Page 22 of Big Stick Energy
The end of a playoff run is always so jarring. We fly back to New York, and the team walks down the gangway and into their summer vacations. Some will spend time with their families. Some have plans to hit the beach or the golf course.
But it’s different for the support staff like me: After a few days off, I go back to work part time. Simultaneously, I take two college courses that the Legends pay for.AndI somehow wedge in a couple of visits with my mother.
That’s why I’m currently standing on a chair in my apartment holding one end of a piece of fabric, while she holds the other one.
My mother squints up at the window frame. “How about we raise the rod a couple of inches?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Darcy.” She cackles.
“Sorry, Mom, but you can’t spend three hundred days a year with a hockey team and not have a teenage boy’s sense of humor. Now go on. Why do we want toraise the rod?”
“It will make the windows look bigger,” she says confidently. “We’ll have to spackle over the holes and repaint that bit. But it’s really no big deal. Do you have a Phillips screwdriver?”
“Sure thing. Let me find it.” I hop off the chair and retrieve my tool kit from the closet.
“Do you want to handle the hardware or hem the curtains?”
“Hardware,” I decide.
It takes me only half an hour to reposition the curtain rod. And then I spackle the wall while she measures the white fabric we bought on Thirty-Eighth Street. We’re going for a boho look. We also bought some velvet upholstery fabric to re-cover my throw pillows.
When we spend time together, we always do a project or two. It’s our love language, established during the difficult year after my cheating father moved out.
I have to give my mother credit—she channeled her rage in some very healthy ways. Not two weeks had gone by when she drove me to Home Depot after school and announced, “I’ve always hated the upstairs bathroom. We’re going to give it a fresh look.”
Until then, I’d never seen my mother touch a toolbox or a paintbrush. But that day, we picked out a peach color that my father would have hated. She bought sandpaper and primer and brushes and rollers, and we got busy on the walls.
We watched YouTube videos to learn how to fix the leaky faucet. We also regrouted the tile and caulked the tub. Money was pretty tight, so we couldn’t just waltz into a store and choosefancy new towels. Instead, she sewed colorful trim onto some cheap white ones from the dollar store.
The next summer, we went even bigger—we replaced some rotting boards on our deck, which was a task my mother had been asking my father to do for years. And we built flower boxes to hang off the railing.
“We don’t need him,” she often said. “He was holding us back.” And even if I could hear the shrillness in her voice—as if my mother badly needed to believe it—it was empowering to see her remaking her life on her own terms. And I learned a lot about sewing and home repair.
She has a good job these days, and money isn’t so tight. But we still enjoy these projects together.
“Didn’t you say you had some work to do for school?” she asks, checking the time. “I can hem these by myself, you know.”
“It’s just some reading. But I should probably do it,” I admit. “I missed the first lecture because we were in Florida. The class is on sports management, though, so the professor was really understanding.”
“He should be! You could beteachingthat class, Darcy. They’re lucky to have you.”
I appreciate her mom’s-eye view of the situation, but there’s plenty I don’t know about the business of professional sports. “Someday,” I promise. “But I’d better start by getting an A in the class.”
“Good plan.”
I sit down at the kitchen table—the one we sanded and painted last summer—and open my course syllabus. I read about accounting principles for, oh, a solid ten minutes. But then I’m distracted by a text from my father.
Pumpkin, sorry about Game 7! I’d been rooting for you guys, at least after Boston got knocked out!
It’s wild how perfectly this text encapsulates my life. My father only roots for me when his first choice isn’t available.
But the next thing he texts isn’t so on-brand:
I was hoping you’d come to the shower this weekend. Theo can’t wait for you to meet Maribel.
Also, I thought we could have lunch together afterward, before you leave town. There’s something I want to discuss with you.
