Flexing Muscles

Elisabeth Harrahy

My dad taught me how to fistfight the day before I started kindergarten. “You need to know how to defend yourself. I won’t be there to watch out for ya, Annie.” He showed me how to stand, my right foot out front. “Turn your body to the side a little. Your left side. No, left. Left. Here,” he said, grabbing my small shoulders, twisting my torso. “Now put up your dukes. No, keep your thumbs outside. You always want your thumb on the outside of your fist. Then no one can break it off.”

I opened my right hand and stared at the palm, tried to imagine what it would look like with no thumb.

He closed it back up. Raised it high. Then he lifted my other fist, not quite as high as the first. Still holding it, he explained, “Now you’ll protect your face with this one, see. Hold it out a few inches, but always in front of your face. Never let your guard down.” He grabbed the other one, still up in the air, and said, “This is the one you jab with.” He pulled it toward him until it brushed his bare belly, just above his belt buckle. “Go ahead, hit me.”

I looked up at his face, not sure he meant it.

“Hit me.”  He was crouched over and scrunching his top lip, squinting his eyes. “Come on, hit me.  I can take it.”

With all that squinting, I wondered for a second if he was afraid he couldn’t take it. I lunged out and hit him, just above his belly button.

He laughed. “I said hit me.  Hit me like you’re mad.”

I swung again, this time wide, and got him in his ribs. He barely winced.

“Now pretend like someone’s beating up on your little brother and you’re really mad.”

I looked up at him again. He was still wearing his mean face. I was wearing my “rock ‘em, sock ‘em” sweatshirt that was too small for me, and I could feel my face growing hot. I forgot about the imaginary bully, took one step forward and swung my right fist as hard as I could into his thigh, my knuckles scraping across his jeans. I took a deep breath and a step back, then lifted my fists again in anticipation.

“Ouch!” He laughed. “That was pretty good.” He straightened up, gently slapped the back of my head, then went and stood in front of the TV screen. Speed Racer was on, I could hear the rev of the Mach 5. After a minute, my dad turned and looked at me, still standing at the ready.  “You can let your guard down, Annie,” he said. “Thatta girl. Now go get me a beer.”

Learning how and when to put up your dukes was as important to our family as eating fried squid on holidays was to the Giordanos across the street. Every family has its traditions. The Chatzopoulos family wore black armbands for a whole year when a family member died, and the Kaminskis shot fireworks off their porch after the birth of each of their nine children. Our Murphy family tradition: flexing muscles. Well, that and drinking beer. And singing anything by The Clancy Brothers.

Sometimes I stood in front of the mirror with no shirt on and both arms up, flexing my biceps. My elementary school friends figured I got them from gymnastics. But I knew where I really got them—from my dad. His were so big, men used to walk up to him at parties and say, “Wanna arm wrestle?” My dad was cool—he’d just take another sip of his beer and slowly turn his head to look them in the eye. “Tell you what,” he’d say, “I’ll even give you two out of three.” By the end of the night, his pockets would be full of cash, and he’d be calling everyone over to watch him lift the ass end of a car up off the ground.

It bothered him that my little brother Sean wasn’t interested in all that stuff. Not arm wrestling. Not cars. Not football. The Degenhardt brothers, who lived down the road, sensed this too. Like dogs that can pick out the one in the crowd who’s afraid. They’d be waiting for Sean when he left our apartment in the row house to walk to the corner store to buy cigarettes for our mom. Sometimes they followed him, one step behind. Other times, they gave him a shove. Or tripped him. One time, they got him so flustered, he took a swing at the bigger Degenhardt, Vinny. But that was what they wanted. By the time I found him, Sean was lying in the street, staring up at the sky, with blood on his teeth and tear stains on his cheeks. The next time they went after him, I was there, and I jumped on Vinny’s back. I punched him in the ear and bit him in the neck while the younger Degenhardt, Joey, held my brother down. After tossing me over a fence, Vinny gave Sean a one-two punch and took off. Joey laughed, then ran after his brother.

