Flirt: The Interviews (4 page)

Last year, though, you're short with the press, your eyes are hard and Swedish blue, you don't smile or sparkle. It's like you and Todd, up in the hot treehouse with protein bars and Gatorade, scabby legs crossed, elbows and knees tough and black from summer, you naughty monkeys, made a blood-brother pact to be a couple of hard-ass jocks. I'm not one of them, but some people – the cranks who call into 24-hour sport talk – say you're not what captains should be. Strip the C, they say. No, says some caffeinated jerk, he has to do it himself, he has to give it up
willingly, let's not have another Linden
coup d'etat
. Hey. Wait up, Markus.

Okay, okay. The kayak forces me to consider only your upper body, especially from back here. I thought hockey players were built like mailboxes up top, but no.

—The gear makes it look like that. Think about it. Forty-second shifts at top speed, full use of lung capacity. Too much muscle and the lungs can't inflate; and muscle weighs tons. Too much bulk and you lose speed. So lower body has to be powerful, but up top should be lean.

—Not out that way, Markus, we need to stay closer to shore. There's a towboat and we don't want to run over his lines. Those guys hate kayakers. Wait up, hey, how'd you do that? How'd you get there from here? Man, you're everywhere.

—More push, less pull.

—If we steer straight – go around that kelp bed – we'll get to the Haystack Islands and the seals will surround us. I imagine the Strait of Juan de Fuca is a lot like the Gulf of Bothnia. Same terrain, same climate. I don't want to hold you back, but I can't hear when our boats are too far apart.

—Similar, yes, the water is the same darkness, but where I grew up is more extreme. I played hockey outdoors, which no one can do here. Peter played across town indoors, of course. It was good when they came to play us because they hated bein' cold, havin' frozen toes, and we knew we'd win. We were much tougher than Peter's team. I'm sure he'd agree. Are you with me? What strength sunscreen do you have on your face?

—I'm good. I'm safe. Sorry to hold you up. Your father was your coach.

—Yes, my father taught me. And Peter's father was his.

—Man, I play tennis with my daughter in the shade of old growth fir on a hot summer morning, the clean breeze reaching up off the strait, our visors tipped against the dappling sun and spritz of pitch, our arms getting brown and our strokes – our ability to wait for the ball to drop to our waists

– improving; old men in retro-whites play anemic but cheery doubles next court and discuss the updated stats of their hummingbird feeders and their wives' most recent blood test with accents both British and eastern European (Nick, the only one in a singlet) while keeping score and disputing
calls ironically; the occasional diving shriek of a kingfisher, no pressure, just a smooth rally. Even there, tears end the session and they're not always hers. The game face of my daughter is a Bertuzzi scowl of bad manners and lazy psychology.

—Many times, my father would make me walk home from the rink because of my attitude on the bench.

—Would you do that now? Make your little girl walk home?

—He was always honest, my father. He always told me the truth. Your form is improvin' already.

—He said that?

—No, I'm talkin' about you. Your form is better.

—Yeah, thanks.

—You look more natural in the boat and stronger, too.

—Right, yeah.

—Bend at the waist just a little. Breathe in through your nose, out through –

—I know, I know. I work out. I can breathe. I'm old but not that old. They say fifty is the new thirty but that would be eighty in hockey years.

—It's true, though. This is a lot like home, it's relaxin' on the water and quiet without a motor.

—You have the same birthday as my dead sister.

—Hold up, I'm comin' back there. This fog will only last a few minutes. Let's paddle alongside each other. That way, I can watch those wrists. Firm them up, no togglin'.

—The water goes so smooth when the fog comes in. It's like the cocktail party's over and we're the only ones left in the messy quiet.

—Except I don't drink.

—Me either.

—That should help with your moods.

—What moods? Who told you that?

—It's only tennis.

—A writer I like, a Canadian turned ultimate New Yorker who still believes hockey is the greatest game, says, “We are optimists and look to sports to amplify our optimism.”

