Take Me Through the Finish by Tom Ziemer

Take Me Through the Finish | Tom Ziemer

He’s having another meltdown.

I know I should stay. I can’t stay.

I try to calm him one last time, try to coax him into belly breathing with me, try to force his blaring nervous system into some semblance of order. It’s no use.

“If I have to stay here, I’ll die, DAD,” he wails, sounding more like a toddler than the 7-year-old he is.

I can’t always tell if his tears are genuine or forced, desperate attempts to manipulate.

I want to run my hands through his hair, the same wavy, auburn locks I had when I was a kid, feel his arms wrap around my back the way they do the few times a year he willingly hugs me.

I want to grab him, will his body to stillness, shut him up, tell him how spoiled he is.

It’s all so confusing sometimes, the pushes and pulls of parenthood—especially with my son. 

He’s introduced me to all sorts of new terms over these past few years: neurodivergent, executive functioning, stimming. I had already heard of autism, of course, had seen the ravings of the anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorists who decided their internet research taught them more than medical school. I’ve only got an associate’s degree, but I guess I’m smart enough to sniff out bullshit peddlers. Either that or they just remind me of my dad.

Right now, though, I have to get to my second job, the only one I truly care about. Or at least I tell myself I have to work; I don’t know if it’s work or an escape at this point.

“Kirby, if you calm down, I’ll get you a snack,” my mom says in an annoying sing-songy voice, as if she’s talking to a puppy.

“Bye, bud,” I say. “Wish me luck.”

He doesn’t, just looks at me with a tearful scowl.

I grab my suitcase, roll it down the hall, through the kitchen, and out the side door of our story-and-a-half house, the screen door bumping against my shoulder as I clumsily try to retract the bag’s handle.

I load the black bag, one that’s accompanied me through the methy river towns and cornfield oases of the Midwest, into the trunk of my Ford Taurus, climb into the driver’s seat, and pull on my cheap neon-green plastic sunglasses. I shake my head and let out an audible sigh as I turn the key in the ignition and the dependable six-cylinder engine growls to life.

Will this ever get easier?

Enough with my single-dad problems. Time to kick some ass.

…

This crowd hates me. Which means I’m doing my job.

They boo and holler insults, most of which I can’t make out. It’s background noise; I’m too busy concentrating on the 200-pound guy in royal blue spandex across from me, trying to remember our carefully planned choreography. We need to take these people on a ride, let them think they know what’s coming, then dash their hopes. Thrill them, then leave them wanting more, so they’ll come back to this dumpy old American Legion hall next month.

My opponent, a young guy named Fulton from Chicago, stumbles out of the corner, ducks my flailing arm and kicks me in the midsection. He’s supposed to grab my head around his bicep, run up the corner ropes, and flip backward, sending me crashing to the mat. Shiranui, they call it. Or Sliced Bread. Whichever you prefer, Fulton doesn’t get quite enough momentum launching off the turnbuckle, and it takes all the strength in my lower back to heave him over my head and sell the move.

“Thanks,” he mumbles under his breath after we slam onto the canvas and he covers me. I kick out at two, push him into the ref, a guy named Nick who’s been around Dairyland Wrestling since I started helping out back in high school. With Nick temporarily stunned in the corner, I drive my right arm between Fulton’s legs for a low blow that outrages the crowd. It’s rare that I win clean these days.

Then I hoist tonight’s challenger onto my back and swing him around, dropping him to meet my lifted knee face-first. Nick recovers to slide down next to us and make it official.

One. Two. Three.

Before I stand and gloat, I whisper in Fulton’s ear. “All good. It gets easier.”

Then I’m up, grinning through exhaustion that’s both real and embellished, Nick raising my left arm and then handing me my belt.

The crowd bays. Kids a few years older than my son shout at me, tell me I suck. I wish Kirby could be here, yelling along with them, but we tried that once; it ended with him screaming and throwing popcorn until my mother could carry him out the back door.

A 30-something hipster in the front row claps for me, recognition I covertly soak in while glaring at him with indignation. A bearded guy wearing a Sting T-shirt tells me to go fuck myself, which is just as much of a compliment.

I walk toward the entrance, turn back to face the crowd, take in all the boos, bask in them, even, and hold up my prize.

It’s good to be the champ.

…

“Dad! I want some breakfast. Do we have bacon?”

