Peter rubs his eyebrows with his knuckles. “When?”
“Right after the juniors’ final.” Peter looks up in surprise.
“Don’t you mean after the semifinal? Tomorrow?”
The president shakes his head calmly.
“No. If they lose the semifinal, David won’t be getting the job. The board will select someone else instead. In which case we’ll need another couple of weeks.”
Peter’s world wobbles on its axis.
“Are you kidding? You’re seriously contemplating firing Sune and then bringing in someone from outside?”
The president opens a small bag of chips, eats a handful, and wipes the salt on his jacket.
“Come on, Peter, don’t be naive. If the juniors win the final, we’ll get an incredible amount of publicity. The sponsors, the council, everyone’s going to want to join in. But the board isn’t interested in ‘almost’. . . Just look at us, look at the club . . .”
The president throws up his hands a bit too quickly, but carries on talking through the ensuing shower of crumbs:
“Don’t be a hypocrite, Peter. You haven’t devoted all those hours to this team for ‘almost,’ you didn’t become GM for ‘almost.’ No one really cares if the guys put up a good fight, they’ll only remember the final result. David is completely inexperienced as an A-team coach, but we can overlook that if he wins. But if he doesn’t . . . well, you know the rules: either you win, or you’re an also-ran.”
For a long time they just look at each other, the club president and its GM. They say nothing more, but they both know: if Peter doesn’t fall into line behind the board and the sponsors, he, too, can be replaced. Club first. Always.
He leaves the president’s office, closes the door behind him, and stands forlornly in the hallway with his forehead against the wall. One harsh lesson that Peter had to learn very quickly when he became GM was that everyone was always unhappy with him. That was hard to accept for someone who has always wanted to keep people happy. It was Sune who told him not to let it bother him, and that his talent for compromise would get him a long way. Then he was able to listen and make difficult decisions with his head rather than his heart.
Perhaps Sune didn’t have his own dismissal in mind when he said that. Perhaps he changed his mind when he got older. Perhaps Peter himself has changed, he doesn’t know. But he does know the rules, everyone knows the rules. You’re either a particular type of club, or you’re one of all the rest.
Not that any of this feels the slightest bit better as a result. All he knows is that he keeps disappointing people. Always.
*
On one corner of the desk in Kira’s office there’s an increasingly cramped collection of family photographs. One is of her and Peter taken the day they moved to Canada, when he’d only just gotten his NHL contract. She happens to notice it just as she’s putting her briefcase down and smiles. God, they were so young then. She had only just qualified as a lawyer, and was pregnant, and he was going to be a superstar. How easy everything was back then, for a few magical weeks. She stops smiling when she remembers how quickly the smiles in that picture had faded.
Peter broke his foot in preseason training, and when he returned he had to fight his way up through the farm team league, only to break his foot a second time when he was finally allowed to play again. After four NHL games. It took him two years to work his way back after that. Six minutes into his fifth game he fell and didn’t get back up. She screamed out loud, despite swearing while she was growing up that she would never make a fool of herself for any man. She sat through nine operations, she doesn’t know how many hours of rehab, physiotherapists, and specialists. All that talent, all that sweat, all leading up to nothing but tears and bitterness in a man whose heart wanted so much more than his body could handle. She remembers when the doctor told her Peter would never be able to play at elite level again, because no one dared tell Peter directly.
They had a young son at the time, and a daughter on the way. Kira had already decided that she would be called Maya. For several months they had a dad who was present without being present. There are no former hockey players, because they never quite reach the same temperature as the rest of us. It’s like trying to rehabilitate returning soldiers: they drift about aimlessly when they don’t have anyone to fight with or for. The whole of Peter’s life had been divided into times and schedules and bus trips and locker rooms. Meals and training sessions and even regulated times for sleep. One of the toughest concepts to teach someone like that is “everyday life.”
There were days when Kira thought about giving up and asking for a divorce. But she remembered one of the stupid slogans written on scraps of paper all over Peter’s room when he was growing up: “The only time I’m not moving forward is when I’m taking aim.”
*
Peter is alone in the hallway. The door to Sune’s office is closed. It’s the first time in twenty years that Peter has seen it like that, and he’s never been more grateful. He thinks about the words on the wall of the president’s office: “Culture, Values, Community.” He remembers something Sune told him during preseason training a lifetime ago: “Culture is as much about what we encourage as what we permit.” For Sune the coach, that applied to making them run through the forest until they threw up, but for Sune the man it also applied to life.
Peter gets some coffee and drinks it, even though it tastes like something has crawled into the cup and died there, then stops in front of the team photograph from their silver-medal season, the club’s greatest triumph. There are copies of the picture all around the building. Robbie Holts is standing next to him in the middle row. They haven’t so much as spoken to each other since Peter came back to Beartown, and hardly a day goes by without Peter wondering what life would have been like if they had changed places. If Robbie had been the more talented one, if he had gone to Canada, if Peter had stayed here and worked in the factory. How different life would have been then.
He remembers one morning in Canada when Kira pulled him out of bed before the children woke up. Forced him to sit and look at them as they slept. “They’re your team now,” she whispered, over and over again, until tears from his eyes started to run down her cheeks.
That year they built a new life, stayed in Canada, and fought their way through every battle that came their way. Kira got a job in a law firm, Peter worked part-time selling insurance. They made it work, they settled, and then—just as Kira started to make plans for the future—came the nights when they realized something was wrong.