Vern’s gym was a big open thing with gray carpet and cinderblock walls. A stage rose out of the middle, the kind for TV wrestling, where guys throw each other into the ropes and fake-punch each other’s faces. Beyond it a couple of men were lifting some free weights, and off to the side of them a huge man was sitting in a folding chair that contained half his ass. He turned around to look at us as we came in, and then he got up and walked toward us, his face shadowed under a baseball cap, his eyes large and shining behind thick glasses.
“You interested in training?” he said. He seemed hopeful.
“Not exactly,” I said.
“If you wanna work out I’m not doing that no more. I’m just training guys for wrestling.”
“Actually I’m looking for a place to learn Sumo. I saw the picture of Hakuho on your website.”
“Picture of who?”
“Hakuho. He’s a famous Sumo wrestler and he’s on your website.”
“I forgot—haven’t even looked at my own damn website.”
“That’s what I was interested in, Sumo.”
“Oh, right.” He pulled a ring of keys out of his pocket and trudged across the gym, motioning me and Pill to follow, so we did, though at that point I was ready to bolt for the front door, to slip out the way we came in. I felt so stupid. What was I thinking, that this would be a Sumo training center? In Chicago? I wasn’t thinking, clearly. I needed to get out of this situation, but the guy was unlocking a door and wading into a closet that was full of weights, mats, and old wrestling promo posters strewn across the floor. He navigated his way through it and reached toward the wall and pulled out something large and flesh-colored—inflatable Sumo suits. Pill gasped.
“I’ve seen those! They look like soooo much fun!” She jumped and landed on a promo poster and slipped, almost going down, but she righted herself.
“Forty bucks an hour,” he said. “Take em with you or you can use em here if you want—the stage is free for a bit.”
“Yes, yes, yes!” Pill shouted.
“I’m sorry, Mr.---” I said.
“Vern.”
“Vern. I’m sorry. I wasn’t looking to rent Sumo suits, I was actually interested in the sport itself. In learning it and training.”
“You wanna learn to be a Sumo wrestler?”
“Yeah.”
“I think you gotta go to Japan for that.”
“So we aren’t going to use them?” Pill said. The corners of her mouth were crusted with powdered sugar.
“I have to watch our money.”
“But you said we’d do something fun today. You promised!”
“And we will, kiddo. We’ll hit a park.”
“Parks are stupid! I want to do the Sumo suits. Please, Sam.”
“I said no.”
She scowled at me, and I was worried she would pitch a tantrum that ended with her flailing on the ground and me laying on top of her, smothering her until she calmed down. That happened. A spring in her brain would snap loose, and she’d descend into this animal-like chaos, where she was flailing and screaming and you couldn’t possibly talk her down, couldn’t bribe or threaten or scold her, all you could do was smother her and keep her from doing real damage. I was afraid we were at that point because she’d been a little frazzled with lack of sleep and the commotion from yesterday, with leaving home and then the accident and the dog. I could see it building behind her eyes. But then she glanced at Vern, who was watching her, and she dialed it back—thank God, she could—and she crossed her arms over her chest, stomped on my foot, and stormed out of the closet.
“Got a temper on her,” Vern said.
“She needs to burn off some energy. Tell you what, maybe we will rent those suits. I think it’s what she needs right now, and it will give me a breather. If the offer is still there.” A part of me was worried he’d say no, your sister is too unhinged even for my gym, which in retrospect feels irrational, but that’s the way it was. I always felt like people were judging us because of the way she acted, or like they didn’t want us around. But Vern said yeah, of course we could still rent the suits, and he helped Pill onto the stage and taught her how to put the suit on, then he went back and joined the guys who were lifting weights.
Pill spent a decent chunk of time bouncing around on the stage, throwing herself into the ropes and falling back. That gave me a chance to sit in a chair down on the floor and think and research stuff on my phone that I hadn’t bothered to consider, like how you actually went about becoming a Sumo wrestler. Vern was right—I would have to go to Japan, which meant I’d need to learn Japanese. I would also need to save tons of money because in the early stages of a Sumo career, they didn’t pay you. You paid them. It would be a massive undertaking, but on that morning, sitting in Vern’s gym with Pill bouncing around on the stage above me, it seemed possible. I wasn’t afraid to work hard, to throw everything I had in pursuit of a goal, and in my naivete, I thought that would be enough. I thought I was in control of my future. I didn’t know any better.
“Saaaam?” Pill had stopped moving and was flat on her back.
“What’s the matter, can’t you get up?”
“I want you to come do this with me. It’s no fun by myself.”
The last thing I wanted was to climb into a Sumo suit and bounce around on some stage. I had already shelled out forty bucks. Pill was draining me in ways I hadn’t expected, which is crazy because I knew before leaving home what she was like, how much she needed. Roll with it, I told myself. So I put on the stupid sumo suit, which smelled like a tire, and as I flipped the inflation switch, and the whole thing started to expand, making a sad whirring sound. If I had been describing the moment for an AP English assignment, I would have said the suit rose around me like a cloud of unfulfilled dreams. Mrs. Konrardy would have loved that.
Pill and I went to opposite corners and charged each other, and I hit her so hard she flew back in a high arc across the stage, rotating mid-flight and coming down on her belly, her head snapping back. I was worried I had hurt her because she just lay there at first, high-centered on that huge belly. But then the machine-gun laugh came out of her, floating across the gym, and I knew she was fine.
Later, as we were climbing out of the suits, Vern came over.
