The Meaning of Hockey, Chapter 4

Bobby made himself stare past the psychologist’s head, at the picture on the wall as she spoke. She was much too nice to look at.

“Why don’t you describe the kind of life you’ve had?” said Frida, interrupting his thought. “What is it like to be a star hockey player?”

“Former star.”

Is she sizing up my body? Uncomfortable, but stimulating.

“What was it like? When did you become a star?”

“Ever since I can remember, really,” answered Bobby. “I had this gift for stickhandling. I remember one time when our team went to a peewee tournament in Swift Current. I was eight by then. We won our first three games and I scored every single goal. Twenty-two of them. Nobody could stop me. So, we get into the final against the home team, one of the best in the province. I score two quick goals on end-to-end rushes so they put their best player on me, this 12-year-old giant, 5’10” — a foot and a half taller than me. This kid is all over me. He doesn’t even watch the play. Just stays in my face, makes sure I don’t touch the puck. This works for three or four shifts and I think they even score a couple of goals to tie the game. Of course, the fans from Swift are loving it. It was the biggest crowd I’d ever seen and they were ragging on me. I’m eight-years old and they’re treating me like I was Gordie Howe.”

“Did that bother you?” said Frida.

“At first. Never experienced it before. But then I kind of start liking it. It’s fun to have this big 12-year old sitting in my lap wherever I go. Fun, because I know how good it’s going to feel when I break free. I shift my weight to the right and then to the left and then break right to get to the loose puck and the goon tries to follow me, but ends up flat on his ass and watches me score while he’s sitting on the ice. It’s fun because the home team’s fans go dead silent. They hate me and I love it.”

“You were what they call a puck hog?” said Frida.

Bobby was startled by her knowledge of hockey. And something about what she said or how she said it triggered a distant, vague memory.

“That’s what they call it when a player doesn’t pass to his teammates and tries to do everything himself, right?” she said.

Bobby nodded. “Ya, that’s what they call it.”

He stared at Frida, trying to figure out what seemed familiar.

“I got called a puck hog a lot,” he said. “Fans for the other team yelled that pretty much non-stop. Sometimes even my teammates’ parents. Used to bother me and I’d try to pass, but no one else on my team could do anything with the puck. Didn’t take very long to realize we won when I was a puck hog and we lost when I was a team player.”

“You realized you were a star?” said Frida.

Bobby nodded.

“What exactly did that mean to you?”

He paused in pretence of consideration even though he immediately knew the answer.

“Adults, other kids, my parents, everyone wanted something from me.”

“What did your parents want from you?” said Frida.

“Let’s make one thing clear, right from the start,” said Bobby, who had feared this line of questioning. “I’m not mad at my parents. Never have been. I’m just telling you how I felt as a kid.”

“Fair enough,” said Frida.

“My mother was sick. She died of cancer when I was 15. I don’t really remember much before she was sick. My Dad, well he was kind of the town drunk. His older brothers got all the family land, so he did odd jobs. In a small town like that, a guy with no farm or no business, well, people just don’t think much of you.”

“You said even your parents wanted something from you.”

Bobby’s mind wondered again. He pointed to the picture of a very stern Latin-looking woman on the wall behind Frida.

“Is that someone famous?” Bobby said. “She looks familiar.”

“It’s a self-portrait by Frida Kahlo. From Mexico. Diego Rivera’s wife. I was named after her.”

Bobby nodded and pretended to recognize the names. He looked at the eyes of the woman in the picture.

“Tough cop eyes.”

“Does the picture make you uncomfortable?” said Frida.

“No, not at all. I like it. I just don’t know very much about art.”

“You were saying about your parents?” said Frida.

“Ya. My parents.” Bobby thought about what he wanted to say for a few seconds. He did not want to mislead. He was not bitter or resentful.

“I pretty much only have good memories of my first eight or nine years. I don’t think my father was around too much. I know he worked in the Alberta oilfields a bit. Then Maman got sick and all I really remember about both of them after that is I felt this tremendous responsibility to do something. Make some money. Buy them a house. They must have been good to me because I desperately wanted to make their lives better.”

“You said they wanted something from you.”

