John Irving - Until I Find You

Emma slapped a collar tie-up on Mrs. Machado and snapped her neck forward, putting her into an illegal front headlock —without the arm. Emma dropped her weight on the back of Mrs. Machado’s head; with Emma’s forearm across her throat, Mrs. Machado couldn’t breathe.

Jack realized only then that Krung was there. The former Mr. Bangkok may have noticed the wrestling because Emma and Mrs. Machado had rolled off the mat, but Emma hadn’t let up with her choke hold. Mrs. Machado couldn’t breathe but her legs were still thrashing.

“Who’s the new girl?” Krung asked Chenko.

“She’s a fast learner, isn’t she?” Chenko said. Emma had hit three illegal moves in under ten seconds; it was hard to imagine a faster learner. No wonder she wanted to know the rules!

“Aren’t you going to stop it?” Krung asked the Ukrainian.

“In a minute,” Chenko said. Mrs. Machado was flat on her belly; her legs had almost stopped moving, but one foot was feebly kicking. She didn’t have a high-groin kick left in her.

“I guess this has gone far enough,” Chenko said to Jack. He knelt beside the wrestlers and put a three-quarter nelson on Emma. “You can’t believe how I had to crank on her to get her to let go of that headlock!” he would tell Pavel and Boris that afternoon when he introduced them to Jack’s new workout partner.

Mrs. Machado never said a word. By the time the defeated woman left the Bathurst Street gym, which was as soon as she was able to stand up and walk, her throat was so sore that she couldn’t speak. Emma did the talking. It may have been lost on Mrs. Machado when Emma called her “not exactly mail-order-bride material,” but she understood what Emma meant when Emma called herself “Jack’s only workout partner.” However this registered with Mrs. Machado, both Krung and Chenko were suitably impressed—albeit a trifle afraid for the boy.

Mr. Bangkok tried to interest Emma in a kickboxing class, but Emma said she would stick to the wrestling. “I only like kicking something when it’s on the ground,” she told Krung, who ultimately looked relieved, even grateful, that Emma was committed to the mat.

When Pavel and Boris came to the gym to wrestle that afternoon, Emma rolled around with them, too. Jack needed a break by that time. He had a mat burn on his cheek and a sore shoulder—Chenko had shown Emma a fireman’s carry, which she had a natural feeling for—and Jack was nursing his first cauliflower ear.

When Emma saw that Pavel and Boris had cauliflower ears that were almost as bad as Chenko’s, she insisted that Jack get his cauliflower ear fixed. It was news to Jack that one could fix a cauliflower ear, but although Chenko and the Minskies disapproved of “draining” cauliflower ears, they knew how.

“I’m sorry, baby cakes—this may hurt, but it would be criminal to let you grow up with ears like these poor guys. You’re gonna be too good-looking to ruin your prospects for the future with dog-turd ears.”

Jack could tell that Chenko and Pavel and Boris were offended. Their cauliflower ears were badges of honor, not dog turds! But Emma Oastler had made Jack’s future her business, and she was not to be denied.

A so-called cauliflower ear is caused by fluid; when the ear gets rubbed on the mat, or against your opponent’s face, it bleeds and swells. When the fluid hardens, you have a lump where you used to have an indentation. The trick is not to let the fluid harden. You drain it with a needle and a syringe. Then you take some gauze, dipped in wet plaster, and press it into the contours of the ear. When the plaster hardens, your ear can’t swell—it can’t keep filling with fluid. The original shape of the ear is retained.

“It’s a little uncomfortable,” Chenko forewarned Jack.

“It’s better than a sore penis, honey pie.” (Even the Minskies agreed with Emma about that.) So Jack went home with a gauze plaster on one ear and a mat burn oozing on the opposite cheek.

“Look at your Jackie, Alice,” Leslie Oastler said, when they were eating takeout that night. “Those thugs at the Bathurst Street gym are going to kill him.”

“It’s better than a sore penis,” Jack said.

“Not to mention the language those Russians are teaching him,” Mrs. Oastler said.

“Jack, I’ll ask you to watch your language,” his mother said.

The next night, Emma had a cauliflower ear. Jack and Emma were pretty proud of their matching gauze plasters. He’d caught her in a cross-face cradle, and while he was grinding his right temple against her left ear, she kicked out of the cradle and pinned him with a reverse half nelson.

“You can’t cradle someone who’s built like her, not if you’re built like you, ” Chenko told Jack.

True enough, but Jack knew that it was good for him to have a workout partner as tough as Emma Oastler. The wrestling turned out to be good for Emma, too. She lost eight pounds in a week. Jack knew that Boris and Pavel had impressed her—if not their ears, at least their diet. The Minskies were disciplined—not only their workouts, but what they ate. “You could have saved your money by sending me to the Bathurst Street gym instead of the fucking fat farm,” Emma told her mom.

“I’ll ask you to watch your language, too, young lady,” Mrs. Oastler said.

“Penis, penis, penis—” Jack chanted.

“That about covers it,” Leslie Oastler said.

“Go to your room, Jack,” his mom told him.

But Jack didn’t care. He wanted to say, “You’re making Emma be a miserable boarder and you’re sending me to fucking Maine, and you want us to watch our language !” Instead, he said, “Penis, penis, penis,” all the way up the stairs.

“That’s really mature, Jack!” his mother called.

“Don’t be angry with him, Alice—he’s just upset about going away to school,” Jack heard Leslie Oastler say.

“No shit—that’s fucking brilliant,” Emma said.

“Go to your room, Emma,” Mrs. Oastler told her.

“Enjoy washing the dishes!” Emma said as she stomped upstairs. (Emma was usually the dishwasher.)

Emma and Jack were workout partners in more ways than one. They had at last become true friends—in part because their mothers were separating them. With each mat burn, split lip, black eye, or cauliflower ear that they gave each other, Emma and Jack thoroughly convinced Alice and Mrs. Oastler that the contact between them—whatever it was—wasn’t sexual. Jack could get up in the middle of the night and go to Emma’s room and get into bed with her—or she could come to his room and get into bed with him. Their mothers said nothing.

The summer was almost over anyway. What did Alice and Leslie Oastler care if Emma and Jack beat each other up at the Bathurst Street gym all day? (Not that Jack ever “beat up” Emma, but he succeeded with a shot or two.)

“It’s just hormones, in Emma’s case,” Mrs. Oastler said. In Alice’s mind, Jack was still about the business of learning how to defend himself from boys.

In two weeks, Emma had lost twelve pounds—and it was clear that she would lose more. It wasn’t just the workouts; her eating habits had changed. She liked Chenko. “Everything but his ears.” With the exception of their ears, Emma liked Boris and Pavel, too.

When Jack lay next to Emma in her bed, or when she held him in her arms in his, it pained him to ask her who she was going to work out with—he meant after he had gone to Maine.

“Oh, I daresay I’ll find someone else I can beat the shit out of, baby cakes.”

Jack had learned how to kiss her and keep breathing, although the temptation to hold his breath until he fainted was strong. And Emma’s attention to the little guy never wavered; true to her word, his penis had healed. A combination of the moisturizer, which Emma continued to apply to the little guy—long after Jack could discern any visible need for it—and the welcome cessation of Mrs. Machado’s attention to his penis, which evidently had been excessive.