We Two Alone Read online

  His heart swelled painfully. For a long moment he didn’t move. “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t have to pretend. I’ve seen the way you look at me. I know why you don’t think about men. And those boots — they’re a dead giveaway.”

  He swallowed bitterly. He had considered a new pair, but the thought of crossing snow and ice in narrow heels had seemed even more incriminating. Now he wished he had thought differently. About everything.

  “Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me.”

  He stared. “It is?”

  “Of course. You shouldn’t get kicked off the team for being . . . what you are.”

  He was baffled. Didn’t she care that he was a boy? Was she that determined to win?

  “Tessa?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  His voice shook. “Tell me, what am I?”

  “Do I have to say it?”

  “Yes.”

  With a creak of leather, she rose from her chair and leaned over his, her hands atop the armrests, her face inches away, crowned by stars.

  “You’re what I am,” she said. Then she kissed him.

  * * *

  Back in the passenger car, they clambered into bunks and looked across at each other until her green eyes winked out, leaving him alone with the train’s eternal clacking. Outside, a silvery landscape slid past. At one point they crossed a truss arch bridge, so perilously high they might have been flying. Her lips had been cool and dry, testing at first, then more certain. When she pulled away, he thought he saw the ghostly afterimage of someone in the doorway. But no, that was impossible; it must have been a trick of light. Still, he had reason to be scared — and confused. After all, she hadn’t really kissed him, had she? He knew women were up to wild and uproarious things these days, but kissing another girl? And wasn’t it wrong for someone like her to take to someone like him? In certain cafés in Chinatown, white waitresses would go off with men for a dollar or two, and even Nelson thought them low for picking up dirty old Chinamen. As the train rumbled on, he tried to sleep but couldn’t. The pillow was soft but the blanket surprisingly thin.

  * * *

  He fell asleep at first light. By the time he awoke, night had fallen again and they had reached Banff. Thanks to the carnival, the whole town was strung up with little white lights, as if Christmas went on forever in this part of the world. On the bus ride to the hotel, Edna flattened her palms against the window and said, “Look at that!”

  “Stop the bus!” Tessa said.

  In the centre of town stood a castle of ice, complete with archways and turrets and battlements. It rose three storeys, more if you counted the flags — England, France, Canada — and the whole thing glowed as if the ice were lit from within. They poured off the bus and into the castle and discovered a luminous, high-walled maze. “Last one out is a rotten egg!” Edna cried, which sent everyone scattering. Nelson ran ahead, feet slipping. His first turn led to a corridor. So did the next and the one after that. Then he ran into a dead end. He doubled back, ran faster. As he cut a blind corner he bumped into Tessa. They both reared up, arms raised, but couldn’t avoid colliding. She let out a playful yelp.

  “I’m lost,” she said.

  “Me too.”

  Tessa laughed, exposing the florid roof of her mouth, and the air between them slacked. Together they wandered the maze as voices around them called out and faded, until all that was left was the sound of their boots squeaking against hard-packed snow.

  By the time they made it out, everyone else was gone.

  “Maybe they’re over there,” Tessa said, pointing.

  With long, loping strides, she crossed Banff Avenue and its median lined with carnival teepees and made for a steep side street. A chute ran down the centre of the street and right through the castle. When the others couldn’t be found, she said, “Come on, let’s try the run!” Seizing a length of rope, she started dragging a toboggan up the sidewalk. At the top of the chute, Nelson sat down first, feet tucked under the board’s curled lip. Tessa wrapped herself around him, and together they paddled with hands and feet until the board began to teeter. For a moment Nelson felt buoyant, suspended in midair. Then, with a visceral tug, they tipped over the edge and hurtled down the chute, bumping, rattling, verging on flight, both of them crying out, and Tessa clinging tightly.

  After shooting through the castle and skidding to a halt, they fell upon each other, laughing. He slumped back, head in her lap, and she leaned forward, nose hovering.

  A voice said, “There you are.”

  Mr. Lichtenhein loomed, his face dark. Nelson scrambled to his feet. Tessa got up slowly.