My son expects a hot breakfast every morning, not the cereal I grew up munching while my mom got herself ready for work. If it were up to him, I’d fry bacon day after day and he’d eat only meat like the carnivorous dinosaurs he obsesses over. And then he’d shit bricks into our toilet for me to unclog.

He seems to have no idea I’m scrambling to get us going each weekday, get him packed and dressed for school, and make myself look at least presentable for my day job. Maybe I secretly want him to live that carefree … I sure as hell didn’t as a kid.

My back aches from last night’s exertions, so I pop a couple ibuprofen that will, in turn, make my stomach sore because I haven’t had time to eat breakfast. I’ll wait to take my Prozac until after I’ve mowed down a breakfast sandwich from Kwik Trip.

Kirby’s frozen waffle pops up from the toaster, so I plop it onto a plate and drizzle syrup into the four wells at the center—only those, nowhere else—the way he likes it. He’s contentedly watching cartoons, a trance I should break to give him practice coming to get his own food. But I’m tired, physically and mentally, so I slide open the silverware drawer next to the sink and walk his plate into the living room. He’s standing two feet from the TV screen, remote in hand, bouncing on his toes.

“Breakfast, Kirb,” I say.

He takes the plate without looking away from the screen.

“Can I have some meat, Dad?” he asks while dropping into a seated position and spearing the whole waffle with his fork. It undoes my careful work with the syrup, which never seems to bother him once he takes possession of the waffle.

“Sorry, bud, we’re out of bacon and sausages. We can pick up some more after school.”

“I hate school,” he says reflexively.

I wince internally, because I know sitting in place and focusing for seven hours is even more taxing for him than it was for me. And yet what other choice do we have? He regularly babbles on about things he learns and imaginative scenarios he plays out with his buddy Jasper at recess.

“Remember what we say when someone brings us food?” I remind him before walking back into the kitchen to sip my coffee.

“Thanks,” he mumbles.

Twenty minutes later, after Kirby has brushed his teeth under my supervision and pulled on his preferred windpants (the non-scratchy ones) along with a Sonic the Hedgehog long-sleeve shirt, we’re out the door to run another weekday gauntlet.

I watch as he slowly buckles himself into his booster seat, strapped into the passenger’s side of the back so I can easily reach back and squeeze his leg while he’s absorbed in his own world. Most of the time, he just pulls his leg away.

We listen to rock music from the 90s and early 00s; it’s like a portal between our two worlds. He likes loud, heavy electric guitar riffs. Chris Cornell’s voice comes on the radio and I ask him if he knows who’s singing, trying to tap into a flash of knowledge he surprised me with at age 4.

“Dad, I just want to listen,” he says.

I back off, because I want to be the kind of dad who respects boundaries, even when it feels like I have to bounce between endless walls and constant harassment from him.

We drive along the riverfront, the reason Commerce became a town in the first place, now a neglected relic. If I ever make it big—or if one of the lottery tickets I buy every couple months hits the jackpot—maybe I’ll buy some of these buildings and revitalize them. Make it my thank you to my hometown, a more substantial display of gratitude than the performances I deliver at the Legion hall every month.

The trees are donning their fall costumes, putting on their own show for the people of Commerce. Kirby’s school is a 10-minute drive from our house, but I usually add a couple of minutes by taking this more scenic route. He should see the best version of his hometown. 

I park on the street, walk him to the classroom doors, and wave to his teacher, a 40-something woman with a dyed-blond pixie cut and tattoos on both arms. I wish my teachers had looked like her. Maybe I wouldn’t have felt like such an outcast, more interested in drawing than playing football and self-conscious about needing speech therapy, while struggling to focus for tests.

I want to go home and sleep, but I have to go sell car insurance.

…

My music hits, but I wait until Kevin Martin’s voice reaches the chorus to stalk through the curtains, much to the chagrin of our crowd. My reputation precedes me, just like it always does, and I find I enjoy that. It’s predictable.

Boos ring out. A kid Kirby’s age stretches to give me five, but I just scoff at him, don’t even bother to fake him out by extending my hand and pulling it back. As the top heel, I’m above that sort of playful shit. I don’t need to build heat with little antics like some bottom-of-the-card act.

They used to cheer me, but I got bored with that. It was too basic, too simple. It couldn’t deliver that same sense of thrill I felt my first time in a ring down at wrestling school in Rockford at age 19. Don’t get me wrong—taking my first bump in the ring knocked the wind out of me, and I had bruises on my torso from hitting the ropes that first week. But I also felt something come alive in me, unlike anything I’d ever experienced. Better than sex, the way the buzz lingered in my brain and body for hours afterward.

