CHAPTER FOUR
I’m hungover again and embarrassed by the memories seeing Jennifer dredged up. I’m bad with embarrassing memories, especially the ones that involve girls. There’s the time I farted in front of Sabrina Turner in the back of her brother’s car, or when I threw up after riding the Spider at the carnival in front of Nicole Bernard and Angela Cox, or when I mixed up okra and Oka during a dinner conversation with Jana and her parents while I was trying to sound smart about food—these moments pop into my head with a regularity that borders on pathological. But thinking about that night in Jennifer’s basement sends me into a cold sweat every single time. My boozy headache and profound humiliation keep me in bed longer than I should be. I was supposed to meet my father around nine, but it’s shortly after noon by the time I finally get moving.
The shower in my room at the Goode Night Inn has some quirks. Finding a temperature between scalding and freezing is like trying to crack a safe, and the water gushes with enough force that I have to take a step back when it slams into my chest. It’s like being pressure-washed, the dirt and stink peeling away. I could stand here forever, blasting off layers of yesterdays, but there’s only about six minutes’ worth of hot water.
Wiping the steam from the mirror, I catch my own eye. I look tired. I look like a guy who’s been drunk for days. And I’m starting to look out of shape. I’ve always had a thin frame, but now I’m doughy through the middle, not fat, but definitely paunchy. My various parts are soft and bleed into each other with no real definition.
Sportswriters tend to be either skinny nerds or loud fat guys. I’m sure there are a few guys that want to grow up to be Red Fisher, but most of us had other plans and instead fail into this gig. Near the end of my English degree, I wanted to be the Canadian John Steinbeck, and I managed to get one short story published in a small literary journal nobody reads. I started writing for the St. Mary’s school newspaper because of some girl, and I knew a lot about hockey and baseball and football, and it turned out I could write a pretty good sentence. I don’t remember ever making the decision to be a sportswriter, but somewhere along the way I became one of those guys who makes sports out to be more important than they really are because otherwise we’d have to admit a lot of uncomfortable truths to ourselves. Writing about sports—watching them closely, analyzing them, coming up with eloquent and original ways to describe the things that happen over and over and over—is a profession that belongs almost entirely to men who could never have played anything at a high level. We are the uncoordinated and the talentless. And if you’re uncoordinated and talentless, but you love sports, learning to write about them is as close you’ll get to being the athlete your childhood self wanted to grow up to be. We’re the kids who collected hockey cards and pored over the stats on the back. I spent forty bucks each year on updated editions of The Complete Hockey Almanac, a gargantuan tome featuring every piece of statistical information the NHL has ever produced. I obsessed over those books and, by the time I was twelve, had committed nearly every NHL record to memory. I know that Larry Robinson is plus-730 for his career and Ian Turnbull is the only defenceman to score five goals in a game. Glenn Hall played 502 consecutive complete games as a goalie. Most points in a game by a rookie? A tie between brothers Peter and Anton Stastny, who each managed eight in the same game on February 8, 1985. Most game misconducts in a playoff series? Five: Terry Macallister, 1974.
The truth is, we’re just big fans—the biggest fans—which is strange because in every other kind of journalism, there’s a certain expectation of objectivity. We fake it, but deep down we’re not all that different from every other diehard homer and athlete starfucker. It’s all good so long as you don’t get caught asking for an autograph. The downside is that after you spend a few years covering finely tuned athletes—and their muscles and talent and fame and success and money—it starts to chip away at your self-esteem. Maybe that’s why guys like J.J. Johnstone end up attacking guys like my father: simple jealousy.
Not that high self-esteem has ever been a problem for me. So far in my career, I’ve been lucky to get assigned to cover university volleyball games. Even after I was hired as a full-time reporter, most of my bylines are community colour pieces: “Minor Hockey Team Raises $6,000 Selling Apples” or “Junior Curlers Hope to Play for Provincial Medals.” I wrote filler—stories mothers could cut out about their kids and stick up on the fridge. But I was paid money to watch people play games and write about them, which is pretty good. I’d been angling to get on the Major Junior hockey beat, covering the Calgary Hitmen and the NHL draft prospects, when the layoffs came. The internet has made even the cushiest newspaper jobs tenuous, never mind positions for low-level guys like me. I wasn’t all that surprised when the axe finally came down, though I really should have had some kind of backup plan in place. Instead, I took my two weeks’ severance and sat on my ass until my lack of savings became a real problem.
I was in a bar watching the Leafs play the Stars when a graphic showing Bobby Monahan’s pursuit of my father’s record popped up. The light bulb went off. I remember saying, “What happened to Terry Punchout?” out loud, followed by, “Fuck.” I’d thought about writing about my father before, but was never sure he was interesting enough. But the moment presented me with the perfect combination of relevance—his falling record—and desperation—my failing career. I’m self-aware enough to know I’ve got a half-baked scheme that doesn’t stand up to a lot of scrutiny, so I try not to scrutinize it. If this goes sideways, I’m unemployed in a shrinking industry with few prospects and no favours to cash in.
