The Penalty Box (25 page)

“I'm sure. Tell everyone out there I'm sorry, and that drinks for the rest of the night are on me. Okay?”

Frank patted his shoulder. “You got it, Paul.”

Frank left, quietly closing the door behind him. Paul's eyes strayed to the hockey gear in the corner; from the shoulder pads that had protected him from slashes, to the skates he'd been wearing when Ulf Torkelson brought him down for the last time. Clearing the couch of junk, Paul curled up in a ball, pulling the ratty old afghan draped over an arm of the couch close around him.

Then he did something he hadn't done since the neurologist told him he couldn't play hockey anymore. He wept.

In high school,
Katie had trained herself to tune out the whispers and snide remarks that followed her everywhere. It was a skill she thought she'd retained, until she entered the rink for the Panthers' game against the Cornwall Bob-o-Links. Hostile glares guided her to her seat, accompanied by low whispers and the occasional snicker. She did her best to quell the anxiety rippling through her as she took her seat beside Bitsy, but it was hard. It felt like all the Panther parents were giving her dirty looks.

“Hey, hon.” Bitsy sounded cautious as she handed Katie a mug full of coffee from her ever present thermos. “How was your weekend?”

“Shitty.” Katie stiffened as two women, both mothers of boys on Tuck's team, turned around to stare at her, their faces smug with condemnation. “Someone want to tell me what's going on here?” Katie asked, though she had a pretty good idea.

Bitsy hesitated. “Liz has been—saying things.”

“Like—?”

Bitsy and her husband shared an uneasy glance. “She's saying the reason Tuck is getting so much ice time is because you're sleeping with Paul. She's passed around a petition to get Paul fired.”

Katie put her head in her hands. “Great.”

“I guess Tuck told Gary?” Bitsy asked.

Katie nodded forlornly.

“I told you kids that age can't keep a secret.”

“You were right,” Katie conceded as she lifted her head to look around. “Where is Liz?”

“Last I saw she was outside the ladies' room, trying to get people to sign her petition.”

Katie moved to get up but Bitsy's hand stayed her. “Don't. That's exactly what she wants.”

“But she's smearing me!” Katie protested as two more parents pinned her with a disapproving stare. Katie stared back until they broke eye contact.

“Let her,” Bitsy counseled. “Believe me.”

Katie settled back in her seat. A cold sweat was beginning to break out on her chest and back. The same thing used to happen in high school when kids would make fun of her. Then, as now, her principal tormentor was Liz Flaherty. Maybe you could never fully escape your past. Katie sipped her coffee, trying to maintain her dignity as the whispering swelled to murmuring. “They believe Liz,” she said to Bitsy, straining to keep the incredulity out of her voice.

“Can you blame them?” Bitsy asked carefully.

Katie looked at her. “No, I can't,” she said after a moment. “If my kid wasn't being played, I'd be pissed, too.” Heartsick, she scoured the ice for Tuck, who was warming up with the team. She watched him circle the ice alone— once, twice, three times. Was it her imagination, or were the other boys being standoffish toward him?

Frank held out his Doritos to her. Katie hesitated, then thrust her hand in the bag. Screw it. A handful of Dorritos wouldn't kill her.

“You probably don't want to know this, but Paul got totally shitfaced at the Penalty Box Saturday night,” Frank confided between bouts of chewing. “Basically insulted everyone there.”

“You're right,” Katie said through a mouthful of Doritos, “I don't want to know.”

Bitsy looked confused. “I thought you were seeing Paul Saturday night.”

“I was. I did.” Misery shot through her. “We argued. About Liz and other stuff.”

“Well, you did a number on his head,” Frank continued. “I mean, he was—”

Bitsy elbowed him. She looked at Katie in disbelief. “You fought about
Liz
?”

Katie nodded. She told Bitsy and Frank the tale of the socks, asking their opinion.

“Liz is totally capable of holding on to socks for months,” Bitsy declared.

“Women are screwy,” was Frank's pronouncement.

“So, you don't think he's slept with her since the night of the reunion?”

