by Jack Falla
Cam grabbed a tablespoon, held it in front of me as if it were a microphone, and asked, “And what’s your position on that question, Senator?”
“I plan to march under the Arc de Capitulation,” I said. “I don’t like her decision but I love her.”
“That’s the spirit, JP. Unconditional surrender. The greatest aphrodisiac in the world.”
“I need all my fighting spirit for the rink,” I said.
“Mr. Savard, you get in front of the fireplace and I’ll try to score on you,” Caitlin said.
“No thanks, Cait. It’s been a bad enough day.”
“You can use the shovel for a stick.”
“OK. You get one shot.”
I grabbed the small brass coal shovel from a rack of fireplace tools and crouched in front of the open iron grate while Caitlin grabbed her sawed-off hockey stick and a lemon yellow tennis ball. Caitlin pushed the ball to within ten feet of me, pulled her stick back to shoulder height, and brought it down on the ball. The shot came in about a foot off the carpet. I kicked it out with my right leg. Easy save, I was about to say until the ball hit the leg of an armchair and bounced back at me, past my flailing shovel and into the cold ashes of the fireplace.
“Goal! That counts!” yelled Caitlin, putting her stick in the air and high-stepping around the living room like the actor who played Mike Eruzione in Miracle.
Tamara buried her face in her hands to hide her laughter.
“You got scored on by a chair, JP,” Cam said.
“Been that kind of day,” I said to Cam, handing him the shovel and heading for the door.
* * *
There were two messages for me when I got home. One from Faith saying she’d be over at six. The other from Nan O’Brien asking me to call her at the Catholic Charities office before 5:30. It was only 3:30 so I phoned Nan.
“It’s about Kevin, Jean Pierre,” she said. “He finally got around to telling me the whole story about the fight at practice. I’m glad someone besides me knows what Kevin’s been going through.”
“He almost went through the side of Cam Carter’s face,” I said. “Cam’s the hero in this one, Nancy.”
“I’ve already thanked Cam,” Nan said. “I don’t think that sort of treatment is listed in the therapeutic manuals but I have to say it worked. Kevin’s talking openly and with less pain than he has since Christmas.”
“Kev’s better at handing out pain,” I said. “What happened anyway?”
“Catholic Charities used to handle more adoptions than any agency in New England,” Nan said. “The woman who’s now my supervisor was the case worker on the Quigley adoption. When she heard Kevin and I were … um … dating she told me she was pretty sure Kevin didn’t know he was adopted.”
“Why’d you tell him? Isn’t that a violation of some sort of rules you people have?”
“Truth trumps rules, JP. Kevin was in a bad situation. His adoptive father turned abusive and that abuse went on for a long time.”
“Until Kevin laid him out,” I said.
“There were a lot of bad years before that,” Nan said. “But what really hurt Kevin is that I also found out his birth mother is dead so he has no chance of ever seeing her or talking to her. He felt rejected. Unwanted both by her and by the family who took him in. I met Kevin’s so-called parents and I can see why he’d feel that way. But he’s better now.”
“Had to be a bitch for Kev to be lugging that around for the last couple of months.”
“When these things come out they tend to come out in tidal waves. It won’t last long. He’s on his way to being rid of it. Well, mostly rid of it.”
“Cam and I have him covered,” I said. “God knows he’s watched our backs long enough.”
“Thanks, JP. Oh, the other reason I called—nice save.”
I laughed and hung up.
