Worth the Fall (2 page)

The thought that maybe he still needed his father
’s permission to make a life decision pissed Petey off. But he couldn’t put that on his father—that was on him.

And time for him to blow the whistle and call the play dead.
“Dad,” he said, raising his hand in a “stop” motion as he saw his father about to argue with him. “Stop. Really. I’m slower on the ice now. The younger guys are getting bigger and are faster. I do not want to go out on a low note. The decision’s been made. I’ve told my coaches and the front office. Come May, or hopefully June, I’ll have played my last game.” He waited for a moment. When his father didn’t make a comeback, Petey looked him in the eye and gave his shit-eating grin. “And I’ll have my retirement drink out of the Stanley Cup.”

After a moment, his father returned his grin.
“Damn straight you’ll be drinking out of the Cup!”

And that would help ease the sting for his father—Petey finally winning the trophy that had eluded him his whole career. Hell, it
’d take the sting out of his body crying uncle for Petey, too.

“
Now,” he said, rising from the table, “I’ve got to go see that screaming, snotty brat of a baby or Lizzie will hand me my ass.”

His mother, with her innate sense of knowing when any storm between Petey and his father was over, came back into the dining room.
“You don’t fool me. You’re going to be a big pile of mush holding that baby. It’s going to make you want one of your own. I guess I’m ready to be a grandmother.”

“
Bite your tongue,” Petey and his father said simultaneously. They grinned at each other, the tension from their “talk” gone. They ran hot and cold, he and his father, but they always quickly found their way back to common ground.

He kissed his mother.
“Thanks again, Mom.” Making his way out of the dining room, across the living room and to the foyer to get his heavy winter coat, he added, “I shouldn’t be too late. I doubt Lizzie’s going to want to stay up late, drink some beers and shoot the shit.”

“
She will. You know she will Petey, just because she’ll think you want to,” his mother accurately stated. “Make sure you don’t keep her up too late. I can’t imagine she’s getting much sleep.”

She was right. His best friend Lizzie would sense he wanted to talk. She
’d hide any yawn and have her husband Finn put the baby to bed—and anything else that needed to be done—and be totally there for Petey. Just like she’d been for years.

And he
’d feel like a douche, but he’d totally take advantage of her friendship.

Just like he
’d done for years.

She had to know something was up anyway. Petey rarely came home during the season, as there just wasn
’t enough time for the ten-hour drive from Detroit to their Upper Peninsula hometown when you were playing a game nearly every night. And these few days he had now—during the All-Star Game break—were days he usually stayed in Detroit, giving his body a much-needed rest.

But even though he
’d just defended his decision to retire at the end of the season to his father, Petey was freaking out over the idea of giving up the only thing he did well.

Hell, the only thing he did period.

He needed Lizzie’s calm perspective on it all to keep him from running to the front office and ripping up the paperwork. Not that he knew if there was actually any paperwork or not. See? He didn’t even know how businesses worked.

All he knew was the ice. The glide, the cool, the feel of nothingness under his skates. And now he was going to give that all up because he wanted to be able to walk in an upright position when he was fifty.

He shut the front door behind him and stepped out onto the front porch. The temperature had dropped at least twenty degrees from when he’d gone inside hours ago to watch the All-Star Game with his dad. He’d been shoveling the front steps and walk, trying to prolong the task because he did not want to endure the torture of watching two of his teammates play in the elite game that Petey’d only played in once in his fifteen years in the league.

But his father had insisted Petey come in and watch the game with him and so he did, feeling a sense of doom, melancholy and pride for the game he loved all at the same time.

He shook off the game, the dinner and the conversation with his father. He’d always been remarkably good at not thinking too much. It’d served him well on the ice. Burrowing deeper into his parka, he made his way down the steps only to feel his feet go out from beneath him.

The ice. The substance on which he made his living. The hard surface he knew as home.

The cool glide betrayed him, and as he heard something in his knee pop he instinctively knew he wouldn’t have several months to come to terms with retirement. No farewell games. No last wave to the cheering crowd at the Joe.

Petey Ryan lay at the bottom of the steps in a crumpled heap.

Retired.

***

“And this is all of us last Fourth of July. See? That’s you, there. And that’s Mom.” Alison pointed to the various faces in the family portrait she’d blown up, framed and placed in her father’s room in the long-term care section of the hospital. “Do you remember that day, Dad?”

“
Yes, of course, Alison. It was only months ago,” her father answered with a touch of exasperation in his voice.

Good. That was good. He remembered, and he was pissed that she questioned his memory. A good day, then.

“It was the day before we shipped out to Korea. God, that was a fun day. Do you remember how Jimmy chased after you that day? But you weren’t having any of it, were you? Playing hard to get, even then.”

Not a good day. But not one of his worst, either.

“Not playing hard to get. Just not interested in Jimmy.” She’d tried different tactics when her father was like this—lucid, but in a distant place. She’d corrected him, changed the topic, and pleaded with him to remember. She’d read up on the proper course of action, and there didn’t seem to be a clear consensus on the topic. In the end, the kindest thing seemed to be to just go along with him.

“
Why not? Jimmy was a
great
guy. A great guy,” her father said. His attention drifted from the photo to a blank spot on the wall where he seemed to see the old gang because a smile lit up his wrinkled face.

