Chapter Fourteen
Dawn
“You’re coaching hockey.” Logan had explained the situation to me. I understood his decision. I even kind of admired him for it; he was doing something he’d find difficult in order to help someone else who was struggling. All of that was true, but at the same time? “We had plans for this week. I made sure my evenings were free because your evenings were going to be free. But now you’re going to be busy. Coaching hockey.” But, no, I didn’t want to be that girl. I wouldn’t be that girl. “I mean—it’s great. Of course you have to help this kid out. I get it. And it’s not like we had reservations or anything. We’d probably have ended up hanging out at the beach most of the time anyway… It’s no big deal.”
“It’s only this week,” Logan said. We were talking on the phone, so I couldn’t see his expression, and that was probably just as well. I didn’t want to be the person who made him unhappy. I didn’t want to make his life more difficult.
“Yeah, for sure,” I said. “No problem. It’s great that you’re doing it. Have you met the kid yet? The sick kid?”
“At breakfast. We’re going to sit down for a bit as soon as I’m off the phone and go over plans, and then the team’s got ice time at ten thirty.”
“Does he seem like he’s going to get into it?”
“I think so, yeah. He’s not—well, you know, he wants to be on the ice. So he’s not, like, thrilled. But I think I can get him excited enough to make it worthwhile.”
“I’m sure you can.” It was like my conditioning was burbling up from whatever deep pit I’d buried it in and I was back in supportive-hockey-girlfriend mode without even a hiccup. “He’s lucky to get to work with you. Not because you’re a good hockey player—just because you’re a good guy.”
“And you’re not mad about our plans getting shifted around a little?”
“Of course not.” And it wasn’t a lie. I wasn’t mad. I was something else, though, something I couldn’t name and didn’t want to think about too much. “This sounds important. You could be changing his life, you know?”
“That might be a bit of an exaggeration.”
“Well, I said ‘could be,’ so that’s a get-out-of-exaggeration-free card.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ve got to go—Andy’s waiting for me. Thanks for being cool about this.”
“I’d have to be pretty psycho to not be cool about you helping a kid with Leukemia.”
“Yeah, okay, fair enough,” he said, and I could hear the laughter in his voice. “So I’ll call you tonight, okay?”
“Yup. Talk to you later.”
I hung up and paced around my room a little. I felt—there weren’t words for it. Restless, trapped, anxious, something like that, and on top of it a good layer of feeling stupid, because why the hell was I letting myself get upset about something as minor as this?
“Grow up, Dawn,” I said out loud. It helped a little.
But I guess not enough, because even after the twenty-minute walk to Mrs. McMann’s house, she still frowned at me from her place on the porch as I turned into her yard. “What are you scowling about? You need to be careful of that—Botox is expensive, but nobody likes a wrinkled forehead.”
I forced my face to relax. “Sorry. Just grumpy. No good reason for it.”
“Don’t apologize to me. It’s not my forehead, and I won’t be around long enough to see yours after it gets all wrinkly.” She smiled peacefully, same as she always did after making one of her morbid comments about her impending death. Which seemed, as far as I could tell from her general level of health and vitality, likely to be a distant, distant event. “If you don’t have a good reason for being grumpy, what’s your bad reason?”
I sighed and flopped down on the steps leading up to the porch. “Well, the entire universe isn’t behaving exactly as I want it to, and obviously that’s completely unacceptable. Doesn’t it know I’m a princess and should get everything I want as soon as I want it?”
“Stupid universe,” Mrs. McMann said. “We should teach it a lesson.”
“I thought you were teaching the lessons to me.”
“Maybe today’s lesson will involve ways to teach the universe a lesson.”
“That’s getting a bit complicated.”
“Not at all.” She pushed herself to her feet. “You stay there. I’m going to get my hat. And I’ll make some lemonade. I’ll make some for you, too. You might not want it now, but you’ll be thirsty later.”
“Technically I work for you. Shouldn’t I be making the lemonade?”
“Don’t be silly. I haven’t taught you how to make lemonade yet.”
I wasn’t sure it was that difficult, but I wouldn’t have thought it was that difficult to make a martini, either, until she’d grilled me on my technique for a few hours in a row. Although possibly that had just been because she was enjoying her role in “disposing of the evidence” of my mistakes.
