Page 101 of Well Played

Mom’s face, the color of a good Bordeaux, fills the screen. She’s on her soapbox before I can say hello, raring to tell me I take too many chances on the ice. Every word detonates likea land mine. Blood pounds in my ears and my lungs work overtime.

The honeyed tone clues me that she wants something. “Frankie, feeling okay this morning?”

“Uh, yeah. I’m fine.” No way am I telling her anything.

“That’s great. I was worried when I saw that fight.”

My lips twist in disgust and disbelief. “That was nothing.”

“If you say so,” she says, sugar raining down the line.

“Is that it?”

The familiar wheedling tone takes over. “Frankie, we’ve had a lot of extra expenses this month. Could you…?” She leaves the actual ask hanging in the air.

The plea for more money comes around this time every month. “How much?”

“Couple of thousand?”

A bit more than usual. Maybe she thinks that holiday spirit will infuse me with more generosity. “You want two thousand?” I’m too loud and a couple of guys look over. “Sorry, I’ll keep it down.” I walk, dragging my bad leg, out of the training facility and lean against a wall in the empty corridor.

“Frankie, are you still there?”

I don’t say anything.

A fist slams against something and I wince at the pieces of falling plaster.

“Don’t play games with me, kid,” she snarls.

I blow out a noisy breath. “You want two thousand,” I repeat.

“No.”

My sigh of relief is short-lived when she says, “We need ten thousand.”

Disbelief practically knocks me down. They get fifty thousand from me every month and can’t live within their means.

“Nope. I can’t do it.” I don’t even care what it’s for.

Her voice screeches over the airwaves like a red-tailed hawk.

“Frank, you’re a real Scrooge, a mean, ungrateful bastard.”

“Did Dad know?” I ask.

That stops her briefly. “Know what?”

“That I’m a bastard?”

The powder keg ignites. “Are you calling your mother a whore?”

The little smile curling up the ends of my lips infuriates her, as does my next comment. “No, you pasted that label on your forehead, not me.”

“I should have sent you to a military boarding school. You never should have become a hockey player, My mistake for not selling your equipment and forbidding you to play. But I was too lenient.” The fist shake accompanying it is too threatening to be laughable. If she was in the room, my nose would be mashed into my lips.

“I blame your father for buying you those skates. For putting you on the ice. Three years old. What was he thinking? Paying for ice time, equipment, team fees. Driving you to games. And then he up and died, foisting it all on me. At thirty-five you need to stop playing games and grow up. Retire and find something else to do.”

Against my better judgment, I ask, “Like what?”

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