The Understatement of the Year Read online

  Before our next ice time, I stood in the locker room strapping on my pads, half listening while Hartley and a guy they called Big-D argued about the Bruins defense lineup.

  Bella skipped through with an armload of practice jerseys, tossing one at everyone in her path.

  “Thanks,” I said when she got to me. But before she could dart away, I grabbed her hand for a closer look at her T-shirt. “Hey! I had that shirt once.” JESUS SAVES, it read. Jesus was pictured on the front in full goalie gear, deflecting a puck. W.M.C.A. Hockey was stamped below the drawing. As in: West Michigan Christian Academy.

  She looked down at her chest and then grinned. “I love this thing. I stole it from Graham.” She tipped her head back in his direction.

  Ah, of course she did. I lifted my eyes to find Graham staring at us, his gorgeous mouth in a grim line. He looked away as soon as our eyes met.

  Well, fuck. This was getting ridiculous. It’s not like I’d walked in here a week ago determined to pretend that Graham and I had never met. We needed to at least be able to nod hello to one another. Or something.

  Bella went on her way, sowing practice jerseys like so many seeds. I was just shoving my foot into a skate when I heard my name.

  “Rikker?” I looked up to see Coach beckoning me from the doorway. “Can you come here a minute, son?” I kicked the skate off and followed Coach in my stocking feet. He led me all the way to his office, where he shut the door. “Why don’t you have a seat for a minute,” he suggested.

  I sat, not knowing why I was there.

  “I have some tapes for you to watch this weekend,” he said, opening a desk drawer and pulling out a couple of DVDs. “Our first two games are against Brown and Colgate. We’ll go over the strategy next week, but I thought you could get a jump on it.”

  “Awesome,” I said, taking the discs.

  “Do you have a way of watching those? Not everyone’s computer has a slot anymore.”

  “I’m good. Thanks.”

  “How are you settling in? Classes okay?” He sat in his desk chair, folding his hands as if we had all day for small talk.

  “Um, sure. So far so good.”

  “Which house were you assigned to?”

  “I’m in Turner. But since I wasn’t part of the housing draw last year, I’m living in a building called McHerrin.”

  “Ah,” Coach said. “Hartley lived in the handicapped room there last year when he couldn’t climb stairs.”

  “That’s what he told me,” I said.

  Coach tapped his fingers on the desk blotter. “We’ll just give it another minute, okay? Bella had something she wanted to say to the team before practice.”

  “Oh.” Oh. “Hell. Sorry. I don’t like being newsworthy.”

  He grinned. “I’d like to be newsworthy.” He held up has hands as if hanging text in the air. “Harkness Wins the Frozen Four.”

  “All right,” I chuckled. “Your version works for me.”

  “I live in hope. We look good this year, kid. Hartley’s back. We scooped you up from Saint B’s. And those Canadian freshmen skate like crazy men.”

  “I noticed that.”

  The conversation died again. I felt Coach’s eyes on me, and I didn’t enjoy it. “You know…” he said, pausing. “I have a grandson who plays basketball at a small school in the Midwest. He had to conduct a few very awkward conversations with his teammates last year. But nobody died.”

  I tried not to gape. Coach had a gay grandson? I didn’t see that coming.

  “If we get any pushback from the team, I’m prepared to tell them to shove it,” Coach said. “So I need you to let me know if that’s necessary. But I thought I’d step back, and see if things got by on their own first.”

  Jeez. “Thanks?” I managed. “I hope it won’t come to that.”

  He looked tired for a moment. “Me too.”

  There was a quick little knock at the door, and then Bella put her head in. “I told everybody to hit the ice now.”

  Coach stood up and looped his whistle around his neck. “Lace up, kid. Let’s do this thing.”

  The only person left in the locker room while I put on my skates was Bella, who sat picking her cuticles on Hartley’s end of our bench. “Well?” I said finally.

  She shrugged. “Too soon to tell. Big-D made a face like I’d just served him shit for dinner. Everybody else just blinked at me. Then they picked up their sticks and went.”