Anyway, I sat on the porch steps and she bustled around inside the house and then came out with her big floppy beach hat and a Thermos that I assumed held lemonade, and she said, “Let’s go!” as if we were heading off on a wonderful adventure. I trailed along behind her as we walked around the side of the house, down the path through the garden and past the overgrown hedge, and out onto the beach.
“No tools allowed,” she told me. “The universe needs to learn to respect us, not our puny tools.”
“Okay, I won’t use tools,” I promised. “What am I going to be doing without tools?”
“‘To see a world in a grain of sand,’ we need to truly look at the grain of sand,” she said and smiled sweetly at me.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. That sounded like a quote, but I don’t get it. And do we really want to see a world in a grain of sand? What?”
“Actually, if we had a good microscope, it would be well worth our while to look at sand up close. It’s beautiful. You should Google it sometime.”
She was always a little extra pleased with herself when she used a modern term like “Google” correctly, so I gave her a moment of self-satisfaction before I said, “Okay, I will. But right now?”
“You are so task-oriented. We’re on the beach. It’s a beautiful day. You’re being paid to stand there on the sand looking at the water. Why are you so impatient to get on to things?” She raised an eyebrow. “Maybe that’s our lesson for today. You need to learn to enjoy the moment.”
“I thought our lesson for today was how to teach the universe a lesson.”
“Yes, but I was bluffing on that. I have no idea how to teach the universe a lesson. I’m not really sure it’s possible.”
“Mrs. McMann, maybe we should—”
“Sand castles,” she said firmly. “Was that what you were going to suggest? Excellent idea. We’ll build sand castles. But without tools. Not because of that universe thing, just because I didn’t bring any. And because you’re too ambitious. If I gave you tools you’d want to engineer some multi-story structure, and you’d either be patronizing or competitive about my sand castle compared to yours, and frankly, that’s not what today is meant to be about.”
“I don’t think you can really say what the day’s meant to be about when you just admitted you were totally making it up as you went.”
“I’m eighty-seven years old and I’m your boss. I can say anything I damn well want.” She announced it triumphantly, and I couldn’t help smiling at her.
“Okay,” I said. “Sand castles. No tools. Are there any other restrictions I should know about?”
“I wish the lake had a real tide,” she mused. “If it did I’d make you build down below the high tide line so you’d know that the physical manifestations of your labors would soon be washed away, but the spiritual lessons would live in your soul forever. But no tides, so screw it. Let’s spend a couple hours building sand castles and drinking lemonade, then go buy fries for lunch and spend the afternoon reading in the shade. Sound good?”
“I’m not sure I should be taking money for this,” I admitted.
“You should always take money. It comes in handy for so many things.” She linked her arm in mine and added, “Besides, I’m having a ball. You’d be a bargain at twice the price.”
“Then maybe I should ask for a raise.”
She laughed, unlinked our arms, and said, “Don’t get carried away. Now—sand castle location. Very important. Far enough from each other that we have space, close enough that we can gossip as we work.”
“Gossip?”
“Of course. That’s an age-old sand castle tradition. You can tell me about your young fellow, and what he did to make you so grumpy so early in the morning.”
“Mrs. McMann,” I started, trying to figure out a polite way to tell her to mind her own business. But then it occurred to me that maybe I’d like to talk it through. Mrs. McMann didn’t seem like the sort of person to be too shocked if I admitted to being a little petty about something—hell, she’d probably cheer me on. “It’s stupid,” I told her. “I meant it when I said I was being a princess.”
“Well, a princess needs a castle,” she said and gestured to the sand. “Get to work. And tell me everything.”
…
Logan
“So you really hate hockey?” I asked. We were sitting on the sand at the beach, looking out at the lake, and Dawn was nestled between my legs, leaning back against my chest. It should have been close to impossible for me to think of anything but her lean warmth, the strength and grace of her body, but…I was managing. It was Friday night, with the camp tournament scheduled for the next day, and it was hard to not be a little excited about it, especially when my team was closing out the week undefeated. Yeah, it hurt to be at the rink and not on the ice. It ached when I saw the sweaty, happy faces of the kids as they laughed and jostled and trash-talked each other on the ice. It absolutely burned when one of them got a nice goal or made a smart play or in any other way did something worthwhile and special. But there was sweetness, too. Just being part of it again—the sounds and smells and all the rest of it—even if I wasn’t in the middle, it was still something to be at the edges.
