by Jack Falla
“Cam and Tamara invited us for dinner,” she said. “You OK with that?”
“Sure. The series moves to a neutral site,” I said.
“Let’s not argue tonight, Jean Pierre. Promise?”
I promised but I didn’t really have to. Faith and I had decided months earlier that any couple who argue in front of other people are major losers and automatically out of our social rotation.
* * *
Topic A at Cam’s house was Kevin James Quigley. “He’s playing like he has tenure,” said Faith, who’d seen all of our recent games either at the Garden or on TV and to whom it was obvious, as it was to Cam and me, not only that Quigley was becoming a reluctant enforcer but that he wasn’t even banging in the corners and getting the puck to Taki and Gaston.
“It’s like he thinks he’s in the NHL for his hands,” Cam said.
“He is. Sort of,” said Tamara, curling her hands into fists and striking a laughably bad pose as a boxer.
“You can’t crank it up for all eighty-two,” I said, reiterating a fundamental tenet of an NHL season: that no matter how much we deny it, even to ourselves, there are games where we simply take a night off. It’s not premeditated. It’s not that we consciously want to do it. It’s just that the season is so freaking long and the only part that really counts is at the end. So I think it’s our mind’s way of preserving our body. The writers like to use the phrase “so-and-so thinks he can turn it on and off like a faucet.” That isn’t true. The damn faucet sometimes turns itself on and off. The main thing is that it’s on in April, May, and June for the playoffs.
“Kevin was great with the kids. As usual,” Tam said.
“Hell be great with the kids in Providence freaking Rhode Island if he doesn’t go back to being his ornery old self,” Cam said.
“You want to invoke the No-Hockey Rule?” Faith asked.
“Moved and seconded,” said Tamara. “All in favor?” The four of us raised our hands. The No-Hockey Rule is when we don’t allow shoptalk at the dinner table. It can be a great idea in the middle of a long season. So for the rest of dinner and far into that cold January night we were just four old friends talking about movies, music, books, and our parents. Faith never mentioned her internship choices and I never brought up the trade deadline. “Is it a violation of the rule if I ask what’s up with our agent and your mother?” Cam asked.
“Major violation,” I said, but we all laughed because we all knew something was up.
“Just have to let ’em play it out. So to speak,” Faith said.
Afterward, Faith and I went back to my condo and made love like sex-starved teenagers. Sex doesn’t solve problems but it restores an emotional balance—“mental homeostasis,” Faith calls it—that makes problems less scary.
We were scheduled to close out January with a Wednesday-night game in Montreal. On Monday morning Cecilia Lopes, the team’s PR director, asked Cam, Gaston, and me to come to her office after practice because a feature writer for the English-language Montreal Gazette wanted a phone interview with us—the three Vermont alumni—for what Cecilia called “a big takeout in Wednesday’s paper.”
* * *
It was dark with temperatures in the low teens and a north wind whipping icy snow against the bus windows as we rode from Trudean Airport to downtown Montreal late Tuesday afternoon. It was the part of the season when, as Cam says, “You’re sick and tired of being sick and tired.” We were also banged up. Cam was playing with a sprained left shoulder, Flipside had been hacking and coughing since Monday’s practice, Luther Brown was back in Boston with the flu, and Bruno had a bruised ankle from a shot he blocked in the Chicago game. Bruno finished the game only because he refused to let trainer Richie Boyle take off the skate boot. “If you take it off my ankle will swell and I won’t be able to get my foot back into the boot,” Bruno said in a remark that tells you all you have to know about how hockey players see injuries.
I was happy to see that—bruised ankle notwithstanding—Bruno’s sense of humor remained intact. We were stuck in downtown rush-hour traffic when Bruno borrowed the bus driver’s microphone to read us a selection from Letters to Penthouse. But instead of reading it as it was written, Bruno kept substituting Rex Conway’s name for the name of the guy in the letter, who I think was having sex with three sorority sisters in a cornfield. “Oh, Rex, do me next, moaned the writhing brunette…” We were all laughing except Rex, who said, “And the men of Sodom were very wicked, and sinners before the face of the Lord, beyond measure. Genesis thirteen, thirteen.” Rex has a way of making the Bible sound funnier than Letters to Penthouse. Or maybe you had to be on our bus.
