Amazons: An Intimate Memoir by the First Woman Ever to Play in the National Hockey League

by Cleo Birdwell

  “Then where are we going?”

  “There’s another restaurant right nearby. If anything, it’s better than the first restaurant. And they’re able to take us right away. You see, the first restaurant has these conventioneers staying at the hotel and they just booked the place solid, this manufacturing association, so I made a spot decision.”

  “Sanders, you’re drifting.”

  “You see, the second restaurant isn’t totally underground. We’re heading right for it. This is the first restaurant we’re passing right now. You have to pass the first restaurant to get to the second restaurant. Then you take an escalator.”

  “Up,” I said.

  “We go up one level, two levels. Then we walk down a corridor and right out some big glass doors, and the restaurant is no more than fifteen feet away.”

  “On street level.”

  “That is the level we are talking about, yes.”

  “Through the howling snows.” I said.

  “I didn’t want to say anything on the phone. I felt you were wavering and I didn’t want to tilt you the wrong way. I thought if I mentioned heavy coats, you’d tell me to forget it. I thought fifteen feet. This is a woman who plays big-league hockey without a helmet.”

  “It is not totally underground, you say.”

  “They store things two levels down. The kitchen is one level down. Only at street level do we find the restaurant proper. Where people eat.”

  We were on the escalator.

  “I paid big bucks for this suit, Sanders. I’m not going out in that storm. If you’d just said fifteen feet, I would have dressed differently and there would have been no problem. I don’t mind the fifteen feet. It’s what I’m wearing that minds. The suit minds. The suit is very upset with you.”

  We got off the escalator but I refused to walk any farther. Sanders tried a joke.

  “You can’t say I took advantage. I don’t have a rolled-up raincoat or plastic booties hidden under my jacket. Our suits are in this together.”

  We were thirty yards from the entrance to the street, and I could feel the cold begin to penetrate.

  “Cleo, do you realize how short a distance fifteen feet really is?”

  “We could die.”

  “Not if we hug the wall.”

  “Even if we live, we’ll look like fools staggering into that restaurant all covered with ice and snow. They’ll have to set us near the stoves.”

  He began whispering in a confidential manner.

  “We slip out the door, we hug the wall. Before you know it, we’re settled in plush seats, we’re getting drier by the second, we’re looking at two drinks and a big plate of warm hors d’oeuvres.”

  “If you’d said something on the phone, I could have dressed for these fifteen feet.”

  “Think of it as five yards. How long does it take to travel five yards with your head down and your arms pumping? We hug the wall. It has to take less than two seconds. I picture a lot of dark wood, Cleo. Tiffany lamps casting a warm glow. Sparkling stemware.”

  “Stop whispering, damn it.”

  Does anyone understand why I grabbed him by the wrist and led him toward the glass doors and right out into the street, and then released him to hug the wall or whatever he wanted to do while I more or less sauntered through the blowing white inferno, surrendering my perfect composure and nonchalance only to the extent that about halfway to the restaurant door I started moving a little sideways, edging into the wind, because it was either that or the children’s game called Statues.

  Sanders was already at the door, clutching it with one hand and reaching the other hand out toward me as though I were bobbing along on the surface of rushing floodwaters and he was hanging off some treetop. The trouble was that the wind was against me, not with me, and there was no danger of my whirling past him—just of my extremities turning blue while I was trying to reach the door.

  Well, he pulled me inside, finally, and we spent a few minutes between the outer door and the inner door blowing on our own hands and on each other’s face. We also did little hops and jumps and beat our forearms against our ribs, all the while making strenuous, panting noises. Sanders persisted in blowing on my face.

  “Worse than I expected,” he said.

  “Oh, I don’t know, I kind of enjoyed it.”

  “I’m really sorry, Cleo.”

  “It was like turning a corner and walking into an exploding star.”

  “Blow on my face some more,” he said.

  “There’s a certain point at which your body no longer knows whether it is very cold or very hot. It knows only intense pain and humiliation.”