Her father was eighty-five, and, up until a few years ago, had always looked a decade younger than his age. But the ravages of severe Alzheimer
’s had taken a toll on more than just his mind. He’d never been a big man, but now he was a shadow of his former self. Small and weak, a recurring lung infection had left him barely able to do the small tasks that would allow him to leave the hospital and enter an assisted-living facility.

That
’s what they’d been hoping for. An assisted-living place that could keep him safe, sheltered, and in comfort. They’d all discussed it—Alison, her mother Nora, and Charles, her father—years ago, back when he’d first been diagnosed. He didn’t want the burden of his care to fall to Nora and they’d gone along with him.

But behind his back, Alison and her mother had formed an alliance of their own. They would do all they could to keep Charles in the family home as his disease progressed. And they were succeeding, until Nora became ill herself.

At first the doctors thought Alzheimer’s for Nora too. Alison had just about lost it that day. She’d called her friend Katie, who was in Spain with her guy, Darío, and unloaded. She just didn’t see how she was going to be able to handle it all. But it turned out not to be Alzheimer’s but a slow-growth dementia of another kind.

Nora had the same sad bouts of not remembering things from the early past, but less frequently than her father did. Her mother
’s condition was not quite as debilitating as her father’s.

But there was no way now that they
’d be able to keep her father in the family home. Her mother was barely able to look after herself, even with a daily visit from Alison. There was no way she could care for her husband too.

“
The trouble with you is you don’t want the nice guys. Oh, you take ‘em, but you don’t really want them,” her father said now, pulling Alison out of what was heading toward a self-pity reverie.

“
What?” she asked, trying to remember what tangent her father was on. Oh, right. She was playing hard to get to Jimmy, who was bound for Korea. It did sound kind of bitchy. Poor guy heading to war and all. Least she could do was throw the kid a bone and let him steal a kiss behind the old oak tree.

“
You think nice guys are weak and you know you can control weak.” He looked at her with knowing eyes and she wondered if he was back.

“
Dad?” she said softly.

“
You’ve been doing it for years. Let the weak ones in, push them around, then dump them because you know deep down inside that’s not what you want. Not what you need.”

“
Daddy?” she said a bit more strongly, trying to pull him out of the past. At least, she was hoping it was the past. Because if not, she was becoming uncomfortable thinking about her father’s estimation of her love life.

“
You need a strong man who won’t let you push him around. But you won’t—” And just like that he was gone. It was like a curtain had closed over his mind. When it happened it didn’t seem to hurt him. He would just get a blank look on his face, which would turn to confusion and then acceptance. It was like he knew his brain just couldn’t put any pieces together right now and it would be best to just power down.

It broke Alison
’s heart.

She patted his hand, said some soothing words to him, then got up to place the photo back on the shelf. She heard the rumbling of her phone vibrating in her purse and dug it out. Lizzie was calling. Odd. She knew Alison always spent the hours after having dinner with her mom at the hospital with her dad. Then she went back to her parents
’ house, where she’d recently begun spending the nights.

“
Lizard, what’s up?” she said when she connected to the call.

“
Are you still at the hospital with your dad?” Lizzie asked. Alison felt a stab of fear at the tone of concern in Lizzie’s voice.

“
Yes. Why?”

“
Petey’s on the way there. He’s in an ambulance. His mom just called me. He slipped on the ice and fell down the front stairs.”

“
In Detroit?” But no, that didn’t make any sense. Still, Alison wasn’t getting it. Her genius IQ seemed to shut down whenever Petey’s name was mentioned. It was like her intelligence level dropped down to his or something. He didn’t even need to be near, just brought to mind.

“
No, here. He was home during the All-Star break. Just for the night.”

“
He drove all that way for one night?”

“
He flew. He didn’t—listen, Al, he’s being brought in to the hospital right now. I need you to go find out what’s going on. How he is. His parents are on their way. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

“
No, I—” But Lizzie’d already disconnected.

Alarm shot through her, but logic quickly prevailed. His parents
’ front steps were only about four or five high. He couldn’t have sustained too serious of an injury—at least not life-threatening—from tumbling down them. Could he? Perhaps he was lucky and had fallen on his head—that way there’d be no damage.

She snorted internally at her own bitchery. Too bad she only used that one on herself and not on Petey. She sighed and started collecting her things. Due to Lizzie
’s command, maybe she’d get to bestow the zinger on the big man himself.

She kissed and hugged her father goodbye, promising to see him the next day. He absently patted her on the back and called her Sally.

She left his room and started making her way to the other wing of the small hospital toward the little-used emergency room entrance.

All hockey players are bilingual. They know English and profanity.

~ Gordie Howe

He wasn’t hard to find. For one thing, it was a pretty small hospital and thankfully there weren’t a lot of emergencies in the neighboring towns of Houghton and Hancock, which shared the hospital. Or at least not a lot of emergencies from seven to ten most nights, because Alison could hear the ambulances arriving when she was in her father’s room and she didn’t hear them all that often.

The other reason she found Petey fairly easily was that a crowd was already beginning to form around him. Local boy makes good. The town hero. And even more beloved because he never forgot where he came from, spending his summers in the U.P., giving to local charities, and helping out with summer youth hockey.

Yeah, a real freaking role model.

He was being wheeled down the hallway on a stretcher, coming right toward her. The EMTs were guiding him, one in front, one pushing from behind, with a nurse on either side of the gurney. Two more nurses were following.