Breaking Away

by Patrick O'Sullivan

  * * *

  Ottawa, Ontario

  4:30 p.m.

  The team bus pulled up behind the Civic Centre and we started to unload our equipment. Game 36 was just another line, just another date on the Mississauga IceDogs’ schedule. It was our fifth game and the fourth on the road in an eight-day stretch since the Christmas break. We were better than the IceDogs’ team the previous season, but we were still the worst team in the league, still looking for our seventh win.

  Although this was the highest level of the game I had ever played at, it felt like a step down from USA Hockey’s program in Ann Arbor. Our under-17 team had been well organized off the ice and we didn’t want for anything. The IceDogs weren’t exactly a new franchise—they had been around for a few seasons—but it still felt like management was making it up as they went along. The same thing was true on the ice. In Ann Arbor I’d played beside a bunch of kids who would play in the NHL. The OHL had older players and the game was faster, but almost none of my teammates in Mississauga would wind up playing pro hockey.

  Still, I was looking forward to getting out on the ice that night. I looked forward to every game. For sixty minutes I had a chance to play—that was the break from school, from practice, from the bus rides and, yeah, from dealing with the father who called Barry’s townhouse long-distance every night to give my shit about one thing or another that he had picked up the last time he saw me play. Those sixty minutes were the best hour of my day, even against the better teams in the league, like the Ottawa 67’s.

  * * *

  Ottawa, Ontario

  7:30 p.m.

  Eight thousand five hundred fans packed the Civic Centre for the first Friday-night game of the New Year for the 67’s. The game had been sold out months in advance, fans banking on Don Cherry being behind our bench, wearing one of his outrageous suits and putting in a performance. But Cherry didn’t make the trip—he wasn’t up to the better part of ten hours on the bus when he had to work Hockey Night in Canada the next day. Still, fans in Ottawa got some sort of show, at least those who were in the section behind our bench. They got an eyeful and an earful of my father pressed against the Plexiglas, screaming at me for three periods.

  Usually my father found a corner of the rink and stood there, strategically positioned so that I could hear his shouting or catch sight of him before face-offs. He’d only ever move away if he recognized an agent or a scout—in which case he’d wander by and try to make small talk.

  In Ottawa, though, he somehow made his way down to the seats right behind our bench. It wouldn’t have been the ticket that I had the team leave him at Will Call, and it wouldn’t have been a ticket that he bought off a scalper. I don’t know where my mother was sitting, and I’m sure that my father didn’t care. Wherever she was, she had to be embarrassed by the scene my father was making and she must have wished that she had never come along on this road trip. He had retired the sad-faced-resignation routine he’d put on while I filled out job applications. He went completely in the other direction, manic, maniacal.

  What he was saying was nothing new—calling me a “pussy” or a “fuckin’ fag,” calling me “useless” or “gutless.” Still, this was different from the other times. This time he wasn’t a voice in the crowd. He was right in my teammates’ ears. They could hear every word and looked at me, shaking their heads, as if to say “WTF.” He was just feet away from the coaches. Steve Cherry and Joe Washkurak pretended not to notice him when he started to pound his fists on the Plexiglas. I caught looks from them, looks that said, “We can’t believe it either.”

  There was nothing that I could do during the game, nothing the players could do. Maybe the coaches could have called arena security—even if they couldn’t nail him with causing a disturbance or menacing and hoof him out of the building, they could have asked to see his ticket and told him to move back to his seat. Looking back, I’m surprised that the police in the arena didn’t step in on their own. They had laid down the law with fans doing a whole lot less. Then again, it was the visiting team that was getting the abuse, and they would have thought my father was just an Ottawa fan venting, dialing the heckling up to 11—a bit extreme but nothing criminal. Maybe they thought he had a couple of beers in him and was a little wild. But I suspect that if he had been drinking, the whole thing would have only escalated in the arena and not waited for later.

  One thing for sure: my father’s act would have been toned down if Don Cherry had been behind the bench that night. Not that he would have been on his best behavior even if Don had worked the game—that hadn’t stopped him from acting out before. Still, he would have dialed it down a notch in the arena, and he would have stayed out of earshot. There was no chance of “Suitcase” winning a battle with Don, little chance that he wanted to get on Cherry’s bad side. My father had wanted to be one of “Don’s guys,” and I was his ticket to the inner circle. He would have been able to go only so crazy but no crazier. And if my father couldn’t exercise any self-control at all and shouted and pounded the glass just the same, I’m sure security and the police would have taken my father’s sideshow more seriously if he had been doing it within spitting distance of a hockey icon.

  Players are supposed to be able to tune out hecklers. They’re supposed to not even notice the extraneous stuff in the arena, the world on the other side of the glass, to be in a bubble. I had thought that my father’s yelling couldn’t affect me, not after all those years of it. But in Ottawa it did. I’ll admit I was distracted. I’ll admit that it gnawed at me. I was only able to give the game divided attention.

