Playing To Win

By F G Paci

The game of life. Stories about competition in sports and games and activities. The Greek conception of the agon, competitive tests of skill and endurance and fortitude – and experiencing what an old TV show once called the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. There is more, however, than the pleasure of a score and the pain of a loss. More than the outcome of the competition is what the competition reveals about character. And, though all playing involves fun and skill and struggle, there is the game that leads to the short-term outcome and there is the game that is without end. The game of life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Guernica
• Release date: Jan 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781550716221

F G Paci

F.G. Paci was born in Italy and grew up in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. He was the Elia Chair writer-in-residence at York University and has an honorary degree from Laurentian University. He is the author of more than a dozen novels, among them: The Italians, Oberon Press, 1978. (Signet Ed. 1980. French trans. La Famille Gaetano, Guernica, 1990); Black Madonna, Oberon, 1982; The Father, Oberon, 1984; Black Blood, Oberon, 1991; Icelands, Oberon, 1999. Italian Shoes, Guernica, 2002 (Italian Trans. Scarpe Italiane, Iannone, Italy, 2008); Hard Edge, Guernica, 2005; Peace Tower, Guernica, 2009; and The Son, Oberon, 2011. A book of essays on his work (F.G. Paci: Essays on His Work, ed. J. Pivato, Guernica) came out in 2003. He lives in Toronto with his wife and has one son.

Book preview

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Fish Tales

The Red Line

Bad Lies

Negative Capability

Soccer Mom

Circle Of Stars

The Game Inside

Slo-Pitch

The Pick-Up Artist

The Rage Of Achilles

About F.G. Paci

Playing to Win

Essential Prose Series 97

Guernica Editions Inc. acknowledges the support of

the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

The Ontario Arts Council is an agency of the Government of Ontario.

Playing to Win

F.G. PACI

GUERNICA

TORONTO – BUFFALO – BERKELEY – LANCASTER (U.K.) 2012

First edition.

Printed in Canada.

Copyright © 2012, F.G. Paci and Guernica Editions Inc.

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication,

reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,

mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise stored in a

retrieval system, without the prior consent of the publisher is an

infringement of the copyright law.

Michael Mirolla, editor

Guernica Editions Inc.

P.O. Box 117, Station P, Toronto (ON), Canada M5S 2S6

2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, N.Y. 14150-6000 U.S.A.

Distributors:

University of Toronto Press Distribution,

5201 Dufferin Street, Toronto (ON), Canada M3H 5T8

Gazelle Book Services, White Cross Mills, High Town, Lancaster LA1 4XS U.K.

Small Press Distribution, 1341 Seventh St., Berkeley, CA 94710-1409 U.S.A.

Legal Deposit – Third Quarter

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2012938355

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Paci, F. G.

Playing to win [electronic resource] / F.G. Paci.

(Essential prose series ; 97)

Short stories.

Electronic monograph.

Issued also in print format.

ISBN 978-1-55071-622-1 (EPUB).--ISBN 978-1-55071-623-8 (MOBI)

I. Title. II. Series: Essential prose series (Online) ; 97

PS8581.A24P53 2012 C813’.54 C2012-902884-3

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 7

Fish Tales 9

The Red Line 39

Bad Lies 65

Negative Capability 91

Soccer Mom 107

Circle Of Stars 129

The Game Inside 161

Slo-Pitch 179

The Pick-Up Artist 195

The Rage Of Achilles 219

About F.G. Paci 237

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Thanks to Christine, my wife, and to Willi Thurner and Patrick Busby for reading some of these stories and offering their sound advice.

Fish Tales

Ryan kept his eye on the two-lane highway as it cut through the dense bush. It was getting hillier this far north, with rolling hills and outcrops of the orange pre-Cambrian rock that had been blasted through and chiseled apart. Adjusting his aviator glasses, he put the AC a little higher for the afternoon heat. Dark clouds, however, were gathering ominously in the west and slowly covering the bright sky.

How much farther to the turn-off? he asked Janey, who was holding the map on her lap.

We’re close, she said. Five minutes or so.

Looks like a storm coming.

He hadn’t been to the Haliburton Highlands in twenty or so years, ever since his last visit to his dad’s cottage. He had just graduated from university and was full of seething resentment. Things hadn’t turned out so good. His father had been back after a two-year posting to the Middle East. At one point they had almost come to blows. Now it was a different story. He was in his early forties, with a wife sitting beside him and two young boys in the back making a racket.

