Page 41 of Center Ice
She squeezes my arm, but doesn’t say anything. Then she rests her head on my shoulder, but after only a minute, her hand on my arm goes limp and her head feels heavy. This is the second time she’s fallen asleep in as many hours.
“Hey,” I whisper, not wanting to startle her. She jolts awake anyway, her head flying up off my arm. She relaxes when she sees me sitting next to her, but I have to wonder if this reaction is left over from years of being woken up by Graham in the middleof the night when he was younger. “Let’s get these antibiotics in you and then get you to bed.”
I push two tabs out through the foil on the back of the plastic holder, and hand them to her with her water. She swallows them down with a little wince, and without thinking, I reach out and smooth the wrinkle across her brow.
“C’mon, I’m going to carry you upstairs.”
“I can manage the stairs,” she whispers.
“You couldn’t even walk up the half flight of stairs to your back door when we got home twenty minutes ago”—I slide one arm under her knees and another behind her back, and lift her from her seat—“and now you think you’re going to do a full flight of stairs on your own?”
“I could have done it if I had to,” she says as she relaxes into my chest.
That sentence haunts me as I carry her through the entryway and up the stairs. How much of her life has been defined by that sentiment—I could have done it if I had to?
Her eyes are already closed when I lay her on her bed. As I set about taking off her shoes, unzipping her hoodie, and then lifting her enough to get her under her covers, I keep thinking the same thing:I don’t want her to have to do this all by herself anymore.
But what does that even mean? Whatcanit mean? I’m gone half the season for hockey, and I have this one year to prove to the Rebels that they should sign me to a new contract. There’s never been a more important year in my career. Because I have to stay in Boston to help with my mom—she has to be my number one priority when I’m not playing hockey. It’s what I committed to when I moved back. It’s what I promised my sisters. It’s what’s right, after everything she’s done and given up for me over the years.
And now there’s Graham. I want to get to know my son. It’s going to be enough of a struggle to find the time to spend with him. How could I throw Audrey, and any potential feelings I have for her, into the mix too? It wouldn’t be fair to make her my fourth priority. Like I told her the other night, she deserves to be someone’s first priority.
As much as I’ve tried to come up with a different solution, I arrive back at the same conclusion each time.
I reach over and turn out the bedside lamp I turned on when we came in, but then Audrey’s arm flies out like she’s grasping for something, and her hand lands on my stomach, only inches from the waistband of my sweats.
“Stay?” The word is so quiet I’m not sure if I heard it or imagined it.
“What?” I whisper, reaching down and smoothing her ponytail back away from her face.
“Will you stay for a minute? Rub my back until I fall asleep?” I don’t know if it’s because she’s half asleep or sick, but she sounds so vulnerable. She could ask me for just about anything, and I’d say yes. She’s the weak side I didn’t know I had and am not sure I want to give her up. But what choice do I have? I can’t be what she needs.
“Sure,” I say as I sit on the edge of her bed.
She scoots toward the center of the bed and rolls on her side. “I’m making room so you can lay down.”
I chuckle to myself when I consider what happened when we were lying next to each other on her couch the other night. But she’s sick, and so it’s not like anything is going to happen tonight.
I lie on my side, facing her back, and let my hand stroke up and down her spine. She’s not burning up like she was before, but she’s still warm.
“Thank you,” she says, her voice groggy as she’s clearly on the edge of sleep. “I really hope I don’t get you sick, though.”
“My tonsils were removed when I was seven. I can’t get strep.”
“Good. Because it’s been nice having someone take care of me for a change.”
I rub my hand along the bumpy ridges of her spine, then sweep over her upper back like I’m tracing wings along each side. “Anytime, Audrey.”
The orange light of early morning is streaming through the open curtains at the edge of her room as the sun rises just enough to light the sky, but not high enough to be visible above the three- and four-story brownstones of the South End.
Audrey’s in the center of the bed, lying on her stomach with her arms folded so her elbows are out and her hands are beneath her cheek. Her face is turned away from me so I can’t see if she’s awake, but her low and steady breathing has me pretty convinced she’s still sleeping.
Knowing she needs as much sleep as possible to recover, I get up as quietly as I can. I didn’t mean to fall asleep here last night, but since I did, I’ll make her some coffee before I head out.
In the kitchen, I get the coffee going and then look around for something I can use to write a note. There’s a packet of papers sitting on the counter along the wall, so I head over to see if it can be written on. When my eyes land on the photocopy of a family tree, with the lines to write in the members of a family, my jaw drops.
The tree has a line drawn in pencil straight down the middle, from the top of the tree right through the trunk. The rightside is completely shaded in, like Graham took his pencil and scribbled as hard as he could across the side meant to house the information about his dad’s family. On the left side of the tree, Audrey Flynn is listed on the branch labeledMomand small red hearts are drawn around her name.The small branches below it, meant for siblings, and large branches above it, meant for grandparents, are all blank.
My stomach flips over, the bile rising to the back of my throat, and I swallow it down, but it feels lodged there, burning away at my esophagus. I grip the edge of the counter and look up at the ceiling. “Fuck,” I mumble under my breath as my fingertips press into the countertops so hard it makes my knuckles ache.
