Interference

by Michelle Berry

  Dayton just moved to town from California. Six weeks ago, late summer, she climbed on the airplane, carrying her daughter and a diaper bag and as many of her things as she could get out of the house and into three suitcases. Clothes, passports, birth certificates, toys, a photo album, her mother’s cookbook. The beginning cold, the trees turning colour, the rush of leaves under her feet, the fall, strikes her every time she goes outside. Knocks her down almost. It is the end of October, Halloween next week, and Dayton can see her breath in the air. She left palm trees and cactus and sweet warm breezes. She left green and blue and came into orange and brown, and now she is into the beginning barrenness of winter, trees beginning to tangle together, limbs empty. Now she is playing hockey because Trish asked her to and because she couldn’t think of a reason not to. Trish’s twelve-year-old daughter, Rachel, would babysit Carrie, Trish said. Trish herself would drive and lend Dayton equipment. Trish’s husband’s old stuff is too big and threatens to fall off. Dayton has to wrap tape around her hockey pants and there is a smell coming off the equipment that wasn’t there when she first tried them on. She assumes she is heating them up with her sweat. It all made sense. Trish said the neighbours across the street, Tom and Maria, would be home in case anything went wrong. Oh, and Frank, he’d be home too, but Trish said he sometimes falls asleep in front of the TV and can’t be woken up. Some kind of narcolepsy, she thinks, or just old age. But Tom and Maria are always available. Trish said they rarely go out. “In fact,” she said, “their bedroom light is often off at ten.”

  “I go to bed at ten,” Dayton said, looking at the clock over the stove. 9:45.

  “Senior Ladies Leisure League,” Trish laughed. She was holding open a pamphlet and had her laptop there to sign Dayton up. They were in Dayton’s kitchen and Trish was waving her glass of wine around dangerously over the laptop and Dayton was trying hard not to be nervous. The solid tile floor of her new kitchen busts glass like a bomb and Dayton didn’t have the energy to get the vacuum cleaner out. Besides, the laptop might burst into flame if Trish’s wine spilled. Carrie was asleep upstairs. Max, the new kitten, was sitting in Trish’s lap. Max is Dayton’s poke at normalcy — “get a kitten,” she thought, “life will be good.” But Dayton forgot about the cat litter, the incessant meowing when she finally got Carrie to bed, the desperate need for attention. Two empty bottles of wine on the table between her and Trish. Pinot grigio for Trish — “That’s all I’ll drink,” she had said. “That and anything red.” Trish snorted — she laughs loud, talks loud. Dayton was drinking red, only because she had only one bottle of pinot grigio in the house. Except for Trish and her booming, echoing voice, everything was quiet in Dayton’s house.

  “We aren’t seniors,” Dayton said. “I’m forty-three.”

  “I’m forty-eight,” Trish said. “I’m way more senior than you. But still, I find it extremely insulting.”

  “What’s even more insulting is calling us ladies.” The women laughed. They typed their information into the laptop, registering for the league.

  “Any ailments?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Heart issues? High blood pressure? Diabetes?”

  Dayton thought about it. “Nope, nothing.”

  “What if I write ‘overweight,’” Trish said. “Do you think that’s an ailment?”

  “You’re not overweight.”

  “Pleasingly plump?”

  Trish swore she had never played on a team before, but she had watched the game at least. Her son, Charlie, plays, as does her husband, Frank. And occasionally, Trish confessed after she pressed Submit on Dayton’s form, occasionally she plays shinny on the backyard rink her husband builds every year. Because Charlie plays hockey, Dayton assumes Trish must, at least, know the rules, she must know something about the game. “Dayton,” Trish laughed loudly. “You think I actually watch the game when I go? I catch up with the other moms. No one ever watches their kid play hockey. I couldn’t even tell you what position he played.”

  “There are positions?”

  “Sure, I signed you up for defence.”

  Dayton nodded.