Will you guys pipe down, for god’s sake, he barked out.

He won’t let me play, Dad, Ethan said.

Liam, let him play, Ryan said in a calmer voice.

Liam, two years older at ten, was in control of the situation as usual. Janey had bought them a new hand-held game that was like a Rubik’s cube, involving an intricate set of plastic Popsicle sticks. It was about a two hour drive up north and the back seat was full of comics and books and toys to amuse the two boys. Each game or book would occupy them for ten minutes tops, before they got bored. Of course, each time Liam picked a new game it would be the same one Ethan wanted. Sibling rivalry was something he had little experience with. He had been an only child.

Liam, Janey turned and spoke in a soothing tone, what did we learn about sharing?

Aw, Mom, he doesn’t know what to do.

Let him try at least.

Here, the older boy tossed the puzzle to his brother, Ryan saw through the rear-view mirror.

Is that the way to be nice? Ryan said to his elder son. He gave his wife a token glance and shook his head.

Get used to it, she said. It’s going to be that way till their teens. I hope we get there before the storm.

They were past Minden, heading east on the two-lane highway, going up and down steep hills and passing a network of lakes, the area uninhabited and wild. They’d have to go another fifteen minutes at the turn-off, if he could remember correctly. When his father had given him directions on the phone, his voice had sounded hoarse and weak.

We’ll go fishing like the old days, his father said. With your two boys. I know a lake nearby that’s been restocked with brook trout and plenty of bass. Plus, there’s yellow perch for the kids. This might be my last summer up here, son. Make sure you pick up licenses along the way.

His father was up there with his second wife, a woman Ryan had never met. A woman from South Africa, Noleen something or other. His father had leukemia. They had told the boys they were going to his father’s cottage for a few days. It would be the first time his father had laid eyes on his grandchildren.

Afterwards he and Janey had discussed the disease and the treatment. I had an uncle who had it, Janey told him. They lose their hair and their appetite. They bruise and bleed easily, and become prone to infections. It ain’t pretty.

On the next passing lane up a hill Ryan quickly overtook a convoy of trailers and slower cars. The powerful Jeep Grand Cherokee engine, a V8, roared down the open highway.

What’s your plan with your dad? Janey asked him.

He glanced at her. Plan? I have no plan. He wants to see his grandchildren. We’ll let him see his grandchildren.

They had told the boys that their granddad was ill and not to expect too much from him.

Your granddad, Connor, was a famous correspondent on TV, Janey had told the boys.

But they were too young to understand. Their idea of fame was a cartoon character or a pirate or a movie superhero. She had tried to make him sound like a hero, explaining how Connor had been posted all over the world, covering wars and political upheavals and natural calamities. When he was their age, however, a hero was the last thing Connor O’Donnell was called in his mother’s house. He could remember how he’d try to catch his dad reporting the news from some corner of the world at night and how his mom would go into a fit of hysterics if she caught him. She had forbidden him to watch for years after their breakup. It wasn’t till he was in his teens that he’d catch his dad on a regular basis, reporting the news from Tehran, Africa, Serbia, or points in the Middle East. He’d stare at the image on the screen so hard, as if he wanted to squeeze some feeling from it, half expecting that resonant officious voice to suddenly stop in the middle of a sentence and say hello to him, his only son. It was odd how the image could be a total stranger and yet still his father. By then, however, his dad had ceased to be a person commanding awe and respect. He had come to see him through his mom’s eyes, as a liar and a cheat who had abandoned the family for his career.

If he tried to analyze his feelings towards his dad now, he’d come up against a stone wall. He had seen so little of him in the flesh, after all. His only fond memories were of the times they’d go fishing during the summers at the cottage when he was a kid before his dad had become a foreign correspondent. His dad was working for the local TV station back then as a newscaster. He had inherited the cottage from his own father who had passed away a few years back. They’d go out into the lake in a rowboat, find a shallow inlet with lily pads and weeds, and cast their lines.

It had been so peaceful back then. The small waves lapping against the boat, the dark wine-coloured water, the rocky shoreline and trees in the distance. He’d stare at the red and white float, bobbing in the water, and imagine the fish underneath debating whether to take the fat dew worm. His father, who had been raised at the cottage, loved the outdoors. He had tried to teach him about fish. You had to think like a fish, he said. Some stay in school all the time, he said. They must be smart. They spend their whole day swimming and eating.

