CHAPTER 20 #2
“I'm your mother, I will never stay out of it.”
I rolled my eyes and took my plate to the sink. “There are lots of things you just don't understand, OK?”
You weren't the one who was blamed for Dad's death in the papers. You weren't the one who had to face kids at school asking what happened every day and you're not the one who has fallen in love with a man whose existence would bring your privacy into question.
And, this was a big one, you're not the one who has built her life exactly how she wanted it all for it to be expected of her to give it up just because hockey was a lifestyle, not a sport.
Sasha and I had gotten so serious so quickly that I hadn't had the time to think if I wanted the lifestyle that came attached to him.
But hours of not being able to move from surgery, only think, made me realize how much of myself I would have to give up to be in a relationship with a professional hockey player.
I couldn't say any of that out loud even if I had been thinking about it for two straight weeks. I had all the time in the world to question why I would give up the man I wanted more than anything.
I didn't stop talking to Sasha because of what happened, but what would inevitably have to happen. Being with Sasha meant sacrificing myself. I wasn't ready and I didn't know if I ever would be.
“No, I don't understand Lucy, but only because you won't talk to me about it.”
◆◆◆
“Mom!” The ancient dust of the old farmhouse decay made me chuckle and swat at the air, but my father's death lingered. I could feel him there in the basement.
“What!” Her small frame appeared monstrous silhouetted at the top of the kitchen steps. “What the hell are you doing down there, Luce?”
“Trying to find something of Dads. Can you help me?”
Her body stiffened. The thought of my father's things still crippling her after so many years.
“Well, what are you looking for, Baby?” Her hand braced the door frame, whether it was to keep herself from falling down at the memories of my father or to prevent his ghost from forcing her to face her fears, I didn't know.
But my head shot towards her, the light blinding.
“His– his–” I couldn't stay it.
Her head tilted to the side with a big quick flip of her sandy hair. “Up here.”
I climbed the old steps, their creek so familiar even after leaving. My mother took my hand and led me past the steaming cup of tea, the old cuckoo clock, Maggie the ancient lab asleep near the wood stove and into her bedroom.
Hinges on her closet door creaked, letting the wood hang too low to the floor where it tugged and scraped on the worn-out carpet. I knelt down quickly and supported the door with my fingers to open it easier.
“I'll fix this when I'm feeling better, Mommy.”
She patted my shoulder and walked into her closet where she escaped behind dresses and six different winter coats.
Some with fur trim, others thickly tartan patterned and one of my father's.
She appeared moments later, his hockey sticks in hand.
They clumsily clanked at her feet as her tiny hands fumbled over them.
They were her exact height and varied and degrees of ware.
“I bitched at him to throw them out, but I'll be damned if I could give them up.” She smoothed a loose curl that fell over her eyebrow. “Any specific one you want kiddo?”
I was frozen to the floor, transported back to winter nights when my father's kerosene lamps would border a tiny corner of our iced over pond. I would cry to go in because of the cold, but too afraid to walk back to the house in the dark myself.
“One more circle, little Lucy. Then I'll toast some marshmallows for your cocoa.” His voice rang out like a megaphone over the ice, bouncing over the slick surface and flicking my hair behind my shoulders with cool wind.
He was so elegant, like a swan on the water. He wasn't just on the ice but a part of it. His smile shone like the sun but the moonlight twinkled in his eyes.
The memory threatened to once again freeze my heart, but in the moment, it felt too warm to be turned to ice.
“Hey, there.” My mother's hand pushed aside my hair. The sticks thrown precariously on her bed.
“Hm?” The image of my father melted away and the doe eyes of my mother refused to blink until I spoke.
“Sorry, just thinking. I remembered one actually, the homemade one, the weird looking one.” I picked through the sticks until I saw the cherry wood.
I couldn't help but giggle at the poor construction, the chips in the blade and the grooves he cut out for his gloves.
It was oh so wrong in so many ways and yet I couldn't help but admire what he tried to make, even if his only attempt never led to a second try.
“That's the one you want?” Her voice was a sarcastic as mine.
Family trait, I guess.
“What are you going to do with all of them?” I didn't realize she had so many.
“They're probably just going to rot in my closet for the rest of my life until I die. I'll probably be buried with them.”
“What if I did something with them?”
“They're all yours.”
◆◆◆
I wasn't supposed to be working, but as soon as I left my mother's house, I had an idea. There were still three hours until Paulie's game and I had a fire in my belly. My father's hockey sticks needed a purpose and I needed a mental escape.
The sticks laid out on my mother's bed reminded me of the slats of a chair and I couldn't get the thought out of my mind.
They were all similar in size, made of sturdy wood and would otherwise have rotted in a closet.
So why not make a chair my mother could sit in as she watched her grandchildren skate on the very pond her love loved?
My body didn't work as my mind wanted it to, but there were minimal positions that the work irritated my stomach.
All the sticks were laid out on my work bench and it was just a matter of attaching them to a frame with screws and supports.
A few lengths needed to be adjusted, some tape needed to be worn off, but I was elated to be doing anything but staring at the ceiling.
A few hours later I had what could be considered the back and the seat of a chair, just not attached together. I was full of dust and the shop smelled like an old hockey stick.
Sasha loved that I smelled like a hockey stick. I teared up at the thought. My emotions overwhelmed.
But the chair couldn't be finished before I had to run to Paulie's game. I snapped a quick picture and put it on the shop's social media page. “Working on something fun. #Hockeychair #memories #inMemorium” then rushed to Paulie's game before Sarah murdered me for missing another one.
They won in epic fashion. When I got home, I had requests for hockey chairs. Thirty of them.