Chapter Ten A Fine Line
Chapter Ten
A Fine Line
Halifax
My son, Connor, steals the puck at the blue line, and I rise to my feet in the bleachers. With astonishing speed and agility for a thirteen-year-old, he flies down the ice toward the goalie in the net.
It’s the final playoff game of a weekend tournament, and the arena is raucous with shouts and cheers.
Becky and I jump up and down as Connor navigates around a defenseman, then passes the puck across the ice to his teammate, who immediately casts it back.
With lightning-fast reflexes and expert stick handling, Connor shoots and scores.
The entire arena explodes with cheering and the clamor of noisemakers.
Ecstatic, I turn to Becky, who throws her arms around me. “He did it!” she shouts.
Other parents around us pat me on the back and shoulders. They’re all good friends because most of us have known each other since our sons first learned to skate, and we’ve been hanging out in hockey rinks and traveling to tournaments for years, supporting our kids through this merry journey.
Connor is special, however, and everyone knows it. He’s exceptionally talented, mostly because he works harder than any other kid in the league. It’s obvious to me that he inherited a very intense competitive edge from his father.
There’s still a minute left in the game, and the players get into position for a face-off, but everyone knows it’s over.
The score is 5–2, so there’s no hope for the other team, but we all watch to the end and remain in our seats for the awards and presentations.
No one is surprised when Connor wins MVP of the game as well as the entire tournament.
Later, Becky and I wait by the soda machines for Connor to emerge from the dressing room. He finally appears with Davey, his best friend on the team, the two of them sauntering out with their gigantic hockey bags slung over their shoulders, their hair wet from sweating under their helmets.
“Great game!” a parent says.
“Good job, guys!”
I can’t help but notice a group of young girls in their path.
“Hi, Connor,” one of them says. “Good game.”
“Thanks.” How aloof he is, oblivious to their swooning.
Becky nudges me, and we exchange a look of amusement.
“Thank goodness he thinks of nothing but hockey,” I say privately to her as we zip up our parkas and follow him out of the arena.
It’s cold and dark outside. With the windchill, it’s minus 30 degrees Celsius, so Becky and I jog to the car. We scramble to get in, and I quickly press the ignition button and set the heat to full blast.
While we shiver, Connor takes his time crossing the parking lot with Davey. They stop and chat before Davey veers off toward his parents’ minivan.
“He’s coming,” I say to Becky. I push the button to open the trunk, and he sets his hockey bag inside, shuts the trunk, and climbs into the back seat.
“Becky’s coming home with us for dinner,” I tell him as I watch him in the rearview mirror.
“Cool,” he replies absently, with the glare of his cell phone lighting up his face. I’m not sure if he actually heard what I said, but that’s how it is with teenagers these days, so I’ve learned not to take it personally.
I remind him to buckle his seat belt before I shift into drive, and as soon as we start moving, Becky flips through some radio stations until she lands on an old Gordon Lightfoot tune.
As we make our way home, we talk about her workweek coming up.
She’s general manager of a downtown shopping mall and always has juicy stories to tell.
We’re ten minutes away from home when Connor speaks up. “Did you hear from Dad?” he asks.
I glance at him again in the rearview mirror, and my heart sinks a little. “No, honey, I haven’t. Did you text him about the game?”
“Yeah, but he hasn’t responded.” We stop at a red light, and Connor gazes out the window. Streetlights from the busy intersection illuminate his face, and I recognize his disappointment, clear as day to me. I see it in the way he rubs at his temple.
“He probably hasn’t had a single minute to check his phone,” I tell him. “You know what the restaurant’s like at this hour.”
“Yeah, it’s busy.” Connor picks up his phone again, and I hate that I must work constantly to convince my children that they matter to their father.
I want them to feel confident about that, even though I’m not always sure I believe it myself.
But at least I’m there for them. Every day. Devoted. One hundred and fifty percent.
When Nate and I first got married, he was still in cooking school, and I was working my butt off to support us and pay for his education after his father cut him off.
Thankfully, money was never an issue because my company had taken off like a rocket.
