Tough Day for the Army (10 page)

—
DUCHESNE

It was a lot of blood. The screams were tough. It even almost made me feel bad for Scialabba, but that miserable fuck had to be dealt with. It's part of the game.

—
DALMPIERRE

I'm just thankful that Janice was at home with the kids.

—
SCIALABBA

Jesus just kept saying “An eye for an eye, an eye for an eye.” To his credit, Scialabba didn't run, but he was plenty scared all right, anyone could see that.

—
GAULTHIER

The incision was really quite clean, extending several centimeters along the orbital ridge and ending just above the maxillary. There wasn't much left for us to do but fit Mr. Scialabba for the prosthetic.

—
DR. PAUL DUFRESNE
, Chief of Retinal Surgery,
Blessed Heart of St. Mary Hospital

The suspension was for life, all leagues, organized hockey, period. I didn't want to see him in the Moose Jaw over-35 no-check Wednesday- night church league. Mr. Christ had to find another line of work.

—
JEAN-PIERRE VALMONT
, Commissioner NWOHL

Nights are toughest. It's a dry cold up here, and that makes the socket ache. The painkillers stopped working years ago, and Rich Scialabba is not going to be some kind of dope fiend.

—
SCIALABBA

I know it hurts him some when I have to clean the socket. He's not careful enough about it, so it's up to me to take the swab and some alcohol and work around the edges. It's all pretty healed, but I know it still stings sometimes. Instead of wincing, though, he smiles at me. That's how I know when it hurts him, when he smiles. It's like when we first started dating and Rich was working his way up through the minors and he had to do a lot of fighting. He would come over after a game, his hair wet and slicked back from a shower, always wearing a tie. I would wait for him, watching through a part in the curtains. Sometimes he limped a little, and sometimes I could see a fresh shiner under his eye as he passed under a streetlight and came up the drive. Most days he'd ring the doorbell with his elbow because his hands were so sore. For a long time he insisted on shaking my father's hand when it was held out to him, until I told Daddy to stop doing that because of how much it hurt Rich. After that, Daddy just sort of waved, and Rich would do the same and then stand and talk to my father, hiding his hands clasped behind his back.

—
JANICE SCIALABBA

People think I should be bitter, but I try to be thankful for some things; it doesn't pay not to be. The settlement left us comfortable, and Janice and the kids are great. I miss the game, sure I do, but the game doesn't define who you are unless you let it. I think that's what happened to Jesus. He just let it get too far into him. You do a job for your team, but that's all it is. My job was to fight, his too. I loved the game, still do, but you can't let it be your religion. I've got other things… like for instance, days with Janice and Richie and Meagan are mostly long and slow and good here. Meagan says she's going to be a dancer, ballet. I don't know where she gets that, but sometimes she begs me to be her partner, and I do it to make her happy. I cradle her across the room like I'm some kind of Baryshnikov. Meg stretches out her arms and points her toes and keeps a super-serious look on her face. It's funny, but she likes to perform dying scenes the most. She hugs herself as she folds to the floor, very graceful, very beautiful. She has long fingers, from her mother. Most afternoons, I head out to the ponds to skate with little Richie. He's good, fast like I never was, nice touch with the stick. He's only eight, but still, when he really gets moving his coat cracks behind him in the wind like some sort of cape. I can only skate in circles now. I chase after him making one long left turn. My arm waves around for balance and I know I look like some kind of clown. As he skates away, Richie sometimes looks over his shoulder and laughs at me, but not in a bad way.

—
SCIALABBA

They started in on a Tuesday, late fall. It was morning, and as Nor-man took the garbage to the curb, he could see them loosely huddled near the bagged leaves that waited for pickup. Damn it, he thought. Homosexuals in the yard.

They'd come to threaten the sanctity of his marriage, but Norman wasn't having it.

“Morning,” he said. Norman tries to be friendly to everybody regardless. That's how he was raised. American values.

