Free The Sweetheart by Angelina Mirabella Page B

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.
    â€œGood,” 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.
    â€œNot 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.
    â€¢Â Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â Â â€¢
    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