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Valancy sat on her bed and took out the letter from Dr. Trent with shaking hands. She had to read it quickly, because otherwise her mother or Cousin Stickles would come in and tell her,
“The devil hates idle hands, you know, and you should be practising or working, not reading or daydreaming.”
Valancy had only been able to go to see Dr. Trent at all because Aunt Wellington’s dreadful anniversary picnic and golf game had been cancelled. Aunt Wellington loved golf, like all good retired hockey players did, but Valancy hated it. She had never dared say that, though, out of fear of how her family might react.
Valancy avoided many things out of fear of what her family might say or do. Playing for a hockey team that was owned and run by her family, on minimal one-year contracts, meant that she was at the mercy of their good opinion at all times. Uncle Stirling ran the organization with an iron fist. Valancy had heard him speak disparagingly about her “European” style of play many times.
“Look at Olive, Valancy, she plays real hockey,” he’d say. Olive, the golden child of the Stirlings, the prized first-line centre who played proper hockey, *physical* hockey. In her heart of hearts, Valancy *hated* Olive. Olive, who was tall and broad and golden, beautiful and brutal. Olive, whose edges were nowhere near as good as Valancy’s, whose speed was nowhere near as good as Valancy’s, but it did not matter, because Olive played “good Canadian hockey.” Olive was “tough.” Valancy played “almost like those Europeans, Doss, can’t you toughen up?”
Valancy never got to use her footwork or her speed, because she was stuck on the fourth line, barely allowed to play. Valancy was only allowed to play at all because she was a Stirling, and it would have looked bad on the family if Valancy was sent down or worse, played for another team. Stirlings had always played for Deerwood and would always play for Deerwood, world without end, amen. Even people who married in played for Deerwood or not at all, like her mother, who had married in but tried to out-Stirling Uncle James with her devotion to the family and organization.
Valancy had always loved hockey. She loved feeling the wind in her face as she skated fast, she loved the footwork, she loved thinking of plays. All she had ever wanted to do was play. She had known since she was little that she would never measure up to Olive, but she had not cared, she just wanted to skate. She remembered when she was little her mother chiding her to eat more so she could grow taller “like Olive, look at her, such a strong girl!” She remembered being told over and over that she was a disappointment–too slight, not tough enough, not fitting into the system.
The reality was that the system was designed for players who played with brute force. Enforcers. Not Valancy, who was light on her feet and who refused to fight. That was another mark against her in Uncle James’ eyes.
“You have to have pride in your family and your team, Valancy! You’re a Stirling! Show them what Canadian hockey looks like! Look at Olive! Are you playing with heart or what?”
Uncle James valued grit above all. Valancy had once dared raise the topic of Corsi at one of the family events and nearly been sent down because of it.
“We do not use new-fangled numbers to tell us what good hockey is! We use our eyes and our gut! No number is going to tell you how much grit a player has,” thundered Uncle James. Uncle Benjamin made some unpleasant joke at Valancy’s expense. Again. Valancy never brought it up again and was only glad she had not gotten into Fenwick. Never bringing it up did not mean she did not think about it however, and in her little free time, she would sometimes go to the library to read about hockey advanced stats. More often she would go to read and reread the books of John Foster.
John Foster, she felt, understood her, somehow. John Foster was a regular columnist in Maclean’s Magazine and wrote primarily about hockey. He wrote about hockey the way Valancy felt about it. He wrote about playing shinny on the lake in the winter, about the feel of the ice underneath and the sky above. He wrote about a game as delicate and rugged as the Canadian landscape, and when he wrote about it, it was beautiful.
Valancy woke the morning of Aunt Wellington’s annual anniversary picnic and golf game and felt a twinge in her heart. Before she even looked out her window she could hear the rain on the roof, and knew the picnic would be cancelled. She wondered if today she might finally go and see Dr. Trent. Had anyone in the Stirling clan known she was even considering that, there would have been an outcry. No one went to Dr. Trent, they all saw Dr. Ambrose Marsh, who was the head doctor for the Deerwood team. However, Valancy did not want to see Dr. Marsh, because everything would go into her chart and Uncle James would see it, and she did not want to talk about her heart with Uncle James or with anyone else in the family. It was probably nothing, but it had been going on for some time, and she thought fleetingly of poor Cissy Gay, who had been forced to retire so young after only playing for the Muskoka team for one season. They had mismanaged her injuries and she would never play again. Uncle James, of course, had a lot to say about that.