My dad kept trying to give Sean the same lesson in fist-fighting he’d given me, but he couldn’t get Sean to fight back. Each lesson ended the same way, with my dad shaking his head and muttering something about his son taking after his mother. Sean would run back to his room, to all the books about far-away places our mother had given him.

*

But Sean was a Murphy, and I remember the day he met that destiny head on.  It was Valentine’s Day, and we were at a dance in the basement of our middle school. I was slow dancing with a sweet but boring boy, keeping an eye on a more desirable boy leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets and a toothpick sticking out of his mouth, when I suddenly heard a commotion at the back of the room.  It was a raucous sound us kids immediately associated with a fight breaking out—which could only mean one thing: my brother was getting the tar kicked out of him. I freed myself from the boring boy and headed for the back of the room, wishing I was wearing pants and not a stupid skirt, but after pushing and squeezing my way through the crowd, I stopped short—for there was my brother, straddled across the chest of Vinny Degenhardt, flexing muscles I’d somehow missed the development of as he placed his hands on the floor on either side of Vinny’s bloodied head. He leaned in close with the meanest look I’d ever seen on his face and said, “Alright, I’m gonna let you up now. Be cool. Or I’ll have to kick the shit out of you again.”

He looked taller to me as we made our way home in the dark, after my English teacher, Ms. Manning, kicked him out of the dance. “Where’d you get those?” I asked. “Where’d you get those muscles?”

He stopped walking, let out a sigh and said, “From Dad,” in a voice that signaled resignation.

“Yeah, well. You sure showed Vinny. That was awesome!”

He didn’t seem to hear me. He spoke with urgency, saying, “But I’m not like him. I’m gonna make something of myself.”

“Yeah? What are you going to do?”

“I’m gonna be an archeologist.”

“An archeologist?” I laughed. “For real?”

He turned and began walking again, picking up speed like he was in a hurry to get going on his dream right then and there. I had to run to keep up with him. I knew he meant it. I saw him watch those archaeology shows on PBS and read the dusty National Geographics our grandmother stuffed under her couch. Noticed how he’d stare for long periods of time at the maps tucked inside. Try as I might though, I just couldn’t picture him searching for artifacts in the middle of some desert in Egypt. I couldn’t picture him getting away from this crappy city in the middle of Massachusetts.

I grabbed his arm. “Hey, wait. Wait up for a minute,” I said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. You surprised me, that’s all.” But it was too late. He saw the truth on my face.

*

A few years later, after our mom had a stroke and died in the middle of a grocery store, Sean gave up on high school and started working with our dad for the Vitelli Construction Company. I quit gymnastics and took over household chores, like making sure dinner was ready when they got back from work and that there were clean clothes for them to put on the next day. Finishing my homework meant staying up later than them, most nights. Sometimes I liked to imagine my mom sitting at the kitchen table with me while I worked, the silence broken only by the scritch of my pencil. Other times I couldn’t bear the thought of her and wouldn’t look up until I was done. Once, after I finished writing a report for my biology class on the protective nature of mother elephants, I walked to the other side of the table, collapsed on the floor, and cried myself to sleep with my head on the seat of her chair.

My brother and dad left for work about the same time I left for school each day.  Sometimes they gave me a ride in the truck. One morning, as I sat between them, I announced that I’d ordered a subscription to National Geographic for my brother’s birthday. (Actually, Ms. Manning ordered it for me after I gave her the twelve dollars in coins I’d been saving in my plastic dog bank.) “I’m telling you now because the first issue probably won’t be here in time.”

“National Geographic? Really?” my dad said. “Aren’t you a little old to be getting off looking at naked Africans, Sean?”

I looked down at my lap and poked all the fingernails of my right hand into the palm of my left. Sean didn’t say anything. He just stared out the window as we passed row after row of three-deckers. When we reached the high school, he hopped out of the truck, and as I got down and slung my book bag over my shoulder, he said, “Thanks, Annie.”

