“I’m cooking that guy’s meal Thursday night.”
“Doyle?” He laughed. “He’s a mean bastard, that one.”
“I don’t want to know. I’m sure it was a long, long time ago.”
“Hell no, Julia Child. Not long back, they let Doyle in the yard with the rest of us, and he said something to piss off some Latin Kings. You don’t piss off the Kings. They stabbed him. That son of a bitch just pressed a sock over the hole in his belly so he wouldn’t look weak. Later, he’s walking some hall with guards on both sides, his hands and legs cuffed, and they pass the dude who stabbed him. Doyle bites off the dude’s nose. And now Julia Child’s making him dinner.”
“Don’t you have trays to wash?”
“About five years’ worth, with good behavior.”
Back at the sink, he worked the high-pressure hose, spraying until steam swallowed him. Having Danny around was as bad as having that window over her desk, reminders she didn’t need. When she saw him, she couldn’t help but see the baseball bat that broke the ribcage of the old man, smashed the old woman’s arthritic hands. No matter how Danny laughed or winked, he couldn’t hide his history. He wore it as plainly as he wore his blue prison shirt, untucked and buttoned to the collar, just like all the inmates.
Sometimes Chuck dressed for school the same way. “It’s a style,” he argued. “No big deal.”
At the rink that night, Shelly nodded to other parents as she picked a spot on the splintering bleachers behind the team box. The boys skated onto the ice, greeted by hand-clapping and rock ‘n’ roll that gargled from the arena’s loudspeakers, and Shelly remembered how earlier, when she left the prison for the rink, the protesters had sung “Amazing Grace” and shoved signs in front of her windshield as she drove out the gate. Like she had anything to do with whether the guy lived or died, like she did anything but run the kitchen and cook.
A teenage girl came and sat beside Shelly. Chuck’s girlfriend. “Hi, Tina,” Shelly said, friendly despite her better judgment.
“Hey.”
Tina wore a fatigue jacket, and her lacquered hair hung in her eyes like a purple shield. Why is it, Shelly wondered, that high school boys love the psychos the way dogs love antifreeze? How could Chuck love this girl, who let him twist for days before returning his phone calls, who flirted with other guys, and who even invited them along when she and Chuck had a date? That’s how he had wrecked his Chevy Nova, smashing the Firebird of some guy Tina was vamping. Chuck got his license revoked and two years probation. Tina never said sorry. Just after that, Shelly started having nightmares: Tina, a wedding ring on her finger, her arms open for a hug, saying, “Hi, Mom.” In the dream, Shelly never knew whether to hug her daughter-in-law or spank her.
Chuck was in the goal mouth now, deflecting slap shots, monstrous in his pads and goalkeeper’s mask. Shelly stared at the mask, trying to make out what was scrawled in red across the forehead.
“What’s that say?” she asked, pointing.
“Maim,” said Tina.
“Maim? Like, wound?”
“Dismember. Cripple. Yeah.” Tina laughed.
“It’s not funny, Tina.”
“I think it is.”
Teenage testosterone, Shelly told herself. Same as when he plastered the walls of his room with pictures of hockey players brawling. Same as when he stayed up late playing blood-soaked video games on his computer. But what about the night he wrecked the cars? Could she blame testosterone then? Hadn’t he crossed some line? And what about “maim”?
Hank, Hank… when you died, he was still a boy, asking permission to spend his allowance on Hershey Bars, full of please and thank you. Four years later, he’s some other thing, out of my control. He scares me, Hank.
But thinking of her husband settled her, because she’d seen Hank handle the worst kinds of people, from drunks in his favorite taverns to the lowlifes he dealt with every day as a Hartford cop. Sometimes she’d drive to the city and wait in the station’s lobby to meet him for lunch, and he’d come in from patrol, a look in his eyes that made whatever punk he had in cuffs waddle like he had peed himself. Sometimes the punk really had peed himself. But Hank never raised a fist. Never used a club. His eyes did the work. Hank’s eyes — frightening and cold when he was angry — promised something worse than a beating if he’d ever let loose. And that look, that promise, gave her faith that nothing would ever hurt him, that he’d always come home. Foolish hope. Because the doorbell did ring one night. Not when he was at work, no. It rang late, when he’d gone out with the boys, and then it was Enfield’s cops instead of Hartford’s. Hank had a few. Missed a stop sign.
No. Maim wasn’t funny.
Shelly stared at her son in case he’d notice her and feel chastised. For all the good it did. Midway through the third period, Chuck charged out of the goal and with his stick flattened the other team’s center, doubled the kid over. The kid jumped up looking for a fight, but Chuck punched first and kept punching until the referees pulled them apart. All the time on the bench, even with the coach in his face, Chuck never removed his mask.
Game over, Shelly waited outside the locker room but kept her distance from other parents. She didn’t want their small talk when all they’d be thinking is what the hell was wrong with her boy. Tina stayed near but said nothing. After a while, the coach came out, and he told Shelly that he’d have no choice: Another fight, Chuck’s off the team.
“Maybe if you’d done something earlier…” she said.
“I’m not his father,” he said. “There’s a limit.”
When the coach returned to the locker room, a shabbily dressed man slipped out, wearing thick glasses and carrying a notebook under his arm. Chuck appeared a few minutes later, his puffy down coat unzipped, his dress shirt wrinkled, his game-day tie loosely knotted. He hadn’t shaved, and his cheeks shined with acne and exertion.
He draped his arm around Tina. They both said, “Hey.”
“That took a while,” Shelly said.
“I was talking to some guy from the newspaper.”
“They want to do a story on you?”
“Yeah. I guess that’s why he was talking to me.”
Outside, Shelly unlocked the trunk of the old Buick. Chuck dropped his duffel bag with such weight that a clump of crusted, wet snow — brown with dirt and rust — fell from the bumper and splashed on the pavement.
At Tina’s house, Shelly adjusted the rearview mirror so she could watch. With car exhaust drifting around them in blue clouds, Chuck tried to kiss Tina. She stepped back. They whispered, their words puffs of frozen breath. He grabbed her wrist. She yanked it away. Shelly thought of driving off, leaving them to eat each other alive.
Then Tina shoved Chuck and marched to her door. Chill air rushed with him into the Buick.
“What’s with all the bad actor stuff?” Shelly asked as they drove home.
“With Tina?”
“With everything. Coach says you’re off the team, you keep pulling that stuff.”
“He won’t. There’s nobody else to play goalie.”
“I don’t like it anyway.”
“It gives me a boost,” he said. From his backpack he look a candy bar, ripped open the wrapper and swallowed in two bites. “That other team is the bad guys. You don’t shake hands with bad guys. You just kick their asses.”
“Your father dealt with bad guys every day. He never hit one. He—”