Chapter 473: Joey XXIX—Sleepless
Breathing deeply, curled in most of the blankets her soft hair tied back, Debbie slept next to him. Joe watched her and wondered how much he didn’t know about her, how much he still had to learn. After all of these years, Joe assumed that they knew each other perfectly and had indeed become one fleshly unit and that they could just remain quiet and happy together watching their children grow. That Debbie could want could be pining for something more never had crossed his mind.
Betrayed? No Joe didn’t feel that, but he did feel a little lost. Somehow Keaner’s suggestion that the secret of Debbie’s wants could be as simple as reading an appallingly bad romance novel didn’t wash over with him. What were women’s rights for at all if their real desire was to be dominated physically and emotionally by men? Of course that’s not what Debbie craved, but he couldn’t quite resign himself to the possibility of her wanting to be downright depraved in bed.
And he hadn’t asked her tonight. She’d seemed sleepy, genuinely tired and he’d let her sleep, not bringing up anything to possibly irritate her. Problem was, Joe couldn’t find it easy to fall asleep himself. And he needed sleep probably more than she did with an important game coming up tomorrow. If he didn’t fall asleep anytime soon then he’d have to sleep in tomorrow morning, maybe, possibly miss the morning skate or take an extra long nap before the game.
Cecile could take the kids out of the house to let him sleep. He’d ask her. But he wouldn’t have to ask her if he could just fall asleep now.
Debbie turned over a few times, started snoring softly, and Joe watched an hour tick by on the clock and finally, with a defeated groan he realized that he wouldn’t be finding sleep anytime soon. Taking care not to disturb Debbie, he slid out of bed and put on a robe and left the bedroom.
Quickest
way to soothe him to sleep, Joe knew was a
“…cases such as the recent one on Crestfield Moor farm have convinced many people to cut down on their consumption of beef and dairy products, opting instead to drink milk alternatives made from soy, and to eat meat from buffalo. Experts however stress that there is no real reason to panic and the beef and dairy industry has spent millions on research and advertising to reassure the public that meat and dairy consumption is safe and that dairy prices will not go up…”
Cecile turned the channel.
An infomercial advertising an odd jelly like bra that consisted of two cups that resembled chicken cutlets…
Cecile turned the channel.
“….CLEANSED!” A woman on the television cast her arms in the air and fell to the feet of a man who had been touching her forehead. The woman then stood up and began to babble incoherently. The man declared, with sweat dripping from his forehead and brow that the woman was healed, she could walk again, indeed the Lord be praised she can walk again.
Cecile made a noise, a scoff.
“Well there isn’t much on the air at this time of night.” Joe said.
Startled, Cecile gasped and dropped the bowl of cereal from her lap onto the floor. Joe couldn’t feel anymore worse at that moment. “Oh no! I’m so sorry!” Cecile exclaimed and she jumped off the couch and jogged past him into the kitchen.
“No I’m sorry,” Joe called after her.
Cecile reappeared quickly with a wash cloth in her hand and she went to the carpet, scooping up the cereal and dropping it into the bowl and then began soaking up the milk. Joe knew he should go help her, it was his fault after all but he found himself unwilling to move. He stood in the doorway, watching her, lips tightened, brow crinkled but she didn’t seem angry, only bent on getting the mess cleaned up. After the milk was sopped up Cecile dropped the wash cloth into the bowl and she sighed.
“Really I shouldn’t have scared you like that,” Joe said.
Cecile looked up at him, her hair pulled back from her face, her eyes calm, and “You didn’t expect that I would drop the bowl.” She brushed her fingers over her forehead as if fixing a stray hair that wasn’t there, and she looked at the bowl. “Or maybe you did. You men are terrible. Maybe you should apologize again.”
Joe smiled. “Well I am sorry.”
She smiled, “I know, its okay. At least, well at least I hadn’t a craving for spaghetti right?”
“Yeah then both of us would have to relocate before Debbie found out,” Joe replied and Cecile only half smiled. He walked into the living room and sat on the end of the couch, Cecile’s lips tightened and she looked at the television. “Do you think he’s really healing those people?” Joe asked.
Slowly Cecile shook her head. “No.” She looked at him, “No, it’s all just tricks and delusions and people wanting to be deluded. False prophets and greed, it’s disgusting.” She picked up the remote control and turned the channel, back to a news channel. “And then there’s the manipulation of our fears so that we will or won’t buy something or eat something.” Her voice sounded so gravelly and defeated he felt touched and worried for a moment.
“Do you think that there are any real healers out there?” he asked, and he didn’t know what he wanted to hear her opinion on that. “God sent them once before right? Isn’t that what you believe? Why couldn’t he send them again?”
