My doctor looked just like James Arness from Gunsmoke, only he wore a stethescope around his neck instead of a bolo tie.
“You’re a lucky kid,” he said. “An eighth of an inch closer, and you could have lost your eye.”
“But I’ll see all right?”
He nodded. “Fine enough to see the scar.”
And that should have been the end of that—I mean, I had ten stitches, but I easily could have suited up and played the next game. But I just…couldn’t.
“My leg doesn’t feel right,” I said in Coach Deight’s office. “I get out there and I feel like it’s going to break.”
Mr. Deight sat back in his chair, his folded hands on his belly, twiddling his thumbs.
“What does the doctor say?”
I shrugged, feeling my face grow hot.
The coach sat there for a while, his office chair creaking as he rocked back and forth in it.
“It’s not really about the leg, is it, Joe?”
I lowered my head until I was staring at my lap.
“Is it about the eye?”
I sat there, the big wall clock like a fussy old lady, tsking each second.
“I think it’s about both,” I said finally, raising my head. As much as I didn’t want to admit to my cowardice, I knew the sooner I offered an explanation, the sooner I could bolt out of the office.
“So you want to take a couple games off?”
I nodded.
The coach sniffed and picked up a pen, clicking it a couple of times before scribbling something on a pad of paper.
“We’ll just say that you need a little time off the ice to recuperate from your injuries.”
“Thanks,” I said, getting up. I was nearer to tears than I’d ever want to show a hockey coach.
It wasn’t official, but I knew: my hockey career was over and I think the depression I fell into was deeper than the one I’d tumbled into after my dad died. That’s not to say I loved hockey more than my father, but after his death, I had my mother to worry about and I knew I couldn’t shine any light on the darkness that surrounded her if I stayed in my own black pit. This time there was no one I had to be strong for, and I mourned the loss of my hockey career as if it was a real person. And in a way it was, I guess, because playing hockey had defined me. It had been my constant companion since I was a little kid waiting for the ice on the creek to freeze. I loved everything about the game, loved it with all my senses: the metallic scrape of blades against the ice, the clatter of sticks tapping against it and the cracking sound a slap shot makes; the sensation of flying down the rink, dodging opponents, the passing, shooting, and deking out the goalie; getting to the bench out of breath and grabbing the water bottle, squirting a slug of cold water down my throat. I even loved the Zamboni and watching the wet trails it made as it cleaned the ice. And now a big part of my life was gone—by my own choice—and you better believe I mourned it and the wuss I had become. I don’t know what had snapped, but something had, and I just couldn’t face going out on the ice anymore.
It was a depression I kept close, like a girl I was especially protective of, and yet in front of people, the girl suddenly became ugly and I told her to beat it, so that no one would know the mighty Joe Andreson would consort with such a loser. I sure couldn’t introduce her to my mom—she was happy and in love with Len Rusk, and I didn’t want to throw a wet blanket on that particular party.
I was in my dorm room one Friday night, my sleepy roommate having roused himself enough to invite me to a sorority party whose hostesses, he claimed, always had good pot (“Man, they should change their name to Delta High!”). Sitting at my desk, I was mindlessly throwing a tennis ball against the wall and catching it, back and forth, back and forth, the small thumping noise it made accenting the first syllable of the word that pounded in my head: loser, loser, loser.
Eleven
“Whaddya mean, crap? These are good!”
Ed Haugland shook his head as Kirk shoved a spoonful of Blue Barties into his mouth. “Cereal’s not supposed to turn milk purple.”
“It’s not purple,” I said, dipping my spoon in my bowl. “It’s blue. And you should try these—they are good.”
“I predict they’ll last as long as CinnaBombs,” said Ed.
“CinnaBombs were the best,” said Kirk. “I can’t believe they took those off the market.”
“They had to,” said Ed, “when all those people started dying of acute sugar poisoning.”
“Cereal’s supposed to be sweet!”
“No, those had a nasty aftertaste,” I said, remembering. “The cinnamon flavoring had a real bite to it.”
Often before our jam sessions, we’d sit in the break room and fortify ourselves with some new product from the grocery store aisles. Ed said our opinions were invaluable; we had the undeveloped palates of children, and whatever we liked, he knew not to recommend to anyone over the age of eight.
“Of course it’s a sad commentary on the state of our food,” said the professional grocer. “When in doubt, they put in either more sugar, more salt, or more chemicals.”
“Yes,” said Kirk in the quavery voice of an old man, “in my day, we didn’t have refined sugar! We just sucked on beets whenever we got a craving for sweets!”
“You’ll see,” said Ed, laughing. “There’s going to be a big counterrevolution against all this crap they put in foods.”
“Well, don’t sign me up,” said Kirk. “It’s the crap they put in that makes it taste good.”
After draining the half inch of purplish/blue milk left in my bowl, I let out a long and sustained burp, shaping the belch into words, which was a particular talent of mine.
“Are we going to sit around talking about food all night or are we going to play?”
Kirk, who was working hard to bring his skill level in burp-talking up to mine, opened his mouth wide, and on top of a deep bass belch rode his “Play.”
