Picks and Sticks

by Michèle Muzzi

  “You know you’re gonna kill yourself in those, right? No picks.”

  “Just gimme a minute,” she said.

  “At least keep your socks on.”

  “No.” Jane stood up, determined, and stepped onto the ice, leaning heavily on her stick. Bud’s voice quieted to a whisper. Mike threw the puck onto the ice and passed it to her. “Pass it back,” the haunting voice told her, then slipped away. She tried to pass the puck back to Mike, and fell forward onto her knees instead. Mike laughed at her.

  “Balance in the middle of the blade. You can’t rely on picks that aren’t there.”

  “I know, Mike.” Jane got up and struggled around the ice, flailing. She laughed at herself and bent her knees. There. That was better. Now at least she could pass the puck without falling down.

  Suddenly, from behind a pile of shovelled snow, Irina appeared with her skates on, helmetless, hair flashing and glinting. She joined them on the ice, beautiful to behold, her movements fast, furtive, mottled by shadows over the moon. Mike stood stock-­still.

  “Man, oh man. Who is that?” he croaked.

  Jane called out to Irina, and she glided over, wraithlike, edging to a stop on one foot.

  “Irina. This is my brother. Michael. Mike, this is Irina, Ivan’s daughter. You know. Ivan. The Zamboni driver?”

  “Oh. Yeah. Ivan.”

  “Hello.” A slow smile spread over Jane’s face as she watched her brother back away, embarrassed by his staring. But Irina had been staring, too. The three of them slowly began to skate circles around each other, passing the puck among the diamonds and shadows.

  5

  Decisions

  JANE FELL HARD. The unmolded leather of her new figure skates dug into her feet, sending a searing pain up through her landing leg. She rolled to her knees, preparing to attempt the double Lutz/double toe loop again. Only the great Karen Magnussen had successfully completed the combination in competition so far. The challenge was enormous, and invigorating. Jane’s limbs were aching from many jarring falls, but each bone-­rattling crunch made her want to try again. She couldn’t deny it — part of her lived for the rush that came with perfection. And here she was, on the verge of it.

  “Let’s go, Jane!” Leonard urged, sensing it, too. “Try to increase your speed this time. Attack the Lutz! The toe loop should follow easily!” Jane scraped herself off the ice with a burst of energy, and stroked around again, ignoring the shooting pains up her leg. Distracted by her mother’s sudden appearance beside Leonard, she tripped over her picks and fell on her face in front of them. She laughed aloud, rolled onto her back, and looked up at their upside down faces. At least he wouldn’t try touching Deb, now.

  For the past three weeks during the Christmas season, practising hockey as much as she had with Ivan and Irina in the early morning and with Mike and Irina on the pond at night, Jane realized she was getting dangerously mixed up between the two types of skates. She constantly had to adapt, physically and mentally. And the new figure skates didn’t help. The stiff leather made her jerky and destroyed her gracefulness, but that would resurface once they softened up and she got used to them. Right now, she just needed to land the combination — at all costs. They would not leave her alone until she did.

  “Maybe that’s enough for today,” Deb said quietly, looking down at her fallen daughter.

  “What’s with you, Matagov? It’s like you’re getting worse,” Leonard complained. “Get up.”

  “These skates are killing me.”

  “Wear some tights!”

  “No way!” Jane laughed again, slapped the ice, and got off her back.

  “Do it again.”

  “Okay!”

  She gained speed, smiling to herself. Leonard’s voice was getting hoarse. She loved getting him riled up, and these days it was happening a lot. She turned backwards into the Lutz entry and pitched forward, tripping again on the sharp picks. She hooted with giddy laughter. Leonard threw his hands in the air, shaking the fur around his arms. Deb shouted her surprise: “Jane! What’s with you?”

  She was losing control. She shrugged off the fall, apologized, and rounded the corner again, still chuckling. Now I’m getting silly. She felt light-­headedness coming on, like her brain wasn’t quite in her body. Deb was staring at her with real concern. She and Leonard started in on each other, loud enough to echo down the ice.