Cecile wrinkled her nose in a way only a young woman could. “No, not at all. God made his point, he sent His son, there is nothing more to be said.”
“But the saints?” Joe asked.
Cecile’s mouth twitched at one corner. “The saints,” she repeated. “I’m even named after one of them.”
“Do you believe in them?” he asked.
Cecile shrugged one shoulder. “I believe in the spirit of them. But…” she sighed. “That man on the TV just now, rest assured, he’s no saint. It’s just pompous posturing.”
“What are you doing up so late?” Joe asked and he stopped himself from a term of endearment, a sweetie or a honey. It would only have been said in a brotherly sort of way but he didn’t want her to assume the wrong thing. And even in his heart he knew that it was the wrong thing to say.
“Couldn’t sleep,” Cecile said softly. “My brain hurts.”
“So does mine,” Joe said in a low voice.
Cecile looked at him, her brow furrowed in a girlish way. “And you need your sleep too, your game is a big one tomorrow right?”
“Right,” Joe said amused that she seemed to finally be catching on. “It is. Did Dan tell you?”
“Amongst other unsaid things,” Cecile sighed and she stood up and took the bowl with her, no doubt to the kitchen.
Joe remained on the couch and he stared at the television startled by a news image of a cow being slaughtered with a screw gun, a story on mad cow disease, on the probability of catching it, on the science of it, on the culture of fear around it. Fear on the news. He thought of the milk Mitchell’s body could not digest, on the meat that Camryn refused to eat from her baby plate and the steaks he and the team ate with such gusto on almost a daily basis. The channel went to commercial and Joe realized that Cecile had not returned. Had she gone to bed?
Well the twerp hadn’t even said good night, not that it mattered so much.
He turned off the television and went to the kitchen, the light still on and Cecile was at the stove warming something over the fire. “Still hungry?”
“This is for you actually,” she said and Joe could see that it was milk.
“Oh you don’t have to…”
“No problem,” Cecile replied. “When I can’t sleep I’m bored out of my mind.”
Joe sat at the table, touched by the sight of her dropping some honey into the pot. “How was Dan tonight?”
“Oh I don’t want to bother you,” she said.
“It’s okay. If he’s being a pill I can have him cleaning up pucks tomorrow, can’t have him distracting my Cec… Nanny from her clear head.”
Cecile laughed and she looked at him. “No he’s fine. Maybe I’m the problem.”
“You?” Joe asked.
The milk bubbled and Cecile quickly took it off the stove and poured it into a clay mug. She turned off the stove and brought the mug to him. She sat at the table and rested her cheek on her forearm now looking sleepy and waifish. “I need to understand him before these important games. He gets funny. I don’t like bothering him, I should talk to Debbie about it, is there a trick to being, ah.. uh…”
“Hockey wife?”
Cecile closed her eyes. “Yeah. A hockey wife.”
“It’s not easy,” Joe said. “It never will be.”
Cecile didn’t open her eyes. “But it’s just a game, you get paid regardless of the outcome, I don’t understand.”
“Well we have fans to think about,” Joe said blowing at the frothy top of the milk. He took a sip. “The owner of a team, he’s in the business of winning, hon…erm… well it just wouldn’t be good business to put together a team not interested in winning. And as players we’re obligated to perform to standard, does that make sense.”
“Perfect.” Cecile said with a clear voice but she didn’t open her eyes. “Now if Dan would just put it to me like that things would be easier.”
“He’s a boy.”
Cecile opened her eyes, clear green eyes. “Of course. The thing is Mr. Sakic, I know I just have to get used to it. Things will get tough as this season wears on, I have a feeling sometimes that it’s on the tip of Dan’s tongue, just there on his lips and it eggs at me. I have a feeling he wants to say something and I know what it is and I can’t understand why he would want to say it and why I would want to hear it.”
Joe took a longer sip of the milk, soothing, good. He pointed to her. “You need to go to bed, girl, you’ll feel better.”
Cecile squinted. “Sometimes ‘the game’ is more important to me. Right?”
A tough one for women to understand, always. Joe felt bad for her. “Sure. But it’s not personal. Its sacrifices we all have to make sometimes. Like you and God for instance, Dan comes second to that doesn’t he? It’s just the way things are.”
The smile on her face, her cheeks suddenly reddened and she stood up, “See, Dan shoulda just put it that way too.”
“Just wait for him to get older,” Joe said. “Thanks for the milk.”
Cecile nodded. “No problem, no problem, thanks for… thanks…” She wandered out of the kitchen and Joe watched her, continued drinking the milk. Somehow something about her made him sad, and filled with apprehension.