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

by Cleo Birdwell

  We all took part, we all had plenty to do, and plenty of fun doing it, but Dorothy was the driving force. She cared about Christmas, and standards, and neatness, and precision, and doing things right, and customs, and tradition, and never settling for second best.

  Did I tell you about my older brother?

  We had the same cute nose. Aside from that, we differed, I’d say, in all the right ways. Which means we got along and liked each other without being treacly about it. Kenny grew up awkward. Even running, a simple thing like that, he’d make one long stumble out of it. In school he ranged from brilliant to dumb. Nobody could figure it out. He was shy and polite, but he had a streak of daredevil in him, too. He learned to drive at the age of nine, thanks to some old guy who used to hang around the drugstore and who took a liking to him. He stole his first car at the age of eleven—just a joyride around the block and what gets me is that he kept it a secret for about six months, or until he drove off with his second car and got caught. After Tom and Dorothy took turns whamming him around the house, he gave me that shy little smirk of his and told me about the first car—a big silver Buick with those antennas that stuck off the sides to tell you electronically when you were nearing the curb.

  Kenny didn’t skate. I can’t remember ever seeing him down by Snowy Owl Glen, not even in summer when I used to wade in the brook and collect the smooth stones that lay on the bottom. The dammed-up part was too deep for wading—maybe six to ten feet—and according to legend, giant snapping turtles were supposed to dwell there—great, slow-moving hulks silently paddling through the murk. Of course this was the part we skated on, solidly frozen by the end of November. More than one older kid reminded me in my early days as a wobbling, swaddled babe that if the ice broke and I fell through, I wouldn’t have to worry about drowning or double pneumonia because those big, dark, shadowy snapping turtles would have my rear end bitten off in about six seconds flat.

  No, Kenny didn’t skate. If Kenny had skated, his ankles would have collapsed completely inward, as if he thought the blades were on the sides of his feet, and he would have spent a whole lot of his time just crawling toward the banked-up sides of the rink, which can be fun in and of itself.

  My brother’s big love was UFOs. That and dolphins. He spent a fair part of his adolescence standing motionless in the woods waiting for some silvery, beeping contraption to come hover in a clearing nearby. Don’t think he didn’t have a camera along. He subscribed to a lot of UFO journals and newsletters, and he had UFO pen pals in about nineteen states and Canada.

  He’d worn glasses since the age of four, and he was the first person in Badger to come around in those little rimless spectacles that everyone started wearing during the Vietnam War, as if looking like a Quaker would absolve us.

  Eventually he also grew the beard and wore the clothes. This was the time when practically every male American under the age of thirty-five looked exactly the same. The little rimless spectacles. The full-faced but modest beard. The alert, gentle, frightened, socially conscious eyes. The shambling walk. The jeans, the heavy work shirts, the gum boots.

  I kept seeing young guys I thought were Kenny. Not just at first glance, either. I would go up to them and scrutinize their faces and say, “Ken, Ken, are you my brother Ken?” It was a real look-alike generation. They’d all grown up awkward, I guess.

  And they all had a thing for dolphins. I don’t know what it was about dolphins, but I guess other civilizations had their centaurs, two-headed dogs etc. Kenny used to ransack the new library on Library Road for books and periodicals about marine life, especially experiments with dolphins, or dolphins as biocomputers, or what dolphins are saying to us. Also, his room was usually full of books whose titles included words like modality, phenomena, feedback, electrophysical, cognitive, spatial, astral, sensory and psychodynamic.

  I skated on the pond. My skates were white. I have the pictures, still.

  Shaver met our plane when the team came back from Atlanta. He and I went outside to get a taxi. There were eight or nine people in front of us. As we waited. Shaver raised one leg behind him and looked back at the bottom of his shoe. Then he did four deep knee bends. The line started moving and we advanced several places. Shaver did two more deep knee bends. He clapped his hands.

  Halfway into town, he took a piece of gum out of his mouth and stuck it to the plastic shield between the front and rear seats.

