87. Kai
Kai
After Kendall and Akio leave, it’s just my mom and me sitting at the long farmhouse style kitchen table together.
The three of us had just polished off an entire pepperoni pizza.
She’s staring at me with the kind of look only a mother can give.
One that indicates she wants to say something, she’s just waiting for the opportunity.
“Whatever you are going to say, just say it,” I tell her.
“He’s amazing, Kai. So much like you and not at the same time,” she smiles. And he is. Akio is the best combination of both of us and yet entirely his own person.
“I know. It’s all Kendall. She’s been doing a great job with him,” I comment.
“So have you,” she observes. I haven’t though, not lately. And that guilt feels like cement blocks attached to my feet.
“But that isn’t what you wanted to talk to me about,” I hedge.
“No, it isn’t,” she admits. “What happened with you and Kendall?” she pries.
“I just thought we needed a little space. That I needed some time to work through some things.”
“And have you done that?” she asks, her eyebrows raised. “Worked through things?” She traces the top of her glass with her finger, patient and calculating.
“Well not exactly, but there’s been a lot going on,” I reply, slightly uncomfortable. I begin fidgeting awkwardly with the paper plate in front of me, ripping off little pieces and making a pile out of them.
“Mhm,” she murmurs. “So, are you stringing her along then?”
“What? No, of course not,” I huff, rolling a piece of uneaten crust in between my fingers.
“Do you still want to marry her?” my mom demands sharply.
“I’m not sure,” I mutter, irritated at the direction of this conversation.
Couldn’t everyone just leave me the hell alone and let me sulk in peace?
“Yes, you are. You’re scared—that’s different than not being certain or not knowing,” she points out.
God, she’s good. I suppose it’s both a blessing and a curse how well she knows me.
I sigh, dropping the paper plate on the table and brushing the crumbs off my hands. “Yes, I still want to marry her.”
“Then there’s a hard truth you need to hear,” she explains, crossing her arms on top of the table.
“Marriage has many seasons, Kai. Hard ones and easy ones, long ones and short ones, ups and downs and highs and lows. Seasons of beauty and seasons of grief. Marriage is about carrying each other and loving each other through all of them.”
I swallow because objectively, I know my mom is right.
Kendall and I have been through so much together, we could get through this rough patch too.
I just don’t know how. I don’t know where to start.
And I’m scared she won’t want all the broken, haunted parts of me. My damaged pieces and jagged edges.
“What if she can’t love me like this?” I posit without looking at my mom.
“I don’t even like myself right now,” I admit.
I’m jaded, terrified. Leaving the house feels like a monumental task.
So, I just haven’t left…in weeks. I’ve stopped trying, stopped caring.
And that paralyzing numbness is a slippery slope.
“She’s the only one who knows how to love you like this. Kendall will meet you exactly where you are and love you more for it. You have always done that for each other.”
“I don’t want to burden her. To ask her to do that.”
“Kai, I think she wants to carry you through this difficult season. And she can. She’s much stronger than you think she is.
She’s just been waiting for your permission.
” She lets me chew on that for a moment.
“I don’t think this is really even about Kendall.
I think this is about you,” she surmises.
“I have nothing to offer her. I look around and I don’t even recognize my life,” I whisper, holding my hands out and palms up. I haven’t admitted this out loud, not to anyone. And it doesn’t change the circumstances, but I do feel a little lighter.
“You still have everything to offer her. She hasn’t stopped loving you because your career path has changed.
And of course you don’t recognize your life.
You went through something unimaginable and horrific.
You have to create this new version of your life.
You have to reinvent yourself and rebuild.
You, my beautiful, brilliant son, have to rise from the ashes. ”
“And if I can’t?” Because that’s my fear, isn’t it? Not just that I would lose Kendall. But that I’d lose everything. That I already have. This thing that’s gnawing at me, this stain on my soul, would eventually swallow me up and spit out my bones.
My mom grins like she’s privy to information I’m not. “Don’t tell the others but you're my favorite and you’re also the smartest.”
I scoff. “I won’t breathe a word because you’ll deny it to the death. And I’m not the smartest, Ryo is. I’ve been knocked down, Mom, but I’m not delusional.”
“You’re damn right I’ll deny it,” she laughs. “Ryo might have the highest IQ but you are the smartest and most emotionally intelligent. He still has a ways to go in that department.”
I snort in response because she’s spot on.
“You can do this, Kai. You know why?” I shake my head. I glance at her, her eyes are bright and she’s radiating love and warmth.
Thank god for her.
“Because you came from me. You forget I had to reinvent myself too, to rebuild all of it from the ground up. I had to fight tooth and nail for my miserable life and learn how to love it again,” she explains, choking up a bit.
“You thought your life was miserable?” I ask.
She hesitates for a couple seconds trying to figure out her wording. “Not anymore, but yes, when things were at their worst. I did.”
“I haven’t forgotten, Mom,” I respond my voice low.
I could never forget that day no matter how many times I’ve tried. The sound of tires screeching, the crunch of metal and glass, the smell of burning rubber and acrid smoke singing my lungs. My screams penetrated the crisp winter air.
“Haven’t you?” she implores, her tone probably a bit harsher than intended. We don’t talk about this time much, this period of her life and mine that’s been drowned in shadows and ripe with suffering. It’s a breeding ground for pain, turmoil, and instability.
And yet, here we stand. We’ve survived it.
“I had to learn how to navigate my entire environment in a wheelchair. To survive knowing I was the only person in most rooms that wasn’t able bodied.
To enter a room full of my peers, people who used to be my friends and know they pitied me.
I had to give up my independence and rely on people way more than I’d like to.
To fight that little voice in the back of my head that said dying would be better than the way I was living.
I had to make peace with the fact that the first thing people notice about me is that I’m in a wheelchair.
And I did it all with three young children. ”
“I know, Mom.”
“Your life is very different now and that doesn’t mean bad. It's just different.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“I’m not going to pretend to understand what you went through and your lived experience. And I know you won’t pretend to know mine. But what I’m saying is that it can be done. You can start over,” she says, covering one of my hands with both of hers.
“How?”
“Well, let’s start by cutting your hair.
Maybe doing some things that would make you feel more like yourself,” she suggests teasingly, reaching across the table to ruffle my hair.
“But seriously, you have to live sweetheart and keep fighting for your life, as miserable and messed up as it may seem right now. You have to keep moving forward otherwise, this second shot you’ve been given will have been for nothing.
You only get this one precious life, Kai. What are you going to do with it?”
***
Ispend the next morning taking my mom’s advice and trying to work through my massive to-do list. To start putting the pieces of my life back together.
I go through my emails that have been piling up mostly from the team lawyers and director of PR.
They want an official statement about my early retirement.
What am I supposed to say— I’m retiring because I had somehow gotten entangled in illegal gambling with members of the mob?
That someone had tortured me, nearly killed me until I was crying for my mother?
Nope. I’m not touching that today. I have to start smaller.
I elect to tidy my apartment instead, to the extent that I could with only one working leg.
That at least feels manageable. I hobble around and throw away some empties, stray takeout containers, and get-well-soon flowers that have been rotting around my apartment since I returned home. This place is disgusting.
Then I research architecture programs and civil engineering graduate programs in Boston. All interests I might have majored in if my future hadn’t been decided for me at a very young age. And that feels surprisingly refreshing, doing something just for me.
But, of course, my mind drifts back to hockey.
The way it always does. I suspect it always will.
Maybe I can’t play anymore but I could coach.
Minor leagues, professional teams—they all need coaches and assistant coaches.
Who would be better equipped or trained to do that than me, a former NHL player?