by Cara Hedley
Thrown back to the darkness, we all sprung to our feet, yanking up our sweats, our jeans, our xylophone flies. Toad gave a hushed, desperate laugh.
‘Oh shit oh shit,’ Pelly breathed.
‘What do we do?’ I whispered. I felt loose-limbed in the darkness, flight instinct kicking in.
‘Well, I mean fuck, what can the guy do to us, really?’ Hal said quickly. ‘I mean, really?’
‘Do we run?’ Heezer hissed manically. ‘Like, do we just bust it right now?’
This idea struck me as criminal, desperate. I saw handcuffs, jail cells. ‘He probably saw our jackets, though,’ I said, breathless. ‘Don’t you think?’
‘Shit shit shit,’ Pelly intoned. The flashlight bobbed up and down, stabbing at our knees as the guard approached. He stopped and raised the light around our waists; it bloomed a wan green-yellow glow up around our faces. I looked around our circle for cues. Toad’s face erupted into a garish grin.
‘Evening, officer! How’re you doing tonight, sir!’
The guard was skinny with a sad, failed attempt at a moustache, and he looked about my age. I moved in closer to Pelly. He just stood there. Bewildered eyes.
‘Why were you doing that?’ he said finally. We hadn’t expected this – this opportunity for moral reckoning. We shifted, looked at each other. I felt small comfort, knowing that, among them, I wouldn’t have to talk. Heezer let a short, uncomfortable giggle spill. Pelly followed with a barked laugh like a tic, then clamped her hand over her mouth, wide-eyed.
‘I just mean, uh,’ the guard shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot and I felt sorry for him. ‘There are ladies’ bathrooms all over campus. You know?’
‘Yeah, okay, but. Do we look like ladies to you?’ Toad slurred the word ladies slightly. ‘Well, except for Hoots here maybe.’
‘Toad, just shut up.’ Hal elbowed Toad in the side and Toad yelped.
‘Sorry, we’re sorry,’ Hal said, quick, gruff.
‘The point is,’ the guard said, his voice growing confident edges in the face of Toad’s drunken disorder. ‘This is campus property and – ’
‘And we’re campus broads, detective sir. We own this place. Seriously, seriously.’ Toad leaned forward unsteadily.
The guard shuffled back slightly. ‘I don’t think I like your attitude,’ he said.
‘Yeah, well,’ Toad pronounced, ‘I don’t like your muss-stash.’
I grabbed Pelly’s arm like it was the scary part of a movie and she leaned into me. Hal stepped directly in front of Toad.
‘Don’t listen to her,’ she said. The guard touched his upper lip as though expecting to feel blood.
‘I see you play hockey,’ he said and shone the flashlight on the Scarlet crest of Hal’s jacket. ‘What do you think your coaches are going to say about this?’
Pelly and I gasped under our breath.
‘Please. I know this – ’ Hal began.
Toad stepped out. ‘They’ll be thrilled! Our coaches are propeeing! They’re progressive!’
I laughed a bit by accident as Toad swayed and Hal shot me dead with the FOAD look.
Behind the closed door of her office, Moon asked that we issue an apology to the team for misrepresenting them.
Toad bristled with indignation. ‘Mooner, come on. If anything, it was an accurate representation. It was like a real Discovery Channel moment for buddy. Like,’ Toad switched to a teacher voice. ‘And today in biology class, Moustache, we’ll be learning that women also have bladders.’
Toad, as a form of protest, was wearing a T-shirt that said Guns Don’t Kill People. People with Moustaches Kill People, next to a silk-screened outline of a grinning, moustached man who looked like Burton Cummings. Sober, her political stance had sharpened.
‘So, let me get this straight,’ Moon said. ‘You are pleading ignorance to the wrongness of ... defiling campus property while wearing team issue. You’re telling me that what you did was perfectly okay.’
Stan coughed into his hand.
‘Precisely,’ Toad said. ‘I think we should fight this, personally. It’s discrimination, this notion that we should have to run around frantically with our knees together looking for the closest powder room, when guys – they just – ’
Moon sighed. ‘Let me stop you there, Corinne.’
‘Buddy,’ Hal groaned. ‘Buddy, you have to shut up.’
