You Could Believe in Nothing Read online

  Derek turned, pretending to look for someone. They were older than they sounded. The man put his hand on the woman’s arm. He said, “I’m counting on you to keep me honest.”

  Nicole joined her family at the baptismal font. She held the boy and pledged her protection. The baby made not a sound. His white arms lifted from the bundle, puffy hands grasping at nothing. Sarah was defiantly single, the father of her child neither seen nor spoken of. As a doctor, she had seen her share of single mothers at the family practice clinic. “She knows what she’s up against,” said Nicole.

  Back at the family home on Empire Avenue, the baby slept while Sarah and her friends withdrew to the backyard, sweating in their summer dresses. Mr. Stanley watched from the dining room, eating sandwiches. Well-wishers shook his hand. It was the weekend of the folk festival, and music from Bannerman Park came through the trees overhead, occasionally disappearing in the breeze. Derek knew the christening was a negotiated settlement, brokered by Mrs. Stanley, satisfying no one.

  Derek and Nicole stayed behind to help clean up. Sarah put the baby down for a nap, and the family sat down for a simple dinner, finishing the cold ham and turkey.

  “You should sleep when he sleeps,” said Mrs. Stanley. “Get your rest.”

  “I’m fine,” said Sarah. She turned to her sister. “What’s your plan? Are you poking around the job sites?”

  Nicole offered a noncommittal answer.

  “The job market’s vicious,” said Sarah. “You can’t pick your spot. You have to go where the work is, go God knows where if you’re serious about a career. And you need to be serious. There’s nothing around here. That’s just the way it is.”

  The homily sounded well rehearsed. Derek suspected it was delivered for his benefit, to notify him that Nicole’s future included much more than a place in his bed.

  After dinner, Sarah pulled a shawl over her shoulder to feed the baby. He dozed off at her breast, so she strapped him into his baby bucket seat and took him home.

  “Imagine that Carter girl,” said Mrs. Stanley, watching the car pull away. “Did you see her in that awful little dress, legs out everywhere? She used to be so sweet when Sarah had her over after school.”

  “They don’t shave, that crowd,” said Mr. Stanley. “You’d think they might trim their armpits before coming to church.”

  “All that crowd live downtown,” his wife explained.

  Mister and Missus pulled on gloves and sun hats and went to work in the garden while Derek and Nicole washed dishes. Dropping a wet towel over a kitchen chair, she padded around the corner and into the TV room, her old bedroom. He found her on the orange couch, an old hide-a-bed contraption scarred by dropped cigarettes. The house was lined with fire-retardant fabrics because Mrs. Stanley kept nodding off, smoke in hand. A high, open window looked out on the garden.

  The clenched silence of their coupling, its strangled gurgling and gasping, mingled with noises from the yard—muttered voices, spading, the pulling and cracking of weeds. Nicole drew her head back, as if recoiling from him. Her mouth dropped open and her eyes clouded over, dreamy and absent.

  Afterwards, she contorted herself to avoid staining the couch, pulling her knees to her chest while Derek fetched a towel. He stood on his toes for a peek out the window.

  “They’re right there, at the maple tree,” he said.

  Nicole wrapped a foot around his leg and tugged. “Sit.” Derek spread the towel out and sat facing her. He lifted one foot, began working his thumbs from the heel up to the pad of each toe. Her eyelids fluttered, and Derek took her in. Bony shoulders, the uneven dip in her collarbone, brown stomach. She didn’t like her mouth, which she felt was splitting into wrinkles, or her breasts. They were shallow, she said, and flattened too readily.

  “You okay?” she asked, regarding him with one eye.

  He nodded. “I don’t know what to make of your sister.”

  “She’s not sentimental. She’s hard. She knows where to stick the needle, our Doctor Sarah.”

  Derek lifted the other foot to his lap, starting again at the heel, calloused and stained from a summer in sandals. Nicole settled into the couch, rubbed her eyes, and let her arms drop behind her head. She was humming a tune, the notes rising as Derek’s hands moved up to her toes.

  “Oh, these span worms,” said Mrs. Stanley, prowling just beneath the window.

