"Notes on the State of Virginia" - Chapter 3
by Peter Pnin
We conclude the third and final week of PILCROW’s Inaugural Serialized Novel Contest. Soon, subscribers (both free and paid) will vote on a Winner to be fully serialized here on the Substack (Finalists are awarded $500; the Winner $1,000.)
Our Finalists for this round:
Seasons Clear, and Awe by Matthew Gasda
Mites by Gregory Freedman
Notes on the State of Virginia by Peter Pnin
We’re excited to have all of you as a part of this endeavor to forge a new path for fiction on Substack. If you believe in what we’re doing, please consider offering a paid subscription.
⚬─────────✧─────────⚬
I sing a hero’s head, large eye
And bearded bronze, but not a man…
From “The Man with the Blue Guitar” by Wallace Stevens
⚬─────────✧─────────⚬
—QUERY IV—
Sport
A Notice of a Disruption?
They were the top line on the Cornell women’s hockey team:
Cecilia Rubinstein: Left wing; 5’8” junior pre-med student from Montreal; Jewish; major: chemistry; truculent; good speed; ferocious work ethic; best defensive forward; voted best hair on team, 2016-17; shoots left; co-captain; uniform number 13.
Emmy Noether: Erlangen, Germany; club team: ESV Koenigsbrunn; member of Germany U-20 national team; sophomore mathematics major; center; superb hands; outstanding lateral movement; skilled deflector of puck; lover of Kurt Weill’s music; ECAC and Ivy League Rookie of the Year, 2016-17; shoots left; boyfriend plays for Boston University; uniform number 7.
Virginia Statusen: Senior; right wing; West Bloomfield, Michigan; major: astronomy; All-America second team, all-ECAC, and All-Ivy first teams, 2016-17; leading scorer ECAC 2016-17; excellent skater with quick acceleration and wit; tremendous vision and game instinct; shoots right; co-captain; uniform number 11.
On March 12, 2018, Dartmouth came to Ithaca to play Cornell at Lynah Rink for the ECAC hockey championship. The winner was assured entry into the NCAA tournament.
Emmy Noether was sick, weakened (people were told) by a misdiagnosed, lingering cold. She had skipped the morning skate and three days of practice. Now, at 5:00 p.m., two hours before game time, riven with fever and a scratchy, sore throat, she sat at her locker with a soccer ball between two stockinged feet.
Known as Oskar to teammates, Emmy was a lovely girl and she would remain lovely days later when her world would come crashing down on her. But Emmy was stalwart and Emmy would play, even as she despaired of the clock’s cruel crawl to a game at seven o’clock. Time was not a healer; it was not a salve; it was merely the sad unwinder of uncertainty.
Two white sticks (new Apple AirPods) hung from her ears as conveyors of music. But the hip-hop lyrics caromed off an obstructive wall of sickness within and were never heard.
She texted boyfriend Thomas, playing in Boston that night: “Kneed a hug!”
His response: “Soon—btw: Ouch! is the hug OK! ;)” He, too, assumed that it was a bad cold.
Emmy squeezed hard on the ball between her feet at stall number three. She taped and retaped the blade of her stick to precise calibration. She twice donned her skates and removed them again, lacing and relacing until she found perfect tension. With her thumbnail, she twice confirmed the sharpness of her blades.
In early January, Dartmouth beat Cornell in Hanover, 6-3. Emmy’s knee was sore and she didn’t play. The game was close until the third period when Cornell’s penalty-killing unit twice allowed Dartmouth power play goals. Both of Emmy’s replacements at center that night—first Brooks and then Harley-Maloney—failed to rival her instinct for the game and penalty-killing prowess.
Come the following games, however, a healthy Emmy resumed a stellar partnership with Cecy and Virginia, becoming the best line in the country. Goals and wins fell off their sticks with alacrity. Emmy skated superbly with elusive shift and handled the puck with deft fluency, notably holding her hands high on the stick. Cecy skated robustly, collecting and dispatching passes with sureness and rejecting attacks of opposing teams. Virginia, gifted with excellence, lent a powered artistry to the group and led the league in scoring.
But Emmy started to go wrong on an unknown day, a day when a process of aberration began somewhere deep within interstices, both chemical and cellular. Without prologue, born from some godded or ungodded necessity, corpuscular agents were transforming her lymphatic process to malevolence through white-celled abundance (as proliferate rank marauders of the blood). Perversely pervading her interior streams, they commenced a clandestine crippling of the girl (a girl yet so pretty).
