If you live with the same person for long enough, you often discover that although you may have had a hundred conflicts at the start of the relationship, in the end you have only one. You keep slipping into the same argument, albeit in different guises.
“There’s a new sponsor—” Peter begins.
“The paper’s already written about it online, everyone’s talking about it,” Kira says.
“I know what you want to say,” Peter says, standing at the bottom of the steps in front of their home.
“No. Because you haven’t asked,” Kira replies, and drinks a sip of wine.
He doesn’t ask now either. Instead he says, “I can save the club. I promised Maya that I’d—”
Kira’s grip on his fingers is gentle, but her voice is merciless. “Don’t drag our daughter into this. You’re saving the club for your own sake. You want to prove to everyone in this town who doesn’t believe in you that they’re wrong. Again. You never get through having to prove that.
Peter grinds his teeth. “What am I supposed to do? Let the club die while people around here . . .”
“It doesn’t matter what people think,” she snaps, but he cuts her off in turn: “My death was announced in the paper! Someone threatened my life!”
“Someone threatened our lives, Peter! Why the hell do you always get to choose when this family is a team or not?”
His tears fall onto her hair. He squats down in front of her. “Sorry. I know I have no right to ask any more from you. I love you. You and the kids. More than anything . . .”
She closes her eyes. “We know, darling.”
“I know the sacrifices you’ve made for my hockey. I know.”
Kira hides her despair behind her eyelids. Every autumn, winter, and spring the whole family lives according to the dictates of hockey, raised up to the heavens when the team wins and tumbling headlong when it loses. Kira doesn’t know if she can bear to put herself through yet another season. But she still stands up and says, “What’s love if we aren’t prepared to make sacrifices?”
“Darling, I . . . ,” Peter says, but tails off.
Kira is wearing a green T-shirt. The words BEARTOWN AGAINST THE REST are printed on it. She bites her cheeks, broken by what she’s giving up but proud of her choice. “Tails called. He’s selling them in the store. Our neighbors were each wearing one when they got home. Christ, Peter, they’re both over ninety. What sort of ninety-year-olds wear T-shirts?”
She smiles. Peter’s eyes dart about in embarrassment. “I didn’t know Tails . . .”
Kira touches his cheek. “Tails loves you. Oh, how he loves you, darling. There may be people in this town who hate you, and you can’t do anything about that. But there are far more who worship you, and you can’t do anything about that, either. Sometimes I wish you weren’t indispensible to them, that I didn’t have to share you, but I knew when I married you that half your heart belongs to hockey.”
“That’s not true . . . please . . . ask me to resign, and I’ll do it!”
She doesn’t ask him. She spares him from having to reveal that he’s lying. You do that if you love someone. She says, “I’m one of the people who worship you. And I’m on your team, no matter what. Go and save your club.”
His answer is barely audible. “Next year, darling, just give me one more season . . . next year . . .”
Kira hands him the wineglass. It’s either half full or half empty. She kisses her husband on the lips, and he whispers “I love you,” his breath mingling with hers. She replies, “Win, darling. If you’re really going to do this . . . win!”
* * *
Then she goes into their house. Sends an email to her colleague: “Can’t take the premises. Not this year. Sorry.” Then she goes to bed. There are three women in the bed that night. Only three.
* * *
The reporter from the local paper calls Peter late that night and asks straight out, “Can you confirm the rumors? Is there a new sponsor? Can you save the club? Have you appointed a female coach? Is Beartown still going to play Hed in the first game of the season?”
* * *
Peter gives the same response to each question; then he hangs up.
* * *
“Yes.”
17
Smells Blood and Catches Fire
On the wall of Richard Theo’s office, beside the picture of the stork, is a printout from the website of the Ice Hockey Federation. It’s the schedule for Beartown Ice Hockey’s season. First game: Hed Hockey.
A fly makes its way in through the open window. Theo doesn’t kill it, just lets it buzz about, more and more lost. He recently read a book about terrorism in which a historian drew an analogy with a china shop: a lone fly can’t overturn a single teacup, but a fly buzzing in the ear of a bull until the bull panics and rushes into a china shop in a rage can accomplish any amount of devastation.
Richard Theo has no need of devastation; he’s happy with conflict. So he’s spent a long time listening to everyone. To people in the supermarket, in the DIY store, in the Bearskin pub, in the Hollow, in the Heights: he’s looked everyone in the eye, and instead of expressing an opinion, he has asked questions. “What should we politicians be doing for you?” “Where do you see Beartown in ten years’ time?” “How much tax did you pay last year? Do you get value for money from it?” From that he has learned that people around here are worried about three things: jobs, health care, and hockey.
So he sat down at his computer and started to write. All summer the local paper has been publishing articles about the rumors that the hospital in Hed is going to be closed, and Theo has commented repeatedly and anonymously using half a dozen fake accounts. He never spreads hate, never draws attention to himself, just discreetly tosses more fuel onto the already smoldering fire. When one worried pregnant woman wondered what was going to happen to the hospital’s maternity unit, one of Theo’s anonymous pseudonyms wondered, “Have you heard anything?” The woman replied, “I know someone who works there she says its being shut down!!!” Theo’s pseudonym replied, “We’d better hope the government doesn’t raise gasoline taxes, or we won’t even be able to afford to give birth in our cars.” When an unemployed man, recently laid off from the factory in Beartown, replied, “Exactly! Always us out in the sticks who have to suffer!,” another of Theo’s identities wrote, “Why should all our money go to the hospital in Hed instead of opening a new clinic in Beartown?”
The man and woman were joined by other angry voices, the tone quickly became more inflamed, and Theo merely nudged the general frustration in the right direction when he wrote, “So the women around here will have to give birth in their cars, but the council always seems to have enough money to support Beartown Ice Hockey?”
Hospitals and hockey aren’t funded from the same budget, those decisions aren’t even made by the same politicians, but if you ask a difficult enough question, there will always be a receptive audience for the simplest answer. So day after day, in different comment sections, Richard Theo has been doing what he does best: creating conflict, setting one thing against another. Countryside against big city. Hospital against hockey. Hed against us.
* * *
Us against you.
* * *
And now more and more people, of all ages and from all parts of town, are wearing green T-shirts bearing the words BEARTOWN AGAINST THE REST.
* * *