Bitsy looked shocked. “Paul?
No way.
He's totally smitten with you.”

Katie groaned. This was not what she wanted to hear, though she knew it was true. She'd spent all of Sunday thinking about Saturday night, trying to sort out her feelings and determine whether she was a snob. There was only one way to find out.

“Do you think I'm a snob?” she asked Bitsy.

“No!”

Katie held her breath. “What if I told you that I'd rather have knitting needles shoved in my eyes than live in Didsbury for good? That the day I left to go to college I vowed I would
never
come back here, except to visit? That every time I open the paper and see the utter lack of cultural life I want to hop into my car and go back to Fallowfield immediately? Would you think I was a snob then?”

Bitsy considered this. “Yes.”

Katie's shoulders sank. “I thought so.”

“Is that true?” Bitsy sounded wounded. “Do you really hate being back here?”

“Of course not.” Katie chose her words carefully. “It's just a little too slow for me, you know?”

“Did Paul ask you to stay?”

“No.”

“Then why did he accuse you of being a snob?”

Katie wiped Dorito crumbs from her mouth. “
He
thinks
I
think he should have done more with his life after hockey.”

“And do you?”

“Yes.” Katie felt like a snob admitting it. “But only because he seems so damn unhappy!” She leaned over to Frank. “Aren't I right? Doesn't he seem unhappy?”

Frank chewed thoughtfully. “He was Saturday night, I'll admit that.”

“I don't think he's really dealt with his past.”

Bitsy looked at her like she was naïve. “Who has?” she asked.

 

 

Gutless. That
'
s the
best word Katie could come up with for Liz's absence during the Panthers' game. Liz had come to the arena, disseminated her poison, and left.

As for Paul, Katie couldn't decide whether he didn't care, or if he was simply oblivious to the tide of ill will flowing both their ways during the game. Just as he'd done the week before, he was evenhanded the first two periods, in some cases playing kids who'd barely logged any ice time previously. But when the Bob-o-Links deked their way into a one-point lead, Paul broke out his secret weapon: Tuck. It pained Katie to watch her nephew fly down the ice, knowing that most of the parents there believed his prominence had to do with
her
. And the way Tuck smiled in adoration at Paul . . . Katie could see that every time Paul tapped him to play, Tuck viewed it as further proof Paul was his father. She needed Paul to break him of that notion, and fast. And she needed to disabuse Paul of a few notions himself.

She waited until the game was over and the players and their parents had left before approaching him. Paul always waited until every child had been picked up before leaving. Today he was sitting with Darren Becker, whose parents never watched him play. Katie felt for the kid: Every time he hit the ice his eyes combed the stands, hoping in vain to see his mother or father there. “Do you want me to try calling your mom again?” she heard Paul ask him gently.

Darren shook his head. “No. She said she's on her way. She probably got tied up in traffic or something.”

“If it's a problem for your mom to get here, I can drive you home,” Paul offered.

The boy's face lit up. Getting a ride home from the coach carried cache. He looked about to accept Paul's offer when his mother hustled into the rink, briefcase in one hand, cell phone in the other. “Sorry I'm late,” she said breathlessly. “I'm on the phone with a client.” She snapped her fingers at her son impatiently. “Ready?”

Darren nodded, collecting his backpack and equipment. “See you at practice tomorrow, Coach,” he called over his shoulder at Paul.

“Good game, Darren,” Paul called after him.

Katie could tell from Paul's frown of displeasure that he was thinking the same thing she was about Darren's parents.

“It's nice of you to wait,” she observed.

Paul shook his head. “You think I should say something to his folks? It's really bad for his morale.”

“I think anything you say to the parents right now wouldn't be taken seriously,” said Katie, sitting down beside him.

“Why's that?” Paul asked, his eyes following the zamboni now smoothing the ice. There were circles under his brilliant blue eyes, and his pallor was gray.

“You're not going to like this,” Katie warned him.