  The next day I went to a studio on the West Side to shoot a commercial for a Hughes Tool subsidiary that made whirlpool baths. About fifty people were there, walking around, yelling, rearranging the set, mostly drinking coffee out of Styrofoam cups.

  Glenway Packer, who was Floss’s associate, came over and helped guide me through the chaos to a relatively quiet spot. Glenway was a tall, well-dressed, middle-aged man with a shaved head and light blue eyes. Floss was always saying he had “beautiful manners.” Certainly he had beautiful fingernails—they gleamed—and beautiful shoes and a beautiful crease in his trousers. An impeccably turned out person, I believe is the phrase.

  He gave me the script. I read the audio part first.

  You know me. Property of the New York Rangers. That’s right, Cleo Birdwell. I shoot pucks for a living. But once I climb down off my skates, I like to sit in my Primal Vortex and feel the tingling excitement of nature’s own fluid fingers. It is like the first woman’s first experience. Primal.

  There was more, but I skipped over to the video portion of the script.

  It seems they wanted me sitting in this whirlpool, eating an apple, and showing moderate to heavy cleavage.

  “Floss didn’t approve this,” I said.

  “Floss is on extended leave.”

  “I know she is. And I know I’m not doing this commercial. My cleavage stays where it is. Inside my shirt.”

  “It’s a reasonably deft little twenty-second cameo, I thought.”

  “Glenway, forget it.”

  “It could create a small sensation. Granted, that business about ‘nature’s own fluid fingers’ is a bit sillier than it absolutely has to be. But I think the apple is deft. The apple is fun.”

  A sort of elegant drawl crept along the underside of his voice. He offered me a cigarette from a silver and black case that looked expensive enough to have the relics of a saint inside it. He took one himself and tapped it expertly on the closed case before lighting it with something that resembled a prizewinning Scandinavian utensil.

  “I want to talk to Floss.”

  “Cleo, you can’t. It is simply not feasible.”

  “Whatever it is she’s up to, she’d tell you how to get in touch with her. Get in touch with her.”

  “Cleo, she is so far away. Getting in touch would be tedious and boring. We told these people we’d be here to shoot their commercial. The money is substantial.”

  “Why didn’t somebody see the script before today? I walk in the door and they want cleavage. Glenway, I’m a hockey player.”

  “Well I saw the script and I thought it was a damned piquant little idea. We’re nearing the end of the century. What is cleavage? People out there have seen everything on their TV screens up to and including the male reproductive organs swinging slowly to and fro. Don’t tell me it was just a bunch of nomadic goatherders on some National Geographic special. The industry has matured, Cleo.”

  “Go swing your organs. I’m a hockey player.”

  “No one’s asking you to swing any organs. We protect our clients. This is simply cleavage. The water will be well above your nipples. Lord, it is no more naughty than a World War II pinup.”

  “Where is Floss?”

  “If I could explain to you, in less than half a day, how exceedingly tedious it would be to have to contact Floss Penrose, I would gladly do it. But the explanation alone would demand more of me than the good Lord in his wisdom has seen fit to instill. Floss is my oldest and dearest friend. But she doesn’t approve everything that passes across my desk. This com
mercial will be good for you, good for Primal Vortex, good for Hughes Tool, good for us all. Good business, good fun. It is the merest of cleavages these playful little admen are calling for.”

  “Moderate to heavy, Glenway, it says here.”

  “Cleo, no nipple. Isn’t that the crux of the matter? Think about it. No nipple.”

  “The crux of the matter is, do I even want to get in that thing?”

  “Kind of late in the game to be backing down conceptually. I can empathize with nipples. But the concept, Cleo—they are selling a whirlpool device and it is no more than basic merchandising sense to demonstrate the product in use.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I never even thought about what I’d have to do.”

  “I am right about the concept, I am on equally sound ground in the matter of cleavage.”

  “I’d feel so dumb.”

