Picks and Sticks

by Michèle Muzzi

  GENERAL STORE PUBLISHING HOUSE INC.

  499 O’Brien Road, Renfrew, Ontario, Canada K7V 3Z3

  Telephone 1.613.599.2064 or 1.800.465.6072

  http://www.gsph.com

  ISBN 978-1-77123-130-5

  Copyright © Michèle Muzzi 2013

  Cover art, design: Magdalene Carson

  Published in Canada

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,

  or transmitted in any form or by any means without

  the prior written permission of the publisher or,

  in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from

  Access Copyright (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency),

  One Yonge Street, Suite 800, Toronto, Ontario, M5E 1E5.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Muzzi, Michèle, 1963-, author

  Picks and sticks / Michèle Muzzi.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Muzzi, Michèle, 1963-, author Picks and sticks / Michèle Muzzi.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-77123-060-5 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-1-77123-130-5 (epub).--

  ISBN 978-1-77123-131-2 (mobi).--ISBN 978-1-77123-132-9 (pdf)

  I. Title.

  PS8626.U99P53 2013 jC813’.6 C2013-906169-X C2013-906170-3

  Fictional characters interact with real-life heroes of the time or are inspired by them in Picks and Sticks. This is a work of historical fiction. Names of persons—living or dead, characters, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. This book is not intended as a substitute for your own research into related historical events.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue — September 28, 1972

  1

  The Pond

  2

  Divisionals

  3

  A Long Day of Dilemmas

  4

  The Hockey Skates

  5

  Decisions

  6

  The Team

  7

  Irina’s Truth

  8

  The Canadian Championships

  9

  Recoveries

  10

  Ultimatums

  11

  Boys Versus Girls

  12

  Endings and Beginnings

  About the Author

  For Nicola and Ben

  Acknowledgements

  LONG A LABOUR OF LOVE, Picks and Sticks has been guided to fruition by many.

  My gratitude goes out to Tim Gordon, GSPH publisher; Andrea McCormick and Chrissy Shannon, GSPH editors; Magdalene Carson, GSPH designer; Maureen Dorey, story editor extraordinaire; Susan Bishop, the Gouws family, Ginger Grace, Earl Hardin, the Killbear gang, Sophie Laliberte, Maureen Madigan, Fred Martinot, Steven Morel, Andrea Muzzi, Inge Muzzi Riendeau, Martine Muzzi, Peter Muzzi, Caroline O’Connor, Alberto Paolucci, Vickie Papavs, Jo Jo and George Rideout, Anton, Lynn, and Jessica van Rooyen, and Katherine Wheatley, all readers of drafts and/or advisors; Anne Mason, original screenplay producer; The Harold Greenberg Fund; Gary Brennan, Murray Furrow, Andrew Martin-­Smith, Sharon McFarlane, Jenny Parsons, and Frank Pellegrino, actors at the first reading of the screenplay; Dr. Gideon Koren, medical advisor; Peter Carver, writing teacher; Elizabeth Etue, women’s hockey advocate, and whose book, On the Edge, Women Making Hockey History, co-­written with Megan K. Williams, provided excellent research material; Michael McKinley, whose book, Putting a Roof on Winter, was another valuable resource; Karen Magnussen, figure skating idol; Tony Cella, her husband, who provided the CBC documentary on her 1971–1973 figure skating seasons; Bobby Orr, hometown hockey hero; the 1972 Canadian Summit Series team, whose miraculous deeds live on; Mayor Hazel McCallion, remarkable female hockey supporter; Greg Rochefort, contributing figure skating historian; John McFetridge, business advisor; Ken Dhaliwal, lawyer; real life inspirations mentioned in the book, from former Parry Sound High School principal David Marsh, to Tina Tabobandung, to the people with whom I lived and breathed in those classrooms and in the Bobby Orr Community Centre in the ’70s and ’80s; finally, but decidedly not last in heart or mind, my immediate and extended family members, who inspire me every day — Mark Adilman, husband, supporter, provider of space, time, and love; Nicola and Ben, daughter, son, lifelong muses; Mieke Muzzi Kramers, spirited mother; Phil and Gladys Adilman, dream in-­laws; Stephen Adilman, Elizabeth Adilman, Tamara Adilman, Sarah White, Susan Pitre, Derek Riendeau, supportive brothers-­ and sisters-­in-­law; and Isabelle, Rachel, Max, Josh, Ira, Monique, Gabrielle, Natalie, and Jared, cherished nieces and nephews.

