Maya is lying on the floor with her guitar on her chest, pretending not to understand. Ana carries the burden of being the child of an alcoholic, and it’s a lonely struggle.
“Hey, idiot?” Ana eventually says.
“Yeah, what, you moron?” Maya smiles.
“Play something,” Ana demands.
Maya giggles. “Don’t give me orders, I’m not your musical slave.”
Ana grins. You can’t cultivate that sort of friendship, it only grows in the wild. “Please?”
“Learn to play yourself, you lazy cow.”
“I don’t need to, you idiot, I’m holding a rifle. Play or I’ll shoot!”
Maya roars with laughter. They had promised each other that. That when summer came, the men in this stupid town weren’t going to take their laughter away from them.
“Nothing miserable, though!” Ana adds.
“Shut it! If you want to listen to your stupid, bouncy blippety blip music you can get a computer,” Maya says, giggling.
Ana rolls her eyes.
“Okay, I’m still holding a gun! If you play your junkie music and I shoot myself in the head, it’ll actually be your fault!”
They both roar with laughter. And Maya plays the happiest songs she knows, even if in Ana’s opinion they’re really not that happy at all. But this summer she takes what she can get.
* * *
They’re interrupted by two short buzzing sounds from their phones. Then two more, followed by another two.
* * *
Being the general manager of a hockey club isn’t a full-time job. It’s three. When Peter’s wife, Kira, can’t be bothered to hide her irritation, she usually says, “You’ve got two marriages, one with hockey and one with me.” She doesn’t add that half of all marriages end in divorce. She doesn’t have to.
The local politicians in the conference room will downplay this meeting, say it was “only about sports.” The biggest lie Peter has ever managed to make himself believe is that hockey and politics aren’t linked. They always are, but when politics work in our favor we call it “cooperation,” and when it favors others we call it “corruption.” Peter looks out of the window. There are always flags raised in front of the council building so the bastards inside can see which way the wind is blowing.
“The council . . . we . . . it has been decided that we should apply to host the World Skiing Championships. Beartown and Hed together,” one of the councillors says.
He’s trying to look authoritative now, which is hard when you’re simultaneously picking muffin crumbs from your jacket pocket. Everyone knows that he’s been trying to get funding for a conference hotel for years, and the World Championships would give him the chance. As luck would have it, this particular councillor’s brother-in-law works at the Ski Federation, and his wife runs a business that arranges hunting trips and “survival courses” in the forest for wealthy businessmen from the big cities who evidently can’t survive without a minibar and spa center. Another councillor adds, “We need to think about the region’s image, Peter. The taxpayers are worried. All this negative publicity has created insecurity . . .”
He says it as if insecurity is the problem. As if it isn’t THE PROBLEM that’s the problem. He pours Peter some coffee; a different sort of man might have thrown the cup at the wall, but Peter has no violence in him. He never even fought on the ice when he was a player. These men used to sneer at him for that behind his back, but they really can’t be bothered to do it out of sight anymore.
They know that Peter’s weakness is loyalty, that he feels he owes his town. Hockey here has given him everything, and it’s good at reminding him about that. A poster in the changing room at the rink says, “A great deal is expected of anyone who’s been given a lot.”
Another councillor, who prides himself on being the sort of man who “tells it like it is,” says, “Beartown has no junior team, and not much of an A-team! You’ve already lost all your best players and almost all your sponsors to Hed. We have to think of the taxpayers!”
One year ago the same councillor was asked a critical question by the local paper about the council’s plans to finance an expensive new arena. He answered without a trace of hesitation, “You know what Beartown’s taxpayers want? They want to watch hockey!” They’re so easy to blame, no matter what your opinion might be: taxpayers.
The same money will end up in the same pockets, the pockets are just moving town to Hed. Peter wants to protest but can’t bring himself to. There’s always been graft involved in council funding of sports, not just as straightforward “grants” but also tucked away as “loans” and “subsidies.” Like when the council “rented” the parking spaces outside the rink, even though the council already owned the land. Or when the council paid to “rent the ice rink for the use of the general public” for all the members of the “general public” who were desperate to skate between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. every Wednesday. At one point, one of the hockey club’s board members was simultaneously on the board of the council’s property company and got the company to buy expensive “sponsorship packages” for hockey games that were never played. Peter knew all about it. The former management of the hockey club was always corrupt. Peter had argued about it at first but eventually had to accept that those were just “the rules of the game.” In a small town, sports doesn’t survive without the support of the regional council. He can’t start shouting about corruption now, because the politicians know exactly how much he knows.
* * *
They’re going to liquidate his club. They just want to make sure he’s going to keep his mouth shut.
* * *
The red hats of the well-built eighteen-year-olds carry the emblem of a charging bull. They’re taking up more and more space on the beach, stretching the boundaries to see if anyone dare try to stop them. Leo’s hatred for them knows no limits.
