Free The Pub Across the Pond by Mary Carter Page B

coming out of her mouth, Carlene could feel herself tense up. Becca was crossing a line, using her condition to talk about Brendan, something that she had already agreed not to do. Brendan was a long time ago, Brendan was in the past, and she didn’t need anyone reminding her.
    â€œGood,” Becca said. “You deserved so much better.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œCan you imagine if you won the pub in Ireland, and you ran into him, like?”
    â€œWouldn’t that be something.” Seriously, condition or not, she was pushing it.
    â€œOr you fall in love with some other Irish man,” Becca said.
    â€œNever again,” Carlene said. “They are the best of men, they are the worst of men.”
    Becca held up her soggy sandwich. “I’ll eat to that,” she said.
    Carlene clinked her beer bottle with Becca’s corned beef. “Cheers,” she said.
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    Carlene worked at Jabs, her father’s training gym for professional boxers. Her father, Michael Rivers, was an ex-boxer himself. When he failed to rise to the ranks of a professional, he opened the gym—just a few months before he met Carlene’s mother. Growing up, Carlene spent more time at the gym than she did in their two-bedroom apartment above it. Now she managed the day-to-day operations. Her father had OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and instead of growing out of it, as he always promised he would, he was just getting worse. Compared to the over-orderly, sanitized world her father lived in, Carlene loved the smell, sounds, and sweat of the gym.
    She loved the squeak of tennis shoes on the linoleum floor, the patter of boxers’ feet, the grunts and groans accompanying their jabs. She loved the ropes that hung from the ceiling, thick twisted vines that she would swing on when no one was looking, she loved the punching bags she would pummel with her fists, she loved the practice ring she would crawl into when she was all alone, punching and jumping and ducking. She loved the sound of whistles being blown, and sweaty men with towels thrown over their muscular shoulders. She loved it all. Her motto in here was “let ’em see you sweat.” When it first opened, the gym was all men. Carlene used to sit on a stool near the ring, hold their towels, and suffer through teasing, hair ruffles, and play jabs. Her small fists would bunch up in imitation of theirs, and she’d strike at phantom enemies in the air.
    Carlene knew that had she grown up with her mother, she would have missed out on all of this. But Renee Rivers died from a weak heart when Carlene was only six. Carlene was raised in the gym, and she wouldn’t have missed it for the world. She wondered if it made her a horrible person to think such thoughts, but she just couldn’t imagine her mother allowing her to be around all those grown men, all the swearing, all the sweating, all the punching. She probably would have taken ballet or tap-dancing class with the other little girls her age, maybe only allowed an hour a week at the gym, such as Saturday afternoons when her mother needed some retail therapy, or her hair done, or a mani-pedi. At least that’s how Carlene always imagined it.
    Now there were plenty of women who trained at the gym. It had been Carlene’s idea. First, she suggested women’s boxing for fitness. She convinced the cutest boxer at the time to teach the class. It was a huge success. She added self-defense, then private boxing lessons, and then, slowly, the professional female boxers came to train. She’d doubled their membership. But on this day, she just didn’t feel like working.
    It had been one month since the Irish festival, and weighing in at a whopping ten pounds, twelve ounces, Shane Weinstein had been born the night before. Carlene had just come from the hospital. She’d never seen Becca so happy. Watching her friend hold her son in her arms was joyous. It also brought unexpected