When Ana has fallen asleep out on the island, Maya lies awake and writes lyrics about hatred. Sometimes she carries on so long that she ends up writing about love. Not the earth-shattering falling-in-love kind but the boring, whole-of-your-life sort. She doesn’t know why, but she’s thinking a lot about her parents this summer. When you’re a teenager, you want them to be sexless, but somewhere along the way the smallest memories of affection between our parents get imprinted on our DNA. Parents who divorce, like Ana’s, can stop a child believing in eternal love. Parents who stick together for a lifetime can make a child take it for granted instead.
Maya remembers such insignificant things from her childhood. The way her mom laughs when she describes her dad’s style of dress as “plainclothes cop at high school disco.” Or the way her dad shakes the all-but-empty milk carton each morning and mutters, “Welcome to today’s Guinness World Record attempt, where we will try to make the smallest cup of coffee in the world.” The way her mom loses it if there are socks on the floor and the way her dad would like to take anyone who doesn’t wipe the dish rack in front of a war crimes tribunal. The way her mom moved around the world twice for the sake of her dad’s hockey and the way her dad sneaks admiring glances at her mom when she takes business calls in the kitchen. As though she were the smartest, funniest, most stubborn, most argumentative person he’s ever met and that he still can’t quite believe she’s his.
The way Maya and Leo didn’t know their parents’ real names for years because they just called each other “darling.” The way they’ve never mentioned the word “divorce,” not even when they’re having a row, because they know that’s the nuclear option, and if you threaten it once, every argument from then on will end the same way. The way they suddenly seem to have stopped squabbling about little things now, the way the house has gotten quieter, the way they can hardly look each other in the eye anymore after what happened to Maya. The way they can’t bring themselves to show each other just how badly they were broken by it.
Children notice when their parents lose each other in the very smallest ways, in something as insignificant as a single word, such as “your.” Maya texts them each morning now and pretends it’s to stop them worrying about her, even though it’s actually the reverse. She’s used to them calling each other “Mom” and “Dad.” As in “Mom didn’t really mean you were grounded for a thousand years, darling,” or “Dad didn’t demolish your snowman on purpose, he just tripped, darling.” But suddenly one day, almost incidentally, one of them writes, “Can’t you call your mom, she’s worries so much when you’re not home?” And the other writes, “Remember, your dad and I love you more than anything.” Four letters can reveal the end of a marriage. “Your.” As if they didn’t belong to each other anymore.
Maya sits on an island in a lake far out in the forest and writes songs about it, because she can’t bear to be at home and watch it happen.
Minefield
This is a minefield you’re walking on
Every word a bomb, but you go on walking
Until there’s a quiet “click” beneath a foot
And then it’s too late to go back.
The worst thing about being a victim is the victims I turned you into
I can’t mend you now, no matter how much I want to
It’s like I was the one who died but you’re the ones who were buried
Like I was the one he broke but you’re the ones who snapped.
* * *
The men in black jackets shake Adri’s hand and walk toward the cars, but Teemu stays where he is and lights a cigarette. Adri tucks a wad of chewing tobacco the size of a baby’s fist under her lip. She isn’t an idiot either; she knows who the Pack are and what they’re capable of, but she’s a pragmatic person.
One summer a few years ago, Beartown suffered a series of break-ins. A gang showed up at night with vans, and on one occasion an elderly man got beaten up when he tried to stop them. Another time a neighbor called the police while the burglary was in progress. One solitary police car appeared three hours later. Adri remembers how a few months earlier there had been reports of illegal hunting of wolves in the forest not far from here and the police had showed up with helicopters, the National Crime Unit, and a SWAT team. Whatever your views on that, when Adri sees wolves getting better protection than pensioners, she has more faith in the criminal standing beside her than in the criminals in the government and on the council. It has nothing to do with morals. Most people are like her: pragmatic.
When the gang came back, men in black jackets were waiting for them. Everyone else in Beartown closed their doors that night, turned up the volume on their televisions; no one asked any questions afterward. There were no more break-ins. Teemu is a lunatic, Adri won’t argue with anyone about that, but he loves this town the same way she does. And he loves hockey. So now he’s grinning like a fool. “Benji’s playing on the A-team this autumn, isn’t he? You must be so goddamn proud! Have you seen the list of games? Is he stoked?”
Adri nods. She knows that on the ice Benji is everything Teemu wants in a Beartown player: tough, fearless, mean. And he’s from here, a local boy made good, a boy next door. Men like Teemu love that. And yes, Adri’s seen the game schedule, it was posted online that morning. Beartown is playing Hed Hockey in the first game of the autumn.
“He’ll be playing—if there’s a Beartown club for him to play in,” she says with a dry laugh.
Teemu smiles, but the look on his face is increasingly hard to interpret. “We’re relying on Peter Andersson to solve that.”
Adri peers at him. It was the Pack who made sure that Peter won the vote of confidence back in the spring and kept his job as general manager; no one can prove it, but everyone knows. Without their votes, Peter would have been out. Now the club has lost almost all its sponsors to Hed, so the Pack were taking a big risk. Ramona, owner of the Bearskin pub, usually says, “Teemu may not know the difference between right and wrong, but he knows the bloody difference between good and evil.” Perhaps she’s right. The Pack lined up behind a general manager and his daughter against the team’s star player, Kevin. But that could be a dangerous burden for the general manager if he steers the Pack’s club into bankruptcy.
“Are you really relying on Peter? I saw the announcement of his death in the paper,” Adri points out.
Teemu raises an eyebrow. “Perhaps someone was trying to make a joke.”
“Perhaps someone from your part of the stand was trying to send a message?”
Teemu rubs his head with a fake look of concern. “It’s a big stand. I can’t control everything.”
“If Benji gets caught up in any of this, I’ll kill you.”
Teemu suddenly bursts out laughing, and the sound echoes through the trees. “There aren’t many people who talk to me like that, Adri.”
“I’m not many people,” she replies.
Teemu lights another cigarette from the butt of the last one. “It was you who taught your brother to play hockey, wasn’t it?”
“I taught him how to fight.”
The trees echo to the sound of Teemu’s laughter again. “Who wins if you fight now?”
Adri looks down. Her voice becomes thicker. “I do. Because I have an unfair advantage. Benji can’t hurt anyone he loves.”
Teemu nods appreciatively. Then he pats her arm and says, “We only ask one thing of Benji out on the ice. The same thing we ask of everyone.”
“That he should do his best and have fun?” she suggests tartly.
Teemu grins. So does she, eventually. Because she knows what he means. Win. That’s all anyone ever asks of you around here. Teemu hands her an envelope and says, “Ramona heard that you and Sune have started a girls’ team for five-year-olds. This is from the kitty.”