Chapter Seven
Aiden
Doom is a palpable thing.
I love my house – when I found it, it felt like it had been built just for me.
It may be a little big for just me, but I never imagined it just as mine.
It was supposed to be a family home, even though I have taken zero steps to get there.
A modern expanse on the outskirts of the city, I wanted land and big windows so I could look at that land.
Growing up in Texas, people assume my views back home were vast deserts and rolling hills, but I grew up in the suburbs, my only view was of the house next door.
I loved to sit on our porch as a kid and listen to all the wildlife, but I never got that big open-space feeling until I saw this house.
Right now, my house feels the opposite to the comforting armour keeping me from the world; today I need protecting from inside my house.
Sat on my glass coffee table is a letter.
Just a small, unassuming letter, but it’s the handwriting that curves out the letters of my name that scare me.
It’s my grandfather’s. I love my pops, dearly, but we don’t see eye to eye about a lot of how I live my life.
He wanted me to leave hockey behind after Mom and Dad died.
To move back home and become the man of the house.
With both of our parents dead my sisters needed my strength, according to him, but when I broached the topic with my twin Alice, she smacked me upside the head and told me she would flay me open if I didn’t go out there and show the world what I could do.
When he didn’t get his way there, he told me I needed to settle down, that I couldn’t run amok all over the US and that I needed a solid woman to keep my bed warm just like Nana Lulu did for him, but it wasn’t that simple.
I want to get married some day in the distant future, to have a family of my own, but I’m the captain of the Spears, I all but adopted a bunch of hockey players overnight, and finding a woman who would not only be okay with me travelling all the time but also with the fact our relationship would also include my team has proved difficult.
Plus, once I come home from the rink, I don’t want to have to be the perfect boyfriend, I want to slob out with a beer and watch game tapes.
Not have arguments about how much I travel or how many hours I spend with everyone except her.
And now here I am, married to Lyndsey, and my wife is avoiding me.
Not that I blame her, she made it clear she didn’t want to be married to me, but I could do with the support of a loving partner when I open this damned letter.
My pops is an old man, made even older by the fact he had to step up in a big way when my parents died, he had to step up in an even bigger way when I wouldn’t stay home.
At first he had help from Nana, but when she died three years later he was alone with us.
Alice and I were adults but we were still under his care.
Instead of doing the mature thing and opening the letter on my table, I procrastinate by spinning my phone between my fingers.
I text Lyndsey, asking to talk about our impending divorce, but I’m pretty sure I won’t be getting a reply.
She doesn’t want to talk to me, she only wants to talk to the lawyer.
I need something to distract me though, that’s why when the phone does start to ring, I nearly drop it.
But it’s not Lyndsey’s name lighting up my screen, it’s Alice’s.
Great. I love talking to all three of my sisters, but my twin has a special knack for pissing me off.
Everyone says it’s because we are so similar, but I think it’s because she takes pleasure in finding every way to get under my skin.
Still, I answer like a good dutiful brother.
“When are you coming home?” Her voice is short. Well damn, straight to the point like usual.
“Oh hi, Al, it’s nice to hear from you. Yeah, I’m doing good, glad to be getting rest, how are you?” My voice drips with sarcasm, but if I can be prissy with anyone, it’s Alice.
“Yeah, hi and whatever, look – can you answer my question, or have you taken too many pucks to the head?” She is the cause of a lot of the pucks I’ve taken, she was just as good on skates as me when we were kids.
But she was smart enough to get into university on a full ride scholarship for her exceptional academic ability so she could study marketing at Texas Tech University, instead of needing a sports scholarship and staying on the ice like I had to do.
“Soon, probably.” I’m noncommittal, as always.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, you drive me crazy, I swear.” I hear the sound of her throwing something down on the other end of the line and the loud noise makes me cringe, bringing the phone away from my ear.
“Why do you want me home anyway, ya miss me?” I ask, hoping she will let me off, I want to avoid Texas like the plague.
“Like a hole in the head. Look, Pops is getting bad. You know I wouldn’t say that unless it was true. I just know he ain’t gonna make it to the end of the year, Aid, we need you to come home.”
With her words, my heart sinks. She wouldn’t tell me something like that unless she meant it. She knows what I’m like; she knows I’ll want to fix it. But from all the way over here I can’t.
I eye the letter again.
“What if I come home and piss him off so much that I kill him?” My voice throbs.
It’s a baseless fear but still, he and I love each other through our endless spats.
What if I turn up and he croaks it because my life choices upset him that much?
Hell, what if the letter tells me that he knows he’s dying and that I better keep my ass away?
“You’re on too many steroids because you sound five types of crazy, if you’re not here you know you will regret it. I know you will.” Her voice is sympathetic but stern, she reminds me of Mama when she talks like that. It’s bittersweet.
