On the Fly

by Catherine Gayle

  A minute later, he made his way back into the living room, got his crutches, and headed for the door. “I love you,” he said. “You, and Tuck, and Maddie. I love all of you. I want to be part of this. It’s killing me right now that you won’t let me take care of you.”

  I couldn’t answer because if I opened my mouth to let out a sound, I might lose my resolve and beg him to stay or run into his arms to cry on his shoulders or melt into a puddle of tears on the floor. None of those things would help right now, so I bit down on my tongue and scrubbed the glass in my hand so hard I feared I might break it.

  “Yeah,” he said, sounding angry. “Good night, Rachel.”

  Then the door closed, and I couldn’t hold back my tears anymore.

  My stomach was in knots the rest of the night and all morning the next day.

  Babs swore he didn’t know what might have happened to get Rachel so worked up, and I had to believe him about that. There wasn’t any good reason he would lie to me. He did say that there was a stretch of a few minutes where Maddie had gone off alone while they were at the arcade because her head hurt, but she’d acted normally when she’d returned. My money was on something having happened to her then, but I had no way of knowing what it might have been.

  Rachel had left for work before Babs and I were ready this morning. She still wasn’t ready to talk. I’d hoped that once she got a good night’s rest, she’d be willing to at least let me in on whatever was tearing her up like that. But—no dice.

  This morning, I’d gone in for some physical therapy and other treatments with the trainers. Nicky had been there for the same thing at the same time as the rest of the boys took part in the game-day skate. It looked like the two of us were going to become best friends for a while, whether we wanted to be or not. The team was heading out for a road trip after tonight’s game, but we were going to have to stay behind and continue our rehab. That meant we’d be spending an awful lot of time together in the very near future.

  It could be worse, I supposed. I could be spending my days with one of the Russians who hardly spoke a lick of English.

  We grabbed a coffee together after our treatments, but I wasn’t really in a talkative mood. He didn’t push. Once we were done with that, I found out that Mom and Dana were still shopping, so I went back to the practice facility to pick up Dad. He’d been with Jim for a couple of hours, so I figured he’d be ready to go soon, at least. I was hoping maybe I could snag him for lunch. I’d never gone to him with girl problems before, but Rachel wasn’t just some girl, and I needed advice.

  Once I got into the building, I took the stairs. This morning, Eddie had agreed to let me walk some since I had been so diligent about wearing the boot. I didn’t like taking elevators, mainly because it made me feel like I was older and more broken down than I ought to be at this point.

  I turned the corner and found Dad and Jim sitting with Rachel. All three of them looked up.

  “There he is now,” Dad said. It wasn’t surprising that they’d been talking about me. I was the one thing all three of them had in common.

  Rachel wouldn’t look at me. She stared diligently at her computer monitor, suddenly focused on nothing but her work. At least Dad and Jim were looking at me and not at her. I didn’t want her to have to face any questions about what might be wrong between us. I had a feeling that would only make things worse.

  “No crutches,” Jim said—not questioning, just observing. “Good, good. Soupy and I—I mean your dad and I—were just talking about taking the two of you out for lunch. Are you up for that?”

  I was fine with it as long as Rachel was. I craned my neck around until she looked up at me. Her eyes were pained and slightly panicky. She looked like she might have gotten even less sleep last night than I had, but she gave me a brief nod.

  I didn’t know if she was agreeing because she wanted to be with me or just because she didn’t want anything to seem out of the ordinary. “Yeah,” I said. “We’ll come.” Maybe this way I could get her to talk to me. Probably not, but it was worth a shot.

  Martha showed up for her afternoon of work a few minutes later, so I waited while Dad, Jim, and Rachel got their coats on. Jim drove. I sat in the back of his SUV with Rachel, but she kept herself to her side of the seat, folding her arms over her stomach so I couldn’t hold her hand.

