The Sweetheart (23 page)

“Leonie, stay here,” the voice says. “I'll go.”

It's Cynthia. She's standing on the curb in a pair of dungarees and saddle oxfords, her hands on her hips.

Wally laughs. “You?”

“Why not me? The baby's down. Leonie can stay here, keep an eye on Harold, visit with her dad a little more. She won't be here long, you know.”

“Think about it, Cynthia.” He starts counting on his fingers. “We still have to get this thing out of the truck—”

“I know. I can do it.”

“You're nuts,” Wally counters. “Look at Leonie and look at yourself. Now, which one of you do you really think ought to go with me?”

Cynthia says, “Why don't we let Leonie decide?”

How is it that you have managed to get yourself tangled up in another one of Cynthia's love spats? Truth be told, neither option—(a) go with Wally, or (b) watch the baby—is terribly appealing. Harold is probably harder to handle than Wally. Sure, he's out for the count now, but what if he wakes up and needs something? You know, baby stuff: a bottle, a clean diaper. You can swing a little domesticity when you have to, but this? This is way out of your league. Still, you know whose side you want to be on, which one of them is the real force to be reckoned with, so you choose accordingly.

•    •    •

You should have opted for moving. Dealing with Cynthia's objections would have been preferable to the sweat you start working up fifteen short minutes after they leave, when Harold begins crying his eyes out.

He is a good baby.
What a crock.

How
does
your father do it every day? You decide to find out and head next door, honeymoon be damned. Before you can knock, the door swings open and Franz appears. It is more than a little strange seeing your father in the Rileys' home—his home now.

“I was on my way,” he says. “I could hear him through the walls. But what are you doing here? I just heard the truck pull off.”

“Cynthia went with Wally. I got put on baby duty.”

He bends over, tickles Harold's chin. “How's that working out?”

Harold answers for you by stretching his arms toward your father and shrieking like an injured cat. “I need help,” you say.

“Come on, turnip.” Franz lifts the baby out of your arms, drapes him over his shoulder. “It's okay. Pop is here.”

That's all it takes. Within seconds, Harold's cries soften into a whimper. You thought this would bring relief. Instead, you feel a stab of possessiveness that puts you even more on edge
.

For the next two hours, you struggle to make yourself useful, to no avail. First, your offers to help Patricia unload boxes and find places for your father's things are gently rebuffed. This is her territory; these are her decisions. Meanwhile, your father single-handedly cares for all of Harold's needs, which includes a diaper change, a warm bottle, and a lullaby that puts him soundly to sleep, releasing Franz long enough to assemble a meatloaf and pop it in the oven. All of this seems a monumental effort of organization, patience, and persistence, but every time you ask what you can do, your father says, “I've got it under control!”

“There must be something,” you say. “I'm just sitting here while you two swirl around me.”

“Here,” says Patricia, dragging a couple of boxes into the living room. “Tell me what to do with these things.”

The first box contains the flotsam and jetsam of Leonie Putzkammer: a stack of paperbacks, ribbons signifying various achievements, yearbooks, random school supplies, and the records you didn't take to Florida when you took the record player. “Let's see what you have there,” says Franz, and you hand him a pyramid of 45s and 78s. Everything else is just odds and ends from your childhood, and a few of your mother's things, too, possessions—not quite trash but not quite treasures, either—that were swept into the dustiest corners of trunks, drawers, and cabinets, where they'd remained for years, decades, untouched and unneeded.

None of this stuff has any real purpose for you anymore, nor any memory or emotion attached to it, but it frightens you to think of it gone forever. What you have wanted more than anything was
change,
to shed this old life, but the idea that the old life would no longer be waiting here for you is hard to accept.

The second box is full to the brim with more of the same. Unsure of what else to do, you sift through it and assemble a small pile of things that appear precious and compact enough to fit in your suitcase: costume brooches you can't remember your mother wearing, photos with water spots on half of her face, a plastic Kewpie doll and baby's blanket that could only have belonged to you, a silk scarf you can tie over your head the next time you ride in Sam's convertible. But then, at the very bottom, under all those layers, you spot the wide brown
O
of the brim on an upside-down hat. You try not to get too excited. So far, it is just a hat. But when you remove the balls of yarn from its crown and pull it out, you can see that this is it: the Musette, as perfect as your memory of it. I doubt you even realized you were looking for it, but of course you were. You place the hat on your head and put everything else back in the void of the box. There is no need to fake sentimentality for the other stuff when you have the one true thing.