  I stood up and went for my stick, the last one in the rack. “Thank you, Bella.”

  She followed me to the door, patting my ass pads. “Let’s see some action, Rikker. I fucking love this job.”

  As I’d done the week before, I skated Coach’s drills as if zombies chased me. Then we scrimmaged for a good forty-five minutes. When I was on the bench, I didn’t try to speak to anyone. Instead, I watched the game as if there was going to be an exam later.

  Our side was dominating. About halfway through the game, coach switched up the rotation. After that, whenever we were playing our defensive zone, I ended up covering Graham. I was still in the flow, still skating like the Stanley Cup was on the line. Because if this team was going to end up hating me, it wouldn’t be because I didn’t make an effort.

  And Graham, to my surprise, played like a skittish granny. He coughed up the puck to me so many times that it almost got boring. “Focus, Graham!” Coach yelled more than once.

  Ouch.

  After practice, I volunteered to move the nets out of the way of the Zamboni. I stacked cones, and generally made myself scarce for a little while. By the time I made it back into the locker room, there weren’t very many people left. Facing my locker area, I hung up my pads until it was a safe bet that everyone was dressed. Then I headed to the showers alone.

  When I came out, only Bella and Hartley were still around. Their two heads were bent over what looked like a glossy hockey program. Bella made marks on it with a black Sharpie.

  “Rikker,” she said as I tried to drag my boxers over damp skin. “We need your bio info by Tuesday. Schools and teams, height, weight. You know the drill.”

  “Roger that,” I said, hopping into my jeans.

  Bella stuffed her paperwork into a bright pink backpack. “Let’s go eat Coach’s barbecue.”

  I hesitated, yanking my socks onto my feet. “I wasn’t going to go.”

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Bella said, handing me my shirt. “That’s not the message you want to send.”

  “I don’t want to send any message at all,” I said from inside my polo. When I could see Bella and Hartley again, they were both staring down at me. “Seriously. I’m going to be everyone’s gossip nugget tonight. Why shouldn’t I sit this one out?”

  Bella looped her arm in mine and yanked me off the bench. “You’re coming.”

  Crap. “Should we bring anything?”

  “Nope,” Hartley said.

  “Just your pretty face,” Bella added.

  “Not helping,” I said, while Hartley snickered.

  Twenty minutes later, we were standing in Coach’s generous backyard. I’d thought it would just be the team, every one of them avoiding me. Luckily, the girlfriends had been invited to Coach’s shindig. With girls there, the conversation was lubricated with summer exploits and other gossip.

  “Can you get this?” Bella handed me a bottle of wine, the cork halfway out. “I thought I had it.”

  I set my much-needed beer down on the table to do her bidding. Tightening my grip on the corkscrew, I levered it out slowly, trying not to break the cork. That done, I wrapped my hand around my beer bottle again.

  “Thanks! Coach’s wife asked me to bring her a glass of white wine. Do you think she meant the chardonnay, or the pinot blanc?”

  “Sorry, Bella, but I’m not that kind of gay friend. I wouldn’t know a pinot blanc if it bit me in the ass.”

  One of the goalies — a big dude named Orson — choked on his beer when I said it. For a second, I assumed that he couldn’t believe tha
t I’d said the word “gay” out loud. But when he tapped his bottle to mine, I realized that he was only laughing at my joke.

  Bella gave us both an eye roll. “So if I want help picking out shoes, I shouldn’t come to you?”

  “You can try,” I said. “But my M.O. is just to choose whichever pair stinks the least.”

  “Who says that’s not an improvement? Some of these guys can’t manage that.” Bella picked up a glass of white wine and headed for the house.

  “You love us anyway,” Orson yelled after her.

  She gave us the finger behind her back, and we both laughed this time. And now I knew then that Orson would put up with me. One down, two dozen to go.

  — Graham

  At Coach’s barbecue, I choked down a couple of pulled pork sandwiches, and wondered how soon I could leave. But Coach hadn’t made his beginning-of-the-year speech yet. And I’d played so badly this afternoon that I didn’t want to draw any more attention to myself.