“Sure they did. I understand now how it works. They were nobodies in a nothing town. People came from all over, all the way from Toronto and New York and Montreal to see me play. I made my parents into somebodies. When I got famous, every French Canadian in southwestern Saskatchewan was suddenly my cousin. And Maman et Papa were no longer the woman with cancer and the drunk fiddle player, they were Robert Benoit’s parents.”

“Did you feel much pressure?” said Frida.

“The pressure was there, but I enjoyed it. To succeed you must learn to love it. For me it was easy because I always liked being the center of attention. I remember when I was eleven or twelve and this scout from Moose Jaw told me he was bringing the head Chicago Blackhawks scout to my game and I told my mother. She said the same thing to me: ‘Do you feel a lot of pressure?’ ‘Non Maman,’ I said. ‘J’aime ca.’ I like it. And I really did. I scored seven goals that game.”

“But you sounded resentful when you said everyone wanted something from you,” said Frida.

“Sure, but that’s a different kind of pressure. The pressure of performing during a game — that I liked. The pressure of being nice to everybody because I was a star and if I weren’t nice, everyone would think I was conceited — that I didn’t like. Feeling that people were nice to me only because they wanted to touch a star — that I didn’t like.”

“You left home quite young?” said Frida.

“Moved to Swift Current for hockey season when I was thirteen. Played a season of midget and then started junior in Moose Jaw when I was fourteen. They had guys as old as twenty-one playing junior those days.”

“It was hard to fit in?”

“Guys are always testing you. ‘Who does this little puke think he is, trying to play with us men?’ And you’re fourteen, with all these older guys. It’s not the healthiest way to go through those early teen years.”

“Why?” said Frida.

Bobby remembered dressing room discussions about sex and beer and he smiled.

“Well, for example, pretty much everything I learned about sex and women came from that dressing room..”

“What sort of things?”

“Let’s see. I learned that if you get an erection and you don’t have intercourse, the pressure builds up and you get these little spider lines all over your legs. If you don’t start having intercourse pretty damn quick those lines will turn blue and get bigger and bigger until they explode.”

Frida smiled along with Bobby. “Did that happen?” she said.

“No way. The boys made sure those lines didn’t get too big.”

“They took you to a prostitute?”

“Don’t need prostitutes when you’re a star. The boys arranged for a 15-year-old groupie of rather loose morals. That was the Frida I told you I knew back in Saskatchewan. Frida the Freak, the boys called her. They said everyone on the team had already slept with her and since I was the youngest I got her last.”

“What was that like?”

“Having sex with Frida?” Bobby said. “It was great. She was really nice to me.”

“Nice?”

“Very nice. I remember the first time. I was scared shitless that I wouldn’t … you know…”

“Perform?”

“But she made it all okay. Always felt calm around her. She was same age, but she might as well have been 30. She was very experienced.”

“Did you feel anything towards her?” said Frida.

“I loved her. That first year in junior I saw her all the time. She was my only friend. I remember walking through Crescent Park in the middle of winter holding mitts. I definitely was in love.”

“What did your teammates think about that?”

“Shit, I never told them anything. They thought I was just porking her. You couldn’t talk about love in the dressing room. Sex, cars, drinking and hockey, that was pretty much it.”

“What happened to Frida?”

“Well, maybe a month before my first junior season was over, one of the 20-year olds, Dale Fisher was his name, came to me and said he wanted Frida back. That I had had her long enough. I don’t think it was really about Frida at all. Towards the end of the season coach was giving me more ice time and some of the veteran players were pissed off. So, when Fisher starts pushing me around, saying ‘I want her back’ I just sort of snapped. I jumped him even though he outweighed me by sixty pounds. I got in a few good punches too, before he drilled me with a left, smack in the middle of the face. First time my nose got broke. Knocked me out. When I came to, the coach had me alone in the dressing room and asked me what it was all about, so I told him.”

“What did he do?”

“Next day Fisher was gone and the team went on a road trip and when we came back two weeks later Frida was gone too. I was the kid who was going to be a big star and the coach didn’t want anything screwing that up.”

“What happened to her?”

“I don’t know. Guys told me her mother got a job in the Okanagan. Another story going around was I got her pregnant and she had to leave town to have my baby. I don’t really know.”

“You never heard from her again?”

