"How do I look?" she asked Cate doing a quick twirl in front of her.
"Beautiful, Mamma!" Cate squealed clapping her hands.
"Time to get packed, little lady," Marie said as she began to hustle around the room and pack up their sparse belongings. They had spent the last six nights in a series of cheap motels across the country all paid for in cash. Marie was tired of the scratchy towels and dirty bathrooms and strange noises at all hours. She didn't just want a place to crash; she wanted a home where she and Cate could really settle down. She was hoping the Harksburg Home could be that place, a place to hide and recover and figure out what her life would be like now.
Chapter Three
"Put a shirt on! You know how I hate those tattoos! Your body is God's temple and I think the good Lord knows how he wants it to look. How are you going to feel when you're at the gates of heaven and you've covered the body he gave you in tattoos?"
Axel grumbled under his breath as he pulled a black t-shirt over his head and pulled it down. "Happy?" Axel asked as he sat down at the table across from his aging mother. "I mean, I did get into heaven after all, which I was not expecting."
"You watch your mouth. That's God we're talking about," his mother said as she set a plate down in front of him. Scrambled eggs, hash, bacon, beans, and coffee, it was an old-fashioned Irish breakfast. The smell of the freshly cooked food wafted up into his nose making his mouth water. The delicious food his mother prepared for him almost made the lectures worth it. She sat down across the table from him with just a cup of coffee in front of her.
"Thanks for breakfast, Ma," Axel said. "It's delicious."
"My sweet boy," she said. "You always did have a good appetite, even as a baby. I never had any problem getting you to finish your meals." Mrs. Connelly had been beautiful back in her day. Her age had taken some of it, but she was still poised and strong. Her lined and wrinkled face still held a smile easily and she kept her hair set and permed with weekly appointments with the hairdresser. She kept her house clean and open, refusing to let an "old lady" smell fester. "What do you think?" she asked holding up a satin boxer's robe. It was red on the outside with blue lining on the inside. She was stitching his name in gold thread on the back in large elegant cursive letters. So far she had his first name and first three letters of their last done already.
"It's beautiful. The letters are big enough, the lines straight and even; it's a masterpiece," Axel said. He could see his mom preen a little. She took a lot of pride in her craft. Axel could have sent away to have the lettering done – it would have been completed faster – but his mother liked doing it, and he liked wearing it. She had lettered all of his MMA gear personally and he considered all of those pieces good luck.
"It'll cover up those horrible tattoos," she said shaking her head at him.
"They're art, Mom," Axel argued. "The one on my left bicep is your maiden name!" he shouted as he pointed to the four-leaf clover with his mother's name tattooed in dark calligraphy along the stem. He had full tattoo sleeves on both arms that went all the way down to his hands and up his neck. His chest and torso were covered, as well. He couldn't get enough of them. He liked to get a tattoo to commemorate every win. Major matches won, dozens of Irish knots, the crest of his mother's family, names of the people he had loved, all total he had spent over two hundred hours in the chair to get all of his tattoos done. His body was a temple, all right, but it was a temple to Axel, a monument to his skill and power in the ring.
"I never asked you to do that," she said shaking her head.
"I know," Axel answered.
"You know, if you had a girlfriend she could do this for you. Wouldn't that be nice? A sweetheart to sew your robes for you?"
"Mom, women don't really do that kind of thing anymore," he said as he took a big bite of bacon and eggs and washed it down with some coffee.
"They just don't know how. I could teach them. It's not too hard," she replied with a wave of her hand. "Will you look at the second drawer over there? It's been sticking."
His breakfast finished, Axel stood up and put his plate in the sink and then leaned over the drawer. He tugged on it and felt the wheel catch. He quickly pulled the drawer out and grabbed a screwdriver. Reaching into the cabinetry, he loosened the wheel inside until it fell into his hand. It was coated in about seventy year's worth of dust and grit. He washed it and replaced it, opening and closing the drawer a few times to make sure it was fixed.
The house was ancient. He had offered her another one, a nice condo in town with a pool and a full maid service. He promised he could help her pay for it, but Mrs. Connolly refused. She wasn't that type of woman. She had worked her whole life and raised Axel herself. She didn't belong in some fancy condo with a bunch of rich folk. So, instead, Axel spent his weekends at his childhood home fixing drawers and shutters that had been installed a lifetime ago.
It would have been easier if he had fond memories from his childhood. But Axel wasn't so lucky. The only time he could remember having money as a child was when his father had been alive. But Mr. Connelly had been a real son of bitch. The only good memories that existed were the rare days when he and his mother managed to get away from his father and have fun on their own. But those days were few and far between.
The old man had died of a heart attack when Axel was ten. He passed out right on the kitchen floor. He left them less than nothing. He left them debt. Both Axel and his mother had gone to work, she as a cleaning lady for some of the richer folks in town and Axel wherever he could. There was never enough of anything. All the money went to bills. Renting a movie was a treat. They knew all the ways there was to stretch a dollar. They had let the house go during that time. Maintenance and repairs had been ignored or just patched up, as they couldn't afford to do much else.
But now Axel was doing well and he was determined to make sure his mom had it just as good as he did. She deserved it. Over the last few years he had fixed up the house, repaired the roof and the cracked cement patio, ripped up the old carpet and put in new hardwood flooring. He put in central air and heating and had the whole place repainted. It was practically a brand new house. That was what he told himself anyway. This was a new house with none of the bad memories of the old.
Now his mother was starting with the grandmother talk. He was only twenty-seven and already he was getting the Irish guilt. But Axel had no interest in having a kid or a steady girlfriend. He liked getting to do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. He never had to ask permission or check in. If he wanted to stay out late, he did. If he wanted to go home with the first hot girl he saw, he did that, too. He couldn't imagine why anyone would get hung up on one woman when there were so many out there.
"Is it gonna be ready in two months?" Axel asked referring to his robe.
"Is that when the big fight is?" his mother asked warily.
"It's the Northeast Supreme Belt. It's a very big fight. It's the big fight, Mom. If I win it I am guaranteed my sponsors for another year, plus five hundred thousand dollars in prize money. I need my new lucky robe if I'm going to win."
His mother shook her head and reached for the robe. "I wish you would choose a different career," she said. "I worry too much about you to enjoy any of this," she said gesturing to the house. "What if something happens to you? What will I do then?"
"Nothing is going to happen and I'm not having this conversation with you again. MMA fighting is my career. I'm not going to do anything else. You don't have to worry. I'm good at it. Nothing is going to happen." He knew she wasn't listening. He had given a different version of this speech dozens of times for the last ten years. If it hadn't stuck yet, it probably never would.
He walked towards his childhood bedroom. The dark hallway was covered in wood paneling and there were no windows and only one light bulb in the far corner by the door to the attic. Underneath that bulb was a picture of his late father. His face was grey and jowly and he looked stern under an ancient brown fedora.
"Bastard," Axel said to the framed picture. His mother refused to take it down, but one of these days Axel himself was going to rip it from the wall. He was glad the old man had died early. Even though he and his mom didn't have a lot it was still much better with Mr. Connelly gone. Once it was just the two of them, they were allowed to watch whatever they wanted on TV and they could laugh as loud as they wanted without having to worry about waking anyone up. Given the choice, Axel would have chosen to starve rather than have his father back.