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“The Lord works in mysterious ways, Lynne,” Rex said.

Cam's dad took a bunch of us to a pricey steak house for an early dinner after the game. “Detroit and Dallas won and covered yesterday. The Deuce is feeling flush,” said Cam. Technically, Cam's dad is Cameron Cabot Carter Jr. but he hates the word “Junior” so we sometimes call him the Deuce. He likes that. Besides Cam and his parents, our party included Tamara, my mother, Faith, Lindsey Carter (who seemed almost as happy to be with us as she was that Caitlin was home with a babysitter), me, and a surprise starter—Cam's and my agent, Denny Moran. Denny's a good guy. Midfifties, divorced for as long as I've known him. His ex-wife loved Denny's ex–best friend more than she loved Denny. It made him distrustful of wives and friends and helped turn him into a workaholic. Denny's a good-looking guy in an aging Robert Redford sort of way. And he's honest and ethical. But that's not to say I wanted him hitting on my mother. I think he hip checked Lindsey and almost broke a couple of chairs trying to sit next to my mom. First Denny tried a few conversational gambits about the game and how proud she must be of me and so forth. Then he blew himself up. “So, Jackie,” he started a sentence.

“Jacqueline, please,” my mother said in a voice colder than Nome.

When Cam heard that he pulled in his chest like a batter avoiding a high fastball. I thought I was the only one who saw the gesture but Faith leaned over as if to pick up a napkin and whispered to me, “So much for Denny crowding the plate.”

When Cam's father got the check he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small leather-bound book embossed with the words “Business Journal.” He uses it to keep track of his expenses for tax deductions.

“What's that, Grandpa Carter?” Lindsey asked.

“This,” said Cam's father, holding up the book, “is the greatest work of fiction in the English language.” I like the Deuce.

As we left the restaurant, Faith and I found ourselves walking together and out of earshot of everyone else. She asked me why I seemed so happy that my mother had brushed back Denny Moran. I said I didn't know but maybe it was a habitual reaction left over from childhood.

“Well I think your mom knows you feel that way. So don't.”

“Don't what?”

“Don't feel that way.”

“Can't help it.”

“Can too.”

“Can not. And why should I?”

“Because your mother deserves it,” she said. “And because you're not eleven years old anymore.”

*   *   *

My mother and Mammam left on Saturday morning before I went to practice. “We'll see you at Christmas, Jean Pierre,” my mother said. Then the verdict came down. “I like Faith very much” was all she said. But she'd never said anything—good or bad—about Sheri the Equestrienne or Missy Taylor the New England Patriots Dance Team Coordinator or any of the women I'd introduced her to since Lisa.

We had noon ice at the Garden and then a charter flight to Philly for a Sunday-night game with the Flyers. I hate playing in Philly. Toughest fans in the league, maybe in the world, not counting German soccer hooligans. Cam and I were walking from the Philly airport terminal to our bus when a kid maybe fifteen years old and standing about fifty feet away recognized me and yelled, “Hey, you JP Savard?”

“Guilty,” I said.

“You suck!” the kid yelled. “Flyers gonna kick your fuckin' ass!”

“Welcome to Philly, the town that booed Santa Claus,” Cam said, and told me the story of Santa Claus being booed and pelted with snowballs during halftime of a Philadelphia Eagles football game years ago.

We beat the Flyers 3–2 in a meat grinder of a game marred for me only by Serge “the Weasel” Balon scoring a garbage goal. I was juggling a shot that bounced off of my chest when Balon bunted the puck to the ice with his stick, then backhanded it into the net. The way he chopped at me I thought the ref could've whistled him for slashing. I also think I should have handled the first shot cleanly. But that wasn't the bad part. On his next shift, with the face-off to my right, Balon looked over and winked at me. A TV camera caught it, so it was all over the sports news and highlight shows. Pisses me off just thinking about it.

We chartered back to Boston after the game. Cold rain driven by a northeast wind lashed the tarmac as we touched down at one in the morning. I'd heard weather reports about a cold front sweeping in behind the rain. It's after Thanksgiving that we enter the heart of the season. Training camp and the first two months of the schedule seem like so much overture. Spring and the playoffs—if we make them—lie unreachably far away. It's the dark cold time when, as Lisa used to say, “you have to carry your sunshine around with you.” I'm not good at that.

Five

If there's reincarnation the Mad Hatter is coming back as a weasel.

