Forty-Seven Emotions and a Curtain
Bennett
You can dress it up however you like—games, photo booths, carefully assigned emotions and a crowd of people pretending not to watch too closely—but at some point, all the noise falls away and what’s left is the thing itself.
No labels. No strategies. No one telling you what to feel or how to show it.
Just a moment that lands clean and undeniable, the kind you don’t have to explain because everyone in the room already understands it.
And once that happens? Well. There’s really no putting it back where it was.
Playlist: “Can’t Stop the Feeling” by Justin Timberlake
Power Play resembles a feelings carnival.
I stand in the doorway for a full ten seconds taking in the damage.
Tables pushed to the walls. A cleared space in the center of the bar that used to contain furniture and now contains a photo booth—a full, curtained, light-up photo booth with a glittery sign on the front that reads FEEL IT TO HEAL IT: THE CAPTAIN’S EMOTIONAL JOURNEY—and approximately forty people who have all, without exception, turned to look at me the moment I walked through the door.
This is not the first time my mother’s bar has been commandeered for my emotional development.
Two days ago, the team showed up here for what Shep billed as a “feelings check-in session” and what actually turned out to be Shep forcing everyone to share their current emotional state while Joely and Lynsie served drinks and wings while trying not to laugh.
Virgil said his emotion was “fine.” Coach Duff said his emotion was “irrelevant.” Gage said his emotion was “still mad about the stick” and looked directly at me.
It was, by any objective measure, a disaster and also the most effective team bonding exercise we’ve had all season. I don’t know what that says about us. I’ve stopped trying to figure it out.
Tonight, Shep is at the center of it all, because Shep is always at the center of everything. He spreads his arms wide when he sees me, like he’s been waiting his whole life for this moment, which knowing Shep he probably has.
“There he is,” he announces to the entire bar. “The man of the hour. Gentlemen—and ladies—Operation Soft Boy has entered the building.”
I look at my mother behind the bar. She has the expression of a woman who orchestrated this entire thing and is very proud of herself.
“Mom.”
“Bennett.” She hands a drink to a waiting customer without breaking eye contact with me. “You look surprised.”
“You rented a photo booth.”
“I borrowed it from the community center. Pru arranged it.” She tilts her head toward where Pru stands near the back wall with a clipboard, because she always seems to have a clipboard. Pru approaches everything including emotional ambushes with administrative precision. “There’s a system.”
“Of course there is.”
The room is full. Not just the team—the whole team, Boone and Brogan and Joely and Heath and Holden and Gage and Coach Duff and Wolfe, who I didn’t know ever left the rink voluntarily—but also Virgil in the corner with a whiskey and the expression of a man who received an invitation and showed up because he said he would, not because he had any intention of enjoying himself.
Nurse Aggie in her scrubs, silver hair perfect, eyes bright with the specific delight of someone who has been waiting to get her hands on me in a non-medical context for years.
Doc Lindy beside her, wire-rimmed glasses, untamed hair, nodding at me with the gentle encouragement of a man who genuinely believes this is good for my mental health.
Franklin Baker is standing in the far corner with his arms crossed.
I look at Shep. “You invited Franklin.”
“Your mom invited Franklin.” He’s completely unrepentant. “Nobody says no to your mom.”
“I say no to my mom.”
“And then you do what she asks anyway. That’s not the same thing.
” He claps both hands on my shoulders and steers me toward the photo booth with the efficiency of someone who has been planning this for days.
“Here’s how it works. You go in with a partner.
We give you an emotion. Both you and your partner make the face.
Four photos. The strip comes out the side. We keep it forever.”
“That is not—”
“It’s exactly how it works.” He holds the curtain open. “I go first. Emotion: surprise.”
He shoves me through the curtain and climbs in after me, and we are two large men in a very small booth, and the countdown has already started.
“Surprise, Cap.” He grabs my face with both hands and manually stretches my expression into something approximating shock. “Like this. Eyes big. Mouth open. There you go.”
The flash goes off four times.
The strip slides out. Shep snatches it, holds it up for the room. Every photo shows Shep with his hands on my face and me looking like a man whose face is being operated by someone else, which is accurate.
