The Tournament

by Angelo Kontos

  Ken did his best to inform his team about New York. They had layered goal scoring from each line, and at least three of their defencemen liked to jump into the offensive rush. They were a physical team with so-so goaltending and average defence, but they found ways to win.

  New York’s biggest weapon was dubbed the “Wayne Gretzky” of The Tournament. His first name also happened to be Wayne – Wayne Vanstone. A sure thing to make the pros, right before he was about to be drafted Vanstone suffered a severe abdominal strain that took years to completely heal. By the time it did, it was too late and no team would look his way.

  For a guy in his late thirties Vanstone looked great on the ice, and he wore #99 on his jersey to honour Wayne Gretzky, his hockey hero. His teammates even called him “The Best One” – a play on Gretzky’s famous nickname “The Great One.”

  COLE

  Good evening hockey fans from coast to coast and to our neighbours south of the border in the United States. Cole Foster here again with you live from just outside the Big Apple, New York City! Tonight, Toronto takes on Wayne Vanstone and New York, who are currently sitting first in the standings. Toronto is coming off two big wins. Can they make it three in a row?

  Lately, Eddie Mark has been nearly impossible to take down on faceoffs, and here he is ready for another draw…

  The puck drops, Mark wins it again, and here we go!

  The first few minutes of the game featured furious skating by both teams and quick line changes. Toronto and New York took turns skating up the ice with the puck, making one or two crisp passes and taking good, hard shots on net. New York’s goalie and Matt Richards of Toronto both looked solid early on.

  Alex was moving faster than he had in any of the previous games and he started two rushes that resulted in legitimate scoring chances. Vanstone of New York and Toronto’s Mike Hill both looked dangerous.

  For most of that opening period the teams looked to be evenly matched – close in hits, shots on goal and scoring chances. Both sides were disciplined and avoided taking foolish penalties.

  Going into the first intermission, the game was scoreless. As the teams retreated to their dressing rooms, the boisterous fans roared support for New York in what was turning out to be a very entertaining game. Reporter Brooks Edwards sat in the crowd and felt the energy in the building. He almost forgot he was watching a bunch of washed-up losers. The game’s quick pace and momentum continued as the second period got underway.

  They are just hammering each other, folks! Vanstone has the puck for New York. He skates by one player…and by another…Davis has him lined up for a hit!…and misses! Vanstone drops it back…and it’s intercepted by Eddie Mark…he hits Hill with a pass!

  Hill’s in on goal…takes a shot…SCORES!!! One to nothing Toronto.

  As the second period wore on, both teams kept up the intense pace of shots, hits and numerous battles for loose pucks. Toronto enjoyed a clear edge in goaltending and faceoffs as Matt and Eddie were outstanding. Eddie also managed to neutralize the lethal playmaking skills of Vanstone, smothering him like a fire blanket and anticipating many of his brilliant passes.

  However, on the next play Vanstone stepped on Eddie’s stick. This caused Vanstone to fall, and the referee’s hand went up to call a Toronto penalty. Eddie groaned.

  With Toronto’s best penalty-killing forward and born-again faceoff specialist in the penalty box, New York controlled the play. Taking advantage of the extra space, Vanstone moved toward the net. He then made what appeared to be a blind, backhanded pass that met an uncovered New York forward as he came around the back of the Toronto net. It was perfectly timed. The forward tipped the puck in easily and New York was on the board.

  The game was tied 1–1, and that would be it for two periods.

  In the dressing room, Alex re-taped part of his stick and looked over at Isaac, whose face lacked colour.

  “You going to make it?” Alex asked.

  “Yeah, baby,” Isaac replied in a soft, unconvincing voice. He looked like he was going to pass out as he took sips from his sports water bottle.

  When the third period was underway, Ken saw that New York was double-shifting Vanstone. Ken responded by double shifting Mike up front and Alex back on defence. The crowd was buzzing as Alex finished a check on Vanstone before being taken out himself by New York’s top defenceman Marty Reed, who had come in from the point to make the hit. Hornsby had warned his players that in addition to being a terrific player, Marty Reed was a tough guy who often rode shotgun with Vanstone on the ice to protect him.