  “I told you!” replied her husband. “I told you! Bloody nuisance!”

  He awoke with a shiver, mouth parched and half-erect penis slumped against his thigh like a drunk on a lamppost. Brianna the weather girl warned of torrential rains, with an urgency that had her almost shouting from the television.

  It was nearly a week since Derek’s lunch with Lou, and their secret was making him sick. He hadn’t seen his mother, couldn’t tolerate seeing her with this knowledge welling in him like a black, undiagnosed tumour. Nicole would be good right now. She wasn’t analytical, exactly. But she could piece things together and suggest a plan of action, making grand leaps that were beyond Derek.

  Brianna’s weather was followed by a “Citywide Special Report” on the filthy state of the downtown. “They throws up everywhere,” said a hairdresser, gesturing at the street. “They pees in the doorways.”

  The scrape of a distant shovel indicated that Mrs. Ennis was back out there, chiselling and grooming her piece of sidewalk. Derek could call Nicole. He knew it was dangerous to let days slip away. Or he could do the Internet porn thing. He had a taste for the virulent, forbidden language of the stuff as much as the visuals.

  Turning off the TV, Derek climbed the stairs and sat at the computer without meaning to. There was a fresh message from Sully, with a string of attachments.

  You dad was there. holy smokes. one of the all time great hawk games.

  sadness of that era still feltby all Hawk fans! many great teams but only 1 Cup - 1961. many disappointments follow!

  team was young - should have won manymore cups - I have proved this by projecting 10 yr scoring totals based on age and production of ’61 team (attached)

  Derek clicked on a photo labelled “rookie year-the perfect mesomorph.” There was the man himself, the signpost of his family’s origins. Bobby Hull sat bare-chested on an examining table, a doctor’s stethoscope pressed to his pectoral, grinning at the camera, amused by the notion that his strength might be in doubt, or even quantifiable. He was miscast, wasted in the cold light of dumpy post-war arenas. With his farm-boy neck and cabled arms, he should have been a home-run king or beach bully, a bronze idol squinting into the August sun.

  only disappointments! all the yeasr after - first place 6 times - NO CUPS. what’s wrong?

  71 was the worst. All fans remember - disaster! They let us down. Statistically PROVEN.

  The attached documents numbered a dozen or more. Derek opened pages of impenetrable data (“1961 scoring-weighted-individual scale,” “roster erosion-1961-73-season/playoff split,” “player contribution-goal/assist quality”). These were scanned from typewritten originals, single-spaced, with corrections and addenda scribbled in the margins. A collage of press clippings held more intrigue (“Hull: No More Nice Guy”), but the articles were cut off beneath their provocative headlines (“Hull Denies Remarks, Will Meet Jewish, Black Leaders”).

  Hull - many great years, but unhappiness. Always wanted more money. Also BAD marriage - he fake of happiness (that was second marriage - he was married and teenage father in st. catharine’s.)

  Joanne was a dream wife - sex/domestic goddess for era of Clearly Defined Gender Ideals. unlike now!

  A JPEG labelled “Joanne” opened to an old magazine ad for dishwashers: “Joanne Hull depends on KitchenAid.” The goddess gazed at Derek with hooded eyes, a possessive hand on her dishwasher console. “Fantastic on crusty casserole pans, and really durable,” read her testimonial.

  “Superstar in Winnipeg” sh
owed the entire brood gathered round a giant million-dollar cheque; Bobby in a houndstooth jacket, Joanne bolstered by her hockey-wife shag cut, their three boys solemn and Aryan blond.

  It all wsent bad in the 7os. 1972 he jumped to WHA for MORE MONEY. The Winnipeg Jet! End of a dream for Chicago.

  then bad divorce from Joanne. he beat her up, famous story of sticking shotgun in her face, ect.

  Bad times!

  Also, he and many other players are cheated out of NHL money owed for pensions.

  Sully did not date his materials, but a later photo appeared a lifetime removed from the perfect mesomorph. Years of sweat and stitches had left the face mottled like a potato. The seraphic smile was gone, the golden fleece reduced to a wire scouring brush. There was new hair as well, a dark thatch sprouting up the back of his neck. Bobby Hull looked more like a hockey player now; guarded, half-poisoned by grudges, near misses, and the stinking ghosts of a thousand locker rooms.