Now, almost 20 years later, this might be one of the last times I make this walk to the ring and step through the top and middle ropes.

Ever since Kirby’s formal diagnosis six months ago—confirming what we had all suspected for a few years—I’ve been steeling myself for the end. On one hand, I need this outlet more than ever. On the other, how can I devote so much time, so much energy elsewhere? What kind of dad would that make me?

“I don’t think you guys are ready for this,” my dad told me when he learned of the pregnancy. Considering his own failings as a father, it was a laughable take, even if I knew, at some level, he was right. Then again, who really is ready?

Kirby’s mother, apparently intent on proving my dad omniscient, skipped town six months into motherhood, to no one’s surprise but mine.

“I can’t just be a fucking cow!” she yelled at me on the night she packed up her Mazda and left to self-medicate and reconnect with her ex in Ohio. It’s subsequently dawned on me that the way she bellowed sounded a bit like the heifers on my uncle’s farm in Albany growing up, the ones my cousins and I gawked at while they mounted each other.

Tanya had shown up in town after I finished up at the tech school. She was a year older than me, the first girl that approached me at a bar (even if she was drunk), and the first one who sucked my dick. Never mind that she didn’t seem to remember having done so the next morning.

Our on-again, off-again relationship was a one-night stand I insisted on trying to drag across the better part of six years. She could be sweet, waking up and making me breakfast the morning after a show. But she’d tune out my ramblings about my long-term career plans because she never seemed to have any herself. And when she drank, she’d go hard and turn mean.

The mornings after, she’d sober up and cry, tell me how she needed me, how her dad had hit her while her mom just sat there, stoned. I’m ashamed of how my pride swelled on those occasions, eclipsing the hurt from her inebriated insults and the pity I felt for her. I was wanted, unlike how I felt most of the time, probably a vestige of my dad moving out when I was 8 and only periodically showing interest in me before or after.

I guess it’s the same feeling I experienced the first few times I got in the ring in front of a live crowd, the same feeling I’m chasing when I pull Kirby into a hug and he wriggles free.

Just in case these are the last chops I’ll deliver, I add a little extra oomph, stinging the babyface’s overtanned chest. I used to spend money I didn’t have on spray tans and hour-long sessions in cancer-causing tanning beds, an expense I’m grateful to Kirby for forcing me to cut. I don’t need that shit anymore; I’ll let my wrestling sell me more than my looks. Which is probably why I’m working this Legion hall month after month instead of professional arenas.

I made it there once, back in my earlier days on the indies, had a tryout match with one of the big promotions in Milwaukee that ended with a blown spot. Everyone involved knew it wasn’t on me, but the other guy already had a contract and a body I could only dream of—or kill myself pursuing—with pecs that bounced and traps that cascaded like mountains.

When I roll out of the way of a moonsault and then hoist tonight’s hero on my back to steal another win, I feel numb and distant, as if I’m watching the finish of our match from above the ring.

I’m done.

…

Kirby’s occupational therapist greets us as we walk into the cinderblock and metal building sitting amid an endless cluster of bland offices on the southern outskirts of town. She’s a cute brunette named Carly who is far more skilled—and patient—when it comes to working with kids like mine. I know it, and so does Kirby. A flash of warmth glows in his big blue eyes when he sees her, before his social awkwardness extinguishes it. He only mutters hello back to her.

“Any updates?” she asks, turning to me.

She’s suspiciously nice, too nice for me to even fantasize about her like the pervert I am. I suspect that, deep down, she sees me as a meathead, the costume I present to the world to hide my inner nerdiness and other insecurities.

“We’re still trying out some of your emotional regulation strategies,” I say, hoping my use of OT-speak will impress her, “but he tends to fight me on them.”

“He’s not the first to sniff them out,” she says with a smile. “We’ll keep practicing, won’t we, Kirby? You ready to head back?”

He nods his head as a slight grin creeps across his face, and they walk down the hallway. I turn and head out the door to drive to the gym down the street for a quick lift. Like the meathead I am.

It’s a happy coincidence, one of the few in my life, these weekly opportunities for us to each work on ourselves. I need every chance I can get to maintain my muscle mass—or at least slow my march toward the middle-aged dad bod that awaits me.

