by Jack Falla
“I saw the puck,” I said. But then I thought I should answer the larger question: “Hey, Linds. We’re goalies. We make saves, not excuses.”
I asked Tamara if she happened to know what her husband had done with the half million dollars I’d given him.
“Sure. I know,” she said.
“Well?”
“He made a great investment with it,” Tamara said, drawing an imaginary zipper across her lips.
* * *
Boston won the Cup, beating San Jose in five games. The Bruins took the first two games in Boston 5–4 and 6–5, lost Game 3, 6–2, in San Jose partly because the Sharks were desperate to save face in front of their fans and partly because Rinky Higgins had another in a series of off nights. Boston won Game 4, 6–4, and the series moved back to Boston.
Faith and I were at the Garden for Game 5. A Boston win would give them the Cup; a loss would send the series back to San Jose. “No way we’re doing the Dionne Warwick,” Flipside told a TV reporter, then whistled a few bars from “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?”
“You OK with this if Boston wins?” Faith asked as we took our seats seven rows off the ice to the left of the Boston goal.
“Sort of,” I said. “I want the guys to win, but it’ll be hard not being part of it.”
The game was tied 2–2 after the first period and 4–4 after the second. The third period opened with a Sharks goal that Rinky should have stopped. You could feel the air go out of the building. That’s when Cam and Quig stepped up and for the next five minutes carried the Bruins on their broad backs. Cam blocked three shots—“What? You think I was going to let Rinky do it?” he told me later—and Quig bulled through two defenders to jam a shot into the San Jose net and tie the game 5–5. The game and the series turned on a play that came two minutes later. Boston was on a power play when Cam took the puck at the right point and did what I’d seen him do about nine thousand times: faked a slapper to freeze the D, then looked to dish the puck to JB at the top of the left face-off circle. The trouble was that Clint Dwyer, the defender on Cam, didn’t buy the fake and skated right at Cam. I thought Dwyer was going to steal the puck off of Cam’s stick and have himself a breakaway and maybe a shorthanded goal. Instead Cam pulled a spin-o-rama, whirling counterclockwise and dumping the puck off the boards into the right corner, where Luther Brown collected it and threaded a pass to JB, who one-timed it as he curled off the top of the circle.
“Goal,” I said to Faith, grabbing her arm just as the puck went into the net and the Garden crowd exploded.
Boston held on for the final five minutes—Cam was on the ice for four of them—while everyone in the building stood and cheered continuously. The crowd counted down the final ten seconds … “Three … Two” … I couldn’t even hear them yell “One.” Pandemonium swept the building and I think it was only the netting, the high glass, and the appearance of a few dozen Boston cops that kept the crowd from spilling onto the ice. The guys mobbed J.-B. Desjardin and then gave the obligatory hugs to Rinky Higgins. It hurt to watch it and not be part of it.
After the teams went through the handshake ritual—is that a great tradition or what?—ushers wheeled a table onto the ice, and the NHL commissioner handed the big silver Cup to Cam Carter, who hoisted it high and spun around once before he started a slow, stately parade around the rink. Cam passed the Cup to Jean-Baptiste Desjardin, who passed it to Flipside Palmer, who handed it to Kevin Quigley, who got by far the biggest ovation. Eventually everyone on the team got to carry the Cup.
“How you doing with this?” Faith asked me about halfway through the celebration.
“Better than I thought I’d be,” I said. Truth is I was jealous. I wanted to be part of it and wasn’t sure I ever would be.
I skipped the dressing-room portion of the festivities—champagne spray really stings your eyes—and drove to Faith’s house, stopping briefly in Cleveland Circle to pick up a pizza at Pino’s.
“What now?” Faith asked after she’d set the pizza on the kitchen table and poured two beers.
“Wait for offers, I guess,” I said. “What about you?”
“I have to close on that house I found in Essex Junction. And I still have to sell this place. And, oh yeah,” she said with mock surprise. “Don’t we have a wedding to plan?”
“Whatever you and your family want is OK with me,” I said.
“You’re not into weddings?”
