Atlas and I

Sitting at the edge of the double mattress that used to be my mother’s before she moved from the big house on Wilder Avenue, I take a deep breath through my diaphragm and breathe out to the count of five. I don’t know how people gather up enough breath to breathe out to ten. After doing this three times, I’m still not relaxed, but I go ahead anyhow, pressing each number Garth scribbled on a yellow sticky note at Strictly Fitness. A woman answers. “And who should I tell him called?” she says, her voice as slippery as aluminum slide on the hottest day in summer. “His training partner,” I say and tell her all about how I had wanted to compete by the time I was forty and here I am at forty-eight, how I’d noticed Garth training so focused doing his deads and clean and jerks, and I thought maybe with the right training partner . . .  And she tells me when she looks at him, really looks, she can see beneath his extra weight, as if he’s stepping out of his clothes—he has such presence. “He talks like an overnight bag so jam-packed you can’t close the zipper. I’ll be in the bathroom and he’s standing outside the door, going on about death and capital punishment and serial killers and the morbidly obese. He just likes to talk.  But not to anyone, you have to be special in his life, if you know what I mean. I have my wedding dress all ready, even though it’s eight months away—I put it in a clear garment bag so I can see it as soon as I open my closet door. That’s why Garth and I train in the afternoon. We’re going to lose twenty pounds each. We made a pact.”

Like Jonestown I think, but I tell her she’ll do it, that I can hear the love and determination in her voice. By the time I get off the phone, I’m hopping mad, but I’m hooked, plain and simple, which is why the following day I’m back for our morning workout, showing off my two-plates-a-side squats. Between sets, Garth tries to clear the books.
“I don’t want to pollute my workout,” I say. “And I hate scenes.”
“Then just listen and that’ll be it.”
“Actually that won’t be it, but go ahead. And don’t talk loudly.” Which I don’t have to worry about, he talks in such a low voice I sometimes wonder if my hearing is going like my grandmother on my mother’s side. My grandmother on my father’s side developed cataracts and went stone blind.

He says she’s not attractive anymore to him with the weight she’d slapped on her mid-section and behind, and I say, “But she was, wasn’t she?” I don’t believe him because he once asked me if I had a bit extra on my ass and how about some cellulite. I had never really thought about cellulite, but I said just a minute I’ll take a look, put the receiver down, paused for twenty seconds which I counted out, one Mississippi, and hoping it was the answer he was looking for, said yes, as a matter of fact I did.
“Come on. You want me to show you how strong you really are? You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever met, except for psycho Crystal, now she’s going to kill someone some day—come on, you want to do three fifteen, one rep?”

I’m grinning and pacing in the black Tyrolean hiking boots I wear when I train, especially on leg days. “Nah—three fifteen? No way. Three fifteen, you say? There was this old geezer at Gold’s downtown, Lou, yeah Lou, said he was the head of the power lifting foundation or he used to be. I wanted to crack one and a quarter each side, so he put two plates a side. I’d walk in, lift the bar off the rack and put it back. He had me do that ten times.”
“I know the deal. Nope—you’re going to do a full squat, one rep.”
“I am?” Grinning—this is a wild thrill. This is better than sex any day. Just like old Arnold said in “Pumping Iron.”
“So what I want you to do is wrap up, put on your belt, although I can’t understand why you do that stuff, never mind, and get in the cage, but not right up to the bar.”

He slaps on the three plates a side. I wrap up my knees with my wide white elastic wraps the way John showed me a decade earlier: twice around under the knee and then diagonally across in an “X” and then tuck under. I used to have wraps with Velcro, but they were stolen, and not at a tough gym either, but one of the little high-class gyms I was visiting for the hell of it and swore I’d never go to again. So here I fucking am, five feet one-half inch tall, one hundred and fifty-five pounds moderately lean, and I’m closing my eyes, breathing in and out slowly and deeply.
“I don’t see any grey smoke,” I say.
“Never mind the grey smoke,” he says. “Just breathe and see yourself going in and lifting off the weight and it’s light, stepping back, doing the squat, the whole thing.”
I close my eyes.
“And quit shaking your head,” he says.
I see myself do the lift; it sure as hell isn’t easy, but I don’t bottom out because I hear John telling me, “Through the floor, through the floor and stand up. Stand up.”
“OK,” I say.
“Now go in.”
I walk in. Two steps and I’m there. I walk into the bar so my neck is under the pad in the centre. I look side to side—three plates a side—I don’t grin. I adjust my stance, shoulder width, toes slightly out; I look at my eyes in the mirror; I let out a deep grunt and lift. Steady myself. Walk back slowly. Too fast and I’ll lose my balance. Again, getting my stance, just right. Garth steps up behind me and put his flat hand on each side of my belt.
“Ready?” I say.
“Let’s do it.”
I’m feeling this incredible weight on my back and my spine is like an accordion and I’m thinking what the hell am I doing. But I’m there with this weight and I am so proud, I picture myself going down and no way is it easy to stand up, but I lift out of the bottom, I’m on my way—
“Wait. I got to tell you something,” he says.
“What?” I say, getting all jumpy.
“Did I ever tell you the one about the guy—”
“Rack it,” I hiss, walking into the rack so I can put the bar back.

First I unravel my wraps. Second I fling off my belt. Third I face Garth.
“That’s it.” I say. “We’re finished.”
“I was just joking,” he says and smiles. Garth smiles. “Look I saw Arnold doing that to Franco on the bench. I thought it would be funny.”
“Funny? I’m there with my all-time-one-rep-max that took me ten years to work up to? Ten years do you hear me? And you tell me a fucking joke?
“I just saw Arnold—”
“I’m not Arnold and I’m not Franco and that were three plates a side. And how many plates do you do?”
“Five aside.”
“And you weigh over four hundred pounds?”

He tells me he’s really sorry and he’s not smiling anymore. “Do it for yourself,” he says. He says, “You’re here now and you can do it. This is your moment. Even if you’re finished with me, do this one for yourself.”
“OK,” I say. “But if you pull any tricks, we are absolutely finished, do you understand.”
“Yes, yes. Just look at those three plates a side! Isn’t any woman nor most men in this gym who can touch you.”
“I’m going to do this squat and I’m never going to do it again, because it’s fucking heavy. But I’m doing it for my own record. And don’t spot me unless I need it, but stay with me, you hear? Stay with me the whole time.”

For the second time I prepare and this time I know what the weight of world on my shoulders feels like. And I, in my red and black spandex builder’s tights, am Atlas. Gender is irrelevant. Everything is still. Walk back, walk back. Garth behind me. Hands on belt. Feet planted. Oh well, oh well.
“OK.”
Holy shit. Control down, feet through the floor through the floor and stand up, stand up. Don’t help don’t help. Stay with me. Stay. With. Me. Standing up. Standing. Stood. Stood up!
“Rack it,” he says.
Walk in. Rack it.
“Just a minute. Gimme a minute.”

Turn around and walk across the gym with my wraps still on. “Yes!” I say. “Yes!” Arms up in the air, fists and all. See Ed, tanned builder from The Workout now at Strictly. “315! Squat. Just did 315!” “Saw it! Congratulations.” Mike, forty-five long-haired, balding on top, trains the frizzy Italian blond. “Hey Mike. Did ya see that man? 3 fucking fifteen squat. Full range no spot. Cool, eh?” I punch him in the shoulder. He laughs. Mike likes me. Then little Mike also trainer, dating the Russian Jewish ex-stripper. Back to Garth.
“Had to do that. Sorry.”
“No problem.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“Told you,” he says.
“Yeah, you did, didn’t you?”
And that’s what memories are made of.