The season winds down with a whimper. There isn’t anything left to vie for, and the games are fundamentally meaningless. Management starts sending emails about a family night for the final game of the season. At first it’s wives and girlfriends and children, the usual crowd, but then parents and siblings start getting pulled in. It grows to the point where Eisler’s sister and her husband are coming in from Germany and Kurmazov’s parents are coming in from Moscow, plan on staying for a month to help him and his wife with their daughters.

Kurmazov asks him if he has anyone coming, and looks sternly at him when he shrugs.

“You have to ask,” he says pointedly, like he knows David hasn’t said a word, and David feels cowed enough by his expression that he calls his mother when he gets back from practice.

She picks up on the second ring, which is a promising enough sign, and David manages to stumble his way through explaining the event.

“I can’t ask for time off with this little notice, David,” she says.

“It’s in ten days, and it’s just for one night,” David argues. “How is that not much notice?”

She sighs, drawn out.

“Kurmazov’s parents are coming from Moscow,” David says, well aware his voice is bordering on a whine, embarrassed but unable to contain it. “Benson’s whole family is coming, like ten of them, from California.” Once again he’s the kid at Lake Placid tagging along with a teammate’s family, who look at him with pity when they think he isn’t looking.

“Well, you’ll be coming to Ottawa for the summer,” she says. “I’ll see you soon.”

“I’m staying in New York,” David says. “Spending a month in Toronto. I don’t have time.”

She’s quiet for a minute. “I imagine you’ll come for a visit when you’re in Toronto, at least,” she says, finally.

“I don’t know,” David says, “it’s pretty far,” and feels a moment of sharp vindictiveness when it quiets her again.

“I can’t make the effort if you don’t,” she says.

“Then don’t,” David says. Thinks of hanging up, but says “Bye,” first, because he doesn’t want to give her an excuse to call him childish again.

When Kurmazov gives him an expectant eyebrow the next day, all David can do is snap, “I asked,” and trust Kurmazov to drop it. Thankfully, he does, and doesn’t say any more about it, not about his own family coming in or anything, at least in David’s hearing. It should be mortifying, to be so obviously pitied, but David isn’t anything but grateful.

*