“Would you look at this?” Marina stood in the middle of a large room.
We’d found the color in Agnes’s house, and it was all thanks to hockey. Other than a small corner with laundry appliances and a tool bench, Agnes’s basement was a floor-to-ceiling shrine to the Minnesota Wild and the North Stars. Wisconsin doesn’t and never has had an NHL team, but Minnesota does, and Minnesota is directly west of Wisconsin.
The floor was covered with a glaringly red carpet. The walls were painted a darkish shade of green. The floor molding and window frames were painted in a white bright enough to hurt the eyes.
I circled the room, staring with disbelief at the memorabilia. Signed jerseys of Wild players—Brunette #15; Gaborik #10. Signed green-and-yellow jerseys of North Star players, the team that left town in the early nineties and became the Dallas Stars—Broten #7; Bellows #23. Signed hockey sticks. Photos of Agnes with coaches and players and general managers.
“So Agnes was a hockey fan.” Marina slipped off her scarf, and her hair came tumbling down. “Weird. Don’t think I once heard her talk about hockey.”
I studied a framed set of used tickets; Agnes must have had two season passes. It was almost a five-hour drive from Rynwood to the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. How on earth had Agnes managed to attend all those midweek games and make it to school the next morning? No wonder she’d been cranky all the time.
“Look.” Marina stuck a hockey helmet over her head. “This year’s new fashion accessory.”
I gaped at a framed photo of Agnes with a man wearing the longish hair of the early 1980s. He wore a yellowish beige jacket, light blue shirt, and dark blue tie. “That’s Agnes with Herb Brooks. Herb Brooks! Look at that ice rink. She must have been there. The Miracle on Ice! Marina, Agnes saw it!”
“What is it with you and hockey, anyway?”
I couldn’t believe it. Agnes had seen the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team win the gold medal.
Marina dragged the helmet off and shook out her hair. “Do you realize what time it is?”
“Uh-huh.” My gaze was locked on to the photo. Agnes and Herb Brooks. Agnes and—
“You’re going to be late,” Marina said.
“What?” I looked at my watch and shrieked. “I’m late! Put that down, Marina. There’s no time for you to play slot hockey. It’s not a toy, anyway; it’s a collector’s item.” I shooed her up the stairs and drove to the store, pushing the speed limit all the way.
“Sorry I’m late.” I rushed in, my bag of clothes in hand. “Paoze, you can go. Thanks for hanging around.”
“There is no problem to stay, Mrs. Kennedy.” Paoze smiled at me. “I will wait until you are ready.”
I said hello to Marcia, my other part-time worker, as I hurried back to my office. In three minutes or less, I was dressed in mostly wrinkle-free polyester and ready to help customers, if, that is, I could stop thinking about the veritable Who’s Who of Minnesota hockey in Agnes’s basement. A hot shot of emotion ran through me—one I’d never in a hundred million years expected to feel in regard to Agnes.
Envy.
I shook it away as best I could and found Paoze. “All set. Thanks again.”
“I was glad to stay.” He gave another blinding smile, slipped on his jacket, and left.
Marcia, a fiftyish emphatic blonde, patted her heart. “What a cutie. Those white teeth!”
“He’s a nice kid.” The bells on the door jangled, and a young family walked in. I gave them the owner-of-the-store nod.
“Do you think he has a girlfriend?” Marcia asked.
“Paoze?” The rolls of stickers were already showing signs of Saturday abuse and the swags of orange and black crepe paper hanging above the rolls weren’t helping. I moved to start the Sisyphean task of tidying. “I don’t know. He doesn’t talk about himself much.”
“Polite. Clean-cut. Well educated, or going to be. Smart.” She ticked off Paoze’s characteristics and giggled. “If I weren’t almost old enough to be his grandmother, I’d get him to ask me out.”
“Your husband might object to that.”
“My kids, too. Say, did you hear about the school?”
“Tarver?”
She nodded vigorously. “I heard about it from Cindy. She takes care of the flowers at city hall? She says the guys—that’s what she calls the police officers—had a call last night from someone across the street who saw some lights on that weren’t supposed to be on. By the time the guys got there, the burglar was gone, but there was a big mess all over the offices. Papers everywhere. Books tossed all over.” Her face glowed with the excitement of the tale. “I bet it has something to do with that principal’s murder. I mean, how could it not?”
The school? I put my hand to my throat. The building where my children spent almost eight hours a day? Tarver wasn’t safe? I breathed in and out, in and out. “What rooms? Do you know?” Not room 16, I begged. Not room 37.
“Just the offices,” Marcia said.
“Offices,” I repeated, and felt my pulse rate drop down toward normal.
“At least that’s what Cindy told me. The principal’s office, mainly. Hey, do you feel okay? You look a little pale.”
The front bell tinkled and a gray-haired couple came in. A small cloud of leaves came in with them and puddled on the floor. Sweeping the floor in October was a never-ending chore. “Hello,” I said, smiling. “My name is Beth. Let me know if you have any questions.”
The woman asked about our selection of Little House books. “We have the full set,” I told her. “In hardcover and paperback. Let me show—”
Someone tugged on my sleeve. “Mrs. Kennedy?”
I turned and gasped. “Paoze! What happened?”
Chapter 9
Paoze’s formerly white shirt was streaked with grime and had a large gash down one sleeve. One bony knee was exposed where his dark blue dress pants had ripped, and blood oozed out of a scrape on his cheek.
“My—my bicycle,” he stammered. “It is—is gone.”
“Oh, no.” I waved Marcia over and asked her to help the customers. “Come with me,” I told Paoze, and practically dragged him back to my office. “Sit.” I pushed him toward a chair.
“I must—”
“Sit!”
We kept a first-aid kit in the cupboard above the teapot and, after pushing around mugs and cheap flower vases and ancient ketchup packets, I found the white plastic box. Inside were all the medical supplies a mother could want. I flipped past adhesive bandages, white tape, and gauze, and found the antiseptic wipes.
“Hold still. This might sting a little.” I held his chin steady with one hand and dabbed his cheek with the other. “The scrape isn’t deep, just messy. But it needs to be cleaned up so it doesn’t get infected.” The wipe was turning pink with blood. Inside the medical kit was a small box of latex gloves; in a perfect world I would have remembered about those before I started playing EMT.
“What happened?” I dabbed at his wound. Dirt and small bits of gravel were embedded in his skin. If I couldn’t get them out, I’d need to take him to an emergency room. And Paoze didn’t have health insurance, so I’d have to pay the bill myself. I dabbed a little harder.
“Each time I lock my bicycle. Each time.”
His jaw muscles flexed against my efforts. “I know you do. You’re very careful.” He was so careful that Lois had taken to calling him the oldest young man in Wisconsin.
“My father teaches me these things. I purchased the lock the same day I purchased the bicycle.” He pronounced it as two separate words. By. Cycle. “The lock I use each time.” His voice cracked. “Each time,” he repeated.
I didn’t know what to say. You do the right thing; you try to protect yourself, but life has a way of beating you up no matter what. “How did you get this?” I indicated his scrape and his torn clothing.