“Real players would tough it out,” he said when he heard Cissy had to retire. Valancy privately thought that toughing it out had led to it getting so bad she could not play again, but did not dare raise this point with Uncle James. Poor Cissy had been torn apart by the hockey world in Deerwood when she came home from Muskoka, retiring because of a series of concussions. “No backbone, that girl,” said Uncle Benjamin, and then proceeded to tell a joke about other things that did not have backbones. Valancy hated Uncle Benjamin’s jokes with a passion, but Uncle Benjamin was rich and one of the owners of the team, so Valancy never said anything. Valancy felt terrible for poor Cissy, who had been a reliable and generous teammate. They had overlapped briefly in juniors and Valancy had liked her, a quiet but reliable presence in the locker room.
As a child she had gotten injured repeatedly and her family and team had gotten used to thinking of Valancy as injury-prone. The reality was that she was remarkably healthy and robust, yet every winter her mother insisted on her taking Purple Pills, saying all the trainers swore by it. Even worse was having to use Redfern’s Smelling Salts during a game, but the trainers handed them out and all the players used them, so Valancy did too, even though she hated them.
Valancy had been lucky with injuries, however over the past season she had noticed a twinge in her chest that had been getting a bit painful. Some of her episodes had been so bad they had kept her awake at night, but surely it was nothing. Valancy thought she might get it checked out anyway, if she could do it without her family and team knowing.
Her chance had finally come. With her unexpected free day, she decided to go see Dr. Trent. She went downstairs and saw Cousin Stickles watering the rubber plant. Valancy could not remember what Cousin Stickles’ actual name was–she had been called Stickles when she was still playing, so Stickles she remained, but it would have been disrespectful for Valancy to call her by her nickname, so Cousin Stickles it was.
“Where are you going, Doss?” asked Cousin Stickles? Valancy hated the nickname Doss with a passion. She liked her actual name. She did not remember when she had gotten the nickname Doss–she had had it her whole life, or so it felt. She rather thought it must have come from when she was in Timbits. She had secretly hoped that as she grew older she might, at the very least, acquire a regular sort of hockey nickname, which would probably be less terrible than Doss, but it had not happened.
“I’m going to the library to read the latest issue of Maclean’s,” Valancy replied. Although her family would much rather she not read at all, as none of them did, if she absolutely *must* read, MacLean’s was deemed acceptable enough. Her family read the Toronto Sun and that was it. Valancy did not wait for a reply before heading out the door.
She stopped by the library to check out a copy of Maclean’s first, because she needed to have something to show for her trip. She then headed to Dr. Trent’s office. Dr. Trent was brusque and clearly had no high opinion of hockey players. The examination was quick but thorough. A nurse called Dr. Trent out of the office so Valancy waited there for him, a little unsure of what to do. Some many minutes later, the nurse came into the examining room and looked startled to see Valancy.
“Dr. Trent was called away for a family emergency,” the nurse explained. Valancy felt a bit better. She was not so insignificant that Dr. Trent had forgotten her, he had an emergency. Anyone might be forgotten in an emergency, even Olive. Valancy got dressed and headed out, after having been assured by the nurse that Dr. Trent would put her results in the mail.
Today, Valancy went to check the mail early again, in case there were any note from Dr. Trent. She knew that if her mother or Cousin Stickles saw mail addressed to her, they would want to know what it was. Unlike the previous days, however, today there was a letter addressed to her, although with her name misspelled. She thought that was a bit odd, since everyone in Deerwood knew the Stirlings, but she shrugged it off. Dr. Trent had been dealing with a family emergency and must have been in a hurry.
Because Valancy shrugged off that misspelling, her entire life changed.