by Jack Falla
“I hope she collects soon,” I said, handing the business card back to Cam, who slipped it into his shirt pocket.
“My work is done here,” Cam said, hoisting himself out of his seat and walking back a few rows to kibitz on one of the ongoing card games played during team flights.
* * *
Rinky got the start in Columbus, where we won an 8–0 laugher. Taki had two goals and could’ve had a hat trick if Kevin Quigley had passed him the puck on a two-on-one late in the game. Instead Quig shot and missed the net. “Make the goalie make the save!” Packy yelled at Kevin when the line returned to the bench. Packy doesn’t yell much and I think it’s been about three seasons since anyone yelled at Quig, who just sat and hung his head.
* * *
Back-to-back games are bad enough but in a ridiculous bit of scheduling we had Buffalo at the Garden the night after we’d played Columbus on the road. I started against the Sabres and lost 3–2 in overtime. I got beaten five hole on the game winner. It always looks bad when a goalie gives up a goal between his pads. But if a goalie in today’s game stood with his pads tight together—the way goalies played a half century ago—we’d give up a lot more goals to the four corners of the net. I usually close the five hole by dropping to the ice and bringing my knees together and keeping my stick blade on the ice and directly in front of me. This time I was a tenth of a second late. It wasn’t a bad goal, it was a great shot. Guys in this league can drive nails with the puck. But it must’ve looked like a bad goal, because I heard a few boos from the crowd. Players say they shrug off boos and that being booed doesn’t hurt. But it does.
Quigley was benched for the game. I hoped Kevin got the message. Cam and I wanted to take him to lunch after the next day’s practice but he said he was having lunch with Nan O’Brien. “Union Oystah House?” Cam said, mimicking Kev’s accent.
“Kev, are oysters really an aphrodisiac?” I asked. But Quigley was walking to the shower and didn’t answer either of us.
* * *
It was after five o’clock when I headed to Faith’s house, driving west on Commonwealth Avenue toward a sun that was setting almost an hour later than it had in December. The last rays of an early-February sunset are the first noticeable glimmers of light in the long dark tunnel of a New England winter. The days start getting longer in late December but it’s only in February that I notice and begin to think about the playoffs—and the trade deadline.
* * *
“Can you believe the nerve of the guy?” I said to Faith after I’d told her about my father showing up at the Montreal game.
“I can believe a lot of things where money is concerned, Jean Pierre. You sure he isn’t going to hit you up?”
“If he does he’ll be my sixth shutout of the season. He told me he only wanted to say he was sorry.”
“He didn’t ask you to forgive him?”
“Nope. Good thing. I wouldn’t have. I haven’t.”
“It’s a basic technique in alcohol and drug recovery to have the alcoholic or addict go back and apologize to everyone he ever hurt, and to make restitution if he can. So what’s the problem?”
“I don’t want him back in my life.”
“He doesn’t seem to be coming back into your life. I doubt you’ll hear from him again.”
“I hope not.”
“You can forgive him in your heart without letting him into your life.”
“Bullshit. He gets nothing.”
“You don’t do it for him, JP. You do it for yourself. You’ve been carrying this anger around for a long time. What good does it do you? What did I hear you tell Lindsey Carter about goaltending? Once the puck is in the net, forget it; the only shot you can stop is the next one. Forgiveness is the next stop.”
“I can’t do it. It’s not just me. The lowlife walked out on my mother, too.”
“From what I’ve seen of your mother, she’s put a lot of it behind her.”
I told Faith about the life-insurance policy naming my mother as beneficiary. “She’ll be a million dollars richer when the son of a bitch dies. Which I hope is tonight,” I said.