They’d stay on the lake the whole morning, maybe catch three or four rock bass or perch, enough for one meal, and then head back. He could remember his father’s broad shoulders as he rowed. He was a handsome man, with dark wavy hair and smooth features and a winning smile that his mom said was photogenic. You had to have the looks for the kind of job he did. Ryan would sit in the back of the old boat and trail his hand in the water, his baseball cap shielding his eyes from the glare.

After his father had been posted overseas, however, his life had been turned upside down. There had been a steady stream of suitors coming to the house for his mom. She was still in her mid-thirties at the breakup, having married in her early twenties to a man eight years her senior. She had told Ryan much later that she had little experience with men before her marriage.

Your father was my first man, really, she said. "I fell for him hook, line, and sinker, while I was still in university. He had that voice that came through your ears like soft syrupy honey. And then he’d hit you with a million dollar smile – and his blue eyes. I was a goner, pure and simple.

I was the one who wanted children. Your father wanted to wait. To see which direction his career was going to take. It would be no use having children if we were traipsing all over the world. But I wanted to have a child quick. Maybe because I was afraid I’d lose him. Maybe to influence his decision to stay home.

The breakup had hit her hard. He had been a kid and didn’t know what was going on most of the time. It almost seemed, however, that she was seeking revenge on the globe-trotting TV journalist. She’d go out with these guys, string them along for months and even years, and then just drop them. There were some rewards for him at the beginning. In their efforts to gain his favour, they’d take him to ball games, hockey games, Wonderland, or the movies. He’d be showered with gifts. The downside, of course, was that he felt a used commodity. He was only a means of getting to his mom who, in spite of having a kid, was quite a catch. She was thin and luminous and graceful, with shoulder-length brown hair and a wonderful laugh that could melt any man’s heart.

One guy had come close to marrying his mom. Ron White. A real piece of work. He had no idea what his mom saw in this guy. Unless he had completely snowed her.

Ryan could recall the first time he had met Ron White. It was during a ball game he had pitched in. Ron had accompanied his mom to the game. After the game, in which he had been shelled for five runs in two innings, Ron had taken him aside.

If you don’t mind me pointing out a few things, the stranger said, you’re giving your pitches away.

All too ready to listen to an adult’s advice, Ryan had looked at the guy as if he held the key to pitching supremacy. He was fourteen years old, his first year in high school, and playing on a rep team in the Kingsway Baseball League. They were at the Islington ball park, just north of Bloor. Ron was in his mid-forties, a heavy-set tall guy with thick shoulders, a goatee, and short dark hair, who looked like a wrestler.

No way, he said.

Ron gave him a little smile. You have three pitches. A curve. A slider. And a fast ball. You hold the ball at your side before the windup and adjust your grip according to what you’re going to pitch. All you have to do is hide the ball in your glove before the windup, adjust your grip while it’s still in the glove, and go from there. Try it.

It had sounded like good advice. Ryan had tried it next time he pitched – and it seemed to work. He pitched five innings and struck out eight guys. But his control went south and he ended up walking nine.

Sure, you change your delivery and your control is going to be affected at the beginning, Ron told him after the game. It takes time. Practice makes perfect.

The next week they had gone to a nearby park that had a ball diamond to play catch. He and his mom lived in a tree-lined residential area in Islington, in an old two-storey brick house that his dad had left them. Ron had gone behind the plate with the catcher’s mitt, turned his ball cap around, and squatted down, offering him a target.

Pop it in here, Ron said. Show me what you got.

Shouldn’t I toss it easy first? Ryan said from the mound. Warm up a bit.

Sure, sure, that’s what I meant.

After a few warm-up throws, however, it became glaringly apparent that Ron could hardly catch. And he tossed the ball back like a girl.

You can’t even throw, Ryan said, laughing. Where did you learn how to play ball?

He hadn’t meant it to be so mean, but Ron’s face lost all its colour. They were enemies after that. Ron played it good when his mom was around, but when they were alone he showed his true character.

You’re not such a hotshot, Ron told him after the sixth month of coming to the house to call on his mom. The son of the famous Connor O’Donnell. I’ve got your number, boy. Just don’t spoil it between Zoe and me, all right. We got a good thing going.

