Interference by Michelle Berry

support with another “woo hoo.”
    Dayton just moved to town from California. Six weeks ago, late summer, she climbed on the airplane, carrying her daughter and a diaper bag and as many of her things as she could get out of the house and into three suitcases. Clothes, passports, birth certificates, toys, a photo album, her mother’s cookbook. The beginning cold, the trees turning colour, the rush of leaves under her feet, the fall, strikes her every time she goes outside. Knocks her down almost. It is the end of October, Halloween next week, and Dayton can see her breath in the air. She left palm trees and cactus and sweet warm breezes. She left green and blue and came into orange and brown, and now she is into the beginning barrenness of winter, trees beginning to tangle together, limbs empty. Now she is playing hockey because Trish asked her to and because she couldn’t think of a reason not to. Trish’s twelve-year-old daughter, Rachel, would babysit Carrie, Trish said. Trish herself would drive and lend Dayton equipment. Trish’s husband’s old stuff is too big and threatens to fall off. Dayton has to wrap tape around her hockey pants and there is a smell coming off the equipment that wasn’t there when she first tried them on. She assumes she is heating them up with her sweat. It all made sense. Trish said the neighbours across the street, Tom and Maria, would be home in case anything went wrong. Oh, and Frank, he’d be home too, but Trish said he sometimes falls asleep in front of the TV and can’t be woken up. Some kind of narcolepsy, she thinks, or just old age. But Tom and Maria are always available. Trish said they rarely go out. “In fact,” she said, “their bedroom light is often off at ten.”
    â€œI go to bed at ten,” Dayton said, looking at the clock over the stove. 9:45 .
    â€œSenior Ladies Leisure League,” Trish laughed. She was holding open a pamphlet and had her laptop there to sign Dayton up. They were in Dayton’s kitchen and Trish was waving her glass of wine around dangerously over the laptop and Dayton was trying hard not to be nervous. The solid tile floor of her new kitchen busts glass like a bomb and Dayton didn’t have the energy to get the vacuum cleaner out. Besides, the laptop might burst into flame if Trish’s wine spilled. Carrie was asleep upstairs. Max, the new kitten, was sitting in Trish’s lap. Max is Dayton’s poke at normalcy — “get a kitten,” she thought, “life will be good.” But Dayton forgot about the cat litter, the incessant meowing when she finally got Carrie to bed, the desperate need for attention. Two empty bottles of wine on the table between her and Trish. Pinot grigio for Trish — “That’s all I’ll drink,” she had said. “That and anything red.” Trish snorted — she laughs loud, talks loud. Dayton was drinking red, only because she had only one bottle of pinot grigio in the house. Except for Trish and her booming, echoing voice, everything was quiet in Dayton’s house.
    â€œWe aren’t seniors,” Dayton said. “I’m forty-three.”
    â€œI’m forty-eight,” Trish said. “I’m way more senior than you. But still, I find it extremely insulting.”
    â€œWhat’s even more insulting is calling us ladies.” The women laughed. They typed their information into the laptop, registering for the league.
    â€œAny ailments?”
    â€œWhat does that mean?”
    â€œHeart issues? High blood pressure? Diabetes?”
    Dayton thought about it. “Nope, nothing.”
    â€œWhat if I write ‘overweight,’” Trish said. “Do you think that’s an ailment?”
    â€œYou’re not overweight.”
    â€œPleasingly plump?”
    Trish swore she had never played on a team before, but she had watched the game at least. Her son, Charlie, plays, as does her