  Prologue

  September 28, 1972

  TEENAGERS SCREAMED at the television. Desks were shoved to the side. The clock ticked down. Dryden had just made three spectacular saves. With two Canadian goals scored in this final period, the game was tied. Now it was the last do-­or-­die minute, a whole country’s pride on the line.

  Jane stood riveted, desperately hoping as she watched the helmeted Soviets whirl around the loose-­haired Canadians. She felt dizzy. With the extra people crammed in, there was no air in her classroom. It was stifling hot for September. On the black and white screen, a player flew up to the net and missed a pass by inches. He banged hard into the boards. Jane held her breath. Forty seconds left. Suddenly, he was back in front of the goalie, the puck on his stick. Henderson! He banged at it twice. Goal! 6–5!

  The room burst into wildness. Jane’s breath rushed back into her lungs, and she shrieked over and over. She threw her arms around a startled boy and felt herself faint. She dreamed she was shooting a puck in a net, top corner, past a phantom goalie. She felt herself smile and her consciousness returned. She was being pulled by two pairs of hands. Her eyes opened. She stared about for a moment, awareness flooding back. She started shouting again. The boys carrying her, let go, shaken by the force of her passion. Jane flung open the first floor window and jumped out onto the school pavement, racing to join the crush of students already in the yard. Cars honked. The town’s fire alarm went off, then the school’s. Noise was everywhere. Jane’s little hockey town would never see the likes of it again.

  1

  The Pond

  BLADES SLICED THE ICE. White snow flew off their gleaming surfaces as they twirled, they danced, they flew. Jane marvelled at the conditions: they were perfect. The ponds had frozen over that winter of 1972 well before the heavy snow arrived. And when it did, the ice remained hard and smooth, the snow either blown clear or shovelled off. Cutting deep grooves, her taut legs forced the blades where they willed. Jane was in total control.

  She hadn’t skated on this pond in ages. Years. She remembered the last time, over five years ago. She’d been ten. Dad had brought her with her brother, Mike. But now, this particular late November evening, the light seemed to beckon her return. She obeyed the impulse, despite her misgivings, and once arrived, she was flooded with longing.

  Attempting a forbidden triple Salchow, she fell flat on her butt. She splayed out on the frozen pond, then turned over onto her stomach, her cheeks flaming from exertion. Her breath came in huge gulps, and she caught it up, calming herself. She’d have to get home soon. Her mother would be wondering.

  But she couldn’t move. She rested a hot cheek on the icy flatness. Echoes of her childhood reverberated off the tall snowbanks, softly at first, then more urgently,
nudging awake a forgotten part in her. She sat up and listened:

  Pass it to your brother, Jane! Don’t hog the puck!

  He has to catch me first!

  Come on, Jane. Pass it to me!

  Impossible girl! Get back here — that’s it, Jane! That landed right on Mike’s stick!

  The echoes faded, and with her breath quiet now, she felt chilled. She wished she had brought mitts. She sat up and slid the snow off her blades. “Don’t eat snow” danced in her head as she licked her fingers, savouring the moisture. She had come totally unprepared, driven by instinct — no drinkable water in sight, and no protection for her heart.

  Memory was everywhere. As a young girl, she had imagined the ghostly shapes of the leafless trees as sombre sentinels standing tall on a white blanket, watching over them and their childhood sport. There they stood now, unchanged guardians of the past. A trick of the mind, and the branches became the strong arms of her father, Bud, waving wind-­filled greetings from another time. Across the still grey-­blueness of the ice surface whirled a light swirl of snow, brushing Jane’s face with murmurs of freezing afternoons. She peered down into the pond’s frozen depths and saw her younger self reflected there: red woollen mittens, a hat to match, brown coat with white stripe, hockey stick in hand. Beyond her shadow, Jane spied a fish a foot below the glass-­like ice, swimming as slowly as time. How could she have stopped herself from coming here all those years? It was everything good and real and natural. And in that exact moment — a train’s lonely call.