“Marriages count. Weddings don’t,” I said. “A wedding is the last exhibition game before the regular season. It’s mainly for the fans. All you want to do in a wedding is get out without getting your starters hurt.”
She shrugged and laughed. “Let’s get married in September. Next year I’ll pull the goalie,” she said.
“Pull the goalie?”
“Yeah. No more birth control.”
In the next three weeks Faith sold her house but not her basketball hoop. We bought the house in Vermont, then celebrated by slipping away to the Château Frontenac in Quebec City for a few days. On our second day we were in the early stages of what promised to be a memorable afternoon delight when Cam called.
“Nice timing,” I said.
Cam told me that he and Gaston Deveau had prevailed on the NHL to let them have the Stanley Cup for an extra day so they could bring it to our alma mater, the University of Vermont. “We’ve got it until noon on Friday, when some guy from the Hockey Hall of Fame has to fly it to Vancouver so Taki can have his day with it.
“We’re having an open house for the Cup at the old Carter rink,” Cam said. “We want you there.” I told Cam that I’d checked the papers and that he and Gaston—not I—had won the Cup. It wasn’t so much that I still felt jealous as that I thought Cam and Gaston might be inviting me because they felt sorry for me.
“Yeah, but we’re alumni and old teammates. You belong there. And save time for lunch. My dad’s coming up. Wants to talk to you.”
I said I’d be there. Faith said she wanted to go too, which I thought was unusual. “Hey, I’m an alumna. I can go,” she said.
“You’re a what?”
“An alumna. It’s the Latin feminine singular. Alumnus, alumni, alumna, alumnae.”
Nothing kills sex deader than a Latin lesson.
* * *
We extended our stay at the Frontenac and on Thursday drove directly to Burlington, Vermont. We were at the Carter rink at ten o’clock Thursday morning when Cam, Gaston, and Paul Fentross from the Hockey Hall of Fame pulled in with the Stanley Cup. Fentross has a cool job. He’s one of two guys who accompany the Cup everywhere it goes. He put on a special pair of jeweler’s gloves to lift the Cup from its case onto a draped display table. There’s a tradition among players that if you haven’t won the Cup you can’t touch it. So Gaston and Cam were the only ones who could touch the trophy with their bare hands. That I couldn’t touch it didn’t make me feel any better. Mostly I felt like a fifth wheel all morning, and I was glad when Fentross repacked the Cup and took off for the airport. “Where we having lunch?” I asked Cam.
“Champlain Medical Center,” he said. “They’re breaking ground for that new hostel where parents of sick kids—mostly cancer patients—can stay overnight. My parents and the company kicked in a lot of dough for it.”
Great, I thought. I’d just had a two-hour reminder that I’d played ten years in the NHL and never won the Stanley Cup. Now I had to go eat finger food, sip soda, and listen to speeches at a ceremonial groundbreaking. “This sucks,” I said to Faith as we drove the few minutes to the medical center.
* * *
When we arrived at the site of the new building we saw three dozen folding chairs arranged on a flat lawn in front of a podium. Two easels shrouded in white linen stood to the right of the podium. “I admire Cam’s parents for funding the thing but I hope they wrap this up fast,” I whispered to Faith as we took our seats in one of the back rows beside Rudy Evanston and his parents. “Wish they had one of these when I was a patient here,”
Rudy said. “My parents lived close but other kids’ parents were traveling long distances. Like you don’t have enough to do when your kid is sick.”
I knew Cam’s parents would be there but I was surprised when they arrived in the company of my mother and Denny Moran. I was about to get up and talk to them but the ceremony started on time, which I thought was a bigger upset than the USA beating the Soviet Union in the 1980 Olympics.
Chadwick Thayer III, chairman of the board of the hospital, talked for a few minutes about the importance of “keeping parents close to their children during arduous medical treatments, especially chemotherapy.” Then he said he was pleased to announce the naming of the new building. He lifted the shroud off of the first easel to reveal an engraved marble nameplate—“The Carter-Quinn Family Hostel” it read. Below it were oil paintings of Cam’s parents and, to my surprise, of Lisa in her nurse’s uniform.
