Page 60 of Home Ice

“I’ll text the details. Rafe’s car picks him up at six, scoops me at six fifteen, and we’re on the carpet by seven. You and the parents arrive whenever Dad finishes circling the block for street parking, so honestly, leave at four.” A voice behind him said something, and he answered it. “Ma wants to know if you have a suit.”

“I own a suit.”

There was a pause on the line while this was relayed, and then a sound from the middle distance of Ma’s kitchen.

“Ma says you own a funeral outfit.”

“It’s a good suit.”

“She says she’s seen it at three funerals, and it makes her sad on sight now. You’re Pavlov’s pallbearer. She’s calling Stavros.”

“I don’t need Stavros.”

“Nobody needs him,” Max said. “Tomorrow at ten, bring the funeral suit so he can insult it, and then he’ll come up with something better.” Another voice behind him. “Okay, I’m being summoned. Disagreement between Ma and Aunt Voula on shoes. Niko, thank you genuinely. It matters that my big brother will be there.”

He was gone.

I thought about six hundred people, arrival photos, and my brother with Rafe’s arm around his waist. There was nothing I could directly object to. It was a good cause, and Ma’s happiness was important.

The next morning Stavros circled me with pins in his mouth and insulted the suit I had brought with me. I came home with a garment bag and no memory of agreeing to half of what was in it.

***

Dad circled the block twice on principle, found nothing, and surrendered to the Palmer House garage. He took the ticket from the machine and read it front and back.

“Fifty-eight dollars for up to five hours,” he said and pounded the steering wheel.

“I’ll cover it, Dad,” I said.

“Nobody’s covering it, but it’s robbery. In Milwaukee, Theo parks for free at the cathedral and walks.”

“We’re not in Milwaukee,” Ma said, checking her earrings in the visor mirror for the fourth time. “Niko, how do I look?”

She looked like my mother in a good dress, and I said so. She took my arm because the sidewalk had slick spots, and she wanted to walk in on somebody’s arm.

The Palmer House has that ceiling. Ma stopped under the lobby dome and tipped her head back, holding my arm tighter, and I let her look as long as she wanted. The rest of the arriving crowd split and flowed past us on both sides. My mother raised two boys on a machinist’s wages and a seamstress’s side work. She earned every ceiling gaze.

“Your grandmother should see this,” she said.

“Yiayia’s seen it. She says the ceiling’s for people who need somewhere to look while they eat alone at a table of eight.”

“She does not say that.”

“She said it at Sunday dinner.”

“She saves these things for you boys,” Ma said, and tugged at my elbow.

The ballroom was gold from the crown molding down. The ceiling was high enough to hold the noise up over everyone’s heads, while round tables were dressed to the floor in cloth that had been pressed that morning and would be in a hamper by midnight.

A young woman named Dana walked us to a table close enough to the front that Ma gasped. Dana said she’d be taking care of us all night.

A man crossed the floor toward us before we sat down. “Mrs. Gregory? Mark Corley, I’m with the Ironhawks.” He shook her hand and then Dad’s. “Thank you for coming out to this. Your table’s situated here for a strong sight line to the arrivals. You’ll see your son enter before anybody else in the room does.”

He turned to me. “Mr. Gregory, the craftsman. Rafe has mentioned you.”

As the room filled, there was hockey everywhere once I looked. Half the auction wall was team business, and among the press by the carpet I recognized Deckert, the reporter whose questions Rafe stepped around like avoiding potholes.

“Voula says they do this every year,” Ma reported, reading the program. “Last year they raised two million dollars, Niko. Two million.”