  A similar play occurred about a minute later. This time Reed came in and knocked Barry Davis away from Vanstone who then moved right in and put a beautiful deke on Matt. The Cat still made an amazing save, but as he was sprawled out Vanstone flipped his own rebound over the helpless Toronto netminder to give New York the lead for the first time in the game.

  Now with less than five minutes to go and Toronto in desperate need of a goal, Ken turned to Isaac on the bench.

  “Can you go again?” Ken asked.

  “Yeah, man,” Isaac replied as he spat down at his feet. “I can go.”

  With about two and a half minutes left in regulation time, Matt put his head down and skated to the bench as fast as he could. Mike leaped over the boards and raced down to the New York zone as the sixth attacker. The Toronto net was empty. Eddie managed to kick the puck to his stick before passing it to Mike who was coming in like a freight train.

  Mike was winding up to take a big shot when three New York players threw themselves at him. As he brought his windup back down, he directed the puck across the slot past two New York players and through the feet of Marty Reed. Isaac anticipated the puck and as soon as he saw it coming from in between Reed’s skates, he calibrated himself and wired a one-timer past the New York goalie.

  SCORE!!!! I-S-A-A-C B-A-N-I-O-N! On an unbelievable pass from Mike Hill…ties the game!

  Toronto’s bench jumped up and down celebrating the goal. Alex put his arm around Isaac and guided him to the bench.

  “Atta boy,” Alex said. “Don’t throw up on my skates.”

  After a relatively uneventful and carefully played overtime, the game ended in a tie. In the dressing room, Ken told his players that it was by far their most complete team effort thus far.

  Their record with eight games remaining in the round robin was 2–3–2.

  Isaac sat in his stall and felt like he could not possibly move. His equipment was still on when Ken walked by and tapped him on the helmet in appreciation of his effort. Isaac managed to smile before ripping his helmet off just in time to throw up in it.

  40.

  Alex knew they were losing. Diana and the doctors were right. All these con artists on the internet promising miracle cures were simply taking advantage of sick people and their vulnerable families to make money.

  It was excruciating to see his mother like this. The more she deteriorated, the more Alex felt like there really could not be a God. If there were, how could this be happening to her? Why could she not be given a few more years to see grandchildren? To travel? To give him an opportunity to pamper her a little?

  Alex fell asleep thinking angry thoughts before all hell broke loose in the middle of the night.

  At first, he thought that he was having a bad dream again. He heard moaning and tried turning over on the living room couch. The moaning continued and then he heard his name in a high-pitched shriek.

  Alex did not register his feet touching the floor, but within a few seconds he was in his mother’s room. He turned on a light and saw that she’d tried to get out of the bed but didn’t make it. One of her swollen legs was touching the ground while the other was still up on the bed, leaving her body half twisted.

  “Mom? What’s wrong?” Alex asked frantically as he lifted her back up.

  His mother grunted. Alex looked at her face and saw that her eyes, completely jaundiced, were not focused. He raced back to the living room and threw on a s
hirt, pants and shoes before grabbing his car keys and running back to his mother, who was falling out of the bed again.

  “Jesus, Mom!”

  Alex covered his mother with a blanket. As quickly as he could, he carried her outside to his car and put her in the passenger seat. She was unable to keep herself up and he had to fasten her seatbelt for her.

  “Mom! Come on, stay with me!”

  For someone paranoid about security, Alex forgot to lock the door to the house as he jumped behind the steering wheel and floored it all the way to the hospital. He decided that if a police officer tried to pull him over he wouldn’t stop.

  “Mom! Stay with me, okay?” Alex begged.

  His mother responded to the sound of his voice and turned her head to face him. She looked like a zombie and Alex knew he would never be able to forget that image for the rest of his life. He took one hand off the wheel and squeezed her hand. In one of the final tender moments they would share together, Alex felt her squeeze back.