  This has ZERO effect on history - best backhawk and best LW ever. Wife beater or whatever - who CARES. off ice troubles don’t matter imo.

  Unfiortunately I met him once and saw something that was unforgivable to me and someday I will pass that story on to you.

  The final attachment was a portrait done in watery brushstrokes. Ribbons of colour spattered and overlapped with acceleration as Bobby Hull launched himself over the puck, the blond head marbled and his Blackhawks jersey running to a smudge of black and crimson.

  Was it so hard to imagine Lou Langdon rising to his feet to applaud such a figure? Lou, who staked so much on the fresh glories of his younger days?

  So much young promise gone!

  a broken man?

  SIX

  Derek tried to decipher Nicole’s emails by having her narrate them, recreating the rasp that turned thick in her sinuses, so that everything she said came from right between the eyes.

  No word on the condo. My nerves are shot. Sarah says pull the offer and move on - the deadline already passed. So I’m totally at sea withit. I’d really like us to talk, but I’m up to my arse this week.

  He considered this, read it back in her voice. Thought he heard the solicitude women reserve for men they are finished sleeping with.

  Can you do me a favour? Can you send me a few of the mysteries from the bookshelf. My Maisie Dobbs mysteries. should be 3 and you’ll know them from the cover. I was saving them to read them all at once.

  Nik.

  The Nazis would have loved email, rigorous and procedural, eradicating the humanity in the exchange.

  Derek retreated to the spare bedroom, where Nicole’s mysteries filled a wall unit and spilled to the floor. The room had one small window looking down on the oil tank, and before they realized how drafty it was, it had been designated a hideaway. They even used that word, hideaway, like a couple of teenagers who thought they could dismiss the world by drawing the curtains.

  Many of the books were fit for the dump, pages puffed and curling with the damp. The unspoiled Maisie Dobbs set held a corner of the top shelf. Nicole would have climbed a chair to reach that high, her T-shirt rising to bare the hollows under her ribs. Derek pulled the books down and flipped one open.

  “A time when light is most likely to deceive the eye, a time between sleep and waking. A time when a man is likely to be at his weakest. Dawn is a time when soft veils are draped across reality…”

  Derek envied the elasticity of mind that let Nicole fall into these books, a thumbnail lodged in her teeth. He had tried a couple, waiting for the trance. It didn’t happen. He wasn’t much for books. Despite having graduated as an English major, Derek had left university without ideals or ideas. College life was not for learning, for the seeding of intellect and the limbering of critical faculties. It was a bacchanal. The social order was merciless, and Derek had felt sharply his place on the middle rung. But all things considered, there was no real downside to being young.

  He left the books on the kitchen table and opened the front door to the wet, shitty evening. A blustery cold had lingered for days, making the city feel cramped and small. He zipped his coat to the chin for the short walk to St. Bon’s.

  Mullock Street, where Derek lived, bordered the grounds of St. Bonaventure’s College, and was named for Bishop Mullock, the determined shepherd who had built the school from thirty thousand Irish stones. Imported for a new penitentiary, the stones were left idle when that project turned out less splendid than imagined. The bishop bought the lot at auction and had them hauled to church land, where his vision was realized.

  To Derek, this seemed a fairly typical bit of St. John’s lore. There was something arid and tyrannical in the city’s ongoing romance with its history, all the stories filled with dogged resolve and half-mad patriarchs.

  Whatever the price, the granite slabs of St. Bon’s were a bargain; 150 years later they sustained an air of unbending, cloistered Catholicism. Having never been through the doors, Derek pictured dark corridors, scrubbed but somewhat odiferous boys, saturnine Irishmen in cassocks, industrial-strength porridge, and masturbation.

