You Could Believe in Nothing

by Jamie Fitzpatrick

  “Obviously I don’t agree with what he wrote,” said Brian. “But I can understand his devotion to the Newfoundland nation.”

  There was a pause while they considered this.

  “Fuck the nation with a crowbar,” said Nels.

  “How much beer tonight, Brian?”

  “We had enough in the kitty for fourteen dozen. Louise is picking up the rum for us and she’ll drop it off after because I didn’t have time.”

  “Party’s here?”

  “Party’s here, upstairs. It’s like a social room up there. Nothing breakable. Beer’s on ice, TV’s set up to watch the game. Lenny brought his poker chips.”

  “Are we allowed to smoke a few draws up there?”

  “We can do whatever the fuck we like up there.”

  Mist had settled over the ice, trapped by the glass walls, so that from one end of the rink the opposite net appeared in a haze.

  “Nothing wrong with Matt’s knees,” said Gover, as he and Derek took warm-up laps. “It’s the TV thing. He’s all pissed off because they didn’t use him at all. It’s like Brian was the only goalie.”

  The new goalie crouched in a corner, one leg extended. Derek watched her face and reconsidered. Who knows if she’s pretty at all? Goalies are sexless.

  “Who’s playing defense?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Derek. He looked around to size up the teams. “Me, I guess, and Nels Pittman. Whoever’s willing.”

  She bounced on her haunches.

  “Okay. I need everyone’s names so we can communicate. You’re…”

  “Derek.”

  “Derek, I’m Stacey. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  By setting the air in motion they had chased away the Zamboni’s exhaust smell. But the fog held as they dropped the puck.

  “Hard!” Stacey’s voice cracked the air like a gunshot.

  Kev Byrne slipped behind Derek and took a pass at the lip of the crease. The goalie reached her stick out in a poke check and Kev lost his footing, sliding into the boards.

  “Quick, quick!” Stacey urged Derek to open ice.

  The puck wouldn’t settle. He rushed his pass, heaving it over the glass.

  “Derek! Read and react!”

  He turned a circle at the blue line, using the delay to push a hand down his pants.

  “Your groin?”

  “What?”

  “Pulled your groin?” said Stacey, indicating his lower half with her chin.

  He pulled the hand out.

  “Yeah. Really tightened up.”

  In fact the tightness was general, in his inner legs, up to his abdomen, and through his ass.

  “My husband, Dan, wrecked his groin playing soccer. Like, right up between his legs.” She touched her glove hand to the middle of her pants. “Fucking scary.”

  “I bet.”

  “You should stretch,” said Stacey. “Do some abdominal, groin, hip flexor. And rub it.” The glove went to her pants again, making a circle.

  Derek skated to the bench, tried shaking the stiffness from his legs, then retired to the meditative silence of the room.

  Sitting and setting his legs wide, he breathed deep and pressed the knees away. He stood and gripped the overhead rack, let his weight hang for a few seconds to extend his stomach. That’s the pose he was holding when Allan Marleau walked in.

  “You guys got a party tonight?”

  “Yeah.”

  Derek continued stretching while Allan paced to the end of the room and back.

  “Brian mentioned the Hockey Night in Canada thing.”

  “The big time,” said Allan. There was no cameraman with him this time, but he showed Derek a small camcorder strapped around one hand.

  “Starting an online project with a friend,” he said. “Real stories. Totally uncensored stuff. Wanted to call it Guerilla Media, but the URL’s taken.” He was still pacing, talking to the space in front of him. “I want to tell guy stories, you know? Get right to the heart of who we are. You ever win a championship when you were a kid?”

  “We won district championship,” said Derek. “Last year of high school.”

  His last year at Wareham High. They fell behind 3-0 to Norris Arm in the championship game, but came back with five goals in the third period. Dave Cheeseman—Fat Dave—scored a hat trick. A thrill tickled Derek at the memory.