Cecilia Lopes wasn’t kidding about the Montreal Gazette doing a huge takeout on Cam, Gaston, and me. The story started on page 1—right up there with the wars, murders, and political scandals—then jumped to the sports section. There were all sorts of photos of the three of us going all the way back to our years at Vermont. The writer made a lot out of the friendship between Cam and me—“the Beacon Hill Brahmin and heir to the Carter fortune and the blue-collar kid abandoned by his father and raised by his mother in gritty working-class Lewiston, Maine”—as if it were surprising that a couple of guys from different social worlds could be good friends and teammates. But that’s the great thing about sport. It’s a meritocracy, especially a blood sport like hockey. In this business we give up our bodies for each other and judge each other only by what we do and how well we do it. I don’t think it’s that way in most business offices. It’s one of the reasons I want to play as long as I can and never go into the world of cubicles, annual reviews, and staff meetings.
* * *
It was snowing too hard for me to take my usual walk into old Montreal, which is why I was hanging around my room after dinner when Gaston called. “Hey, JP, heads up, our old alma mater is on TV tonight. Playing UMass-Amherst. Go, Cats, go.”
“Thanks. Tell Cam,” I said.
“Already did. We’re watching it in your room.”
Burlington, Vermont, is so close to Montreal that we could pick up the telecast of a rare midweek college game. Vermont ranked seventh in the nation and was second, behind Boston University, in Hockey East. Goalie Rudy Evanston was playing like an all-American. At least that’s what I’d read in the papers. What I saw on TV was appalling. Two of Rudy’s first three stops were spectacular glove saves but only because Rudy was farther off of his angles than I was in high school trig.
“Tabernac. Get me a stick. I score ten goals on this guy,” Gaston said.
Rudy had a great catching hand, so on any shot from center to the left wing he positioned himself by cheating to the stick side and tempting the shooter with the seemingly open glove side. You might slide by with that in college but it isn’t going to work in the NHL, where shots are harder and more accurate. And it wasn’t working all that well against UMass, which won 5–4, with two of those goals scored low to Rudy’s glove side. Too low to catch.
“Who’ve they got for a goalie coach? Derek Jeter?” Cam asked.
“An unpaid volunteer assistant. I forget his name,” I said.
“Well, they’re getting their money’s worth,” Cam said.
The next morning I called Marco Indinacci at Vermont to tell him what I’d seen, which was that “when it comes to playing angles no one’s going to confuse Rudy Evanston with Minnesota Fats.”
“We got a goalie coach. Guy played minor pro. But he works full-time for the city and he’s missing half of our practices because a new supervisor changed his hours,” Marco said. “Any chance you could sneak up here for a couple of practices? Rudy would love it. So would I.”
“Not a prayer,” I said. “We go from Montreal to Columbus, then home for a game with Buffalo, and then we get the All-Star break.” I explained to Marco that I wouldn’t be at the All-Star Game. Fans didn’t vote me to the team. The team’s third goalie would be named by the Eastern Conference All-Stars head coach and that was Montreal’s Jean Picard beca
use his team won the conference championship last season. Picard would pick his own goalie, Claude Rancourt.
“OK. But give Rudy a call. Tell him what you saw,” said Marco, giving me the number for Rudy’s off-campus apartment.
I phoned Rudy. A woman answered. “Just a minute, I’ll get him,” she said.
I’ll bet you will, I said to myself.
“Rudy? It’s J. P. Savard. To whom did I just have the pleasure of speaking?”
“Oh my God, Mr. Savard … ah, that was Claire.”
“Consoling you after last night’s loss, was she?”
“Don’t tell me you saw that. I sucked.”
“Right on both counts. I saw it on TV—we’re in Montreal—and you sucked. Hey, you’re going to have to stop cheating to your stick side.”
“It was working well until last night. I’ve had a pretty good season.”