We hadn’t even jammed a half hour when Ed sat back in his chair, his hand falling to his side.
“I can’t hold on to the pick anymore,” he said. “My hand’s all numb.”
Kirk lifted his sunglasses and rested them on top of his head, and the two of us exchanged looks that telegraphed a little worry, frustration, some impatience. You had to have been deaf not to hear the wrong notes Ed had been playing, blind not to have seen how his hand fumbled against the strings like a paw, but as we had in the past, we all, including Ed—especially Ed—tried to ignore it. Some nights he played like Jimmy Page and we’d be lulled into thinking that everything was fine, but more often than not, he’d have to end the jam session early because of numbness, pain, or what he complained was “my hand’s inability to do what I tell it to do.”
Kirk drummed his sticks against the rim of the snare—his nervous tic.
“Have you seen a doctor yet, man?”
Ed bowed his head and shook it.
“Well, make an appointment,” said Kirk.
“We’ll go with you,” I said, to soften the sharpness of Kirk’s order.
We sat in the waiting room, amusing ourselves by finding the hidden pictures in a Highlights magazine feature.
“There’s the shoe,” I said, pointing to the sneaker camouflaged in tree bark.
“And there’s the dick.”
I laughed and then shushed him, nodding toward the receptionist, a gray-haired woman who wore a silk rose pinned on her smock lapel.
“You can’t talk about dicks around her,” I said, my voice low.
“Well, I wouldn’t be if they didn’t hide one here in the picture.”
“You moron,” I said, looking carefully where he pointed. “That’s a rocket.”
Wiggling his head, Kirk smiled. “That’s what the ladies call mine.”
“In your dreams.”
“No, in theirs.” After giving me one of his signature smirks, he leaned toward me and pulled a letter out of his jeans pocket. “I don’t think we’re going to find any more hid
den pornography in there, so if you want to see something really good, take a look at this.”
I unfolded the paper, which bore the University of Florida letterhead.
“Hey, you got in.”
He nodded, his face composed into a cool nonchalance. It was a composure he couldn’t hold.
“Can you believe it? I was going to wait until Ed got out”—he glanced at the door behind which patients disappeared—“but I couldn’t! Florida! I’m going to school in fucking Florida!”
“Congratulations,” I said, slapping him on the back. “That’s just great.”
And it wasn’t as if I was lying. I knew how much he had wanted to go away to a school near the ocean. He had applied to schools in California and Florida with the goal of studying marine biology (I’ll bet there are thousands of others who like Kirk were inspired to go into their field by watching Jacques Costeau on TV), and practically every check he’d gotten from Haugland Foods had gone into his college fund. I was truly happy for him, although I couldn’t deny the presence of the little gnarled troll who sat inside me, arms folded, pouting. What about me? What about our jam sessions? You’ve already got a life of adventure planned, and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing with mine!
My junior year was almost over and my declared major was in journalism—certainly a romantic enough field—but the trouble was, any pictures of myself shouting out questions to Gerald Ford (“What’s the real truth behind the Warren Commission, Mr. President?”) or wending my way through the maze of a Moroccan bazaar to meet with a CIA operative for a handoff of top-secret documents or tracking down the MIA soldier whose name a college girl had worn on a copper bracelet faded under the troll’s sneer: As if that’s going to happen.
When I dropped out of hockey, I seriously considered dropping out of school; what kept me going to classes was that I had no idea what else to do. I was still on the Minnesota Daily staff but worked more as an editor than a reporter; it took a lot less energy to change the words of someone else’s story than to come up with the story myself. I was in a funk—not a serious, where’s-the-revolver funk, but I did sigh a lot.
When it came to my own future, my imagination was like the balky old van I drove, not taking me very far before it sputtered to a stop, whereas Kirk’s was a sleek Corvette with a V-8 engine and a full tank of gas. I admired and envied him for it, wondering how a kid like that got the confidence to get his hands on a set of keys like those.
But everything is relative, and when Ed got a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, the weight of my own problems didn’t seem so heavy.
One day I found Ed behind a pallet of canned goods in the storeroom, sobbing.
“God!” he wailed, practically slapping the tears off his face. “I hate this! I hate how one day I can feel great and the next day I don’t have any sensation in my legs!”
He spent his energy on running the store, and if there was extra left over, a jam session might happen, but it was the rare one that lasted over an hour.
“I’m just so weak! I’m as weak as a little old lady!”
“You’re as fucking weak as a fucking old lady,” reminded Kirk, who advised Ed to swear more because it was one small thing he could do to make himself feel better.
As the summer went by, I spent more and more time in the grocery store, doing the schedules, taking care of the orders, making the deposits, trying to ease Ed’s load as much as possible. Kirk helped as much as he could, but he had a second job busing tables at a local diner to sock away as much money as possible for school. Not playing until two in the morning had to be a relief for him; I mean, the guy had to sleep sometimes.
