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

by Cleo Birdwell

  “. . . and that’s why it’s so good to he hack among the Amazons. Amazon Ringos, Amazon Discos, Amazon Nuggets, Amazon Noshes.”

  Floss slaps back.

  “You should have done it,” she says. “It doesn’t sound stupid.”

  “It was stupid then, it’s stupid now.”

  “It’s in the middle of celebrity pole-vaulting.”

  “That’s stupid, this is stupid.”

  “This is not stupid. That’s stupid. This shines by comparison.”

  The little girls are skating around Karen Lee Mickie. Floss slaps my hand again.

  “You’d have been twice as good. Look at her. She’s so pert and bouncy she’d cause cancer in rats. Where’s her tits? No tits, Cleo.”

  I slap her hand.

  “. . . women-tested Amazons. The snack we packed for women.”

  As the thing goes on, Floss gets angrier at me for not having done it. It is half-serious anger. She keeps slapping my hand. The bartender brings us two more drinks. Floss is beginning to slur.

  “Her breasts couldn’t shine your breasts’ shoes. She is a boy, Cleo, and you are a woman in the full, ripe flowering of your life.”

  “Drinking Scotch from a cane.”

  Snow falls upon the pond. The background is misty. There is nostalgic music. Karen Lee Mickie is skating figure eights in slo-mo. There is a close-up of her face. They have photographed her in such heartbreaking, snowy radiance I expect the bartender to wish us a Merry Christmas and give us a round on the house.

  “She’s good here,” Floss says. “You have to give her the edge here. Nobody does figures like Mickie.”

  I slap her hand. She slaps back.

  “. . . the new crackle-snackers from Kelloid’s.”

  We are caught up in a flurry of half-serious hand-slapping.

  Floss stops long enough to finish her drink, then resumes hitting my hand.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this,” I say. “I want to settle down, have children.”

  We laugh a little hysterically.

  “This is exactly what I shouldn’t be doing. Running around town with Shaver. Drinking from a cane. Things were going so well. Life was sane and calm.”

  A different commercial comes on.

  “When is he due back?” Floss says.

  “A couple of hours. Dr. Glass told me.”

  “We’ve been out more than two hours, Cleo.”

  “A couple of hours. Several hours. That means three, four, four and a half.”

  “I beg to differ,” Floss says. “A couple means two. It has always meant two. This man should be back in his Kramer.”

  “A couple means a few.”

  “I confess to being a little surprised, Cleo, by your lack of concern in this matter.”

  She is beyond the slurring stage and into early stiltedness.

  “Dr. Glass was being informal. A few hours. Several or more hours.”

  “I must take issue with that,” she says.

  We call the bartender over. He moves toward us like a sea creature along the ocean floor. Something believed to be extinct. Scientists are lowering lights and cameras. Tourists buy plastic replicas of the creature. Local people have named it Deep Fat. A motel called Fatview Cabins is being built.

  Floss says to him, “Help settle an argument. What does a couple mean? A couple of anything. Chickens, eggs, hours, minutes.”

  “Two,” he says.

  This man is trifling with my lover’s well-being. I laugh crazily. It’s a sound I don’t recognize. Then I start slapping the back of Floss’s hand. She slaps my hand. Some strange, quivering tension seizes the bartender’s body. We realize he is laughing. Floss and I amuse him. This taut spasm is the way he laughs. His eyes disappear in his face. The lids are completely buried. His short arms start swinging back and forth. The world press headlines: deep fat laughs for camera.

  Floss takes advantage of his good mood to get him to fill the cane. She gives him a twenty-dollar bill and we push Shaver out into the street. Next to the bar is a theater that shows X-rated films. Playing today is Sloppy Seconds with Hugo Furst. I glance at the glossy stills under glass to see if my brother is featured.

  We hurry north on Sixth Avenue. You see us in a dazzling overhead shot, dodging the yellow taxis. I laugh on and off. A tense, high-pitched, out-of-control sound. I have the wheelchair, and Floss is running to keep up. We race into the park and head in a northeasterly direction at the first opportunity.

  “Slow down,” she says.

  “A couple is two. We have to get him back.”

  “A couple is two, but I’m sure Dr. Glass left some margin for error. There’s the carousel. I wonder if they have a wheelchair ramp.”

  This is the first time I’ve seen the carousel.

  “It’s called the Delacorte Carousel,” Floss explains. “Wait, that doesn’t sound right. I think the carousel is Jewish. It’s the Guggenheim Carousel. The band shell near the mall is the Delacorte Band Shell.”

  We look at each other.

  “That makes sense,” I tell her.

  The carousel is impressive and the music is genuinely inviting, but I refuse to give Shaver a ride, as Floss keeps urging me to do. We keep hurrying east and then north.

  “What about a taxi?” she says.

  “The chair is too big and it’s not collapsible. Sick Wheels said I was lucky to get this one. It’s a weekend, remember.”

