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“I don’t want to make you nervous, Stats. You say the word, and I’ll head home.”
“Stay, please. Sit down, make yourself comfortable, and I’ll go start on some coffee.”
Francine steps into the kitchen and Stevie and I sit together on the couch. At least until Stevie abandons me and joins Francine in the kitchen.
“Hey girl,” Francine’s voice is soft, “I’m fine. But your dad makes me a little nervous. It’s not his fault, I just haven’t done this in a while.”
Stevie’s collar jingles, her toenails click on the tile floor, and soon she’s back in the living room with me, sitting in front of me, staring intently. Then she paws at my leg.
“Do you need to go out?” I ask. She stares. Paws. Stares some more. “Well, okay then. Let’s go out.”
“I left her leash on the hook by the door,” Francine calls from the kitchen. “I usually take her for a lap around the block.”
“Sounds good,” I call back, finding Stevie’s leash and getting her hooked up. “We’ll be back soon.”
When Stevie and I hit the sidewalk outside of Francine’s building, I breathe deep, grateful for a few minutes to collect myself, and I know Francine is doing the same. Stevie guides me around the block like she already knows the place, and I suppose after nearly a week she knows the neighborhood, and knows her host better than I do.
“What do you think, Stevie? Should I take her out for dinner? Make tonight a date?”
Stevie stops at a mailbox and turns to look at me with a “duh, you stupid human” kind of look, and on the walk back to Francine’s building, I start working out how to ask her out.
“Want to go skating?” I ask as soon as I open the door to her apartment. I probably could have done that a little differently, judging by the look on her face as she looks up from the phone in her hand. “I mean…do you want to go out? Tonight? I was thinking dinner and…”
“And skating?” She fills in with a smile. “I think we could do that.”
As if agreeing with the plan for the night, Stevie heads straight to the nest she’s made on Francine’s couch and curls up in a tight ball watching us both as if to say “you can leave now.” So we do.
Detroit’s Campus Martius Park is a hub of winter activity downtown, beginning with the annual tree lighting leading up to Christmas, and continuing until March when the outdoor skating rink shuts down until the next winter. Francine and I pick up dinner from a nearby food truck and find an unoccupied table near the rink. It’s an unseasonably warm late February in Michigan which seems to be keeping a lot of skaters away, but once our burgers are gone, we lace up our skates and hit the ice.
“This is fun,” I hold Francine’s hand as we skate a lap around the perimeter of the rink, “but I’d love toreallyskate with you sometime.”
“Ohreally,” she bumps into me with her hip before turning around and skating backward. “A little one-on-one when you’re off injury protocol?”
“Careful Stats,” I reach for her hand, pulling her into my chest and skating us to a slow stop, “I just might take you up on that.”
Francine seals her lips over mine, arms wrapping around my waist as the world skates on around us. Bunching the fabric of her overcoat in my hands, I press my body to hers, holding on tight as she teeters a little on her skates. The night turns cold, but with Francine in my arms it doesn’t matter, I can’t feel it anyway, all I feel is her solid strength against me.
After another lap around the rink, Francine and I skate off, removing our skates and getting hot chocolate from a nearby vendor. There’s room for us on a nearby bench, and Francine sits first, pulling me down beside her.
“Why hockey?” I ask as we sit side by side, watching the remaining skaters on the ice.
“I grew up in Houghton,” she says, putting her left hand up to serve as a map of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and pointing to a spot near the top of her hand, “and there wasn’t a whole lot to do, but hockey was, and still is, pretty big up there. Youth hockey was just thethingwe all did. We had a pond in our backyard that served as a small outdoor rink, and I grew up playing with my dad and my brother. I loved the game. I watched with Dad every chance I got. I was fascinated by the speed and precision And a little bit with the freedom to knock people into the boards.”
“Do you have a bit of a vengeful streak, Francine?” I grin, quickly kissing her cheek.
“Pot, meet kettle,” she laughs, “but yes. A little bit. Although girls hockey doesn’t allow hits and boarding. Except for my current league. When we negotiated our beer league’s rules we did it with that in mind. Some of us grew up playing with the boys and wanted to get back to our roots, which includes more physicality. What about you? How did you get into hockey?”
“I grew up in Windsor, right across the river, so I grew up watching the same Union team you did. Those guys, The Assembly Line, were my idols. As soon as I could walk, my dad had me in skates. We had an outdoor rink in the neighborhoodwhere I grew up, Dad played beer league with borrowed equipment, and we watched every game we could. But,” I stop, overcome with memories of a different time, “we couldn’t afford the game. It’s not all that accessible for working class families. The gear, the travel, the league fees. A neighbor saw me on the rink one day with my brothers. We were playing a pick up game with other kids from the neighborhood, using borrowed equipment, and they approached my dad about helping pay for me to play.”
“Why are youth sports so prohibitively expensive?” Francine asks, frustration in her voice. “They exclude so many kids who could use the outlet, the chance to play on a team, or the chance to just play a game they love.”
“If it wasn’t for that neighbor I don’t know where I’d be, but I know I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have played junior hockey, or made it to the developmental league in college. I owe a lot to Mrs. Cleary. She didn’t have kids of her own, and was kind of the neighborhood grandmother. She’s the reason I’m here now.”
“Well in that case,” Francine slips an arm around my waist, nestling herself closer to me as she softly kisses my cheek, “I think I owe her my thanks, as well.”
“She passed a few years ago.” I was grateful the team allowed me bereavement leave. She wasn’t my grandmother by birth, but Mrs. Cleary wasmygrandmother. “But I was able to get her to my debut in Detroit. She got to see me skate for the Union.”
Francine and I sit together until the air takes on a chill neither of us can stand. Bundling her close to my body, she looks up at me with heat in her eyes, kissing me one more time under the lights strung across the sidewalk.