  He took us to an upscale restaurant in the Pearl District, one of the kinds that was run by a celebrity chef and had won all sorts of prestigious awards. You only heard about chefs like him or awards like those if you watched a lot of Food Network and Top Chef or read Food and Wine magazine. I didn’t really do any of those things very often, and the food looked a little frou-frou for me. I’d always been more of a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy—much more comfortable eating things that were familiar and recognizable than whatever all this was.

  At least it tasted good.

  It didn’t take long into our meal before Dad and Jim started telling Rachel and me all sorts of stories about their playing days. I was just a baby when Jim joined the Hartford Whalers as a rookie—the team Dad played more than half his NHL career with. Jim had spent a few years there before getting traded and going on to win a Stanley Cup with the New York Rangers. He’d even lived with us like Babs had stayed with Zee last season and with me this season, to settle into the league and get used to the lifestyle a pro athlete had to live.

  I didn’t remember much of Jim’s time in Hartford. He was still with the Whalers when Dana was born, but he’d moved on to get his own place by then.

  Jim told us about some of the pranks they’d pulled on him when he was a rookie: filling his gloves with gum, slicing through the laces on his skates before a game, dragging all of the furniture in his hotel room into the bathroom—a stunt he swears Dad was behind, but which Dad fervently denies having any part of to this day—and before long he and Dad were laughing so hard they could hardly speak.

  “Do you guys do things like that to each other?” Rachel asked me. It was a safe question for her to ask—something she could use to take part in the conversation so they wouldn’t suspect anything was amiss but which kept her distant from me, still.

  It killed me, but I played along. “Oh yeah. You learn pretty quick when you’re around hockey players to always stay on your toes. Monty is notorious for unscrewing the lids to all the water bottles during practice so someone will get a face full of water. And you never know what Burnzie or Homer is going to do…”

  “You see a lot of it on the long road trips,” Dad said to her. “Get the boys away from their wives and kids for a while and they’ve got to find some way to pass the time and keep themselves loose.”

  Jim put his napkin on his plate and sat back in his chair. “It’s those kinds of things I miss the most. I still travel with the team, but it’s not the same when you’re the GM. No one wants to pull a joke on you. They think they’ll get traded. We’re still the same guys we always were, though. We haven’t lost our senses of humor just because we play a different role now.”

  “I’m sure I could help to arrange for something next time you come out our way,” Dad said with a wink at Rachel.

  Jim chuckled. “I’m sure you could. But then Rachel would have to deal with frantic calls from my players, wondering if they’d crossed the line and if they were about to be on their way out of town.”

  “That might be a little more payback than you deserve,” Dad said. He took another sip of his water and flicked his glance over to Rachel. “And I don’t think she’s done anything to deserve having to deal with that.”

  “You can take it out on me all you want because I owe you, but leave my assistant out of it,” Jim said. He was smiling when he said it, just like he always was when he talked about how much my dad owed him.

  I narrowed my eyes, glancing between Jim and Dad for a hint. “You keep saying that—that you owe Dad. That’s why you were so keen to let Dana tag along with the team last season and why you wanted to give me a chance. But I don’
t get it. What the hell could you owe him for this many years later?”

  “He doesn’t owe me anything.”

  “I owe your dad everything,” Jim corrected him, ignoring the way Dad was shaking his head. “You were pretty much just a baby, so you wouldn’t remember it. But there was a game in my second season when we were playing the Oilers in Edmonton. I’d hit Gretzky along the boards, and McSorley didn’t like it. In today’s game, I would have easily been called for boarding or charging, something. Back then, they just let a lot of those calls go. Anyway, McSorley came after me with a flying elbow to my head, trying to instigate a fight with me. Before I could even get up off the ice to protect myself, your dad got in there. Soupy was the last guy we needed fighting an enforcer like McSorley—he was one of the most skilled players on the team. The rest of us were supposed to protect him, like McSorley was out there to protect Gretzky.”