  “Where is everybody?” she asked.

  “On the bus,” Mr. Lichtenhein said. “Waiting.”

  * * *

  The Banff Springs Hotel was a chateau with heavy stonework and pitched green roofs, one of the famous Canadian Pacific Railway hotels that dotted the transcontinental line. In the dark-panelled lobby, a small army of bellhops shouldered their luggage and gear up the grand staircase. Libby and the sisters had been assigned to one room, the rest of the girls to another. Tessa walked in and sat on the bed by the window.

  “Nellie and I will take this one.”

  Nelson’s breath grew short. He grabbed his valise and hurried down the hall to the bathroom and slipped on a thick cotton nightgown and his mother’s thin metal headband. Then he took a deep breath and returned. The others had slipped into nightgowns too, and the pale, ethereal, barefooted sight of them made him feel lightheaded. He lowered his eyes and climbed into bed.

  “Nellie?” Tessa whispered when the lights went out, but he feigned sleep, his back turned, afraid of all the ways he might betray himself.

  When he woke in the morning, he and Tessa were alone. She was looking down at him, head in one hand, her green eyes blue in the steel-grey light.

  “How long have you been up?”

  The corners of her mouth rose faintly. “A while.”

  A knock sounded. Nelson drew back.

  “Rise and shine, girls,” came Mr. Lichtenhein’s unwelcome voice.

  * * *

  Mather’s Rink was a perfect wooden rectangle on the banks of the Bow River. The day was crisp and clear, the ice glassy and hard. Swooshing around in warm-up, Nelson revelled in the open air, the miles of sky, and the ever-present view of craggy, snow-capped Cascade Mountain, which loomed over the whole town.

  Their first game was against the Amazons. The rivals from Vancouver would play each other first, as would the rivals from Calgary, the Regents and the Patricias. That way, the championship game was assured of being an interprovincial battle. That morning, the Amazons looked especially loose, laughing and whooping and posing for pictures, the crowd two-deep on all sides. At one point, the lanky girl who had scored in Vancouver kissed her coach on the lips.

  “Did you see that?” Nelson asked.

  “What? Kit Carson and Guy Patrick? That’s old news,” Tessa said.

  During warm-up, Nelson drew looks, even unabashed pointing. Over breakfast, Edna had read aloud from the carnival program: “ ‘For glitz and glamour and a dash of novelty, come see the fair sex wield the twisted hickory!’ ” As she listed off the teams, her face fell: “ ‘. . . and the Vancouver Valkyries, featuring Nellie Woo, the World’s First Asiatic Woman Hockeyist’?”

  Mr. Lichtenhein sniffed. “They don’t throw carnivals just for the sake of sport.”

  “I thought we were a team.”

  “We are a team,” Tessa said. “And we’re here. To play for the championship. That’s the important thing.”

  The referee skated to centre ice in a tweed suit and flat cap, and the teams lined up, wingers on either side of the centre, the rover and defenders directly behind. The crowd leaned over the boards and pounded them raucously.

  On the opening faceoff, Tes
sa and Kit Carson waged a long battle for the puck, both of them blocking out, lifting each other’s sticks. When Tessa finally swatted the puck back to Nelson, Kit Carson bristled. Unlike Denman Arena, whose scoreboard and lights had made Nelson tight, Mather’s Rink and its fringe of trees reminded him of Lost Lagoon, where he’d always felt carefree, and his first feint led to open ice, his first rush to a clear shot. Hockey teetered on that fine line between confidence and fear, and today he felt good. Tessa must have felt the same; they seemed in sync. Halfway through the first period, when she dropped a perfect pass in the Amazons’ zone, Nelson cradled the puck on his blade and aimed for his favourite spot: top shelf, far side.

  The crowd roared as he leapt into Tessa’s arms.

  Between periods, as they sat in one of the warming huts, a shed with benches along the walls and a wood-burning stove in the middle, their coach laid out a new strategy: now that they had the lead, they were going to slow the game down. With two hands, he mimed a hook, a slash.

