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

by Cleo Birdwell

  “Too many people trying to dissway me from the door. You don’t know what kind of sly bodies been trying to get in here unannounced. Not a day goes by that I don’t open my coat and let the curious have a look at the bayonet I keep in there.”

  He reached the door and started spraying Windex on the glass. An elderly woman entered the building and Washington Post moved with the turning door, taking those quick, small, dainty steps. He cleaned the glass as he revolved and then kept right on revolving once the woman was through the door.

  This was a pointed hint, I thought. Anyway, he was right. I had no business entrusting a doorman with something so delicate, no matter how easy it might be to keep the Kramer going.

  All right. I went upstairs, got some money, put on my coat, took the elevator back down, walked through the revolving door (joined by Mr. Willie, who was polishing metalwork by this time), and hailed a cab. I gave the driver the address of Dr. Glass’s office, and eastward we went. Luckily the doctor was coming out of his building just as the cab pulled up and I more or less snagged him on the run and arm-wrestled him into the back seat.

  He carried an umbrella and briefcase and looked every bit the mild-mannered demon of lobotomies.

  “I usually walk,” he said.

  “I’ll pay.”

  “It’s all right. We’ll go halvesies.”

  I could tell from his tone of voice that he was a little miffed at the way I’d hauled him into the cab.

  “I insist on paying. Doctor. It was my idea, this ride, and I will pay, and let’s have no more discussion.”

  “Get a receipt from the driver,” he whispered.

  I told him I’d found the note taped to the Kramer.

  “Nurse is good with words,” he said.

  “I have no problem with the note. It’s a good note, a lucid note. The problem is that it’s physically impossible for me to be with Shaver on a regular basis.”

  We were stuck in traffic already. Horns were blowing and cabdrivers yelled at each other in the gathering dusk. I was waiting for Dr. Glass to go into his routine about the loving atmosphere of the American home.

  “Did you think of calling a nursing service?” he said.

  “A nursing service.”

  “They’ll provide a nurse whenever you want one, for whatever period of time.”

  “That’s great. Why didn’t I think of that? A nursing service.”

  “See how easy?”

  “Doctor, I’m really grateful. I was so confused and worried I just wasn’t thinking straight.”

  “Sometimes we do help.”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “I feel so much better.”

  “It’s a weight off your chest, isn’t it?”

  “You’ll never know.”

  “They always say that. ‘It’s a weight off my chest.’ ‘It’s a load off my mind.’ How much better do you feel?”

  “So much better.”

  “They always say that.”

  “I also feel very dense for not having thought of it myself. I came racing here from Detroit. I was one big, jangly nervous wreck.”

  “See how easy?”

  “Sure, when you know what you’re doing.”

  Our driver kept racing down side streets from one traffic jam to another. I didn’t care. I felt lightheaded with joy and relief.

  “Doctor, there’s something I’d like to ask. How well will Shaver be after five months in a Kramer? Will it all be worth it?”

  He looked amused.

  “I don’t play God with other people’s lives.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “No person should have that power.”

  “Is it playing God to cure someone?”

  “We have to ask ourselves what constitutes a cure.”

  “All right, what constitutes a cure?”

  “We don’t know,” he said. “At our present level of knowledge, we don’t really know who is sick and who is healthy. The definitions blur into each other.”

  All through this, he was looking amused and paternal and superior. I didn’t want to undergo a wave of depression fifteen seconds after my burst of joy, so I decided not to probe any further and I just sat there looking out the window at people streaming along the sidewalks.

  “Can you recommend a particular nursing service?” I said after a while.

  “I have a phone number in my study if you’d like to run up with me.”

  “I guess that’d be okay. Sure, thank you.”

  “I’ll make us a couple of Tanqueray martinis and we’ll watch the afterglow on the river.”

  I looked at him.

  “It’s been a long, tough, trying day,” I said, pausing between words to give them added impact. “I think I’ll just get the phone number and head on home.”

  Tanqueray martinis? The afterglow on the river? It sounded like Fifties Suave to me. He probably had a library of LPs devoted to huge stringed orchestras with female voices making vowel sounds and seagulls crying above the breaking surf.

  Our driver broke away from First Avenue and went speeding toward the river. Soon we pulled up in front of the doctor’s building.

  “Ask for a receipt,” he whispered.

  The driver had a toothbrush in his breast pocket. I paid him and got a receipt. Dr. Glass and I went into the lobby. In the bright light, I could see that the blond streak in his hair was now an ash-blond streak. He took off his coat and handed it to the doorman along with his umbrella and briefcase.

  “It’s the only exercise I get,” he told me.

  “Handing stuff to the doorman?”

  “Running up the stairs.”

  “You run?”

  “Good for the pulse rate. Want to come?”

  I shrugged, took off my coat, and handed it to the doorman. Dr. Glass and I walked to a door at the far end of the lobby and the next thing I knew we were running up the stairs.

  “Our coats go up by elevator?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I guess you two have it down pat. He waits a set amount of time, puts the stuff on the elevator, and it gets to your floor just as you come running along the hall.”

  “Don’t talk,” he said.

