Rafe
Chapter nine
The lane to Cross opened for about as long as it takes to blink, and I didn’t use it. I’d come up the right wall with the puck on my stick and their weak-side defenseman already sliding over to take the middle away. The safe play was the dump. The team wanted the dump.
I hit the blue line and pulled it back instead.
Heath was there because Heath is always there. He took the bump and moved it low. Varga put it back to the point. The point shot came through a screen, and I got a stick on it two feet in the air and redirected it into the far side of the net.
Our fans roared. Varga barreled into me and yelled something in Hungarian directly into my ear.
“That’s the read,” Cross said, banging my helmet. “You have the read every time.”
On the bench, Coach Markel didn’t look up from his card. “Good,” he said. “Again.”
We did the same thing, or close to it, in the third period, and it turned into Heath’s goal off a rebound. We won four to one.
The room afterward smelled of wet gear and orange slices. Trier sat across from me, working at a knot in his skate lace.
“Two points,” he said.
“One and one.”
“Two points.” He didn’t look up. “Peaches ate a full can this morning, in case you were wondering.”
“That’s good.”
“It’s adequate.” He stood, gathered his shower things, shrugged one shoulder, and went to shower.
Varga was already fully dressed, planning a meal for our open day tomorrow.
“Mikkelsen’s out,” he announced. “He has a dinner.”
“I am having dinner.”
“You have a dinner. Meeting the parents at their home on a Sunday. In front of the grandmother. Whose idea was this?”
“His mom called me.”
Laughter rippled through the room. Varga sat down on the bench beside me and placed a hand flat against his chest.
“His mother called you.”
“She got my number from Max.”
“Rafe. Look at me. The mother called. That’s not dinner. That’s a summons.”
“You’ll be fine,” Heath said from his stall, without turning around. “Eat everything they give you.”
“Ask for seconds,” Kieran said.
The players’ parking garage was mostly empty by the time I got there, and it was cold enough that my breath showed under the flat white lights. I sat in the truck with the engine running for the heat and typed a message on my phone.
Rafe: what do I bring tomorrow?
Max: nothing! she’ll say bring nothing
Max: she is lying
Max: flowers. not the gas station ones. she can tell
I sent Mom a text, too. Her answer came quickly.
Mom: Dinner at his family’s! That’s lovely. Flowers, and offer to help with the dishes and mean it.
***
I stopped at a flower shop on Damen, where a woman in a canvas apron took the ones I’d picked out of my hand and gave me different ones without explaining why. They cost more than I expected, but it made me feel like she’d given me her best.
The house was a brick bungalow on a street in Portage Park where every driveway had a basketball hoop over it. Max’s car was at the curb. Behind it sat Niko’s black pickup.
The front window glowed gold, and somebody stood there looking out.
I got out and carried the flowers to the front door. It opened before I reached the top step.
“He’s here!” It was Max’s mom. I’d only seen her in the background of one of his videos. She was shorter than I expected, moving faster and reaching for my forearm. “Oh, look at you. Gus! Gus, he’s here, come and see how tall.”
“I’m coming.”
“He’s not coming. Come in, you’re letting the cold in—Max, your friend is standing in the door with his arms full.”
Somewhere behind her, my voice said, “It’s a great team and a great organization.”
That threw me. I heard somebody say, “There. Run it back. Let’s hear him say it again.”
Max appeared. “They’ve been watching that for the last twenty minutes.” He had a dish towel over one shoulder. His mom reached for the flowers.
“You didn’t have to. You shouldn’t have. This is too much.” She turned and called over her shoulder. “Come with me to the kitchen. Sit anywhere. Niko! He’s here.”
Max took my coat. A group of people in the living room watched as I dutifully headed for the kitchen.
The house was noisy.
There were four conversations running at once, a TV with the volume turned up high, and water running in the kitchen sink.
A blend of spice smells filled the air. It was cinnamon layered with oregano and lemon.
At my house, you could hear the refrigerator opening and closing. Here, everything else buried it.
“Rafe.” Max’s dad entered the kitchen, reaching out to shake my hand. He had his phone in the other hand. He was shorter than both Max and Niko, with a strong, stout build, and he was still carrying on a conversation using his phone. “Theo, he’s here. Say hello.”
“HELLO,” said a loud voice from the phone.
“That’s my brother, Theo. He’s in Milwaukee. You can call me Gus.”
“MILWAUKEE,” the voice on the phone confirmed.
“Hi,” I said.
“Theo watched the game.”
“GOOD GAME.”
“He wants to ask you about the goal,” Max’s dad said.
Max’s mom guided me to a small, round kitchen table, and his dad sat opposite me.
“So the goal,” he said, holding the phone out between us like a microphone. “The second one, in the third.”
“I didn’t score the second one. That was Heath.”
“THE FIRST ONE,” said Theo.
“The first one, Theo says.”
“That was mostly the entry,” I said. “Their D stepped up early, so we bumped it back and came in behind him, and then it was a point shot and I got a stick on it. It’s not really a goal I did much for.”
There was a brief silence in the kitchen. The water stopped.
“He says he didn’t do much for it,” Gus reported.
“HE PUT IT IN THE NET.”
“He says you put it in the net.”
“That part’s true,” I said.
Max entered the kitchen. “Come meet the family. Ma, can Rafe meet the family?”
She waved at us. “Go. Yes. It’s crowded in here.”
“Good to meet you, Theo,” I called to the phone as we left the room.
Niko was sitting on the floor in the corner with a chair tipped back on his knee.
He had it upended, one hand on the back rail, working at the underside of a leg with a screwdriver and something small held in his teeth.
He’d pushed his sleeves back, and a vein stood out in his forearm every time the screwdriver turned.
Max found a seat on the couch near an older woman. That was it for the introductions.