—It's true. There's always a way to play better, always a new season to feel good about before it starts. Always a way, a system, to overcome obstacles – injuries, mistakes, whatever. I think fans look at us and see that we persevere and we show them there's hope, even when spirit breaks, or your leg or elbow, even when a best friend is broken badly.

—Now, I know you're a spiritual guy. Your dad's a pastor, right?

—Sort of.

—Ingmar Bergman's father was, too. You knew that?

—Lutheran, I think.

—Remind me to ask you about Bergman at some point.

—Oh, ya, you bet.

—And I know you don't want to tell me about how faith works in your life, but it seems so much a part of your game and your life. It's too bad you don't want to share your wisdom and help us all to maybe get along better and be happier and decide what's holy and what's not.

—Well, I'm a public figure but I'm also private and so is my family.

—Yes, but what is it about Christians that makes them so insider-ish? It's like they have a secret society and the rest of us don't get to come to the meetings. If it's so great in there, why can't everybody come in, chug a cold beer and a Cheez Whiz sandwich, and then leave?

—You don't have churches in the Strait of Juan de Fuca?

—Ha. I'm not talking about going into a real place; I'm speaking figuratively, I'm using a metaphor. It's
like
you people have a secret club and you don't want heathens to know what goes on there.

—I know what metaphor means. Answer this: in the playoffs, when they call us warriors, is that a metaphor or a direct comparison?

—It's a cliché, I know that much.

—Maybe look it up and get back to me.

—Let me think about it.

—You don't believe in God, is that what I'm hearin'?

—Here's what happened. I'm fourteen and I have a terrible crush on Davy Jones of the Monkees.

—He dated a Swiss actress. Ursula Andress. My father had her in a James Bond poster rolled up in his closet. I spent a lot of time in there.

—Okay. I'm fourteen and you're almost born, and I've been writing letters to Davy for a couple of years, trying to get an answer. First, here's a question: Why do kids do that? Why do they want to communicate with guys like you? Why isn't it enough to watch the games or, in my case, listen to the records. Why the letters? Hey listen: foghorn. Kind of redundant.

—I think there's reasons. I think it's an emptiness – maybe just a small hole, nothin' to worry about – that they're tryin' to fill. You had an emptiness to fill. You were lonely in a way that friends and family couldn't fix. You probably should have gotten serious about soccer and entered some tournaments – round robins are really great for kids and you don't need expensive equipment – but pop music isn't a terrible choice. Do you want me to name all the members of ABBA?

—My sister was dieing; she was twenty. Do you have any idea where shore is right now?

—At fourteen, that would leave sore spots, for sure. Let's stop here until the wind takes the fog. I can feel the sun. It won't last long. Lay your paddle across my boat.

—So one day, my sister's on the loveseat, sick from chemo or radiation, I can't remember which.

—What cancer are we talkin' about?

—Hodgkin's Disease.

—Like Mario.

—Right. But when my sister had it, nobody survived it or bought hockey teams or skated again or made dekes or trick passes through their feet. So she's home and somehow I know that today's the day the letter from Davy Jones is gonna come. I
know
. We're in the living room in June. There are antiques – a little George V walnut desk –

—Nice.

—– under the window overlooking the peony bed in the back garden, gold velvet loveseats, a turquoise-blue Chinese carpet stained by our spaniels but still smooth, 1914 oak floors, a fireplace tiled in blue-green, teak cocktail tables.

—This house was in what style?

—Georgian.

—Nice.

—Not fancy. My father was an auctioneer so he found stuff.

—Simple is often the most beautiful. Those birds?

—Buffleheads.

—I like the shape of their heads and how they all dive together. I wonder how they know to all go at the same time. Drink some of this; rest your hands.

—So it's this day and I've decided to stay home from school because I'm sure the letter from Davy Jones is going to come and it's early June and Grade 9 is almost done anyway. And I play double solitaire with my sister and sometimes she has to lie back on the velvet loveseat. She eats green grapes and drinks ginger ale to settle her stomach. She looks like shit, once lovely with black hair and twinkling eyes and smooth pale skin, freckles provocative and sweet across her small nose. She was entering a series of last stages. She'd been sick for six years, was supposed to last only two but science was moving fast and dragging her along. Not fast enough, obviously. But still.