I stretched out on the couch and thought about where I was in life. Rinky Higgins was pushing me. I’d push back. Maybe I’d win back my job. I probably would. This time. But what about the next time? Maybe Rinky would ask for a trade to a team where he could be the main goalie. But then our team would bring up Kent Wilson or wheel in some other guy to push me. I’ve seen too many guys stay too long. It’s ugly. First you alternate starts. Then the other guy gets the big games. Then one day they send you down but they don’t call it that. They say, “We just want you to get more playing time in Providence” … or Wilkes-Barre or Binghamton or wherever. And then they might call you back, but more likely they forget you. The next thing you know you’re thirty-eight years old and alternating with a teenager. Then some AHL GM is telling you they’re sending you down to the ECHL but “just so you can get more playing time.” I remember Gumper Dreesen, the other goalie in Providence during my season in the AHL. Dreesen was thirty-seven and barely hanging on. They sent him down to the ECHL a few days before Christmas. I lost track of him until five years later when Sports Illustrated did a big feature on hockey among the Cajuns of southern Louisiana. A photo captioned “Win One for the Gumper” showed forty-two-year-old Gumper Dreesen playing for the Bossier-Shreveport Mudbugs of the Western Pro League, which is about as far from the NHL as Neptune. By then Gumper was divorced and living in a trailer park with his dog, Five Hole.
I called Denny Moran to tell him that if it helped his bargaining position I didn’t need a four- or five-year deal. I figured I’d get what I could for three years, then call it a career. Go out on my own terms, or something reasonably close to my own terms. Of course, Denny wasn’t in his office, because he was in Maine servicing Carter & Peabody’s account with the Maine State Employees Association. I wondered what else he was servicing. I could’ve reached him on his cell phone but instead I asked his secretary to flip me over to Denny’s voice mail. I left a message, then stretched out on the couch again for what I thought would be a short nap, but I didn’t wake up until six o’clock when I heard Faith coming up the stairs. “Can I tell you about our specials, sir?” she said, bursting through the door with a bag of groceries. “Pasta carbonara,” she said, putting the bag on the kitchen table and hanging up her coat. “We got your pancetta, your olive oil, your parmigiana, a little Romano, a few eggs, a little cream … a heart attack in a bowl except for … THIS,” she said, lifting a bottle of pricey Barolo wine out of a paper bag. “It’s the wine that’ll keep you heart-healthy, Jean Pierre. Trust me. I’m a doctor. Bar’s open. Get you something? A little eye-opener? You look like you need one.”
“Earl Grey tea with honey,” I said, sitting up on the couch and rubbing my eyes.
Faith nuked a cup of tea and set it down on the coffee table.
“Sit down for a sec before you start the great experiment in arteriosclerosis,” I said, patting the couch beside me.
“What up?” she said sitting down.
I took a sip of tea, put down the cup, took Faith’s hand, and said, “We’ll have a nicer evening if you know right now I’m with you on this Vermont move. It’s the best thing for you. Someday it’ll be the best thing for us. I still like what I do. But I know I can’t do it much longer. It’s time to think about something besides the next practice, the next trip, the next game. I love you, Faith.”
Then Faith McNeil did something I’d never seen her do. She took her hand out of mine, put both hands to her face. And cried.
“Jeez. First Quig, now you. What happened to all the hard guys?” I said.
She choked out a “Thank you, Jean Pierre,” followed by a sentence that sounded like it was caught in a run-down between laughter and tears; “I haven’t cried since we lost to that bitch Hazel Anne Worthington in the states.” She slid the napkin out from between my teacup and saucer and dried her eyes with it. “What made you change your mind?”
“A lot of things. Age maybe. It’s not so simple. But I talked it over with Tamara today. I think she told me what I already knew. It’s time to start thinking beyond the next shot. Sometimes I wonder if anyone can teach us anything we don’t already know.
That’s enough. We can talk about the rest later. And, ah, maybe the rest should include picking out a diamond.”
“You’re supposed to surprise me, not tell me.”
“I was afraid I might pick out something you wouldn’t like.”
“You know, JP, I’ve always wondered how you can play hockey with so much confidence and not have the same confidence about … well, about almost anything.”
“Maybe because I haven’t done anything besides play. It’s the only thing anyone ever told me I’m good at.”
“I know one other thing you’re good at,” she said, walking over to the living-room window and closing the drapes on the gold-and-gray remains of a late-winter sunset.
“What happened to the pasta carbonara?”
“The chef is substituting a new special,” Faith said, stepping out of her skirt and laying it across the back of a chair.