  As dumb as it was to go running up the stairs, it was exactly what I needed after the kind of day I’d had. I was in good shape, naturally, and I have to admit I enjoyed sprinting up the dim stairwell, taking two steps at a time at the outset and easily outdistancing Dr. Glass. There’s nothing like physical exertion to wipe out tension, worry, and strain.

  “Long stairways,” I called back.

  “Old building.”

  “High ceilings?”

  “Right.”

  I geared down to one step at a time. We seemed to be going awfully far up. I tried to remember what floor he lived on, thinking back to the time I’d visited with Shaver.

  “How much higher?” I said.

  “Don’t talk.”

  “Give me a yes or no. Ten or above?”

  “Yes.”

  We were both panting. He was catching up to me. He’d probably done this about seventy-five times and knew exactly how to pace himself.

  “Fifteen or above?”

  “Yes “

  There were numbers in the stairwell. We were on eight and I was definitely slowing down. Dr. Glass was abreast of me and we ran stride for stride, wordless, panting, straining, aching, for about four flights. He loosened his tie and undid the top button on his shirt collar without breaking stride.

  “Twenty or above?”

  “No.”

  “So. It’s between fifteen and twenty.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it closer to twenty?”

  “No.”

  “So. It’s fifteen, sixteen or seventeen.”

  My lungs ached and my calf muscles were tightening up, but I kept on going. We reached fourteen. Dr. Glass stumbled forward and I just left him there bet
ween landings. I was either getting a second wind or had died and was leaving my body. I reached sixteen and went careening around the bend and up another flight, tossed forward by momentum alone. I was still climbing when I realized I didn’t hear the doctor behind me. I stopped, and stood there huffing. My sweat had turned from warm to cold on the eleventh floor, and my heart was pounding.

  Slowly I headed back down. I found Dr. Glass sitting on sixteen, on the landing, his belt undone and his pants open, to help him breathe. One leg was bent up, the other stretched along the marble floor. He was trying to fan himself with a limp hand.

  “Are you all right?” I said.

  He nodded, breathing heavily, grasping at his shirt collar to loosen it further.

  “This it? Sixteen?”

  He nodded.

  “I accidentally climbed about an extra flight and a half,” I said.

  He kept nodding. I don’t think it was completely voluntary.

  “What now?” I said.

  He managed to raise an arm and gesture toward the door. I opened the door and found myself facing the freight elevator. The elevator door slid open and I went over there and got our coats—they’d been neatly folded over the handrail—and grabbed the doctor’s umbrella and briefcase from the far corner.

  When I returned to the stairwell, he was inching his back up along the wall, trying to stand. My left leg was having spasms, which hadn’t happened since a triple overtime play-off game in Medicine Hat, about three years earlier.

  He took off his jacket and handed it to me. He zipped his pants and slowly fastened the belt. He looked ashen. He kept licking his lips in a search for moisture. I watched him take his pulse. I was holding both coats, his jacket, the briefcase, and the umbrella.

  A drop of sweat fell off the tip of his nose onto his wristwatch. He seemed satisfied with his pulse rate.

  I took the taxi receipt out of my jeans and handed it to him. He thanked me.

  I followed him through another door to the hallway proper. He dug his keys out of his pants and we went inside. I dropped the stuff on the floor. Dr. Glass went into the living room and flopped down on the sofa, gradually sliding into a horizontal position, face up, one hand trailing down to the carpet. He alternated between dry gasping and mere heavy breathing. I sat on the arm of a big, stuffed chair, my head hanging. We remained that way for a considerable period of time. At length I realized someone or something was moving nearby. It was little Mona, the doctor’s ten-year-old.

  “Mona, get us something to drink,” I said.

  “I only do Bloody Marys.”

  “I’ll settle for water.”

  “Have we met?” she said.

  “In a tall glass, please.”

  When she came back, I realized how dirty and wan she was. Her dress was soiled and fit badly, and she was gnawing on an ancient crust of bread. She looked like a Depression child in some classic, haunting photograph.

  “Thank you,” I said. “This is good. Get some for your daddy, too.”

  I drank the water slowly and once again scanned the paintings in the room—big, stark, impressive canvases. Dr. Glass was still stretched out.

  “Where is your wife. Doctor?”

  “Don’t talk,” he said.

  Mona came back in with some water for him.

  “Where is your mother?” I said.

  She shrugged and went down a hallway.

  “Doctor, I’d feel better knowing your wife was home. You understand. It’s just a question of appearances. Where is your wife?”

  “Around somewhere. It’s a large apartment.”

  “I know, it sprawls.”

  “Mona will find her.”

  “In the meantime, I’d like to get that phone number if I may.”

  He lifted the drooping arm and pointed back over his head. I headed that way through an open door and found myself in his study. Glass cabinets, big desk, diplomas, shelves and shelves of dark old tomes. I felt the same way I always do when I walk into a room like that. Who is he trying to kid with all these books?

  There was an address book on the desk. There were three nursing services listed under N, and I called the first one. The woman told me they’d have someone at my door at eight sharp.

  My mood was on the upswing again. I drank some more water, and when I lowered the glass from my face I realized little Mona was standing practically at my feet, gnawing at that crust of bread.