—Family support?

—Support?

—Who were you talkin' to about the transition, where were you gettin' help for what the family was goin' through? What hospice?

—No such thing back then, not in this country. What?

—Really?

—Really. We were on our own, Markus, and no one talked about it.

—Why not?

—Private.

—That's ridiculous. What were they afraid of? Honesty is the most important thing. That makes me angry.

—Wait up.

—Sorry.

—Don't leave me in the fog.

—Sorry. What's that rumblin'?

—Freighter, but far away. So our spaniel goes nuts, as usual, and again I just know there's a letter. I wait until the mailman's gone down
the stairs and I can see him cut through our side garden, jump over the little rock wall and skip up to the neighbour's house. And I open the front door – we've had to put the mailbox outside so the dog won't grab envelopes and shred them – and there's a letter from Davy Jones in a creamy envelope.

—But it's a form, a copy, not a real letter.

—It is a real letter. It refers to things I'd put in my letter. “You don't have to be a bird to feel the way you want to feel,” Davy wrote, because I'd mentioned I'd like to be a seagull so that I'd be free and, like, eat seafood whenever. And I say to my sister on the loveseat how I think I believe in God now, because I was so sure the letter would come, and I'd been really praying for it and now, miraculously on the day I stay home from school, here it is. And my life is so great and this must be religion and God's in charge of everything that matters.

—That's not what religion is. That's not what prayin' looks like.

—Listen, I've seen you score a crucial goal near playoff time and look up, your stick still smoking, and thank God. I don't think that's what religion is either. The team – the boys, the fans – helped you score that goal, not God. And you're not supposed to talk to Him while we're all watching Sportsnet.

—What did sister Mario say about your sudden conversion.

—So my sister looks at me and with what's left of her burned-out brain says, “It would have happened anyway.” And I know she's right. Maybe it's hindsight, maybe I'm embellishing, but I think even at fourteen I understood that a real God would not let my sister suffer for years and still feed me letters from a false God like Davy Jones and let me brag about it to my sister on the velvet loveseat. “It would have happened anyway,” she said, already through with any idea of a benevolent God for herself. I was being asked to choose: you can have a God and Davy Jones and the cheap-thrill pathetic world of short celebrities from Manchester dating busty Nords, or you can have the respect and intimacy of your smart, beautiful and doomed sister. No contest.

—But since then, once the grief was less painful, surely you've been able to realize that –

—Nope. Since then I've been on my own. Hey, no fog. Wait up. So Markus, Mr. Nike multi-millionaire, what false gods do you worship? Do you agree that hockey is the religion of this country, that you are one of its gods?

—I like jewelry. And I like my belt to match my shoes.

—There's no one in the NHL who looks as good as you in Armani.

—Well, I don't know about that.

—Okay, not counting Trevor Linden.

—Trevor's four inches taller than I am, his legs are longer and he's quite a bit older.

—More saint than god, when you think about it. I wish all you guys would go back to wearing eyeglasses. Look at Larionov in his wire rims. What a doll. Hunk city. Laser surgery robbed the sport of true handsomeness.

—I see those islands. Let's go out a little further. Keep talkin', we'll go easy.

—I asked my doctor a while back why an older woman, say in her mid-to-late forties, would suddenly be taken with hockey players. Suppose, I said, a character in a story fantasizes about hockey players, sees herself helping them plant rhododendrons in their Shaughnessey garden or attending dress-up events at the Bayshore with them and looking sleek and young, imagining they're interested and wanting her in the cart at charity golf games. They're bored of the hockey-blonde wives they scored in the bars in Juniors or the loyal, lanky girlfriends they wed post-high school. They're ready for a wise woman with a sense of humour and a sense of occasion. I asked my doctor, is there a physiological reason for such a state or is my character on the cusp of a more humiliating stage of peri-menopause?