Chapter 362: Cheli XII—All the Apologies

Chelios’ throat tightened as he drove down the street, peering at home numbers and with the radio turned low so that he only heard the gravelly scraping of the ice and salt underneath his tires. He sighed when he saw the proper number, the green brick mansion. One car sat in the driveway, a slate colored SUV, he could see a stain where another car should be, but was not. Did that mean Patrick wasn’t home? But why should he be afraid of him? If Patrick was, then just as well, he could deliver the same message with or without.

He stopped the car. Should he call? But that felt odd, he would just tell whomever, I’m just outside so I might as well come in. Stop being a cowardly shit. He swung open his door and slammed it shut and he clenched his fists somewhat as he went up the drive to the door. He saw a quick jerking movement at the curtain and he loosened his fingers. Hell, this wasn’t war!

The front door opened and he could hear a small dog barking frantically, one of Patrick’s sons stood, squinting at the glass door. He opened it and poked his spikey haired head out. “What are you doing here? Dad’s not home.” Teddy or Freddy?

“Hey, T-T—Fred? Fred yeah, that’s fine,” he said as nicely as he could. “Hey I just needed to talk to either your Dad or your Mom, is she home?”

Fred wrinkled his nose, “I guess, come on in.” The boy leaned over and picked up the dog, a fluffy, half grown puppy, and he turned and disappeared into the house. “Mom! MOM! Chris Chelios is here, MOM! He wants to talk to you or Dad!”

“What the hell are you doing here?” A girl’s smart ass voice said and Chelios looked to his right to see that gorgeous little cat that he’d last seen with his blood on her lips. She had her arms behind her back and her pointy chin tilted up. Chelios’ fingers went to the itchy scar on his wrist. “You wanna get your ass kicked again?”

“Yeah and this time I won’t bleed,” Chris snapped but in a somewhat playful tone. “Scared yet?”

The dark skinned girl raised her black eyebrows and half grinned as if she couldn’t believe anyone would dare talk to her like that. She must be a rich little bitch or something Chris assumed.

“Dude, really, what are you doing here?” Jonathan Roy said in a curious voice.

To Chris’s amusement Jonathan’s face seemed somewhat off, his cheeks and forehead seemed pink and raw, almost as if he’d been sunburned or scrubbed to harshly. “Dude lay off the greasy foods and you won’t have to exfoliate so much,” Chris grinned.

Jonathan narrowed his eyes. “Shut up.”

The girl laughed. “Yeah Chelios knows all about exfoliation right?”

Jonathan grinned. “Sure he does.”

“He prol’ly has his roommate exfoliate him and then apply the mint base mask!” she giggled. Oh wow that girl had perfect teeth! His wrist twinged painfully.

“Hey…” Chelios began.

“Yeah can you imagine?” Jonathan jumped in. “Oh oh oh… Malts my feet are so sore pleeeeeeease can you rub em it feels sooo good!”

“You little…” Chelios sputtered. He could feel his pulse spike.

“Oh wait, oh wait!” The girl gasped sparkling like a little fairy princess. “After the exfoliation and rub downs they probably get in touch with their feminine side by wearing tassles on their….”

“Okay now cut it out!” Chelios snapped wanting to swat the pups across the carpet. God damn punks thinking they can gang up on him! “Show some god damn respect when you’re around….”

“And I would appreciate it if you show some god damn respect to my children under their own roof!”

Shit. Chelios fumed inside to see the triumphant smiles on the kid’s faces before they dashed behind Michele, and then disappeared into the next room, no doubt to crouch by the doorway and listen. There those eyes were, sparkling blue with slanted hate and loathing, annoyance, arrogance, her fingers pink as she pressed them on her boyish hips.

“Hey they started it,” Chelios said helplessly. “Those kids are completely…”

“And I will talk to them later but they are first, children, and you do not need to be responding to them as one, yes? There is something called setting examples but you know this of course having children of your own?” She sighed and for a moment looked so tired and fragile before she inhaled and her eyelids fluttered. “So what is it today, Chris, I’m tired.”