Pelly and I glanced at each other. I raised my eyebrows. Pelly looked scared, like she’d lost some sleep over this, bruised wedges under her eyes. Moon pinched the bridge of her nose, closed her eyes. ‘Enough, you two,’ she breathed, a weary mother. ‘Okay, okay.’
‘STOP.’ Stan slammed his palms on the desk next to Moon and leaned forward. A vein bulged in his forehead and his face grew red. ‘You acted like jackasses. All of you. You were caught. Your teammates know. You have to be accountable. You are ambassadors of this team and of the Scarlet Athletic Program and you have to be held accountable for acting like assholes and getting caught. That’s it. Bottom line.’
Silence. Stan rarely raised his voice. Now: jackasses, assholes. Our eyes slid like kicked dogs to our laps, slinking down across the dirty beige carpet.
‘Ah did not have sexual relations with that woman,’ Toad mumbled to her knees. Hal punched her in the arm hard enough that I heard the dull rap of knuckles on bicep. And this sound released in me a startling surge of inspiration. I stepped out, suddenly, from the escarpment of their egos.
‘We’re sorry,’ I said tentatively, looking up at Stan, at Moon. The resonant wobble of that word, We. Then, again, louder, with conviction. ‘We’re really sorry.’
Hal and Toad looked at me as though I’d just broken out into Spanish opera. Pelly smiled like I was a boyfriend who had surprised her with flowers. The horn signalling the end of the ice time before ours sounded through the office wall. The ice just there on the other side. Ed starting up the Zamboni.
Toad dragged her eyes from me. ‘We are, Mooner,’ she said in a voice as quiet as she was capable of. Hal gave a grudging nod.
And then we couldn’t waste any more time. The Zamboni’s shining tail dragging us all toward practice.
Toad, Hal and Pelly all seemed relieved to get back to their stalls, climb into their equipment, return to the ice. But I felt like I’d been away for a long time, like I’d been on vacation, and was now forced to go back to school. I didn’t want to put on my skates.
‘What the hell is Moon doing? That is not a power play – there, okay, that’s better, now you’re talking. Go, Corrine! Shoot that! Shoot that!’ Mo bellowed, pushing himself up from his seat, hands raised over his lap. Sig looked over to Terry and the two chuckled. Eileen, on the other side of Mo, grabbed his jacket sleeve and yanked.
Sig pulled her glasses down her nose and squinted at the numbers around the faceoff circle, the name bars too blurry from this distance. She was starting to attach numbers to names, names to parents. She’d gone for coffee with a few of them after the last game, Mo inciting a cheer right in the middle of Tim Hortons. These parents were different from the parents of the boys Iz used to play with. Chuckling about their hockey-playing daughters, the nicknames twisted roughly from the girls’ names they’d given them, laughing about the game-time spars. Pride edged with a kind of vigilance like something might break at any time, blood in their eyes when a daughter got benched or shaken up along the boards, but laughing all the while.
Terry, all bundled in that fleece blanket of hers, leaned in to Sig. ‘Iz is looking strong out there tonight, Sig.’
‘Not bad at all, you’re right.’
A University of Regina player tripped a Scarlet, and Mo leapt to his feet. ‘Get your head out of your ass, ref! Here – ’ He fumbled wildly in his jacket pocket and yanked out a pair of glasses. ‘You want these? Want these? You’ll – ’
Eileen gave his arm a violent tug and Mo fell hard to the bench.
‘Enough,’ Eileen hissed. Mo craned his neck at her, spread his hands.
‘What? I was just offering – that was bloody Sausage, you remember her? Number Six! She’s been getting away with this shit all game – ’
‘Bloody Sausage?’ Eileen giggled. ‘Listen to yourself, Mo. For chrissake. It’s different when the girls say it.’
‘What?’ Mo began to laugh.
The Scarlets wove down the ice, passes echoing tightly into the stands, the players’ calls to each other blurring into crowlike squawks. Sig watched Moon pace along the bench, pen in her mouth. Her eyes darted from the ice to the tops of the players’ helmets to her clipboard, in ticlike sweeps.
A scream.
Movement on the ice sprayed to a quick stop, stilling the bobbing toques in the stands. Breath caught under parkas. A circle of teammates gathered around a fallen Scarlet player, and Sig murmured, ‘What happened?’
Another howl from the ice. Sig had heard the sound before, in countless other rinks. Always made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Eileen leapt up, eyes wide, and stepped from side to side. Mo breathed heavily.