Something I would have liked to have shared with Dawn. “I mean, we spent most of Monday night looking at pictures of microscoped sand on our phones. The pictures were great and everything—sand really is a lot cooler than I ever gave it credit for—but that came from your day at work, right? But when I talked about my day at work you—”
“I listened!” Dawn protested. She hadn’t pulled away from me, but her body was tense, now, not relaxed like it had been.
“Yeah, you did, but you—I don’t know. Everything else we talk about it’s like your brain is—okay, this sounds kind of creepy, so think of it only in a really, really figurative sense, okay? But it’s like your brain is actively sending little tendrils out to join with mine, so you can experience the same thing and we can share ideas completely, and it’s like my brain is sending the same threads your way—okay, don’t give me that face; I said it was creepy. But the point is, when I talk about hockey you just—you just listen. Like you’re anybody, not like you’re you.”
We were sitting on our own, not near the fire, and she was facing away from me so all I could see was a vague silhouette of her face. But I didn’t think she was looking too happy. “I know that’s kind of an impossibly high standard. Like, you’re just being a good listener when I’m used to you being some kind of supernatural psychic communicator or something. I get that. But, still—you really hate hockey?”
She sighed. “I don’t hate it. I just…don’t love it. This isn’t a secret. Six days ago if someone had started talking about hockey, you’d have stood up and walked away. You did stand up and walk away a few times. So it’s great that you’ve had your big epiphany and everything, but—I did my time, hearing about the damn game. When you talk about it—like, if you talk about the kids, and their personalities and whatever, that’s fine. I can handle that. But do you think I care about some great play somebody made?”
It probably wasn’t fair, but I was actually hurt. “I talked about a play one time.”
“Yeah. So this isn’t a big deal, right? It’s not a big deal that I’m not a super-communicator on this one topic, and it’s not a big deal that you talked about something I’m not interested in one time, and it’s all going to go away the day after tomorrow anyway. Right? So this isn’t a fight we need to bother having.”
It was my turn to sigh. She was probably right. No, she was definitely right, at least about us not needing to fight about it. It was just hard to have something eating my brain the way hockey had been for the week—well, for my whole life, really—and not be able to talk to her about it. “Andy’s kind of an asshole. Does saying that count as being about the kids?”
“Uh, yeah. But why’s he an asshole?” She sounded a little shocked, but amused, too, and her body relaxed back into mine, so I felt like we were back on the right path. “He has cancer, Logan! You need to be nice to him.”
“That’s what I told myself from Monday to today. And, okay, maybe it’s the cancer that’s making him an asshole—I know I was a jerk to a lot of people when I was injured, and I can see how being super sick would make it hard to behave. But even if I understand the reason, that doesn’t mean he’s not an asshole.”
“Maybe we can go with acting like an asshole,” Dawn tried. “Since you can’t be sure whether it’s his true self or whether it’s the cancer talking.”
“Okay, yeah, I can go for that. Andy’s acting like an asshole.” And then I couldn’t help adding, “He seems to be pretty good at it, like maybe he’s had a fair bit of practice.”
Dawn laughed and ran her hands down to rest on my thighs, which always felt just about perfect, and I told her about Andy’s annoying ways. She pointed out that Brady had said he was nice, and I told her that sucking up to adults and being fake around them was just one of the many ways Andy was a jerk.
“Is he being mean to you, baby?” she asked.
I would have been a bit happier about the pet name if I didn’t suspect she was actually calling me a baby. “No. He sucks up to me, too. But I’ve seen him with the guys. The team. He’s an—he’s acting like an asshole.”
It wasn’t a big deal that Andy was an asshole. It wasn’t even a big deal that my girlfriend didn’t love the sport I loved. It was all fine. Everything was good.
But for the first time since I’d first met Dawn I was a little—not dissatisfied with her. I mean, her decision to stay the hell away from hockey was one of the things I liked about her. I was just disappointed, I guess. It would have been nice if we could have been totally, completely in synch in every possible way.
I knew that wasn’t realistic. I knew she was great. But there was a tiny niggle somewhere in my brain, now. Nothing terrible.
But everything wasn’t absolutely perfect between me and Dawn anymore. And I wasn’t sure quite what to do about it.