Change was clearly afoot in late February (a godless month of limited light, we of the north can agree) when the line’s play suffered, because cohesion derives from the center position and that player—Emmy (of small physical stature)—was tiring and losing precious fragments of precision and pace. She was getting very sick.
It was September 19, 2016 when Virginia first saw Emmy skate, stickhandle, and trick the puck deviously. The daughter of a German industrialist, Emmy spoke pristine English with Teutonic wit. She was a comely girl in reluctant comportment with a father’s sporting passion and was a sometime stranger to the talent she carried. Lost of a mother at a too young age, she had become the maternal principal to two brothers in tow and, in time, discovered that she was magical on ice, instilled with a talent, unsought and often unkempt.
Virginia and Cecilia entered the locker room. They saw Emmy, sitting in equipment and uniform, all but for her red jersey. They were excited but cautious, and moved closer to speak.
Cecy: “Hey, Oskar, how ya doing?”
Emmy: “Been better, Ceece.”
Virginia: “You playing?
Emmy, without the slightest smile: “Wouldn’t miss it, Stats.”
Cecy: “Have you told the coach yet?”
Emmy: “Yeah, I called her this afternoon.”
Virginia, testing: “We’re going to kick some Green butt then, aren’t we?”
Emmy nodded with a head that preferred not to nod.
“Want to juggle?” said Virginia, looking at the soccer ball.
Emmy looked weakly at Virginia and said: “Not yet.”
The remaining ensemble—most of the team—saw exuberance in Virginia and Cecy at stall number three and noted their hands mussing Emmy’s fine blond hair. In catching sly glances at the girl with uniform number 7, they tried, but failed, to find blitheness in the young German’s face. Hers, however, was a body in deep somatic rift—diseased by a significant misworking.
With Emmy to play that night, preparations moved apace and, soon, as seven o’clock came close, Emmy, in full uniform, stood on skates with teammates in semi-circular formation ready to hear Coach Holbrook, who stood at the dressing room’s center. Sara Holbrook was proud of the team’s season-long performance and believed it to be national championship caliber.
She began to speak. Her words urged the translation of belief into achievement: that every game is the pursuit of collective perfection; that their highly-developed bodies and skills were limited only by the depth of their desires; that desires were driven by the power of imaginings; that the imaginings were realized only upon the willingness to sacrifice and to push their bodies far beyond limits of normalcy; and that though perfection was never attainable, they could, by their assembled and highly practiced powers, create on this night a moment of triumph beyond all expectations, a moment for which they have dedicated months of intense labors, a moment leading, ultimately, to deserved victory.
She spoke with passion and fired up these Cornell players (save for the German one), who now rocked on their skates in anxious waiting to begin the game. Emmy listened in limited perception, as her once too-warm skin of moments ago transformed to lonely coldness. It was a foreign feeling for this foreign girl to stand scared, waiting, and barely wanting to play. Energy and purpose arose in the girls around her, but Emmy stood on a floor that felt skewing, spinning, falling.
Period One, Shift One
Cornell 0, Dartmouth 0
Emmy’s line was on the ice. Virginia was enthralled to join her and Cecy at the face-off circle. These two teams—one in red, one in white—were prepared to engage for sixty minutes in a peculiar ordered confusion of sticks and skates. It was, she considered, a light drama in three acts for pleasure of players and watchers—an artifice of firmly regulated manner and process with an outcome in numbers. Hockey, for her, was rather like velocity—a scientific function, where the game was defined by an output relative to time, to wit, goals per period.
With the game just seconds away, Virginia sensed security and safety on her skates with blades cut sharply to a deep radius to better navigate the cold, hard ice below chilled to twenty-five degrees. She felt it in the white-helmeted hockey prodigy named Emmy at center, who glided forward-bent to the red center dot with stick pressed to knees while giving sidelong glances to her line mates. Though sick, Emmy would play.
Standing before Emmy was Dartmouth’s checking third line—a fast troika from Minnesota (the so-called Gopher Line), which had negated its Cornell counterpart, lacking Emmy, in January. Though women’s hockey prohibits checking, Dartmouth would target the slight Emmy for an abundance of contact at the edge of legality. The peril for Emmy was exacerbated by referee Pettis, an official with a penchant for laxness in interpreting the prohibition against body checking.