  “I said I think she’s had enough for today,” Deb said.

  “Not by a long shot. She’s not even trying!”

  “How many times has she fallen?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think she’ll injure herself if you continue.”

  “Yeah, right, Deb. Pull the old injury card. For crying out loud, Canadians are two weeks away!”

  “She looks completely out of it!”

  Jane lifted off and opened up into a single Lutz. She didn’t even try the toe loop on the end. Leonard called her over to the boards. She spoke before he could.

  “I’m sorry. I’m really tired this morning. But I don’t want to stop. What should we do?”

  Leonard began to berate her, but Jane watched Deb touch his sleeve to silence him. Her insides churned. She sobered instantly.

  “I’ll try it one more time,” she choked out. “Put on some music.”

  In a moment, Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto filled the air. Jane flew down the ice, and nailed it.

  That night, Jane snuck into her mother’s bedroom and picked the lock on the trunk with a bobby pin. It was surprisingly easy to open. In it, she found the old hockey sweater her father wore when the Kelowna Packers represented Canada. She fingered the logo: a green Canadian flag. She buried her nose in the red and blue fabric, desperate for the smell of him.

  “What are you doing?” Her mother loomed in the doorway.

  “I was just …”

  “I can see what you are ‘just.’ You’re snooping through my things.”

  “These aren’t your things! This was Dad’s. He would have given it to me. Not shoved it in a trunk to rot!”

  Deb reached for it. “You don’t have any right to that sweater.” Jane pulled back.

  “Neither do you. It’s not fair of you to hide it.”

  “Please put it back and get out of my room.” Her mother was making an effort to speak calmly.

  “Why should I? I want it.”

  “Stop this — ”

  “Why do you never cry?”

  “What?”

  “I’ve never once seen you cry. Did you even love him?”

  “Jane … Jane …” Deb tried to embrace her, but Jane threw the jersey at her and ran out.

  The next morning, Jane arrived at the arena extra early, Mike’s recently rejected hockey stick and her smoothie in hand. Head down, shaking off the snow, she went inside expecting Ivan. Instead, she got Al Leblanc. Al, skating alone on the ice, in his own world, an NHL star.

  “And Sanderson passes to Orr, and Orr weaves his way through a maze of players, and he shoots — he — !” The puck missed, flying above the net, and slammed the glass near Jane’s head. She flinched. Al saw her. Both were caught. He skated up to her and started shouting through the glass.

  “What are you …? How’d you git in here?”

  “I … I think … the doors were open. Yeah … they must have been …” she yelled back. Al stared at her.

  “Figure skating isn’t fer another hour and a half, fer Pete’s sake!”

  “I … couldn’t sleep.” Jane caught sight of Ivan and Irina coming in. She turned to stop them with a gesture, but Al saw them, too. Irina ducked into the shadows beside the stands. Ivan walked up to Jane and stood beside her.

  “Mr. Leblanc!” he shouted through the glass. “You are here early!”

  “So are you.” Al continued to stare at them, chewing his cud. H
e was ridiculous in his too-­small hockey gear, belly bulging over his shorts. Their yelling through the glass was stupid, too. Jane couldn’t stand it.

  “Oh, look. I asked Ivan to let me in early so I could practise a little before my coach got here.”

  “What’s with the hockey stick?”

  “What?”

  Al pointed.

  “Oh, um, Mike asked me to bring it down. For later.”

  “Uh huh. Just so long as ya understand …” Al’s voice was laced with derision; he spoke slowly and enunciated as best he could. “There ain’t no girls gonna play hockey in my arena.” They stared at him blankly. “Git it?” They nodded. He started to rant. “And don’t be askin’ me fer extra ice time no more! I’m gonna talk to Leonard. I’m sick of it! Takes away from my boys’ practisin’. Yer brother knows that, and seys nothin’. Just lets it happen. Don’t know why I made him the gall darn captain. Gonna talk to Leonard soon’s he gits here. Ivan. Clean the ice. Ain’t nobody gonna use it ’til Leonard gits here.” He burped. “Hungry. Need a doughnut.”