Back then, there weren’t many designers doing home staging for the Realtors, and miraculously I’d had the foresight to hire a web guy to develop a software program to create virtual staging for homes, offices, and outdoor spaces. It was the first of its kind.
When Nate finally opened the restaurant of his dreams—an upscale fine-dining establishment on the Halifax Waterfront called Oblique—I began to find it difficult to juggle work and motherhood.
Miraculously, a corporate buyer for my software program came along, so I took the offer and sold it—along with my business—for upward of three million dollars.
The timing couldn’t have been better because Nate started working twelve hours a day, six days a week, determined to be the first restaurant on the east coast of Canada to earn a Michelin star.
It was during that hectic time that I received the heartbreaking news of my mother’s cancer diagnosis. A year later she was gone. Two years later, my father suffered a fatal heart attack, and Nate was so overwhelmed at the restaurant that he wasn’t able to attend the funeral.
They were difficult years, but I’ll always be grateful that the sale of my business had given me the freedom to stay home and take care of my family.
We pull into the driveway of our cozy house in the West End, a two-story craftsman with a low-pitched gable roof and a wide front porch with tapered columns on stone piers. Nate and I purchased it when I was pregnant with Amanda, but it was in dire need of TLC, so it came at a good price.
Over time, I’ve put my design skills to good use, and we’ve restored it to its former glory.
It’s in a sought-after neighborhood with expansive lots and mature trees, so today it’s probably worth double what we paid for it.
(Not that its market value matters to me, because I love this house, and I never want to move.)
I shut off the car and press the button to open the trunk. We all get out and hurry to the front door before our noses freeze off in the biting wind.
Connor disappears to the basement to dump his hockey gear while Becky and I ditch our coats and boots and make our way to the kitchen.
“Wine?” I ask.
“Yes, please,” she replies.
I retrieve a bottle of white from the wine fridge and pour us each a glass.
“To hockey,” Becky says, making a toast.
“And to us.” We clink and sip.
“Can I do anything to help you with supper?” Becky asks.
“No need to lift a finger. I made a chicken lasagna this morning. All I have to do is stick it in the oven.” I remove it from the refrigerator and peel back the aluminum foil.
While we wait for the oven to preheat, we sit on the stools at the kitchen island.
“It’s a shame Nate missed the game,” Becky says. “That was one for the record books.”
“He did amazing, didn’t he?” I reply, intentionally skipping over the reference to my husband’s absence. I want only to celebrate Connor’s clever leap over a defenseman’s stick just before he caught a pass from his teammate and scored the final goal.
The TV comes on in the basement rec room, and I hear Connor talking to a friend on his cell phone.
Becky watches me for a moment, then asks carefully and quietly, “Has he been to a single game this year?”
Wishing that she’d let this pass, because I’m reaching the end of my tether and I don’t want to be reminded of that, I pick up my wine and take a sip. “No, he hasn’t,” I admit.
She sits back and rests her fingers on the base of her wineglass. “Do you ever worry about how the kids feel about it? I know you’re fine because you’ve always been supportive of his dreams, but Connor seemed a bit discouraged tonight.”
“You noticed?” I take another swig of my wine.
“Yes.” Becky sits forward. “You know that you can talk to me.”
Explosions from the woofer speakers downstairs cause the floor to tremble. Obviously, Connor has found an action movie to watch.
“Yes, I do worry,” I confess. “I hate that the kids don’t feel important to their dad. And honestly, for years I’ve been feeling like a single mother.”
It’s the first time I’ve admitted this to anyone.
“Have you talked to him about it?”
“Yes, and he always apologizes and says he’ll do better, but nothing ever changes.
” I pause and think about the many conversations we’ve had about the time he spends at the restaurant.
“I want to be supportive of his career because I know what he went through with his father. I don’t want him to ever regret quitting law school, because I’m the one who encouraged him—which ended up causing a permanent rift in his family. ”
“You blame yourself for that?” she asks with a touch of surprise.
“A little.”
Becky shakes her head. “Well don’t, because Nate wanted to be a chef long before he met you, so you can’t take responsibility for a decision he made for himself. He was a grown-up.”