  The Roman Catholic empire that once commanded the hilltop was humbled, its schools sacrificed to secular education and tracts of property sold to help finance settlements relating to pedophilic scandals. But the grand Basilica of St. John the Baptist remained, as did neighbouring St. Bon’s, now a private school championing the Catholic mind and spirit. The Dickensian gloom of the original building might have been a tough sell to modern parents. But its aspect was lightened by less imposing additions and upgrades, like the reassuringly bland Mullock Hall. In the shadow of this hall was tiny, busy St. Bon’s Forum, a place of ice hockey in miniature. Its rink was barely two-thirds regulation size, so small that adults now played four skaters against four, rather than the standard five-on-five. There was a time when men played five-on-five hockey there, contesting hot and bloody championships in the 1940s and 1950s. The heroes of these games became legends, and in some aging circles their names might still be uttered with townie reverence. But the remaining few were elderly, and as their era of clubby manliness disappeared from view, it was not likely they would be remembered much longer.

  Derek arrived to find a CBC van blocking the entrance, directly under the No Parking sign. Derek had to swing his hockey bag from his shoulder and hoist it in front of him to get through to the door. A man in a black jacket pulled a tripod and nylon satchel from the back of the van.

  Brian waited inside the front door, clipboard in hand. He nodded to Derek and marked the clipboard with what seemed an unnecessary flourish.

  “We’re not using regular rooms tonight. We’ve got one of the bigger rooms in the back because it’s better for shooting. And we’re asking everyone not to start getting dressed until the cameraman is ready, because they’re looking to get the whole experience on tape, like a regular game night.”

  Derek circled the perimeter and climbed the steps to the back room. The ice was quiet, absent of the large men who usually booked the hour preceding theirs and skated about looking mournful. They played with no goalies, shooting at pie plates strung from the crossbars.

  A full crowd waited obediently. Shawn Gover looked up, knees jiggling, as Derek entered.

  “What’s going on out there?”

  “I saw a CBC van, a guy with a camera or something.”

  “Ice is ready. We should get going.”

  “What’s with Brian, anyway?”

  The door swung open. Brian led the entourage. “Listen up. Boys, this is Allan. I’m sure some of you will recognize him.”

  Allan wore a long leather coat with a crimson scarf tucked around the neck, and tiny glasses. “Hey, boys. How the fuck are ya?”

  The man from the van followed with a camera at his shoulder, one visible eye blinking rapidly.

  “Barry, my trusty assistant.”

  Barry straddled a couple of hockey bags and hu
nched down, panning the room, then lowered the camera. His hair was grey straw sprouting from a CBC ball cap, and his eyes were set in dark rings, as if the viewfinder had left inky marks.

  “Boys,” he said.

  Steve Heneghan stepped forward. “What kind of story, ah, like, what did you have in mind?”

  Allan offered an open palm, as if in deference. “How many people really understand what’s at the heart of this game?”

  Shrugs around the room.

  “Fuckin’ come on!” Allan dramatically swept his hand before him. “The years you guys have invested in this ritual. The jokes. The wins. The goalie’s pads. Tonight’s lineup taped to the wall. Waiting for the Zamboni to make one final turn, and you fuckin’ can’t wait to get out there!”

  Murph raised an eyebrow. There was a self-conscious cough, a shifting of asses around the room.

  “And the smell,” said Allan, laughing and pointing to an open hockey bag. “Only hockey players know it’s the greatest smell in the world! What do you say to that?”

  “I’d say you don’t get out much,” said Murph.

  Allan skipped to the middle of the room. “If these walls could talk. This is hockey, boys! Hockey is here, in thousands of rooms and thousands of fuckin’ rinks just like this one.” He grabbed a stick that had been propped against the wall and twirled it in his hands. “Work with me on this, boys. This is the real shit!”

  Derek checked the cameraman for a conspiratorial glance. But Barry was shooting again, hunched down with the lens turned to the rubber floor, his expert gaze drawn to some near-invisible detail.

  “I don’t mean any disrespect,” said Gover. “But I have doubts about this.” He spoke carefully, as if reading from a prepared statement.

  Brian spoke from his knees, strapping a goaltending pad at the back of his calf.

  “I think what Allan is trying to say is that there’s a story here lots of people can relate to. It’s like, regular guys, you know? People can relate to it.”

  “Regular fuckin’ guys,” said Allan, his pale eyes full to bursting behind the little glasses. “That’s the shit!”