  Pale ale number three wasn’t enough to sooth my nerves. Beer just couldn’t make big enough payments on my overdue buzz bill. Coach was a scotch man, so I wandered into the house to see what he might be pouring.

  I found Coach in his study with a handful of guys watching hockey footage on a big screen. “Graham!” he called. “I’ve got video of last year’s Brown game. Watch this defensive play…”

  But the video wasn’t what I was after. “Whatcha got there?” I asked one of the new kids — the one we were calling Frenchie. He squinted at me apologetically, probably trying to decide if the word for whiskey was the same in English as it was in French. Instead of attempting to solve the mystery, he handed me the glass, and I took a taste. “Nice.”

  “I’ll pour you one,” Coach said, his eyes still on the screen. “Maybe it will put some hair on your chest, Graham. Today you could have used it.”

  “My shit was not together,” I agreed with him under my breath.

  He put a glass in my hand. “Figure it out, kid. We have a chance to do great things.” Then Coach left the room.

  When he was gone, I drank the scotch in two gulps. Big-D picked up the decanter and topped up his glass, and then mine. “Figure it out, kid,” he said, mimicking Coach. “But after practice, be careful not to drop the soap in the showers.”

  Another defenseman began to laugh, and then the Canadian kids joined in, the way people do when they’re not sure if they understood the joke. With Big-D right there in my face, I forced a smile and I took another deep drink.

  This time, the alcohol burned all the way down.

  Coach’s speech always came before dessert. So when I saw the cupcakes coming out of the kitchen, and heard the telltale ding ding ding of a spoon on a glass, I made my way to the front lawn.

  “Tonight,” Coach said, scotch glass in hand, “I want to read to you my favorite quote of President Teddy Roosevelt’s. Maybe you’ve heard it before in a history class, or philosophy. But it could have been written for hockey players. We’re going to go far this year, and along the way people are going to try to tell us that a little Ivy League school can’t play hockey at the national level. But that’s bullshit!”

  We cheered, of course. We always did. On other nights like this one, I’d breathed in every word Coach said. The last two seasons, I’d stood here taking in his wisdom as gospel. But tonight I felt as though I stood on the edges of my life, looking in.

  That’s what a weeklong anxiety attack will do to a person.

  “Listen up!” Coach squinted at his notes. “‘It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.’” Coach smiled at us. “‘The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming. And who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat!’”

  There was more cheering then. And Hartley put two fingers up to his lips and whistled.

  “Now, boys,” Coach continued. “I don’t love failure. I fucking hate it. But what Teddy meant was that you have to embrace the fact that failure exists, or you will never find greatness. The man wrote a long fucking sentence which really means — go big, or go home!” At that, he raised his glass again, and we all drank whatever we had.

  My stomach rolled with discomfort. Again. Because I wasn’t feeling the love. Every shitty thing I’d ever done in my life had just caught up to me.

  Check, please. It was time for me to sneak out.

  First, I headed toward the bathroom to take a leak before walking home. As I wove through the house, I got a little distracted by an oblique glimpse of Bella in the study. She was standing in front of Frenchie, her hands on his chest. She was rubbing him gently, and talking a mile a minute. And he was gaping at her like she was a vision from heaven. Good God, she was working him over. The kid wouldn’t know what hit him.

  Lost in half a smirk, I didn’t look where I was going. Which is the only way I could have ended up shoulder-checking Johnny Rikker as he came out of the bathroom.

  “Jesus,” he swore, grabbing the doorframe to keep his balance.

  The word “sorry” got trapped in my throat as I realized who it was. And I leapt back, away from his body. But not before the shock of getting so close to him sunk in. The face I’d been ducking all week frowned up at me. I was taller than he was, I realized. When we were fifteen, we’d been the same height.

  It had made kissing him really easy.

  No doubt the look on my face now was one of total horror, since that had been my default expression since the moment he’d walked into the locker room a week ago.

