We Two Alone Read online

  “What’s your name?”

  “My name?”

  She laughed brightly. “You’ve got one, don’t you?”

  “Um — Nellie.”

  She looked at him askance. “Are you wearing . . . makeup?”

  His throat seized. “Maybe.”

  She frowned. “We want to be taken seriously, don’t we?”

  He nodded.

  “I’m Tessa,” she said, smiling. “Everyone,” she said, pointing her stick as she skated away, “this is Nellie!” Slowly the others trickled back onto the ice.

  A jowly, mustachioed man in a greatcoat and bowler appeared on the bench and pecked a finger in the air, mouthing numbers. Seven players, just enough to field a team. He gave Nelson a long, curious look but said nothing.

  With only seven, that night’s session was less tryout than practice, but Nelson was still a bundle of nerves. At any moment, his cap might fly off or his culottes puddle around his ankles, and the thought made him bobble more than one puck. But at fleeting moments, caught up in the joy of it all, he felt neither boy nor girl but simply a child again, playing shinny with Sammy in Stanley Park whenever Lost Lagoon froze over.

  At the end of the night, the man in the bowler, Mr. George Lichtenhein — the name sounded familiar but Nelson couldn’t place it — called them to the bench. “That was . . . interesting. Let’s try this again next week, shall we?”

  As Nelson hurried off the ice, a voice called after him: “See you next week?”

  He turned. Tessa stood by the gate, a few strands of damp hair clinging to her forehead.

  “Yes,” he replied.

  * * *

  They were all respectable girls. That’s what Nelson gathered during practice. Lucy and Abigail Smith were sisters, homely girls with long chins who skated beautiful figures in warm-up. Libby Rogers was twenty-one and married and had tended goal for a team in Fernie. The others — Thelma Woodson, Edna Lawrence, and Tessa McNally — were all in their final year at King George High School, and Nelson could picture them striding through the halls, three abreast, the seas parting for the Queen and her entourage.

  At the end of their second practice, Mr. Lichtenhein gathered the team around the bench and announced a game with the Amazons. A cheer went up. Loath as the Amazons might have been to take on such upstarts, they had no choice; without a league, they were simply starved for competition.

  Talk turned quickly to uniforms. Whether to wear lark caps or toques and whether or not to have tassels.

  “Who cares what we wear?” Tessa said. “What we need is a name.”

  “What about the Georgias?” someone asked. “You know, in honour of the King.”

  “Or the Monarchs.”

  “No, the Kewpies!”

  Tessa grimaced. “We need something more like ‘Amazons.’ Something to do with strong women.”

  After his mother had died, blind and crazy by the end, Nelson had found himself on the street at twelve. His mother’s black valise had held all his worldly possessions, including his mother’s winter coat, which kept him alive on bitter nights until he was saved by the Methodist Church and sent to live for a few glorious months with one Mrs. Wilhelmina Ostermann, a squat, bosomy, pearly-haired woman whose son had been hauled off at the start of the war for acting in a very suspicious manner. Yet every night in her turreted Queen Anne house in the West End, she would play Wagner defiantly on her blooming Victrola. His favourite was the urgent score that went da da-da DAA da, da da-da DAA da . . .

  “What about the Valkyries?” he said.

  Seven heads swivelled. Thelma scrunched her nose. “What are Valkyries?”

  Nelson swallowed. “They’re women from Norse mythology. They chose who died in battle and carried them to” — he searched his memory — “Valhalla.” Mrs. Ostermann had always explained the music. She had even shown him a reproduction of a painting of caped women with winged helmets, flying on horses through storm clouds and lighting.

  “Women who choose their victims,” Tessa said. “I like it.”

  Slowly the others nodded, smiled, tapped their sticks.

  “What do you think, Mr. Lichtenhein?”

  His moustache twitched. “The Vancouver Valkyries. It’s got a ring to it.”

  Tessa beamed. “Then Valkyries it is.”

  At the end of the meeting, the coach turned to Nelson. “So, you know Norse mythology.” The man raised a brow. Then he turned and left.