It was a strange summer. Some nights I crawled into bed feeling bruised and battered, as if I’d been the target of a 350-pound Hell’s Angel whose precious hog I’d accidentally leaned on. In reality, I was being pushed by responsibility and pulled by resentment, but what really roughed me up—brought me to tears a few times—was guilt. How could I complain about working so hard in the store after watching Ed try to reach for a box of borax with fingers that refused to close around it? How could I resent Kirk’s happiness? As possibility exploded around him like fireworks, how could I stand off to the side, muttering, Yeah, sure. Great show, but how about some of that for me?
By nature, trolls are small, but when mine decreased in size it meant not that his strength was waning but that he was becoming more potent, more concentrated, and I didn’t like it one bit. I hated this puny, petty side of me, yet when I tried to strangle the troll, he just grew tougher and wilier. The fight was exhausting.
It’s something to walk your own mother down the aisle to meet her husband.
“It’s a pretty old-fashioned tradition,” said my mother, straightening my bow tie as we stood in the little church office before the ceremony. “I mean, the idea of being given away—like property—is sort of sexist.”
“Do you want me not to do it?” I asked, hopeful.
My mom brushed the lapels of my tux. “I’m not letting you off that easily.” She laughed and kissed my cheek. “Besides, I want to show you off. Look how handsome you are.”
“Ma, no one’s going to be looking at me.”
I turned away then and looked in the mirror, frantically blinking back tears as I adjusted the tie she’d just tied. Really, my one big fear of the whole day was that everyone was going to be nudging one another, whispering about the bride’s crybaby son who couldn’t stop blubbering.
As my mother and I stood at the back of the church, ready to begin our processional down the papered aisle, all the solid material, bone, ligaments, and muscle, that composed my knees liquefied when the organist began playing the wedding march.
Oh man, I’m gonna pass out!
My mom squeezed my biceps and her smile said a thousand things, preeminent among them. Hey, look at us, what we’ve been through. You’ll always be my Joe. You can do this. I love you.
Bone marrow began to set, ligaments and muscles were fused, and I took a step, confident that my knees had jelled—if not all the way, at least enough to hold me up.
At the reception, I had three reasons to celebrate: (1) my mother got married to the guy she loved, (2) I hadn’t passed out while she was doing it, and (3) my uncle Roger had traveled across three continents to make it to the wedding, and while he hadn’t exactly made it to the ceremony, he did make it to the reception.
“I had no idea he was coming!” I said as I danced with my grandmother.
“Oh, I didn’t believe he would until I saw him.” My grandma pursed her lips and then, throwing all caution to the wind, let her mouth relax into a smile. “I guess he didn’t have time to get a haircut.”
“Come on,” I said as my grandmother dipped under my arm. “You know he looks dashing.”
“Well, he should,” she said, dipping back out in a nice little spin. “He’s my son, isn’t he?”
Another miracle of the day was that my grandma was in a good mood, laughing and joking and showing off her moves on the dance floor. When a silver-haired guy cut in, I was sad to leave.
“Will you save me a waltz?”
“Oh, Joey,” she said, letting go of my hand to take her new partner’s. “I’m not going to make any promises I can’t keep.”
I joined the group thronged around my uncle.
“The last wedding I was at, there was a fight because the cow the bride’s family gave the bridegroom’s was said to give sour milk.”
“No kidding,” said Miss Johnson, a math teacher, twirling her necklace around her finger.
“Is that right,” said Miss Remington, and if I didn’t know her as a no-nonsense geography teacher, I could have sworn she was batting her eyelashes.
“Yeah, things were getting a little hairy, until the bride’s brother pulled in a mangy old goat and said the family had suddenly remembered the second half of the dowry.”
“No kidding,” said the math teacher.
“Is that right,” said the geograph
y teacher.
“Tell me more,” I said, mimicking their breathless voices.
“Joe,” said my uncle, clapping me on the back, “let’s go find us a brew, eh?” He bowed to the circle of women. “I shall return.”
Steering me toward the bar, he thanked me. “I was afraid that math teacher was about to ask me to dance again, and not only does she have two left feet, but she has two left feet that like to step on mine.”
He ordered two beers from the bartender, and we clinked bottles. “God, it’s good to see you, Joe.” He took a draw of his beer, and as we both leaned against the bar, surveying the crowd, he made a sweeping motion with his hand. “Good to see Carole with a good man again, good to see my mother having a good time—she moves pretty well for an old bag, doesn’t she?”
“Real nice,” I said, laughing.
The band, composed entirely of former students of my mother’s, was playing “The Look of Love,” and my grandma and the silver-haired guy were dancing as if they’d been doing the cha-cha together for years; she not only followed his every step but seemed to anticipate it.
“She should dance every day,” said Roger. “She could have avoided a whole lot of unhappiness if she just danced every day.”
I took a long pull of beer, feeling like I had to defend her. “It’s kind of hard to dance without a partner.”
My uncle shrugged. “I’m not saying she had to remarry. Hell, it takes resiliency—and hope—to marry again, and God knows Ma does not have a lot of resiliency or hope in her makeup. Not like Carole.” He gestured with his bottle at my mother, who in her pale blue floaty dress looked like Ginger Rogers out on the dance floor, even though there was no way Len could be mistaken for Fred Astaire. “All I’m saying is she should have found a way to do something that she loved to do.”