At the face-off, as planned, Emmy, a polished practitioner of face-offs, pulled the puck back and left to Cudmore on defense, who flipped it ahead into Dartmouth’s zone for chase.
Emmy, still so quick, captured it first and slipped ahead of her opponent. Near the corner, her eyes cut right and she saw what she expected—Virginia streaking to center in ready flight. So far, a good start for the young, but sick German lass.
Unfortunately, Emmy passed errantly to Virginia and felt her first Dartmouth bump. Virginia, needing to adjust, played the puck to her right and, with an opponent tight behind, released a compromised shot, which sailed high into the glass.
For the remainder of the shift’s thirty-seven seconds, Dartmouth stifled the line, blunting each of its attacks. Throughout its duration, Emmy’s energies were quickly ebbing. She returned to the bench weakened and disheartened.
Coach Holbrook, as everyone, was unaware of the graver problem, so she offered a solution that was more tactical than helpful. To assistant Neffin, she said, “Emmy’s not right—let’s get them away from this line. Double-shift them on the next change.” The coach would play them quickly again out of sequence in order to evade the Gopher line. Her plan seemed logical, except for Emmy’s illness.
Neffin leaned down to speak to Emmy and her line mates: “You’re going back out when their number two line comes out. Okay?” He then shouted Cornell’s number two line—now on ice—to hold its return to the bench until Dartmouth committed to its change.
Emmy despaired when she heard this: (“No! No!”). Fires already burned in her lungs and legs and she feared failure. Virginia, to her rightt: “Let’s do it, Oskar. You’ll be okay. Just get the puck to Ceece or me and we’ll do the rest.” Cecy, sitting to her left, added: “Remember, you took them apart last year when you were only a jerk freshman. Now, let’s get a goal this time.”
The words gave Emmy neither propulsion nor spirit, while the clock moved quickly to the dreaded next shift. She listened to rhythmic cheers from the crowd, which soon lifted her to her feet, scared and waiting. She looked at the ice surface that had already become haphazard patterns of arcs, lines, and shavings, reflecting frictional sprints, turns, and stops of intense competition.
At 1:01, Dartmouth’s first line withdrew and its number two jumped on the ice. With a firm tap on Emmy’s back, Neffin exhorted: “Emmy—go, go, go!” Emmy, never having recovered from the first shift, went over the boards with Virginia and Cecy.
On this second, accelerated shift, Emmy briefly became Emmy again after taking a pass from defenseman Singer, for even in illness, the body can often recall its most repeated rhymes of action. So here was Emmy, now with the puck, inside her blue line, creating an illusion for a Dartmouth forward—freezing her by deception—and finely throwing a pass to Virginia on the right, who, with space, skated to Dartmouth’s left circle and snapped a shot, which caromed off the far post to Cecy who missed with another shot. The puck returned to Dartmouth, which attacked quickly with Virginia, Cecy, and Emmy trailing behind in pursuit.
That attack, however, was thwarted when Virginia, behind her net, stole the puck from an imprecise opponent, moved up and right, saw Emmy, remaining high in their zone for a breakout pass, moving forward toward center ice. Virginia zapped a hard pass to her. Emmy looked over her right shoulder and saw it coming hard to her left and behind her.
In rapid, unthinking calculation, Emmy turned herself left, briefly becoming completely blind to the puck. With learned grace, Emmy finished her rotation and moved her stick and eyes from side right to side left. Then, her vision having come around, Emmy, with facile ease, captured the puck dead on her blade while in continuing flight. If she were to recall, such art was perfected at a rink in Erlangen with a father who had made a similar pass to her a hundredfold times. They—a young daughter in obeisance and a father on a mission—practiced to excellence every facet of play until due deliberation dissolved into remission and gave way to a state of innateness. But Emmy was often cold and wanted to go home—a girl forlorn and unforgotten of memories of her mother, who had once calmed the desires of a driven father.
With her pass complete, Virginia continued ahead quickly on powerful strides. Emmy crossed the blue line with Virginia close behind. Virginia called, “Oskar, I’m right!” The puck went to Virginia. She held it, waiting for Cecy to move center. But a Dartmouth player intervened and Virginia delayed and went to the corner and circled clockwise. Emmy cut to the right of the net and went around back and came out in front on the left. Virginia, emerging from her turn, looked and saw Emmy at the far post. The puck moved twice: from Virginia to Emmy and into the net.