Harold begins to stir. “Right on time,” says Franz. With speed and efficiency you can barely believe, he changes the baby's diaper and scoops him out of the bassinet. “Have I got just the thing for you,” he says. He slips one of the 45s out of its sleeve and places it on the turntable: Patti Page. “Not bad, huh?”

Harold certainly seems to agree. Franz sings along with the record and twirls him around the room in their well-rehearsed waltz. As he does, the whimpers become hiccups, and then giggles. Pat steps into the doorway and leans against its frame, a hand over her collarbone, a thankful smile on her face. And just how do you fit into this picture? It's not clear yet. You were not prepared for your usual roles, however undesirable they might have been, to be so quickly and totally taken over. Amazing, isn't it? You may be skilled in the arts of theater and adaptation, but you have no idea what character to play.

•    •    •

Cynthia, on the other hand, has a few suggestions.

“I hurt all over,” she says upon her return. “Do you think you could help Wally unload?” Wally, acting the slowpoke again, gets out of the truck just in time to hear this and rolls his eyes, but you say, “Sure thing, Cynthia,” eager to do something other than take up space. Besides, the work is easy enough, and dinner is all the better for having made yourself useful. During the meal, she leans over and whispers, “Why don't you come camp out on our couch tonight? Let them have the place to themselves.”

Makes sense to you. It is your father's honeymoon, after all, and it hasn't been much of one so far. But Cynthia has an ulterior motive.

“Leonie,” she says later, helping you stretch last night's sheets over her new couch, “do you think you could do one more thing for me?”

“Maybe.” You've been siblings less than a day and already she's maxed out a year's worth of favors.

“Do you think maybe Harold could stay out here with you tonight?” She bats her eyelashes a little. “It would give me and Wally a little . . . you know. Privacy.”

Privacy? How much privacy could they really expect with you in the adjacent room? You peek down into the bassinet, which, for reasons that are now clear to you, has been rolled into the living room and parked by the couch. There he is: the little turnip himself. He's sleeping on his stomach, his fist pressed against his mouth. You have already spent much more time with Harold than you care to. But Cynthia, master of getting her way, senses your hesitation and is ready with her defense.

“He's a really good baby. Probably sleep right through the night. And if he doesn't, well, I'll run right out. You won't have to do a thing. You don't mind, do you, Sis?”

“I don't think it's a good idea,” you say. “I didn't do so great with him earlier.”

“Please, Leonie.” This time, all the honey has dropped out of her voice. There is something urgent in her plea. This isn't Cynthia the Snake Charmer. This is Cynthia the Desperate. “We need this.”

They need something, all right. Life is a grind: long hours at work, endless chores, sleepless nights. Resentments are building. For the next few years, every dispatch from home will describe the destruction of their marriage: she will spend too much money, his eye will wander. Surviving these disasters will take more than anything you or I can give. Still, it is a call for help, one you cannot ignore. You look up at the ceiling and sigh, resigned. “He can stay.”

“You're the best,” she says, throwing her arms briefly around your neck before skipping into the bedroom.

Wally doesn't follow immediately behind her. Instead, he stands in the doorway for a spell, staring at you with something of a dumb grin. Maybe the first impression you formed of him was the right one. You understand that people will make assumptions about you based on your figure, but whatever Wally is reading into it is far from any message you are trying to send. For the first time in a long time, you can sympathize with Sam's need to run interference when he can.

For a minute, it seems like Wally might say something, but before he can, Cynthia calls, “Wally, come
on
!” It hurts to hear her hit that same note of desperation, and to see the way he turns his eyes away from you toward the bedroom before he waves his good-night and disappears, but at least it is over and, finally, you can be alone. Sort of.

After the door is closed and the mattress springs begin to groan, you stretch out on the couch and attempt to ignore the sounds of their efforts by flipping through the stack of magazines on the coffee table. They're mostly Wally's magazines:
Motor Trend, Hot Rod, Popular Mechanics, Sports Illustrated
. Nothing you care to read. You should call Sam soon, but you won't tonight. What you really need is sleep. That is the only way to put an end to this day, to keep your mind from drifting in unpleasant directions, like whether a certain other couple is enjoying marital relations this evening.

