asks, his hands extended in front of him. “This is a match. You are opponents. So wrestle, damn it.”

  “Oh,” you say, blinking back at Peggy. The two of you stare at each other for a while, each waiting for the other to begin, to offer up some clue as to how this might go. Thankfully, Peggy steps forward and takes you by the shoulders, granting you permission to do the same. It is a strange sensation, to be locked in ref’s position with her—not just another woman, but a buddy. It is a decidedly tentative press, and it makes you tentative, too. How real should this be? What are the boundaries? And what is she to you, exactly? Is she your colleague or your rival?

  “Well, this is boring,” says Joe. “Would either of you care to do anything that might keep a paying customer from walking out?”

  “Like this?” says Peggy, and she drops down and grabs your legs out from under you.

  “Better,” says Joe. “Nice fall, Leonie.”

  Yes, it was, you realize, already back on your feet, crouched and ready to go. You hadn’t even thought about it, just let your body unfurl and meet the mat as you’d practiced so many times. Maybe you were getting somewhere after all. Peggy, similarly crouched, snarls ironically, which further deflates the tension. It’s a joke, she seems to be saying, and you acknowledge your understanding of this by comically baring your teeth. You feel confident enough to take her by the arm and launch her into the ropes.