The crowd was ecstatic and Emmy, after celebration, skated slowly to the bench, feeling as if her body was completely broken.
Cornell 1, Dartmouth 0
The lead held for fifteen minutes. At 17:11, Cornell’s Saulnier was penalized for tripping, giving Dartmouth a man advantage. Emmy and Virginia, Cornell’s penalty killers of choice, stepped on the ice. Their shift was long and difficult as Dartmouth held possession in Cornell’s zone with precise puck movement. When play was finally interrupted, Emmy and Virginia skated slowly to the bench. They had been on the ice for one minute and eight seconds and Emmy was taxed beyond her limit in illness.
At 19:01, Cornell’s new skaters were caught up ice and Dartmouth’s Zeiss scored on a slap shot high.
Cornell 1, Dartmouth 1
Play resumed with a face-off at center ice with Cornell’s third line on the ice. Another shift loomed for Emmy before the period’s end. But she was not ready—her heavy breathing had become stubbornly persistent. Something was amiss in her energy system.
Neffin: “Emmy, get ready.”
As always, the Sanipedes were in attendance, sitting tightly packed in seating across from Cornell’s bench. Mrs. Sanipedes wore stylish pants of comfortable dark corduroy and watched with an intentness unusual for a curator. Her husband, older and less chic, was Emmy’s advisor. For them, this game had been a thrilling bout of rink-length rushes and stunning goaltending. Virginia, number 11, skated with brio and created plays of danger, despite Emmy’s slowness.
Virginia and her line mates were now readying for the period’s final shift. A leg of each was poised on the boards as line number 3 returned to the bench. These three went over the boards en masse as Dartmouth assembled an attack deep in its zone. Thirty-one seconds to go.
Emmy, as usual, was assigned to the puck handler, with Virginia to her right and Cecy holding back. But with their first strides, Emmy’s legs faltered. The Dartmouth skater went around her and Emmy quickly fell behind. The Sanipedes then saw Virginia make a quick decision. Sensing Emmy’s fatigue, Virginia went at the puck carrier and, with the reach of her stick, knocked the puck loose into Dartmouth’s right corner. Cecy joined Virginia there and engaged with a tumble of Dartmouth players and sticks. Suddenly, however, Dartmouth’s Lyle moved the puck to the other corner where her teammate Nanji took it and passed up to Odland. The last attack would be Dartmouth’s. Ten seconds remaining.
The Sanipedes watched Emmy with typical diligence and saw her stay away from the corner, avoiding the scrum and waiting in reserve. To them, she looked tired and slow.
Both Cecy and Virginia were far behind the play, just emerging from the corner. Meanwhile, Dartmouth’s Odland pushed forward quickly with forwards Hagstrom and Lund against Cornell’s Rougeau and Gagliardi on defense. Emmy, the closest forward defender, needed to blunt the advantage by catching Lund, Dartmouth’s trailing forward. But Emmy had made her turn slowly and was two strides behind her.
There were no exhortations, no pleadings, no cries that could have propelled her faster—not those of a father, of twin brothers, or of a nervous crowd.
As Odland crossed Cornell’s blue line, Emmy saw the danger unfolding. Odland moved from left to center, drawing Cornell’s Rougeau with her. As the left-shooting Lund moved into the vacated space, Emmy feared that a goal was coming, unless she moved faster to check Lund. She reached deep for speed, but nothing happened.
Poor Emmy, too slow in pursuit, saw the elegance unfold closely before her: a brisk leading pass from Odland to Lund, joining player and puck fluidly, and a snapped wrist shot over the right shoulder of goalie Candelosi.
Dartmouth 2, Cornell 1
The Sanipedes, professor Mario and wife Helen, saw Emmy’s desperate, reaching lunge for the puck, her long icy slide, her pause, and her final prostrate counterpoint to the Dartmouth upright jubilation.
In November, Emmy told Professor Sanipedes of her love for mathematics and her desire for a doctoral degree. With her giftedness, he promised he would help her in that pursuit. She had a talent in abstract algebra and had fast advanced to upper level courses. It seemed so unfair, he thought, that her mathematical intelligence was useless for a girl so tired and weak.
