Dominick
July passed in a blur, flying faster than I could keep track of.
July also passed by with an agonizing, glacial slowness that made each second feel like an hour, and made hours feel like forever.
Time, it seemed, simply couldn't make up its mind.
My routine hadn't changed very much, at least not on weekdays. I still spent all my morning and afternoon in either the gym or the rink, either working out or just practicing. I worked on muscles and speed, pumped iron and built endurance. It was the same stuff I'd been doing for years.
It used to feel important; now it felt like a tedious formality that I needed to suffer through before my days—or at least my evenings—could really begin.
Those had changed, quite a bit. My usual carousing with Alton had taken a back seat to holing myself up at Helena's place, eating her cooking and playing board games with Ali. Or working more on the back yard, landscaping and restoring the old iron furniture to its former glory one piece at a time.
It was a culture shock, but I loved almost every second of it.
Almost.
There were those moments when my eyes met Helena's, and I remembered what I had lost. Or more accurately, what I'd never had and never would have. Those times were even slower, even more brutal than the worst early-morning gym session. At least when I was working out, I knew what was going on and why and when I could leave.
With Helena, it was still a mystery. Something had gone terribly wrong, but I didn't know what. I wanted to ask, but she clearly didn't want to talk about it. I wanted to push, but I couldn't risk making a bad situation into an impossible one. As hard as it was to be around her sometimes, the only thing worse would've been to not be around her.
Ordinarily I would've taken the hint, backed off, and let go. Except that, too, was impossible. How could I try to move on if I still saw her every day, still spent much of my time in her home? Even if I'd wanted to forget all about Helena, there was no way to do it without abandoning Ali, and that was too high of a price.
Besides, I still enjoyed being with Helena. She made me happy for the most part; it was only whenever I felt another spark between us that things felt wrong. It was so easy to convince myself she felt the same thing, but I was obviously just deluding myself.
Revving up my bike, I passed another row of cars on my way down the Massachusetts Turnpike. At long last, it was finally the weekend and I could visit earlier—and none too soon, either. Last night had been unusually challenging; I'd been forced to attend a high-class soirée by one of the team's sponsors, and hadn't been able to see either Helena or my daughter at all. It had taken all of my professionalism and willpower to not walk out in the middle of the event, and even then I'd only barely managed.
If only Alton knew…I thought with a smirk. No doubt, my best friend would've been incredibly amused if he'd known just how difficult the party had been for me.
Or the reason why.
I really needed to tell him something soon. We'd been practically inseparable in our youth, and even now we both played on the Bruins and saw each other almost daily. Despite being so close, I could barely remember the last time we'd hit up a bar together, or even seen each other outside of the gym. At this point, he probably was assuming I had cancer or had become a Mormon or something. It was only his strict adherence to the Man-Code of Silence that kept him from asking what was happening.
Of course, knowing Alton, cancer might very well have worried him less than the truth. Sure, he'd probably be amused by how domesticated I'd become and crack a few jokes. After that, though, he'd probably try to convince me to walk away. As unpleasant as his own family life had been, I couldn't blame him for being cynical. I'd skipped over the beginning and middle stages of love and sex, jumping right to the messy obligations and pushy demands.
Or at least, that's how he would see it.
He was wrong, of course.
How to break the news to Alton was a puzzle for another day, however, and all thought of him slipped my mind as I pulled into Helena's driveway. I dismounted the bike and checked my side bag, finding the carefully-wrapped bouquet of pink, white, and orange roses still intact.
Buying them had seemed like a great idea when I got up this morning, and the florist had assured me that the colors were all more-or-less platonic. Staring down at them now however, it felt pushy and presumptuous to surprise Helena with a bunch of flowers. Worried she would get the wrong idea, I shook my head and closed the bag.
I got about halfway to the house before changing my mind again, running back to the bike and retrieving the bouquet.
This time I made it all the way past the driveway before overthinking it. Before I could put them away, however, the front door swung open and Ali waved me in enthusiastically. Her already-huge smile got even brighter when she saw the flowers, and I knew it was too late to hide them.
"For me?" she asked, bouncing on her heels as she spoke.
"No, they're…well, kind of. Actually. Yes. For both of you," I mumbled.
"Thanks! I'll take one now," she said, snatching a pink rose from the bouquet at random. She took a big sniff, then stared at me expectantly. It wasn't until she cleared her throat and pointed to her own mouth with the flower that I noticed something was different.
She was wearing shiny lip gloss, a shade of pink that matched the rose almost perfectly.
"You like it?" she asked, her voice full of hope.
"It looks great," I said. "And the sparkles, too," I said, now noticing that her face was adorned with tiny flecks of glitter.
"Mom did it! For my date!" she said, and my heart somersaulted.
"Your date?" I asked, acting as nonchalant as possible.
It was either that or grab at my chest and inadvertently burst into a Redd Foxx impersonation.
This is the big one! You hear that?
"Well, not a date-date," Ali explained. "But Jason's parents are taking him and his sister, my friend Laurie, out to a restaurant to celebrate their 20th anniversary. They invited me yesterday, and Mom said I should dress up smartly for it. So we spent the whole morning putting this together."
I leave for one day and Ali's going on a date? I asked myself. Ali cleared her throat expectantly, drawing my attention back to her as she showcased a white blouse with red dots, complimented by an aqua blue skirt.
"How old is Jason again?"
Ali's hands switched from gesturing at her clothing and straight to her hips. "Don't you be one of those obnoxious dads who complains about boys!" she warned, grabbing her handbag and retreating into the kitchen. Helena said something to her, and Ali re-emerged in a flurry before stepping up on tiptoes to kiss me on the cheek. Before I could process anything else, she'd flounced out the door and was heading over to Jason's house.
