Interference by Michelle Berry Page B

someone shouts. Dayton has no idea what that means. She skates away from the boards, thinking maybe she is too close to them.
    Ever since she left John, Dayton has tried to do things differently. Her first thing was to move away. That was different. Not like her. And she didn’t just move down the block either, but to a new country, to a city she’d never heard of, a small town, really. The second thing she tried to do differently was to make friends. She didn’t have any friends in L.A. who weren’t John’s friends first. So when she needed help there was never anyone there for her. Dayton had no one. And now she’s playing ice hockey. (“You don’t call it ice hockey, ” Trish said. “It’s just hockey. If you call it ice hockey, people will know you’ve never played.” “But I’ve never played,” Dayton said. “I know that, Dayton, and you know that, but you don’t want anyone else to know that, do you?”) That’s her third different thing.
    The tree outside the window of Dayton’s new house reminds her, late at night, of the one that sucked that kid into it in the movie
Poltergeist
. Dark and huge and thick, its limbs reaching out to her, scratching ominously against her window. Carrie’s snuffles on the baby monitor echo through the house. John is somewhere back in California, probably out at the bars with another tanned, breast-implanted woman. After all, what other kind of women are there in California? How stupid Dayton feels to have believed him. To have married him. To have stayed with him when he did the things he did to her. “How stupid am I?” she asks the tree each night before she falls asleep. But Dayton knew she couldn’t get away. Not without completely disappearing. John doesn’t like to lose anything — his car keys, a dime, his sunglasses, his wife. Losing is for losers, he says.
    â€œDayton, puck,” Trish is screaming at her, and Dayton sees a break in front of her and rushes in to take a swipe at the puck. Again, she misses. She can’t seem to connect that small black dot with her long wooden stick. It seems easy, but for some reason it isn’t. But she can skate. Dayton knows she can skate — all those figure skating lessons as a kid paid off — if only she could hit the puck. Someone skates past her so quickly that Dayton can feel the wind. She looks at her stick as if it’s the stick’s fault. But, in fact, the stick has kept her standing. She realizes she is using it as a crutch. Balancing herself with it. Leaning on it. Heavy.
    It’s such a typical story — the Husband and the Buxom Blond. It happens all the time. Trish waved her hands around her head when Dayton told her and said, “Oh my god, can’t men do something new once in a while? Can’t they surprise us?” Dayton smiled then because John was full of surprises. Surprises Dayton could predict but that still surprised her. Angry, shouting, predictable surprises. She liked Trish immediately. Trish who has been married to the same quiet guy for twenty-three years. Trish who has a house full of kids and dogs and cats and goldfish, a messy, lived-in, disorganized, happy house. Trish who makes teddy bears for a living. Sewing on button eyes and sparkly ribbons. “Buxom,” Trish said. “Now that’s a word I haven’t heard since before I was born.” She held up her wine glass to toast the word. She laughed loudly. The kitten, Max, moved slightly on her lap. “Buxom.”
    Dayton skates to the bench. Two minutes off. Two minutes on. The sweat is rolling down her nose, her temples, her neck. She feels as if she is wearing a sauna.
    â€œI’m dripping,” she says to Trish. “Especially my hands.” Dayton holds up her gloves, looks at them. “Why are my hands so sweaty? And my elbows. And my neck.”
    â€œThis is way too much fun,”