Chapter 5 Ellie
ELLIE
“Snickerdoodle! You’re home!” My mom sweeps me up into her arms and kisses my face.
“Ooh, I’m so happy to have my little girl here with me.
What time do you get off work tomorrow? You’re not going to work as late as you did today, are you?
We need to get the Christmas decorations up.
Your brothers are going to be in town tomorrow!
I’m trying to convince them to stay here.
They can bring all of their friends. I can make wolves in a blanket. ”
“Wolves in a what?”
“It’s just pigs in a blanket with some spicy dipping sauce and yellow food coloring and everything-bagel seasoning.” My mom beams at me.
“You made those for my bingo night.” Granny Murray stomps by, copy of Sports Betting Weekly under her arm.
“They look like uncircumcised penises with an STD. You can’t be serving those to people.
Certainly not millionaire hockey players, especially not if you’re trying to marry your daughters off to one of them.
Kathy practically had an orgasm then a heart attack when she saw one.
Slapped the dementia right out of Candice too. ” Gran flicks on a sausage.
“No one’s marrying any NHL players,” I say desperately.
And definitely not coaching them, right? I think hysterically.
I feel sick. I must have dreamed it, right? Right. I’m not going to coach a bunch of NHL players. I can’t. I won’t. I shan’t.
“I’m just going to go wash my face, then I’ll help you with dinner,” I tell my mom.
And scream into a pillow and seriously contemplate my life choices.
Too bad in the Clarke household you are never, ever alone.
“You sleep with one of them yet?” Granny Murray whispers as she follows me upstairs. It’s the same question every time I come home from work.
“I’m not sleeping with them—they’re… coworkers…” Technically my employees now…
I need a pretzel with beer cheese and a Benadryl and some wine.
“Your cousin Dakota is engaged to that Ryder fellow. You come from these same loins.” Gran slaps her thigh.
“You got the right stuff, girlie! Get you a hot NHL player with a big dick. You’re better looking than any of those puck bunnies that hang around the practices. And your tits and ass are real.”
“I don’t have time for dating, Granny Murray. I need to save money, probably get a second job.”
Oh god, how am I going to coach the men’s and my girls’ team? We’re not going to be an NHL coach.
My eye is twitching. I press my finger on it.
“You ought to get that looked at.” Granny Murray follows me down the hall past my siblings’ bedrooms.
My mom has kept each one like a shrine for my siblings when they come home to visit.
My dad’s big NHL-goalie payday afforded them a very nice house.
Me and each of my five siblings got to have our own room, and there’s still space for a guest room.
Where you’d think Granny Murray would be living, right? In her time of need?
Wrong.
We are roommates.
Sometimes bedmates if she comes home drunk from the bingo hall and crawls into bed with me.
“You’re twenty-three. You have to live.” Granny Murray pulls up my pants, which are sliding down. It’s hard to shop for clothes when you have a hockey butt. Also, yes, my extended family is enmeshed and codependent. Thank you for noticing. “Enjoy life. You’re only young once.”
“I can’t wait to be middle-aged. I’m going to sit under a mound of quilts and read books and drink fancy tea blends.”
“Boo, boring!” She blows a raspberry. “We need to go to the horse tracks.”
I scrub at my face with a makeup remover pad, watching in the mirror as Granny Murray shows off all the clothes she and Aunt Babs found for me when they went shopping today.
“I can’t wear that to work, Gran.” I snatch the skimpy Mrs. Claus teddy out of her hands and shove it in the linen closet.
“This is for under your clothes. You get one of those guys,” she says, “when they’re all ’roided up and horny after a big win, show him a little of this, and you’ll have a ring on your finger by summer.”
“I’m not sleeping with a player, and certainly not after a win, because the Rhode Islanders are the worst team in the league. They will never win a game.”
“Not with that attitude.” Granny Murray snorts. She pulls up my pants again.
I’m starting to see why my cousin Gracie finally evicted her out of her house.
“I need to help Mom with dinner.”
The gravy is bubbling away on the stove.
Mom gives me another big hug and a smooch. “My baby’s back in the nest. Never leave home again, snickerdoodle. I made your favorite: garlic-cheddar mashed potatoes.”
“Yes! I need carbs and dairy today.”
“You need to get a man. You baby that girl, Trina,” Gran rails. “She should be out on the town, roaming the streets.” Granny Murray thrusts a mug at me. “Eggnog. Your Aunt Stacy made it. She doesn’t put enough rum in it.”
Golden liquid is sloshed into my mug.
I take a big, burning swallow.