  “We all feel dumb, most of the time. This is not sufficient cause to cancel a shooting. Believe me, there is dumb everywhere. We are surrounded by dumb. One simply plows through. This is called making one’s way in the world.”

  “Where is Floss?” I said.

  Glenway Packer sighed. He leaned way over, placed his cigarette on the floor, then ground it well into the cement with the tip of his beautiful shoe.

  “You must know?” he said.

  “I’d really like to talk to her. I really don’t think she’d want me to do this commercial.”

  “She’s in Sri Lanka,” he said.

  Sri Lanka? That’s where Archie Brewster was. Which meant she’d changed her mind about some terrifically demanding new profession and had gone chasing after Archie, after all. By the time she got to Sri Lanka, he’d probably be in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, or one of the Benelux countries. Poor little Floss.

  “If you’ve never placed a call to Sri Lanka,” Glenway said, “you can’t imagine the hazards and obstacles. Besides, she left no word as to exact whereabouts. We’d have to try all the hotels in the whole country. Obviously she doesn’t want to be disturbed. What Floss needs least is to mediate a philosophical dispute pertaining to cleavage.”

  “I agree,” I said. “Let’s let her rest.”

  He seemed relieved that he wouldn’t have to put through a call to Sri Lanka.

  “All right, Cleo, let me try a different tack. It will take these people a while longer to get the set the way they want it. They are perfectionists. In the meantime, I will set out to win your goodwill by telling you that the Kelloid Company—of Battle Creek, Michigan, lest we forget—is about to introduce a new line of snack foods and they are considering you, Cleo Birdwell, as their spokeswoman. It is a gigantic market, they will make many commercials, the gold will come sliding out in hot little ingots. Apparently all those pregame and postgame interviews you’ve been doing have impressed these people. They think you are the bee’s knees. It is not yet settled. But I think they are definitely leaning your way. It is all very hush-hush. I fly to Battle Creek in a couple of days. More talks. Final word shouldn’t be long in coming.”

  “I don’t think I can do it, Glenway.”

  He turned his head sideways and then looked slowly, slowly up toward the ceiling.

  “Tray, why not?”

  “I eat Ralphies,” I said.

  “You eat what?”

  “Ralphies. They’re a terrific little junk food.”

  “Who makes them?”

  “I don’t know. Probably Ralphies and Co.”

  He looked directly into my face.

  “You realize this is stupid.”

  “Yes, I do, but I think if I’m going to endorse some other junk food, it would be dishonest, because of the Ralphies. I eat them all the time. I couldn’t go on television and say I eat these other things. Maybe I would eat the other things if they were good. But I would also eat Ralphies. I would eat Ralphies by a wide margin over anything else.”

  “You know how incredibly stupid this is,” Glenway said. “You must know. I’m convinced you know.”

  “I do know, yes, but I can’t help it if that’s the way I feel. It is stupid. I agree with you. I see what you’re saying. It is very, very stupid.”

  “I will go to Battle Creek anyway,” he said.

  “You probably should.”

  “I’m convinced you’ll feel differently by then, if not sooner. Perhaps within the hour.”

  “I know it’s stupid, Glenway. What I’ve been saying is stupid. Very stupid.”

  “It isn’t stupidity that troubles me, Cleo. There is stupid everywhere. In this business, one eats and drinks stupid. One has stupid with one’s coffee. There are massive doses of stupid coming from every direction, virtually around the clock. One dissolves two stupids in half a glass of water. So I don’t mind stupidity. What I object to is misplaced stupidity. Do you see the distinction? You are using your stupid in an unworthy fashion. Your stupid deserves better than this. You are wasting it in a sense. You are misusing it. No one will see it for what it is.”

  “Where did you go to school, Glenway?”

  “Yale,” he said. “Why?”

  I talked it over with Shaver and he agreed with me. In a way I was let down. I knew it was stupid. It was stupid. I wanted Shaver to tell me I was nuts not to do the Kelloid commercials if they chose me. Either do them or don’t do them, I wanted him to say, but either way don’t base your decision on a craving for Ralphies. How can anyone be loyal to a brand of junk food? But Shaver didn’t say these things. He agreed with me. He backed every word.