“Good morning,” they replied. A couple of them wore nicely tailored suits that looked just a bit snug in the seat. One had a lime-green sweater tied around his neck. Their grooming was impeccable. Another had a perfectly straight trail of hair plunging down his chest, accentuated by the open front of his shirt. Still another was clad entirely in leather; he squeaked whenever he moved. A few looked just about like anyone else. To Norman, they all smelled citrusy. Norman turned to make his way back to the house.

“You don't show her the proper attention,” one of them called after him.

“Excuse me?”

“Your wife; you take her for granted,” another said.

“I love my wife.”

They looked at each other and smiled. “Of course you do.” The man with the lime-green sweater slipped his arm around the waist of one that looked just about like anyone else. “But when's the last time you
really
looked at her?” he asked. The other man turned to face the man with the sweater. They closed their eyes and brought their faces close together, brushing noses.

Norman didn't need to see that stuff. He went back inside.

Ellie was moving around the kitchen. Those fellows didn't know what they were talking about. Norman looked at his wife every day. Norman watched as she took the breakfast plates from the table to the sink. Her bottom shook underneath her robe as she scrubbed the plates. Her hair medium-length and brown. The ankles thicker than you'd think, but not in a bad way. Norman had been looking at her for years. How many years? Thirty-six. What was left to see?

Norman stood to leave for work. He wondered if he should say something to Ellie about the homosexuals outside, or if it would just cause her worry. Ellie placed the dishes in the washer. Norman cleared his throat as if to speak and Ellie smiled, waving the scrub brush in farewell. Saying nothing, Norman walked out of the kitchen, to the garage, to the car. He backed out of the driveway without looking, wondering if he might feel a bump as he ran over the whole pack of them.

Norman didn't see them for a while after that first encounter, but then one evening, as he went to retrieve the recycling bin, there they were, playing hopscotch along the sidewalk. There seemed to be more this time. They clapped loudly for each other as they went for each successive square. Norman thought, but didn't say,
Fairies.

“We've been meaning to tell you,” the one with the lime-green sweater said, dribbling his stone into a hopscotch square, “your moves in the bedroom, they're limited.”

“What do you mean?”

“For one thing, are you always on top?” he asked, hopping toward his stone.

“Is there another way?”

“Would you like us to demonstrate?” He paused and looked at Norman.

“Lord no.”

“We could show you some things.” The one in the lime-green sweater held his hands outstretched at his waist and pumped his hips forward.

“No, please, no.”

“Homophobic?”

“Midwestern.”

They laughed. Norman did a little as well. He knew deep down he wasn't homophobic. He was pretty positive he'd known some gays, treated them well, treated them just like anyone else. He didn't hate people for what they were or for what they chose to be. That wasn't Norman's way.

The one with the lime-green sweater tied around his neck stood on one foot and bent to retrieve his stone, his arm stretched down, his leg levering into the air from his hip.

“Anytime, though, if you want,” he said, skipping back to safety.

Not always on top. Mostly, but not every time, Norman thought. Ellie had been his only and his always, and that should mean something. They were getting older for sure, but they were not dormant, no sirs. Some nights, they would be watching television side by side on the couch and their knees would touch and there would be a little twitch up Norman's leg, an ache that climbs to you know where, and it is the same ache as when she first let him kiss her under the bleachers back in high school, when they went outside to steal a smoke and Norman leaned into her, as though drawn by a magnet, pressing his lips harder against hers until she ducked away and he clanged his head against one of the support bars.

Those nights, once in bed, Norman will slide her nightgown up and run the back of his nail along her thigh, and that is his sign. Hers is a change in her breathing, deeper, longer, and when she is ready she will slip out from underneath her nightgown and Norman will shed his bottoms and climb on top, bracing himself so as not to crush her, and there they are. One man and one woman, together. As it was in the Garden, as it has been since, and as it should be forever.

They were back again a few weeks later. It had snowed, and Norman was out shoveling the drive. They wore puffy winter coats with fur-trimmed hoods, except for the leather-clad one who still wore his leather, now accentuated with matching gloves, and the average ones who wore long overcoats. As Norman cleared the snow, they frolicked in the yard, making snow angels and flinging snowballs at each other. Frankly, Norman thought, they threw like girls.