After a few minutes of feeling bad about the way I look, my current employment status, not having had sex with Jennifer Clark ten years ago (or last night), and a half-dozen other things, I brush my teeth and put on the same shirt I wore yesterday. On my way to the rink, I stop for coffees, hoping it’ll both tame my hangover and keep the peace with my father, given how late I am.
•
When I get to the rink, my dad isn’t in his apartment. I roam the building for about ten minutes before I find him in the small Zamboni room. The front of the machine is open, tilted forward, and pouring snow into a large hole in the floor straddled by the Zamboni’s tires. I’ve never seen this before—I’ve never even thought about how a Zamboni actually works—so it had never occurred to me that the large, boxy front was almost entirely empty most of the time.
“How many times do you have to clean the ice to fill that thing?”
“You’re late,” my father says as the snow finishes emptying. He slaps a switch with his bad hand and the front of the machine lowers itself back into place with a low whir.
“Yeah, sorry. Late night. You know how it is,” I say with a weak smile, recognizing that he probably doesn’t know how it is. He crouches down next to the Zamboni and opens a panel on the side. “But I brought you some coffee.” I hold the cup out toward him, but he doesn’t look up, so I set it down on a narrow table to my left covered with tools, some tubes, and other bits and pieces of machinery, most of which are foreign to me. I’ve never been mechanically inclined.
“So,” I say after several minutes of silence, “do you want to talk here, or should I wait for you upstairs?”
“No time. Game’s at two-thirty.”
“I know, me and some of the guys were gonna meet up at the bar and then come down and watch it. But you and I have some time first.”
“No, we don’t,” he says coldly. “The peewees just went on and I’ll need to clean the ice as soon as they finish, which means I’ve got an hour to fix the vacuum on this thing.”
“The vacuum?”
“Yes, the vacuum. It sucks up the wash water. If you don’t suck up the wash water, you leave dirt on the ice.”
“Right. Dirt.” It’s clear the machine is old—it looks like the same one from when I was young, which would make it at least twenty years. How many hours has my father put into patching it up?
How many times has he fixed the same vacuum? When did he get so handy with machines?
“Look, Dad, we’ve got to get these interviews done. I’ve only got so much time, you know?”
“Then you should get out of bed earlier.”
“Jesus. I thought we decided you weren’t going to be like this.”
My father stops tinkering inside the machine and looks up at me from where he’s squatting. “Be like what?”
“Like this,” I say. “A letdown.”
“You need to stop acting like I owe you this, boy. I don’t. You want some of my time, fine. But right now I need to get the fucking vacuum working, whether that’s disappointing to you or not.”
“I knew this would happen. Why would I be able to count on you for something now?” I feel petulant and I don’t know where it’s coming from. Is this what unrepressed anger feels like? It’s satisfying.
My father sighs and his eyes fall away from mine. “Adam, you can be mad as hell about what you think I did or didn’t do, but it doesn’t change the fact that right now I have to get this goddamn thing working.” He punctuated that last bit by kicking the side of the Zamboni.
This would be a good time to walk out. I could go, meet the guys, have a drink, and watch the game. Come back tomorrow and pretend this conversation didn’t happen. No real harm has been done here. Yet. I turn to go, but something in me just can’t leave it alone.
“This is why she left you, isn’t it? Shit like this. You were just a constant letdown, so she left you.”
My father stands. The arch in his back straightens, and he seems to grow a full two inches, looking more like the man I remember.
“She didn’t leave me. We just needed…” he pauses, searching for the right words “…to be apart for a bit.”
“A bit! You were divorced for fifteen years when she…” Died, but I can’t finish the sentence out loud.
“It was more complicated than that.”
“Yeah? I bet it was pretty easy for her.”
“Nothing like that comes easy.”
“So, what was it? What made her go?”
“Nothing,” he says, but a slight dip in his shoulders betrays him, and I know I’m onto something. His discomfort eggs me on.
“There was something, wasn’t there?”
“No.”
“Did you hit her?”
“I would never!” The fire in his eyes tells me he’s not lying.
“So what? You cheated on her?” Again, he deflates a little. “Holy shit! You did. You fucking bastard.”
“I made bad choices.”
“You fucked someone else.”
“I behaved inappropriately.”
“Jesus, you can’t even say it.”
“It doesn’t need to be said.”
And I suppose it doesn’t. He’s wounded and on the ropes, and if I wanted, I could take out years of frustration and anger on him. I could yell and scream and use my mother—the memory of her—to cut him to his core. And I can tell he knows this. But, mad as I am, using my mother to break him seems unconscionably cruel. It would also be a pyrrhic victory—I could hollow out what little is left of him, but it would leave me with nothing, too. No interview, no article, no real ties to my hometown.
“Look, I’m gonna go—we can both cool off, you can get your work done, or whatever. But after the game, can we try again?” I hate that I need him more than he needs me right now. “Please.”
My father slowly walks over to the workbench and picks up a tool. “Come by here an hour after the game is done,” he says with his back to me.
•
The Duke Street house was a gift from the town, a property they owned for some reason or other, but was rundown and unused. They told him he could stay there rent-free until he sorted himself out. Everyone knew he was coming home broke, but no one talked about why. He left when he was sixteen and became a celebrity. Pennington was excited to have him back.
