John Irving - Until I Find You

The following morning, Emma woke Jack before her mom was up. (Jack’s mother was never up in the morning; Mrs. Oastler always drove him to the Bathurst Street gym.) The boy usually got up and fixed himself a bowl of cereal or a piece of toast, and he drank a glass of milk and a glass of orange juice—by which time Leslie had come downstairs and made herself some coffee.

Mrs. Oastler was friendly to Jack in the mornings, but she wasn’t talkative. She smoothed the boy’s hair or patted the back of his neck with her hand, and she made him a sandwich for his lunch, which also included an apple and some cookies—especially if Leslie wanted to keep the cookies away from Emma.

But on this mid-August morning, Jack woke up with the ceiling fan going full speed. He saw Emma stuffing a pair of her shorts and socks and a T-shirt into his gym bag, where he carried his wrestling gear. “We’re getting to the gym early today, baby cakes. I’m your new workout partner, from now on. But I want to go over some moves with Wolf-Head before we start.”

“With Chenko?” Jack asked her.

“Yeah, with Wolf-Head,” Emma said.

“But why do we have to be early?” he asked.

“Because I’m a big girl, honey pie. Big girls gotta warm up.”

“Oh.”

There was already a note on the kitchen table when they padded downstairs in their bare feet—they were trying to be as quiet as they could. Emma must have written the note the night before. ( “I’m taking Jack to the gym,” or a message to that effect.)

Emma and Jack walked to Forest Hill Village and had breakfast in a coffee shop on Spadina. He had a scone with raisins in it, and his usual glass of milk and glass of orange juice. Emma just had coffee, and a big bite of Jack’s scone.

They cut over to St. Clair and he pointed out the dirty, dark-brown apartment building where Mrs. Machado lived. He was a little afraid of how purposefully Emma kept walking; it wasn’t like her to not say anything. She seemed so angry that Jack thought he should tell her a nice story about Mrs. Machado—something sympathetic. To his shame, he basically liked Mrs. Machado. (He would recognize only later that this was part of the problem.)

“Mrs. Machado has to keep changing the locks on her apartment door, because her ex-husband keeps breaking in,” Jack told Emma.

“Did you see the new locks?” Emma asked.

Now that Jack thought about it, he hadn’t. “I can’t remember seeing any,” he said.

“Maybe there aren’t any new locks, baby cakes.”

It wasn’t the conversation he’d had in mind.

They were at the Bathurst Street gym so early that Krung hadn’t yet arrived. A couple of pretty good kickboxers were going at each other. Chenko was sitting on the rolled-up wrestling mats, drinking his coffee. “Jackie boy!” he said, when he saw Emma. “Did you bring your girlfriend?”

“I’m Jack’s new workout partner,” Emma told him. “Jack’s too young to have a girlfriend.”

Chenko stood up to shake Emma’s hand. The Ukrainian was in his early sixties—a little thick in the waist, but the muscles in his chest and arms were well-defined slabs, and he was very light on his feet for a man who weighed one-eighty or one-ninety and was only five feet ten.

“This is Emma,” Jack said to Chenko, who bowed his head to her when he shook her hand. Emma regarded the snarling wolf on Chenko’s bald pate as if it were a family pet. (Jack had told her all about it.)

“You must be five-eleven, Emma,” Chenko said.

“Five-eleven-and-a-half,” Emma told him. “But I’m still growing.”

Emma and Jack helped Chenko roll out the mats before they went to their respective locker rooms to change into their workout gear. Emma didn’t have any wrestling shoes, just socks. “I’ll find you some wrestling shoes, Emma,” Chenko said. “You’ll slip on the mat in those socks.”

“I don’t slip a whole lot,” Emma told him.

“What does she weigh, do you suppose?” Chenko whispered to Jack—the Ukrainian was finding Emma a pair of shoes—but Emma heard him.

“I weigh one-sixty-five, on a good day,” she answered.

“On a good day,” Chenko repeated, watching her put on the shoes.

“Maybe one -seventy- five today,” Emma said.

“You’re a little out of Jack’s weight class, Emma,” Chenko said.

“I’ll start with you,” Emma told Chenko. “You look big enough.”

“Well—” Chenko started to say, but Emma was out on the mat; she was already circling him.

“I suppose you should start by telling me the rules,” Emma said. “If there are any rules, I guess I should know them.”

“There are some rules, not many,” Chenko began. “You can’t poke your opponent in the eyes.”

“That’s too bad,” Emma said.

Chenko started with a little hand fighting—just grabbing Emma’s wrists and controlling her hands—but she got the idea and peeled his fingers off her wrists, grabbing his hands and wrists instead. “That’s the way,” Chenko said. “You seem to have a feeling for hand control. You just have to remember to grab a whole fistful of fingers at a time, at least three or four. No grabbing a thumb or a pinkie by itself and bending it.”

“Why not?” Emma asked.

“You can break someone’s finger that way,” Chenko told her. “It’s illegal. You have to grab a bunch of fingers.”

“There’s no biting, I suppose,” Emma said. (She sounded disappointed.)

“No, of course not!” Chenko said. “And no pulling hair, no grasping clothes. And no choke holds,” Chenko added.

“Show me a choke hold,” Emma said.

He put her in a front headlock, jerking her head down and holding the back of her neck against his chest with his forearm across her throat. “This is an illegal headlock,” Chenko explained, “because I don’t have your arm, too.” He incorporated one of Emma’s arms in the headlock; this kept Chenko’s forearm off her throat. “You headlock someone, you have to take his arm, too. You can’t wrap your arm around someone’s neck and just choke him.”

“That’s too bad,” Emma repeated.

Chenko showed her a proper stance and a pretty basic knee-pick. He showed her an underhook and a double-underhook, and how you get from a collar tie-up into a front headlock. “ With the arm,” Chenko made a point of repeating. He showed Emma a lateral drop; he even let her do a lateral drop on him. (Jack could tell that Chenko landed a little harder than he expected, with all of Emma’s weight on him.) “You’ve got good—” Chenko started to say; then he stopped. He was pointing at the middle of her body.

“Hips?” Emma said.

“Good hips, yes,” Chenko said. “Your hips are the strongest part of your body.”

“I always thought so,” Emma replied.

They were down on the mat—Chenko was showing Emma an arm-bar—when Jack noticed that Mrs. Machado had come out on the mat in her workout gear. She was just stretching, but he could tell she had her eye on Emma. “Who ees the beeg girl, dahleen?” Mrs. Machado asked him.

Jack was as tongue-tied as he was in any dream; he couldn’t speak. Emma was still rolling around on the mat with Chenko. “Mrs. Machado is molesting Jack,” Emma told the Ukrainian. “She made his little penis sore.” Chenko had rolled into a sitting position; he was staring at Jack and Mrs. Machado. Emma was already on her feet and walking toward them.

“Jack, did you tell thees beeg girl our secret ?” Mrs. Machado asked.

It was no contest, Chenko would tell Boris and Pavel later. Emma poked Mrs. Machado in the eyes, in both her eyes. Mrs. Machado cried out in pain and covered her face with her hands. Emma grabbed the pinkie on Mrs. Machado’s right hand and bent it back, breaking it. The finger stood up at a right angle from the back of her hand. Mrs. Machado screamed as if she’d been stabbed.