“Oh, Ellie.” My mom licks her thumb and tries to clean off my face.
“Ooh! Eggnog!” My older sisters clamber into the kitchen.
“You’re here! All my girls!” My mom wraps us into a big hug.
Angie steals my mug and drinks it, while Maxie goes right for the rum bottle.
“There’s red wine in the gravy, girls.”
“You better make sure it gets cooked off,” my dad’s voice booms. “Jace and Adam have a big game tomorrow. We need them to pass a drug test.”
My mom screams.
I catch the spatula and keep the pan of gravy from flying off the stove as she sprints to my brothers—somehow even bigger than the last time I saw them in their black-and-yellow Direwolves jerseys—and hugs them like they just returned from war or something.
“My boys! My little boys! Oh! My children are all here for dinner! I didn’t know you were coming in.”
“We thought we’d surprise you.” Adam grins as my mom squeezes him, then she goes for my other brother.
My dad’s face is lit up with pride and joy as he gazes over my younger twin brothers. Big-time NHL hockey players, both on the Direwolves. An NHL draft-day miracle.
“Don’t worry, Ellie,” Adam says as he and Jace rush to me and both wrap their arms around me, squishing me. “We’ll go easy on the Rhode Islanders tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” Angie says as she steals a spoonful of mashed potatoes. “Try not to beat them by like twenty points, m’kay?”
Adam laughs. “Ryder already said that once the point count gets to ten to nothing, he’s going to switch to all us rookies and let us play.”
“Yeah, I bet I score a goal this game!” Jace whoops.
“Your first NHL goal!” My mom hugs him.
“It hasn’t happened yet,” my dad teases softly. “You’ll jinx it, Trina.”
My mom mimes zipping her lip. “Your grandmother and I have been making custom Direwolves jerseys for everyone to wear.”
“No help from that husband of yours, of course,” Gran says drunkenly.
Maxie silently offers Dad the rum bottle.
“Did you make a Rhode Islanders one for Ellie?” Jace teases and starts trying to peel the foil back on the roast beef.
“Oh, surely you can sit with the family just this one game, snickerdoodle?”
“She’ll get fired, Mom, if she does that,” Angie says.
“Yeah, again,” Maxie adds.
“Oh, you remember Leo Niedersachen? He just retired from Boston,” my dad tells me as my mom shoos us to ferry the piping-hot dishes to the dining room.
“His wife just had their third child, and their nanny moved back to France. I told them that you were great in childcare, Ellie, and were looking to get back in the field.”
“Wonderful!” Mom claps her hands. “You can be a nanny and sit with us at the game.”
“Yeah, thanks, Dad. I’ll send him an email tonight.” And not show up to work tomorrow.
It still seems like a bad dream—Dana handing me the keys to the hockey castle. They’re still hidden at the bottom of my tote.
We sit down for dinner. I load up on the cheddar potatoes, making a little well and drowning my potatoes in gravy.
“You want some potatoes with that gravy?” My dad delivers the standard joke, pretending to offer me more potatoes as all at once, everyone’s phones go off with the Google News alert sound.
My siblings and dad all reach for their phones in unison.
“No electronics at the table,” Mom scolds.
“But it could be big hockey news!” Jace cries.
“Yeah, that’s my hockey news notification,” Adam protests.
“They need to know what’s going on in the industry, Trina,” my dad, Nate, says.
Yeah, I’m sweating. I have a bad feeling about this. “No phones at the table, guys.” I try to wrestle them out of my siblings’ hands. “I never see you guys. It will be nice to have dinner with normal people, not just Mom and Dad.”
“Oh my fucking god!” Angie yells, her voice rising on the last word.
“Language, girls.”
“You cunt!” Maxie’s got a huge grin on her face.
“So cunty,” Angie drawls.
“Cu—C-wordy,” Jace self-corrects as he and Adam scroll through their phones. “This is, like, a big-dick, fucking ballsy move.”
“Maxine!” Mom swats her with a towel. “Look what you started.”
My dad is looking at me like he’s angry, hurt, betrayed.
“Where’s that bottle of rum?” I ask desperately.
“Got you, girlie.” Granny Murray scoots her chair back.
“You’re an NHL coach,” Nate finally spits out.
I wrench the bottle from Gran. “The food’s getting cold.” I chug rum into my glass and sit down, banging my knee on the table.
“How are you a coach, Ellie?” My dad glares at me.
“This is great news, dear.” Mom rubs his back. “She got a promotion. It’s a pay raise.”