Lynne Abbott, Knower of All Things, broke the story. In a box on page 1 of the
Boston Post
Monday sports section, Lynne wrote that she'd “learned from multiple sources with direct knowledge of the trade that the Bruins and Rangers will today announce a deal bringing New York's seldom-used fourth-line center Gaston Deveau, 30, and two third-round draft picks to Boston in exchange for Bruins forward Brendan Fitzmorris, 21.” Lynne also pointed out that in trading Brendan, Madison Hattigan was unloading about $1 million in annual salary while assuming only the league-minimum $475,000 on Gaston's contract.

“Un-fucking-believable,” Cam said when I picked him up for the drive to practice. “The Mad Hatter saves Gabe Vogel $525,000 in payroll, probably pockets a $52,500 rake-off for himself, and we lose a good young prospect. We could've had Gaston for two minor leaguers. Tops.”

We arrived at the Garden to find Lynne leaning against the wall in the corridor outside our dressing room. “You don't want to go in there yet,” she said, nodding toward the dressing room, from which we heard muffled shouts coming through the cinder-block wall. I couldn't make out every word but “salary-dumping parsimonious motherfucker” came through pretty clear.

“Brendan hasn't been this mad since his girlfriend used the parental controls to block the Spice Channel on his cable,” Lynne said.

Just then the Mad Hatter came storming out of the room, pausing to stab a bony finger at Cam's chest and shout, “You're captain. You wanted Deveau. You talk to Brendan. And you goddamn well better be right about Deveau!”

“Probably rushing off to look up ‘parsimonious,'” I said as Hattigan scurried away.

Cam went into the dressing room and I stayed outside for a few minutes, ostensibly to talk to Lynne but really because I never know what to say to a guy who's been traded. There are maybe a dozen guys in the league who have no-trade clauses in their contracts. The rest of us have to sweat it out every season. Being traded isn't just disruptive, it's humiliating. I've seen more than a few guys cry when they're told they've been traded.

When I finally went into the dressing room Cam and Brendan were sitting together. I heard Cam say, “You're right. There are twenty great guys here. But you know what? There are twenty great guys on the Rangers, too.”

Brendan nodded and buried his face in a towel, his anger giving way to sorrow and resignation. Then he wiped his face, threw the towel in the laundry cart, and started packing his equipment bag. By the time he finished, most of the guys were in the room and Brendan went around shaking everyone's hand and saying good-bye. It was a classy way to go out. When he came to me he said, “Watch out for Broadway Brendan, JP.” Then he asked me if Lynne Abbott was around. I said she was still outside in the corridor. I shook his hand and wished him luck in New York. But not against us.

“What'd Brendan want?” I asked Lynne a few minutes later as I clomped out to practice.

“Remember that stunt he pulled with his penis in the dressing room last season?” she said. “He wanted to apologize again. He said the first time he apologized only because Cam made him. But this time he really meant it.”

“You believe him?”

“Yeah. Guys change, JP. People grow up.”

“Not hockey players.”

“Even hockey players,” she said. “It just takes you longer.”

*   *   *

I was stretching before practice when Kevin Quigley asked me if I'd help him deliver the sticks we'd promised Nan O'Brien, the social worker from Catholic Charities. Except Quigley never actually
asks
for anything. What he said was, “Hey, peckah-head, we got to get those sticks ovah to Nan O'Brien today because we go to Ottawa tomorrow and she needs them for her fund-raisah.”

I asked him why he needed me, seeing as how he was the one with the SUV. “Her office is in Government Centah and you cahn't pahk there,” Quig said. “I figure we can carry them over in two stick bags. It's only a few blocks.”

Kev got everyone to give him an autographed stick, then borrowed two stick bags from Les Sullivan, our equipment manager. Kevin and I each carried a bag through a cold rain to the Catholic Charities offices.

“You think she's a free agent, JP?” Quig asked.

“She wasn't wearing a ring when we met her on the plane,” I said.

“Maybe she's just not married on the road. Like most of the guys in the league. How old you think she is?”

“Late thirties. Maybe forty. Too old for you, Kev,” I said. Quig is twenty-seven. “Besides, she didn't sound like she's from Charlestown.” I'd never seen Quig with a woman over twenty-five and who wasn't a member of his hometown parish, Holy Family. I think Kev holds the NHL record for dating women named Colleen or Bridget. Most of his girlfriends talk in that Greater Boston Irish-Catholic patois that even the best actors can't imitate. The woman Quig was with at last year's team Christmas party tried to tell me I'd played well against Ottawa the previous night. How that came out was: “You played wickud pissah against the Senatahs, JP.”