  Al left the ice surface. Irina stepped out of the shadows, followed behind, and watched him go down the dressing room corridor. When he had ducked into a room, she nodded to them, and Ivan turned to Jane. “I don’t think we should risk it,” he said.

  “Forget him,” Jane responded. “Let’s just wait ’til he takes his skates off and goes to Steve’s. He’ll be gone for half an hour at least. He eats about twenty at a time. Let’s just wait for him to get out of here.”

  They waited until they saw Al depart in his street clothes; then Jane and Irina sat on a players’ bench to get dressed. Irina watched, bemused, as Jane put on a skating skirt and got out white skate covers for her hockey skates.

  “Don’t laugh,” Jane pleaded. “You know I have to do this …”

  “I like … Nice style.”

  “Thank you. If Al shows up again, we fling our sticks over the boards.”

  “No. We smack him so he faint. Or you … you do some spins.”

  “Without picks. Perfect. Easy as pie.”

  “What is pie?”

  They got up and skated out, Jane amazed that she had got Irina talking. They practised for twenty minutes, joyously. Then Ivan got nervous and declared it was enough. He moved the net and went to the Zamboni. The girls skated to the side, passing the puck. Jane looked slyly at her usually quiet companion.

  “How’s it goin’ with my brother?” she asked.

  “You ask this question too much.”

  “You never answer.”

  “No.”

  “He’s not sleeping, you know. You have turned him into a night hawk.”

  “How you know this?”

  “I’m not sleeping either.”

  “Is not good.”

  “No.”

  “I … I have not said something to him. We are not to-­gether. Not how you mean, anyway.”

  “I know. But you soon will be,” Jane teased. “I see you with him all the time now. People are talking at school … it looks like you’re going out.”

  Irina sighed, lifted the puck, and began to bounce it off her stick. “I like him,” she stuttered, “but … is not so okay for me to be with him … now, I mean,” she amended.

  “I thought your father was okay with it.”

  “Oh. Uh. He like Mike …”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “Me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean me. I am problem.”

  “Why, though?”

  “Because I cannot feel anything right now … for any person …”

  “Why not?”

  “Please … I …”

  Irina let the puck drop, and skated away, much to Jane’s frustration. She’d been playing matchmaker for weeks. She was really good at getting them in the same place at the same time. Mike, smitten as he’d never been, was finally taking more notice of a girl than hockey, but Irina alternated between aloofness and her particular form of friendliness. Mike was completely confused.

  The girls became engrossed in a passing drill while Ivan climbed onto the Zamboni and began to back it onto the ice. When they looked up, a bulky skater had covered the length of the ice, and was chasing a puck, firing it where the net would have been. Bull’s eye, thought Jane. As she and Irina watched, mesmerized, Ivan scrambled off the Zamboni and called out, “Hey! What you doing there?” The player skated hard up to him and stopped, snow spraying everywhere. Off came the helmet.

  “Susan!” Jane exclaimed.

  “What’s happenin’?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Wanted to play.”

  “How’d you know about us?”

  “Player’s intuition.”

  “Come on.”

  “What is name?” grilled Ivan.

  “Susan Orr.”

  “Orr?” said Ivan.

  “Yessss,” hissed Susan, rolling her eyes.

  “Defence?”

  “Left wing.”

  “Come back early tomorrow morning,” Ivan said gruffly. “But we are very careful. Must watch for Al Leblanc before we play.”

  Jane listened nervously. Ivan knew nothing about this girl. “Ivan — ” she began, but he cut her off.

  “A quarter past five. Be here.”

  Susan nodded, studying Ivan’s face.

  “We’ve gotta get off the ice,” Jane fretted.

  “Ya know,” Susan said, ignoring her, “I’ve seen you somewhere. Ivan, is it? Like on TV or something.” Irina grabbed her father’s arm. Ivan laughed uneasily. “I do not think so,” he deflected. He clambered back onto the idling Zamboni. The girls scooted out of the way, and Ivan drove it onto the ice.