“That’s where your half mil went, hon,” Faith said just as Cam turned around in his seat a few rows in front of us and mouthed the words: “You want your money back?”
I smiled and shook my head. No. I was as over Lisa’s death as I’d ever be but I was glad to see her work remembered.
After a phony ceremonial groundbreaking, Chadwick Thayer III went back to the podium to talk about the hospital’s tight budget and how projects like the Carter-Quinn Hostel were possible only through private donations. He then pulled another little rope, releasing the shroud covering the second easel and revealing a large oak panel carved with the names of the major donors to the building. There were six names beside the heading that read: “Founders: Cameron and Diana Carter Jr., Cam and Tamara Carter, Faith McNeil, M.D., Jean Pierre Lucien Savard.” Cam told me later that founding donors had given gifts of a half million dollars and up and that his parents kicked in five million. “I think my father hit the Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont,” he said.
Beneath the founders’ names was a lengthy list of other individual and corporate donors. I scanned it for names I knew. There was Serge “the Weasel” Balon—“said he wouldn’t make the pledge if we didn’t include his nickname,” Cam said—Kevin James Quigley, Nancy O’Brien, LICSW, and all of the Bruins players and coaches. There were contributions from Le Club de Hockey Canadien; Dennis Moran; Jacqueline Savard; Dolph and Mary Evanston; and Harry Flask of Masks by Flask. The names were carved on separate sections of oak to allow for the listing of future donors. Near the top of the listing was a blank space where one of the glued-on panels had apparently fallen away. “Should use screws to attach those names,” I said to Cam. “It looks tacky when a panel falls out.”
“Remind me there’s something I have to talk to you about before you leave,” Cam said.
“Can’t even get a goddamn bourbon in this place,” said Cam’s father, who looked like he’d had it with the white wine. “Let’s hit the Slapshot. Got to talk to you guys,” he said, tossing a half-full glass of alleged Chablis into a plastic-lined trash barrel.
“You go ahead. We’ll see you there,” Cam said. “I’ve got to talk to JP for a minute.” Cam led Faith and me to a table behind the plaque listing the names of the donors.
“I need you to make a decision,” Cam said. With that he lifted a small white towel that covered a strip of oak paneling, the strip that I’d thought had come unglued and fallen from the main plaque. “I took this down because I didn’t know if you’d want it up there,” Cam said, showing me the small wood panel carved with the name Rogatien J. Lachine. My father. “He pledged fifty thou,” Cam said. “You want him on or off the plaque?”
“If he’s off do we still get the dough?” I asked.
“Already got it. No strings attached.”
“Then he’s gone. Archives,” I said.
“OK. Just needed a decision,” Cam said.
“Wait a minute, Cam.” The voice came from behind me. It was my mother. She put an arm around me and rested her hand on my left shoulder. “It’s time to let it go, Jean Pierre. Past time. Let it go for your own sake,” she said.
Cam stared at my mother and me. Faith stood by silently. Denny stayed in the background. “Put it up, Cam. It’s all right,” my mother said in little more than a whisper.
“JP?” Cam said.
I nodded. “It’s all right,” I said, and reached for Faith’s hand. The anger receded and all I felt was tired.
* * *
It was like old times at the Slapshot, where Cam and Tamara, Cam’s parents, my mother, Denny, and Faith and I crowded around a wooden table in a back corner of the old college sports bar. “Open a tab and keep an eye on us,” Cam’s father told the waiter, slipping him two twenties and ordering a round of drinks.
Before the drinks arrived, Cam’s dad leaned forward in his chair and said, “It’s a done deal. I bought the goddamn team.”
“There go another forty-two nights a year,” Diana said.
“More than that because we’re going deep in the playoffs,” Cam’s father said. “Whole deal didn’t take but ten minutes.” We laughed as Cam’s father told us how when he walked into Gabe Vogel’s office and Gabe said any discussion would be “preliminary to give you time to set up your financing.”