  “Women are taking over traditional TV, traditional media,” said Allan. “Filling it with whiny confessional bullshit. That’s what sells these days. And artsy stuff. Lesbian stuff.”

  “We beat Norris Arm. They had us down in the third period.”

  But Allan was gone, shouting into his cellphone, the door swinging shut behind him.

  Asshole, thought Derek. He dropped his hockey pants and jockstrap, massaged his abdominal like Stacey had recommended.

  As a teenager, Derek had hated his hands. Fat and fumbling, always battered by minor accidents, like deposits of useless flesh at the end of each arm. That’s how he had ended up on the hockey team at Wareham High. The hands were different out there, more intuitive. He was not gifted, but the game allowed him a dignity that hardly seemed possible in the real world. By casting his lot with the jocks, Derek claimed the jock’s privilege of physical fluency, while most classmates, living in their heads, were still struggling to get one foot in front of the other.

  Representing a smaller town and much smaller school, the Norris Arm boys tumbled off their bus in cheap department-store jeans and muddy boots. They took to the ice in mismatched helmets and socks. They were underdogs, and Derek and his teammates hated them for this apparent virtue. But the Norris Arm boys were good enough to win. They had it in their hands, just couldn’t finish the job.

  “Fuck them,” said Fat Dave, after the obligatory handshakes. “Fish stink bay wops.”

  The coach said it was a lesson in respecting your opponent. They smirked and waited for him to leave so they could meet up with Gord Molloy’s brother. He waited outside the rink in a rusty Corolla, and sold them two canvas bags full of beer. They walked to Heidi Chan’s house, hiding open bottles when a set of headlights came into view. There was no wind, and the snow was squeaky under their boots. Their jackets flapped open, and their wet hair went stiff in the cold.

  Down the back stairs to Heidi’s basement, the heat started them sweating again. There was no way through the bodies blocking the rec room. Somewhere a girl cried in pain or laughter. More laughter came from the darkness at the end of the hall, and voices rose above the crowd, crackling like crossed radio signals. Molloy opened the canvas bag, and Derek took two warm bottles of Dominion. He pushed down the hallway towards the laundry room. Faces were strange and hard to discern. The boys lining the wall were too old for high school.

  “You’re on a tear,” said Joan St. Croix. She laughed, swinging her legs from a work bench.

  “We won. We came back and kicked their ass.”

  “Whose ass?”

  “Norris Arm. They had us down three goals.”

  “All hail the conquering heroes.”

  Derek drank and looked around. Molloy poured a beer over Fat Dave’s head and whooped, but didn’t attract much notice.

  “What are you up to?” he asked Joan.

  “Oh, you know. Heidi Perky Tits having a big party. The place to be.” She raised her bottle in a mock toast. “Are you any good?”

  “Good?”

  “At hockey. At being a jock.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Not great?”

  Derek shrugged.

  “Then why are you trying so hard to be one?”

  “Be what?”

  “A jock, silly.”

  “I’m not trying to be anything.”

  “Sure you are.”

  Derek was
starting to feel hot and swollen.

  “I gotta go take a whiz,” he said, and squeezed back the way he came, towards the light of the stairs. What the fuck was her problem?

  The crush of the rec room had eased, and inside, a skinny boy stood at the stereo, picking cassette tapes from their cases and hurling them at the wall.

  “Fleetwood Mac!” he called, raising the tape overhead before spinning it like a Frisbee.

  Crash. A ripple of anarchic laughter looped the room.

  “Depeche Mode!”

  Crash.

  The meaty chords of an AC/DC song set off a scratchy buzz in the stereo speakers. The skinny boy played air guitar, going weak at the knees and twisting his face in torment. Derek saw the uneven part of Joan’s hair in the doorway.

  “Are you wasted?” Her brown eyes had gone dull.

  “A little,” said Derek. They were shouting to be heard.

  “I was just thinking that if you weren’t going to stay, you could walk with me down until we get to your street.”