  In California hockey was occasionally on TV in the bars when Dayton went for a drink after work. In the old days, before she had Carrie and stayed home alone most nights, she remembered watching hockey on TV in the bars. She had maybe glanced at it on the news while washing up the dishes after dinner. John had said he played once upon a time — Dayton can never be sure of what is the truth when it comes to John — but Dayton never paid attention to hockey. Not really. Men moving fast. Skating hard. A puck you can’t even see on TV, sticks everywhere. It was cold on the TV and Dayton was warm in sunny L.A. Beach volleyball, now that’s something she watched as she strolled the boardwalks with Carrie in a Snugli.

  “Do you have to wear a costume?” Dayton asked.

  Trish snorted her wine. “Costume? We’re not playing dress-up, Dayton, we’re playing hockey. Costume. Oh, that’s too funny. It’s called equipment. I think. That’s what I think.” Trish was getting drunk. Dayton smiled shyly.

  But now, here they are, on the ice, and Dayton is pretty sure it is all about the dressing up. It took her a serious, confusing, complicated forty-five minutes to figure out how to dress herself in this equipment, this armour. That’s only, Trish told her, because Dayton put everything on in the wrong order. Dayton will remember, next time, to plan it all out, to concentrate — her jill, then her shin pads, socks, shorts — and then put the skates on. She was lucky she didn’t rip Trish’s husband’s expensive padded shorts trying to squeeze the sharp blades of the skates into them. Someone should have made her practise getting dressed beforehand. The other new woman on the team tells Dayton she practised in her living room. Someone should have given her a lesson ahead of time. Life is like that — no one helps anyone out ahead of time but everyone seems ready to give advice after. To chide you. Laugh at your mistakes.

  A jill — now that was something new. Every little piece of Dayton’s body is protected, even her groin. Trish said, “I’ve had my babies,” to the young guy in the sports store, “I don’t need to protect anything down there.” He laughed, shrugged, blushed a bit. Old ladies, he must have thought, buying hockey equipment, protecting their old lady parts. Dayton could almost see him swallow down the bile. What’s next? The end of the world? Senior Ladies Leisure League.

  After the skates you put on the shoulder pads, neck guard, elbow pads, jersey and helmet. Trish and Dayton drew a line at the mouth guard. “How am I supposed to talk or cheer with that thing in my mouth?” And now Dayton’s out on the ice, watching the puck slide quickly past her goalie and into the net, listening to the board-banging other team, and wondering about it all. About playing the game of hockey. About women — some mildly old, some young, some in between — gathering together at 9:00 on a work night, their kids in bed, to slide around with blades on ice and whack at this little, hard puck using sticks. And why is the puck so hard? What’s it made out of? Even through her padding Dayton felt the smack of the puck when it hit the back of her leg.

  “Off the boards, off the boards,” someone shouts. Dayton has no idea what that means. She skates away from the boards, thinking maybe she is too close to them.

  Ever since she left John, Dayton has tried to do things differently. Her first thing was to move away. That was different. Not like her. And she didn’t just move down the block either, but to a new country, to a city she’d never heard of, a small town, really. The second thing she tried to do differently was to make friends. She didn’t have any friends in L.A. who weren’t John’s friends first. So when she needed help there was never anyone there for her. Dayton had no one. And now she’s playing ice hockey. (“You don’t call it ice hockey, ” Trish said. “It’s just hockey. If you call it ice hockey, people will know you’ve never played.” “But I’ve never played,” Dayton said. “I know that, Dayton, and you k
now that, but you don’t want anyone else to know that, do you?”) That’s her third different thing.

  The tree outside the window of Dayton’s new house reminds her, late at night, of the one that sucked that kid into it in the movie Poltergeist. Dark and huge and thick, its limbs reaching out to her, scratching ominously against her window. Carrie’s snuffles on the baby monitor echo through the house. John is somewhere back in California, probably out at the bars with another tanned, breast-implanted woman. After all, what other kind of women are there in California? How stupid Dayton feels to have believed him. To have married him. To have stayed with him when he did the things he did to her. “How stupid am I?” she asks the tree each night before she falls asleep. But Dayton knew she couldn’t get away. Not without completely disappearing. John doesn’t like to lose anything — his car keys, a dime, his sunglasses, his wife. Losing is for losers, he says.