Cecy, Virginia, and Emmy went to the bench, stood for three seconds to the period’s end, and exited left to the locker room. Virginia was behind Emmy and said, “Don’t worry, Oskar. We all got caught up ice. Ceece and I are as much to blame.”
Cecy walked fast to get close beside Emmy. She looked through the wire cage of Emmy’s helmet and saw two watery eyes. Cecy stayed silent. She placed her bulky, padded arm on Emmy’s shoulder.
After a moment, Emmy said, “I can’t play, Ceece. Something’s wrong.”
Emmy walked to her chair, removed her helmet, and revealed a face flushed of color and a pony of fully soaked hair. She went to the trainer’s room and pulled off a drenched jersey as her body had seemingly expelled every trace of moisture. She grabbed a Gatorade to drink and an ice pack to press to her forehead.
She breathed uneasily and sat despondently. After a long draught of fluids, she leaned far forward with her eyes to the floor. Her hands, so often active in expression and playfulness, gripped hard to the tops of her knees pads.
Coach Holbrook entered the room.
“Emmy?” asked the coach. “Emmy, are you okay? Should we call the doctor?”
Emmy was silent.
“Emmy?”
“No, I’m okay.”
Holbrook, a woman with children of her own (ages six and eight), said nothing more. She jumped up on the table and sat next to Emmy. Virginia and Cecy came into the room and looked at the two, sitting in silence.
Holbrook turned to her captains, paused, and spoke: “Look, Stats and Ceece, here’s what we’re going to do. Emmy’s going to stay here for now. Joe’s going to keep an eye on her. If she can play later, great. If not, we’ll move some bodies around. Meanwhile, Stats, we’ll put Cook at center with you two.”
As soon as Holbrook rose to her feet, Emmy rolled to her back like a fallen insect covered with carapaces of protective paddings: from high on the shoulders to her upper arms, the hinged elbows, the hips and thighs, down to the shins and knees, and, finally, the skates.
Holbrook was disarmed by Emmy’s frailty, a sight she had not seen before, leaving Holbrook uncertain for words: “Emmy, take it easy. If anything changes let me know. We’re still going to win this, whether you’re there or not.” Holbrook moved her hand to Emmy’s cheek, stood, and went back to the team. Virginia remained.
For a brief moment, Virginia stood, shaken by the sight of a weakened friend. The team was preparing to return to the ice. She asked with concern:
“What’s up, Oskar? How bad is this?”
“I’ll be alright, Stats. Don’t worry. Go play. But, hey, could you get me my cell phone before you go?”
Virginia retrieved the phone, got a fist pump, and went to the locker room for Holbrook’s words before the second period. The trainer’s room cleared. Now alone, Emmy texted: “please come to trainer’s room.” The message went to a woman in the stands, one who had befriended her and who had talked to her about decorative arts and family and life and occasional bumps in life’s continuum.
Helen immediately saw the text and showed it to her husband. Only minutes remained before the teams were to enter the ice for the second period. Helen texted Emmy: “Be right there :)”.
Emmy spoke to the trainer as he handed her nourishment and towels. “Joe, Helen Sanipedes is coming down. Would you let her in, please?”
Second Period
Dartmouth 2, Cornell 1
The period began poorly for Cornell. Virginia was uncomfortable with Cook at center and her play had become uncertain with Emmy suddenly absent.
Dartmouth was thriving and forced Cornell to defend. Attacks were amassing on goalie Candelosi when Helen arrived at the locker room to see Emmy flat on her back.
The room’s light was dimmed. Emmy’s eyes were shut. Her mind focused on breathing and steady exhalation. With each respiration, she sought control over this insistent derangement.
“Emmy.”
Emmy rose to her skates to stand, moved to Helen’s embrace, and held her tightly.
Emmy spoke of her pain.
Helen comforted Emmy and, in time, Emmy’s tears and words of fear subsided. They sat for minutes together in silence.
“Emmy, should we take you to the hospital?
Emmy shook her head “No,” looking straight ahead.
“Can we take you home?”
Emmy shook her head “No.”
In her silence, Emmy’s thoughts conceded the truth of an intrusive, interior fracturing. But she did not want to leave. Amid fear, she found comfort in the sanctum of sport and this room of rest and medicaments. She could not undress and leave the arena and enter into a cold, dark March night. Not yet. She said, “I can’t leave yet, Mrs. Sanipedes. Not yet. I’m going to try to play again. Not yet. I just needed this break. I’ll be alright for the third period.