*   *   *

The name plate on the wall beside an open office door read: “Nancy O'Brien—Family Preservation Program.” Nancy was behind her desk when Quig and I walked in, dripping wet and carrying stick bags.

“Oh, thank you. This means so much to us,” she said, stepping out from behind her desk as Quig and I took the sticks out of the bags and propped them in a corner of her office. I have to say that Nancy O'Brien, LICSW, was looking good in a classic Mrs. Robinson sort of way. She still had the leghold trap holding back her hair but gone was the pantsuit she'd worn on the plane and in its place was a black chalk-stripe business suit, the skirt of which stopped about four inches above her knees. “If I had legs like hers I'd wear skirts, too,” I told Quig later. She still wasn't wearing a diamond or a wedding ring.

Nancy told us the signed sticks would bring in thousands of dollars, most of which would go directly to her program. “If we don't clear at least fifty thousand dollars on this dinner dance and auction I'm going to have to lay off a caseworker,” she said, adding a wry, “Merry Christmas.”

“So where do you want to have lunch?” Nan asked. Kevin hadn't told me lunch was included in the deal, probably because, for me, it wasn't.

“Union Oystah House is good with me,” Quig said. “JP cahn't stay, though. We promised Sully we'd get the stick bags right back to him. He's packing us up for Ottawa and Atlanta.”

I picked up the audible. “Yeah, I've got to take the bags back,” I said to Nan. “Besides, I told Cam I'd go to the airport with him to meet Gaston Deveau.” That wasn't true. I was just trying to help Quig. Maybe pick up the assist if he nailed Nan O'Brien.

“I heard the guys in the office talking about that trade,” Nan said. “It must be awful to be owned by someone who can trade you away.”

“It's not like we don't get paid,” I said. But Nan was right.

I grabbed the empty stick bags and walked back to the Garden, stopping briefly in Quincy Market, where a store specializing in old photos had an eight-by-ten black-and-white studio publicity shot of the late actress Anne Bancroft as the aging seductress Mrs. Robinson in
The Graduate.
I bought the photo and, a few minutes later, taped it to Kevin Quigley's locker. The dressing room was quiet so I spent a couple of hours answering mail. I try to answer every letter except the ones from the wackos who never sign their name or give a return address. And who, I suspect, never in their wussy life set foot on a rink, field, court, or anyplace they wouldn't enjoy safety and anonymity. “You can't hide on the foul line,” Faith once said. You can't hide in a goal crease or a batter's box or a tennis court either, which is why I respect anyone who has the guts to play anything more than a video game.

*   *   *

It was about 4:30 and getting dark when I pulled Boss Scags into Faith's driveway, surprised to see her Lexus parked outside and the lights on in the garage. I entered the garage through the side door and found Faith placing strings of Christmas lights on the floor. “Testing them before I string them on the house,” she said.

“When you doing that?”

“This weekend.”

“I'll help you do them now if you want. Rain's letting up.”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“Premature illumination,” she said.

*   *   *

Over dinner I told Faith about Quigley apparently taking a run at Nan O'Brien, who must be ten or twelve years older than he is.

“What's Kevin like? He's the only guy on the team I can't figure out,” she said.

Next to Cam, I consider Quig my closest friend on the team, so it surprised me that I couldn't tell Faith more than I did. Just that Kevin's a local guy who played college hockey at Boston University and still lives in the parish he grew up in. The only time he ever goes anywhere is when we play a road game. Quig had a tough childhood. His father is a Boston cop, a gruff guy I'd met a few times. “Get too close to him and you could catch a bad cold,” Cam says of Quig's dad. Once when Quig was drunk he told me his father used to slap him around a lot and that his mother was too mousy to do anything about it. The abuse ended when Kev was seventeen and hit back. Dropped his father with two punches—“a body shot and a head shot. We got along better after that,” Quig told me. Quigley was a linebacker in high school and still wears number 63, his old football number. But he knew he had a better future in hockey. Kevin's a great guy to go to a ball game with and everyone on the team knows he'll cover your back. And he might lead the NHL in charity work. But, aside from that, no one really understands him.