32. Kieran
Kieran
He turns the folder around and slides it across the desk.
"Two years," he says. "Reduced annual value. Twelve percent off your current. Conditional language about organizational expectations is in the third paragraph. Read it before you sign."
I read it.
The number is fair, given where we are. The conditional language is what I expected — a behavior clause, a press-conduct clause, a the head coach will not contradict the organization's official position on personnel matters without prior consultation clause.
I read the clauses twice. None of them ask me for anything I am not already doing.
I pick up the pen.
I sign.
I slide the folder back across.
He signs.
He puts both copies in the small drawer at the top right of his desk, locks it, and looks at me.
He says: "Thank you, Kee."
"Thank you, Declan."
"Don't make me regret it."
"I won't."
He shakes my hand across the desk.
"Locker room at eleven," he says. "Captaincy ceremony for Sasha. Mikko's retirement statement comes out at noon. Photo at center ice at two. The rest of the afternoon is yours."
"Thank you, Declan."
"Get out of my office, Kee."
I smile and go.
* * *
The locker room at eleven is full.
Twenty-three players. Five assistant coaches.
The training staff — Will, the two assistants, the equipment manager, the video coordinator.
Priya at the back. The franchise's communications director at the door.
Mikko at his own stall with the captain's letter on the inside of his locker for the last morning of his career.
I speak from the center of the room.
I keep it short. I thank the players. I thank the staff. I tell them what they already know about Mikko, and I let Mikko stand and say what he has been preparing for two months to say. He thanks the room. He thanks his wife. He thanks me. He sits.
Sasha is given the captaincy in a small ceremony Declan has been planning since March.
Mikko walks across the room and hands Sasha his own jersey — the C still on it.
Sasha stands. Mikko hugs him. The equipment manager will move the letter onto Sasha's sweater overnight, the way every captain handoff in this organization has been done since 1971.
The room applauds — short, hard, professional.
I dismiss them.
Mikko stays at his stall and looks at the inside of his locker for what is probably ten minutes after the room empties.
I go down the corridor to my office.
* * *
The team photo is at two at center ice.
It is the photo the franchise takes at the end of every season; players, head coach, assistant coaches at center ice.
The franchise pairs it with the family-section walkaround afterward: wives, partners, kids of the players and staff invited onto the ice for ten minutes for their own picture with the team.
The communications director sent the invitations out this morning. Greer and Indie will both be there.
Greer arrives in a Barons sweatshirt over a soft cotton skirt and the curve at her middle is plainly visible under it. She is no longer trying to hide it.
Indie is at her elbow in a dark green dress I have not seen on her before, with her hair down. She is here this afternoon because Greer texted her this morning and said Dad asked. Will you?
The team picture has the players and coaches in two rows. Sasha at the middle of the front row with the ‘C’ on his chest. Mikko one chair to Sasha's left. Me one chair to Sasha's right.
When the picture is finished, the families come onto the ice on the rubber mats the photographer has laid down. Wives, partners, kids of the players and the staff scatter across the ice for their own ten minutes with the team.
Greer walks onto the ice with her hand on Indie's arm. I cross from the bench side and stop in front of them.
The photographer crosses with me. He takes a picture of the three of us at center ice — Greer in front of me with her hand on protectively on her belly, Indie beside her with her hand on Greer's arm. I stand behind both of them.
“That's the one I am going to file,” he says.
Mikko, on the ice with his wife near the blue line, gives me a small smile as if to say, “I’m glad all is good, coach.”
I give it back.
The Globe runs the photograph on the front of the sports section the next morning above the fold, with no caption beyond Boston Barons head coach Kieran Larsen, Center Ice Boston executive director Indie Larsen, and Barons team physical therapist Greer Callahan, at the season's end Monday at the Garden.
* * *
I drive Greer home to the brownstone at four-thirty.
Indie's car is at the curb when we pull into the small private space beside the house. She has driven over from Cambridge and let herself in. The lamp on the front-hall table is on. There is a tray of small pastries from the bakery on Charles Street on the counter that she has brought with her.
She is at the kitchen island when we come in.
She looks up and says, "Greer, I bought you the lemon tarts you like."
"Thank you, Indie. That was so nice of you."