I was excited to have him back, too. We’d finally get to do all the things fathers and sons did, which, in my mind, involved a lot of playing catch and fishing and watching hockey. I imagined these were the things all sons did with their dads, even though I had no real evidence. Dave’s dad wasn’t around any more than mine, Paulie’s was a dick, and the rest were just sort of there. But a kid’s mind is like a rock tumbler: ideas go in, bounce around, and come out polished and shiny, but in the end, they’re still just rocks. My idea was that, somehow, in complete defiance of history and probability and evidence, my dad would become Father of the Year on his return. It really pissed me off when he didn’t.
The first month or so was good. He seemed happy to be around and talked a lot about what he was going to do. “No free rides,” he’d say. “We should fix this old house up a bit. Want to help your old man do that, Skinny?” Yes, Dad. “Maybe I’ll go coach the Royals. I could teach those kids a thing or two, right, Skinny?” Yes, Dad. “Hell, maybe I’ll run for mayor! Think I’d make a good mayor, Skinny?” Yes, Dad.
I begged my mother to let me stay with him on weekends, and much as it probably pained her, she couldn’t come up with a good reason not to. My father and I would watch hockey and play cards. He’d take me with him around town and, wherever we went, people wanted to shake his hand, welcoming him home, while I stood there beaming with pride.
But gradually my father wore down. Fewer people wanted to say hello because everyone had already said hello. It became clear that the town, accommodating as it was, had no plan for him, and my dad, for all his talk about coaching and politicking, didn’t have one for himself.
He’d drink rum and Cokes all night, and while he wasn’t a sloppy drunk, even at eight years old I could tell when he had a lop on, especially if we were watching hockey. The drunker he got, the more he’d yell at players and referees, using nicknames and first names because he knew most of them. More often than not, he’d fall asleep in his chair, snoring loudly, and I’d turn off the TV and go to bed. Within a year, we’d made a routine of our weekends together. TV. Rum. Snore. Bed. He wasn’t much for keeping the fridge stocked, and on the nights we didn’t get pizza, I was left to eat ketchup sandwiches.
His relationship with Pennington fell into the same kind of routine. Terry Punchout went from being a local legend to being a local fixture, more of a mascot than a hero. The town was nice enough about it, though, letting him keep the house even though he hadn’t done anything to earn it. His idea about coaching the Royals seemed reasonable to me, and probably most everyone else. I think people assumed it was going to happen, but they never officially asked, so Dad never officially offered. In his mind, that would have been asking for a handout. He was fine with using the house, because he hadn’t asked for it, which I suppose fit with his antiquated notions of respect and manliness and how people should conduct themselves. You can probably blame hockey for those ideas, too.
•
I climb the stairs to J.J.’s to meet the guys before the Royals game at two-thirty. The bar is much busier than the last time I was here. Every Royals game is a minor event in this town, but Saturday-afternoon games are like church. I have to admit, putting a bar in this rink was a stroke of genius. I have no idea who gets the money from the booze sales, but it’s clear the Royals might be the linchpin of the entire Pennington economy, as the bar is already filling up and I know the seats inside the arena will be at capacity.
Because I’m early, I manage to snag a table. Shitty applauds my initiative when he arrives, happy he doesn’t have to carry his pitcher of beer around the crowded bar. I’ve already got one on the go, but Shitty orders another three and puts them on the table. Paulie and Mac show up and each adds two more. Dave buys himself one bottled beer and avoids our table.
The bar is filled almost entirely with men. The older guys share stories about goals scored, fish caught, women bedded, and days won. People ask each other about wives and mo
thers and kids as though they hadn’t all done this just a week ago. Like last night, I’m left at the table with Paulie, while the other guys make the rounds. Paulie humours people who stop to chat, answering questions in a way that isn’t answering them at all.
“How’s your mum?”
“Oh, you know Mum.”
“And what are you up to, Paul?”
“Oh, just a bit of this and that.”
Then they give a little laugh and move on. Meanwhile, Paulie’s father is working the room as hard as anyone, answering the same questions about his wife (“Healthy as a horse”) and what his son is up to these days (“Not so much working hard as he is hardly working”). Mac and Shitty come by the table often to refill their glasses and, in Shitty’s case, roll his eyes in a way that isn’t specific, but is perfectly clear: this show—men meeting and drinking and being social with expired braggadocio and vapid small talk—is ridiculous. It’s all patter and platitudes, and while I suspect this is the way all men talk when they spend time together, that these men choose to do this every single weekend boggles my mind.
“Is it always like this?” I ask Paulie.
He takes a second to size up the room, trying to figure out what it is I’m really asking. I think he gets it. “Yeah. I guess,” he says, and shrugs.
“And you guys do this every weekend?”
“What the hell else would we do?”
“I don’t know, but you’d think you’d be tired of this. It’s just a bunch of assholes trying to relive their glory days, isn’t it?”
Paulie screws up his face in a way that implies he’s never really given the ritual much serious consideration. “Yeah, I s’pose that’s about right.”
“And you don’t get sick of that?”
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