The Borders in Peabody, MA was quiet last Saturday when two-time Olympic medalist, figure skating celebrity and lifelong North Shore resident Nancy Kerrigan arrived to do a signing. The employees who greeted her apologized for the thin crowd; so far, only one man and his little girl were in line for an autograph. Kerrigan casually mentioned that yesterday, in Downtown Crossing, she drew a good audience, and was even asked to say a few words. As for tonight, maybe it was the location, or a problem with publicity, but everyone decided to blame the turnout on the Sox-Yankees game.

Kerrigan, who's remembered outside the world of skating for getting her knee whacked in the scandal that forever tied her name to Tonya Harding's, was here to sign copies of her new DVD, Halloween on Ice. Now 35 and still looking tall, fit and exactly the way you remember her, Kerrigan spoke with several little girls who came for an autograph. She greeted the kids like a neighborhood mother, asking how old they were and how they planned to dress for Halloween. "They don't know who I am. It's so cute," she laughed, although she conceded that they might know her name from seeing it on the wall at the rink in Stoneham.

The DVD she was signing collects an hour of clips from her long-running Halloween show. She explained that she chose the theme because "there were so many skating shows back then ... and having a theme gives the opportunity for the skaters and the audience to see something really different and creative." For example, on the disc, you can watch Kerrigan drop to the stage on a rope, dressed as a spiderwoman. Olympic bronze medalist Josef Sabovcik plays a rock-and-roll vampire who regurgitates blood onto his chin—and then performs a raucous routine that ends with a perfect back flip. Two-time bronze medalist Philippe Candeloro also hams it up as Freddy Krueger, then rips off a fake left hand and squirts blood all over the ice.

Back in 1994, some partisans credited Oksana Baiul's more pixieish smile for snatching the gold from Kerrigan by a tenth of a point. But if Kerrigan, a self-described tomboy in her youth, was never dainty, she looks like she's having a blast in this show. In the routine where she plays a zombie queen, she turns her upright carriage into jerky rigour mortis: halfway through, she adjusts her lolling head with both hands and rams it in place with a gruesome CRACK.

Kerrigan hasn't decided what's next in her career. She has had plenty of exposure to show business, from starring in Footloose on Ice to singing "The Best" on a Tina Turner tribute album. ("I thought that was a joke when someone called me and said, 'We want you to sing on this album.' And it was the president of Arista records.") Until recently she was a commentator for Lifetime Television, but "now they have no sports division, so I'm out of a job"; and although she still skates, Kerrigan will sit out this season because of her just-announced pregnancy. "I had a full schedule actually, then I basically had to cancel everything. So I don't know. I don't think it means the end of what I'm doing, although I'm 35, and athletics get harder. But if something great and interesting came up, I'd do it. If someone ever said, 'Do you want to do Footloose again?' I'd jump in a second. That was the most fun thing I ever did."

The notorious Tonya Harding incident will always give her a certain kind of fame, but she seems unwilling to exploit it. She only alludes to it once on the DVD, during the interview portion, when she describes her pride at being inducted this year into the U.S. Figure Skating's Hall of Fame. "To be honored in the Hall of Fame is so amazing, to be remembered for what I did—as opposed to sometimes I'm remembered for things I had no control over."

(c) 2004 Chris Dahlen