“Let’s not wreck the couch,” I said, taking her hand and leading her to my bedroom. Our lovemaking lately had been mechanical. It was just sex really. Basic maintenance. But that night began better, as much communion as sex. My years of conscientious field work have established that the simultaneous orgasm is about as rare as a truthful NHL general manager. So I’ve always been a ladies-first guy. But after one of the best starts in the history of foreplay, Faith became strangely detached.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
“You go ahead, Jean Pierre. It’s OK.”
“No. What’s wrong?”
“I think I’m too happy,” she said.
“We can stop for a while.…”
“No. You go ahead. I want you to.”
And so I lost myself in Faith McNeil while she kept saying “thank you” and I kept saying her name, neither of us seeing beyond the moment, or around the corner.
Nine
It was grisly. We were playing the Rangers in a matinee—our last home game before a four-game trip. Late in the game Taki tore into the New York zone at full tilt. He cut around a defenseman and pushed hard to the net, then he lost an edge and crashed skates-first into the boards. You could hear the bone break.
Taki lay on the ice a long time before the EMTs took him off on a stretcher. The trainers told me that when they got Taki in the ambulance, cut away his game sock, and took off his shin pad, they saw a piece of bone sticking through the skin below his knee. He was done for the season and maybe for all seasons.
Our first concern was for Taki, but buried under that was the unsettling knowledge that he was our team’s second-leading scorer and 20 percent of our offense. Without him and with Gaston playing with bruised ribs we were a one-line team. And one-line teams are toast in the playoffs. With three days before the NHL trade deadline we knew Madison Hattigan would have to swing a deal for a scorer. Either that or we could all call our country clubs and book tee times.
* * *
“There’s no goddamn distinction in potential,” Cam’s father says. He means that as pros Cam and I are judged only on what we do—not what we want to do, could do, ought to do, or used to do. That’s what makes pro sports such a cold business, and it’s one of the reasons players get nervous as the trade deadline approaches. That deadline was only two days away when Cam picked me up for the ride to the airport and the start of a weeklong trip with games against Buffalo, Florida, Tampa Bay, and Carolina.
“Who do you think the Hatter will deal?” he asked as the Buick idled in traffic.
I said Rex Conway, who hadn’t been scoring lately.
“We’ll have to give up more than Rex to replace Taki,” Cam said. “It’s gotta be a big deal, JP. Either that or our season’s over.”
I knew Cam was safe because he’d already announced he’d retire at the end of the season. The more I thought about it the more I worried about myself. A lot of teams like to rent players for the postseason. That is, find a guy like me who’s at the end of his contract, trade for him, and have to pay him for only three or four months. After that they can re-sign him or let him become a free agent. The risk to the team is minimal. And a lot of teams would like an experienced goalie in the postseason. “Maybe I’m not so safe,” I said.
“Naw. You’re OK. The only team that needs a goalie is Montreal and teams in the same division almost never trade with each other. But we’re going to lose someone,” Cam said.
Every player hates the thought of losing a teammate and friend because of a trade. Every trade is an ugly reminder of how little control we have over our life.
* * *
Most of the guys were milling around in a private lounge near the boarding gate when Cam and I arrived. As we walked in I saw the woman behind the desk reach for the handheld microphone, and I thought we were about to get the first early boarding call in the history of U.S. domestic aviation. But what came over the public address in that phony-polite Stepford Wives disembodied techno voice you hear at airports and on recorded messages was:
“Your attention please. Will passenger Jean Pierre Savard go to the nearest airline courtesy desk.… Passenger Jean Pierre Savard, please go to the nearest courtesy desk.”
“Excuse me,” I said to Cam as I started toward the woman behind the counter in the back of the lounge.
“Maybe it’s Denny. Maybe you’ve got your deal,” Cam said. “Hope so.”
I hoped so too. But some instinct made me fear the call.
The lady behind the counter handed me the phone.
It was Madison Hattigan. “You really oughtta buy a cell phone, JP.”
