Page 4 of Puck the Coach's Son
“Fuck off,” Creed says, pleasantly.
The room laughs. The room keeps talking. Nobody tries to sit me down for a pep talk about my father. Nobody comes over. I'm grateful and I'm alone; I'm not sure those are different things.
When I've got my base layer off, I take my towel off the hook and walk to the showers. I don't look at Creed's stall. I don't look at anybody's stall.
The showers are the worst part of a new room. It's where the hierarchy gets drawn and redrawn. Everybody pretends not to look at anybody. Everybody looks. I have been in a lot of locker rooms and I still haven't figured out how to do it without feeling like I'm doing it wrong.
The stall at the far end is the one I want. The wall is a wall on one side, which is half a problem solved. I get in, turn the water hot, face the tile. I can hear the room through the water: laughter down the hall, a cell phone somewhere, the hiss of three other showers already running.
I close my eyes. I do the exercise my sports psychologist taught me two cities ago. Four in, seven hold, eight out. I do it twice. The knot in my chest un-clenches a notch. I get the soap.
The shower next to mine turns on.
I don't open my eyes. The showers here are open-topped; the partitions only come up to the shoulder. Whoever it is can see me if they want. I keep my face in the water.
“Sweetheart.”
It's under the sound of the water, which means he's close to the partition, which means he's leaning on it. I don't answer. I don't move. My body has every available muscle locked. My face is in the water. He can't see my face.
“Nice skate today.” He says it friendly. He says it like he's about to buy me a beer. “Real nice.”
I keep my eyes closed.
“You know what your dad did to me today, sweetheart?”
I don't answer.
“He benched me.” A pause. “For the whistle. He benched me forthe whistle. Everybody in this room saw him do it. Your old man's gonna try to make an example out of me. I get it. It's day one. He's setting a tone.”
I don't answer. My heart is hitting my ribs like a fist.
“Here's what's gonna happen, sweetheart.” His voice drops. It does not get louder. It gets quieter, which is so much worse. “He's gonna come at me, and I'm gonna come at him, and we're gonna do this whole song and dance all season. And somewhere in the middle of it, I'm gonna pick a night. And I'm gonna put my hands on you. And I'm gonna ruin you.”
I have not moved. I cannot move. The water is hot and it is cold at the same time. My whole skin has become its own animal.
“You ever been with a man, sweetheart?”
I don't answer.
He laughs, low, close to the partition. I can feel the vibration of it through the tile. “Yeah. I didn't think so.” The water keeps running. “Gonna be a real nice thing for your dad, knowing I got to you first. A real nice thing.”
He turns his water off. He doesn't wait for me to say anything. He wouldn't have known what to do if I did. I hear his footsteps on the tile, slapping away, the grunt of him toweling off at the end of the row, the door swinging shut.
I stand with my face in the water past the point the hot has started to hurt. I count my breaths. Four in, seven hold, eight out. Four in, seven hold, eight out.
My body is doing something I have never given it permission to do.
I have never given it permission to do much of anything. I have eaten what I was supposed to eat, slept the hours I was supposed to sleep, moved my body through the drills and the lifts and the practice schedules Dad set for me like a good car through its maintenance intervals. My body is a professional instrument. That's what Dad calls it—when he calls it anything at all. “Take care of the instrument.” I have never done this to the instrument. I don't even know what this is, except that every nerve in it has just been told it has been waiting all its life and now it's been told for what.
I turn the water colder. It doesn't help.
I tell myself: he is trying to hurt my father through me. I tell myself: he is a bully and a predator, and he has nothing to do with who I am. I tell myself: you are not the kind of person this happens to.
Under all of it, quiet, in a voice I don't want to hear:Yes, you are.
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MADDOX
