IT WAS, THAT DAY IN 1989, when I went back to visit the town and met Paul, as if we were finally beginning to recognize what and who we were. It was deep winter — one of those winter days when you either go to work or start to drink wine at seven in the morning. We were walking along the highway on our way to visit Stafford Foley.
I could see how Stafford, back in 1961, would think his snake was real. He would think it was real because he wanted it to be real. He didn’t want to sleepwalk — walking down the street in his slippers. He didn’t want to have insulin attacks, where he would become as strong as the Amazing Hulk, and five or six of us would have to hold him down and feed him a sugar cube. He didn’t want to be tiny and blind. He wanted to have his own snake. He wanted to play hockey.
And if it wasn’t going to happen he would become a pathological delusionist. He would tell people Gordie Howe phoned him or he was over talking to the coach — who wanted him to become a scout for the team. Stafford had all kinds of plans such as this, back in 1961, and he was no more deluded than most of us. Not only did my father play Beach Blanket Bingo in October, where we would stand about in earmuffs watching our breath — and of course Annette — but, when I was not much older than this, we would have beach parties in January after a hockey game.
Yes we were all essentially madly self-deluded.
“But that is the fabric of our entire lives,” Paul said. “Self-delusions, overcome by self-mockery.” “And others’ mockery of us overcome by self-delusion.” Like Stafford and Michael. Like Phillip Luff’s father who wanted Phillip so badly to become a great hockey player that even when Phillip was in his 30s he couldn’t put away his skates. Even though his body was broken up and hurt, tormented by injury, he did not, for his father’s sake give up the fantastic dream. Even though his father by then wanted him to, Phillip could not.
“Still delusion or no, there will always be great moments,” Paul said, “great moments for us in hockey.” Hockey and other things as well. Mr. Foley played hockey in Europe on the army team from the North Shore. They played exhibition games in Scotland and England.
He was a great winger. Yet the greatest moment of Mr. Foley’s life came on D-Day. On D-Day Mr. Foley was doing the one thing that he didn’t quite expect to be doing. When the North Shore Regiment reached the wall, and skirted the first town, Mr. Foley had the opportunity to help deliver a baby girl, wrap it in swaddling clothes and keep on fighting.
Paul and Stafford knew this. And Mr. and Mrs. Foley could never ever turn anyone away from their door. Any child, any orphan was theirs. So, for that hockey year of 1961, was little Tobias.
I was once reprimanded by one of our new generation for thinking too much of children as orphans, or underprivileged little humans. Still and all, I knew my share of them. And I suppose as Mr. Foley thought, if you know one, you know them all. That is, orphans are like murderers. Once you know one, you can clue in to certain aspects of all of the others. Murderers almost always smile as if you’re the one they wouldn’t kill, and orphans almost always smile as if you’re the one they belong to. Both of them, like Canadians, can be self-deluded about their essential makeup.
Tobias used to attend all the birthday parties at the Foleys’ and leave certain articles of clothing there, so he could come back at a later date to retrieve them. But at other birthday parties he was left out. Shamefully I don’t remember him being invited to mine.
I remember a richer kid — one of the Griffin kids, showing Tobias and Michael his new goalie pads and skates and saying with smug certainty (as if he was repeating what his father had told him), “Kids like that always like to be shown what they are missing.”
Tobias did like to see what other children had. And Stafford on more than one occasion complained to us that Tobias was in his bed upstairs sleeping. The first time I heard him complain I was at the door to get a glass of water after a game of road hockey.
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