Page 39 of Home Ice

“He says you put it in the net.”

“That part’s true,” I said.

Max entered the kitchen. “Come meet the family. Ma, can Rafe meet the family?”

She waved at us. “Go. Yes. It’s crowded in here.”

“Good to meet you, Theo,” I called to the phone as we left the room.

Niko was sitting on the floor in the corner with a chair tipped back on his knee. He had it upended, one hand on the back rail, working at the underside of a leg with a screwdriver and something small held in his teeth. He’d pushed his sleeves back, and a vein stood out in his forearm every time the screwdriver turned.

Max found a seat on the couch near an older woman. That was it for the introductions.

Niko set the chair down on all four legs, pressed it once with both hands, and slid it an inch on the wood floor. He crouched and checked it from the side, one eye running the line of the legs, and then he stopped because he’d caught me watching.

“You made that,” I said.

He gestured toward an empty upholstered chair for me to sit in. “I fixed it,” he said. “My grandfather made it. People have been sitting on it wrong for forty years.”

“I sit on it correctly,” Ma said from the kitchen behind me.

“You tip it back.”

“I lean.”

“You tip it back on two legs and then you’re surprised that it feels rickety.”

“Niko.” She came through the doorway with a dish in her hands. “Don’t argue with me in front of company. Rafe, come. Come and be useful.”

I got up and followed.

“WHERE’S HE GOING.” Theo asked from the phone.

“He’s going to the kitchen,” Gus said. “The women got him.”

“I’m not a woman,” Max called as he followed me.

“You’re going to the kitchen.”

“Wash your hands,” Ma said, pointing at the sink. “Then you can carry.”

I washed my hands and dried them on a towel somebody handed me. Ma gave me a dish of something with a crust on it and told me exactly where to put it.

The dining room table was long and full of food. The older woman sat at the far end of the kitchen table, out of the traffic, with her hands folded on the tablecloth.

I’d seen her in one of Max’s videos, sitting in a lawn chair at a family event. I assumed she was one of his grandmothers. She’d been silently watching me since I entered the house.

“Yiayia,” Max said, sweeping past with a stack of small plates, “This is Rafe. Rafe, this is my grandmother. She has opinions about you.”

“I met him,” she said.

“You didn’t meet him. He just walked in.”

“I watched him park,” she said, and kept her eyes on me. “He backed in.”

I didn’t know what I should say, so I said, “It’s easier getting out.”

“Hm,” Yiayia said.