  “It was a long, long fifteen feet. I have to admit. I may have erred on the low side.”

  He started blowing on me again. I pushed him away and we went inside.

  Faces floated through the dimness. Captains, waiters, slowly circling us, looking for signs of hats and coats, scarves and boots. As we were being led to our table, I detoured to the women’s room, where I took off my shoes and held my feet up—one at a time, of course—to the hot-air blower. It takes a limber body etc.

  I went back out. There was still some frost in Sanders’s hair and he was bleeding slightly in two places on his left hand. From hugging the wall, I guess.

  Anyway, we started in with a couple of drinks and assorted appetizers, and after a while the stinging sensation caused by all that flying ice began to leave my face and hands. I was still doing a fair amount of sniffling, but it was Sanders who kept the people at nearby tables on edge with his great, wet sneezes.

  When he leaned toward me, I backed up and got my napkin ready, but he just wanted to whisper again.

  “What do you think of Kinross?” he said.

  “Your typical unique madman,” I think I answered.

  “How good are you at keeping secrets?”

  “Not good. Terrible.”

  “He may be ousted,” Sanders said. “The conglomerate’s unhappy. They may ease him out. They want a little less color. They want someone who lacks impact. Kinross gets a terrible press. He keeps telling reporters to suck, to eat shit, to rotate.”

  “To rotate?”

  “He gives them the finger and says rotate. He keeps dredging up insults from his early days as a street tough. ‘Your mother wears combat boots.’ Then he hits the desk and laughs. ‘Up your giggy with a rusty meat hook.’”

  “Up your giggy?”

  “So they want someone inoffensive,” Sanders said. “Someone who will endorse and promote every aspect of the Hughes Tool policy without the slightest question or hesitation.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told them I’d think about it.”

  He called the waiter over.

  “When you have a minute, we’d like two more drinks.”

  I ate some celery.

  “Maybe you should have said yes right then and there. You showed hesitation. They don’t want hesitation.”

  “If I’d said yes then and there, they would have thought I had a mind of my own. It would have shown decisiveness. I think it was in my best interests to be weak-willed and indecisive.”

  “Who knows all this?”

  “No one,” he said. “It’s in the utmost confidence. I trust you to remain silent.”

  “I’m awful with secrets. I’ve always thought people who keep secrets are untrustworthy.”

  “That sounds like a contradiction, Cleo.”

  “You know what I mean. They’re certain types.”

  “You mean if you know you can trust someone with a secret, you’d better not tell it to him.”

  “I mean if someone is good at keeping secrets, you can be pretty sure he’s a certain psychological type. He may keep your secret, but he’ll give you the feeling you shouldn’t have told it to him. The more you’re certain he won’t reveal the secret, the more uncomfortable you’ll be, knowing that he knows.”

  “W
hy don’t we look at the menu?” Sanders said.

  “In other words, your secret is safe with me because I’ll probably reveal it.”

  “The halibut looks good.”

  “I’m not getting through, am I?”

  “It’s probably my fault, Cleo. If I can’t picture something mentally, I have trouble following.”

  “Why do you need a picture? I’m giving you words. This is how people communicate, Sanders. It’s called talking.”

  “Yes, but sometimes I need a picture painted for me. That’s the way I think. I know it’s not your fault, but your argument is kind of abstract and elusive. You’re not painting a word-picture.”

  “You mean like I say ‘cow’ and you see a little cow in your head?”

  “That’s a perfect word-picture, yes.”

  “What about ‘shit’?”

  “Good and clear,” he said.

  We looked at the menus. Sanders told the waiter that whenever he was ready, we would order. No hurry. Anytime he happened to find himself in the area.

  “The point is this,” he told me. “If they give it to me, I expect to grow into the job. I may start out by being spongy and clammy, or whatever metaphors are called for, but I want to be a strong president eventually, and I think I can be.”

  “Isn’t it unusual to jump a man from team GM all the way to Garden president?”

  “No one else has the qualifications I have.”

