Page 4 of Taking It To Overtime
It used to bother me, but sixteen years away from home has a way of tingeing both my memories and the place with a nostalgic rose pink. I’m no longer desperate to leave, no longer have the itch between my shoulder blades that most small-town kids feel at some point. I don’t talk about my childhood much, not in interviews, but it was a good one. I was an average student and an above-average hockey player in a town that revered the sport. My on-ice prowess got me out of any trouble I could find, not that it was much.
All my free time, all of my goals, circled the rink. They drew me to the ice with a gravitational pull. Vic, Erik, and I spent hours carving lines into fresh ice, hauling trash out to the dumpster and mopping the concession stand for extra ice time, driving from town to town for tournaments.
Unlike the twins, whose Mom left town as soon as they did, my parents still live in the three-bedroom split-level Igrew up in. The one with my heights etched into the bathroom doorframe. My old hockey gear stashed in the unfinished basement next to the washer that needs to be smacked to turn on and the dryer that takes at least two cycles per load. The same paint-by-number still life my mother hung up on the living room wall to disguise the hole I put there in middle school.
I’ve been offering to move them into a new place or fix it up since I inked my first contract with Atlanta—back before the team moved up north to Winnipeg. It’s like arguing with a set of brick walls and even I can admit I come by my stubbornness from good old-fashioned genetics.
They’re supposed to take care of me, not the other way around.
Yes, but I’m the one with money to burn.
It suits their needs just fine.
Risking toe fractures every time they need to throw in a load of laundry is hardly suiting anyone’s needs. Not really.
They don’t want to cover up memories of my youth.
Well, I already fixed the hole in the wall, even if there’s still a raised patch painted a different shade of peach from the rest of the room.
If they won’t let me use my money for them, at least I can come home to visit. I try to make it back every offseason. Sleep in my old bed, offer my experience to the local youth teams, and try to give my parents time off from the kitchen. This summer I’m even bringing them a gift: Jack Spaeglin. Hopefully, having the teenager underfoot for the next week will ease some of my mother’s empty-nest syndrome. He’s the closest they’re going to get to a grandchild for the foreseeable future.
Mom’s been careful not to ask, but I know she’s ready for me to settle down. She wants me to come home for a wedding in the gazebo my dad built underneath the giant oak tree in the backyard. It’s an image that was tattooed on her brainwhen I was a kid and she caught me wrapped in a dark throw blanket, pretending to get married to the freckle-faced neighbor girl. She’d wrapped a faded white bath towel around her skinny shoulders, another draped over her dark red hair because “every bride needs a veil.” The problem is that image never left my mind either, even if Vera hasn’t crossed my mind in years.
That’s a bald-faced lie.
I’vetriednot tothink about Vera Novak, but it’s hard to avoid her when she’s everywhere.
My mom’s magazine has an article about new skin care routines? There’s Vera’s sienna-freckled skin showing off her genetic gifts under the guise of selling moisturizer with gold and snail mucus. A teammate’s girlfriend gushes about the invite she received to fashion week? She comes back with stories about seeing Vera’s forever-long legs strutting down the runway. The Arctic bans nudie mags from the locker room—and in theory, on any team property—but find a group of guys pouring over the glossy pages of a magazine and cackling like drunken hyenas accidentally initiated into the closest frat? There’s Vera in a tied up tank top and the tiniest bikini bottoms known to mankind. Her face tipped back so the sun can kiss the top of her ski-slope nose.
And then maintenance needs to come down because someone, don’t look at me, used a little too much force while trying to hang up his shoulder pads and ripped the pegs off his cubby. I swear it was an accident.
I push the woman from my mind and flip on my blinker, turning my dad’s ten-year-old Volkswagen under the clearance sign for the drive-thru. If I have to spend the next week babysitting, at least I can do it caffeinated. And Iambabysitting. Some nineteen-year-olds with million dollar contracts focus on skating, conditioning, and the banality of adult life—laundry, groceries, vacuuming, etc.—others almost get arrested forsolicitation after chatting with women they say they didn’t know were undercover cops posing as prostitutes. The latter require supervision.
My phone buzzes as I pull up to the window.
Vic Varg:
He just touched down but still has to pick up his gear. Best guess… forty-five minutes.
The perk of a tiny town in the middle of nowhere? I can rock right up to the airport. Zero wait. Zero traffic. Sure, the drive is almost an hour, but I’m already at the halfway point—Kimmelwick doesn’t have drive-thru coffee, it barely has a stoplight—and I’d rather spend sixty minutes driving past farmlands and Amish buggies, then spend it sitting in stopped traffic or navigating a million underground tunnels where the lanes vanish without warning. Always just as the GPS signal cuts out.
The teenager at the window has bright green hair and a gauged ear. They don’t even glance in my direction as I hand over a twenty and take the brown bakery bag and the white cup. Their “thank you” comes in a monotone voice as they give back my change, not glancing up from the register until I’m about to roll up my window.
The double take is almost comical. Almost.
“Holy shit.”
Here we go.
“Oh fuck. Oakes.” The swallow is audible. “You’re Robbie Oakes.”
Another perk of visiting my hometown? Everyone might recognize me, but the star-struck treatment has worn off. I can buy toilet paper and coffee in relative peace. Back in Quarry Creek, I hired an assistant to handle grocery deliveries andanything else I might need so I can limit my time in public. Some guys dream of the fame and money that comes with professional hockey. They thrive on the recognition, the connection. I just love the game. The rest is something I have to tolerate if I want to keep hitting the ice.
I could just drive away, but they’re just a kid and so I dip my chin in a brief nod, stuffing my change back into the pocket of my athletic shorts.
“You’re like my idol! That overtime win against Tampa? That goal you pulled out with seconds to spare? You ate dude. Left zero crumbs.”
I’m not sure what any of that means, but I know ESPN featured that goal over and over on a bunch of highlight reels. Not that I’ve seen them. Tristan, one of the team marketing gurus, told me all about the publicity I’d racked up when she corned me for an interview. I have no moral compunctions ducking reporters, but Vic would beat my ass if I did that to his wife.