“Woo! We’re moving up in the world,” Granny Murray exclaims. “You and me, let’s start looking for real estate. These digs are cramping my style. I’ll be your wingwoman.”
“Er… it actually does not come with a pay raise.” I can’t swallow. “It’s just a temporary thing, Dad. You know, because of the arrest, yadda yadda. Dana Holbrook is a cheapskate.”
Angie and Maxie are horrified.
“You take that back!” one yells.
“She is queen of the cunts!” the other fires back.
“Icon!”
“Legend.”
“Her hair.”
“Her nails!”
“Her car!”
“Her vibe!”
“Her attitude!”
“Her clothes!”
“Her shoes!”
“Her everything!” they say in unison.
“Yeah, I mean, you don’t say no to Dana Holbrook,” Maxie says.
“Yeah, Dad,” my sister echoes, turning to Nate. “You do not say no to Dana Holbrook.”
“Wow, an NHL coach.” Dad pokes at his meat.
“You always wanted to be a coach after you retired, didn’t you, Dad?” my brother asks innocently. No one ever said hockey players were smart.
I try a distraction tactic. “Wow, this roast beef is perfectly cooked, Mom.”
My dad slowly sits down at the head of the table.
My mom loads up his plate then gives my brothers more meat, who attack their food like starving dogs.
“A new job for Ellie!”
“Why don’t we talk about literally anything else?” I say as I shovel cheesy potatoes in my mouth.
“Be proud! You’re the first female coach!” Mom hugs me.
“There’s that assistant coach in Winnipeg,” Angie says.
I nod. “See, not the first. Not a trailblazer.”
“Yeah, she’s an assistant. You’re the head-honcho coach. You call all the shots,” Gran boasts.
“You’re the head coach.” My dad sounds like he’s going to keel over into his pot roast.
“More potatoes?”
“Stop trying to feed that man carbs and dairy. He needs alcohol, Trina,” Granny Murray says then turns to me. “You’re gonna do great, kiddo. Shit, I already placed a bet on your game tomorrow.”
“You did?” My brothers are howling in laughter.
“Yep, my whole Social Security check.”
“Your entire…” Nate holds a finger to his eye that is visibly twitching. “Trina,” he hisses to Mom, “we agreed your mother was going to stay here while she saved up to move into another retirement home.”
“Yes, Nathan,” Granny Murray slurs. “My entire Social Security check, because I believe in Ellie. I raise girls’ girls.
Women support other women because the men in their lives won’t.
” She waves her mug of scotch at my dad.
“You’re gonna do great, kid. I’m gonna be there cheering you on.
And don’t forget: the best motivation for men is sex.
Sometimes you gotta suck a few dicks to win a hockey game. ”
My siblings sit there, shocked. Unlike me, they do not live at home and thus seem to have forgotten what Granny Murray is like when she starts drinking on a weeknight.
Jace raises his hand. “How many dicks do you think I’d have to suck to get a Stanley Cup?”
Our dad shoots daggers at him. “Don’t you dare engage in any sex acts with anyone!”
“So, we’re hosting a holiday party,” I say in an attempt to change the subject.
“When are we not hosting a holiday party?” Angie interjects then turns back to hockey. “So, what’s your strategy for the game tomorrow?”
“Forget that—what are you going to wear?” Maxie leans over.
“You have to wear white,” my other sister says.
“No, pink.”
“Her strategy is gonna be to loooose.” My brothers cackle.
“No offense, sis!” Adam steals the slice of meat off my plate and stuffs the whole thing in his mouth. “I do support you, but we’re still going to kick your ass.”
“They’re going to crucify you,” my dad says. He’s staring blankly at the china cabinet. “I’m going to talk to the NHL tomorrow. My daughter can’t be an NHL coach. You’re basically a child. You still live here. At home. With me. It’s not happening. It can’t happen.”
“A woman can be an NHL coach, Dad,” Maxie argues.
Nate turns on me. “You can’t control these men. These are the best of the best.”
“Uhhh…” Adam makes a face. “The Rhode Islanders team isn’t that good, Dad.”
“She’ll probably be better than that coach they had,” Jace adds. “It doesn’t matter who they hire, the Direwolves are going to destroy you guys.”
“It’s just a temporary position until they get a real coach,” I promise my dad.
“Maybe you can help her find a coach, Nate,” my mom suggests.
My dad gives a sharp nod. “Right.” He looks down at his food and slices his meat aggressively. “I’ll do that. You’re not going to be an NHL coach. You can’t.” He dishes up more salad for me and my siblings. “That’s final.”