"Very few teenage boys will appreciate being given a pink rose, you know," I said weakly, but Ali was long gone. It was just as well; I was still reeling from everything that had happened.
Ali was dating! Or at least, she was not-really-dating, which somehow felt even worse. If eleven was too young to be dating, it certainly seemed too young to be in anything that needed the phrase it's complicated.
What she'd said at the very end, though, had surprised me more than all the rest combined.
Dad.
She'd never called me that before.
Ali had always used more formal words when addressing me, father or sometimes even sir. As much as I still felt like an impostor, and wholly unworthy of the title, I had to admit that some part of me still loved the sound of it.
Dad.
It just seemed so…causal. Like it was something to take for granted, like I was stable and successful and satisfying enough to be taken for granted.
Or maybe she'd just been buttering me up so I wouldn't complain about Jason.
Who knew?
"Helena?" I called uncertainly from the foyer. There was no answer, leading to an awkward pause just long enough for me to re-re-reconsider the flowers. I took off my jacket and carefully covered the bouquet in its old leather before finally heading into the kitchen. Helena was there, her face downcast and scrunched up.
She didn't look at me when I came in, focused on peeling the mountain of potatoes on the table in front of her. Between the stiff way she was sitting and the intense focus on her task, her body language seemed tense and closed-off.
"They're usually better with the skin on, you know," I teased, trying to ease the apparent tension.
Of course, that was playing with fire. Aside from the question of which way to hang the toilet paper, few domestic topics were as incendiary as the Great Potato Skin Debate.
"If you're a hedonist, maybe," Helena muttered angrily.
Definitely playing with fire.
"I…don't see the connection," I said, still hoping to cheer her up. Whatever had put her in a bad mood, it seemed like laughing could only help. "Did you join the army without telling me or something? Or are you just trying to feed the whole city?"
"Better-than-fucking-the-whole-city," she mumbled under her breath, just loud enough for me to hear. She finally lifted her eyes long enough to pin me with a hostile glare, suddenly removing all doubt as to what—or rather who—was bothering her.
"Oh," I said, at a loss for other words.
This was turning out to be a very strange day.
"And uh—who would be doing that, exactly?" I asked, knowing fully well what the answer was. As much as it felt like sticking my head into a lion's open mouth, I couldn't think of a better way to continue.
"I caught your latest fashion show," she said, the non sequitur catching me off guard.
A very strange day.
"Fashion show?" I asked.
"Well, what else would you call it? With that endless parade of models all over your arm," she snarled, peeling the potatoes with more and more agitation.
"Maybe you should put the peeler down," I said carefully. "Before you hurt yourself."
With another glare, Helena slammed her hand—and the peeler—on the table.
"Models!" she repeated. I didn't know what, exactly, was wrong with models, but clearly Helena had a few issues with them.
So I let her talk.
"I don't even know you, you know," she said. "But you come in here and play family every night, the perfect embodiment of…of perfection!"
"I don't play—"
"Almost ever night," Helena interrupted. "Except last night. We happened to catch the news, you know. And there you were. Dominick Henderson, the ice hockey champ. Complete with…whoever that latest conquest was, I'm sure you've already forgotten her name."
"Jackie," I said helpfully. The seething look on Helena's face made the last piece of the puzzle fall into place, and suddenly I felt very stupid for not realizing sooner. "You're jealous!"
"I am not jealous!" Helena said loudly, practically yelling. Her hand, still flat on the table, was trembling as she spoke. "I'm just trying to protect my child."
"From what? A dad that's willing to give her everything he has?" I asked, resisting the urge to point out that Ali was our child. The misunderstanding was bad enough as it was; there was no need to provoke Helena further.
"She is a small, impressionable young girl who thinks the world of you, and what're you teaching her? That women are just…accessories, things, trophies. You're a womanizer."
"A womanizer," I said slowly. "Who hasn't been with a woman since the day he saw you."
Helena's eyes went wide with surprise, her lips parting a little in shock. The moment ended as quickly as it began as Helena violently shook her head with a silent no.
"What's the matter, struck out on your date last night?" she blurted out, her voice a mangled whisper as her eyes began to water. "Or maybe she wasn't good enough for you! What the hell is wrong with you? She was beautiful. Tall, perfect hair, perky little breasts that're still perfect because they've never been used. How can I possibly—how…."
Helena trailed off, tears finally falling as her body shook with a suppressed sob.
"How can you possibly compete with her?" I asked, finishing her thought for her. "You don't. Because you don't have to."
"Then why? That hussy," Helena whispered.
"Jackie was not my date," I explained slowly. "At least not in the romantic sense. She's a co-worker."
"Her?" Helena asked, her voice full of disbelief. "A hockey player? That anorexic thing? What position does she play, the puck?"
Even with the tense situation, I couldn't help but laugh at Helena's joke. Despite her apparent rage and frustration, she chuckled a little too.
Just enough to make me certain that everything was going to be all right.
"She's a model," I explained carefully. "But you knew that. She and I do shoots together sometimes. For our sponsor. You know, the one who was throwing that event last night. Both of us were all but required to attend."
Helena's face softened slightly, so I continued.
"Neither of us had real dates, so we went together. That worked out great for me, because I didn't want a real date. I had someone in mind, but it didn't work out. Things were very complicated," I said, echoing Helena's words to remind her it had been her decision to back off.
Somewhere along the line I'd walked over to the table, and was standing close enough to touch Helena. I wanted to do just that, to grab her and pull her up and kiss her and never let go. She had been clear, though, that she didn't want anything further with me.
Except that just seeing me with a co-worker at a formal party had been enough to send her into a fit of wild jealousy.
Why was that?
I didn't know, but I intended to find out.