  “There’s the Wollman Memorial Fountain.”

  “That’s a drinking fountain.”

  “You’re right, let’s drink.” She stops and tilts her head way back and drinks from the cane. “The Wollman Fountain’s on Seventy-second Street. Why don’t we take Shaver to the zoo?”

  “There’s no wheelchair ramp. Come, hurry.”

  “I wonder if they’d let us into the Sam and Bella Tishman Children’s Zoo. We could say Shaver’s a gland case.”

  I laugh briefly and frighteningly. It is almost a bark.

  We see a film crew shooting a scene in a leafy glen. I want to stop and watch. This is how they make magic. But there’s no time to dawdle. The Kramer is now.

  “They’re filming your book, Cleo. When they’re finished, they’ll postsync a Vivaldi soundtrack. This is called postsynching in our business. Have a drink.”

  “No.”

  “We have to stop. My side hurts and I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “I have to go to the bathroom, too.”

  “We should have gone in the bar.”

  “Deep Fat keeps his kelp in the toilet. It’s got iodine.”

  We look at each other.

  “That makes sense,” she says.

  Five minutes later, we are nearing Fifth Avenue. The Wollman Memorial Fountain is somewhere to our left. Behind us is the Damrosch Mall, according to Floss.

  A kid about fifteen, on a skateboard, is keeping pace with us. His left fist is clenched and he is talking into it.

  “Hi,” he says to Floss. “Enjoying your outing in the park?”

  He thrusts the fist in front of her mouth.

  “Lovely day,” she says into it.

  He pulls the fist back to his own face.

  “Where do you make your home?”

  “Right here in Manhattan, Wally.”

  Wally?

  “And what is your favorite charity?”

  Floss pauses to wait for the fist.

  “The Seventh Fleet,” she says. “They’re doing their best to meet the challenge of the Soviet naval buildup. I urge your listeners to send whatever they can to the Seventh Fleet, the Bangkok Hilton, Honolulu, Hawaii, oh one three six seven.”

  The boy takes this answer in stride and veers off. I try to identify this new stage Floss is entering.

  We are out of the park. She stops to drink from the cane and then hands it to me and takes over the wheelchair.

  “He has good color,” she says.

 
“Dr. Glass said the sun would be good for him.”

  “You ought to let his hair grow.”

  “I give him occasional light trims,”

  “Let it grow wild, Cleo. Trim the beard lightly. Let the hair on his head grow wild. Believe me, it will look fantastic.”

  “I cut very, very lightly.”

  “Let it grow,” she says. “And get a sunlamp. It’s too much trouble to get him in and out of the Kramer every day. Get a sunlamp and safety glasses and lift the hood of the Kramer and shine the lamp on him a few minutes a day.”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  “And buff his fingernails.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “Do you talk to him?” she says.

  “All the time.”

  “It’s good to talk to them. They hear it even if they don’t seem to.”

  She has to get to a toilet badly. Since my apartment is closer than hers, we go over there together. Floss takes the wheelchair through the side entrance while I spin through the revolving door.

  “Four people waiting upstairs,” Mr. Willie says.

  “Are they Arabs?”

  “Not so you’d notice.”

  “I see. Can you give me a breakdown by sex?”

  “Two of each.”

  “All right. Why are they upstairs?”

  “They’re carrying bulky stuff and I just got done with these floors. I left them on the rug outside your door.”

  I go up there. Sure enough, there are two men, two women lounging around the hallway along with tall lamps and cameras and other equipment. They are dressed for the Australian outback. Safari jackets, bush hats etc. Then it hits me. Of course. The story team from Success magazine.

  They all start talking at once. The elevator door opens and Floss comes charging out, half dying of imminent urination. She is all but clutching herself there to keep it in. She walks hunched over. I explain about the story team.

  She makes that mean, nasty, pug-nosed face I have seen before. It is the storm before the storm. Her eyes narrow and she seems to be sniffing her upper lip.

  “You people dare come up here without checking with me? This is my client and dear friend. You can’t just walk in here and exploit her life without notifying her agent. All exploitation crosses my desk first, you little shits. Just for that, we’re not giving her story to your magazine. This woman is going to tell her own story in her own words. We’re doing a book. This woman is a full-length book. She is not some three-page profile in your pissy magazine, photographed in her converted lighthouse in Montauk with her fucking cat Renaldo.”

  Floss grabs the cane from me, unscrews the handle and takes a couple of deep swallows.

  “Not only is she a book, but they’re already doing the movie version. Go over to Central Park if you don’t believe me and take those silly-ass outfits with you. You look like tourists at World War III “

  The story team does some grumbling, but they pick up their stuff and leave. I open the door and Floss goes racing into the bathroom. It is then I realize we have forgotten Shaver.