‘Shit. Shit. It’s her knee.’ Under his breath. The stands were still, faces slanted toward the trainer slipping across the ice on Hal’s arm.
‘Oh dear,’ Terry said and shifted uneasily.
Eileen sprinted to the stairs, skittered down to the ice, arms pumping at her sides, her mouth a wild arc. Mo didn’t seem to notice Eileen’s departure, eyes fixed on the circle surrounding Toad, swearing steadily under his breath.
Sig clucked her tongue as she watched Eileen fumble with the gate to the ice, no one helping her. She yanked the handle frantically, and a young man ambled slowly from the penalty box, the one who took the stats, and began to jiggle the handle. Eileen stood back for a second, arms jerking at her sides. He wasn’t fast enough, Sig could feel this in the urgent appraisal of Eileen’s eyes, remembered the way her kid’s, her grandkid’s, screams would rip the inside of her ears, rip through and grab some hidden muscle, ancient and red inside her. The kid wasn’t fast enough with the gate.
Then Hal reached down, took Toad’s arm and hoisted her up. A small cheer moved in the stands as she glided slowly across the ice, Hal helping her along.
‘Not her knee then,’ Mo said, blew out a long breath. ‘Probably just got the sauce knocked out of her.’ He turned to Sig, wiped a big hand over his cheek.
‘She’ll be fine,’ Sig said.
‘That wife of yours is quick.’ Terry leaned over toward Mo.
‘Yeah,’ Mo laughed incredulously. ‘Corinne’ll give her crap for that later. Girl’s twenty-one and she still has her mom trying to come on the ice when she’s hurt.’
‘Ah, can’t blame her,’ Sig said and watched as Eileen leaned toward the stats boy, saying something to him with an embarrassed smile.
‘Better go collect her before she slips him her number,’ Mo said, grinning, and stood up. ‘Buy her a coffee or something.’ He headed toward the stairs.
‘It’s awful when they get hurt, isn’t it?’ Terry said. ‘I remember once when Chris was young, she sprained her ankle in a ringette game – real bad sprain, big swollen lump the size of a tennis ball.’ She cupped the shape of a ball with her hands, pink nails poised like claws. ‘I saw her go down, and I don’t even remember the rest of it. The coach said she’d never seen anyone sprint across the ice like that. And, you know, I can’t even walk on ice without falling all over the place. Tried curling once, and spent more time on my butt than on my feet, I think.’
‘Well.’
‘I don’t know what it is.’ Terry shook her head. She gazed out at the ice. ‘There’s something about daughters in pain. Makes you crazy. Crazy and brave.’
The door to the toilet stall was open a crack. Pulling at a tangle in my damp hair, I pushed it open and took a step in.
Hal slumped on the toilet, cheek resting on her knees. Her face whipped up, eyes welted red over the eyelids and down into the darker crescents beneath, her cheeks wet. She looked at me and a sound twisted from her throat. She threw her hands, shaking, over her mouth.
‘Shut the fucking door.’ A muffled croak.
‘I – ’I said. ‘Do you want me to – ?’
‘Please, just close it.’ Hal kicked at the door with her foot. I pulled it shut carefully and then stood for a moment, registering what I’d just seen. Boz walked into the bathroom, makeup case in hand, and positioned herself in front of a mirror, squeezing moisturizer into her palm. I went over to her.
I leaned toward her ear and whispered loudly, fighting the Guns n’ Roses coming in through the doorway. ‘Boz?’
‘Yeah, hon?’ she said, unsurprised by the whisper. Hers were ears accustomed to secrets, to confessions.
‘Hal’s in there,’ I pointed to the stall. ‘And she’s pretty upset.’
Boz cocked her head at the stall. ‘Like, upset?’ she said.
I nodded. She touched my shoulder.
‘Thanks for telling me, babe,’ she said and moved toward the stall.
I went back to my spot. The room was emptying out in carpool-sized chunks, everyone headed to Boston Pizza for our post-game meal. Next to me, Pelly rubbed her scalp violently with a towel. She journeyed a Q-tip into her ears. She applied vigorous layers of chap-stick. Boz came out of the toilet stall eventually. She went to the CD player and turned down the volume and when Heezer began to protest, she shook her head in warning, her mouth a line.