“Rudy, I watched the game with Gaston Deveau and he was drooling on himself thinking about how many goals he’ll score on you if you get to this league, which, the way you played last night, you won’t. You’ve got quick hands, but it’s all about positioning in the NHL. You give NHL forwards a lot of glove side to shoot at and they’re going to hit it. These guys score goals for money.”
“I guess it wouldn’t hurt if our goalie coach showed up more than once a week,” Rudy said.
“No one’s more alone than a goalie, Rudy. You’re going to have to work it out on your own. NHL scouts look for good fundamentals. Don’t make the position look harder than it is. The only people you’ll fool will be fans and writers.”
We talked for a few minutes. Rudy said he’d “checked out OK on the last cancer screening” and that the biggest decision he faced was whether or not to turn pro after this season or stay for a final year of college. I wanted to tell him to stay in school because he wasn’t ready for the pros. But that would’ve sounded hypocritical coming from me, a third-year college dropout. All I told him was that whenever he was ready I’d hook him up with Denny Moran. “Meanwhile, keep square to the puck.”
He thanked me for calling.
I told Rudy I’d take him and Claire to dinner the next time I was in Burlington “if Claire’s still on the traveling team.”
“She’ll be on it. She’s the one,” he said.
“Not a puck bunny, then?”
“Definitely not. Hey, you’ll love this. She’s a nursing major.”
“Make sure she doesn’t put your game in intensive care.”
“Did a good job of that myself last night.”
We wished each other luck and said good-bye. I went down to the bus thinking of my own college days and how simple and good that time was.
* * *
We should have bottled the game with Montreal. It was that great. The Canadiens were flying. We were flying. The crowd was into it as only a Montreal crowd can be, roaring start to finish. It was wide-open up-and-down hockey with shots off the rush and quick counterattacks. There were so few stoppages that we made more changes on the fly than we did on face-offs. At one point in the second period I looked up and saw Canadiens defenseman Justin Pelletier wheeling at top speed through center ice looking like a fourth forward, his eyes darting left and right as he looked for someone to pass to. He dished to an open teammate who one-timed a shot I stopped with my blocker. Pelletier, trailing the play, tried to sweep the puck past me but I dived and stopped it with the wide paddle of my goal stick. Cam grabbed the rebound and sent a home run pass up the middle to Gaston, who broke in alone only to be stopped by Rancourt, with the puck instantly coming back our way again. It was like that all night. The score was 3–3 with three seconds to play and a face-off in Montreal’s zone to Rancourt’s left when Packy waved me to the Boston bench. He figured Montreal couldn’t score in three seconds, so he put out a sixth attacker. Gaston took the face-off with Jean-Baptiste and Taki behind him at the top of the circle and Quig and two other forwards stacked in front of the Montreal net. Everyone in the building knew Gaston was going to try to win the draw back to JB or Taki for a quick shot. Everyone was wrong. When the linesman dropped the puck, Gaston pushed away the Canadien center’s stick, corralled the puck, and wristed a quick shot that beat Rancourt high to his glove side a fraction of a second before the horn sounded. We went crazy on the bench, piling over the boards as if we’d won the Stanley Cup.
It was in this giddy collective mood that we went whooping and hollering our way through the short corridor leading from the ice to the visitors’ dressing room. Usually the only people you see on that walk are cops, arena security guys, and photographers or writers. I guess that’s why the man wearing a black suit and well-tailored camel’s hair overcoat and holding a newspaper caught my eye. The man reached out and grabbed Cam’s elbow as Cam walked by. Cam stopped and talked to the guy, who I figured must be a Montreal writer I didn’t recognize.
In the dressing room, we gathered around the TV to watch replays of the goal, cheering like high school kids every time the puck went into the net.
I was taking off my leg pads when Cam came into the room, tapped me on the right shoulder with his gloved hand, and motioned me toward the trainer’s room. I was still in my sweaty long underwear and game pants when I followed Cam into the small room. “Give us a second, will you, Richie?” Cam said to Richie Boyle. Richie left and Cam closed the door.
“You see that guy who stopped me after the game?” Cam asked.
“Yeah. Writer, TV producer, or con man?” I said.