  As for Primal Vortex, he thought I should have done it. Just for fun, he said. Eat an apple in a whirlpool. The first woman’s first experience. What’s a little titty? That’s what he said. When I told him I’d walked out and left everyone standing around with hammers and screwdrivers and hoses in their hands, he kept saying, “What’s a little titty, what’s a little titty?”

  That night we went to a farewell party for Garden prexy James Kinross. It was true; he was being ousted, just as Sanders Meade had said on the Night of the Howling Snows.

  The party was held in a private room in a restaurant near the Garden. About sixty people were there, including some Rangers, some Knicks, a few boxing people, some wives, a lot of executives. No Sanders Meade. No Hughes Tool.

  There were hors d’oeuvres by the ton and a girl bartender in a Knicks warm-up suit that was unzippered more or less to her knees. Kinross sat spread out in a leather chair and people kept leaning over to shake his hand or peck him on the neck. He did a lot of laughing, coughing, and turning red.

  when Tyrone Penny, the roundball legend, asked Kinross what his plans were, we were close enough to hear him say, “I’m gonna go home and blow my fuggin brains out.” Then he hit the arm of the chair, coughed, laughed, bounced, and turned red.

  Shaver and I went over to say hello. Kinross grabbed my hand and wouldn’t let go.

  “This kid is something, ain’t she?”

  Shaver smiled.

  “I got a lech for this white woman. Look at her. What’s she like in the sack? Seriously, she must be the all-time greatest thing since the Chinese did it sitting down in hammocks. I bet she’s like semi-sweet butter. No fooling, what’s she like? I bet you never stop doing it, God bless you kids, first thing in the morning, right? The neighbors can’t believe it, they got a trampoline act living upstairs. God bless you both, all kidding aside, I wish I had your youth, your energy, your ideals. That’s what I miss about getting older, in all seriousness—youth. I miss youth. I bet you do it in the bathroom, in the elevator, standing up, sitting down, sideways, God love you, I wish you the best of everything, you deserve it, and anybody tells you different I’ll open their fuggin heads.”

  Shaver began shuffling his feet.

  “Hell shit, she looks to me like it’s no holds barred. That’s the way they are, these farm-fresh types. Hunks of pure white butter. She’s sly, this Birdwell. She’s got a little devil in her. Am I right, or what?”


  Shaver’s smile grew paler and more strained.

  “God bless you kids today, with none of the hangups that plagued my generation. You do it in fuggin treetops if the wind’s not too strong. Get yourselves some drinks. What are you drinking?”

  We already had drinks and we were drinking them. Toby Scott came over to say hello. Kinross didn’t let go of my hand.

  “Toby, you little prick, thanks for coming. Where’s that shit-ass Merle?”

  “He’s in the hospital. He may die.”

  “Yeah, well his voice will live on, like fuggin radioactive waste.”

  He hit the chair arm, laughing and coughing violently. “You two guys are something. Every time the opposition scores a goal, it’s like the Hindenburg bursting into flames all over again. Were you actually weeping the other night, Toby, when that little jerk McLeod got beat up?”

  “He’s one of our guys,” Toby said.

  “The way he’s been playing, they oughta run the Zamboni machine over his prone body. And you oughta do something about that squeal that comes out of your mouth, Toby. It’s like listening to squirrels mate. This is advice that comes to you from a man who’s gonna go home tonight and blow his own fuggin brains out, so you oughta consider it heartfelt and sincere. Have a drink. Get yourself a drink, Toby, you little bullet-eyed scumbag, God love you.”

  Kinross sat slumped there, red faced, sort of palpitating and out of breath, his free hand shaking—the other one still holding me in its grasp.

  “Toby, what do you think of this Birdwell, an all-white woman like this? If we gave you a running start, it would still take you two weeks to lick her white body from head to toe. She’s that tasty, right? You’d linger. You’d spread a second and third coat.”