Beartown
* * *
People feel pain. And it shrinks their souls.
The minutes are creeping toward lunchtime. Kevin is standing in the garden dribbling a puck with soft, controlled movements in complicated patterns between forty glass bottles placed around the ice. To anyone else it would have looked like it was happening incredibly fast, but to him each movement of his wrist feels leisurely. Time moves slower for him than other people, he doesn’t know why. When he was little he used to get beaten up by the older kids because he was too good, until Benji showed up out of nowhere at training one day. They slept at each other’s houses every day for several months, read Benji’s sisters’ old superhero comics by flashlight under the covers, and both their lives suddenly made sense. Their own superpowers united them.
“Sweetheart?” Kevin’s mom calls from the terrace door, pointing at her watch.
As Kevin approaches she carefully reaches out her hand and brushes some snow from his shoulder, lets her hand rest there for longer than usual, more gently than he’s used to. She bites her lower lip.
“Are you nervous?”
Kevin shakes his head. She nods proudly.
“We need to go. Your dad managed to get us on an earlier flight to Madrid. We’ll drop you off at the rink.”
“You’ll have time to watch the first period, though?”
He can see in her eyes that she’s going to pieces. But she’d never admit it.
“We’re in a hurry, sweetheart. Your dad’s got an important meeting with a client.”
“It’s a round of golf,” Kevin snaps. That’s as close as he ever gets to answering back.
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.
* * *
Kevin’s mom turns around for some reason and looks through the back window. She usually doesn’t do that: like her husband, she places great value on not being sentimental
and teaching Kevin to be independent. They’ve watched spoiled children in the Heights grow up to become triumphs of mediocrity—feeble, whining creatures who are going to need their hands held all their lives—and they’re not going to let that happen to Kevin. Even when it hurts, even when Kevin had to walk all the way back from Hed in the dark when he was in primary school because his dad wanted to teach him the consequences of being late, even when his mother had to pretend to be asleep when the boy got home. Even when she wept silently into her pillow. What feels comfortable for the parents isn’t what’s best for the child, she’s convinced of that, and Kevin has grown strong because they’ve allowed him to.
But Kevin’s mother will always remember what she sees through the rear window that Saturday, and how her son looks as he stands in the parking lot. On the biggest day of his life he is the loneliest boy on earth.
* * *
Amat tries to make it look like he’s only walking past the cafeteria by chance, and succeeds pretty much as well as if he’d tried to claim he’d eaten his best friend’s ice-cream by mistake. Kira is heading in the opposite direction, but greets him cheerily and says far too loudly:
“Hi, Amat! Are you looking for Maya?”
Kira gestures brightly toward the cafeteria and disappears down the stairs, but turns back and calls:
“Good luck today!”
Then she tenses her muscles and growls dramatically, the way she’s heard teenagers do out in the town when they wish each other luck:
“Knock ’em dead!”
Amat smiles bashfully. In the cafeteria Ana and Maya’s voices grow louder in heated debate and Kira hurries down the stairs before one of the girls says something about boys that her mother would have to scrub away from her brain with soap, water, and copious amounts of Riesling.
* * *
Benji is suddenly standing next to Kevin without Kevin having heard him arrive. His hand on his friend’s shoulder and not a word about the fact that Kevin’s eyes look shiny. In return, Kevin says nothing about anniversaries and cemeteries. They’ve never needed to. They just look each other in the eye and say the only thing they always say before a game:
“What’s the second-coolest thing in the world, Kev?”
When Kevin doesn’t respond at once, Benji elbows him in the stomach.
“What’s the SECOND-coolest thing in the world, hotshot?”
“Fucking,” Kevin says, smiling.
“But first you have go into that rink and do the coolest thing in the world!” Benji cries, swinging his bag so carelessly that Kevin has to duck.
As they head off toward the locker room Kevin raises his eyebrows and asks: “So, Benjamin, have you been to the bathroom?”
When they were little, during one of their very first matches together, Benji wet himself on the team bench. Not because he couldn’t get to the bathroom, but because one of the players on the opposing team had been trying to check Kevin all through the game, and Benji refused to leave the bench and risk missing a changeover and leaving Kevin unprotected.
Benji bursts out laughing. As does Kevin. Then they pick up their sticks and set off to go and do the coolest thing in the world.
* * *
“Have you heard any of their new tracks, though? They’re completely insane! It’s like you get high just from listening!” Ana squawks.
“What is it you don’t get? I don’t like techno!” Maya cries.
“This isn’t techno. It’s house,” Ana snaps, insulted.
“Whatever. I like music where they can play at least one instrument, and with lyrics that contain more than five words.”
“God, when are you going to listen to music that isn’t a suicide soundtrack?” Ana wonders, letting her hair fall over her face and imitating Maya’s music taste with drawn-out air-guitar strumming and groaned lyrics: “I’m so sad, wanna die, because my music suuucks . . .”
Maya laughs loudly and counters with one fist gyrating in the air and the other on an invisible laptop:
“Okay, this is your taste in music: Umph-umph-umph . . . DRUGS! YEAH! Umph-umph-umph-umph!”