  “It’s just…Fuck, it’s just getting going here.”

  “Okay,” she said. “See you around, I guess.”

  He caught up with her at the top of the narrow stairs, where Heidi Chan’s boyfriend sat on a folding chair, waving an arm as if beckoning someone from a distance.

  “Come on in, boys! Come on in!”

  A long string of boys came through the screen door, one of them clutching a big juice jar sloshing with amber liquid. Snow blew in behind them, and the open door smashed repeatedly against the house. Three steps led from porch to kitchen, teeming with bodies and smoke. In a corner where coats hung from hooks, a couple was necking furiously. The girl leaned into the boy, who wedged a leg between her thighs. A huge houseplant had overturned behind the girl, and the soles of her socks were caked with black earth.

  “We got more beer,” said Molloy, punching Derek’s shoulder as he pushed by. “Fucking Norris Arm. We shit on them!”

  Ronnie Bulgin appeared, pink and shivering. He had no coat, his glasses were missing, his white shirt was open to the waist and soaked through with melted snow. Recognizing Derek and his teammates, Ronnie grabbed at their arms and shoulders, pounding on their backs and leaning his wet, bare chest into them.

  “Somebody get the retard a beer,” shouted Molloy.

  Joan led the way through the back door and up the driveway. In the dark crook created by the chimney, a girl sobbed into a boy’s shoulder. The snow around the house was pitted with vomit and empties, but the snow along MacDonald Drive sparkled under streetlights.

  “What are you doing after school?” Joan asked, as they reached the sidewalk and the quiet of the street overtook them.

  “University, I guess. You?”

  “Get the fuck out of here. Shitsville. My sister in Montreal just got married. I can get a job up there, probably. My French is decent.”

  Her breath shot out in quick white puffs.

  “My brother just got married,” said Derek. “He’s out west.”

  They exchanged near-identical wedding stories. The couple flies south and families are notified via ocean-blue pictures in the mail. When the news arrived at Derek’s house, his mother brought the envelope to the porch before his father even had his coat off. Curtis, bearded and brown, stood with his unknown bride, the two of them in Hawaiian shirts, white surf foaming at their feet.

  A taxi rolled by, its tires kicking up hard-packed snow. Derek finished the beer in his hand and threw the empty on someone’s front lawn, where it bounced and skittered on a gleaming icy crust.

  “My mom works at the Holiday Inn,” said Joan. The Holiday Inn roof was visible in the distance, beyond the snow ploughed high. “In September I came home from school, it was the first week of school, on Friday. And my mom calls and asks me to come pick her up. I said, ‘Why didn’t you take the car?’ and she said it’s just as easy to walk, but now she wanted a ride.”

  She lifted a black mitten and rubbed under her nose.

  “You know that stupid way people laugh when there’s nothing funny? She laughed like that. So I went over there. And I sit there in the car for ten minutes and finally she comes out. This guy is behind her, carrying a bunch of files and stuff and he puts them in the back seat. Mom introduces me and the guy leans in through the window, wants to shake my hand. He says hello really loud, asks me what grade I’m in, like I’m a five-year-old.”

  Derek pictured September, with its long afternoon shadows and days when nobody can dress right because the air is like summer but the breeze sends a chill.

  “So they leave again, and I wait. Finally I just go in there. The hotel’s empty, no one at the desk or anything, just the music you always hear in the lobby. So I went down to her office. I’ve been there a hundred times before.”

  She paused while a dark sedan overtook them and disappeared ahead, one tail light red and the other smashed out.

  “The door is closed, but not all the way. I can see them through the crack, kissing like crazy, and he had his hands all over her.”

  “Your mom—”

  “Mom and this asshole who was just shaking my hand, like he was a great fucking guy.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I went back to the car and turned on the radio, turned it up. Some stupid goddamn song. Then Mom came out and we drove home. She wasn’t in there much longer after I saw them. So I guess they weren’t doing it. Not that time.”