Soon the cries of an infant summon you to duty. Harold. For all of my life, I have tried to love that little turnip. I have done auntly things. When he came to visit in the summer, I filled the pantry with indulgent snacks—MoonPies, Slim Jims, pork rinds, cheese curls, Coca-Cola in glass bottles, and, to go with the Cokes, bags of Tom's peanuts—and let him eat to his heart's content. The rest of the year, I sent cards on birthdays and holidays with crisp bills tucked inside; little outfits and various sports paraphernalia; posters, albums, and other memorabilia autographed by rockabilly and country-western stars. And I
do
love Harold. Perhaps it has not been in the natural, innate way that Franz did, but over time, I found my own way. This is all anyone can ask of family: that they try their damnedest to act like one. And that's exactly what you do when you lift Harold out of his bassinet, hold him against you—one hand on his back, the other under his bulky bottom—walk him over to the radio, and turn it on: not so loud as to disturb anyone, but loud enough to dull the sounds coming from the bedroom, loud enough to soothe the crying infant. That's what you're doing when you hold his head against your chest and let out a long, low
shhhhhhhhhh
; when you begin to sway, the way your father did with him earlier, the way he surely must have done with you once upon a time. That's what you're doing when you tuck your resentment away, stroke his head while his cries subside, turning into little hiccups, and whisper, “There, there. There, there.”

TWENTY-ONE

T
he following afternoon, after taking the morning train to DC and checking into your hotel room, you gear up in ring attire, wrap your coat around yourself as tightly as possible, and take the elevator to the lobby, where a legion of platinum-haired ladies in trench coats is waiting for you. In another one of his half-inspired, half-cockamamie stunts, Sal Costantini asked Vicky Darnell to assemble all the local Gorgeous Girls for a photograph he can use to publicize tomorrow's big event: your grudge match with Screaming Mimi Hollander.

You understand why this bout has to happen, but there's nothing you dread more than squaring off with Mimi. At least your fan club is here to bolster your spirits. This has got to be more Gorgeous Girls than you have ever seen in one setting. More sizes, shapes, and colors, too: petite to Amazonian, boyish to zaftig, porcelain to bronze. One of the girls—long strawberry-blond hair, hooknose, and athletic build—stands a full head above the crowd, so she is the first to spot you and the photographer stepping out of the elevator. She taps the shoulder of the girl to her left and says something into her ear, which starts a game of telephone until all eyes are fixed on you.

This is why you hurried here, why you kept this morning's good-byes short and sweet. You don't just know this role—you relish it.

Even if you hadn't already met Vicky, you could have guessed that she would be the one holding the clipboard, commanding the brigade with the efficiency of a drill sergeant. Her acne is worse than you remember; she tried to tamp down the redness with pancake makeup to little success. When her attention is pointed toward you, she smiles and offers only the shyest of waves. This tugs at your heart. You so enjoyed how free she was with her affections last time you met. (Your fans don't often swoon.) The attention she has shown your character has been instrumental to your success, but more than that, it felt to you like friendship. It shouldn't, really, and if your life were richer, maybe it wouldn't. You had so looked forward to more of the same, not only from her but the other girls as well. Instead they follow Vicky's lead and keep their distance, acknowledging you only with smiles. And so, instead of the full embrace you imagined, you and Vicky share an awkward handshake. “It's good to see you again,” you tell her, an earnest truth despite your greeting, and she says, “You, too,” before she introduces you individually to each grateful girl while the photographer taps his foot.

The photographer wants to take the picture outside in front of the arena, beneath the marquee. His plan is to place you at the bottom step and pose your multiples behind you. It is late afternoon and the lighting is terrible, but he hopes to make up for this with a semiartful shot: ­Athena at the Parthenon, ascending into infinity. This works for you, so you and your blond army follow him to the corner of 14th and W.

You and Vicky bring up the rear, and as you walk, she gathers courage and begins conducting an unofficial interview. She is less concerned with wrestling and rivalry than she is with other, more trivial affairs, like where you shop. Other questions include
What was it like being on
I've Got a Secret
?
and
Is Spider McGee a good kisser?
You answer each one with patience and enthusiasm, slathering on the kayfabe for maximum effect. Eventually, you reach the arena. Vicky stares up at your name on the marquee, sighs, and says, “Your life sounds dreamy.”