*

Two years after I graduated from high school, my brother drove to my university to tell me he was going to be a father. He looked so thrilled, standing there with the biggest grin I ever saw on his face. I gave him a hug and said we should go celebrate, but inside, I felt anxious. As we drove from my dorm to a small local bar off campus, I couldn’t help thinking that this news was a recipe for disaster. He told me over beers that he planned to marry this girl, Greta. That he really loved her.

“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I made journeyman, and she has a studio apartment where we’ll live. Everything’s gonna work out.”

He got up to order another round, a shot of vodka for me this time, and I watched him walk away from our booth. I was overwhelmed by my never-ending urge to take care of him, and the realization that I was powerless to do so. At the bar, a man wearing a cowboy hat and boots tried to muscle his way in between my brother and a pretty woman on a barstool. I watched as my brother turned, puffed out his chest, and looked at the man. My brother’s lips were tight, his eyes partly squinted, and there was an air of danger about him. The young man stepped back with a nod, and I had a flashback to that middle school dance.

When my brother returned and sat down across from me, I said, “Hey, you remember that night when we got kicked out of that dance in middle school? What made you go after Vinny like that?”

He looked at me, his eyebrows raised, like it was something long forgotten. He took a swig of beer, set his mug down, wrapped his hand around his chin and said, “First off, you didn’t get kicked out, I did. You just chose to come with me. And second, well, I don’t really know.”  He paused. “I don’t think Vinny was harassing me any more than usual. I just remember feeling this surge of heat in my head. And before I knew it, I was decking him on the floor. After that, I felt relieved.”

I nodded and downed my shot of vodka. I’d become aware, on recent visits home, that people knew not to mess with my brother. My high school friend, Colleen, told me that she and her boyfriend had watched my brother go up to a guy in Casey’s Bar, for what seemed like no good reason, and shout, “What the hell are you looking at?” When the guy answered, “Nothing much,” my brother put him in a headlock and dragged him outside. Ten minutes later, he came back in, brushed his hands off, and asked the bartender for another beer.

*

About a year after my brother married Greta, he showed up at my dorm room, drunk, at three in the morning to tell me he’d come home early from work and found Greta on the living room floor with some guy, the baby sleeping in a basket beside them. The guy was wearing nothing but a dress shirt, and Greta, nothing but the guy’s tie. Sean told me it was his fault for not making enough money to keep her happy.

I didn’t know what to say, except, “It’s not your fault.”

He started to cry. “I miss Mom,” he said, lifting the corner of his flannel shirt to wipe his eyes.

*

After that, Sean went back to living with our dad. They moved into an apartment in an old three-decker on the side of the city where most of their job sites were located.

I visited them less frequently, burying myself in my schoolwork. But when my dad called the morning of St. Patrick’s Day and asked me to come celebrate the “holiest of holy days” with him and my brother, I didn’t say no.

We met at Breen’s Bar, and after a couple beers, I got up to put a quarter in the juke box so I could hear “The Irish Rover”, while my dad showed off his “still hard-as-the-ground-in-winter” biceps. I watched him from a distance as he smiled and pointed to his arm to anyone close enough to see. No one asked him to arm wrestle.

I hopped back up on my stool, pushed my empty beer mug aside, pulled a bottle of prescription Prilosec from my purse and ordered a vodka chaser.

My dad lowered his arm and took a step in my direction. “What are those pills for? You having problems at school?”

“No,” I said. “School’s fine.” I wanted to tell him about the most recent scholarship I’d been awarded, and how one of my biology professors thought I should apply to graduate school, but I figured it wasn’t a good time. Not that there was ever a good time. But especially not now. Not with my brother rolling up his sleeve to show off the result of lugging brick and stone for years. “I take them to calm my stomach,” I said. “That’s all.”

My dad reached out and squeezed Sean’s massive arm but said nothing. Instead, he tapped my bicep as he took another swig of beer. I peeled off my wool cardigan, but my father turned back to my brother and said, “You drink too much. You show up at the job site late. When the hell are you gonna get your own place? You have a kid, for Christ’s sake. It’s time you grow up and start acting like a man.”

