*
Peter already has a pain in his stomach when he steps into the president’s office. It’s messy, littered with old photographs and cups; there are some expensive bottles of drink on a table in one corner, golf clubs, and a half-open wardrobe containing a spare suit and clean shirts. They’re going to be needed—the president is sitting at his desk eating a sandwich the way a German shepherd would try to eat a balloon filled with mayonnaise. Peter tries to stop himself from wiping down both the desk and the president with napkins, and at least manages to stop before he gets to the president.
“Can you close the door?” the president mutters as he chews.
Peter takes a deep breath and feels his guts tie themselves in knots. He knows that everyone in the town thinks he’s naive, that he doesn’t understand where this is going. But he’s really just good at hoping. He closes the door and gives up on that.
“We’re going to appoint David as coach of the A-team,” the president says, like a training video in how not to be diplomatic.
Peter nods bitterly. The president brushes some crumbs from his tie.
“Everyone knows how close you and Sune are . . . ,” he adds by way of an apology.
Peter doesn’t respond. The president wipes his fingers on his pants.
“Don’t look like that, for God’s sake, as if I just stole the presents from under your Christmas tree. We need to put the good of the club first, Peter!”
Peter looks down at the floor. He’s a team player—that’s how he would describe himself. And the starting point for that is always understanding your own role, and its limitations. He’s going to have to tell himself that plenty of times today, force his brain to control his heart. It was Sune who persuaded him to become GM, and it was Sune’s door that was always open to him when things got tough.
“With all due respect: you know I don’t agree about that. I don’t think David’s ready,” he said quietly.
He doesn’t make eye contact with the president and looks around the walls of the office instead, as if he were looking for something. The only time he avoids eye contact is when something feels extremely unpleasant. Kira says he starts “shooting imaginary clay pigeons” as soon as he finds himself in any sort of conflict. He can’t even point out that he’s been given the wrong change in the supermarket without breaking into a cold sweat and wanting to curl up into a ball. The wall behind the president is decorated with pictures and pennants, and one of them—ancient and faded—reads “Culture, Values, Community.” Peter feels like asking the president what he thinks that means now that they’re about to fire the man who built up everything surrounding them. But he stays quiet. The president throws up his hands.
“We’re aware that David pushes hard, but he gets results. And the sponsors have made a significant investment . . . for God’s sake, Peter, they saved us from bankruptcy. And we’ve got a chance to build something big now, using the products of the junior team.”
Peter looks him in the eye for the first time and replies through gritted teeth:
“We’re not supposed to develop ‘products.’ We don’t manufacture anything at all. We nurture human beings. Those guys are flesh and blood, not business plans and investment targets. The youth program isn’t some factory, regardless of what some of our sponsors seem to think.”
He bites his lip hard and stops himself. The president scratches his stubble. They both look tired. Peter looks down at the floor again.
“Sune thinks David is pushing the juniors too hard. I’m concerned about what might happen if he’s right,” he mutters.
The president smiles. And shrugs his shoulders.
“Do you know what happens to coal if you apply enough pressure to it, Peter? It turns into diamonds.”
*
The Andersson family never plays Monopoly, not because the parents don’t want to, but because the children refuse. The last time they tried, Kira ended up holding the board over the open fire, threatening to burn it unless Peter confessed that he had been cheating. Their parents are so competitive that Maya and Leo simply refuse to play. Leo loves hockey because he loves being part of a team, but he would probably have been just as happy being in charge of the equipment as he is being a center. Maya chose the guitar. You can’t compete at playing the guitar. Maya’s last sporting memory is of the time she lost a game of table tennis when she was six because another girl ran into her and knocked her over, and how the youth-group leader who was supposed to hand out the medals had to lock himself in a cleaning cupboard so Kira wouldn’t find him. Maya had to console her mother all the way home. After that she announced that she wanted to learn to play a musical instrument.
Nothing has made Kira more proud or more envious than when she heard her daughter plug in an amplifier for the first time and play David Bowie in the garage with her dad on drums. She hated and loved Peter because he had the sensitivity to learn. So that he could be close to Maya.
The four members of the family are so improbably different, and even if Kira never stops reminding them that Peter actually confessed to cheating at Monopoly, she nonetheless thinks about that Monopoly board every now and then and feels . . . ashamed. Not a second has passed since she had children without her feeling like a bad mother. For everything. For not understanding, for being impatient, for not knowing everything, not making better packed lunches, for still wanting more out of life than just being a mother. She hears other women in Beartown sigh behind her back: “Yes, but she has a full-time job, you know. Can you imagine?” No matter how much you try to let words like that run off you, a few of them stick.
She’s ashamed to admit it to herself, but getting to work feels like a liberation. She knows she’s good at her job, and she never feels that way about being a parent. Even on the best days—the tiny, shimmering moments when they’re on holiday and Peter and the children are fooling about on a beach and everyone is happy and laughing—Kira always feels like a fake. As if she doesn’t deserve it, as if she just wants to be able to show a photoshopped family photograph to the rest of the world.
Her work may be demanding and tough, but it’s straightforward and logical. And being a parent is never like that. If she does everything right at work, things usually go as planned, but it doesn’t matter if she does absolutely everything in the universe correctly as a mother: the very worst can still happen.
*
The weight on Peter’s chest feels too heavy for him to be able to get up from his chair. The president tries to look authoritative:
“The board wants you to tell Sune the news and deal with the interviews with the press. It’s important that we demonstrate that we’re all united regarding this decision.”