  My teammates played really well against the 67’s, but I had a brutal game. I screwed up chances. After my teammates came back to tie the game, I took a bad penalty and Ottawa scored to take the lead—for good, as it turned out. It was maybe my worst game of the year. No excuses, it’s just something that happens. It didn’t happen because of my father, though he didn’t help. It was just one of those nights when nothing works for you.

  I was frustrated as hell and started to jaw at my father, over my shoulder, not looking back at him. I provoked him. I was practically begging him to come over the glass at me—if he had crossed that line, he’d have been in a hell of a lot of trouble. Really, though, there was no calculation on my part. I mouthed off to my father and goaded him because I was sick and tired of his shit.

  “Shut the fuck up,” I yelled.

  “You fuckin’ loser, you’re out of your fuckin’ mind,” I yelled.

  I was mad but I was still rational. I made my mind up right there on the bench that this had to end. It might seem like a strange place and time to make a life decision, but really that’s how it played out. It was now or never. I had always thought that the day would come when I was going to have to walk away from my father—when I was eighteen, when I made it to the pros, sometime down the line. That night in Ottawa, though, I realized there was no waiting until I had a pro contract and was self-sufficient. I had lived in fear of being physically beaten by my father. Now I was worried that he might take it a step farther. He seemed capable of doing absolutely anything.

  * * *

  Ottawa, Ontario

  10 p.m.

  Before the game, it hadn’t entered my mind to look for a confrontation with my father in Ottawa. I wasn’t looking for a confrontation with my father. Not before the game. Not after. I did everything I could to physically avoid him. I was one of the first to shower, get dressed and head out to the bus with my equipment. My hair was still wet and I didn’t comb it. It was a race. I figured that if I could beat him out to the back of the arena, I could get on the bus while he was waiting for me outside the dressing room. I figured if I was on the bus, I was safe.

  I did beat my father out to the bus. Only by a few steps.

  I was walking toward the bus with my hockey bag over my shoulder and my sticks. My father was yelling at me from behind. I didn’t turn around. I tried to ignore him, but I had a sinking feeling that he was going to get phy
sical.

  I threw my hockey bag and sticks into the bus’s hold. My father grabbed my shoulder.

  “You’re fuckin’ going home,” he yelled.

  He let me loose for a second and bent over. Then he grabbed my bag out of the hold and threw it on the snow-covered pavement. I didn’t say anything, just walked away from him and started up the steps into the bus. He grabbed a handful of my jacket and pulled me backward. I was knocked off balance but managed to stay on my feet.

  “What the fuck?” I said. “Just leave alone. Get the fuck out of here.”

  I got out of his grip and onto the bus. He followed me on and dragged me down the aisle, yelling, “It’s fuckin’ over! You’re going home.”

  There were only a couple of players on the bus, and they had no idea what the hell was going on. The lights were off. There were no adults in the seats. The driver wasn’t on the bus. Neither were the coaches.

  It didn’t occur to me till later on that the coaches being there might have shut things down. The whole night would have turned out differently if Don Cherry had been there. Don’s exit from the arena was always like Elvis leaving the building. Hundreds of people crowded around. Extra security would be outside, pushing back hordes of fans looking for an autograph or a photo with him. Don might have already boarded the bus when my father went for me after the game. If Don didn’t or couldn’t physically stop him, he would have at least asked him what the hell was going on. He would have said that it was a team rule, that players rode the bus home with the team, no exceptions.

  If Steve Cherry or Joe Washkurak had been there, either of them would have given him the same message. Maybe with a bit more of a physical pushback than Cherry, who was almost seventy.

  Then again, more people around might not have changed things so dramatically. While my father was dragging and shoving me toward the van, I could see twenty or thirty adults standing around behind the arena. Most if not all of them were family of players or fans who would have been inside earlier. None of them tried to step in. None of them said a word—not one Good Samaritan among them. I have no idea what went through their minds. Did they come up with their own interpretation of events? Probably a father giving his son some tough discipline . . . It’s none of our business. If you had asked them about the first sign of character in a hockey player, they would have said the willingness to stand up for a teammate who was being ambushed. And yet outside the arena, not one of them budged. My father probably physically intimidated most of them, but they didn’t have to stand in his way to call the police or security. Nobody tried to help me.

  * * *

  My father dragged me over to the van and threw me in the back seat. He picked up my equipment and threw it on top of me. My mother was sitting in the front seat whimpering. She had known what my father was going to do. He’d spelled it out to her and told her to wait there. If she’d had her wits about her, she could have left the van and told the coaches. She could have told a cop. She could have asked anyone standing around for help. Instead, she just sat there, did what she was told and said nothing to my father and nothing to me.

  You might give her the benefit of a doubt. You might think that she felt threatened with physical abuse herself over the years and again that night, like those people who stood by and watched in back of the arena in Ottawa. I don’t see it that way. I don’t think she deserves any sympathy.