“Shit, okay, I’ll get a flight. I have something I need to do tomorrow but I’ll be home before end of next week. Okay?” I reassure her. If the letter really does say to keep my ass away from Texas, then I’ll just go and support my sisters, I don’t have to go see him.
“Oh, you have something to do? What’s her name?” she singsongs down the line.
“Fuck all the way off, Alice.” That just makes her cackle at me before trying to catch her breath.
“Also, yeah, I do miss you, you know? You’re my brother, I do like having you around,” she says after she manages a full intake of air.
“Aw, that almost sounded sweet. I’ll text you my flight info when I’ve booked something.
” I just need to get tomorrow over with first, I reassure myself.
Go see little Jack’s first official hockey game and talk to Lyndsey about the fact Mr Collins is going to take a few more days to finish up the papers, shouldn’t be too hard.
“Bye, dickhead.” Before I even get a chance to reply the line cuts, filling my living room with silence again.
The silence rises around me, a fog that I know how to wave away. I pick up the letter and whip the envelope open in a quick pull. The quicker this is over the better.
Aiden,
Son, I know I’m no spring chicken. I’ve been in this damned home for three years and it’s given me a hell of a lot of time to think.
About you, about the girls. About your dad.
Losing him cracked my heart in a way I tried to hide, but now I have to face the music and soon I will meet my maker the way he had to.
We have all suffered an immense amount of loss in our lives, you and the girls suffered it earlier than anyone should have to.
But I like to think I stepped up and was the best guardian I could be.
All that to say, I have been thinking about wills.
I don’t have much to give apart from the house, I don’t have a lot of money or things to pass down to you the way your father did.
You might not believe me but I never agreed with his decision to put his belongings under conditions.
I wanted you to find love the way both your father and I did but I wouldn’t have put it in writing.
Still I cannot argue with a dead man, he chose to make it a requirement for you to be married to get your part of the inheritance without consulting me.
I would like to see my son’s medals before I go.
You know I don’t agree with your choice to not marry, and it brings me a lot of sadness to know you are missing out on becoming a real man by pushing the need to settle down aside.
You have lived the high life as a professional athlete for a long time and it is high time you saw your life for what it is, a gift that you are throwing back in the faces of those who love you.
Your father was hard-headed, we both know that.
But even I never imagined he would put a stipulation in his will that you would need to be married to gain your inheritance.
Regrettably, but I understand it. Without a good woman by your side, you are missing out on the best parts of life.
Your father knew that better than any of us.
I loved your father, and I love you too, but I agree with him.
You will not be a real man until you know how to love someone other than yourself.
Your father found it and I did too. I want you to find that before I go.
Your running around the country instead of settling down has had an impact on everyone.
I want to see my son’s medals back at home – one last time.
Come home, Aiden. Find a woman and look after your sisters the way you always should have done. I do love you. I just want you to know what love really feels like.
Pops.
My hands shake around the paper before scrunching it into a ball. My fists squeeze and shake as I turn a ghostly shade of white.
Those things are mine. My dad wanted them to go to me.
I don’t think he knew how long it would take me to find a wife.
I know Mom made him happy, but I don’t understand why I’m being punished for not finding the same kind of love?
I did everything I should. I worked hard.
I played hard. I answered to every call.
What do they think would happen if I never married?
Now Pops is trying to guilt me, putting pressure on me to marry before he dies?
That wouldn’t be real love. He implies I’m somehow selfish, but his words are completely self-serving.
It has nothing to do with my happiness at all.
If Alice is right and Pops will die soon, what does he want me to do?
Marry someone just to give a certificate of proof to my dad’s lawyer and get the medals for him?
Without conscious thought, I storm down a flight of stairs to my home gym.
There are treadmills and weights littering the room, but I head straight for the punching bag.
I don’t take the time to wrap my hands, they are already clenched into fists.
Then I swing. The hook above my head creaks with the force but I push ahead.
Swinging in a constant meditative rhythm over and over.
Right, left right right. Left, right, left left. Again and again.
Punching until it is all I can feel. Every thought pushed through my fists into the fabric of the bag.
It swings as I hit it but I wish it would grunt like when I hit someone on the ice.
I’m not a violent player, I only fight if it is necessary and, right now, it is necessary.
Players around the States should take comfort in the fact that the Spears didn’t make it to the playoffs because if I were to be on the ice this week, I’m not sure I would have the control to keep my temper from flaring.
My plan is to keep swinging until I pass out, but soon the bag starts to be speckled with blood from my knuckles. The cold air hitting the small wounds stings me back to the present. As I’m finding myself back in the room, the fog inside my mind begins to lift – if only for a moment.
I am married.
Well, I have a marriage certificate. If I can get Lyndsey to put off that divorce, I can get what is rightfully mine.
I can get my father’s things, make my grandfather happy, and maybe, just maybe, life can go back to how it was before.