The room reacts accordingly.
“Next,” Shep announces. “Anger.”
Gage goes next. Gage, who has been waiting for this moment since the goalie stick incident with the specific patience of a man who has been wronged and intends to document it.
He gets into the booth, and when Shep calls anger through the curtain, Gage does not make an angry face.
He makes the face. The face of a man whose sacred equipment was violated on live television in front of two thousand people and their extended families.
He points at me. He points at himself. He points at me again. The message is extremely clear.
I make what I hope is an appropriately remorseful expression.
The strip comes out. Every photo tells the exact same story. The room is in tears.
Then Wolfe climbs in for frustration, which he demonstrates by crossing his arms, staring directly into the camera, and mouthing “the power play sequence” while I sit beside him looking like I’ve heard this complaint before, because I have heard this complaint before, approximately six hundred times this season.
Then Heath for pride, which he executes by sitting up very straight, puffing out his chest, and pointing at me with both thumbs as if to say this guy, in a tone of voice you can somehow see in a photograph. I manage an expression that might be humble if you squint.
Then Holden for confusion, which requires no direction from anyone because Holden, himbo that he is, genuinely cannot figure out why we are doing this and his face makes that abundantly clear, and I genuinely cannot explain it to him, and four photos document our shared bewilderment in real time.
Then Boone gets in and Shep calls out disgust, and Boone looks at the camera, looks at me, looks back at the camera, and says “every time he makes us run the drill again” before arranging his face into an expression of such profound suffering that the room starts a slow clap.
Nurse Aggie slides in next with the unhurried confidence of a woman who has seen the inside of every person in this room and knows exactly where to apply pressure.
Her emotion is embarrassment. She settles into the booth, turns to me, and says pleasantly: “Remember when you came in for your physical two years ago and I had to—”
“I remember,” I say very quickly.
“I thought you might.” She turns to the camera and arranges her face into an expression of sympathy so theatrical it belongs in a soap opera. She pats my hand. “For the camera, then.”
The flash goes off. The strip comes out. I do not look at it.
Doc Lindy is next. His emotion is peace, and he settles into the booth with the genuine tranquility of a man who has made his peace with forty years of small-town medicine, a Zamboni operator’s philosophy, and one very stubborn hockey captain.
He folds his hands in his lap. He tilts his head slightly.
He breathes in and out with the measured rhythm of a man who does his breathing exercises voluntarily.
Then he looks at me and says, “You’re doing very well, Bennett. Better than I expected, honestly.” He returns his gaze to the camera. “I mean that as a compliment.”
I make a face that the strip later confirms looks like I am not sure if I have been complimented or diagnosed.
Then Brogan, for love. He gets in the booth and executes love by putting his arm around me, squeezing my shoulder, and giving the camera the smile of a man who has been watching his brother figure out how to be a person and is deeply, genuinely moved by the progress.
I manage ‘brotherly affection’ if you tilt your head sideways.
Joely, watching from outside the curtain, actually tears up. The strip goes straight into her purse.
Then Mom, who gets in the booth, looks at me for a long moment, and says: “Proud. That’s the emotion I’ve got.
Not what’s on the card. That’s just what I have.
” Then she looks at the camera and sits there, steady and certain, the way Mom does everything.
I look at the camera, too, and my expression does a thing I didn’t authorize it to do.
The flash goes off four times. I don’t know exactly what the photos look like but I know the moment felt like one I’m going to remember.
Coach Duff is next. The assigned emotion is joy.
He gets into the booth with the posture of a man reporting for duty.
He sits down. He looks at me. He looks at the camera.
The countdown runs. He does not smile. He does not frown.
He generates an expression of such profound, weaponized neutrality that the concept of joy seems to evaporate from the immediate vicinity.
When the strip comes out, Shep holds it up and the room goes completely silent for two full seconds before erupting into the loudest noise of the evening.
“That,” Shep says, “is the face of a man who has outlawed feelings since 1987.”
Coach Duff nods once. “They’re inefficient,” he says, and returns to his drink.