"Tonight, I am cooking," she continues.
I look at the stove behind her. The big stockpot is out. The cutting board is out. There is a small pile of garlic and onion next to a package of pasta on the counter.
"Indie, you don't have to cook."
"I want to. Sit at the island. Both of you. Just relax."
She makes the pasta her mother used to make on Sunday nights when Indie was a child — the one with garlic and onion and a small amount of cream and the parmesan rind Cara used to keep wrapped in the freezer for exactly this dish.
It is the only recipe I know of that Indie has ever cooked from memory.
She made it twice in the year after her mother died. She has not made it since.
The smell of garlic and onion fills the kitchen.
She is, by every measure I have, healing in front of me at the kitchen island.
When she serves the pasta, she serves Greer's plate first.
Greer eats two helpings.
Indie eats half a plate and most of a glass of wine.
I eat what is in front of me and watch my daughter cook for the woman I love.
* * *
Mikko comes over a little after nine with whiskey.
He buzzes the front door with the bottle in the brown paper bag the bourbon shop on Boylston wraps every bottle in, and he stands in the front hall and gives me the same hard fast hug he gave me at the end of Game 5 of Round 1.
The four of us sit at the kitchen island with the bottle of bourbon between us and the remaining pastries from Indie's bakery run on a plate at the far end of the counter.
We talk for two hours.
We talk about the season. We talk about Sasha.
We talk about the way the third-line center has, in the last six weeks, gone from a guy who was going to play out his contract in the American Hockey League next year to a guy three teams have called Declan about already.
We talk about the number-retirement ceremony Declan has scheduled for Mikko on Opening Night.
We talk about Mikko's wife, who will come back to Boston in June with the kind of tan only Finland in June can produce.
We do not talk about the Globe column from April, or Greer's licensing-board inquiry, or the contract I signed at nine this morning.
We talk about hockey. We talk about family.
We talk about the people in the room and the people who are not in the room.
We do, at one point near the end, talk about and Indie tells Mikko a story about the time her mother taught her to make this exact pasta in the kitchen we are sitting in, and Mikko tells Indie a story about a fundraiser Cara dragged him to in 2014, and I do not, in any of it, look away.
At eleven, Mikko stands.
He kisses Indie on the top of the head. He shakes my hand. He gives Greer a hug. He picks up the bottle of bourbon, half empty now, says for next time, and goes.
The brownstone goes quiet.
Indie stands.
She says: "I am going to sleep upstairs again tonight. I will be gone in the morning before either of you is up. I have a board meeting at eight."
"Indie."
"Yes, Dad."
"Thank you."
"And Greer."
"Yes."
"The pasta is yours for the rest of the week. The recipe is on the counter."
She kisses Greer, this time, on the cheek. Greer closes her eyes for half a second.
Indie climbs the stairs.
We hear the door of her old room close.
* * *
I look at Greer across the kitchen island.
The lamp behind her warms the side of her face.
I say, "Come upstairs."
She looks at me.
She says, "Yes."
I take her hand and walk her up the staircase she walked up with me for the first time in November. I take her into our bedroom, close the door, turn on the lamp by the bed, and leave the overhead off.
She stops in front of the full-length mirror on the back of the closet door — the one I had installed for her in February when she could not, anymore, fit comfortably in the bathroom one. She looks at herself in the Barons sweatshirt with both her hands flat against the front of her.
I cross to her, stand behind her, and put both my hands over hers on the curve.
She leans her head back against my shoulder. In the mirror, our reflection is twenty-eight weeks of her body and forty-seven years of mine, my hands flat over hers, my mouth at her ear.
I say, into her hair: "I want to take my time tonight."
"How much time?"
"All of it. The rest of the night. The rest of the morning too.”
I lift the Barons sweatshirt off her over her head, slowly taking the long sleeves down her arms one at a time. The soft cotton bra underneath is the maternity one she has been wearing at home for weeks. I unhook it, slide the straps down her arms, set it on the dresser on top of the sweatshirt.
Her breasts have come in heavy in the last six weeks, the nipples darker than they were in October, the soft new heaviness of pregnancy on a woman who has not, in front of a mirror, let herself look at the body she has been growing for me.