  He studied me for a second, his expression darkening. A hand rose to rub his pectoral where I’d slammed into him the moment before. Then he seemed to pull himself together, lifting an eyebrow tauntingly. “Was that good for you?”

  I only stood there, mute, and choking on my own stupidity.

  A second later he dropped his gaze and passed me, heading for the front of the house. I watched him go. Because I could not look away.

  — October —

  Shadow: Covering an opponent closely, limiting his effectiveness.

  — Rikker

  I walked to the hockey weight room through a fine autumn afternoon, admiring the decorative old architecture. After four weeks, I’d learned the campus pretty well, and figured out a lot of that new guy stuff that you have to learn. The dining halls had Pepsi products. The graduate school libraries were open later than the undergrad ones. You didn’t need quarters for the laundry, because they took credit cards.

  Also, I tried not to get depressed about always being the new guy.

  People passed me in twos and threes, chatting together. The transfer student is an awkward thing to be. Friendships have already formed. Allegiances made. I was going to be separate for a while. An outsider.

  I was already used to it.

  At the gym, I got busy sharing a squat rack with Trevi. He was another forward with curly dark hair and a nice smile. (Though he was obviously as straight as a ruler.)

  I put Trevi at a solid six on the Rikker scale. That was my private rating for how tolerant my teammates were of me. Trevi had earned his six by always looking me in the eye, and acting friendly enough when we found ourselves standing next to one another at Capri’s or using the same piece of weight room equipment.

  But he’d never started a conversation with me. Not once. It was as if volunteering anything about himself would be taking it too far — as if the other dudes might start to wonder, you know?

  That was life in the locker room.

  “You’re up,” Trevi said, stepping aside to stretch.

  I maneuvered myself beneath the barbell and hoisted it onto my shoulders. Then I took a good step backward, stuck out my a
ss and squatted. The first three reps were okay, but numbers four and five nearly killed me.

  When I’d finally parked the barbell back onto its holders and turned around, Trevi was massaging his own shoulder with one hand. He’d done that a lot this afternoon. “That bothering you?” I asked him.

  “It’s just a big knot,” he shrugged. “But it’s going on two days now. Stubborn bitch.”

  “Huh,” I looked around the weight room. “Do you know if they have any tennis balls around here? I know a trick.”

  “Yeah? Hang on. It’s gettin’ to the point where I’ll try anything.”

  I stretched my quads until he came back with a hard rubber ball. “Will this work?”

  “Sure.” I took it from him. “Now sit down on that bench.” That’s when I saw the slightest hesitation. Maybe Trevi didn’t realize that I’d actually have to touch his shoulder. And now he wondered whether it was worth it. “It won’t make you queer,” I joked.

  His expression turned sheepish, and he sat down on the bench. The best thing to do would be to probe his shoulder with my fingers, looking for the knot. But I knew he’d be happier if I kept my hands off him. “Point to the spot,” I said. He reached two fingers back, digging them into the muscle. “Okay,” I said, putting the tennis ball there. When he took his hand away, I began to press. “Right there?” I asked, putting some weight behind the ball.

  “Yeah. A little higher?”

  I adjusted the ball a fraction of a centimeter, and put even more weight behind it.

  “Christ,” he grunted.

  “I know. But it works. In fact, it will still work even if you cry like a little girl right now.”

  He chuffed out a laugh.

  “Drop your head, and just try to relax. It takes a couple of minutes for your muscle to stop fighting back.”

  “‘Kay,” he said.

  Pressing the ball into his muscle, I glanced around the busy room. Hartley and Orson were doing split squats against the windows. Those were the two players who rated highest on the Rikker scale. Orson was a solid eight. I always found him easy to talk to. And Hartley was a nine. That dude worked to include me, and never even seemed to notice he was doing it. In fact, he could earn himself a ten. But I was saving room on the Rikker scale. Maybe I’m a tough grader, but I hoped that the unlikely day would come when somebody actually told me that they were glad I showed up to play hockey here.