  At the next practice, Mr. Lichtenhein assigned the girls to positions: Lucy and Abby to point and cover point, Tessa to centre, flanked by Thelma and Edna on the wings, and Libby to the role that she alone was equipped to play: goalkeeper. “And Nellie,” he said with a long, significant look, “will play rover.”

  That night, Mr. Lichtenhein ended practice by opening a large cardboard box and pulling out socks, culottes, toques (without tassels), and seven black sweaters, each one emblazoned with two yellow V’s, one on top of the other, like chevrons. “Come on, Nellie!” Tessa hollered as she and the others hurried off the ice. Nelson thanked his coach but said he had to go, avoiding once again the perils of the dressing room. At home, he threw off his old sweater and pulled on the new one and posed before the mirror. These weren’t the colours he might have wished for, certainly not the maroon and single white V of the Millionaires, but a uniform was a uniform, and this one fit surprisingly well, as if it were meant for him.

  * * *

  On game day, the Valkyries took to the ice in their new bee-striped socks, while the Amazons wore their now familiar beige sweaters, the letters VA stitched across their chests in red. A flyer had been made, which explained the semblance of a crowd. Though few, spectators made the occasion real. Nelson lined up behind Tessa, mouth dry, his whole body thrumming. When he looked across the way, who should he see in the stands but Frank Patrick, his dark hair perfectly coifed. Frank Patrick was not just the coach of the Millionaires’ one and only Stanley Cup team in 1915 but one of two brothers who had brought Denman Arena and professional hockey to Vancouver in the first place. Nelson stood there aghast. That’s when the puck dropped and the Amazons blew past.

  Game on, Nellie.

  A few weeks ago, from high in the stands, the Amazons had looked slow, at least compared to the Millionaires, but down on the ice they were anything but. Nelson found himself standing, watching, chasing the puck, more than a little overwhelmed. If not for Libby’s cool-headed netminding, the Amazons might have scored early and often.

  Eventually, the Amazons managed to slip one past, right through Libby’s pads as she dropped to her knees. That’s when Nelson finally snapped to. Until that moment he had moved in a fog, dazzled by the lights, the smattering of fans, but suddenly his head cleared. As his play picked up, so did Tessa’s. Now that the game was on the line they sought each other out. As time wound down on the giant electric scoreboard, she found him streaking down the left side. Recalling his first tryout, he cut wide on the point and curled toward the net and whipped the puck far side.

  Ping!

  Iron and out.

  After the game, as the teams shook hands, Tessa said, “Rematch. Next weekend.”

  The Amazons looked at each other coyly. Finally, someone said, “We won’t be here. We’ll be in Banff.”

  “Playing in a tournament,” added a lanky, curly-haired girl — the day’s lone goal scorer. “The Western Canada Championship.”

  “There’s a Winter Carnival in Banff,” Mr. Lichtenhein explained in the dressing room afterward. “They’ve had a tournament for a few years now. To go with the bonspiel.”

  “We should go,” Tessa said.

  “Do you think you’re ready?” Mr. Lichtenhein asked.

  “We almost beat them!” she replied. Suddenly everyone clamoured.

  The coach looked around, gauging the mood. Then he smiled like the cat th
at got the cream. “We are going. I’ve made arrangements.”

  The room erupted.

  “Signed us up as soon as I knew we could field a team. But I wasn’t going all that way to get embarrassed. Needed some proof you girls could play.”

  “But . . . a championship?” Lucy asked.

  “That’s just a fancy way of saying there are no other tournaments around. And a way to sell tickets. Besides, we can compete. If the Amazons are going, so should we.”

  “You’ll do anything to beat the Patricks, won’t you?” Tessa said.

  That’s when Nelson remembered where he had heard his coach’s name before. Frank Patrick and his brother Lester were the ones who had lured Cyclone Taylor away from the Montreal Wanderers of the rival National Hockey Association, and the team’s owner was none other than Sam Lichtenhein. The Amazons must have been the Patricks’ team, and Mr. Lichtenhein — son, nephew, cousin? — must have still been feuding.