* * *
We beat Florida 4–1 on a Wednesday night before the All-Star break. The score was 2–1 midway through the third period when Cam teed one up from the point and blasted the puck right into a Florida forward’s shin pads. The puck bounced back into neutral ice, where Ricky Lange, the Panthers’ top scorer, picked it up and skated in alone on me, Cam in furious and futile pursuit. Lange skated straight down Broadway, faked a shot, pulled the puck back with a toe dribble, and cut around to my left just as I hit the ice. He then lofted a backhand over me and into the top of the net. Well, almost into the net. In a desperate move I shot out my left leg. I got the toe of my skate on the puck, sending it over the goal and into the netting that protects the spectators and makes them think they’re looking at a game through a fog bank. “You’re lucky, Savard!” yelled a fan in a Panthers jersey. That, of course, is utter bullshit. I don’t admit to any lucky saves. After the game a writer asked me if I didn’t feel lucky to have stopped Lange from scoring a goal that might have changed the game. I said I felt stupid falling for the fake but after that I made the only move I could make and it was good enough. What I didn’t say is that if fans and writers are going to blame me for the rain, then I’m going to take credit for the sunshine.
Jean-Baptiste, Taki, and Cam were Boston’s representatives in the NHL All-Star Game. That gave me a four-day break before a three-game road trip. Faith was busy at school so I drove up to Maine to see how my mother was doing. Before I left I asked Cam and Faith if they thought I should tell my mother about my father’s appearance. Cam bailed out: “Do what feels right,” he said.
“I’ll bet he talked to her before he talked to you,” Faith said.
* * *
Piles of muddy snow narrowed the salt-stained streets of Lewiston. I slalomed Boss Scags around the potholes and puddles en route to my mother’s house. Most Ferrari owners put their car in storage for the winter. But most Ferrari owners have more than one car.
My mother was on the phone and laughing—something she hasn’t done a whole lot in her life—when I walked through the unlocked front door.
“Here he is now.… Here, hon, Dennis wants to talk to you,” she said, handing me the phone.
Denny told me the Mad Hatter had finally scheduled a meeting to talk about my contract. “He says he’ll see me a week from next Monday,” Denny said, adding, “You don’t make the All-Star team and all of a sudden Hattigan has time to talk to me. What a coincidence.”
I told Denny I wasn’t looking to bring down the casino. “Just get me another four or five years and for Christ’s sake keep me in Boston.”
“Shouldn’t be that hard,” Denny said. “Put Jac—put your mother back on for a second.”
I handed the phone to my mother, who laughed at whatever it was Denny said. Two laughs in three minutes. A personal best.
We ate boudin blanc for dinner; it was from the last batch of sausages my grandmother had made, and which my mother had kept frozen. My grandmother made her version of boudin with pork, chicken, cream, butter, plain bread crumbs, and a combination of spices known only to her. Thank God she never made boudin noir, which contains pig’s blood and which my grandmother called “blood pudding.” We ate in the kitchen, which smelled as it had when my grandmother was alive. “I hate to screw up a good meal, but a guy claiming to be my father showed up after the Montreal game,” I told my mother.
She didn’t act surprised, because she wasn’t. “I thought he might.”
“Thanks for the heads-up.”
“I didn’t know for sure and I didn’t want to distract you.”
“So you’ve seen him?”
“No. He wrote to me about a month ago. He wanted to say he was sorry.”
“What did you say? Have you answered him?”
“Not yet.”
“You going to?”
“I’
ll let him know I got his letter and that it’s good—good for him—that he feels remorse. It’s good he’s in recovery. I wish him well with that. But that’s all. I don’t want to see him.”
“Did he want to see you?”
“He didn’t say that.”
“Can I see the letter?”
My mother went to her room and came back with a small hand-addressed envelope from which she handed me a folded one-page handwritten letter.
Jacqueline,
Il y des péché qui sont impardonnables … “You know I can’t read this,” I said, handing the letter back to her. She smiled and read it to me:
“Jacqueline,
“Some sins are unforgivable. Mine is one of them. But I want you to know the sorrow I feel, and will always feel, for what I did as an alcoholic. And for what I did not do as a husband, a father, and a man.
“I have been sober more than five years. The people at the alcohol program at Hotel Dieu—that’s the French Hospital in Montreal,” my mother explained—“say I should apologize to all the people I hurt when I was drinking. But I had to wait until the sorrow grew so heavy that I wanted to express it and was not doing so only because someone told me to.
