Page 58 of Rookie Mistake
"He's not pathological."
"He alphabetizes his spice rack, Eli."
"The spice rack is efficient."
"The spice rack is a cry for help. I love him anyway."
Irina called the following week. Irina and Carmen have exchanged numbers. This fact is the most terrifying development of my adult life. A Russian figure skating coach and a Cuban ER nurse communicating directly, without the buffer of their sons, is a geopolitical alliance that the world is not prepared for.
"Your mother is very loud," Irina said to Nikolai.
"She is Cuban," Nikolai said. "Volume is cultural."
"I like her. She has opinions about food. I also have opinions about food. Our opinions are different. This makes the conversation interesting."
"Mama, please do not form an alliance with Carmen Mercer."
"Too late. We are exchanging recipes. She is sending me something called picadillo. I am sending her blini."
The alliance is formed. The alliance produces weekly phone calls and recipe exchanges and the unstoppable, mother-to-mother connection that occurs when two women who raised difficult sons discover that the sons have found each other and that the finding is the best thing the sons have done.
Gerald knows. Gerald has always known. Gerald's text thread with Lorraine, which I imagine as the most comprehensive emotional archive in professional sports, contains the full record: "Another one." "Different Russian. Same story." "The rookie stayed." And now, the latest, which Gerald showed me one evening when I was leaving the facility late and Gerald was at his desk and the lobby was quiet and Gerald looked at me and decided that the showing was appropriate.
Gerald's phone. The text thread. The latest entry:
Gerald: Different ending this time.
Lorraine: Better ending?
Gerald: Better ending.
I looked at Gerald. Gerald looked at me. The looking contained thirty-two years of watching and the watching contained every couple who walked through this lobby and the couples contained the culture and the culture contained me.
"Thank you, Gerald," I said.
"For what?"
"For watching."
"That's the job, kid. I just watch the door."
I am sitting on the couch in our apartment on a Sunday evening in April. The playoffs start Tuesday. The apartment iswarm. Reading glasses on the nightstand. Sneakers by the door, left upright, right on its side, the asymmetry permanent and perfect. Teaspoon in the mug. Sofrito next to the pasta. Chekhov on the side table. Lamp amber.
Nikolai is beside me. His arm is around me. The arm is automatic, the automatic is the ordinary, the booth is ours.
"Nikolai."
"Yes."
"Rookie mistake."
"What."
"Falling for you. The whole thing. The parking deck and the coffee stain and the pasta at ten-thirty and the reading glasses and the elevator and the lamp and the teaspoon and the fight and the game and the crying and the coming back."
"Those are not mistakes."
"Best mistakes I ever made."