  It’s one thing to feel threatened in your marriage if you have no children. Accepting that physical threat from your spouse and trying to soldier on—that’s a personal decision. But tolerating your spouse’s abuse of a child is unacceptable, even unconscionable. When my mother sat by passively all those years, she enabled my father’s abuse. Even though he did a lot of it out of her sight when we were on the road, she had seen the evidence—I was wearing it all over my face and body. And she had seen him punch and kick me hundreds of times. She should have done something the first time it happened, taken my sisters and me out of harm’s way, walked out on my father and reported him to law enforcement. Some women in my mother’s position might have felt so financially dependent on an abusive husband that they feel they can’t leave. That wasn’t the case with my mother. In fact, the Martins had always been my parents’ safety net, a cash machine that my father had access to because my mother’s birthright was their bank card and passcode. A lot of times the Martins were my parents’ single biggest source of income. If my mother had taken my sisters and me away from my father, her parents would have been there for her.

  By standing by and offering no response, no pushback, no resistance, my mother abandoned her responsibility as a parent: the protection of her children. Her tears in the front seat of the van meant nothing. Her passivity implied approval of or at least resignation to my father’s abuse of me. That’s how it had been for years, and that’s how it was the night of January 4, 2002. She’d had opportunities to save me from those beatings every day all those years when I was growing up. Just one phone call to the authorities would have done it. There were hotlines she could have called. There were friends she could have called who would have offered her any support she needed and a roof over our heads in an emergency. If she had called a guidance counselor at any of the schools I had attended, she could have got help. I’m sure that if she’d reached out to USA Hockey when I was in the program, Moe Mantha and others on the staff would have jumped in. But instead of reaching out to others who could have helped us, my mother kept the family secret. If you were to ask anyone who knew her when I was growing up, you would get the same answer—she “seemed so nice.” She kept up appearances. She knew what a monster my father was but gave him cover. People would think such a “nice” woman could never stand beside a husband capable of crimes against his family.

  That night was another example of how my mother enabled my father. Once again she passed up the opportunity to get help for us.

  * * *

  The IceDogs team bus was still sitting in the parking lot and players were still coming out of the arena when my father put the van into gear and took off. He drove over to the Best Western. My parents had checked into the hotel before the game and left their suitcases there. My father pulled the van up to the front doors.

  “We’re fuckin’ going back to Michigan,” he said to us. “Get the fuckin’ bags and check out.”

  She said nothing—nothing to him, nothing to me. She and I went into the hotel and up to the room to pack their bags. We were out of the van and away from my father for ten minutes, the perfect opportunity to get help. There was a phone in the room. I had no way of calling the team to let the coaches know what was going on—these were the days before cellphones and texts. Still, my mother could have called 911 and told the dispatcher that she was concerned about her husband’s mental state, that I was being held against my will, that she feared for my safety. And if she had done that, I’m sure the police would have arrived in the time that it took her to check out. She could have alerted the front desk at the hotel. She wouldn’t even have had to come downstairs to the lobby. She could have deadbolted the door and waited for help.

  I didn’t call 911 and deadbolt the door myself because I couldn’t have counted on my mother to back up my account of the incidents when the police arrived. She would have put on the “nice” act and told them that it was all a family argument that would blow over.

  The forgiving take on my mother’s inaction is that it didn’t occur to her to reach out for help. Fact is, she failed as a parent again.

  She dutifully packed up in the hotel room. She stifled her tears while she carried the bags through the lobby, again keeping up appearances and not causing the staff any alarm. Then she put the bags in the back of the van, took her seat in the front and burst into helpless tears, picking up where she’d left off.

  When I got into the back seat, my father kept up his crazy, threatening monologue, but for a while at least I tuned him out and thought about my mother.

  Dozens of times she had seen
my father slap me around and done nothing. She would ask him to stop but couldn’t stop him. So many times she had stayed in bed while my father was keeping me up all night, making me do push-ups and sit-ups to exhaustion, punching and kicking me to motivate me. She had to have heard that going on, and sometimes even if she did sleep through it, she saw the evidence. She never questioned my father about the game the night before, never asked the next day why we came home at two in the morning when we should have been back before midnight. Fact is, she had a good idea of what happened after a game.

  My father wasn’t so much tough as brutal. He headed the family in a reign of terror. My mother was the exact opposite. People mistook her surrender and submission to my father for a happy marriage. They thought someone that “nice” had to be a good mother, had to be the glue in a happy marriage with that crazy, off-the-wall character. A lot of people had suspicions about my father, but he fooled most into thinking he was a decent if driven rough diamond. My mother fooled them all. Everyone thought she was the rock of the family when what I saw was a woman sleepwalking through life.

  I know some will defend her and say that she feared for her own safety or maybe that of my sisters, that my father would have assaulted her if she had ever called the police. If that was in fact the case, then she was willing to put her interests ahead of mine. I would have to pay the price for her fear.

  After all that had happened over the years, it was on that night that I could finally see my mother’s role. She couldn’t have done less to protect me over the years. I couldn’t even say for sure that she didn’t buy into my father’s plan to turn me into a pro hockey player—whatever he thought it would take.

  * * *