  “That’s not our game,” Tessa said, rising.

  “It is now,” Mr. Lichtenhein replied.

  In the second period, Tessa kept skating hard, hunting for more goals, and Nelson did the same, flying up and down the ice, but the others relished the chance to bump, hack, and whack. Ow! Hey! Watch it! the Amazons cried, clutching their legs, shooting dirty looks. They kept turning to the referee, arms raised, but the man just shrugged.

  The strategy was working.

  In the third, both teams came out furiously, throwing shoulders, sticking out hips, and bodies kept falling to the ice. After getting rapped on the shins, Edna hobbled after her assailant and laid out a lumberman’s chop. The other girl crumpled and stayed down for a long time and had to be helped off by teammates. The referee glowered at Edna and pointed her off the ice. Both teams would have to play one short.

  When play resumed, Kit Carson took over the game. With more room to manoeuvre, she swooped around the Valkyries, unleashing shot after spring-loaded shot until one eventually eluded Libby. “Stick to the game plan,” Mr. Lichtenhein barked, but momentum had swung, and Kit Carson kept slashing to the net, past suddenly timid defenders who could only wave their sticks, and in time she scored again, a bullet to the glove side, and the Valkyries flagged.

  As time ticked down, Thelma and one of the Amazons joined in one last foot race to the puck, which had lodged itself in a corner. Both of them skated madly, elbows in the air. When it looked like she would lose this final skirmish too, Thelma knocked the other girl’s skates out from under her, sending her feetfirst into the boards.

  What Nelson heard before the harrowing cry was the dry snap of a stick. Only no stick was broken.

  * * *

  After officials converged upon the scene and the game was called and the fallen girl taken away on a stretcher, the Valkyries sat in their warming hut until the silence swelled to bursting.

  “We didn’t have to play that way,” Tessa said.

  “The game plan was working. Maybe you two” — the coach pointed at Tessa and Nelson — “should have followed it.”

  “We didn’t have to play like . . . men.”

  Mr. Lichtenhein drew up. “I’m surprised at you, Tessa. You of all people should know that hockey is hockey.”

  She made as if to say something, but didn’t. In fact, she didn’t say anything else all day, not as the team stood in the cold, watching the Regents beat the Patricias, not on the ride back to the hotel, the bus conspicuously theirs alone, and not as the team sat cheerlessly down to dinner in the dining room. It wasn’t until the Amazons came trudging through that Tessa finally spoke: “How is she?”

  Kit narrowed her eyes. “Her leg’s broken.”

  “Good god. I’m sorry.”

  “Clara can hardly walk, either.”

  Thelma and Edna stared at their plates.

  “Then how will you play tomorrow?”

  Kit turned to Guy Patrick, who nodded grudgingly. “Guy talked to the officials,” she said. “They’re letting us find replacements. But they have to be from British Columbia. The final has to be interprovincial.” She paused, letting the news sink in. “We’d like you to play for us, Tessa. And you too, Nellie. You’re the only ones who played clean.”

  “No!” Mr. Lichtenhein boomed, rising to his feet. The whole room turned.

  Guy Patrick stepped forward, his blond hair swept back atop his high forehead. “This is about more than you and me, George.”

  “Is it? Would you feel the same if I were poaching your players?”

  “Yes, if it meant beating Alberta.”

  “If you two play,” Mr. Lichtenhein warned, eyeing them back and forth, “you’ll be finding your own way home.”

  Tessa’s eyes slivered. “You’re a fine one, aren’t you?” She rose from her seat and stalked off, and the Amazons followed suit. One by one the Valkyries pushed back their chairs, but when Nelson got up, Mr. Lichtenhein wagged his fork. “Sit down, Nellie. We need to talk.”

  Libby gave Nelson a rueful look, then left him to his fate. Mr. Lichtenhein set down his knife and fork, his moustache pearled with gravy. “You and Tessa have gotten mighty close. Thick as thieves, I’d say.”

  Nelson’s jaw loosed.