When Kevin left town, the story changed, but his old friends quickly adapted to new truths. All they needed was a new leader. And William Lyt, a forward on the first line and Kevin’s former neighbor, put himself up and gave them the version of history they were longing for. He’d heard his parents repeat it at the kitchen table for several months: “We’re the victims here, we had victory in the final stolen from us. We would have won if Kevin had played! But Peter Andersson insisted on bringing politics into it! And then he tried to blame US for the fact that that psychopath raped that girl, even though we haven’t done a damn thing! And you know why? Because Peter Andersson has always hated us. Everyone listens to him just because he was once a pro in the NHL, as if that makes him so morally superior. But do you think Kevin would have been prevented from playing in the final if it hadn’t been Peter’s daughter? If any of our sisters had been raped, do you think Peter would have called the cops to pick Kevin up the same day as the final? Peter’s a hypocrite! Kevin’s just an excuse, Peter never wanted boys from the Heights in Beartown Hockey, and you know why? Because some of us happened to be born into families with money, and that doesn’t suit the myth of Peter Andersson as the great savior!”
William’s parents’ words echo from his lips. Every season his mom, Maggan Lyt, gets annoyed that the club promotes kids from the poor parts of town as figureheads but when it’s time for the bills to be paid it’s always the parents from the Heights who are expected to open their wallets. “When are people going to get tired of paying for Peter Andersson’s social experiments?” she complained to anyone who would listen back in the spring, when news spread that the club was starting a hockey school for four- and five-year-old girls.
“They want a girls’ club!” William bellows on the beach.
The words work because they’re easy to understand. Everyone in his team has felt under attack and misunderstood since the rape. So it’s a relief to hear that Peter Andersson hates them, because the easiest reason to hate him back is the conviction that he started it.
* * *
Peter looks around the table. He’s expected to ??
?take it like a man,” but he’s no longer sure what the politicians see him as: the boy who was raised by Beartown Ice Hockey Club? Who became team captain and led a dying backwoods team all the way to become second best in the country twenty years ago? Or the NHL professional he later became? Before he was persuaded to come back home and become general manager of the club once it had tumbled through the leagues, where, against all odds, he built up one of the best junior teams in the country and made the little club big again. Is he any of those men?
Or is he just a dad now? Because it was his daughter who was raped. He was the one who went with her to the police that morning back in March. He was the one who stood in the parking lot outside the rink and watched as the police pulled the junior team’s star player off the bus just before they set off for the biggest game of their lives. He knows what all the men in here think, what men everywhere are thinking: “If it had been my daughter, I’d have killed the man who did that to her.” And not a night goes by without Peter wishing he was that sort of man. That he possessed that violence. But instead he accepts the cup of coffee. Because masculinity is hard at any age.
One of the politicians begins to explain, and his tone veers between sympathetic and patronizing: “You need to be a team player now, Peter. We have to act in the best interests of everyone in the district. A good reputation is vital to our hopes of attracting the World Skiing Championships. We’re going to build a new arena in Hed and establish the hockey school there . . .”
Peter doesn’t need to hear the rest; he’s heard this vision of the future, he was there when it was written. First the rink and hockey school, then the shopping center and better links to the highway. A conference hotel and a ski competition that gets shown on television. And then who knows? Maybe an airport? Sports are only sports until someone who doesn’t give a damn about sports has something to gain from them; then sports suddenly become economics. The hockey club was going to rescue the entire council district, and that remains the case. Just not Peter’s hockey club.
Another of the men, whose brain has evidently been on holiday for at least the past couple of hours, throws his arms out. “Yes, obviously we’re very sorry about . . . the situation. With your daughter.”
That’s what they say: “Your daughter.” Never “Maya,” never her name. Because that allows them to insinuate what they really want him to think about: If it had been anyone else’s daughter, would Peter have let Kevin play in the final? The politicians call it “the situation,” but the PR consultants the council has brought in call it “the scandal.” As if the problem wasn’t that a girl was raped but that it happened to become public knowledge. The PR consultants have explained to the politicians that there are other communities that have “been afflicted by similar scandals that have negatively impacted the town’s brand.” That’s not going to happen here. And the easiest way to bury the scandal is to bury Beartown Ice Hockey. Then everyone can point to the “raft of measures” and show how they’re building a bigger club in Hed, with “better morals and greater responsibility,” without having to answer for the fact that it’s the same men as always who are building it.
“All the damn journalists who keep calling, Peter. People are getting nervous! The council needs to turn the page!”
As if the journalists weren’t calling Peter’s family. Neither he nor Maya has spoken to them. They’ve done everything right, they’ve kept their mouths shut, but it doesn’t make any difference. They didn’t keep their mouths shut enough.
* * *
While eighteen-year-old William spent the summer gathering his team at Hed Hockey beneath the banner of a shared hatred of Peter Andersson, other conversations have been taking place in other parts of the district. William Lyt’s father is on the board of the golf club; he plays with bank managers and politicians and is popular not only because he knows people with money but also because he’s the kind of man who “speaks his mind.” The council needs the business community’s support to bid for the World Skiing Championships, so the business community has made one serious condition: one hockey club, not two. They say it’s a question of “responsible economics.” They stress the word “responsible.”