“His name is Rogatien Lachine. Says he’s your father. He wants to talk to you.”
Seven
I couldn’t say anything as I struggled to comprehend the fact that a man claiming to be my father was standing outside our dressing room wanting to talk to me. The struggle didn’t last long. “I have two answers for him, Cam, a short one and a long one. The short one is no. The long one is no fucking way.”
“That’s what I figured,” Cam said. “Can’t blame you.”
“Un-goddamn-believable. A guy walks out on his wife and child and a quarter century later decides to come back for a little how-dee-do? Tell him to take a hike.”
“Why me? This is your chance to tell him yourself.”
“Fuck him. I’m not talking to him. I should high-stick him. And how do I know he’s really my father?”
“You see the nose?” Cam asked. I had to smile at that. “I think you should talk to him, JP. Or at least listen.”
“No. And why is he coming at me through you?”
“He read the story in the paper. Knows we’re friends. Look, it’d only take a minute. You can always walk away.”
Richie Boyle stuck his head in the door: “Hey, guys, I need the room. Got walking wounded out here.”
I left the training room and went to my dressing stall with Cam behind me, still pressing. “It’s your life, JP. Like it or not, parents are a part of it.”
“That fucker stopped being a part of my life a long time ago. What’d he say to you?”
“I’ll tell you on the flight. Go talk to him.”
I reached into my equipment bag and pulled out my catch glove and blocker.
“What the hell you doing? He wants to talk, not shoot at you,” Cam said.
“These are in case he tries to shake hands,” I said, pulling on my gloves and walking out of the dressing room.
* * *
“I’m Jean Pierre Savard,” I said, walking fast and, I hoped, menacingly toward the man in the overcoat. My voice came down hard on my last name, my mother’s maiden name. I didn’t extend my hand and neither did he.
“I’m Rogatien Lachine. I came here to tell you I’m sorry for what I did to you and your mother.” The man spoke with a French accent. His black eyes looked straight into mine.
“Yeah, well, you and your sorry are twenty-five years too late. And why bother me now?” I said, not wanting to make this easy on him.
“I was a drunk for twenty years. The people who help me recover tell me
I should apologize to everyone I hurt. It takes me years to get up the courage to do this. I know it doesn’t change anything. I know I can’t make it up.”
“What do you really want?” I asked, figuring that he wanted to cash in on my success somehow, although from the way he was dressed he didn’t look like a guy who was missing any meals. But it’s a fact of any player’s life that once you come into the big money you find relatives and alleged friends coming out of the woodwork. Everyone wants a piece of you.
“I only want you to know I’m sorry. I’m ashamed of myself. And always will be. That’s my punishment.”
“Good. You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” I said. “And how’d you get in here anyway? You got tickets?”
“A suite. It’s for the business.”
“What’s your business? Impersonating a father?” I said, landing what I thought was a pretty good shot. But the man never changed expression or tone of voice.
“Excavation and construction. We do OK. There’s a lot of building in Montreal.”
“Hey, JP, bus rolls in five minutes. Let’s go.” It was Packy yelling down the corridor.
“I’ve got to go,” I said. “Not that I want to stay.”
“You should be proud of what you’ve made of yourself.”
“Wish I could say the same for you,” I said.
“Au revoir. I have to leave too,” he said.
“At least that’s something you’re good at,” I said, ripping in one last shot as Rogatien Lachine turned and walked toward a door leading out to the cold Montreal night.
* * *
I took my usual bulkhead seat on the charter and, in an effort to be alone, threw my coat on the empty seat. Didn’t work. Cam tossed the coat into an overhead bin and sat beside me. “Have a nice father-son chat?” he asked.
“Can you believe that guy?” I said.
“I can believe he’s remorseful and you’re pissed.”
“So what’d he say to you?” I asked Cam for the second time.
“He gave me this,” Cam said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a business card that read Rogatien Lachine—Construction & Excavation and carried a Montreal street address, fax, and phone number. “And he said he wanted you to know he made your mother the beneficiary on a million-dollar life-insurance policy. He didn’t want to tell you himself.”