“Emmy,” Helen spoke, uncertain of whatever words were to be said.
“Look, thanks for coming down. I just needed someone to talk to. I’m alright. You can go back to your seat.”
(Meanwhile, on the ice, Dartmouth was pressing the attack, outshooting Cornell 11-2 with seven minutes to go.)
Helen said, “Emmy, are you sure?” Emmy nodded. Helen held Emmy’s hands and said good-bye.
On the bench, Virginia kept looking over her shoulder for Emmy’s return.
Cornell struggled for the entire period. Toward its end, Harley-Maloney became Virginia’s center, which resulted in little improvement. Then, at 18:44 of the period, Cecy stole the puck in her zone and saw Virginia quickly breaking to the center circle. Cecy passed between the defensemen to Virginia at full speed, a glorious sight. Virginia skated powerfully as she crossed the blue line and saw goalie Milligan looming with her stick left and glove right. Milligan came forward and Virginia held straight. And then instinctively, Virginia moved suddenly—puck left, right, and left again for a backhand shot. Virginia’s cut left was sharp and quick and she lifted the puck high enough, but for one final inch—it glanced off the top of Milligan’s right pad and went over the net. A crescendo of excitement rose high and fell with the miss.
The cheering reached the locker room as Emmy redressed in dry garments and equipment. She felt lifted by the sound, however weakly. She must play once more, she thought, just once more.
Soon the team returned to the room down by a goal.
Coach Holbrook found Emmy waiting in the locker room and said, “Are you Okay?”
“I’m okay.”
“Look Emmy, this is your decision. If you think you can play, we need you out
there. But if you can’t, I need to know.”
“I can play,” Emmy nodded. “I’m feeling better.”
“Emmy, can you skate for twenty minutes?”
She paused and said “No, not twenty. I can’t, coach.”
“Then I’ll use you on the power play. Okay?”
“Okay.”
So much, then, for the many virtues of Emmy—her mastery of mathematical theorems and problems; her elusive skating from end to end; her fair hair and skin; her piety as a faithful supplicant, who kneeled religiously for atonement; and the love she obtained from her family and boyfriend. All these were helpless against a disease dispersing disorder within, which, in due time, would be joined with science to be medically identified.
In the locker room, just before the third period, the team rose for one final rally. Cecy, the vocal leader, spoke through the cage of her helmet. She spoke of the concept of winning, the notion of the unity of one exceeding another, and declaimed mightily for victory.
The team was ready to return to the ice, except for a voice—the lone, unexpected voice of Emmy. Her helmet was off, revealing small blue eyes fixed on a weary face. She asked for a moment to speak to the team, something she had never done before.
Virginia stood five feet away and listened:
I’d like to say something before we go out.
Virginia looked at Emmy—diese junge Deutsche Mädchen—in Cornell red and white, with a stick in hand, and her helmet propped up to show her tired, drained face. She spoke in a weak voice:
“Look, I know I let you guys down so far in this game. But I’m going out there now to play as hard as I can. But even if I’m not out there, you guys can win without me. You’re too good, too fast, and too strong for Dartmouth or any other team in this league. Just remember that tonight and for the rest of the season, okay.”
All eyes remained on Emmy as she stood before the close circle of teammates. Then they all gave a cheer and returned to the ice. Emmy waited for everyone to leave and saw Virginia standing by herself. Virginia came to Emmy and looked into her face.
“What’s going on, Oskar?”
“I don’t know, Stats. I don’t know.”
Period Three
Dartmouth 2, Cornell 1
Over the period’s first nine minutes, Cornell held the edge, although Virginia’s line, lacking Emmy, remained stymied by lack of central cohesion.
For the line’s sixth shift, Holbrook changed the center again, telling Fulton, a good, skating freshman, to be in the middle between Cecy and Virginia.
Virginia protested. Eleven minutes were left and there was no time for another experiment. The only hope, she thought, was to take center herself.
On her way to the ice, she turned to Holbrook and said, “Coach, I’m playing center.”
“No, Stats, stay on the right!” Holbrook yelled.
Virginia ignored her and went to take the face-off. Holbrook briefly considered pulling her off the ice, but rejected that as a greater foolishness.
Virginia skated to Fulton and said, “You’re on the right.”
“But...” exclaimed Fulton. She turned to Holbrook, who nodded her head.