  “We better get off,” Jane said. As they slowly skated to the side, she eyed Susan curiously, still leery. “Where you from?”

  “Moved here from Huntsville.”

  “You related to Bobby?”

  “Cousin.”

  “Cool. How’d you know we were here?”

  “Lucky guess.”

  “Come on, it’s gotta be more than that. We’ve been careful.”

  “There’ve been whispers.”

  “From who?”

  “The hockey gods, I guess.”

  “Bull.”

  “Nobody told me. I saw Irina give you that pair of skates.” Jane looked down at the white-­covered hockey skates, caught Susan’s gaze, and smiled. Susan continued. “It just took me a little while to figure you girls out, you being a figure skater and all. But I finally figured right.”

  “Where’d you learn to play?” Jane asked.

  “My backyard.” They smiled at each other again.

  “JANE!”

  The hairs on Jane’s arms stood up. Leonard was calling from the entrance across the ice. He was with Al who was shoving a whole doughnut into his mouth.

  “Yikes,” Jane said, “shoulda got off earlier.” She turned her back to Leonard and handed Irina her stick.

  “Take this and get out of here.”

  “Knock him on head with it,” Irina whispered.

  “Wish I could …” Jane waved at Leonard, then started to skate over to him and Al as gracefully as she could, avoiding the noisy Zamboni. Leonard hollered at Jane’s two accomplices, “You two. Come here, now!”

  Jane gestured for them to follow. Irina dumped the sticks over the boards and glided across. Susan shrugged and followed with her stick still in her hands. Ivan paused to let them past, and then continued circling his Zamboni. He shot Jane a worried look. Jane made it to Leonard and stood before him, wishing that she didn’t care so much about what he was going to say.

  “What were you doing with that hockey stick?”

  Al piped up, mid-chew. “Sh
e tol’ me she brung it here fer Mike. That’s crap, ya see. Don’t have his tape job. I seen that right away.”

  “Right.”

  “I tol’ her. No girl hockey allowed. I tol’ her that. I’m cuttin’ her ice time. Figure skaters turnin’ into hockey players. It ain’t right.”

  Leonard’s face was beet red. “Jane?”

  “I … I just like to warm up with a hockey stick sometimes. It, um, makes me feel lighter once I get rid of it. For jumps, I mean.”

  “I’ve never seen you do that.”

  “Like you and Mom wouldn’t scream at me if I did that in front of you.”

  “Who are these girls? Certainly not figure skaters.”

  “No kidding,” Susan said, slapping some unfrozen water with her stick so that it sprayed close to Leonard’s head. Jane recoiled before he did.

  “Irina,” said Irina.

  “What?” Leonard said.

  “My name is Irina. You ask who are we.”

  “She’s Ivan’s daughter,” Jane said, hoping to distract him.

  “Ivan and Irina. How quaint,” Leonard sneered. “And you?” he said, glaring at Susan. Susan glared back, refusing to answer, and flicked more water in his general direction. “Nice coat,” she said. Leonard gawked at her. Jane, amazed and fearful of Susan’s defiance, turned away, watching as Ivan drove the Zamboni off the glistening ice.

  “Git Ivan over here,” Al ordered. “I told him youse couldn’t have the ice time. But no. You were practisin’. He jus’ covered up the evidence.”

  “Who’re you to tell us what to do?” Susan demanded.

  “I run the place,” Al spluttered.

  Jane shot her a pleading glance. Susan spat, then skated away to get Ivan.

  When Leonard found his voice, it was oddly high-­pitched and strained. “Jane. Come over here. Now, please.” He stepped onto the ice and skated away from the others. Jane followed him, trying to appear as defiant as Susan. But she was too scared. They stopped at the far end of the ice.

  “I knew something was up,” Leonard said. He lifted up her white skate covers with his toe picks. They left a gash in the black leather. “You thought these would fool me?”