You could go a lot of ways with this. You could avoid a response altogether. It isn't really a question, after all; it's a statement.
Your life sounds dreamy
.
Or you might test the waters of real friendship and let her in on the most surprising revelation of your transformation: this life is far from what you thought it would be. But you have been doing this long enough to understand that Vicky does not want reality. She has no desire to see the complicated young woman you are most of the time. Besides, she has gone to a lot of trouble. You owe her something, don't you? No, don't burden her with the truth. Don't tell her that your life is dreamy for only a couple of hours a day, at best. Don't tell her how much those hours cost you.

“Yeah,” you say. “It kind of is.”

The photographer claps his hands to get everyone's attention. “Okay, ladies,” he says. “I need to get a better look at you before I put you into spots. You know what that means.” When no one rushes to shed her outer layer, he snaps his fingers a couple of times. “Let's go, let's go. We're burning daylight.” After a collective startle, the girls brave the cold and their insecurities and take off their trench coats, revealing their swimsuit-clad figures.

First and foremost, the girls are human, and so their bodies have all the normal, reasonable deficits: old white stretch marks, new purple stretch marks, cellulite, knock-knees, bowlegs, flat feet, duck feet, legs like tree trunks, legs like twigs, crooked teeth, teeth smeared with red lipstick, droopy bosoms, imposing shelflike bosoms, nonexistent bosoms, downy chest and stomach hair, faint mustaches, hairy moles, birthmarks, jutted jaws, cleft chins, freckles, dark circles, back fat, front fat, unruly corkscrewed hair, flat limp hair, hair with split ends, too-short hair, and lots of platinum hair with dark-black roots. And because they are human and teenagers to boot, and because it is too cold to be standing around in a swimsuit, their shoulders hunch forward, their arms fold around chests and torsos, their heads drop.

I wish I could tell you that you aren't mentally cataloging all of the more unfortunate features or, at least, that you also register the plentiful number of exquisite ones: heart-shaped faces, perfectly set dark eyes, lovingly manicured nails, spotless complexions, huggable middles and caress-able curves, elegant noses, plump lips. I wish I could say that when you look at them, you see how they are all just as complicated as you. Instead, you come to this disappointing conclusion: The Gorgeous Girls are not terribly gorgeous.

At least you have the decency to keep this thought to yourself. The photographer is not nearly as delicate. “Oh no,” he says, under his breath but just barely. He lets the camera drop to his side. “No, no, no. This is
not
going to work.”

Vicky sidles up to you and the photographer, and you search her heavily made-up face, which is several shades darker than her rapidly goose-pimpling body, for signs that she has overheard him. If she has, she is keeping it to herself. “Are you going to arrange us, or should we just figure it out ourselves?”

“Hmmm,” he says, brain spinning, eyes wide and frightened. “I'm not sure yet, Miss—”

“Darnell. Vicky.”

“Vicky. I'm rethinking things. Now that I see all of you, you see. Hmmm. Is quantity the way to go? I wonder. I need to think. Here, let me start with Gwen.” He grabs you by the arm and leads you roughly, hurriedly to the initial step, where he wants you to stand. “Don't worry,” he says in a whisper. “There's no way I'm going to let all those dogs in the photograph.”

While your own thoughts haven't been much kinder, this strikes you as unnecessarily cruel. “Those
girls
went to a lot of trouble to be here.”

The man snorts. He lets the camera hang around his neck while he kneels to direct you into the stance he wants, and you comply, too shocked to do otherwise. “It's okay,” he says. “I'll be the bad guy.”

Before you can reply, he is on his way back toward the crowd, rubbing his hands together, apparently ready with his excuses. From your position, it is hard to hear just exactly what it is he tells the girl-huddle, but you make out
composition
and
essence
and
resolution
and
desirable,
and watch in horror while he handpicks five girls he finds suitable enough for the picture, whittling his imagined infinity down to a row of stunned bridesmaids.

The operative word here, Gwen, is
watch.
Despite your horror, you do nothing beyond standing, stony and silent, in your pose as the girls who didn't make the cut pick their trench coats out of the pile. Many of them—rattled and disappointed but still loyal—stay to watch the shoot; a dozen or so others pick up their purses and walk out. One of the selected girls shows her solidarity by exiting with this smaller group and loudly declaring the happenings
bullshit
and you a
goof
.
Another spectator, wiping her eyes with the heel of her hand, rethinks her loyalty and joins them. While the photographer leads the four remaining girls up the stairs to position them, the deserters cross back over W street, where the whole group of them are stopped by a woman whose face you can't see but whose shape you recognize instantly.