The one with the lime-green sweater ran up to Norman. He clutched a fistful of snow, cocking his arm back, free arm pointed toward Norman as the target.

“Please don't,” Norman said.

He dropped the snow to the ground and brushed his hands together. “I wouldn't,” he said. Norman scraped another strip of the drive clean, piled the snow into berms along the sides.

“So,” he said.

“What?”

“Gina,” he said. He stretched the name out (Geeee-nahhh) and smiled and looked up at Norman from under his hood. He wiggled his eyebrows.

“What does that mean?”

“Gina,” he said, “from work. You watch her. She
is
hot. Even we can see that. We may be gay, but we're not dead.”

Gina. She had some skirts, no doubt about it; Norman was not dead either. Her mode of dress was not really appropriate for the workplace, but Norman had not made a careful study of her wardrobe or anything. He'd always been faithful to Ellie, and ogling women was rude. “I don't know what you're talking about,” he said.

“Hawwwww,” he laughed, tilting his head back. “That wasn't your wife you were thinking about bending over the copier and tugging her panties down as your trousers dropped to your ankles. I'm pretty sure of that.”

So this was their game, Norman thought; sow doubt, undermine traditions with their free-love hedonism. He wasn't going to have any of it. He'd thought no such things. Norman raised the shovel over his head. “Back off!”

“Whoa, big guy,” he said, raising his hands and retreating. “Don't kill the messenger, my man. We're not here to harm.” He turned and jogged back to his companions and rejoined the hijinks. Norman quickly finished the driveway and retreated inside.

Gina. Was it possible that she began to linger overlong at Norman's desk? She is younger, but not so much younger. Twelve years? Fifteen? Twenty? She is lean, and her walk is strong. She smiles at him often, but then Norman is her boss and this is not a bad strategy with a boss. Norman knows that gender dynamics have changed over the years and that successful women sometimes use their womanness to their advantage. Her skirts stretch very tightly over her hips and they ride up high. Norman does not remember this style of skirt on the young women of his generation. In high school, the boys would duck their heads to peek at the girls' calves beneath their hemlines, and that's what he first saw of Ellie. The ankles a bit thick, yes, but the calves, shapely, promising something interesting higher on the leg. With the skirts today, no imagining is necessary, but in seeing them, the mind races, Norman thinks, and not in a good way. And the breasts, they tremble above the open neck of her blouse; a small charm tumbles down the gap from a necklace, inviting one to look. On cold winter days, she entered the office hugged by a heavy coat, covered, but then she shook free from the coat and there she was, all of her, the skirt, the blouse.

These newer styles seemed wrong, inappropriate, but… effective, was the word that came to Norman's mind.

They started showing up at work, one or two of them in the bathroom or the kitchenette. Norman wondered how they got past security. Everyone in the building was supposed to wear a name badge. “So,” the one with the lime-green sweater said, “dinner with Gina.”

“It's with the whole team,” Norman replied, stirring powdered creamer into his coffee. “Thanks for a job well done.”

The man frowned at Norman's cup. “How do you drink that crap?” he said. “Ever hear of a mochaccino?”

“I've been drinking it every day, and no, I wouldn't know about mochaccinos.”

The man went to the fridge and pawed through the leftover lunches, grimacing at the Chinese takeout containers and a half-eaten Caesar salad with breaded chicken strips. “Ugh, you people are going to eat yourselves into your graves. Want to see my six-pack?”

“Is there something you wanted?” Norman said, sighing.

He shut the fridge and turned to Norman. “You drink that sludge every day, and I'm sure you think it suits you just fine, but the truth is I've seen you drive by the coffee places and you're curious about the lattes, the mochaccinos, the frappuccinos.”

“I don't even know what those are, nor do I care,” Norman said. Truthfully, Norman often found himself staring at the windows of these coffee places that suddenly seemed everywhere, wondering about the possibilities inside, but he would never go in for fear of making himself the fool by ordering wrongly. “Why break what doesn't need fixing?” Norman said.