Niko set the chair down on all four legs, pressed it once with both hands, and slid it an inch on the wood floor. He crouched and checked it from the side, one eye running the line of the legs, and then he stopped because he’d caught me watching.
“You made that,” I said.
He gestured toward an empty upholstered chair for me to sit in. “I fixed it,” he said. “My grandfather made it. People have been sitting on it wrong for forty years.”
“I sit on it correctly,” Ma said from the kitchen behind me.
“You tip it back.”
“I lean.”
“You tip it back on two legs and then you’re surprised that it feels rickety.”
“Niko.” She came through the doorway with a dish in her hands. “Don’t argue with me in front of company. Rafe, come. Come and be useful.”
I got up and followed.
“WHERE’S HE GOING.” Theo asked from the phone.
“He’s going to the kitchen,” Gus said. “The women got him.”
“I’m not a woman,” Max called as he followed me.
“You’re going to the kitchen.”
“Wash your hands,” Ma said, pointing at the sink. “Then you can carry.”
I washed my hands and dried them on a towel somebody handed me. Ma gave me a dish of something with a crust on it and told me exactly where to put it.
The dining room table was long and full of food. The older woman sat at the far end of the kitchen table, out of the traffic, with her hands folded on the tablecloth.
I’d seen her in one of Max’s videos, sitting in a lawn chair at a family event. I assumed she was one of his grandmothers. She’d been silently watching me since I entered the house.
“Yiayia,” Max said, sweeping past with a stack of small plates, “This is Rafe. Rafe, this is my grandmother. She has opinions about you.”
“I met him,” she said.
“You didn’t meet him. He just walked in.”
“I watched him park,” she said, and kept her eyes on me. “He backed in.”
I didn’t know what I should say, so I said, “It’s easier getting out.”
“Hm,” Yiayia said.
“Don’t try to win,” Max said quietly. “There’s no winning. You survive instead.”
Ma was excited about the gala. “I’m so happy for both of you. It must be a big party. It’s the Palmer House.” She said Palmer House the way my mom said the city. “On Valentine’s Day.”
“It’s black tie and six hundred people,” Max said.
“Six hundred.” She stopped stirring. “And they asked for the two of you.”
“Yes, Ma.”
“They’d better take pictures,” she said. “Nice ones. Not with the phone, and in a good frame size.”
“I know the frame size,” Max said.
And then Max told her about our first dinner. I knew he had to have told it before, but she probably loved hearing it.
“Rafe said he had four years of high school French, so he could read the menu.”
Ma laughed.
”—and he ordered the duck, and I had walleye. I’d had it once before, and it’s so good. Then Rafe tells me it was a quarter the size of a real walleye.”
Ma laughed louder and pointed her spoon at me like I’d scored.
“You see how they are,” Ma said to Yiayia, delighted. “Back and forth. Just like on a TV show.”
“Yes,” Yiayia said. “Like a show.”
Niko came into the kitchen to carry Ma’s platter of lamb. He’d rolled his sleeves back down for dinner. He took the platter with a dish towel folded twice. Ma said, “It’s heavy.”
“I know it’s heavy. I’ve carried it before.”
Yiayia pointed toward the kitchen island. “He made the stools, too.”
“They’re good stools,” I said.
“One is too tall,” she said. “He made it for his grandfather’s height. I use it to remember.”
Ma called toward the living room. “Gus—get it while it’s hot.”
The dining room table was formal, dark, with carved legs and an ironed tablecloth on it. Gus sat at the head. Ma was nearest the kitchen. Max and Niko sat across from me. I was beside Yiayia.
The food came in waves: lamb, potatoes drizzled with lemon, and pastitsio, fresh-baked. Side dishes filled out the table.
“He likes the spanakopita,” Ma said.
“I like it too,” Max added.
“You’ve had it a thousand times. For Rafe, it’s his first time.” She took my plate, which already had food on it, and piled more on before setting it back down.
“Thank you,” I said.
The questions started with the lamb and never really stopped.
“Your mother cooks?” Ma asked.
“She cooks a lot.”
“What does she cook?”
“Everything. Big pots of it. Soup all winter.”
“What kind of soup?”
“Beef, mostly. She makes it Sunday and we eat it at least three more times during the week.”
Ma took that in with the spoon still in her hand. “Would she want the potatoes?”
“The recipe?”
“Yes.”
“She’d want it,” I said. “She’d make them next week.”
Ma set her spoon down. “I’ll write it out. It’s not a real recipe; you have to do it by feel, but I’ll write what I can.”
Max pointed his fork at me across the table. “Careful. You’re going to end up on the Christmas card.”
“He’ll be in the letter,” Ma said.
“How long to drive to Saskatchewan?” Gus asked.
“Twenty hours.”
“Twenty hours to go home?” He shook his head.
“About that. Fargo is halfway.”
“Do you stop in Fargo?”
“I stop for gas.”
“They don’t fly you?” Gus asked.
“They fly me most places. My truck’s mine, though. I drove it down in September and like to have it in both places.”
The questions kept coming, and I kept answering. Ma asked about the road trip food again, whether it was the same in every city, and I said, “Pretty much. The team sets most of it up ahead. It’s easy. I just eat what’s there.”
“He doesn’t,” Niko said.
He said it in a quiet voice, but it fell into the middle of a moment of silence. Everyone looked at him.
“He orders the thing he’s never had,” Niko said. “Give him a menu and he’ll find the one thing on it he can’t picture, and that’s the order. He got duck with cherries for the first dinner with Max because he’d never had it.” Niko stabbed a potato with his fork. “He’s not easy. He’s curious.”
Nobody said anything. Gus looked at Niko, and Ma looked at me.
I watched Ma as she made a decision. She lifted the pastitsio. “More?”