  Jane felt achy — head, heart, and lungs. She dragged herself up, determined to try the triple Salchow again. But now, her toes lacked even a hint of that painful, tingling feeling; she knew she was courting frostbite. Jane silently cursed her figure skates; they were useless outdoors, especially if you skated barefooted. She tried to wiggle her bare toes, wondering whether to stay as she looked out at the landscape. There was that tricky light again, the one that lured her in the first place, the white snow catching fire from the setting of the orange winter sun. She stood mesmerized.

  Voices. Real ones. Jane wasn’t alone. She turned her head and saw two skaters emerge from the lengthening shadows of the flame-­tinged snowbanks. They tossed a puck onto the far end of the bean-­shaped pond. Jane moved stealthily to the side and watched the pair, intrigued. It was unusual in these parts to see a player with a helmet, especially with such long hair. All of a sudden, the puck escaped the taller player and here it was, skidding down the ice, stopping at Jane’s still blades. She looked at it, then up into two icy-­blue female eyes.

  “Oh …” said Jane.

  “Hello.”

  The two skaters stared. Another voice.

  “Jane! What you doing here?” It was Ivan, the Zamboni driver from the arena. He skated up to them. Jane had never seen a girl in hockey equipment in her life.

  “Jane. This is my daughter, Irina. We … uh … we find this place, last night.”

  “I didn’t know you had a daughter, Ivan.” She continued to look at the girl, stunned by her intense beauty. They had to be about the same age.

  “You practise here, Jane? We get out of way for you.” Ivan’s accent was strong, but not easily recognizable.

  Jane continued to stare. This girl belonged in winter. She looked like ice and snow, all blueness and white. People could drown in those eyes. Or freeze. Irina finally looked down and moved the puck from between Jane’s skate blades with her stick. She spoke faltering English.

  “We move … yes, Papa?”

  “No, no,” Jane insisted, “I’m done. I … I just came here to take my mind off the competition. It’s been very draining, all week long …”

  “Yes. I watch,” Ivan said.

  “And tomorrow I’m …” She took a deep breath and blurted, “Please, Ivan. Don’t tell Leonard you saw me here … I just thought … you know, I’d try a few things out.”

  Ivan smiled at her. “Why would I tell this coach anything? Come, Irina.”

  Jane withstood Irina’s unblinking gaze for another moment until the girl flicked the puck forward and stroked away. Jane watched them skate off, strangely envious. She sat down on a makeshift seat carved into the snowbank, and untied her laces. She couldn’t feel her fingers anymore, and breathed on them after loosening each hook. The light was almost gone. She would have to race home.

  Jane reached the house in near darkness. She opened the unlocked door and slipped in. She heard her mother’s bedroom floor creaking above. She shrugged her skates off her shoulders, and buried them in her skate bag, still wet. She shook off her oversized boots and her parka and stumbled barefooted into the warm kitchen, her cheeks blazing from the force of cold against heat. She knew she had to wrap her toes in a towel, something hot, her fingers, too. As she entered the kitchen, she felt instantly dizzy from the transfer from bitter cold outside to oven-­generated heat inside. Nausea rose in her stomach, and she tried to get a hold of herself. She bent over, and slowly, the dizziness receded. She threw a hot, wet towel on her feet, and her toes came back to life with the painful tingling sensation that rendered her incapable of movement. When they felt prickly-­warm and she was able to wiggle them, her body finally relaxed.

  She went upstairs. Jane heard her mother rummaging about in her bedroom. She peeked in. Deb had opened the old trunk. She kept a lock on it, the contents safe from prying teenage eyes. Jane walked in. Her mother was lifting out a sheer, yellow skating dress that looked like it was from the 1950s. Tissue paper fluttered to the floor.

  “Mom, what are you …?”