  After detailing the trip, Mr. Lichtenhein said, “I’ll see you all at the train station bright and early Wednesday. And let today be a lesson to you. If you want to win, you have to play the whole game” — he glanced at Nelson — “not just one period.”

  As soon as the coach left and the others started to change, Nelson threw on his boots and hurried out of the room. He was already a block down Georgia Street when someone called out after him through a faint swirl of snow.

  Tessa came to a breathless stop. “Don’t listen to him. You played great.”

  “No, it’s not that. I have to get home.”

  She raised her brows. “Are those men’s boots?”

  He looked down sheepishly.

  “You’re an odd bird, aren’t you?”

  When he made no reply, she said, “I can’t believe we’re going. Your parents will let you, won’t they?”

  He nodded vaguely.

  “Good,” she said. “We can’t win without you.”

  * * *

  After changing in an alley, Nelson rushed home. In the back room, he reached under his palliasse and pulled out his mother’s valise, dusty and wrinkled as elephant hide. Folded inside was her brown herringbone coat, and through the scent of wool and must he caught a fading note of lavender. Before she finally died, his mother had gone raving mad. Had said some dark things, confusing him for the men who had used her. In her final months, she’d been bedridden, but their “landlord,” who over the years had given her many a black eye, had let them stay in their fetid little room so long as he still found ways to extract payment. When his mother was well and truly gone, Nelson asked if he could stay, but the landlord raised his fist, enraged. Nelson managed to grab only the coat and valise before bolting.

  Back then, her coat had been too big; now it was short at the wrists and tight across the back, but it fit, just. Encouraged, he dug through bins of unwashed laundry and picked out more things. Every sweater and blouse fell flat across his chest, but he saw this as a boon: the boyish figure was in, which meant he stood to be the most girlish of all.

  He was standing before the mirror in a long-sleeved cotton nightgown when the bell at the front of the laundry jingled. He tore off the nightgown and shoved it into his mother’s bag and kicked the bag under his palliasse a moment before the door to the back room opened and Fong Man appeared in a Chinese robe and Western fedora, hand trembling atop his gnarled rosewood cane.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “That’s what I thought. Get back to work.”

  “Actually, I need some time off.”

  The old man scoffed. “You don’t work enough as it is.”

  Fong Man was the one who had led the war against eighteen-hour workdays, back when he was slaving away for the old Chinese kingpins. “I thought you wanted us to work less.”

  The old man grunted, then curled up on his own palliasse. “Get back to work.”

  The answer made Nelson burn. Who was Fong Man to say no? If anyone was now the boss, he was.

  But again his confidence faltered. He kept imagining all the ways he might be discovered and what might happen to him if he were. It used to be Sammy’s job to row out into the harbour and scoop up sacks of opium that had floated to the surface — this after they had been dumped from ships under the cover of dark and after the rock salt to which they had been tied had dissolved. Sammy wound up floating in the harbour himself, no doubt at the hands of a rival gang. Nelson didn’t want to end up like that. But each time he thought of backing out, he heard Tessa say, We can’t win without you.

  * * *

  First thing Wednesday morning, instead of lighting a fire in the pot-belly stove and setting water to boil, Nelson stole through the streets of Chinatown, stick in one hand, valise in the other. There were no cries in the market, no Freemasons outside the Chop Suey House, just motes of snow drifting through the aureoles of street lamps. He had left a note on the front door of the laundry: CLOSED. COME BACK NEXT WEEK. It would take a while for anyone to notice, and by then he’d be long gone.

  Terminal Station was a wide, red-brick building with white columns on nearby Cordova Street. Nelson was first to arrive. He took a seat in the marble booking hall, drawing looks, feeling exposed. But once the others appeared — first Libby, laden with gear; then the sisters, complaining of work (“I can’t tell you what it took to get the time off!”); then Thelma and Edna and finally Tessa, wearing boots that made her look even taller — he felt absorbed into their ranks. His outfit looked of a piece with their cloche hats and wraparound coats, but the sight of their sticks and pads was curious enough for someone happening past from The Daily World to ask for a photograph. As the team lined up, Tessa clasped Nelson around the waist, an instant before the flashbulb popped.

