Chapter 7
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The sponsor weekend was a Friday-Saturday in Portland and the trip began, as most things in Wes Berglund’s life began, badly.
“Halloran is going to love this,” Wes told the rental clerk.
“Halloran can suck it up,” said the rental clerk, who was named Bree and had been in Wes’s grade in high school and had never forgiven him for not asking her to homecoming.
He drove the sedan home through the dark to his apartment, parked it in the loading bay of Frank Nakamura’s hardware store, and went upstairs and put a kettle on. Outside, the harbor was the color of pencil lead.
He had packed last night, the way a man packs when he is trying not to think about the fact that he is packing.
Goalie bag in the trunk, in case Marin Pell needed him in gear at any point during the photoshoot.
Suit garment bag for the small donor reception Saturday night, which had been added to the itinerary in a last-minute panic by Marin’s office.
Toothbrush. Two shirts. A second pair of jeans.
The blue sweater his mother had knitted him for Christmas two years ago, because she would ask whether he had worn it.
He drank his coffee. He looked at the harbor. He went out at six-forty to pick up Ada.
Ada lived in a small clapboard rental on Pillsbury Street, three blocks from the Salt he had asked her, while standing inside, what she wanted, and she had said whatever you’re having, but with sugar, and he had brought her a black coffee with two sugar packets balanced on the lid because the gas station did not have oat milk and there were limits to what he was going to do about it.
She accepted the coffee. She took a sip.
“Berglund,” she said quietly. “This is the worst coffee I have ever had.”
“I know.”
“It is the worst coffee in the entire state of Maine.”
“I know.”
“I would like another one, please.”
He bought her another one. He bought himself another one.
He bought, for the road, a single bag of pretzels, which he opened with one hand and set on the gearshift between them, and which Ada raided over the next forty-five minutes with the steady, deliberate efficiency of a person who had not eaten a real breakfast.
They talked, in the middle hour, about goalie superstitions.
“You start with the right pad,” she said.
“How do you know.”
“I watch you put your pads on every morning. You start with the right pad. You always start with the right pad. You also tap the doorframe of the dressing room on the way out.”
“I do.”
“Why.”
“Because Henrik did,” he said.
He said it before he had thought about whether to say it. He kept his hands on the wheel. He did not turn his head. The sedan rolled along the bypass at exactly the speed limit.
She was quiet for a long second.
“Your brother,” she said, carefully.
“Yes.”
“I am sorry, Wes. I — I knew. I had heard. I am sorry.”
“It’s all right.”
“It is — it is not nothing.”
“It is not nothing,” he agreed. “It is also not new. You can ask me about it. I do not always have an answer. The doorframe tap, I have an answer to. He taught me. I never stopped.”
She nodded once.
“My father,” she said. “Same. Different. My father died when I was nineteen. He was — he was driving. There was ice on the bridge. I do this thing with the heater in cars where I do not turn it all the way down even when I’m too warm, because he always had the heater on, and the heater going is part of how a car sounds safe to me.
I don’t talk about it. I think you are now the second person who knows it. ”
“Who’s the first.”
“My mother. Of course.”
“Of course.”
He reached, with one hand, and turned the heater up another notch.
She did not say anything. She did, with one small motion, lean her shoulder a half-inch closer to the heater vent.
They were not, he noticed, holding hands.
They were not, by any rule of their agreement, allowed to be holding hands in a parked car or a moving car or anywhere that wasn’t lined up for a Tidemark photo.
They were two adults in a sedan with a busted defrost. They were going to a sponsor weekend in Portland to put their faces on a campaign. He was not holding her hand.
He kept his hand on the heater dial for a beat. Then he put it back on the wheel.
“Berglund,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
He did not ask for what.
Portland was forty minutes of stop-and-go and a parking garage Marin Pell had pre-paid for. They got out of the sedan in a cold concrete echo chamber, took their bags out of the trunk, and stood for a beat looking at each other.
“Forty-three minutes late,” Ada said.
“Pete’s car.”
“Pete’s car.”
The hotel was three blocks away. It was a sturdy old brick building near the wharf with brass fittings and a doorman in a long coat.
Marin had booked them on separate floors.
There was, as Wes had told her there would be, a key in an envelope for each of them at the desk. Two keys. Two rooms. Two floors.
The day was packed.