So now, down on the beach a few days before Midsummer’s Eve, all the young people’s phones start to buzz at the same time. First the beach falls silent; then a group of muscular eighteen-year-olds burst into loud, malicious roars of laughter. None louder than William Lyt. He climbs into a tree and hangs up two red Hed Hockey flags so that they billow out like bleeding wounds over the green leaves, the color of Beartown.
His team gathers in a semicircle beneath the trees, waiting for trouble. But they’re too big, too strong; everyone on the beach goes to the same school, so nobody dares. The beach belongs to Lyt after that. It is divided in the way that all worlds are divided between people: between those who are listened to and those who aren’t.
* * *
And the teenagers on the beach who see those young men and hate them without being able to do anything, the ones who love Beartown Hockey but aren’t strong enough to take on William Lyt’s gang, they now have to direct their fury toward someone else. Someone weaker.
* * *
Maya and Ana read the first anonymous texts, then they switch off their phones. “This is your fault.” “If the club dies so do you, slut!” “We’ll get your dad, too!” Ana and Maya know what’s happening now, know who’s going to bear the brunt of the hatred and threats.
Maya goes to the bathroom and throws up. Ana sits on the floor of the hall outside. She has read that support groups for victims of rape call themselves “survivors.” Because that’s what they do each day: they survive what they’ve been subjected to, over and over again. Ana wonders if there’s a word for everyone else, the people who let it happen. People are already prepared to destroy each other’s worlds just to avoid having to admit that many of us bear small portions of a collective guilt for a boy’s actions. It’s easier if you deny it, if you tell yourself that it’s an “isolated incident.” Ana dreams of killing Kevin for what he’s done to her best friend, but most of all she dreams of crushing the whole town for what it’s still putting Maya through.
The idiots won’t say it was Kevin who killed Beartown Ice Hockey; they’ll say that “the scandal” killed the club. Because their real problem isn’t that Kevin raped someone but that Maya got raped. If she hadn’t existed, it wouldn’t have happened. Women are always the problem in the men’s world.
Maya and Ana pack their backpacks, walk out through the door and into the forest without even knowing where they’re going. Because anywhere at all is better than here. Ana doesn’t take her rifle. It’s a decision she’ll regret.
* * *
Leo waits until it starts to get dark. He hides alone at the edge of the forest until the beach is empty. Then he creeps back down to the lake, climbs up into the tree, and sets fire to the red flags. He films the flames consuming the words and the Hed Hockey logo burning. Then he posts the clip anonymously online where he knows everyone in the school will see it.
People will say that violence came to Beartown this summer, but that won’t be true, because it was already here. Because people are always dependent upon other people, and we can’t ever really forgive one another for that.
5
Everyone Is a Hundred Different Things
A young man with a bare chest and a backpack is walking alone through the forest. He has a tattoo of a bear on his arm. A well-dressed lawyer is sitting in an office. She has photographs of her family on her desk and is just fielding another call from a moving company without understanding why. At the same time a stranger in a Jeep is driving along a main road with a list of names in the glove compartment.
Their cell phones buzz. Peter Andersson hasn’t even left the meeting in the council building, but the politicians have already leaked the news that Beartown Ice Hockey Club is going into liquidation. The politicians are learning things like that from their expensive PR
consultants: that you have to “control the narrative.”
The young man in the forest, the lawyer in her office, and the stranger in the Jeep all pick up their phones. They are all involved.
* * *
Everyone is a hundred different things, but in other people’s eyes we usually get the chance to be only one of them. Kira Andersson is a lawyer, highly educated in two different countries, with two university degrees, but in Beartown she will always be “Peter Andersson’s wife.” There are days when she hates herself for hating that so much. For that not being enough for her, just belonging to someone else.
She eats lunch at her desk, surrounded by pink Post-it notes relating to work and yellow Post-it notes reminding her of things to buy and errands she has to run for various members of her family. Beside her computer stand photographs of Leo and Maya. The guilt she feels from their eyes could have destroyed her had she not been interrupted by the stamping sound in the corridor.
Kira almost smiles then, in spite of this hellish summer, because she knows which of her colleagues is about to storm in. Partly because she’s the only other workaholic still in the office just before Midsummer and partly because a door never opens when she passes through it; it throws itself out of her way. Her colleague is over six feet tall and makes enough noise to be the same size in width. She’s the worst loser Kira has ever known, and her standard reply whenever anyone complains about work is “Shut up and send an invoice!” As usual, she starts the conversation in the middle of a sentence, as if it’s Kira’s fault for having the gall not to have been present when it started:
“ . . . and now the pizzeria’s closed, Kira! ‘Closed for the holidays.’ What the hell? What sort of person takes a holiday from a pizzeria? That ought to be classed as a vital public service, like . . . doctors and . . . firemen, and . . . shoe shops! And there I was, thinking I might have sex with the guy behind the counter, he always looks so sad, and the sad ones are always the best in bed! What are you eating? Have you got much left?”