Soon afterward, Hal stalked out, blotches all over her face and neck. In front of the mirrors, she grasped the edge of the counter and leaned forward, shoulders bunched up around her ears. She froze like that and the room didn’t skip a beat, the slow swarm of departure continuing, oblivious, while Boz and I watched from a distance. Hal turned her head slowly to the side and rested her mouth on her shoulder. She stared down at the microwave next to her hand. Heezer brayed loudly. Pelly threw a tape ball at the garbage can and groaned as it rebounded off the rim. I caught Boz’s eye, then looked back at Hal.
In one quick motion, her arms unhinging suddenly, as though jerking awake, she yanked up the microwave and threw it against the opposite wall, a tinny din. All eyes chasing Hal as she ran from the room. Stung silence for a few moments, set to the hushed, whining backdrop of Axl Rose, then Toad said, ‘What in fuck’s name?’ Her voice dripping wonder. Boz went over to her, said something in her ear and then they both went and, together, lifted the behemoth microwave. They eased it back onto the counter and Toad ran her fingers over its busted wall, gently.
‘Bitty!’ she barked. ‘Get over here. We need an engineer.’
Bitty, pulling an arm into her track jacket in the West End, blushed. ‘Toad, I’m in my, like, first year. I don’t – ’
‘Engineer. Stat. Useless or whatever.’ Toad bent her face down close to the microwave, brow furrowed, and gave something a forceful poke.
Boz looked up and caught me watching. She came over, brushed my hair back from my ear, bent over and whispered. ‘It’s Terry. Hal’s mom. She’s sick.’
Nobody mentioned the microwave at Team Meal, Hal eating her spaghetti, eyes down, at the head of the table. Monday, Toad showed up carrying a gleaming white microwave in her arms. Put it on the counter, plugged it in, went to her stall. We played on.
When we walked through the yellow door to the dressing room, it was easy to believe in the pulse of the room, to change our clocks to the long sweeping circles of the Zamboni. As if nothing could get in.
‘Good evening, could I speak to Miss Isabel Norris please?’
I rolled over to my back on the bed, crooked the phone into my neck. My history text fell to the ground. ‘Hi.’
‘Miss Isabel?’
‘Who else would it be?’
Jacob laughed. ‘I’m trying to be a gentleman.’
‘Okay. Yes, this is Isabel.’
‘Brilliant.’ He cleared his throat. ‘So, I was wondering if you wanted to come over here to watch the game? A few of us are setting up in the common room.’
‘What
game?’
He laughed. I didn’t say anything, his laughter even harder to navigate on the phone.
‘Oh, you were serious? Flames and Oilers. Is there another game?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You coming then? It’s going to be a pizza and wings event.’
‘I don’t watch hockey.’
Jacob laughed. ‘You play.’
‘Yeah, but I don’t watch it. It’s boring. Don Cherry’s a jerk and always says the same things.’
Jacob paused.
‘No offence or anything,’ I said. ‘I just never watch it.’
‘I’m speechless over here.’
‘Why?’
‘So have you been fooling me? Do you even play?’
‘I’ve always played.’
Jacob gave a surprised snort. ‘What next, Isabel?’
My teammates followed the NHL with a mixture of lust, envy and hockey love. Heezer wanted Eric Lindros and also wanted to be like him: ‘Did you see that bastard’s goal last night? How does he do that? Bastard. Father of my first-born son.’
‘Pat Quinn makes me horny,’ Toad responded.
They discussed games the next day in the dressing room, dissecting plays and moves and fights. They negotiated trades among our stalls, placed bets, yelled. Scheduled their bar plans around Hockey Night in Canada when we weren’t playing ourselves.
It was all the same to me, though. Same characters, different teams. Same ending, with Don Cherry rattling on like he was saying something new. I’ve always known about hockey being the Religion of Canadians. But what about the other side: the hockey atheists, the disbelievers, the half-believers? I played, so I’d never thought to look in that direction. The ones sitting on the fence. Jacob made it sound like I was headed to Hell.
‘Here, could you pass these down please, doll?’ Boz fished out a noisemaker and passed the bag to Pelly.
‘Whose birthday?’ Pelly asked. Boz puffed out her cheeks and blew out slowly. ‘It’s not a birthday,’ she said. She hit her thighs with fisted hands, and then stood up, whistled on her fingers as she strode out into the middle of the dressing room.