  “I believe it.”

  “I know you’re reacting to the snow, the fact that you didn’t want to have dinner with me at all, and your general feelings about me, so I’ll let that slide,” he said.

  The food was good. I never know what to say about wine except it’s good, it’s bad, or I don’t know. This was good. Sanders must have been hungry; his plate was scoured clean in a matter of minutes. He kept looking around for something else to eat until I pushed my bread at him. There was no more butter, but he seemed reluctant to ask the waiter to get some.

  I began to wonder about the possible connection between a man’s timidness in a public place and his prowess in the bedroom.

  Don’t men and women have different kinds of timidness? Floss Penrose was shy, timid, fearful and full of anxiety, and very small as well, but in restaurants and shops she got the kind of service they reserve for heiresses and legendary movie stars; and I don’t know how she did it except it had something to do with her clothes, the big, dark rings she wore, and the ambition and power-madness that people probably thought they saw in her petite frame. But I think timid men are most timid when they’re in public. On reflection, I would say this is male pride in conflict with the guilt and anxiety caused by centuries of taking charge, but that’s all the social psychology you get out of me.

  Sanders sat there looking around for something to spread on the bread I’d given him. He wasn’t a bad-looking man, thirty-five or so, with a longish head, sincere and puppylike eyes, and his hair artistically cut and sculptured at about the $25 level.

  He dressed in the wholesome boy-man style that young sports execs and the whiter athletes favor, and on the Rangers it was only J. P. Larousse with his short, wide neckties and shadowy beard and hand-knit sweaters who varied from the norm.

  We finished off the wine and ordered dessert and coffee. I was feeling no pain, as my dad used to say, until I heard an extra loud gust of wind go roaring down the street. This reminded me of the reality ahead, fifteen or more feet of white wilderness.

  After dessert and coffee, we ordered liqueur and coffee. The place was slowly emptying out. Whenever someone left, we heard the wind through the double doors and felt a creepy chill at our feet.

  When we finished our liqueur, we went back to drinking Scotch.

  “It’s great to be single, isn’t it?” Sanders said.

  I had no idea what he meant by that.

  “I was always afraid of getting married because I knew I’d want children and I figured having children would cause tensions in the marriage.”

  “Why would children cause tensions?” I said.

  “Well, the modern marriage tends to be pretty selfish, and I was afraid of all kinds of conflicts once the kids started being born.”

  I imagined babies sliding down a conveyor belt.

  “That needn’t happen, Sanders, if a man and woman agree on what kind of marriage they want.”

  “What kind of marriage do you want?”

  “I’m too young and too drunk.”

  “I want a marriage in which there is respect for each other’s shortcomings.”

  “Don’t you mean tolerance?”

  “I’m not sure tolerance goes far enough.”

  He finished his drink and ordered another liqueur. There was a thoughtful pause.

  “And I want my children to go to Yale,” he said. “Maybe you think I’m looking too far ahead, since I’m not married yet, but whatever I am I owe to the influence of Time, Newsweek, Yale, the Racquet Club; J. Walter Thompson, where I started out as a copy cub; General Foods, which made me a brand manager; Standard Brands, which hired me away from General Foods; Hughes Tool, which hired me after Standard Brands fired me; ITT, which was so nice to my dad all the years he was an executive there; Pleasantville, New York; Montclair, New Jersey; and Westport, Connecticut, where I spent my formative years; Camp Wonset for Boys; Yellowstone and Sequoia national parks; F. A. O. Schwarz, where so many of my toys came from; and the books of Wadi Assad.”

  I studied the pleasant, earnest, elongated face across the table. You could say I gazed levelly.

  “You don’t read Wadi Assad, Sanders.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I’ve read everything the man wrote.”

  “You haven’t. I know you haven’t.”

  “Test me, then.”

  “What’s the title of his first book?”

  “The Heart-shaped Moment.”

  “How many Mystic Prince books are there?”

  “There are three Mystic Prince books.”

  “Why does the fish know nothing of the sea?”

