I stood and dug in my jacket hung on the back of a kitchen chair, then sat back down with my mother. “Look what I found.”
I handed her the blue hairbrush.
“Oh.” She took it in her left hand. “Where did you get this?”
“In the Zamboni shed. Gracie had it in a secret place.”
Mom turned it over in her hands. As she did, her lips began to tremble. Her eyes welled.
“Mother?”
She clutched the brush in both hands and brought it to her chest. She bowed her head. She began to sob.
I reached across the chair and took her by an arm. “Mom. What’s wrong?”
“She didn’t have to-” Mom had to stop for a moment. “I told her you could have helped.”
“What are you talking about?”
She thrust the brush at me. “Why couldn’t you two get along? Why couldn’t you both just-” She was struggling to talk. “I told her. I told her… I told her you could help her.”
“Help her what?”
“She wouldn’t listen. ‘He’ll never help me. He hates my guts.’ That’s what she said. But you, you…” She pulled the brush back into her, crying harder. “Shirley can have the money. I never wanted any money.” She was sobbing so hard now that she could barely catch her breath. “I could have… I could have…”
“What? You could have what?”
She held up a hand to stop me. She set the brush in her lap and reached one hand out. I took it.
“Mom, what is it?”
“Those people. All those people from down there. I wish they’d just stay. Just leave us alone. We don’t need their big houses and fancy boats.”
“Mom?”
She tightened her grip on my hand.
“You know, I would give my life for you. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes. I know that.”
My mother hitched forward in her chair, gathered up my other hand. “Any mother,” she said, “a good mother, would lay down her life for her son.”
I waited.
“Gracie didn’t have an abortion,” Mom said. She saw the quizzical look in my eyes. “There was no abortion.”
“So there was no baby?”
“Yes. There was.”
I looked down at our entwined hands. “I know who.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You don’t know, Mom. There’s a really bad guy downst-”
“No, Gus. Think.”
In my mind I walked into Gracie’s good bedroom again, the one with the light coming in, the poster on the wall, the child’s drawing of the hockey player. Then I heard the piano music again. I looked up at my mother.
“Are you-” I let her hands go. “No. My God.”
“I wish she would have asked you for help.” She picked up the brush again. “It’s my fault that you two never got along.”
“You knew? You knew all along? All this time? Fourteen years?”
“I’m sorry, son.”
I ate the bologna sandwich cold, without tasting it, as I drove to the rink. I parked in front and grabbed my skates out of my hockey bag. Until then, I had forgotten about the pain in my foot. I limped into the arena.
A peewee team from Starvation Lake was playing one from Alpena. I didn’t bother to check the scoreboard. Johnny Ford watched from his perch behind the concession counter. He held his gaze even after I plopped my skates on the counter. He was wearing the same River Rats sweatshirt he had worn the night he had caught me snooping in the Zam shed, with the same mustard stain on the “N,” the yellow now turning brown.
“Hey, Johnny,” I said. “Can you do these?”
He still didn’t look my way. “Look at that,” he said. He pointed the stump below his left elbow in the direction of the ice. I turned to see. “Three guys coming into the zone, all on the same side of the ice. What’s the advantage in that? Might as well be two guys. Shit, one.”
I had figured that Johnny Ford watched a lot of hockey, but until then I had no idea that he cared.
“Yep,” I said. “All about two-on-ones, man.”
“Really ain’t that complicated.” Now he looked at me; then, dolefully, at my skates. “It’s kind of late, isn’t it?”
“I don’t need them tonight,” I said.
“When’s your next game?”
“Pickup skate, tomorrow night.”
“I’ll leave them under the counter. Four bucks.”
I gave him a twenty. He turned his back and moved to the cash register. He punched something with his stump and the drawer flew open. I heard the bill-holders snap inside the drawer as he plucked out a ten, a five, and a single with his other hand.
“Hey, Johnny.”
“Yeah.”
“You ever find that phone?”
He shoved the drawer shut with his butt. He laid the change next to my skates. “Nah,” he said. “She probably lost it.”
I took the ten and the five.
“You get a new one yet?” I said.
He dug in his sweatshirt pouch, produced a cell phone. “This.”
“They let you keep your number?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s cool.”
“Yeah.”
“Why the hell did you loan it to her anyway?”
“She let me drive.”
“The Zam?”
“Yeah.”
“How was it?”
“All right. A little harder with the-” He waggled his stump.
“I’ll bet. But you’re doing a fine job now, man. Ice was good last night.”
“Thanks.”
“I heard a funny story about a Zamboni driver tonight. He was-”
“No, no, no, man.” Johnny waved his hand at me. “Bad luck.”
“OK, OK.” I laughed. “But look, I was just thinking, you know, the cops are all over Gracie’s stuff since, you know. They might find the old phone. You can trade it in for, I don’t know, maybe some cash.”
He shrugged. “I don’t want to mess with cops.”
“I don’t blame you.” I looked at the skates. “Ready tomorrow?”
“Yeah.”
I started to leave, then stopped and turned back to Johnny Ford. “Shit, you know, John, I’m talking to the cops about ten times a day. Give me your number and if it turns up, I’ll give you a call.”
“You don’t have to.”
“No trouble.”
He had to get low to the counter, his hair hanging down over his face, so he could hold a napkin down with his stump while he scratched out the number.
