Tristan reimagined Ch. 1

By: Asa Montreaux (Andrew Mccarthy)

My parents split up, and I thought it was the perfect opportunity to escape the only things I’d ever known. I told them that their fighting was causing me too much pain and that I was leaving to live in Canada. My father assured me that I didn’t need to go and do things all on my own. He was going to come with me to Canada. Maybe I should have left on my own, but I could never say no to the man.

You see, I was born in Canada, and this is why I have always been better than everyone else. Canadians are better looking, more intelligent, and more talented at hockey than any other group of people. Whenever I was given a hard time in school or in the alleyways, nothing ever affected me. I had already won. I was Canadian, after all. I rose above every conflict because, after all, I was going back to Canada soon. When was I going back to Canada? Next year. Next year when? Next year, son.

My experience of being a child clashes with those pastoral images of childhood. I remember feeling frustrated all the time. If I could just have been given authority over my own life... but my only access to power in this world was through my parents' wallets. Sometimes, when you’re growing up, you feel so frustrated that when something bad happens, it makes you happy.

When my dog died, I cried for a couple of hours, but eventually, my dog’s death became less about the death of a companion and more about an event in my life. My dog’s death could be one of those moments when things change. I could be the hero in my story, inspired by my dog’s death to be the best little twelve-year-old in the world. I think this divorce thing is the same. We like disaster. We love explosions. I took advantage of the explosion to get what I’ve always wanted.

And I’ve always wanted to go back. The funny thing about getting what you’ve always wanted is that it always seemed so far away that you’ve been living for other things. I was leaving my whole life, which I had worked so hard at. It was so sad because that life was so valuable, and there was so much more work to do. I would never see it through to the end. Being a normal person is just as rewarding as being a rock star if you’re good at it.

We left Vancouver when I was three, but it was already too late for me. I paraded around my uncle’s apartment wearing his hockey gear—however loosely—and I was already scoring the game winner in Game Seven. I always wanted to be a big-time hockey player, which is why it sucks that I had spent my life in Houston, Texas. But we had some good teams there. However, I had just run out of teams to play for, and I needed to leave to play better hockey. I had been planning something less explosive, like playing for the Dallas Selects or Detroit Compuware. But this was just one of those events in life that I really needed to mean something bigger than Detroit Compuware.

I had visited Vancouver several times growing up. Cities are always so much more attractive when you don’t live there. A city will give you a free pass if you are just there to visit. You pay a lot of money when you’re visiting the city. But if you’re not paying a lot of money, then the city is nearly as hostile toward you as any new immigrant. You see the seedy streets, and you ride on public transportation with some of the sketchy characters. Backpackers in Europe are probably more struck by the harshness of life than they are by the temples and jewels of antiquity.

Which is not to say I was wholly taken with Vancouver. I was taken aback by skid row, and I knew what that meant about the people who made up this city. I knew that some people tried to help the people on skid row, but I also knew that the city was quietly making them extinct—shrinking their areas with high-rise buildings and coffee shops, raising the price of living and transportation.

As attractive as Vancouver is, as comforting as it was to know that I would be reunited with my cousins, to be returning from an extended period away, I wasn’t coming for the city or any of its people. I was coming for its hockey. We chose to live within a five-minute drive of twelve sheets of ice. There aren’t twelve sheets of ice in all of Houston. Just driving to the rink every day was a reminder that I would forever be at a disadvantage. Ice time was the most precious commodity for a hockey player.

The team I wanted to play for was the Northwest Giants. It was a major midget team comprised of the best players from Burnaby, North Vancouver, West Vancouver, New Westminster, Squamish, and Whistler. That was a lot of hockey players to draw from, and a lot of good ones. Burnaby and North Vancouver were home to the winter clubs. Those winter club teams made me shake my head at how good they were. It seemed as illustrious to play for those teams as to play in the NHL. I revered this team, and it was really very silly to be trying to play for the Northwest Giants. They were the number one nationally ranked team the previous season. How was a kid from Texas going to squeeze his way in there?

I suppose if I didn’t make that team, there were other teams I could have played for. But I was very, very set on having things one way. I didn’t know how to compromise. If I had known how to do things like that, then I probably would have graduated a year early, like I was supposed to, and gone off to a U.S. school, forgetting about any call to Canada. As it was, I was going to be loitering around for my senior year. I decided to pretend that I needed physics and chemistry, and so I took them. All in all, I still had three spare blocks left.

People stick around for senior year so they can go to prom, but I had left all the people I had grown up with, and I don’t want to talk about it.