“I just need to talk to you or, or Patty I don’t care which.” He held out his hands to show her how safe he was, and he mentioned Patrick’s name to show her that he didn’t have any ulterior plans concerning her. “I just need to talk to one of you.”

“Then talk,” she said.

“Not with the kids eavesdropping.”

Michele sighed, “Jonathan, Elena, upstairs, now.”

The kids obeyed instantly jogging up the stairs and giggling.

“Isn’t he too young for a girlfriend?” Chelios asked.

“That’s none of your business,” Michele replied. “I don’t have time for you, so make it quick.”

Chelios looked away, he knew he hadn’t expected much hospitality but it still irked him. “Look I don’t want a repeat of last time, so, look we can’t just leave things alone, it’s impossible.”

Michele’s forehead furrowed. “Perhaps for you, I’m fine.”

Impossible infuriating creature, why would he expect anything different? The woman had an inability to see things from other perspectives than her own. Why would he think anything in the slightest could make her different now? Actually he hadn’t expected to get through the front door, and with those guard dogs of kids, it’s amazing he did. “Look, that’s great for you, but can you just look at things from a charitable perspective for once in your life?”

Michele’s eyes widened and she laughed. “Charitable? You’re telling me that I need to be charitable to you? I owe you something? What do I owe you?”

“Nothing,” Chris muttered pinching the bridge of his nose. “You don’t owe me anything, okay I understand that but I’m just asking, pleading for your better nature here okay, I am asking for something I don’t fuc… deserve, and I am hoping that you can find it in your heart….”

“You’re not going to get down on one knee are you?” She asked crossing her arms and frowning but he saw a slight spark of mirth in her eye. And although he didn’t feel gratified, he felt as if he had made progress somehow.

“No, I’m trying to be serious okay.”

Her face lightened considerably and she nodded. “What do you want?”

Perhaps because of the children in the house, Chris thought that had to be the most fortunate timing but she suddenly seemed receptive and not in the slightest danger of throwing a tantrum or a violent outburst. “Look,” he said and he took a step forward and touched her shoulder and she tightened but didn’t shrug him off. He felt awkward and embarrassed for touching it and even more embarrassed to admit to the gesture by pulling away. “I… I know you didn’t want it back and, I can’t get it back, and I’m sorry for not having it anymore but I thought it would help if it were gone.”

“Are you drunk or something?” she asked.

Chelios groaned and ran his fingers through his hair. “You know what I’m talking about! It’s gone! Okay does that make you happy?”

Michele shook her head. “Nothing about it makes me happy.”

Chris closed his eyes to avoid a full out glare. “I just want to apologize for something that can never be fixed, and I’m begging you to forgive me because…”

“Does this have to do with Tracee again?” Michele asked. “How is that going?” At first glance Chelios thought that perhaps she was taunting him, of course she would have heard about his arrest and whatever little tidbits the press printed about him and Tracee and he would have roared at her and reminded her about her own issues with her husband so recently. But her voice, he heard if not an affection, an understanding there. Yes, she would know that things weren’t as they seemed, and his family would be hurting, finally a common ground for them.

Chelios leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over his belly. “Sure, it has everything to do with her and my family. It’s ripping them apart, I can’t hold it together anymore, these nightmares, these memories, okay? I attacked my own fucking wife cause I thought it was you, if I don’t get more fucked up in the next few months, then I’m gonna be fucking surprised okay? I need help.”

She narrowed her eyes but no anger flickered there, “You need my help? What can I do?”

“I don’t know,” he muttered. He didn’t look at her because he could feel his cheeks reddening. “There’s something wrong about you, and I don’t know if it goes for Pat too, but it’s around you, your memory, your spirit I don’t know but something of it is stuck in my brain like a fucking thorn I can’t claw out and it’s been festering for years. I can’t scratch you out, and don’t think it’s because I’m in love with you or anything, it’s because…”

“You hate me?”

“No that would be easy, I just can’t stand you.”

She smiled. “And I can’t stand you.”