  “I did what anyone out there would have done if they saw the hit I saw,” Dad said.

  “And you ended up missing almost half that season with a broken orbital bone, nose, and jaw, and you could have lost your eye.”

  Rachel set down her fork, her eyebrows pinched together. “I’m sorry,” she said after a minute, “but you think you owe him everything because he fought for you? I admit I still don’t fully get why they allow fighting in hockey, but that seems a little overboard, don’t you think?”

  Jim didn’t even bat an eye. “It’s not because he fought for me. It’s because of what he taught me about life in the months that followed when he was trying to get back in the game.” He turned his gaze to me, staring like he was trying to impart some special wisdom to me with nothing more than his eyes. “A lot of people thought he might have ended his career with that fight, that his injuries might take him out. The eye injury, especially, was a concern. But Soupy wouldn’t give in so easily. He wasn’t ready to quit, and so he worked harder than anyone I’d ever seen in order to not just come back to the game but to come back better than he’d ever been before. Since I lived with you guys, I saw more than pretty much anyone but your mom what all he went through. It had a profound effect on me. Before that, I was just coasting along through my career, not giving anything more than the bare minimum to keep my spot. He helped me see that you can’t take anything for granted, that you have to be willing to fight for what you want or it’s not worth having.”

  By the time he stopped talking, I was staring at Rachel so hard I wondered how she didn’t break beneath it. She was looking down at her plate, refusing to look up. Now I got it—finally, really got it.

  “I saw the same willingness to fight in Dana when she showed up here last season,” Jim said. “I owe it to your dad to help in any way I can, but it’s easy to do that when I can see those qualities in his kids. I see it in you, too. He’s taught you two well, just like he taught me.”

  “Their mom had a little something to do with that, too,” Dad said.

  “I don’t doubt that for a second.” Jim took another sip from his glass of water. “So, who wants dessert?” He waved our waiter over and changed the subject to more stories about pranks from his and Dad’s playing days.

  Jim was right—Jim and Mom and Rachel. I wanted her and her kids and a life with them, whatever that entailed. That meant I had to fight for it, and it might even mean I had to fight her for it. A fight like that wasn’t just about the fight—it was about the aftermath.

  I was ready to experience the aftermath with her.

  I didn’t really want to take the kids to sit in the owner’s box during the game, but I also didn’t want to explain why we weren’t there to the kids or anyone else. I hadn’t sorted it all out in my mind yet, so I definitely couldn’t explain myself.

  Brenden had tried to pull me aside after lunch so we could talk, but I still wasn’t ready.

  I’d shrugged him off, telling him I had too much work to do and needed to get back to it. That we could talk later.

  Later would be here soon, and I still didn’t know what I was going to say other than I needed there to be an end to our relationship as it was. It was too soon after everything that Maddie had been through for me to even think about getting involved with someone, and it was way too soon for me to leave the kids with babysitters so I could go out on dates.

  When we walked into the box, my eyes immediately landed on Dana and her parents. Just perfect. They were sitting near the front of the box and snacking on some of the offerings from the buffet table.

  I got Tuck set up in the corner with some toys and turned to Maddie. “What’s the plan for tonight?” I asked her.

  She squinted at the ice, then looked up at me. “Can I try the sunglasses from Mr. Nicky?”

  She hadn’t had a headache all day, but there was no telling when one would come on and what would cause it. Still, we wouldn’t know how the sunglasses would work for her if she didn’t try them. I fished them out of my purse and handed them over. She put them on and went to the seat in the far corner at the front, where it was likely to be as quiet as anything she’d find up here. Most of the players’ wives and girlfriends tended to sit in groups and talk, and most of the kids stayed near the back and played.

  Dana waved me over as soon as she caught my eye. She moved over a few seats, giving us a little privacy from her parents at the same moment Sara came in and joined us. I was going to have to put on a show tonight, as expected.