“Never. I tried. Went to her house and tried to get a forwarding address. But coach ordered me to forget about her. And the team captain fixed me up with a new girlfriend. She was really hot.”

Bobby’s voice revealed a certain regret.

“Not hot enough to make you forget Frida?”

“First love, you know,” Bobby was looking at his feet, but then looked up to see another tell on his doctor’s face. She was removing something from her eye. Again the movement looked familiar.

“Do you ever think what might have happened if Frida had stayed in Moose Jaw? Or if she really was pregnant?”

“I thought about it,” said Bobby, who was still trying to place where he had seen that movement before. “For a couple of years I thought about it a lot. Used to dream about her and I getting married.”

He smiled, even though he felt sad.

“I was young and romantic. Looking back, it was probably the best thing that could have happened. If she was pregnant it might have screwed me up bad.”

Frida seemed bothered by his response.

“I guess that doesn’t sound too good, but I was only 14. I mean, I hope she had an abortion, if she was pregnant. She was only 15 herself. She had her whole life ahead of her.”

Frida’s stare was as menacing as the Frida on the picture behind her.

“What did I say?” Bobby said.

“If she was pregnant, imagine what her life must have been like.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” said Bobby. “I mean, I wouldn’t have even known, for sure, if she were pregnant, if it was my baby. Or if she planned it all.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Frida.

“You might not believe it, but I can tell you there are some women who sleep with stars who don’t mind a single bit if they get pregnant while doing it.”

“You sound experienced. You have other possible children you don’t look after?” said Frida, her voice sodden with sarcasm.

“Who said anything about not looking after my children?” Bobby said, irritated by her tone.

“Do you?” said Frida. “Did you make anyone else pregnant and say it was her fault?”

This was no fun, thought Bobby. No fun at all. This Frida the psychologist was some sort of flaming feminist, who was blaming him for all the woes of the world.

She continued to tear a strip off him. “How many other times did it happen?”

“Just once, with Mike’s mother,” Bobby said. “I want to talk more about him and the fight we had. He called me a fascist pig. He wears black all the time and talks about anarchism and punk rock and caused a big riot at a playoff game in Sarnia.”

Frida’s glare was intense enough to cause Bobby to momentarily forget what he was talking about.

“I hardly knew his mother,” Bobby said, remembering his point.

“Just well enough to fuck her? As a star, you were doing her a favor by fucking her, right?” said Frida.

Now Bobby was angry. She had no right to talk like that.

“It’s not true that I didn’t look after him. I always sent money. Five thousand dollars a month.”

“You paid for your sin this time?” said Frida.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Bobby.

“Did you help raise your son?”

“She wouldn’t let me. She’s a fucking lesbian.”

“You tried?”

“I was playing hockey or coaching,” said Bobby as he felt tears well up in his eyes. “I think he hates me. He was cut from a team back in Ontario and I’m too scared even to call him. Last time we talked he called me a ‘a jock capitalist.’ What’s that supposed to mean? I was telling him about my dream of owning a junior team and he calls me a jock capitalist.”

“Did you ask him about his life?” Frida said in an aggressive tone.

Did he? He couldn’t remember.

“I was nervous,” Bobby said, wiping another tear from his right cheek.

“Did you think you could just show up in his life after years of neglect and your son would harbor absolutely no resentment?”

He looked carefully at Frida. “Why are you talking to me like this? Is this how you talk to all of your patients?”

She stared at him, anger adding a red tinge to her green eyes. She started to say something, then stopped. And again. Finally, she spoke: “You are right. This is not acceptable on my part.”

Frida stood up, carefully smoothed her skirt and walked behind her desk. “I apologize. It was unprofessional.”

She sat at her desk and wrote something in her book.

“I will refer you to another psychologist.”

For a few seconds Bobby didn’t understand what she meant. Then, he said: “You don’t want to see me anymore?”

“Obviously it would not be appropriate,” said Frida, again wiping her eye with that same flicking motion.

At that moment Bobby remembered where and from whom he had seen it before.

“You? You are Frida. Frizzy. From Moose Jaw. What happened to your hair?”

“This session is over. Please leave.”

“Are you?” said Bobby.

She stared right through him.

“Are you? You’ve got to tell me.”

Next chapter: Friday

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