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Lucinda Fleming was a tireless organizer of her class reunions at St. Hilda's--Jack's graduating class, had he been a girl. Maureen Yap, whose married name would remain a mystery, attended the reunions regularly--even in her nonreunion years. The Booth twins were regulars as well; they were always together. But Lucinda's Christmas letters never mentioned the twins' identical blanket-sucking sounds. (Jack would wonder if the Booths still made them.)
Caroline French was a no-show at the reunions. If Caroline still thumped her heels on occasion, she was doing it alone. Her adversarial twin, Gordon, was killed in a boating accident--not long after he left St. Hilda's, when Jack was still in school elsewhere. As Jack would discover, it's remarkable how you can miss people you barely knew--even those people you never especially liked.
Jack's last day of school, in the spring of 1975, was marked by the unusual occasion of both Emma Oastler and Mrs. McQuat accompanying him to the Lincoln Town Car, which Peewee had dutifully parked with the motor running at the Rosseter Road entrance. It had been Mrs. Wicksteed's dying wish that Peewee continue to be Jack's driver for the duration of the boy's time at St. Hilda's.
Emma and Jack slipped into the backseat of the Town Car as if their lives were not about to change. Peewee was in tears. His life was about to change--actually, upon Mrs. Wicksteed's death, and Lottie's abrupt departure for Prince Edward Island, it already had. The Gray Ghost leaned in the open window, her cool hand brushing Jack's cheek like a touch of winter in the burgeoning spring. "You may . . . write to me, Jack," Mrs. McQuat said. "In fact, I . . . recommend that you do so."
"Yes, Mrs. McQuat," the boy said. Peewee was still sobbing when the Town Car pulled away.
"You better write to me, too, baby cakes," Emma was saying.
"You just watch your ass, mon," Peewee blubbered. "You better grow eyes in the back of your head, just to keep watching your ass!"
Jack sat in the backseat, not talking--much as he had on the way to and from Mrs. Wicksteed's funeral. All the while, his mother kept saying that the summer ahead would be "no vacation." She said she was dedicating herself to the task of getting Jack ready to go away to school. "You have to learn how to deal with boys, Jack."
Alice, whose estimation of her son's lack of athletic prowess was exaggerated but largely true, sought the services of four men she had tattooed to instruct Jack in the manly art of self-defense. What form of self-defense he chose was up to him, his mom said.
Three of the tattooed men were Russians--one from Ukraine and two from Belarus. They were wrestlers. The fourth man was a Thai kickboxer, an ex-champion--the former Mr. Bangkok, whose fighting name was Krung. Mr. Bangkok and the wrestler from Ukraine--his name was Shevchenko, but Alice called him "Chenko"--were both older men, and bald. Krung had chevron-shaped blades tattooed on both cheeks, and Chenko had a snarling wolf tattooed on his bald pate. (When Chenko bowed to an opponent, there was the unfriendly wolf.)
"A Ukrainian tattoo, I guess," Alice told Jack, with evident distaste. Krung's facial blades were "a Thai thing," Alice said. Both men had broken hearts tattooed on their chests. Daughter Alice's work--no one had to tell Jack that.
The grungy old gym on Bathurst Street was marginally more frequented by kickboxers than by wrestlers. Blacks and Asians were the principal clientele, but there were a few Portuguese and Italians. The two boys from Belarus were young taxi drivers who'd been born in Minsk--"Minskies," Chenko called them. Boris Ginkevich and Pavel Markevich were sparsely tattooed, but they were serious wrestlers and Chenko was their coach and trainer.
Boris and Pavel had tattoos where some wrestlers like them--high on the back between the shoulder blades, so that they are visible above a wrestler's singlet. Boris had the Chinese character for luck, which Jack recognized as one of his mom's newer tattoos. Pavel had a tattoo of a surgical instrument (a tenaculum) between his shoulder blades--a slender, sharp-pointed hook with a handle. As Pavel explained to Jack, a tenaculum was mainly used for grasping and holding arteries.
The walls of the old gym were brightened by some of Daughter Alice's and the Chinaman's flash--one of the few places in Toronto where the Chinaman's tattoo parlor was advertised. Even the weight-training mirrors were outlined with Alice's broken hearts, and her Man's Ruin was on display in the men's locker room, but the gym's decor was dominated by Chinese characters and symbols. Jack recognized the character for longevity, and the five bats signifying the so-called five fortunes. And there was the Chinaman's signature scepter, the short sword symbolizing "everything as you wish."
Jack had told his mom that it was his favorite of the Chinaman's tattoos--she said, "Forget about it." The boy also liked the finger-shaped citron known as Buddha's Hand, which either Alice or the Chinaman had tattooed on Krung's thigh.
In the old gym, too, there were the Chinese characters for deer and the lucky number six--and the peony symbol, and a Chinese vase, and the carp leaping over the dragon's gate. The so-called dragon's gate is a waterfall, and the carp leaps upstream, over the waterfall; by so doing, it becomes a dragon. This was a full-back tattoo--it took days, sometimes weeks. Alice said that some people with full-back tattoos felt cold, but Tattoo Ole had argued with her on this point. Ole claimed that only people with full-body tattoos felt cold, and not all of them did. (According to Alice, most full-bodies felt cold.)
There was also a moon goddess in the Bathurst Street gym, and the so-called queen mother of the west--in Taoist legend, she has the power to confer immortality. And the Chinese character for double happiness, which Alice refused to tattoo on anyone; it was synonymous with marriage, which she no longer believed in.