“Love the sound of that.” Paul loosened his tie. “Before we get into the fun stuff, I want to apologize for Saturday night. Asking you to leave like that was a little abrupt.”

“Not really. We both needed time to think.” She studied his face. “You look exhausted.”

“I am. Haven't been able to sleep.”

“Me neither.” She drew a deep breath. “We need to talk.”

“The words every man wants to hear.” His eyes locked with hers. “Shoot.”

Katie drew her coat tight around her, less from the cold blasting through the rink than from needing a sense security. “It's Liz,” she began on an exhalation of breath. “She's telling everyone the reason you use Tuck so much is because we're sleeping together. She's circulating a petition to have you removed as coach.”

“Screw her,” Paul scoffed. “It'll never happen.” His tone was offhand, but his expression said otherwise. Anger smoldered in his eyes and his jaw was clenched so tightly Katie kept imagining his teeth cracking.

“Whether it happens or not isn't the point. I spent the entire game getting dirty looks from parents.”

“Screw them, too.”

“No, Paul. That's not the right attitude. They have a right to be upset. You're not being fair.” She swallowed. “This is doing damage to
Tuck
.” When he said nothing, she pressed on. “You have to stop playing him so much. It's not fair to the other kids, and it's not fair to him. He's nursing a fantasy that you're his father. Did you know that?”

Paul looked taken aback. “No.”

“Well, he is. And the more ice time you give him, the worse it's going to get. So please, stop.”

“Fine, I'll stop. And we'll lose.”

He reached out, stroking her hair. Katie closed her eyes a moment, relishing the sensation. “Don't distract me,” she commanded quietly. “I'm not done.”

Paul's hand dropped. “Of course you're not.”

The wisecrack hurt. “What does that mean?”

“You're going to tell me we have to break up for Tuck's sake. That he'll never catch a fair break if we don't.” Katie could feel her face beginning to turn red. “Right?”

“Paul—”

“Don't interrupt, I'm not done yet. Then you'll remind me you're going back to Fallowfield in the fall, as if no couple in the history of the world has ever endured a long-distance relationship. I'll point this out to you, and you'll squirm and stutter and say it has nothing to do with that. You'll claim it has to do with me not fitting into your vision of things. Then you'll say I'm trapped in the past and you can't be with someone like that.” His gaze was hard. “Did I nail it, or what?”

Katie's voice trembled. “It's not that cut and dried.”

“No, it's not. Because I left out the most important part of the equation.”

“What's that?” Katie asked uneasily, rocking in place to keep warm. The temperature in the rink seemed to have dropped twenty degrees in the past thirty seconds. Or maybe it was just the humiliation of being so accurately parodied.

“You love me, and you can't deal with it. I'm not the only one with a problem reconciling the past and the present. You've got one, too, but you're too damn intellectual to see it, never mind admit it.”

“That's not true,” Katie whispered fiercely.

“Sure it is.” Paul stood up, draping his sports jacket over his right shoulder. “You're afraid of your past and, according to you, I revel in mine. Look, it's okay. I understand. I'm now an underachieving townie. You're a high-powered professor scaling the heights of the ivory tower. We had a little fun between the sheets, and now you want out before the really tough questions start getting asked. It's cool.”

Katie could barely find her voice. “I never meant—it's not—”

“We're done, Katie.” He smiled at her sadly. “There, I said it. Now you don't have to stress over letting the ex-jock bar owner down easy.”

“I don't view you that way!” Katie protested. “I don't—”

“We could go round and round on this,” Paul cut in wearily. “But let's not. It's been great. I love you. I'm sad it didn't work out, but that was your call, not mine. I'll make sure Tuck doesn't have any hassles. Thanks for letting me know about Liz's big mouth. Maybe while you're still in town we could meet for the occasional cup of coffee and talk. I know Didsbury doesn't have a Starbucks, but I'm sure we could find
some
place that would satisfy your sophisticated tastes.” His eyes darkened, filling with pain. “I always enjoyed talking to you, Katie.” He leaned over, planting a soft, lingering kiss on her forehead. “Good luck with your book.”