Standing outside in the hallway is his best friend.
*
There are no almosts in ice hockey.
12
A long marriage is complicated. So complicated, in fact, that most people in one sometimes ask themselves: “Am I still married because I’m in love, or just because I can’t be bothered to let anyone else get to know me this well again?”
Kira knows that her complaining drives Peter mad. That he sometimes feels browbeaten. Sometimes she calls him five times a day simply to check that he’s done something he promised to do.
*
Peter’s office is perfectly organized, the desk so clean you could eat off it. The shelves are lined with LPs that he doesn’t dare take home because he’s worried Kira will force him either to throw them away or buy a bigger house. He orders them online and has them delivered to the rink, effectively turning the receptionist into his dealer. Some people hide the fact that they smoke from their spouse. Peter hides his online shopping.
He buys the records because they calm him down. They remind him of Isak. He’s never told her that.
*
Kira can’t remember exactly how old the children were when the snowstorm hit, but they hadn’t been living in Beartown long enough for her to get used to the forces of nature. It was around Christmas, the children weren’t at school, but there was a crisis at work so Kira had to go off to an important meeting. Peter took Maya and Leo out tobogganing and Kira stood by the car and watched them disappear into the swirling whiteness. It was so beautiful and so ominous at the same time. She felt so bereft once they had vanished from sight that she cried all the way to the office.
*
When Peter got injured in Canada and Kira started work, Peter was left at home alone with Isak. One day the child had a stomachache and wouldn’t stop screaming. Panic-stricken, Peter tried everything. He rocked him and took him out in the stroller and tried all the home remedies he had ever heard of, but nothing worked. Until he put a record on. Perhaps it was something about the old record-player—the crackle in the speakers, the voices filling the room—but Isak fell completely silent. Then he smiled. And then he fell asleep in Peter’s arms. That’s the last time Peter can remember really feeling like a good father. The last time he had been able to tell himself that he actually knew what he was doing. He’s never told Kira that, has never told anyone. But now he buys records in secret because he keeps hoping that feeling might come back, if only for a moment.
*
After her meeting that morning close to Christmas, Kira called Peter. He didn’t answer. The man who otherwise always answers. Then she heard on the radio that the snowstorm had hit the forest and people were being advised to stay indoors. She called a thousand times, left shouted messages for him, no response. She threw herself in the car and drove with her foot to the floor, even though she could barely see a yard in front of the hood. She ran out into the trees where they had left her that morning and started yelling hysterically, then collapsed and dug desperately at the snow with her hands, as if she might find her children there. Her ears and fingertips froze, and afterward she didn’t know how to explain what had happened inside her. Only several years later did she realize that it was a nervous breakdown.
Ten minutes later her phone rang. It was Peter and the children, carefree and untroubled, wondering where she was. “WHERE ARE YOU?” she yelled. “At home,” they replied, their mouths full of ice-cream and cinnamon buns. When Kira asked why, Peter replied uncomprehendingly: “There was a snowstorm, so we came home.” He had forgotten to charge his phone. It was in a drawer in the bedroom.
Kira has never told him, has never told anyone, but she’s never really recovered from that snowstorm. From the feeling she had in the car that she’d lost them too. So now she sometimes calls her husband and children several times a day just to complain to them. To reassure herself that they’re still there.
*
Peter puts a record on, but today it doesn’t help. He can’t stop thinking about Sune. The same thoughts keep going around his head for hours as he stares at a dark computer screen and throws a small rubber ball harder and harder against the wall.
When his phone rings, the interruption is so welcome that he even forgets to be annoyed at his wife for always taking it for granted that he’s going to forget everything he’s promised to do.
“Did you drop the car off at the garage?” she asks, even though she can already hear the answer.
“Yes! Of course I did!” Peter says, with the absolute conviction he only demonstrates when he’s lying.
“How did you get to the office, then?” she asks.
“How do you know I’m at the office?”
“I can hear you bouncing that stupid ball against the wall.” He sighs.
“You ought to work as a lawyer or something, has anyone ever told you that?”
The lawyer laughs.
“I’ll consider it if I can’t go professional with rock-paper-scissors.”
“You’re a cheat.”
“You’re a liar.”
Peter’s voice is shaking when he suddenly whispers:
“I love you so much.”
Kira laughs so he won’t hear her crying when she answers:
“Same here.”
They both hang up. Kira is eating lunch four hours late in front of her computer so she can get her work done and still have time to stop to buy new guitar strings for Maya before she rushes home to take Leo to his evening practice. Peter isn’t eating at all—he doesn’t want to give his body the chance to throw up again.
*
A long marriage is complicated.
*
The juniors’ locker room is quieter than usual. The significance of tomorrow’s game has started to get under their skin. William Lyt, who’s just turned eighteen but has a beard as thick as an otter’s coat and weighs as much as a small car, leans toward Kevin and whispers in a voice that suggests he’s in a prison film and is asking for a knife made out of a toothbrush, “Have you got any chewing tobacco?”
On one occasion last season David happened to mention to Lars that he had read that a single portion of chewing tobacco did more damage to a person’s fitness than a whole case of beer. Since then the juniors have been able to count on being yelled at so hard by both Lars and their parents that their hairline shifts backward if anyone so much as glimpses the telltale signs of wear on the pocket of their jeans from carrying a puck-shaped can of chewing tobacco.
“No,” Kevin replies.
Lyt nods gratefully anyway, then sets off around the locker room in search of some. They play in the first line together, but no matter how much bigger and stronger Lyt is, Kevin has always been the obvious leader. Benji, who could perhaps be described as having certain issues with authority figures, is lying half asleep on the floor, but reaches for a stick and pokes Kevin in the stomach with it.
“What the . . . ?” Kevin snarls.