if jeff carter stopped to think about his life he would see that he is living in margaritaville (the song)
work in progress. me saying hm what if i was 41 year old jeff carter. let me larp as him.
it’s funny that mowing the lawn is a sign of white picket fence class success. from the outside perhaps it looks like the peak of wealth: i have a lawn to maintain, i have Land to maintain, and i am using multi-thousand dollar machine to maintain my property. but what is often not mentioned is how the tiny grass blades sometimes fly up high enough to hit your shins or ankles. especially if extra time has passed since the last cut, then there’s tons of small grass that feels like little glass shards on bare skin. this is what jeff is thinking about as he rolls up his long socks to get ready for his tuesday morning lawn session. he unhooks the heavy duty headphones from where they’re swinging on a nail in his picture perfect home depot garage and revs the engine to the mower. it’s an expensive enough model that the headphones aren’t really necessary, it’s not like he’ll get hearing damage. but it helps him retreat a little bit more, to maintain a bubble of space where he’s just going through the motions of mowing the lawn. he turns onto the first corner of grass.
when he moved from los angeles to pittsburgh full time two years ago, it was a rash decision long time coming. there were plenty of nice suburbs in southern california that megan and kids were definitely not opposed to staying in, but his time in the west coast was up. his time near the oceans was up; rather, that time had been up seven years ago. the move made logical sense, with where everyone’s families were located and obvious familiarity with the area. at least, that’s what he told himself and the press. because logic also said that if location had been a long-term pressing issue, then he wouldn’t have been in LA until 2021.
the truth is, turns out the pacific ocean and the atlantic ocean are not so different. it’s all just large expanses of water at the end of the day. and jeff understands why there’s so many artworks and songs and poems about the sea. something about the water conjures memories and thoughts that aren’t usually at the forefront of his mind. waking up in the summers and easily going to the beach with his family every other day was beautiful until it wasn’t. because when megan and his kids were out in the water together and he was tanning by himself, the water would make him remember the other times he would be down by the shore.
there’s no need to be stuck in the past. and again, the move was a logical decision for many other reasons. he had to leave, he wanted to leave.
in 2009, jeff watched as the penguins came back to beat his team in the eastern quarterfinals and then eventually win the cup. which then became the start of a new pittsburgh dynasty. he remembers sitting in the locker room after, steaming with anger, joints aching, and filled with fiery motivation to get his revenge, to not feel this ugly, inadequate feeling ever again. mike was by his side, and they had slapped each other on the back silently, in tandem, in lockstep, as they had been since 2003.
in 2010, jeff watched as everyone slowly realized that kane’s goal was in fact, a goal, and he went blank. he’s not sure how mike handled the captain duties because all jeff wanted to do was immediately leave the rink, leave south philadelphia, leave pennsylvania, leave, leave, leave.
in 2010, jeff turned his phone off and sat on the sand in his private beach for hours on end.
in 2011, mike passed the cup to him and jeff has never once forgotten a detail of that memory. the feeling of mike’s fingertips brushing against his. the moment when they both shared the weight of the cup, of their hard work, of all the bullshit only the two of them had to deal with. and how mike looked at him in the eye, mouth surrounded by bushy beard but the smile not diminished in any way, and said, “we did it,” and let jeff skate out with the cup. there had been some spit in the corner of mike’s mouth. the cup was wet with the sweaty palms of others before him. the metal was warm from mike’s hands.
in 2015.
in 2026, he steps into PNC arena and feels the buzz of the battle of pennsylvania. he heard this flyers team got into the playoffs last minute through a shootout win. it’s a cool fact, he surmises. lots of teams scrape their way in, it’s what they do once they’re in that matters. he quietly was not pleased with muse’s decision to rest so many of the penguins once they had clinched, because he knows momentum from the regular season is a scary thing. when the puck drops, he has a moment of disorientation. there’s yellow and white orange jerseys on the ice, and a lone flyers fan nearby is bravely yelling in support of philadelphia. the flyers score first, and he watches their little bodies celebrate on the ice with the fervor of a team that hasn’t had a playoff goal in five years. the tiny bodies emerge from the celly and he spots number 46, trevor zegras, he knows that one, how could he not.