“You’re on the right,” returned Virginia.
Virginia told Fulton that she and Cecy would converge hard together on the puck on the forecheck and that Fulton was to stay close behind them for passes and loose pucks. Putting two skaters on the puck was a gamble, but they had done it well before in other desperate situations.
The face-off was at Cornell’s blue line. Just as the linesman was ready to drop the puck, Virginia suddenly turned and skated away toward her net. She looked at Emmy at the end of the bench, who had not yet played this period. Virginia turned her head to look at the crowd.
“Eleven, let’s go!” the linesman barked at her.
In that instant, as her heart beat harder, Virginia saw the night in simplicity as an unadorned, unalloyed challenge—a challenge to the internal chemistries and complexities of her being. Here and now, an energy flowed into her soul.
“Ready,” she said as she came square to the Dartmouth player.
The puck was dropped. Dartmouth won the draw and shot the puck into Cornell’s zone as Cornell’s Cudmore fell back to retrieve it. Cudmore held the puck and paused behind her net as a Dartmouth forechecker arrived in front.
Virginia then did what she had rarely done before: instead of going to the boards or a corner for a pass, she swung wide around in front of the net and went behind it, approaching Cudmore from the left, picking up rapid speed as she neared. She called: “Cuddy, I got it,” grabbed the puck, and began a headlong rush down the ice. The left wing came to meet her, but with a feint Virginia threw her away. Already the pursuing Dartmouth center was a stride behind. The Sanipedes felt excitement and stood on their feet.
Virginia hit the red line with Cecy following left and Fulton right. The Dartmouth defensemen retreated, wary of Virginia’s speed. Once over the blue line, Virginia slowed to allow Cecy’s and Fulton’s advancement and then, with splendid timing, unleashed a powerful wrist shot to Milligan’s left. The goalie stopped it with her leg pad but allowed a rebound to Fulton, who swept it into the net. Time: 10:33.
Dartmouth 2, Cornell 2
The players skated to the bench to celebrate and Virginia went down the line of extended arms bumping gloves, saying with each bump “One more,” “One more,” “One more.”
With the next line on ice, Virginia sat down while the others were standing. Holbrook noticed Virginia with her head pitched forward, looking down, and approached her and said, “I guess I’m a genius for moving you to center.”
“Sorry, Coach. Had to do it.”
Less than seven minutes remained and Emmy sat still at the end of the bench. Holbrook would not take the chance to play her at even strength.
Then came the penalty. Tripping by Dartmouth at 17:14 and Emmy heard the call: “Noether.” If Emmy had been wiser, she would have said “No.”
But she went out on the ice in a mistaken belief that she could help. Dartmouth’s Nyland, a senior defenseman and captain, had remembered the scouting report, which said that Emmy was a small finesse player who could be thrown off by contact. Nyland had noticed Emmy’s second-period absence and noticed her return to the ice. Nyland had over thirty pounds on Emmy. As Nyland saw it, Emmy was the danger that could knock Dartmouth out of the playoffs. She needed to be neutralized.
Her chance came quickly. From the face-off, the puck went into Dartmouth’s right corner. Emmy went first and shot it around behind the net to Virginia. Pettis, one of the slower referees, crossed the blue line late, was screened by two players, and would not see the contact. A split-second after the puck left Emmy’s stick, Nyland sensed opportunity. She made a motion as if reaching for the puck just before the boards began their curve to her right. Emmy was ahead of her to the left, but needed to go right to follow the boards’ curvature.
Virginia, receiving the pass in the opposite corner, saw Nyland’s shoulder and arm push out hard to knock Emmy off balance. Emmy hit the boards and fell to the ice. But Pettis, following the puck, did not blow his whistle until he saw Emmy lying still on the ice.
The Cornell players moved quickly to Emmy’s side, except for Cecy who skated directly at Nyland.
“Nice hit, you fucking sack of shit from Saskatchewan!” said Cecy, putting her helmet face-cage to face-cage with Nyland’s.
“Go fuck yourself, Rubinstein. I hardly touched her. If she can’t stand up on her skates, tell her to go back to Germany,” Nyland returned.
“Oh, by the way, congratulations on making the Canadian U-90 IQ team, you asshole. No wonder you’re at Dartmouth,” Ceece shot back.
Players circled around Ceece and Nyland, while Virginia went directly to Pettis to plead for a penalty.