  “I was supposed to wear this at Canadians with your coach,” Deb said with her back to Jane.

  “It’s beautiful,” Jane said, stepping farther into the room.

  Deb kept her back turned. “I’d like you to wear it for your junior competition tomorrow, if you want. I think it’ll fit. I know you are taller than I am, but …”

  “Uh, wow, I don’t know. Really?”

  “Yeah, really.”

  Jane moved up to her mother and fingered the soft fabric. “Wow. The skirt is so full.”

  Deb’s eyes remained on the dress. “It’s a bit out of fashion, I know. I’ll tuck it in here and there … You’d be the first to wear it.”

  “Cool … But maybe not tomorrow, okay, Mom? I mean, I’m not used to doing the program in it.”

  “That’s true.”

  Jane glanced sideways at her petite mother, searching her pretty face for clouds of emotion. Deb Little and Leonard Pratt, Jane’s long-time coach, had been pairs skating partners, but had somehow missed their opportunity to go to Canadians even though they had qualified. The details were fuzzy, but Jane knew this disappointment stood between them, and was present in the little verbal jabs they took at one another. Sometimes, they behaved horribly. Jane wondered if Deb had arranged for Leonard to coach her as a kind of peace offering. Fact or fiction, Jane resented thinking it might be true.

  “Be nice if Leonard eased off me sometimes,” she sighed.

  “Well, he won’t now. I won’t let him.” Deb’s round, brown eyes held her daughter’s gaze, challenging her.

  Jane reacted. She stepped forward to the open trunk and knelt down. She rifled through the old photographs on top. She slowed when she came across a picture of her dad’s 1958 Kelowna Packers hockey team. More memories! Jane and Mike had constantly begged their father to tell the story of the hockey tournament he had played in Moscow, and how his small town team from British Columbia had won.

  “Can you put those back?” Deb asked, her voice constricted.

  Jane didn’t care if her mother wanted her to stop.

  “This is so cool.”

  Next was an action picture of her father playing against the Soviets in the famous Luzhniki Sports Palace. Jane lingered over the photos, sensing her mother’s discomfort, so she put them down and searched some more.
Underneath some blankets, she found her father’s old hockey skates and a smaller pair beside them. Hers. She pulled them out.

  “Wow. I remember these.”

  “Yeah. I remember, too.” Forbidden territory. Deb’s face was still, but whiter. Jane stared at her.

  “Could I … would you mind if I take these to my room?” she asked.

  “Yes, I’d mind!” Deb barked. “I don’t want you …” She checked herself, hesitated, then softened. “No, I … I guess it’s okay.”

  It better be, Jane thought fiercely. She rummaged some more, aware that she was goading her mother to respond.

  “Um, there wouldn’t happen to be an old … just a sec.” And there it was: her dad’s old Kelowna Packers hockey puck, complete with a fading logo. She remembered searching through the snow for hours when it got lost. Then it disappeared for good.

  “So this is where this got to.” She couldn’t look at her mother now as she clutched it to her chest. “I better get ready for bed. Competition tomorrow.”

  “Yeah. I’m gonna lie down for a nap. I’m on night shift tonight. I asked Mike to be home by eleven.”

  “Good night, then.” Jane got up, shot a tiny unfelt smile at her mother, and left. When she glanced back, Deb was staring at her trunk, the yellow dress forgotten in her hand. Don’t care how she feels, thought Jane. How dare she hide these things from me. For years!

  Jane was old enough now to sense the chip, the size of a boulder, on her mother’s shoulder. Deb’s bitterness at the way her life had turned out was palpable. Jane often wondered if her mother was as jealous of her daughter’s youthful ability as she was proud, but nothing was ever stated, just suggested. Obviously, she knew it was Jane’s turn to shine. But Deb would do petty things like hiding their father’s keepsakes when she knew her children cared about them.

  Bizarre! Jane thought.

  Jane took her skates and the treasured puck to her trophy-­filled room and set them up on the nightstand. She moved some hard-­won figure skating medals to make space. She lay there looking at her new-­found mementos, sensing hockey spirits swirling above.