Seven

Sam wasn’t exactly grumpy during the game. But he was preoccupied. Mostly, though, he wasn’t content. I counted on Sam’s underlying contentedness, even when he was irritated or pressured. His demeanor was a constant, like the color of his eyes or the contours of his immense shoulders.

Shortly after Sam and I had started going to hockey games, Lauren had asked, “What do you guys talk about? Just sports, or what?” I knew that it was sometimes Lauren’s style to begin meaningful conversations with a distancing move. Years ago, my interpretation of her style had been wrong; I’d decided since that the tendency had little to do with her discomfort with intimacy. Rather, she was protecting some transferential image she had of me, allowing me room to pretend that nothing meaningful was actually occurring during the conversation. It was a simple relationship sleight-of-hand to try and keep me from running.

She asked the question about Sam and me and hockey as she turned her back to begin clearing dishes from the dinner table.

Instinctively, I thought I knew where she was heading. I said, “Well, we do talk a lot of hockey. Sam’s a hockey evangelist and I don’t think he’s going to stop preaching until I’m converted and can recite every name on the Stanley Cup since 1950. But we talk about other stuff, too.”

“That would be hard? The Stanley Cup name thing?”

“If you’re not Canadian or from Minnesota, yes, it would be hard.”

“Like, what else do you talk about?”

“Cop stuff. Life. You know.”

“No, I don’t know. Hanging out at sporting events isn’t exactly your style. It’s forty-five minutes to McNichols, the games seem to last forever, it’s forty-five minutes back home. You guys go to two games a week sometimes. You’re spending a lot of time together. Does he talk about his family, do you talk about us? What goes on?”

I presumed that she wasn’t interested in just the facts. “You know how Sam used to seem content all the time? I mean gruff and prickly, but content?”

She thought about it a moment, said, “Yeah.”

“It’s different now. I’m not sure what it is, but I think he’s working up to telling me about it, whatever it is. Something has knocked Sam off balance. We’re still dancing around it.”

“Different how?”

“The contentedness, the joy, is gone. He’s brooding about something.”

“Something with Sherry?”

“Maybe. He doesn’t talk much about her.”

“Do you ask?”

“I don’t pry.”

“Simon?”

“He seems thrilled with Simon. Simon’s great. Soccer, peewee hockey; Simon even has Sam out rollerblading, if you can believe that.”

She tried on the image. “I think I’d like to see that.”

“Me too.”

“Work? Is it work?”

“No, I don’t think so. If I had to guess, I’d say family, or maybe something existential, some life-change thing. I’m not sure yet.”

“Does it have to do with last fall? With the shootings and everything?”

“That’s what I thought at first, but no, I don’t think so. He doesn’t seem to dwell on that much. I really don’t think that what’s bothering him is anything he’s talking about.”

“Well, then, it must be something he’s not talking about. What is he avoiding?”

I’m the psychologist. It should’ve been my line.

I said, “That’s a good question, sweets. But I’m not sure. Maybe it’s Sherry, maybe it’s his marriage. I’m patient. He’ll talk when he’s ready.”

She pulled a stool up to the sink so she could sit, and started washing dishes. With her back turned, she said, “You avoided my question before. Do you and Sam talk about us, about you and me?”

I had avoided it once and I was tempted to ask her to repeat the question and blame it on the running water. I didn’t. I said, “Yes, sweets, we do.”

She nodded.

“You want to know about what?”

“You’d tell me?”

“Of course.”

She edged closer to the front of the stool so she could more easily reach the sink. “I’m not sure that I want to know. I’ll let you know when I do.”

Our eyes never met during the entire interchange.

My mother always said don’t ask questions that you don’t want to know the answer to. Prosecutors, like Lauren, always say don’t ask a question that you don’t already know the answer to. My assessment was that this time Lauren’s discretion adhered to both rules.

What she wasn’t prepared to hear again was that her illness had changed us. I thought she wanted to know if I was confiding in Sam about it. But what was more compelling to her was her need to hold onto the luxury of pretending that her ascetic style of coping with multiple sclerosis was working like flawless software, and that our marriage remained blissfully uncontaminated by the toxic neurological residue of her stripped myelin.

Gretzky had scored during the early penalty but the Avalanche were up three to one when the second period ended. Peter Forsberg had a hat trick already. Sam said he liked Forsberg’s toughness much more than his puck handling and then stood and asked me if I wanted anything. He meant at the concession stands.

I replied, “Yes, Sam, there is something I want. I want to know what’s bugging you lately.”

“Case today is screwy.” He didn’t miss a beat before replying and pronounced his answer in a convincing fashion, as though he were really upset about work.

I said, “Yes, it sounds like it is. But it’s not your case and that’s not it anyway. Screwy cases consume you, they don’t bum you out. Anyway, whatever has been going on with you has been going on quite a while. Much longer than Dr. Edward Robilio has been Dead Ed. What is it, Sam?”

He looked at me as though he were actually going to answer. Instead, he shook his head a little and said, “I have to piss,” stood up, and disappeared down the tunnel that was next to his seat.

Ten minutes later he returned and handed me a soft pretzel covered with hard grains of some product that was masquerading as cheese. I said, “Thanks.” The scent of the faux Parmesan flashed me back to the aroma of Mike Toohey puking on my desk in the seventh grade. I held the wax paper at arm’s length and started breathing through my mouth.

He asked, “Don’t you ever have work things that get you going? Make you goofy?”

“Sure. All the time. Right now I have a new patient in the hospital, a kid, who’s, I don’t know, on my mind a lot.”

He said, “See? Some of it’s like that. And okay, some of it’s Sherry. What’s going on. Some of it’s her family. I’m not used to crap like this.” He filled his mouth with pretzel and chewed for a while. “My family in Minnesota is normal. People talk to each other, they help each other out. I don’t know about family grudges and holding stuff in. And I’m not handling it well with Sherry and her damn family and their squabbles. There’re apparently all kinds of goofy rules that get applied by these people and I don’t seem to know any of them.”

I waited a few heartbeats to see if he was planning to continue on his own before I asked, “What is it? What’s going on with Sherry and her family?”

He drained his beer. “Sherry has one sister. Older, by a few years. The sister moved to town eight, nine months ago. Boulder. The two sisters, they don’t get along, haven’t as long as I’ve known Sherry. Sherry won’t give her sister the time of day because of this thing that happened years ago, and Sherry says she’s furious at her sister because of how she treats their parents. All of this was bad enough for me when the sister lived out of state, but Sherry has been-well, what Sherry has been is a first-class bitch since her sister and her family moved to Colorado.”

He looked over. I don’t know if he was checking for boredom on my part, or what, but he apparently approved of what he saw. He continued.

“See, okay, this has been hard for Sherry. Her sister and her don’t talk at all, not a word.”