  “Worst. Date. Ever,” Sara said dramatically as she flopped into the seat on my other side. “I think all the booze he kept buying for me during that game seriously impeded my ability to discern how insanely boring he was.”

  “Then maybe Laura can somehow keep all her duckies in a row,” I replied, trying to keep my tone light.

  Her eyes shot up to my face. “Oh God. What’s wrong?”

  Crap. I hadn’t made it through two minutes of pretending everything was all right, and they could already tell.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” I lied. “It’s just been a long day.”

  “Hmm,” Dana said, narrowing her eyes. She left it at that, though.

  “Anyway,” Sara said with a wave of her hand, “I’m miserable. Daddy loved banker boy. I made the mistake of introducing them before we left. Daddy invited him over for dinner after the team gets back from this next road trip. What was I thinking?”

  Dana winked at me. “Maybe you should give Laura’s idea of dating one of the guys on the team a little more thought.”

  “Not gonna happen.”

  We all turned to the ice because the game was getting started. The Storm was playing the Anaheim Ducks tonight, another division rival, which only made the necessity of a win even more important.

  I checked on Maddie more than normal after what had happened last night, but no one went near her and she seemed to be adjusting to the sunglasses well.

  The first period was more than half over, with the Storm leading two to one, by the time Laura, Katie, and the rest of the Weber kids came into the owner’s box. The younger two took off to sit with some other kids they knew. Even though they had their hair and makeup done, it wasn’t difficult to see that Laura and Katie had both been crying. Recently, too. Their eyes were bloodshot and puffy, and they had matching red noses.

  Katie scanned the room and made a beeline to join Maddie in her quiet corner. That shouldn’t bother Maddie. I gave her a quick glance to be sure, but she smiled when Katie sat down. Laura watched her daughter get settled, and then she found the three of us.

  As soon as Laura sat down, Dana asked, “What is it? Today was the doctor, right?”

  Laura shook her head, her eyes brimming with fresh tears. “Yesterday. They did some tests and just called us back with the results a little bit ago. Dave had already left to come here…” She stopped for a minute, staring down at her hands. She had them folded together on her lap while she twisted her wedding band. A tear spilled down her cheek. “It’s leukemia. We don’t know how advanced yet. They’re going to send us to an oncologist to
get more tests done and figure out what to do from here. It’s silly for me to be such a mess like this already, right? I mean, we don’t even know what we’re facing yet.”

  I took her hands in mine and held them, trying to keep my own nausea over the thought of one of my kids getting sick like that at bay. This was one surefire way to get me to forget about my own problems for a little while. “It’s not silly. It’s normal. You’re a mom. That’s what we do—worry about our kids.” I knew that all too well.

  “Have you told Dave yet?” Sara asked. “Or the other kids?”

  Laura shook her head. “I didn’t want to tell him on the phone. I didn’t want to tell him before the game and screw with his head that way.” She pulled one of her hands away from me and brushed at the tears going down her cheeks. “I don’t know what to say to the younger kids. God, maybe I shouldn’t even tell Dave until after the road trip, you know? He’s going to have to go, and it’ll just eat at him if he knows but can’t be here.”

  “No,” Dana said firmly. “He has to know. You have to tell him tonight before they leave.”

  “I don’t know how…”

  “Of course you don’t,” I said. “There’s no class they teach about how to deliver news like this, no rulebook.” I let go of her hands so I could pull my cellphone out of my purse. “But you’ve got to tell him, and you aren’t going to be alone when you do it. We’ll be with you. And Jim will, too.” I knew he would have his cell on him during the game, so I sent him a text. He’d need to know.

  Laura Weber has health news about Katie. She needs to tell her husband. Can you come talk with her before the end of the game?

  Not even thirty seconds passed before he responded.

  Be right there.

  A couple of minutes later he came into the owner’s box. He took Laura and Katie aside, talking quietly with them, supporting and comforting them while they cried. He stayed until well into the third period, oblivious to what was happening with his team.