  “Dayton, puck,” Trish is screaming at her, and Dayton sees a break in front of her and rushes in to take a swipe at the puck. Again, she misses. She can’t seem to connect that small black dot with her long wooden stick. It seems easy, but for some reason it isn’t. But she can skate. Dayton knows she can skate — all those figure skating lessons as a kid paid off — if only she could hit the puck. Someone skates past her so quickly that Dayton can feel the wind. She looks at her stick as if it’s the stick’s fault. But, in fact, the stick has kept her standing. She realizes she is using it as a crutch. Balancing herself with it. Leaning on it. Heavy.

  It’s such a typical story — the Husband and the Buxom Blond. It happens all the time. Trish waved her hands around her head when Dayton told her and said, “Oh my god, can’t men do something new once in a while? Can’t they surprise us?” Dayton smiled then because John was full of surprises. Surprises Dayton could predict but that still surprised her. Angry, shouting, predictable surprises. She liked Trish immediately. Trish who has been married to the same quiet guy for twenty-three years. Trish who has a house full of kids and dogs and cats and goldfish, a messy, lived-in, disorganized, happy house. Trish who makes teddy bears for a living. Sewing on button eyes and sparkly ribbons. “Buxom,” Trish said. “Now that’s a word I haven’t heard since before I was born.” She held up her wine glass to toast the word. She laughed loudly. The kitten, Max, moved slightly on her lap. “Buxom.”

  Dayton skates to the bench. Two minutes off. Two minutes on. The sweat is rolling down her nose, her temples, her neck. She feels as if she is wearing a sauna.

  “I’m dripping,” she says to Trish. “Especially my hands.” Dayton holds up her gloves, looks at them. “Why are my hands so sweaty? And my elbows. And my neck.”

  “This is way too much fun,” Trish says. “Don’t you think this is fun?” Trish is panting beside her. They watch three other women skate out and take their positions. There is another woman standing with them behind the boards but they don’t know her. Trish smiles and the woman smiles back and says, “Woo hoo,” and Trish grins. The woman says, “All I keep saying out there is ‘shit shit shit’ every time I miss the puck. ‘Woo hoo’ is much better.”

  They all laugh.

  Dayton tries to remember the last time she did something like this. She thinks it was grade seven, volleyball, that was the last time she played a team sport. After that it was all jazz dancing and ballet and gymnastics and swimming and figure skating and aerobics. Stuff girls do for themselves, not for a team. It feels good to be present with a bunch of women and not have to talk about anything much, not have to serve wine or worry about saying the right thing. Not have John hovering over her, watching everything she does, everything she says. And who cares about what you look like under all this equipment, under this costume? Who cares if you are buxom or flat-chested? Who cares if you are blond or brunette? Your bruises and scars don’t show underneath all of this padding.

  The worst thing that ever happened to Dayton was when John came home from work and told her. After all she had put up with. Weeks they’d been fighting. Years, it sometimes seemed. Before their rushed marriage, before they told anyone Dayton was pregnant, they fought about everything and anything. Any little thing. What kind of toothbrush to buy, where to shop for curtains, whether to even get curtains or get blinds. Everything. They both knew they shouldn’t have married, of course they shouldn’t have. But they did. Because they thought it was the right thing to do. Because John was transferred from Toronto to California and Dayton needed a reason to follow him. But then he came home one day and everything was still and quiet, Carrie was sleeping, and he came right out with it. For no reason other than the sudden quiet of their home. They weren’t arguing. Or talking. They didn’t even say hello first. He laughed. Dayton knew, of course she knew. John was John. Sometimes home, sometimes not home, always distant. Mostly angry. Shouting. Mostly selfish. Mostly self-absorbed. Dayton thought, later, that if he hadn’t said anything, if he hadn’t said, “I’m seeing someone else,” she would have gone on with life the way it was and she probably wouldn’t have changed anything. Carrie was brand new, California was new. Life was new and John could have done exactly what he wanted, like he always did, if he just hadn’t told her. Most of the time Dayton is mad at him not for having the affair, but for telling her about it. For making it come out in the open, making her feel more ashamed than she already did. If he had only kept his big damn mouth shut.