“I am working up the courage to apologize to our son. I am sure he is angry and will remain so. I see in the papers what he has done and am proud of him and of you and ashamed of myself. No apology is adequate.
“Then he told me about the insurance policy,” my mother said, folding the letter and putting it back in the envelope.
“That’s the only part of this that doesn’t suck,” I said.
“You’re not in the locker room, Jean Pierre.”
“Sorry. But the hell with him. We should talk about something else.”
“First tell me about your meeting with him.”
I told her what happened outside the dressing room in Montreal. “I have no intention of forgiving him. I told him that,” I said.
My mother ignored that. “Denny says there’s some progress on your contract,” she said.
“Denny and the Mad Hatter are meeting a week from Monday. The deal will get done, but God knows when.”
“And what’s Faith doing next year?”
“Same thing she always does—whatever she wants,” I said with more bitterness than I’d intended. I told my mother about Faith’s internship choices and how she was leaning toward the Lake Champlain Medical Center in Vermont.
“Then you two have some talking to do,” my mother said. “Faith’s a good woman, Jean Pierre. And very strong.”
“We’ll work it out,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure we would. Or could.
I stayed overnight at the house I’d grown up in and slept in my old room curled up under a patchwork quilt my grandmother made. I slept eight hours—something I hadn’t done since the season started—and awoke to the smell of bacon and coffee. My mother and I ate breakfast together. We didn’t talk about my father. After breakfast I read the Lewiston Sun-Journal and saw that the Mainiacs, the local Junior A team, beat Quebec City 1–0 with Lewiston goalie Demetre Fontaine picking up a thirty-five-save shutout. I knew that Fontaine—a nineteen-year-old from Trois-Rivières—was the Montreal Canadiens’ number one draft pick the previous year. Another kid who—in a few seasons—would take a veteran’s job the same way Rinky Higgins or Kent Wilson could take mine.
I waited until the morning traffic cleared before I headed back to Boston, a ziplock bag of boudin blanc on Boss Scag’s floor. “When are you going to get a sensible car?” my mother asked as I was leaving.
“When I grow up,” I said.
* * *
There were two calls on my phone when I got home. Faith wanted me to go to her house on Sunday to watch the telecast of the NHL All-Star Game. Denny Moran wanted me to call him at his office.
“Get a life and stop working Saturdays,” I said to Denny when he answered his own phone at the Carter & Peabody offices.
“That’s what I want to talk to you about, JP.”
I said that would be more fun than talking about the $50,000 bonus I’d blown by not making it to the All-Star Game.
“Maybe not,” Denny said. “This is awkward, JP, but since we picked up that Maine State Employees account I’m spending more time in Maine than a moose. Look … Christ, I can’t believe I’m saying this.… I’ve got to be in Portland next Friday and I’d like to take your mother to dinner. But I won’t if it bothers you.”
“If it’s OK with her it’s OK with me, Denny. And I think it’ll be OK with her. She’s been stuck in that house a long time. It’ll do her good to go out. Might even do you some good.”
“I appreciate it, JP. That almost makes me forget my cut of the fifty thou All-Star bonus you blew.”
“Have her home by eleven,” I said.
* * *
“I’ve been hit on harder at the Ritz bar,” Faith said of the predictably nonviolent NHL All-Star Game, where no one hit anyone or blocked a shot and the final score was something like Eastern Conference 172, Western Conference 138. Or maybe it was 14–9 the way the paper said. Our guys did well. JB and Taki each scored and Cam picked up two assists. The only downer was seeing my fellow goalies get lit up like tiki torches. That and watching Montreal goalie Claude Rancourt being helped to the bench in the third period after a Western Conference forward lost an edge and fell on Claude’s right knee. I suppose most fans think I should be glad that our archrival’s goalie got hurt. Maybe I’d feel that way if it happened to another player. But goalies are a strange breed and we mostly wish each other well. We all belong to the Goaltenders Union, which isn’t a real organization in that we don’t collect dues or hold meetings. I tried to explain this to Lynne Abbott a couple of years ago. The best I could do was to say that the Goaltenders Union is a freemasonry of spirit and empathy, an unofficial brotherhood of guys held together by our apartness. And it doesn’t matter what level you played at. If you were a goalie in peewee hockey, then you’re in the union. It doesn’t even matter if you don’t play anymore. Being a goalie is like being a Marine—you’re never an ex-Marine or an ex-goalie. Lynne said she understood but I don’t think she does. I think only goalies understand.