“Sir, sir!! Didn’t you call a penalty?”
“No, it was clean.”
“Clean!? What? That was a body check. She went right at her. That’s Rule 7,” she assertively advised him.
“Back off, eleven. I didn’t see it.”
“You didn’t see it!! Look at her. How does she get there without being checked?”
“Be quiet. One more thing from you and you’re gone.”
Virginia backed away and went to Emmy, who was rising to her feet with aid of the trainer.
The linesmen, meanwhile, began separating Cecy and Nyland, who were continuing to jaw at each other.
The Lynah crowd was in uproar, for most everyone had seen the illegal check. Even Mario and Helen Sanipedes were loudly sounding objection.
Virginia and her line returned to the bench and Emmy refused to go to the locker, sitting in pain and despair at the end of the bench.
This would be Virginia’s last collegiate game. It would be the end of a hockey career begun on backyard rinks with sister Tedd and neighborhood kids. It continued to leagues and games and much triumphal metallic glitter. It was carried forward by a mother and father driving miles forever with the kids asleep in a car’s back seat. It was convenient for the family that Virginia, being particularly talented, could play up on Tedd’s older teams and excel as the youngest. Notwithstanding their ages, this coupling became a notable pairing as Tedd kindly permitted Virginia this one precocious advantage.
The game went into overtime. At 2:11 of the extra period, Virginia’s line stepped on the ice once more. At this point, the players were not driven by concepts or words, but by the residue of whatever training and memory of skills remained in their bodies.
Soon after entering the ice, Cecy emerged from her zone with the puck. Fulton was in the middle, and Virginia trailed on the right side pursued by Dartmouth’s Hartigan. Cecy crossed the blue line and stopped suddenly. Virginia had gained an increasing gap on her check as she moved into the Dartmouth zone. Cecy ripped a pass through to Fulton advancing down the middle and, with a subtle deflection, she put a shot on Milligan, who stopped it, but allowed a rebound.
As Milligan fell to the ice, the puck lay feet away from her, spinning, spinning. Virginia, never stopping, never quitting, continued to approach the goal with Hartigan pursuing, coming hard behind her.
Milligan saw Virginia moving fast toward her as she reached for the puck. Virginia kept her speed even as the hard-pipes of the net loomed ahead of her. Hartigan, just behind, saw the impending collision, but continued skating hard in full stride.
Stretching, reaching, Virginia got to the puck first and pushed it into the net. Then, hoping to avert a metal-to-flesh collision, she quickly turned her skates in an effort to stop, but felt Hartigan, unable or unwilling to stop, pushing her from behind, raising her higher and higher into the hard, unbending crossbar. Helplessly, she felt the rounded metal bar cracking the bone of her humerus, interjecting itself in the barely exposed gap between the elbow and shoulder pads. Virginia immediately fell to her knees in exquisite pain with a broken arm.
The fans cheered. The Cornell team tumbled from the bench to embrace Virginia, who, on one knee, held her left arm up and said: “I’m hurt, I’m hurt.” Her teammates huddled closely around her in jubilation, including Emmy, who pushed through to come close to her.
“Are you okay, Stats?”
Virginia smiled weakly and said “I’ll be okay” as she wrapped her left arm around Emmy.
Within days, Emmy’s illness was diagnosed. She soon returned home to Germany for treatment. Soon, the team learned of her plight—the disease, the lymphoma, the tumor, the dangers, the medicine, the surgery, the prognosis, the chemotherapy, the lack of sense, and the fear and heartbreak for the young girl.
The next weekend, Virginia watched the team’s playoff game from the end of a hockey rink. Cornell, of course, had no chance to win without Emmy and Virginia. Virginia stood alone with a woolen hat pulled low to her eyes. Her right arm lay bent and casted inside her parka, while the right sleeve, bereft of its arm, dangled limply. Her eyes were fixed on the red circle at center. She was deaf to the sounds flowing about her. Her focus relaxed into softness as her vision captured the players as abstractions, as skimmers on this sea surface of ice, in flights and fancies of imperial delight, as glimmered particles of an indelible jewel, sparkling and beckoning.
She let her eyes close. They must close, she knew. They must fall, she knew, fall as final gates to extinguish the burning desire to be playing again. She held and held them closed, until she opened them, turned, and slowly walked out into the clear, cool night.
