Page 123 of Breaking Away

My dad hashis arm over his face. He’s been slumped this way ever since I bailed him out of jail. The sink is full of crushed beer cans, everything in the fridge stinks, and muddy footprints track dirt everywhere.

“What happened to Josie?” I ask, tying up another trash bag.

Josie is the house cleaner I pay for.

“I fired her,” is my dad’s muffled answer.

“Why?” My voice is expressionless. It’s the only way he gives me straight answers, a lesson I learned early on. “What happened?”

“She was stealing my money.”

Right. He fell off the wagon, got drunk—and then became paranoid. Got it.

I wonder how much I can pay her to come back? Double? Triple?

As I move to load the dishwasher, knowing I’ll have to run it twice to get all the gunk off, I ask, “When did you start drinking again?”

“It was one time, Dmitri.”

My chest compresses. With the amount of cans I threw away, his one time lasted a few days.

Guilt-flavored bile rises in my gut. We talk on the phone every morning, but I didn’t notice the signs. I didn’t check in enough. With Kavi living with me, I was more than distracted.

This other contradictory pain grows, remembering she’s gone to Seattle.Like one half of me has left with her.I’m blindly clearing counters. When the sink is empty, I stalk to the closet, grab some cleaning solution, and spray down every surface I can see. “Come live with me,” I tell Dad.

“Stop it. We are not having this argument again. You know this is my house. It’s where I belong.”

He paid for it with his signing bonus the day after he got drafted to the league. The walls are a mausoleum to his career, pinned with faded newspaper clippings and photos. Over the years, usually when he was drinking again, I imagined tearing everything down.

My gut clenches. I haven’t felt that way in a while. The day after my knee got busted, he mostly got his life sorted. Training me gave him new purpose. And after I got drafted to the league, every win under my name kept him happy. Sober.

I don’t know what happened this time.

My dad moves his arm and cracks open an eye. “You’re playing differently. Pushing yourself too hard.”

He’s right. My performance is unstable. I have a couple of incredible games where I go past my limit, and then my knee taps out, forcing me to play worse. “It’s what the coach wants.”

“The knee. You have to protect it.”

“… if I told the team, we could adjust our strategy. Strategize around my flare-ups.”

Bloodshot eyes stare at me accusingly. “You want to guarantee your contract won’t renew? Because that’s what will happen. And then you’ll turn into me.” His arms spread out,encompassing everything. “When you lose the thing you love the most, this happens, son.”

I toss the sponge I was holding into the sink. “My team isn’t what your old team was like. They’re different.”

I don’t know where these words are coming from, but they ring true.

“Don’t be a fool,” spits out my dad. “Your teammates aren’t your friends. You are one of the best defensemen playing right now. You know what that means? A target on your back. Everyone wants you to fail. They’ll celebrate it. Trust me, I know.”

An urge builds up. To tell my dad about Hughes, Quinn, Emmad, Matt, the rookies… But what would I say? They came over for a barbecue. We laughed and played games. We’re starting to fit on and off the ice like a real team.

“You better not trust anyone,” Dad warns. “You made that mistake once, remember? If I wasn’t there…”

I know the speech by heart. He loves talking about how he saved my career. It makes him feel better.

I’m not saying it isn’t true. Without him, I wouldn’t be where I am right now.

“There’s a program,” I say when he goes quiet again. “A better rehab.”

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