  “She has some kind of . . . influence over you, doesn’t she? You can hardly be blamed, of course. She’s a very influential girl. From a very influential family. Her father is a barrister. Do you know what that means? Let’s just say her family might not be too happy to know whom she’s been . . . consorting with.”

  Nelson blinked rapidly.

  “Tell me something. Do you have a brother?”

  “Pardon, sir?”

  “A brother. Do you have one?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Are you sure? I saw someone at a boys’ tryout who looked a lot like you.”

  “I’m an only child.”

  Without warning, Mr. Lichtenhein reached across the table, took him by the chin, and turned his face from side to side, his fingers thick, coarse, vulgar. Nelson’s eyes burned.

  The man finally let go and dabbed his lips with a napkin. Then he threw the napkin down and rose to full height.

  “Don’t play.”

  * * *

  Nelson returned to his room to find Thelma and Edna playing cards on the bed.

  “Where’s Tessa?”

  Edna raised her eyes. “Why are you asking us?”

  Sensing the chill, he backed out of the room and wandered the hotel, through vaulted, dimly lit passageways that made him feel deep underground. Eventually, he came to a glassed-in room filled with greenery and white wicker furniture. There he found Tessa taking in the dusky view of the valley beyond.

  “I — I don’t think we should play.”

  Her brows cinched. “You can’t be serious.”

  “It’s not really fair, is it? He brought us here to play for him. And he’s paid for everything —”

  “Don’t be fooled, Nellie. Every team gets a share of the gate.”

  “But how will we get back?”

  “Don’t worry. My father will pay our way, if it comes to that.”

  He imagined the barrister and the barrister’s wife catching sight of him at the station. “Won’t your parents be upset if —”

  “Who cares what my parents think?” she snapped. “All they think about is ‘society’ — and marrying me into it. Mother especially. I’m sick of it.”

  Her attitude surprised him. “My mother’s dead.”

  She searched his face. “I’m sorry. And your father?”

  “Gone too. I live with my . . . uncle.”

  “What does he do?”

  “He runs a laundry. We run a laundry.”

  Tessa nodded faintly, and Nelson was certain that everything had changed.

  “What’s going to
happen to us?” he asked.

  Tessa’s eyes sharpened. “We’re going to be together, Nellie. All the better if you don’t have parents to stop you.” She gripped him by the shoulders. “In Paris there’s an art collector — she’s a writer, too — and she lives with a woman and everyone knows, it’s all out in the open. We don’t have to be afraid. It’s a whole new world out there.”

  Until that moment, he had thought of her as someone very different, perhaps impossibly different, but now he saw that they were in fact the same: neither wanted to be what the world expected.

  “Okay,” he said, “I’ll play.”

  * * *

  That night, after everyone had gone to bed, Thelma claiming a “doozy” of a headache, Nelson slipped down the hall and ran a bath. As he lay in the tub, water rising stingingly over his blackened shins, he looked at himself, at the part of himself that now seemed to stand between him and happiness. Could he go on pretending, maybe in Paris, or would he have to do something drastic? Those eunuchs of old, they’d had affairs with the concubines they guarded, so they must have still felt something. Could he go through life like that if it meant being with Tessa?

  If he didn’t entertain the thought for long, it was because he nursed a secret hope: that she might come to love him for who he was. That he might reveal himself one day, to her utter joy and amazement. It wasn’t impossible to think. Didn’t some part of her want a normal life? And wouldn’t he still scandalize her parents, if that’s what she was after?

  Back in their room, he found Tessa lying in bed, seemingly out for the count, but as soon as he climbed in, she turned, drew close. He flinched.

  “We can’t. Not here.”

  “Just to say goodnight. Don’t worry, they sleep like bears.”

  She pressed her lips to his, her breath milky and sweet, and he gave in to the dream, the lavish impossibility of it all, even though what he was doing amounted to a kind of theft. But just as guilt threatened to ruin the moment, he remembered what Sammy used to say whenever they stole onto streetcars or filched penny candy, trying to claw back a little of what the world had denied them: It ain’t stealin’ if you’re owed.