I downed another shot of vodka. Truth was, my brother had grown to be just like my dad.  That’s where my dad’s disgust came from—recognition. The only difference was that my brother showed up late in the morning after drinking the night before, and my dad left early to go drinking before dinner.

The downward slide had begun earlier for my brother than for my dad though. Kind of like genetic anticipation, when symptoms of a hereditary disease develop at a successively earlier age than in previous generations. I wondered about this, even as I pulled up my right sleeve to show off my own muscle. This didn’t bode well for my young nephew, I thought—Sean the third.

“I can still kick your ass,” my dad continued, moving closer to my brother, who was sitting on a barstool. “I can still kick anyone’s ass.”

Sean dismissed him with a “Yup. Okay, Dad.”

“What, you think I can’t? You don’t fuckin’ believe me?” Now he was jamming his forefinger into my brother’s chest, just below his collarbone.

Billy, the bartender, yelled, “Take it outside,” pointing first at my dad, and then to the door. I looked around the room. The seven or eight people there were all staring at us.

My dad backed away from my brother then motioned with his head for Sean to follow. I slid down off my stool, grabbed my sweater and purse, and walked out behind them.

I figured we’d all walk to their apartment across the street and head upstairs, maybe have another drink, but when we got to the front porch, my dad started in on my brother again. He called him a loser. “You think you’re so tough,” he said. “You’re not so tough. You just remember where you got that from. I’m the master.” He flexed his left bicep again, pointed at it with his right forefinger. He was in my brother’s face. Backing him up against the railing. “I could take you out in two seconds,” he said.

I slid myself between the two of them. “Stop it!” I yelled. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

My brother put his hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay, Annie. Step aside,” he said. “You wanna fight, old man?”

“Come on. Don’t do this,” I said to my dad, my hand on his chest. But my dad was rushing toward my brother as if I wasn’t there, squashing me between them as he grabbed him by the throat. I tried to push my dad back, but it was no use. I tried stomping on his foot, but I don’t think he felt it. He was still gripping my brother’s neck, but Sean shoved all three of us back with tremendous force. I thought maybe this time one of them might actually kill the other. I felt a surge of heat in my head, and I swung my right arm up to punch my dad as hard as I could in the nose. Not exactly the way he’d taught me, but effective, nonetheless. Blood started to leak out of one of his nostrils. He looked down at me with surprise, released my brother, then picked me up by my shoulders and tossed me. My feet were in the air when the back of my head hit a porch post. I slid to the ground, stunned.

I squeezed my eyes shut and started praying, trying to remember the words.  Hail Mary, full of grace, mother of God, mother of God— but all that came to mind was my own mother. My mother holding my hair back while I vomited on the floor beside my bed. My mother gently dabbing mercurochrome on Sean’s skinned knee. Putting dinner on our table. Lying on the floor of the grocery store. Looking like plastic inside her casket.

When I opened my eyes, Sean was stumbling down the steps and away from the porch. My dad watched him until he disappeared into the darkness down the road. Then, as though he’d suddenly remembered me, he turned and offered his hand, lifting me up off the ground in one swift motion. He was smiling. “That was some punch you landed, kiddo.” He wiped the blood from his nose and mouth with the back of his hand.

I cupped the egg-sized lump on the back of my head. My heart was still racing, and I felt nauseous. I was worried about my brother. I didn’t know where he would sleep.

My dad went inside. Before following him, I glanced across the street at the windows of the bar and the apartments above. I wondered what the brawl must have looked like to other people. I wondered why no one had called the police.

When I woke up in the morning, I could hear my dad and brother joking about their boss’s latest girlfriend and then discussing what had to be done at their job site. I walked toward the kitchen and leaned against the worn trim in the doorway with my arms folded across my chest. Relieved that everything seemed alright between them, I watched as they drank their coffee and pored over some kind of blueprint.

Sean looked up. “You okay, Annie?”

I stood up straight and strode to the cabinet to grab a mug. “Yes,” I said—flexing the kind of muscles no one can see.