“So you’re not interested in wrestling? Because they’d sign you like that.” He snapped his chunky fingers. I had seen pro wrestling on TV and I couldn’t believe people were into it. I didn’t understand the appeal. But I didn’t want to say that, to insult everything he was about.
“Sorry, no,” I said. “But thanks anyway.”
He looked down at Pill, at her red, shining face, her hair compressed on her head. “Looks like you got a good workout in,” he said.
“I think I’m probably really good at this,” she said. “But I’m tired!”
“I bet you are,” Vern said. “Tell you what. No one is using these Sumo suits. I’ve rented them maybe twice in all the years I’ve had them. Come back anytime and just use em for free. May as well.” He took off his baseball cap and smoothed back a few threads of hair that traversed the shining top of his head before joining a braid going down his back. Then he replaced the cap and shrugged. “For what it’s worth,” he said.
“I’m not sure what we’re doing the next few days, but thanks—that’s really cool of you,” I said. And he shrugged again. As we left, Pill turned around and called out, “See you tomorrow, Vern!” Like it was already decided.
9. April Storm Makes and Appearance
Cookie Dough came tearing through the yard in her fat girl run, her ears flapping and her scraggly tail doing circles. She stopped at Vern’s feet and wagged up at him, thrilled as always to have him home. He bent over, pulled a dried leaf out of the fur behind her ears.
“You and the leaf pile,” he said. She wagged and smiled up at him like he was paying her a compliment.
They climbed the steps together and went into the porch, where a mountain of mail was waiting, forming a peak under the mail slot. He looked over the pieces on the top, the ones that had come today. Nothing worth looking at, except maybe one letter from the bank, which he tore open. They were trying to sell him life insurance again, which didn’t make much sense for someone like him with no kids and a hunk of money just sitting in his account. He threw the letter on top of the pile, which he would take care of later, he decided. Scoop it all up and toss it in the recycling. But right now his back was hurting and he was tired and addled in his thinking, and he wanted to go inside. Those kids from earlier today. Something about them worried him, though he couldn’t say what.
Cookie Dough sat beside him and huffed.
“You hungry?” he said. She stood and wagged her whole body and led him to the kitchen. He poured some food into her bowl and she started in, crunching loudly, bits of kibble falling to the floor because her teeth weren’t good and she kept looking around as she ate, trying to keep an eye on him as he moved about the kitchen. He got his soda and bag of cheese and caramel corn and took it into the living room. He dropped into the couch, his back complaining. He needed to see a doctor about it, but ten to one they’d just throw him a bottle of pills, which was their solution for everything these days. The truth is he needed to lose the gut, that was the thing. He needed to stop with the popcorn and soda and eat some real food. Easier said than done, he thought, as he tore into the bag of popcorn and settled back into the sofa, turning on the TV. Cookie Dough came running in and launched herself into the air, landing on the couch beside him and flopping onto her back. She was mostly brown, but the fur on her chest was white and soft, and he gave it a good rub. He felt peaceful, and he put his food down and settled deeper into the sofa. He could feel a nap coming on. But then the doorbell rang and Cookie Dough jumped off the couch and spun her wheels across the floor, barking like they were under attack and it was down to her to alert the troops. He pushed himself up and went out onto the porch. A woman was standing on the top step, peering at him through the screen door and shading her eyes with her hand. A homeless person, from the looks of her. But then he realized it was April Storm, though this was a different April. She was not the beautiful young woman he remembered, but someone thin and ragged with terrible browned teeth.
“What happened to you?” he said.
“Can I come in?”
He didn’t like the idea. You don’t disappear for two years and then just show up one day. But she was hugging herself and shivering and he felt sorry for her, so he let her in and offered up some ginger ale and saltines, which she didn’t want. She stood there in his living room, still holding her elbows. Cookie Dough sniffed her feet and legs and she stepped back, trying to get away.
“Don’t like dogs?” Vern asked. She shook her head. “Cookie Dough, back off,” he said. Cookie Dough came and sat at his feet and huffed loudly, offended.
April tossed her hair over her shoulder. It was stringy and tangled. It used to flow down her back, pieces of it lifting as she stood on the top rope of the stage, waiting to jump into the match. She would leap and fly into the ring Wonder Woman-like, one foot aimed at her opponent. Of all the wrestlers he’d worked with, she was the most agile and gifted. But also the most fragile. One night in Dallas, she was thrown too hard by a woman named Marla Mayhem, and she landed wrong. Her body flew up against the ropes but her head hit the floor at a bad angle, and she ended up with a busted vertebra in her neck and a torn-up shoulder, which they never could fix completely, even after two surgeries. She kept trying to get the doctors to do a third surgery, but they said no, it would be too risky, so they just gave her a load of pills and she disappeared.
“I need some money,” she said.
“You’re not working?”
She touched her shoulder and shook her head, as if that was an explanation. But it wasn’t, really. Because she was standing there in front of him. She could do something if she wanted. But her eyes were sunken and dark, desperate in a way that made him want to just give her something so she’d leave, bad as that sounds. He took out his wallet and handed her a twenty.
“Get yourself some food,” he said. Then he had an idea, one he’d probably end up regretting: “Come to the gym tomorrow. I’ll find you a job that’ll be okay for your shoulder. Fifteen bucks an hour.”
She stared at the twenty, not moving at first. Then she took it and crumpled it in her hand and walked out. She didn’t bother to thank him or even say goodbye. She just left, which was annoying but also a relief—something wasn’t right with her, and truth be told, he was glad she was gone.
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