  “Because the sea is all there is.”

  “Why did the emir give up all his wealth and enter the land of the blind?”

  “He wanted to see with new eyes.”

  “Get the check,” I said.

  Sanders gestured to the waiter, who came over.

  “When you have a minute, would you let us have the check, please.”

  I asked the waiter whether we could return to the hotel by going down through the kitchen and the cellar and then out through some fire door or whatever into the second subterranean level. He said he’d check.

  Sanders told him there was no hurry.

  The waiter came back with the captain, who moved in a sinister glide, his right hand over the left part of his abdomen, as if that was where his phoniness hurt him most.

  “He wants a tip, Sanders.”

  Sanders coughed up five and we followed the captain down into the kitchen, where everybody was yelling at each other, and through a rear door into the cellar. Only a dim light was on down there and he pointed to a big metal door at the other end of the room, over by the wine racks, and asked us to do such and such with the locks and latches before we closed the door behind us. He went back upstairs to yell with the others, and Sanders and I moved warily and with little cackling sounds out of a hundred horror movies toward the big door, except I stumbled on something and he grabbed me and held me. His nose was in my hair and he was saying, “My nose is in your hair,” and we were both laughing but at the same time pressing in, practically grinding against each other, and he kept taking big whiffs of my hair. We kissed, and his hands were at my bottom, moving me into him, and my pelvis was shifting and dipping and thrusting.

  “My room,” he said, all business, and we got to the door and had all kinds of trouble opening the thing much less locking it behind us, but finally we were o
ut in some corridor and his hand gripped mine as we ran and walked simultaneously toward the nearest staircase.

  Out of breath, I said, “Why did the kindly lion eat the well-intentioned man?”

  “He was hungry, he was hungry,” Sanders shouted.

  I grabbed him and kissed him and we nearly went through a shop window. We climbed the stairs and headed toward the elevator bank. The door opened and Sanders pressed seventeen and we grabbed each other and started gyrating and kissing. We knew enough to separate as the elevator reached the lobby, where the door opened and in walked Eric Torkleson. He nodded casually, pressed twenty-one, and faced the closing door. At the mezzanine level the door opened again and in walked Brian McCall, Bruce McLeod, Gordon Fraser, Brian Fraser, Jack Ferguson, Mike McPherson, and Fergie Sinclair.

  “How’s Torkle?” Fergie said.

  “Sleepy,” Eric said.

  “Did you take him out to play in the snow?”

  “We shoveled a while.”

  They all laughed a little, rising on their toes. Sanders and I were pressed against the back of the elevator, careful not to touch each other. I realized he was looking at me, trying to communicate some kind of signal or instruction by making exaggerated facial gestures and mouthing words.

  One seven one eight. His room number.

  At seventeen, Sanders got out. I couldn’t remember what floor I was on. Where was my key? Inside jacket pocket. Two one zero nine.

  At twenty-one, Eric, Bruce, the two Brians, and I got off. We said goodnight, and I walked very slowly toward my room, hearing each of the others in turn open a door and then close it behind him. I decided to be cute and take the stairs down to seventeen. Why risk another meeting in the elevator and the possibility of awkward questions? I walked right past my room to the red door at the end of the corridor. I had to push hard to get it open, and when it did open it flew open and I went tripping forward.

  Shit! I was outside!

  These were fire stairs and I was flattened against a metal rail by a mean, sharp, whistling wind that took my breath away. I couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t see a thing in the face of all that blowing snow. The only way I could turn was slowly, and I did this and then gripped the rail with both hands, not sure whether the metal was burning me or freezing me, and then I squatted down to get part of my body out of the full force of the shrieking wind and I felt my way back to the door, which was banging crazily against a wall. I stumbled inside, found the stairs I wanted, and took a deep, deep breath. Although I was inside and safe, I was still in a state of near shock and I hurried down the stairs, still hunched over in a protective ball, and limping a little, and with one hand touching the wall for support, and cold, very cold.