  He pulled his car into the emergency drop-off zone and screeched to a halt. Two nurses were outside drinking coffee when Alex ran out of his car and pleaded for them to help him.

  The nurses caught a glimpse of Alex’s mother as he opened the passenger door. One of them ran inside the hospital while the other tried to communicate with his mother and prepare her to be moved from the car.

  The nurse that ran in was back quickly with a wheelchair. Alex lifted his mother into the chair and the nurses wheeled her inside.

  “Is this your mother?” the nurse asked.

  “Yes,” Alex answered. “She has cancer.”

  One of the nurses rushed Alex’s mother right into a wing of the emergency room while the other one stepped in front of him.

  “What’s your name?” the nurse asked.

  “Alex Bucco. My mother’s name is Maria,” Alex answered and tried to get past her.

  The nurse put a hand up to stop him, and a security guard who was nearby approached.

  “Alex, listen to me for a second,” she said. “Your mother looks very sick. Let us get her comfortable and then we’ll come get you straight away. Okay?”

  “I think she’s in pain. Can you stop her pain?”

  “We’re going to take care of your mother. Okay, Alex?”

  “Is Dr. Cross working?”

  Another nurse stepped out of the triage station and came over.

  “Hi, Alex. Diana’s not working tonight,” she said.

  This nurse who knew Alex guided him gently by his arm to

  a seat in the waiting area. A moment later she returned with a small cup of coffee. Alex looked up at her and nodded thanks as he took it. He pulled out his phone and texted Diana.

  My mother…hospital…not good. Plz come.

  Ten minutes passed. No response. Then twenty…still nothing. Alex went to the nurses’ station every so often for the next hour demanding to see his mother. He was finally warned by security to stop or he would be escorted out.

  After an eternity, a nurse finally came and got him. As he walked past the various patient stalls in the emergency wing, he heard a plethora of unpleasant sounds.

  He saw a woman being restrained who was yelling someone’s name at the top of her lungs.

  A teenage boy lay in a bed wearing a baseball uniform with one of his knees elevated in a brace.

  A middle-aged woman was wandering up and down the hallway yanking at her hair and talking to herself.

  Just past this woman, Alex saw Diana standing there waiting. She was dressed in her regular clothes and she looked tired. Diana had obviously come in response to Alex’s pleas, despite not replying to his text.

  “Alex,” Diana began quietly. “Your mother is very sick.”

  “I know.”

  “Listen to me, okay? She needs a different kind of care now.”

  “Whatever it is, I can do it at home.”

  “Alex, she’s not going home.”

  “Well, when can she go home?”

  Diana just shook her head.

  “She has to die in a hospital?” Alex asked in disbelief.

  “You cannot take care of her anymore. Not the way she needs.”

  Alex crossed his arms and stood there, unable to speak.

  “Look, whatever’s happened between us, you have been there for your mother,” Diana said. “You’ve been a model son for her. But now you have to start letting go and accept what’s happening. And you have to do that because of how much you love her.”

  Alex became emotional and leaned against a wall for support. After a moment, Diana gently placed a hand on his shoulder. Alex turned and put his arms around her, more tightly than he had in a long time.

  After a minute or so, Diana pulled herself away slowly. “You need to be with her. Go.”

  Alex nodded and took a moment to pull himself together. He wiped away at his face and went in. Diana pulled the curtain to give them privacy.

  His mother was hooked up to various tubes, including a catheter. Alex had walked by a pee puddle in the hall and now wondered if it was hers.

  When she saw him, his mother held out a hand and tried to get herself out of the bed.

  “Alex, thank God,” she said in a tired voice. “Help me up. I have to pee.”

  “Mom, they’ve hooked you up to a catheter.”

  “Get me up before I pee myself,” she insisted. “I’m going to pee myself.”

  “No, you won’t,” Alex said. “It’s just the pinching in your bladder making you feel like that.”

