“She doesn’t care what Peter thinks.”
Ramona chuckles. She’s always been a bit fonder of the Rinnius brothers than all of the Bearskin’s other boys. Teemu gets her groceries for her every week; Vidar used to do his homework here. Many years ago, just after Holger died, the boys heard someone say that Ramona had “started to forget things, could be Alzheimer’s.” It wasn’t, it was just a perfectly ordinary broken heart, but the boys read online that you can delay the aging process in the brain, so they started forcing her to do crosswords. Every morning they would bring her a new one. She swore loudly and loved them unconditionally for that. So now she says, “So Vidar shits on a desk and Zackell doesn’t give a shit about Peter? That’s not going to end well.”
“No,” Sune agrees.
Ramona scratches under her chin with one of the whisky glasses. “It’s not like you to go against Peter.”
“No,” Sune concedes.
“Why? Is she that special, this coach?”
Sune sighs deeply, making the hairs in his nostrils sway wildly. “Either we win or we go under, Ramona. Vidar used to be one hell of a goalie, and if he still is, then I’m prepared to take a chance on his . . . personality.”
Ramona smiles. “When the Devil gets old, he gets religious.”
“Can you see to it that Teemu takes Vidar to practice?” Sune wonders.
Ramona raises an eyebrow. “Listen, you old fool, do you remember how Vidar used to play hockey? You had to drag him off the ice when practice was over! And now he’s been locked up for . . . hell, you won’t be able to keep him away from that rink, no matter how well armed you are!”
Ramona doesn’t say what she’s thinking: that she’ll drag Vidar to the rink herself if need be. She was never quite able to save Teemu; he was too angry to change. But perhaps Vidar can still have a different life, and Ramona isn’t about to let that opportunity go, even if it’s the death of her.
Sune nods and sips his whisky. It makes his eyes water. “Well, then.”
He falls silent. Ramona snorts. “Anything else?”
Sune is embarrassed at being so transparent. “I want to ask for something else. Not for the club, just for me. There’s a little girl named Alicia. She’s four and a half, lives over in—”
“I know who the little lass is,” Ramona says gloomily, not because she knows the girl but because all the local bar owners know the adults who live in the same house.
“Can you help me keep an eye on her?”
Ramona pours more whisky. “Are you sure you’re not here to charm me into bed? You’re doing better now than you ever used to.”
Sune smiles. “I’d have a heart attack before you had time to undo your bra, but thanks for the offer.”
Ramona drinks. Then she says unhappily, “I don’t speak for anyone in this town, Sune. But Peter’s my boy, too. So tell him to remember who stood up for Beartown, for his own sake. No matter what this new sponsor demands.”
Sune nods. He knows she means the Pack’s standing area in the rink. This is a hard town to keep secrets in.
“I’ll do my best,” he says.
It won’t be enough.
* * *
Peter stops outside Leo’s room. The boy is twelve years old, almost a teenager. Peter thinks back to when he was born, that shattering moment when he heard his son cry for the first time. When he was allowed to pick up that fragile naked body, support the little head, with its scrunched-up eyes and plaintive cries . . . and when the wailing stopped. The first time Peter realized that the tiny person was sleeping soundly in his arms. What are we prepared to do for our children at that moment? What aren’t we prepared to do?
But the years whistle past. Fathers need to live in the moment; general managers are never allowed to. Fathers need to seize the day, because childhoods are like soap bubbles; you get only a few seconds to enjoy them. But general managers need to think about the next game, the next season, onward, forward, upward.
Peter is standing with two sticks in one hand and a tennis ball in the other. Leo used to drive him crazy asking him to go and play in the driveway. “Dad, can you move the car? Dad, can we play? Dad? Just a little while! First to five goals!” Peter would be sitting with the remote in his hand, watching a recording of a game or struggling with a stack of files and a pocket calculator, working on the budget, and would reply, “You need to do your homework first.” After his homework was done, it was too late. “Tomorrow,” the father would promise. “Okay,” the son would reply. Men are busy, but boys don’t stop growing. Sons want their fathers’ attention until the precise moment when fathers want their sons’. From then on we’re all doomed to wish that we’d fallen asleep beside them more often, while their head could still fit on our chest. That we’d spent more time sitting on the floor while they were playing. Hugged them while they still let us.
Peter knocks on Leo’s door now, and the twelve-year-old replies without opening it. “Mmm?”
“I’ve . . . moved the car out of the driveway,” the father says hopefully.
“Oh?”
“Yes . . . I thought maybe you might like . . . might like a game?”
He’s clutching the tennis ball so hard that the sweat from his hand is leaving marks in the green fabric covering. Leo’s reply is merciless: “I have to do my homework, Dad. Tomorrow, maybe!”
Peter almost opens the door and asks him again. But instead he puts the sticks back into the cupboard. Then he sits down on the sofa on his own with the ball in his hand and falls asleep there.
* * *
Kira closes the lid of her laptop. Looks into Leo’s room. He pretends to be asleep; she pretends to believe him. She walks past the living room, puts a blanket over Peter, then stops as if to brush some hair from his forehead. But doesn’t.
She sits on her own on the steps in front of the house, looking at the same stars she could have looked at from anywhere in the world. At work today her colleague gave her an envelope, sent by an older woman whom both Kira and her colleague had idolized for several years, a director and investment genius who had changed direction and set up a big charitable foundation fronted by artists and actors and backed by multiple millions. Kira and her colleague met the woman at a conference last year, they managed to attract her attention, and when they parted the woman gave Kira her business card and said, “I’m always looking for smart people with a bit of fire inside them. Get in touch if you ever need a job.” Kira didn’t really take the offer seriously, perhaps didn’t dare to, and let it remain a vague little dream. But the envelope today contained an invitation to a large conference that the woman’s foundation is organizing in a couple weeks’ time, in Canada.
“Why is she inviting us to go? Does she want to use the firm?” Kira asked breathlessly.
Only then did she see the jealousy in her colleague’s eyes. Kira looked at the invitation again and realized that it mentioned only her name. Her colleague did her best to be proud but still sounded like a little girl who was about to lose her more talented friend to the big wide world: “She’s only asked you, Kira. She doesn’t want to use the firm. She wants to give you a job.”
* * *
Kira sits on the steps outside the house with the envelope in her hand, looking at the stars. They’re the same stars you can see from Canada. She moved there once so that Peter could play in the NHL, with the best in the world. She knows what he’d say if she says she wants to go to the conference. “Do you really have to go right now? There’s so much going on with the club, darling. Maybe next year?”
* * *
Kira will never be able to explain. Peter will never understand that she has her own NHL.
* * *