“Already got the goddamn financing,” Cam’s father said, reaching into his suit jacket pocket and throwing a cashier’s check for 225 million onto Gabe’s desk. “I told Gabe he could have the check and the cable TV rights. Take it or leave it. He took it so fast I was back on the Lear before they had it refueled. Landed in Boston in time for the Sox game. Ahhh, that’s all life is anyway. Get up in the morning and do what you have to do, then come home and do what you goddamn want to do.”
The drinks arrived.
“You boys are going to have to get yourselves a new agent,” Cam’s dad explained. “Denny will be running the team, and I don’t want any conflicts of goddamn interest.”
“Mom’s representing me,” Cam said. I think he was joking. Then he told us that he was going to play another two seasons. “Harvard B School will still be there,” he said.
“You’re a free agent July first,” Cam’s dad said, looking at me. “We’re spending to the cap and we’re signing you. We’ll top whatever Montreal offers. I can’t watch any more of that Higgins kid jumping all around in there. Goosing goddamn ghosts is what he looks like he’s doing. We’re going to sign that Evanston kid as a free agent. Probably start him as the number two in Providence. But he’ll be in camp with us next year. I want you to work with him.”
“My pleasure,” I said, relieved to know for certain I’d be going back to Boston.
“Hey, now who’s taking a job that will keep us apart?” Faith asked.
“Only for two seasons,” I said. “We can work it out.”
“Seems like we just had this conversation,” she said, laughing.
“Life’s a busted play, hon,” I said.
“But that doesn’t mean you can’t win,” she said, squeezing my arm with one hand and with the other making a circular motion signaling the waiter for another round of drinks.
When the second round arrived, Cam’s dad raised his glass of Jack Daniel’s in Faith’s direction. “Lady, you’re a goddamn franchise,” he said.
“And here’s to winning the Cup again next season,” Cam said.
* * *
We should have won it that next season. But we didn’t.
Coda
“That’s it, guys, time for dinner,” I yelled as I walked down the plywood ramp leading from the mudroom door to our backyard rink. It was a few minutes after sunset and I could see the constellation Orion rising in the southeast sky looking like a cosmic goalie clomping out of his dressing room for the next period.
“One more shot,” Luc said to Jackie, who was crouched in front of the official NHL goal, one of the gifts the Bruins gave me when I retired eight years ago.
“One shot for the championship of the universe,” Jackie said. “Dad, watch this.”
Luc was six years old and Jackie e
ight. It was February school vacation. They’d been playing all afternoon on the sixty-five-by-thirty-five-foot rink I’d made out of plywood boards on a flat patch of ground behind our house in Vermont. In December I’d put a plastic liner in the rink and flooded it with a garden hose. We could skate from about Christmas into early March as long as I kept the rink free of snow.
“Here he comes!” yelled Luc, stickhandling the puck and picking up speed as he skated counterclockwise in front of me before wheeling up ice and skating full bore on Jackie. In the tradition of kids everywhere Luc had to do the play-by-play: “Savard sweeping behind his own goal … breaks down the right wing … past one defenseman … he’s in alone…”
Jackie stood at what would have been the top of the crease, giving Luc not much more than the five hole and a sliver of space in the top left corner.
“He cuts for the net … goes high … and he…” but as Luc started to yell “SCOOOORES,” Jackie’s blocker flashed up to tip the puck over the goal and into the garden fencing I’d nailed above the boards to keep pucks in play. Luc retrieved the puck as it came off the fencing, held it behind the net for a second, faked coming out to his right just long enough to move Jackie to that post; then Luc cut to the opposite post and tucked the puck into the net. “He SCOOOORES … on the wrap-around!” Luc yelled lifting his stick in the air and dancing on his skates.
“We said ONE shot, you moron. That was TWO shots!” Jackie yelled.
“I still scored. Look at it, it’s in the net,” Luc said, pointing to the puck. That’s when Jackie threw the goalie gloves on the ice and ripped off the goalie mask, letting her long auburn hair fall onto her padded shoulders. “I’m going to kill you, Luc,” she said, grabbing her brother by the V-neck of his hockey shirt with her left hand and hauling back her right for what might’ve been a pretty good shot to Luc’s helmeted head.
