By the time we’re done, I’m exhausted and starving. “You guys are the best. Let’s shower and get some food. My treat.”
But the two of them go off to spend the evening with their womenfolk, so I end up treating Silas to takeout instead.
We’re sitting in the living room eating spicy chicken and watching our rivals lose to Tampa. Just like old times. Except I have this niggling feeling I can’t shake. Like something’s missing.
Or someone. Heidi isn’t here. She’s out on her date. I got a look at that guy who showed up in a suit to take her for dinner. Mr. Straight and Narrow, with his shiny penny loafers and his boring tie.
He’s bad in bed, I remind myself. Although it’s unclear why I care in the first place.
I shove some more noodles in my mouth and try not to wonder if she’s going home with him tonight. Lord knows it’s none of my business.
My phone vibrates with a text. From her. It’s like I conjured her up with my inappropriate speculation.
I just have one question, she writes.
Eight inches, I reply, just to be a tool.
OMG, stop. She adds an eye-roll emoji.
Aren’t you out on a date right now? I ask. I’ll bet charm school frowns on texting another man when you’re on a date.
Charm school can bite me, Heidi replies, and I let out a bark of laughter. Just answer my question. What time did you write down for the Zamboni pool?
Why? Does it matter?
It does to me.
Where are you right now? Are you coming home?
I can’t believe I went there.
I’m in the ladies’ room at Peter Luger, and I have to get back to my date. What did you bet?
14 minutes. If you coulda just been 27 seconds faster, I wouldn’t have lost my 20 bucks to the rookie.
“Who are you texting?” Silas asks from the other end of the couch. He takes a leg off the coffee table and swings it over to give my thigh a nudge, because only goalies are that flexible. “You’re smiling like a goober.”
Sorry about the money! I’ll make it up to you.
I put the phone down to save myself from asking how she’d like to make it up to me. And because Silas is giving me a smug look. “It’s Hot Pepper, right? You always look like a goober when you’re thinking about her.”
I rest my head back on the sofa’s back and close my eyes. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what? State the obvious? Can you fall for a girl when she’s driving a Zamboni? No, wait—I think you fell for her when she was beating me and Bayer at darts.”
“News flash. I’m not falling for anybody.” I used to think of Silas as an easygoing roommate. I don’t anymore.
“You say that, but—” My phone rings in my hand. The phone number of the caller is blocked. Nonetheless I answer it so fast that Silas laughs. What if Heidi needs rescuing from her date? “Hello?”
“Jason.” The voice on the other end is slurred by both alcohol and tears. Fuck. It’s not Heidi, thank God. But it’s a call that I dread nonetheless. “Honey. How are you?” the older woman asks.
“I’m well, Jolene. And you?” I hold in my sigh, because I know what’s coming.
Her sob is loud and broken. “It’s that time of year again. When I feel so blue! It’s gonna be bad this time. I just know it.”
Fuck.
It is that time of year again. I always struggle in the fall, too. Although Jolene is the kind of person who leans into tragedy. The first moment I met her I knew she was trouble. Jolene—my high school girlfriend’s mother—is a hundred and two pounds of narcissism with a raging addiction to alcohol on the side.
“Me too, Jolene,” I say. I’ve learned that agreeing with her is the quickest path to freedom.
“It’s so hard. So hard to watch the leaves fall again and to know my baby girl won’t ever see them again. She loved the fall. We used to go back-to-school shopping together.”
I grit my teeth. There’s some truth in what she says—Lissa loved every season. She was full of life and adventure. But Jolene had only been interested in her daughter when it suited her. And most everything Lissa bought she earned for herself.
“The high school looks just the same,” Jolene says between sniffles. “Just the same! Kids with their backpacks…”
Silas is motioning to me from the other end of the couch. He’s lifting his hand in imitation of drinking a beer.
I nod, and then reconsider. Tequila, I mouth. He gives me a salute and marches into the kitchen. Jolene goes on and on in my ear. “My sweet girl. So nice to everyone.”
Tuning her out, I kick my feet onto the coffee table and settle in to remember Lissa the way she really was—an absolute hellion of the highest order. In a good way. When my parents were giving me grief about playing junior hockey instead of going to prep school, it was Lissa who’d said—middle fingers raised—“Fuck that noise. You do you.”
She was so strong. A lioness at sixteen. I fell hard.
Five years later, it’s still so easy to picture her face. I only keep the one photo in my gym bag. But I can see her so clearly in my mind that I don’t need more. She had a wide, laughing smile and bright, mischievous eyes. My wild girl. My Lissa. I loved her with the pure, bright fire of youth. I thought we’d have a hundred years together.
We got two.
“The Juliet to your Romeo!” Jolene wails. “Gone. A real-life tragedy.”
It was. And it’s one that I re-live through phone calls like this a couple of times a year. She always calls in October or November. The accident happened over Thanksgiving weekend. Freezing rain. A slippery Minnesota road. I’d been four states away at a hockey tournament that I’d signed onto at the last minute.
“You can’t leave me alone with the family on Thanksgiving!” Lissa had shrieked when I told her. “They’re the worst on holidays.”
It was all true. I shouldn’t have left her there to fend for herself. Even so, Lissa didn’t need to solve the problem by escaping into the car of a friend who was too high to drive…
Silas puts a bottle of Jose Cuervo onto the coffee table, along with two shot glasses. This happens right around the same time when Jolene steers the conversation to the other purpose for her call.
“My goddamn landlord,” she weeps. “A man with no heart at all. I’m a little short this month, and he’s threatening me. A lonely old lady. Can you believe the nerve? I’m between jobs right now. He knows this.”
“How much do you need?” I ask immediately. There’s no point in beating around the bush.
“You are such a good boy to offer,” she sniffs. And I swear I can hear the distinctive sound of a match lighting her latest cigarette. I’m going to write her a check and she’s going to blow it on cigarettes. “I’ll lose this apartment if I don’t come up with fourteen hundred real quick. Not that I have any groceries in the kitchen.”
“Let me have your address,” I say, grabbing a magazine off the coffee table and flipping it over.
I look around for a pen. Silas tosses me one with those quick goalie reflexes. Thanks, I mouth. When he’s not busting my chops, Silas is the best roommate ever.
“Could you send it Western Union?” she asks with a sniffle. “I’m kinda in a bind.”
“Why not,” I say, eyeing the tequila bottle.
“I want to pick it up at the Walgreens on East Main Street. It’s store number 111.”
“Okay, sure. I’ll do it tomorrow afternoon. I’m traveling in the morning. Better go, Jolene. Good hearing from you,” I lie.
“Goodnight, honey. Be well. I’ll pray for your safe travel.”
We hang up and I toss the phone onto the coffee table and put my head in my hands.
“She’s back, huh?” Silas asks, uncapping the tequila. “How much does she want this time?”
“Whatever,” I grunt. Hell, if Jolene knew the terms of my new contract, she would have asked me for ten times as much. Luckily, she doesn’t follow hockey.
Besides, taking care of Jolene is something I do for Lissa. The only thing I can do for Lissa. It has fuck-all to do with Jolene.
“I think you should tell her to fuck off,” Silas says. “But if you won’t, let’s drink tequila instead.” Silas hands me a bottle of water first, because it’s important to stay hydrated the night before a game. Then he lines up the shot glasses and pours.