  “What about your dad?”

  “He has to go out of town a lot, so she can screw this guy as much as she wants.”

  Joan raised the mitten to wipe her nose again. To hear a girl speak so frankly of sex, to picture somebody’s mom in an office, some lucky bastard whaling away at her right there on the desk, was all too much. Derek’s head reeled, and a fierce boner strained the inseam of his jeans.

  “You think your folks will stay together?” he asked, partly to distract himself.

  She shrugged and looked around, as if seeking another opinion. “Dad doesn’t know a thing.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “There’s no way.”

  Billy Hillier had once seen his mom making out with a strange man, but that was years after his father died. Besides, Mrs. Hillier was old, over fifty for sure, so the idea of her doing it was comical. Even Billy made a joke of it. Joan’s mother had to be different, young and boiling with passion under her hotel manager’s skirt.

  “So what was it tonight?” Joan asked.

  “Tonight?”

  “You won a big game, or something?”

  “We won the district.”

  “Did you score? Is that it?”

  “No.” Derek sighed. “It’s not about who scored. Jesus.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s just, like...They had us.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “We pulled it out.”

  They went quiet for a block, and stopped at the corner of Quebec Street.

  Derek turned and wrapped himself around her in a manly, take-charge gesture. His parka, stiff and ungainly, undermined the attempt. Still, Joan didn’t back away. She stood on her toes and kissed his cheek, holding it for an extra beat.

  “Goodnight,” she said.

  “On the lips.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Come on.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Come on.”

  Rolling her eyes and sighing dramatically, Joan wrestled from the bear hug—“Let me breathe”—grabbed Derek’s collar with both hands, and pushed her mouth against his hard enough that their teeth bashed together. She took a long inhale through her nose, and when she finally pulled away she grabbed at his lower lip, releasing it slowly.

  “How do
you do it?” asked Derek. “Living with your mom and dad, every day in that house?”

  “You just show people a little bit of yourself. Different bits, depending on who you’re with.” She shrugged. “That’s how Mom does it, anyway.”

  She touched her cold nose to his, and looked down, tucking her chin into her woolly scarf.

  “You are the only person who knows that story,” she said, and he felt the breath of the words.

  She turned and continued up the street, raising the black mitten as she went.

  Derek let himself in the back door and slipped into the bathroom for a near-instantaneous bout of self-abuse, more relief than pleasure. He sat in the living room and propped his feet on the coffee table, looking out on the street.

  The house had changed since January, the day his father came home in a rage. Laying out crumpled scraps of paper on the dining room table, he had spent most of the evening on the phone, his voice rising and falling. “Someone’s gonna hang!” he said at one point. That was when Derek decided his parents were full of shit, and there was nothing to be done about the troubles coming down on them.

  They had never properly moved into the place. The living room was anonymous, its matching lampshades draped in Cellophane. All the real stuff, family photos and knick-knacks, the sweet-smelling cedar chest of his earliest childhood memories, was shoved into a corner of the basement, covered in blankets. The house felt transient, and in this way it betrayed a lack of trust. None of them believed in Lou, or his dying brake-and-muffler venture.

  Derek was starving, but unwilling to spoil the metallic taste in his mouth. Across the street, birch and maple trees climbed in Mr. Aylward’s backyard, bare branches high over the rooftop. There was a distant creak of floorboards. His mother stirred at any noise.

  Kev Byrne had the run of the poker game, gathering mounds of chips and stacking them by colour. From outside the circle it looked chaotic, with chips and cards and crumpled bills scattered about, shouting and swearing, everything jumping and rattling when a fist hit the table, then moments of silent tension. They took frequent breaks to jeer and lament bad cards and pour drinks in huge plastic cups. Kev wagged and bobbed his head.

  “When I took that tumble, it’s like every vertebrae in my neck seized up,” he said.