I should probably instead call Tyler, the head of our little regional promotion, to tell him I’m tapping out. We’ve known each other since high school, when we both played drums in the band. He was two grades above me, the older brother I never had, the type who let me hang around but resisted laughing at my jokes, as if it was his way of keeping me on the proper rung of our pecking order. He’d been helping his stepdad, Jeff, run shows since he was in middle school, back when Stone Cold was slamming beers and flipping birds and making every boy with a chip on his shoulder want to hit his gym teacher with a Stunner.

I worry he’ll try to convince me to stick it out, that it’s really the best move for both of us, that I need to wait and see what he’s got planned for next year. I’ll postpone that call until later, I tell myself, as I pull into the parking lot.

I alternate between squats and overhead presses, sipping my protein drink in between and scowling enough to scare anyone away from using my machines. It’s the one time I live my character in the outside world, and it’s purely for utility; I only have so much time to exercise and need to be efficient.

Next, it’s on to power cleans, triceps dips, Russian twists, shoulder hangs, a quick jump rope and everything else I can fit in before I hustle back to the OT clinic, where Kirby silently greets me and defers all details of his work to Carly. Maybe I should take him with me to the gym sometime, let him unleash some of the molten energy that seems to be bottled up inside him.

He hands me a drawing as we walk out to the car. It’s of a boy surrounded by lightning.

…

I’m dropping my title belt, Tyler informs me. It’s the perfect opening for me to tell him my news, but I hesitate.

“Gunner is ready, we’ve been building him up for six months now,” he says. “It’s his time.”

I nod and grip his hand.

“I get it, Ty. See you out there.”

Gunner and I put on one hell of a match. Give these people who shelled out $20 a pop their money’s worth. Soar off the top rope and slam each other down, wrench each other’s arms and trade kicks to the gut while they down hot dogs and Pabst Blue Ribbons.

I go for my finisher, but he slithers free, just like we planned. The crowd gasps. They can sense something is afoot, that this isn’t like any of my past dozen title defenses, that Gunner might just unseat me. We have them hoping despite themselves, believing our story even though they know it’s all rigged.

When I flop my body forward and flip over to sell Gunner’s piledriver and he hoists himself onto the top rope, the noise is building, waiting to explode. They crave this ending. I gaze up at the dingy, discolored ceiling, watch Gunner pump his body through a frog splash and brace myself for the impact that will end my reign. The fans yell along with the ref’s count, and the party is on.

As I stumble my way to the back, my disequilibrium is only partially contrived.

…

My mother is asleep in the armchair when I get home. Kirby wears her out, especially when her fibromyalgia flares up. I rely on her more than I should, even though she tries my nerves with her incessant worrying.

“Do you think you should try a dairy-free diet for him?” she used to ask every couple of months when Kirby was a toddler and still didn’t say many words beyond “Dudda.”

I pull an afghan over her snoring body and hope like hell she won’t wake up until I’m already in bed. I don’t want to talk, even if she could manage to push aside her judgments of my lifestyle to listen.

I quietly roll my bag into my room, change into fresh boxers, and tiptoe across the hall to Kirby’s room. He’s curled up sideways across his queen mattress, which I bought so I could fit next to him during marathon bedtimes reading enough Eric Carle books to sear the words into my memory. He’s easier to get down these days now that naps are a thing of the past and he runs himself into the ground with rapid-fire thoughts, if not physical exercise.

When I stoop down to triple-check that he’s breathing, his eyes pop open. He rarely wakes up in the middle of the night.

“Dad, did you win? Do you still have your belt?”

I wasn’t sure he even knew I was the champ, let alone felt any sense of attachment to my title. The morning I told him I’d won the belt, he didn’t even respond, just complained I was blocking his cartoons.

“Nope, buddy, it was time for me to give it up.”

Tears fill his eyes and his chin juts downward. 

“It’s OK, Kirb, it’s just someone else’s turn, that’s all,” I try to reassure him.

“You gotta get it back, Dad. Gotta be the champ.”

I brace myself for a late-night tantrum, but instead, he rolls over, curls his arm around his stuffed sloth, and closes his eyes. I crouch on the floor next to his bed for several minutes, scratching his back. His brow furrows, then relaxes, and a hint of a smile spreads from his lips up into his round cheeks. They were the first thing I noticed when the sonographer showed us the 3D ultrasound. My little bulldog.

I stand, pad back across the hall to my room, and gingerly ease myself into bed.

Maybe I’ll call Ty tomorrow.

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