  For one long, stunned moment, I can’t remember where we saw him last. He was with us in the bar. He was with us in the park. Did we bring him into the building? Did we put him on the elevator?

  I run into the apartment and sort of hurl myself against the bathroom door. I hear Floss say, “Wait your turn. King Kong.”

  I have bounced off the door. I stand looking at it, trying to remain calm.

  “Where is Shaver?” I say slowly and clearly, with a little note of trembling suspense mixed in.

  There’s a pause. She even stops peeing. Then we both laugh hysterically. It is an unhealthy sound, a little crazed, very much out of control. It causes a fresh surge of peeing in there. There must be a muscle linkage.

  I go rushing out to the elevator. When I emerge in the lobby, Shaver is sitting quietly outside the little office where Mr. Willie takes phone calls. He is still snugly upright, thanks to Floss’s drawstring, and has not lost any of his color.

  I say a soft thank you to the Force that controls the universe.

  Later, the three of us have an early dinner in the bedroom. I take the Kramer off auto-command so that Floss can inject the nutrients. This is the last time she will attend to Shaver. If everything goes according to schedule, he will be out of the Kramer by the time she returns from France.

  I wonder how they’ll get along. I wonder how we’ll get along. I imagine a series of scenes. In the first scene. Dr. Glass picks up his phone and dials my number. Nurse answers the phone as I stand by to assist if necessary. Nurse confirms it is the right number Doctor has dialed. Then she lifts the hood of the Kramer and puts the phone next to Shaver’s ear. Doctor presses a button on the Butler box.

  Shaver wakes up refreshed. The Kramer is airfreighted to a woman in Salt Lake City.

  Over the next week or ten days. Shaver seems free of any symptoms of Jumping Frenchmen. He has a thorough physical with test results analyzed by Third World technicians in hospital labs high above the East River. Nothing is amiss. Dr. Glass tells me to call him immediately at the first sign that something is amiss. There is a Kramer in Miami Beach that is temporarily free and that Dr. Glass has first claim to.

  Shaver walks around the apartment in his boxer shorts. He brushes his tongue once or twice a day. He eats Ralphies and drinks bottles of Wink. He has awakened with alternating thirsts for Sprite and Wink.

  We take long walks in the park and talk about visits to Badger and Red Deer. We discuss his future. He is apparently well enough, and certainly still young enough, to play hockey again if he wants to. He thinks he would rather do something else. Something that will help other people. Community work. The young, the poor, the disabled. I tell him the Kramer was repaired by a Mafia electrician, with him in it. He says from now on he will try not to judge people by criminal affiliation.

  In the last of the scenes that I imagine, I am scribbling in my notebook one day and I see Shaver, out of the corner of my eye, which is how such things are usually seen, walk backward from the bathroom into the bedroom. A facial tissue is hanging from his nostril. There is the sound of two hands clapping.

  I leap for the telephone. I am surprised at the eagerness with which I pounce on the instrument. I have dialed four digits of Dr. Glass’s office number when Shaver rushes into the room and tries to wrest the phone from my hand. We grab, clutch, and pull. I am surprised at the intensity of our struggle. Our eyes meet for a long, sad, terrible moment, and then he relaxes his grip on the telephone. I rip it from his hands.

  This is the series of scenes I have been imagining as Floss and I finish our Western omelets in the softly waning light. She says it is time for her to go and she gives the Kramer a little pat. She is obviously trying to underplay this parting. It is good theater and good taste, and I respect her for it, especially since it comes at the end of a day in which no one has underplayed anything. On her way out the door, I hand her the hollow cane and the drawstring of her silk taffeta pants.

  Night falls on the city.

  That night, in bed, I thought of the pictures I have of myself. I have pictures of myself, a small girl, skating on the pond in Snowy Owl Glen. My skates are white. I wear a stocking cap and half a ton of clothes. I am pudgy and fierce looking. Because of all the clothes I’m wearing, I have to hold my arms out away from my body, a little like penguin wings.

  Maybe it was these pictures, and what they recalled, that gave me the idea of getting out my old Instamatic the next day. I blew the dust off it and found some rolls of color film in the butter tray in the refrigerator. Then I took dozens of photos of Shaver in the Kramer cube.

  I set up these pictures carefully. I was determined to be deliberate and thorough, regardless of my personal genetic coding. This was a serious idea, even profound, even pseudo profound, and I wanted pictures that would do justice to the whole experience of Kramering. I kept the hood on the Kramer for
some shots, took it off for others. I used different kinds of lighting. I stood on chairs, I shot in high-assed, awkward, side-stooping positions. For the last shot on the last roll, I straddled the Kramer like a crazy woman and peered down into that soft, calm, faraway face.

  Click.

  About the Author

  Cleo Birdwell was born and raised in Badger, Ohio. Unfortunately, the author will not be able to tour because she will be leading the Rangers in their pursuit of the 1980-1981 Stanley Cup.

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