  His mother’s eyes began to lose focus again. She sighed and let herself fall back down on the bed. Her hands were shaking.

  “Why won’t you let me use the bathroom?” she repeated. “I’m going to pee myself.”

  For the first time in his mother’s presence, Alex cried openly. He leaned over and hugged her.

  “I’m so sorry,” he sobbed. “I’m so sorry you got sick. I don’t know what to do.”

  The last words Alex would ever hear his mother say as she put an arm around him:

  “It’s okay, son. It’s okay.”

  41.

  After a long bus ride home from the US the next morning and a shorter-than-usual early evening practice at the Arena Gardens, Alex was sitting in his dark apartment and obsessing over whether he should call Diana.

  The only light came from his cellphone and he stared at the time: 3:08 a.m.

  His 3:00 a.m. wake-up habit had not changed, and neither had his nightly tendency to have bad dreams. For the past several weeks, Alex refused to get out of bed when his eyes opened at exactly 3:00. Instead, he chose to lie there until he fell asleep again.

  Tonight was different, though. He got up and sat at his dining room table and wondered if he should really try to call Diana in the middle of the night. Alex briefly considered sending her a text and then talked himself out of it. He could not break their long silence with a text message.

  That would be gutless.

  Alex felt a wave of fatigue and nausea. He put the phone down and rested his head sideways on the table. An hour later his phone vibrated, and it startled him awake. He jolted upright in the chair.

  “Hello?”

  “This is Toronto Police Services calling. I’m looking for Alex Bucco.”

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  “Mr. Bucco, are you familiar with an Isaac Banion?” the officer asked.

  “Yes. Is he okay?”

  “We have him here and I was wondering if you’d be able to come down to the station,” the officer said.

  “I’m on my way.”

  42.

  Unlike the previous visit to the home of his ex-girlfriend Melanie, Isaac didn’t hesitate this time to walk right up and ring the front doorbell incessantly. He was holding a small plastic shopping bag.

  “Mel!” he shouted. “Come on, I know you’re in there!”

  It was just past 10:00 p.m., and Isaac was fighting off the wear and tear of yesterday’s big game and the tr
avel afterward from New York. After today’s short practice, Helen had called the players into her office and given them their next little financial dividend.

  Isaac took his money and went right to a toy store. He asked a young sales associate to help him find something that “would, like, be totally mind-blowing for a three-year-old”…and whatever it was, it had to fit a small budget.

  A short while later, he ended up with a tiny book about textures. His little girl probably already had books like this, but that wouldn’t matter. This would be from her dad, so she would cherish it.

  As he continued to ring the doorbell, he saw Melanie appear in the living room window and even though the window was closed, Isaac could hear her clear as a bell:

  “I can’t fucking believe you!” she exclaimed. “Isaac! Get off my porch!”

  “You’ve got to see this cool little thing I got for Sofe-Sofe.”

  “Isaac, get the hell off the porch!” Melanie yelled desperately from behind the window. “You promised to never do this!”

  “Look, when you open it and turn the pages you can feel all this cool shit,” Isaac said, and demonstrated as though he were presenting the book to a group of young children.

  Melanie disappeared from the window. Isaac rang the doorbell again.

  “Mel!”

  After another few minutes of bell ringing and door knocking, sirens could be heard in the distance. It took Isaac a moment to realize what was going on, but as he heard the sirens becoming louder and getting closer, he stopped ringing the doorbell.

  Instead, he kissed the little book and put it in the mailbox. Then he turned around and waited to face the music.

  The Vesta Lunch was a 24-hour greasy spoon diner on Dupont Street that had been operating there since 1955. When he was younger, Alex’s mother brought him there a few times. Alex remembered two things about the place: the milkshakes were amazing, and the old guy who worked behind the counter once hit on his mother.

  Now, he and Isaac sat at the counter shortly before sunrise. After retrieving Isaac from the police station, they drove to the diner. Alex figured Isaac could use some comfort food.