“We’re getting ready to board here,” I said in a tone I hoped told the Mad Hatter I didn’t want to chitchat.
“Look, Jean Pierre. I wanted you to hear it from me first. We’ve traded you. We had to.… It’s to Montreal. We needed a scorer. They needed a goalie.”
I felt sick. Helpless. I looked for a chair but there wasn’t one nearby so I leaned on the counter, my head down and my stomach turning. The rest of Hattigan’s message was just bits and pieces of information coming through my ear into a mind so stunned it could barely comprehend. Hattigan was telling me that the Canadiens had sent Henri Brisette, a proven forty-goal scorer, plus a future first-round draft choice to Boston for me. “… and, frankly, we feel Reginald is ready to step up and if we don’t give him a chance we’re going to lose him. I’m the one who’s going to take the heat on this thing, JP. You were a popular guy here, and a great player. Listen, the best thing you can do is call Jean Picard as soon as you can.” Hattigan gave me the Montreal coach’s phone number. I scribbled the number on my boarding pass. I was too shocked to say anything.
“Jean Pierre? You still there?”
“Not for long,” I said, and put down the phone.
Cam was standing behind me. I think he’d figured out what happened from my reaction.
“I’ve been traded,” I said. “Montreal.”
“Jesus Christ Almighty, JP, I’m sorry.” Somewhere in the background the Stepford Wife was making the boarding call. Across the lounge a line of players and coaches shuffled toward the boarding concourse. “I guess you’re the only guy I get to say good-bye to,” I told Cam as Flipside Palmer, the last guy in line, disappeared into the walkway leading to the plane.
“Gentlemen, we’re boarding your flight,” the lady behind the counter said to Cam and me.
“I gotta go, JP. I’ll call you tonight. Bitch of a business. I remember when it used to be a game. Hey, you want to take the car?” Cam said, fishing in his pocket for his keys.
I said I’d take a cab. Cam boarded the flight. I stood in the lounge holding my garment bag.
“Sir, you’re not boarding?” the Stepford Wife asked me. I said no and walked away adrift in a miasma of humiliation, isolation, rejection, abandonment, anger, confusion, helplessness, self-pity, and fear of the unknown.
On the cab ride home I couldn’t even think about Montreal. All I could think about was my being ripped away from teammates and friends, some I’d known for ten years. I wasn’t even going t
o get a chance to go around the dressing room and say good-bye, to go out the classy way I’d seen other guys go out. Ten years, nine hundred and some-odd games, thousands of flights, bus rides, parties, and dinners with guys I felt closer to than to anyone except Faith and my mother. All ripped away in a two-minute phone call. I figured Cam would tell the team on the plane. I wondered what they’d think. What they’d say. I knew how Rinky would feel. The same way I felt when I was a rookie and the team dumped Harry “Head Case” Harrington and I knew I was in the Show. I didn’t blame Rinky nor was I resentful of him. Four, five, maybe six seasons from now the same thing would happen to him and, later, to whoever replaced him. We’re all in the game’s food chain, all part of an endless cycle of consumption. And in the end we all wear the spoked D—Dump City.
I heard the trunk lid pop as the cabbie pulled up to my condo. I put the fare and a $10 tip through the tiny door in that annoying protective plastic barrier separating the cab’s front and back seats. The bulletproof shield reminded me there are lots of jobs more dangerous and demanding, and less lucrative, than playing hockey.
I figured Faith had already left for her meeting at school so I planned on leaving a message on her phone. I wanted her to hear the news from me before it broke on TV or radio. Then I’d call Denny Moran, my mother, and maybe Jean Picard in Montreal.
But Faith was just coming out the front door as I walked up the stairs with my suitcase. “What are you doing home? You look awful. Are you sick?” she said.
“Worse. I got traded.”
“Oh my God. Where?”
“Montreal.”
Faith held the door for me, then went to the phone and canceled her meeting. “Tell me about it,” she said. She didn’t seem as upset as I’d expected her to be. Or maybe as I’d hoped she’d be.