  “Mona, I thought you had your own apartment.”

  “I got evicted.”

  “I won’t ask why.”

  “I’m supposed to be looking for a new place.”

  “All by yourself?”

  “One of them comes with me. They take turns. We’re looking at lofts.”

  “Aren’t most of the lofts way downtown? You’ll be far away.”

  “My mother knows a lot of people down there. And she’s down there almost every day. Her male lover lives in a loft.”

  “I see. That’s nice. Does he paint or sculpt?”

  “He raises pigeons.”

  “I see. That’s nice.”

  She took my hand and led me out the far door and down a long hallway into a big, gloomy, practically rubble-strewn bedroom. On the bed was her mother Natasha in something I believe is called a peignoir, and she was drinking wine out of a jelly jar and gazing intently at a small portable TV set propped among pillows at the foot of the bed. Cats crawled around everywhere, slept on windowsills, bounded down from chairs—all noiselessly, moving from one soft object to another.

  As I stood in the doorway, taking in this scene, I realized Mona had disappeared, and just about then the woman turned and spotted me. Without the dark lipstick and heavy eye makeup she’d been wearing last time, her face seemed pasty and drawn.

  “Well, hello,” she said.

  I mumbled something about the nurse service, having met her before, love the paintings etc. etc.

  “Throw a cat off a chair and make yourself comfortable. I’m going through one of my haze-outs. Nothing but TV for a solid week. I don’t want to think about anything. I don’t want to discuss the art market. Wall Street, theater, film, dance, war, what have you.”

  She didn’t mention hockey, so I wasn’t sure she even remembered me, although she was using a tone of intimate confidentiality. Mona crept up behind me and nudged me to a chair alongside the bed.

  “I forget to feed the cats,” Natasha said, as if she expected me to reply that I forgot to feed the cats during my haze-outs.

  Mona hoisted up a gallon bottle of wine called Jiminy Cricket and her mother filled the jelly jar. I used my water glass to indicate I was doing just fine, thank you.

  Natasha was watching a movie made for TV. It had that glossy look. They spritz the whole set with hair spray. The actors have carved faces and move about on casters. Every third shot is a zoom into some frightened woman’s teeth.

  Mona climbed onto the bed and we watched a while. The movie was about a woman being stalked by two escapees from a lunatic asylum. An old man and a young man. I’d seen clones of this movie about nine times in hotel rooms in hockey cities all over North America. Women being stalked is one of the great themes of movies made for TV, I’ve noticed. The other is athletes with fatal diseases. The first is all zoom; the second is slo-mo.

  “Isn’t it dreadful?” Natasha said. “I let it wash right over me. This is one of the liberating things about haze-outs. You accept shit for what it is. It is shit. They know it and you know it, and there is no need to get mad at it, or be critical of it, or call it names. Its only name is shit.”

  I couldn’t get over how soundlessly the cats crept and jumped and scratched. All the time I was there, I was aware of motion at various speeds but never any sound.

  “I find I need longer and longer distractions,” Natasha said. “I used to haze out for a day or two, at most, and I’d only watch old movies or documentaries. Now I watch anything, the most stagg
ering shit imaginable, and I keep adding on days. But we all justify it to ourselves the same way, don’t we? We need to be dumbed out, rinsed out, or we’ll shatter from the strain.”

  I was getting interested in the movie. I hate to admit it, but once the suspense starts building it doesn’t really matter how superficial everything is, or whether you’ve seen these same car chases and car crashes four hundred times.

  “Isn’t it excruciating?” Natasha said. “They pile shit upon shit. It becomes an art form of its own. A pyramid of shit. An Uffizi Gallery of shit. The Museum of Modern Shit. Astonishing that we need these shit sabbaticals in order to become viable again.”

  Against my better judgment, I wanted to find out what was going to happen to the stalked woman. She was in a cabin in the woods and the lights had gone out.

  “When did the lights go out?” Natasha said.

  “A moment ago.”

  “The lights always go out.”

  “I know.”

  “Look out for the old fellow. He’s the one she ought to be worrying about.”

  “He’s the canny one,” I said.

  “He’s under the house,” Mona said. “He’s coming up through the boards.”

  “Where’s the young one?”

  “In a tree,” I said. “Trying to get onto the roof.”

  In the cabin, the woman heard a prying sound below her and heavy footsteps above. There was weird, vibrating music—your typical unique paranoid-schizophrenic soundtrack. The camera zoomed into the woman’s terrified eyes. A commercial came on.

  “Where’s your daddy?” Natasha said.

  “On the sofa.”

  “Did he run up the stairs, that stupid ass?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sid Glass, Stupid Ass.”

  “She ran up with him,” Mona said.

  “She did not. Don’t be silly.”

  “She did so.”

  Natasha looked at me.

  “You didn’t. You couldn’t have.”

  “Of course I didn’t.”

  “Why would you? Why would anyone?”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  Mona gave me one of those betrayed-child looks. I think they practice that look in front of mirrors. If you’ve never had a betrayed child give you that look, you don’t know the first thing about guilt or shame. My brother was a little master of that kind of look. He went around searching for situations that might lend themselves to the betrayal of a child.