  And Dayton knows that when she thinks this way she sounds exactly like her mother. Ignore the obvious. Push your problems away. Get on with life no matter what. The sick thing is that Dayton grew up watching her mother make mistakes and promising herself she wouldn’t make the same ones. Here she is, though, now in the same position as her mother.

  Buxom. Implants? Really, John, really?

  Maybe men can’t surprise us, but we sure can surprise them.

  He never, for a moment, saw it coming. That fact Dayton is sure of.

  Stepping out of the bench and onto the ice, Dayton sails towards the puck, towards the net. She takes her stick back as far as she can without hitting anyone and she whacks at that little black thing and suddenly her team is roaring. She hit the puck. She actually hit the puck and it slid wildly, out of control, straight into the net.

  Later on, in the change room, Trish says, “Hey, Dayton, it doesn’t matter that it went into our net, it just matters that you hit the damn puck. You really hit it.” And everyone laughs. Someone has brought beer and they all sit there on the change-room benches half in and half out of their equipment, and some of them drink a beer. Just one. Someone starts talking about the weather and Dayton quickly realizes that she has no idea of the winter that is to come even if she grew up in Toronto, that she can’t predict the future any more than she can justify stealing Carrie away from John and leaving California.

  He’ll find her someday soon. Losing is for losers. John does not think he is a loser. Someday John will show up on her front doorstep. He’ll look at that big honking tree in front of her house reaching out to grab him and eat him, and he’ll take Carrie back with him and things will never be the same. He always does this kind of thing. He surprises her with his predictability and Dayton is sure that his next surprise will be huge, and destructive.

  But, for now, it’s Dayton 1, John 0. Dayton scored a goal. Who cares, she thinks, if it was in the wrong net?

  Build-Your-Bear™

  Your way is the right way . . .

  Come Build, Come Play, Come Love.

  Your Bear.

  Dear Ms. Patricia Birk,

  We are writing to inform you that we are considering serving you with a Cease and Desist order regarding your line of specialty bears. Here at Build-Your-Bear™ we take pride in our uniqueness. Your “The Bear Company” has trod all over our brand. Are you even trademarked? The variety of clothes you offer — everything from tutus to three-piece, pin-striped business suits — the custom-made Career Bears, including Astronaut Bear an
d Plumber Bear, even the line of Sports Bears, were all original creations of Build-Your-Bear™. We are aware, of course, that you cannot possibly be operating on the scale of our company, but it has come to our attention that there are several similarities with your bears that are simply too close for us to ignore. How many other people have thought to make a Lady Gaga Bear, for example? Or a Dick Cheney Bear? We can understand your Obama Bear, but a bear based on Richard Nixon seems unlikely to be an original idea without the backing of the major advertisers that we have.

  At the moment we will not serve you with papers. However, if you do not prove to us that your ideas are original AND cease making these bears, we will be forced to take legal action.

  Build-Your-Bear™ goes back many years. We were founded in 1997. We are proud of creating original bears for young girls and boys that, when combined with certain clothes and accessories, make each bear someone highly recognizable. Besides, we had to pay for permission to create look-alikes of the famous celebrities. Why shouldn’t you?

  Sincerely,

  Maisy Crank

  CEO and Head Bear of Build-Your-Bear™

  Madison, Wisconsin

  4

  Is it any wonder, Trish thinks, that I’m always yelling? This morning, for example, the candy bar wrapper on the front-hall bench, the rotting apple in the lunch bag, the gym clothes on the kitchen table. And Rachel’s basketball rolling at her feet. Every morning she trips on the damn thing. Plus the dog. He’s underfoot all the time. Trish finds herself leaning over him to fill up the kettle in the sink. It’s easier to bend over him, as he lies there on the floor like he thinks he’s the kitchen rug, than to tell him to “move it” every fifteen seconds. Trish gets tired of saying the same thing over and over. He slinks back. That’s the problem: he leaves — at least he listens to her at first — but suddenly he is there again, always underfoot. She didn’t want the dog but she’s the one who has to deal with him. And he latched onto her as if she were his long lost mother. Everyone else gives him love, walks him, feeds him, Trish does nothing, but the damn dog is always following her around, sticking to her like glue.