He looked at her and he smiled and for the first time around her, he felt calm. “At least we agree on something.”

Her smile slipped away and she leaned to him and touched him briefly on the cheek. “What do you want?”

“Your forgiveness. If you just let me go, if you just put me at a little peace maybe that would help things, I know it will. I just want my wife and children, I want things back to the way they were and if you’re living on peacefully like you say, if none of that shit from the past bothers you still, can’t you just let me go? Can’t you just accept my apology?”

Her cheeks mottled with pink and pale splotching and her frail throat tightened, her eyes filled with tears and her nose reddened. He could see her body tremble. “Just go away,” she said. “Before I really kill you.”

Montreal—1986

Ah yes she was beautiful. He hadn’t really touched her yet. Chris felt like a stalker, his fingers had just brushed over her, but he hadn’t allowed himself a real enjoyment of her. He would savor her later, when he had her all to himself, when he was sober and could remember a full enjoyment of her cool surface.

Lord Stanley’s Cup and he thought of it as a her. A shiny, silver, gallant little lady calling to him, enticing, seducing, enraging, inciting, inspiring all this shit and pain and sweat and joy that they’d been fighting for in the past months. He ran his tongue over his lips, this past season, none of it meant shit because of this. The Cup was the only thing important now.

He heard her laugh, throaty but not yet too inebriated to know what the laugh was for. Just briefly he felt fear, and worry, and he looked at her. Michele sat on Robinson’s lap, his large hands rested over her tummy and he had his cheek pressed into her body. She leaned over the cup and dipped her fingers in the champagne that sloshed and drooled over the sides, sucking on them.

Where were the other wives and girlfriends? Chris looked around, they were scattered, kissing men that were not theirs to kiss, enraging each other, drunk, laughing, crying. Pat sat with a circle of reporters, grinning, skinny, lanky, winking with his pale skinny hand caressing the Conn Smythe award. Chelios was still a little stunned at the boy’s blossoming, but he wasn’t ungrateful.

“Put me down you shit,” Michele giggled.

“Say it in English kitty cat and then I’ll think about it.”

Chris’s heart jumped and he scowled and he saw Michele’s face twist. She wriggled out of Larry’s lap and slapped him on the shoulder. “Never say that again!” she snapped. “EVER!”

Larry held up his hands. “Sure, sure, whatever you want little girl.”

She nodded and turned away from him, he made eye contact with her and she came over. He wanted to hide suddenly; he didn’t want her clouding his fun. “Where’s Patrick?” she asked.

Chris gestured to the reporters. She rolled her eyes and smoothed down her teased hair. “Of course, eh?”

He nodded. “Hey this is great huh?” He didn’t know why he said that.

She grinned. “Of course.”

“I mean, you know it’s worth it, a dream come true?”

“Oh no doubt.” She hiccupped.

“I mean worth just letting things, you know, be bygones?”

She scowled. “Don’t you dare compare this to that, there can be no trade value or redemption yes? And why bring it up, we were having fun. What’s wrong with you?”

Chelios slipped his hand in his pocket and felt the bracelet there. He wanted to give it back; he thought maybe it would be a good idea to do it right now, a peace offering to top off the night. She had to miss it, she’d be happy to have it back wouldn’t she? “I just thought….”

“Think nothing,” she sighed. “I don’t.”

“Well you seem to be doing a lot better?”

She shrugged, “Well I’m a lot different.”

“Is that good?”

She looked away, towards Patrick holding court with the press. She slowly shook her head. “I can look at it like this, eh? Like, Patrick would not have had the passion to do this thing he did, this wonderful thing he did, were it not for the bad thing that happened. I can think of it like this, as a chain reaction that led to something, a treasure worth the pain, but I will not think of it all. You can think of it like that and feel proud of yourself, yes? Are you proud of yourself for helping to create this thing?”

Chris shook his head and released the bracelet in his pocket. “I’m not proud of anything; I just want to say I’m sorry.”

She looked at him and smiled, “You’re not worth forgiving.”