The old gym itself had once been a rug store. The large display windows, which faced the Bathurst Street sidewalk, attracted the more curious of passersby. In the neighborhood, the former Mr. Bangkok's kickboxing classes were famous. Krung, despite the chevrons emblazoned on his cheeks and the Buddha's Hand on one thigh, was a popular teacher. There were kickboxing classes for all levels. Jack was enrolled in a beginner class, of course; given the boy's age and size, his only feasible sparring partners were women.
His mother had put him in Mr. Bangkok's able hands (more to the point, his able feet) so that Jack might learn to defend himself from bullies, which boys of a certain age--especially in an all-boys' school--are reputed to be. But Jack once more found himself in a situation where his most dangerous adversaries were older women. When the boy asked a Jamaican lady with a big bottom if she was acquainted with his friend Peewee, she said: "You keep your peewee to yourself, mon." Jack was relieved that she was too big to be his sparring partner.
He was paired instead with a Portuguese woman in her forties, Mrs. Machado, who informed him that her grown children had moved away, leaving her unprotected from the random assaults of her ex-husband. According to Mrs. Machado, she was forced to keep changing the locks on her apartment. Her ex-husband still held her accountable for her wifely duties, even though she was no longer his wife. Because he repeatedly returned to her apartment, either to force sex upon her or beat her up, Mrs. Machado was learning to fight.
For not dissimilar motives, the women in Krung's beginner class were particularly interested in mastering the high-groin kick. (In Jack's case, this meant that Mrs. Machado kicked him in the area of his chest and throat.) In the opinion of the former Mr. Bangkok, the high-groin kick was "impure"; yet Jack and the women in Krung's beginner class had reasons beyond the purity of kickboxing for mastering a high-groin maneuver. If he was going to be bullied by older boys, Jack was not opposed to learning a high-groin kick.
Mrs. Machado was a challenging sparring partner. A short, heavyset woman with coarse, glossy black hair and pendulous, low-slung breasts, she blocked most of the boy's kicks with her ample thighs, or by turning sideways to him and receiving his kicks with her wide hips. And as short as she was, Jack was shorter. He was four feet, eight inches tall and weighed seventy-five pounds. Mrs. Machado was five feet two and weighed one-fifty. She could kick a lot harder than he could.
"You'd be better off wrestling her," Chenko advised Jack. "You just don't want to end up underneath her."
Chenko respected Krung and the more skilled kickboxers in the gym, but he had contempt for the women in Krung's beginner class--Mrs. Machado included. She was a hard kicker, but she wasn't very agile. In Chenko's opinion, Mrs. Machado could never defend herself from her ex-husband by kicking him. She would have to cripple him with the first kick; if she missed her mark, the fight would be over. Chenko thought that Mrs. Machado would be better off learning to wrestle.
As for Jack's eventual self-defense, Chenko believed that the boy would have scant success defending himself--either kickboxing or wrestling--until he grew a few more inches and put on another fifty or seventy-five pounds. "I don't see that your mom is getting her money's worth yet," Chenko told Jack--this was when Jack and Mrs. Machado had been kicking each other for about a week.
But wasn't it Mrs. Oastler's money? (She was getting her money's worth, Jack suspected.) Leslie Oastler would drive him to the gym on Bathurst Street before his mother was out of bed in the morning. Jack was there all day. He kickboxed with Mrs. Machado, he hopped on one foot for five minutes at a time, he stretched and stretched--the objective being to kick consistently above your height at shoulder level without losing your balance.
Jack rolled out the mats with Chenko, and disinfected them, and wiped them dry. He brought clean towels, fresh water bottles, and oranges cut into quarters to the kickboxers and the wrestlers. When the Minskies came in the midafternoon, Jack sat at matside with Chenko and watched Boris and Pavel pummel each other. They were both about Mrs. Machado's weight, but lean--two very tough taxi drivers in their late twenties or early thirties. Chenko had the worst cauliflower ears, but Boris and Pavel had similar no-necks with little more than scar tissue for eyebrows, and the Minskies' ears were unmatched lumps of dough--barely more recognizable (as ears) than Chenko's.
The wrestling Jack learned was rudimentary--much of it defensive. A Russian arm-tie and front headlock, a three-quarter nelson and a cross-face cradle. On top, Boris had a mean cross-body ride; from the feet, Pavel had a good duck-under, a better arm-drag, and an outstanding ankle-pick. Chenko was a high-crotch man, but Boris and Pavel preferred an outside single-leg. Chenko liked the lateral drop, but only if your opponent was close to your height. There was no one Jack's height in the Bathurst Street gym. In wrestling, he had no actual opponent--he just drilled the moves repeatedly with Chenko, Pavel, and Boris.
Occasionally, after Mrs. Machado had landed her best high-groin kicks in the area of Jack's chest and throat--especially when she'd knocked his wind out--he could persuade her to "roll around" with him on the wrestling mat. She was the wrong height for the lateral drop, but Jack could ankle-pick her all day, which Mrs. Machado found frustrating--and when he managed to get her down on the mat, he could keep her down with a cross-body ride. She couldn't get away from him.
To be fair, Chenko taught Mrs. Machado a snap-down; when she snapped Jack down on all fours, he couldn't get away from her. (She would just lie on the boy with her seventy-five-pound weight advantage, breathing heavily.) "Ha!" she would cry, when she got him down--the exact same exclamation Mrs. Machado favored when she landed her best high-groin kicks.
