His mother doesn’t reply. Kevin knows it’s pointless to carry on: the main hobby of this household isn’t hockey, it’s avoiding any talk about feelings. If you raise your voice, you lose. All you get is a curt, “There’s no point talking to you if you’re just going to shout,” followed by a door closing somewhere in the house. He starts to walk toward the hall.
His mother hesitates. Reaches her hand out to his shoulder again, but stops herself and touches him tenderly on the neck instead. She runs a large company, and is very popular among her staff precisely because she’s so approachable and sympathetic. It’s as if it’s easier when the people involved have different job descriptions. For years she used to go to bed dreaming of all the things she was going to do when she got older and had more time, and now she sometimes wakes up in despair in the middle of the night because she can no longer remember what those things were. She wanted to give Kevin everything she herself never had as a child, and she always thought she’d have time left over for all the other stuff. Talking and listening. The years have passed too quickly, and somewhere between her work and Kevin’s hockey practice he grew up. She never managed to learn how to communicate with her child, and now that she has to tilt her head back to look him in the eye it’s even harder.
“We’ll come to the final!” she promises, the way only a mother can when she inhabits a world where it would be inconceivable for a final to take place without her son being part of it.
*
The cafeteria is still empty, even if the rink is beginning to fill with people. Kira is making coffee and getting hot-dog rolls out of the freezer. Maya is gazing out of the window.
“Who are you looking for?” Ana teases.
Maya gives her a hard stare, and Ana cups her hands in front of her mouth and imitates a crackly cockpit announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, we ask you not to open any snacks during this flight because we have someone suffering from a peanut allergy on board.”
Maya kicks her on the shin. Ana jumps out of the way, and goes on in the same voice: “We MAY let you lick the salt from the pean . . .”
Kira sees everything, hears everything, and understands almost everything, but says nothing. It’s impossible to let your daughter grow up. The only problem is that you’re not given a choice. Kira was fifteen once upon a time, and unfortunately still remembers exactly the sort of thing that used to fill her head back then.
“I’m just going to get the milk from the car,” she interrupts when she suspects that Ana is about to say something that neither mother nor daughter are ready to hear spoken out loud in each other’s company.
*
Kevin’s father is already sitting in the car, and he tells Kevin to sit in the front and starts to quiz him about his English test on Monday. His father’s life is all about the quest for perfection, his whole life a chessboard where he isn’t happy unless he’s two moves ahead of everyone else. “Success is never a coincidence. Luck can give you money, but never success,” he often says. His ruthlessness in business frightens people, but Kevin has never seen him raise his hand to anyone, or even his voice. He can actually be quite charming when he wants, without ever needing to reveal anything about himself. He never loses control, never gets excited, because you just don’t if you’re always living in the future. Today there’s a hockey game, but on Monday there’s an English test. Two moves ahead.
“My job is to be your father, not your friend,” his dad explained when Kevin mentioned once too often the fact that Benji’s mother sees almost all of their games. He didn’t need to get angry for Kevin to understand his point: Benji’s mother doesn’t sponsor the team to the tune of several million kronor every year. She doesn’t make sure that the lights in the rink stay on. So she probably has rather more time to watch games.
*
Benji has taken the road by the lake so he can smoke without anyone seeing, which ought to stop Lyt’s mother from organizing another petition, the way she did when they were at preschool and Lyt saw Benji eating sweets even though it wasn’t a Saturday. She’s very keen on justice and equality, Lyt’s mother, so long as they’re based on her precise interpretation of those words. Almost all the parents are like that. Benji has always thought that this town must be a terrible place to be a grownup. He buries the butt of his joint in the snow, then stands among the trees with his eyes closed and contemplates turning around and walking back the way he came. Away from all this. Then maybe steal a car and leave Beartown in the rearview mirror. He wonders if that would make him happier.
*
The parking lot in front of the rink is full of people. Kevin’s dad stops the car a short distance away.
“We haven’t got time to stop and talk today,” he says, nodding toward the other sponsors and parents in the parking lot, who are as impressed by the Erdahl family’s money as their kids are by the way Kevin plays hockey.
When you grow up in a family that never talks about feelings, you learn to hear the nuances in words like that. There’s no need for him to apologize to Kevin for not driving him all the way to the door, because he just did. They pat each other briefly on the shoulder and Kevin gets out.
“You can tell us all about it tomorrow,” his dad says.
There are dads who ask “Did you win?” but Kevin’s asks “How many did you win by?” Kevin always hears him making notes; a whole section of the basement of the house consists of neatly stacked boxes packed with thick notepads full of careful statistics from every game Kevin has ever played, all the way back to little league. There are probably people who think it’s wrong to ask your son, “How many goals did you score?” instead of “Did you score any goals?” but both Kevin’s father and Kevin himself would have replied the same way: “How many goals do their sons score?”
Kevin doesn’t ask his father if they’ll have time to watch the first period, he just shuts the door and hoists his bag onto his shoulder, as if this were just an ordinary Saturday. But as the car pulls away, he turns and watches it until it’s gone. There are more parents than players around him in the parking lot. This isn’t just an ordinary Saturday for them.
*