His mom told him Ron was an important producer for a new series of shows that would be syndicated on TV. According to her, he had been an ultimate fighter a number of years back. Ryan had seen a few of these fights. Wearing nothing but shorts and knuckle-gloves, their ankles taped, the guys went at each other in any of twenty-five fighting styles. Mostly they boxed with their fists and feet, wrestled each other to the mat, and then plowed away with their fists till their opponents were a bloodied piece of side meat.

Ryan didn’t want any part of the guy after that. Every so often he saw Ron looking at him with this dead stare, as if he had him in his sights for a serious mauling.

Ron had lasted two years. When he had asked her afterwards what she saw in him, she had said it was his voice.

He has a sweet voice, believe it or not, she said. He had me going for a long while.

It seemed his mom was always looking for his dad in other men. Not only their voices, but sometimes the way they looked or walked or carried themselves. She claimed the major problem with Connor wasn’t only his career, but that he wasn’t an honest guy. He tended to bend the truth, as he called it. Not an out and out liar, but a fabricator, as he called himself. He stretched the truth, omitted details, or switched them around till what came out was something close to a tall tale.

This came out in his handling of the news, his mom told him. They all have this way of exaggerating things, right? Your dad said it was like creating a dramatic arc to a story. To add colour and excitement to otherwise boring pieces. It got to a point where I couldn’t believe anything he told me.

Ryan could remember conversations with his dad on the phone from halfway around the world. His dad would always promise him he’d be home for his birthday or graduation or whatever and he’d always hear the same story. It would have to be next time. Something would always come up. It seemed the state of the world was such that it always conspired against them. It was an unstable place. Something was always bound to flare up – a war, a calamity, a natural disaster – to keep them apart. By the time he reached his teens, he had ceased to believe anything his dad told him.

When he mentioned this propensity in his dad’s makeup to Janey, he added that he wouldn’t be surprised if his dad had made up the story about the leukemia.

He’d never do such a thing, Janey said.

Oh, yeah? You don’t know Connor O’Donnell.

But that was twenty years ago.

Can a zebra change its stripes?

At the turn-off they went into a concession road whose asphalt needed major repairs. The Grand Cherokee bumped along at a slower pace. The rain clouds came over and covered the sun. Not an auspicious start to their trip. It was four o’clock.

Janey, he said, see if your cell-phone works this far.

By the time they reached the last turn-off to the lake the rain was coming down hard. He maneuvered the Jeep over large ruts in the dirt road that circled the western half of the lake, with driveways to the various cottages along the way. His father’s cottage was on the north side of the lake. They kept their eye on the lot numbers and for a wooden nameplate with O’Donnell on it.

There it is, Dad, Liam said.

I gotta go to the bathroom, Ethan said. Fast.

They parked on nothing more than a rock formation that overlooked the lake and the cottage. A black BMW was parked in the clearing.

You gotta help me, he looked at his wife. This is going to be very awkward.

Janey, who worked as a sales consultant in her father’s firm, was very good with strangers and business situations. She had a very outgoing personality. To keep fit she worked on her aerobics. He had always liked the way she looked. Of average height and very slim, with straw-coloured hair that was now in a ponytail, and fair-skinned features that freckled in the sun. Both boys had her fair features, though they got their solid girth from him. Liam had a mop of reddish brown hair, while Ethan was blond and slimmer. At this age, Liam’s teeth were coming out a little crooked. He’d need braces soon. Ethan had his mother’s good looks and slim lithe body.

Just remember, she said, as they made to get out of the car, he’s your father, no matter what. And the boys are going to be looking at how you handle your own dad.

****

When he woke up the next morning his dad was already up making breakfast. The boys were sleeping in the third and smallest bedroom on bunk beds. It didn’t take long to get them up. They were suburban kids and were excited about going fishing for the first time. After a quick trip to the bathroom, he put on an old pair of walking shorts and a sweater over his T-shirt. It was a little chilly in the late-August morning. He slipped on his cross-trainers for the boat. Janey rolled over in her sleep.

Com’on, boys, he said as he passed their bedroom. The bathroom’s empty.

In the kitchen his dad had the coffee and eggs going. This morning he wasn’t wearing his baseball cap.

How do you like your eggs? his dad said.

Over easy.

The cottage had been renovated from what he remembered as a kid. The east side of the kitchen had slide-open windows. The large patio deck outside looked over the lake in a breath-taking