How convenient that Mimi should be passing by at just this time! What could she have
possibly
been doing here? She stops to speak to them, and the girls respond with angry animated motions, pointing back toward the arena, toward you.

This must be hard for you to watch—the fury and bruised esteem of your fans, not to mention the smug, self-righteous look you can just imagine on Mimi's face. But when you shift your gaze back to the thirty or so girls who stay, your eyes fall on an even more painful sight: Vicky.

You know all too well the rejection she is feeling. You should have protested. That's what a real champion would do, anyway. She wouldn't have just posed.

•    •    •

One night later, just before the match, you stand at the back of the arena awaiting the announcer's call. This has now become so routine that it sometimes borders on dull, but tonight, you have all the old jitters: cotton mouth, butterflies, goose pimples, etc. For the first time since your very first match, Mimi will be in the opposite corner. You hoped to speak to her before now, take her temperature, but she was too preoccupied with some activity in her dressing room. From the sound of it, there were multiple people in there with her. You don't know what that is about, or what kind of retribution she might have planned for you, and the anticipation is brutal. Making matters worse is this business with the Gorgeous Girls. Before the match, you sweet-talked Sal into upgrading their free tickets so they'd be closer to ringside. This is small compensation, to be sure, but you hoped it would salve any still-smarting wounds and lessen some of your guilt. Now, you are panicking. What if they don't come? What if the botched photo shoot has turned them all against you? What if you have to look down at a series of empty rows—ringside, no less!—all the while pretending nothing is out of the ordinary, keeping a silly grin on your face? Because you certainly can't make your fears known to your audience.

Costantini plastered cards with your image in every storefront in every working-class neighborhood in the city. For those who might have missed these, there was also the picture of you in today's paper, looking confident and queenly. Now, this dank, drafty area is teeming with fanatics who answered the call and have come to cheer you on. It hardly matters that you dread tonight's stroll down the aisle more than any since you ceased to be a taunted and maligned heel. You have a job to do.

And so, once you are summoned—
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the sweetheart of the ring, Gwen Davies!
—you step into the aisle and get to work. You cut a slow and gracious path through the outreached arms, the giddy smiles, the cardboard signs (
Sweetheart, Be Mine!
), the tokens of affection (single roses in cellophane), the unintelligible jumble of adoration:
love, dropkick, legs, gorgeous, pin, hold, face, touch, bombshell, win, love, love, love.
You answer your fans by squeezing their hands, mouthing
thank you
s silently but with exaggerated slowness, pretending not to see the flicking tongues or the hands cupping imaginary breasts, accepting the acceptable tokens, and pressing your lips to the ends of your fingers and blowing kisses at worthy targets—the man who holds both of his children aloft so they can see you through the crowd, the couple whose sign says they drove fifty miles to be here. Best of all, when you reach the front row, you find twenty-­odd Gorgeous Girls, Vicky included, elbowing one another, clasping hands, bouncing up and down, and making a satisfying amount of noise. What a relief; they are going to give you a second chance. Some of them are, at least. After you make your way into the ring, you point to the blond-haired, red-mouthed girls (
I see you!)
and quickly shed your robe, climb onto the turnbuckle closest to them, and stretch out your arms, welcoming them back into the fold with one large embrace:
Take me, I'm yours.

The noise dies down and the announcer, holding a microphone suspended from the rafters by a long black cord, summons your opponent—
Screaming Mimi Hollander!—
to the ring. Mimi appears in the aisle and marches past the revelers and their taunts, her head aloft, jaw set, eyes blank. This, of course, is not out of the ordinary. Here's the unusual part: she isn't alone. Shortly after Mimi appears, a group of women fall into step behind her and follow her through the crowd. There are eight of them, all dark-haired and clad in black suits.

Now you know what Mimi was up to in her dressing room, don't you, Gwen? She was schooling these girls. Those shuffles and furtive whispers were all part of Mimi's crash course in the art of the heel. Now, she is parading her pupils out as a supporting cast of evil sidekicks. The effect, you have to admit, is awe-worthy. Perhaps their heads are not held quite as high and mighty as their leader's, but they are still convincingly wicked: their fists resting defiantly on their hips, their mouths drawn closed into steely, resistant puckers. And that's not all they've learned. When the spectators direct their surly energy toward them, those insults, the same ones that would so easily weaken your resolve, pump them up. Chests inflate. Dark energy rises.