* * *
We had a tough trip after the All-Star break; a Tuesday-night game in Denver followed by an all-night charter and a Wednesday-night game in Vancouver before we had to fly back across the country to play the New York Islanders on a Saturday. We lost 5–2 to the Colorado Avalanche, a team we could meet if we get to the Stanley Cup finals. Packy started Rinky Higgins in that game. That’s a little game coaches play. The unspoken message to the Avalanche was: OK, you beat us, but you didn’t beat our top goalie, which you’ll have to do when the money’s on the line.
I got the start the next night in Vancouver. The team was tired from a 2 a.m. arrival and from having played the night before. We were hanging on to a 2–1 lead late in the third period when there was a scrum in front of the net. All I remember is that I was trying find the puck amid all the skates, sticks, and legs when someone banged into me from my right side, twisting my mask around so I couldn’t see. I threw off the mask like a baseball catcher going after a pop-up and just as I did someone hit Flipside Palmer, who came crashing into me, knocking my unhelmeted head against the left post. All I saw was an explosion of yellow in a field of black. When I regained consciousness, Richie Boyle was shining a flashlight in my eyes. “Probably a mild concussion,” Richie said. “You’re done for tonight, JP.”
Flipside and Cam helped me to the bench and Rinky came in for the last five minutes. That was a tough spot for him but he made a couple of stops and we escaped with the W.
I had a headache so I popped three ibuprofen and spent a long time in the shower letting a hard spray of hot water play on the back of my neck. “Got my bell rung. No biggie,” I said to anyone who asked. I fell asleep in my room at the Westin Bayshore at about midnight. An hour later I woke up and vomited. I didn’t want to wake Richie—trainers
keep worse hours than players—so I took an over-the-counter sleeping pill and an antacid tablet and sat hunched over on the edge of my bed for the next hour until the sleeping pill kicked in.
When I woke up at about 6 a.m. I still had a headache. I called Richie, who came to my room and told me he wanted me to go back to Boston to see our team doctor, Jack “Send ’Em In” Wynn. A team doctor is about the last person you want to see when you’re hurt. Team doctors are hired and paid by the club, which most of us see as meaning that the Hippocratic oath gets twisted around so that the phrase “but first do no harm” becomes “but first don’t lose your gig with the club.” I think if my head got knocked off of my body and was spinning around in the face-off circle the team doctor would retrieve it, sew it back on, and tell management I’d be good to go in two or three games. It’s only rookies who don’t seek out independent doctors and get second opinions. But my contract says I have to see old “Send ’Em In,” so I flew back to Boston via Toronto, arriving too late to see anyone. Thursday morning I took a cab to Massachusetts General Hospital, where Doc Wynn shined more lights in my eyes, did some other tests, and surprised me when he said: “You’ve got a slight concussion; you’re out until the headaches are gone for at least five days. You could be out a week. Maybe more. That said, it’s only ten a.m., so you’ve got plenty of time to go get your second opinion.” No matter what they say, no doctor likes it when a patient gets a second opinion. But I think the fact that Doc Wynn knew I always got a second opinion is what kept him honest in the first place. It’s a crazy game but you have to play it. I ignored his remark about a second opinion and asked him, “What’s the story on internships here? Good program?”
“Mass General is one of the best hospitals in the world, JP; getting an internship here is like being signed by the Yankees or playing Carnegie Hall. Why? You making contingency plans in case Hattigan doesn’t sign you?”