Beside them Amat clears his throat. By now they’re bouncing around the cafeteria so uncontrollably that Ana knocks over a whole stack of boxes of gummy bears. Maya stops, howling with laughter.
“Are you . . . okay?” Amat asks.
“We just have very, very different taste in music,” Maya grins.
“Okay . . . I . . . well, you know . . . I was just passing, I . . . I might be playing today,” Amat says.
Maya nods.
“I heard. Congratulations.”
“Well, I’ll probably be on the bench most of the time. But I’m on . . . the team . . . I . . . But if you’re not doing anything afterward. Later, I mean. This evening. Or if you are doing something, then . . . I thought maybe I’d ask if we . . . I mean, if you like . . . with me . . .”
Ana slips on two packets of candies and very nearly brings down the entire soda fountain. Maya is laughing so hard she’s almost sick.
“Sorry, Amat, what did you say?”
Amat is about to reply, but isn’t quick enough. Suddenly Kevin is standing next to him, not bothering to pretend that he just happened to be passing by. He’s here because of Maya. She stops laughing when she sees him.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi,” she says.
“Your name’s Maya, isn’t it?”
She nods warily. Looks him up and down.
“Yes. What’s your name?”
It takes Kevin a few seconds to realize that she’s joking. Everyone in Beartown knows his name. He laughs.
“Ephraim von Shitmagnet, at your service.”
He bows theatrically, even though he hardly ever makes jokes. And she laughs. Amat stands alongside, hating the fact that it’s the best sound he knows, and it’s not for him. Kevin looks at Maya in fascination.
“We’re having a team party at my place tonight. To celebrate our victory. My parents are away.”
Maya raises a skeptical eyebrow.
“You seem very sure you’re going to win.”
Kevin looks like he doesn’t understand.
“I always win.”
“Really, you do, do you, Ephraim the Shitmagnet?” Maya laughs.
“VON Shitmagnet, please,” Kevin grins.
Maya laughs. Ana crawls to her feet and adjusts her hair awkwardly.
“Will . . . will Benji be there? At the party?”
Maya kicks her on the shin. Kevin nods cheerily at Maya.
“There, you see? Bring your friend. It’ll be cool.”
Then he turns toward Amat for the first time and exclaims:
“You’ll come too, won’t you? I mean, you’re part of the team now!”
Amat tries to look self-assured. Kevin’s two years older, and that’s crushingly obvious as they’re standing next to each other.
“Can I bring a friend too?” he asks quietly.
“Sorry, Ahmed! This is just for the team, yeah?” Kevin replies, slapping him on the back.
“My name’s Amat,” Amat says, but Kevin has already walked off.
Maya and Ana go back into the cafeteria, still laughing. Amat is left alone in the corridor.
* * *
If he gets a single chance to make a decisive move in the match this evening, there’s nothing he wouldn’t give to make the most of it.
16
Pride in a team can come from a variety of causes. Pride in a place, or a community, or just a single person. We devote ourselves to sports because they remind us of how small we are just as much as they make us bigger.
* * *
Kira leaves the girls in the cafeteria, laughing in spite of herself. If Peter had heard the things she herself had said to her friends when she was fifteen he’d have needed a defibrillator. They were so surprised by each other to start with. She told him he was “the only prudish hockey player,” and he covered his ears when she joked around with other bar staff. She w
as so used to being the only girl where she worked—it is the same in law firms as it had been in the restaurant—but testosterone has never been a problem for her. Peter was the one who needed a paper bag to breathe into when one A-team player, sans front teeth, once told Kira gleefully at one of the few team dinners the wives were still invited to that he had “rubbed his knob on every fucking glass in here,” in the hope that the GM’s wife would be disgusted. She responded by explaining the female equivalent to him in great detail, until the toothless wonder didn’t dare look at her again for the rest of the evening. Peter was ashamed at the time. Still is. The last embarrassed Neanderthal. All these years, and they can still surprise each other. That’s not such a bad thing.
She walks toward the parking lot through the rink, but stops by the ice and just stares at it. No matter how much she tries, she will never be anything more than Peter’s other half in this town. She assumes that all adults occasionally wonder about another life, one they could be living instead of the one they’ve got. How often they do so probably depends on how happy they are. Her mother always used to say her daughter was an incurable romantic as well as hopelessly competitive, both at the same time. Kira presumes that’s true, based on the fact that she and Peter have gone bowling three times and are still married. The third time they ended up googling “emergency marriage counselor” at one thirty in the morning. God, how much he annoys her sometimes, but God, how she loves him. It wasn’t a love that developed gradually, it hit her like an affliction. It’s an ongoing condition. All she wishes is that each day were forty-eight hours long. But she’s not greedy, she’d be happy with thirty-six. She just wants to be able to have a drink and catch up with a TV show, is that really too much to ask? She just wants sufficient time to make a big enough blanket.
She thinks about that other life far too often. The one someone else is living. She was so happy for Peter when he got his professional contract, but she was happy for herself when he stopped playing. When there was space for her. Will she ever be able to admit that to him? The brief period when he was neither a player nor GM, when he sold insurance and simply tried to be happy, is the best time she can remember. How can you tell the person you love something like that?