  “And who are you ladies?” the man asked, pencil poised above a notepad.

  “We’re the Vancouver Valkyries,” Tessa said, giving Nelson a squeeze. “Mr. George Lichtenhein’s amazing band of lady puck chasers!”

  When the general himself arrived in his greatcoat and bowler, he marshalled his troops and marched them onto the train. As soon as the train pulled out, Nelson and all the girls except Libby, their nominal chaperone, scampered from car to car, euphoric. He remained in a state of elation through lunch, served on trembling china in a white linen dining car, but afterward his eyes grew heavy. For the past few days he had worked round the clock, soaking and scrubbing and pressing and folding until the shelves were chock full of brown paper parcels. He had even made the midweek deliveries, early. Now all that work was catching up with him.

  He drifted off in the passenger car. By the time he awoke the world was dark and the others gone; only Tessa remained on the seat across from him.

  “Where did everyone go?”

  She raised a finger to her lips, then pointed up. All the bunks had been lowered.

  “What time is it?”

  “Late. You must have been exhausted. I couldn’t sleep last night, either. And I’m still live as a wire.”

  When snoring rippled the air, Tessa said, “Let’s sit in the lounge car.”

  The invitation pleased him, and together they skulked through slumbering cars until they came to one with large windows, beyond which shone a milky spray of stars. They settled into swivelling leather armchairs.

  “So, Nellie. How did you get to be such a good player?”

  Nelson recalled his days of playing shinny with Sammy on Lost Lagoon. “For a while we didn’t even have skates. Just slid around in our shoes. Didn’t have sticks, either. Just used some hooked branches.” For a few years he had used a pair of rusty clamp-on blades he had found by the lagoon. He didn’t own real skates until Mrs. Ostermann had bought him a pair at a charity shop — a detail he kept to himself.

  “Wow. The boys let you play?”

  A stumble. “Yes. I was . . . determined.”


  “I suppose it’s in your blood.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I bet you’re used to fighting for every little thing.”

  After a pause, she said, “When I was a girl we had a houseboy named Henry Lum. He used to tend the coal and sleep on the floor in the basement. He never complained, but I felt guilty. One night I went down to check on him. Scared him half to death! He was terrified my parents would catch us down there and think the worst. I never went down there again.”

  When Mrs. Ostermann had shown Nelson how to tend the furnace, he had expected her to point to some bedding beside it. Instead, she gave him a room upstairs. Something of what he had felt for her then now extended itself to Tessa.

  “My mother showed him how to fry bacon and eggs so she could sleep in. I remember how I used to come down to those wonderful smells and think that Henry was somehow my mother in disguise.” She laughed. “Then came that horrible murder trial. Remember that? The Millards’ houseboy? I would have swatted Mrs. Millard with a chair too, if she had tried to cut off my ear. Wouldn’t have thrown her body in the furnace, mind you, but I would have defended myself. Just unlucky to strike her dead. But my parents let poor Henry go. Suddenly scared of the help, like everyone else. Henry begged to stay, but my parents had made up their minds. I cried, too, but it didn’t help. Have you ever run across a boy by that name?”

  “No.”

  “I suppose not. All those men in Chinatown. Lucky you. You have your pick.”

  It took a moment for Nelson to understand. When he did, he was taken aback. “I — I don’t think about men.”

  She smiled, then gazed out into the night. “Gosh, isn’t this beautiful?” she asked, knees drawn to her chest in wonder. As he traced her profile — the tip of her nose, the arc of her throat — he realized this was the wonder. That he should be here. With her. That they should be friends at all.

  “What are you looking at?” she asked. She turned to him. Under the play of starlight, her smile looked mischievous. “You can’t fool me, Nellie. I know what you are.”