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I spent most of the wake standing between my mother and Faith in the receiving line and trying not to look at my grandmother's body lying in an open casket a few feet away. Faith told me later that viewing the body “helps people accept the reality of death.” I know she's right but I'd rather watch curling than look at a dead body.

My mother was a rock through it all except for the final closing of the casket on Saturday morning before the funeral-home guys loaded it into the hearse for the trip to the church. She cried then but not for long.

Faith sat with my mother in church while I served the Mass. I'd worn a black Hugo Boss suit, white shirt, and black silk tie for the occasion. But Monsignor Faucette found a size XL altar boy's black cassock and white surplice that fit over my suit so I had to parade around dressed like a ten-year-old. At least the long sleeves of the cassock hid the cheat sheet I'd taped to my wrist. But as with goaltending, all the responses and actions came back to me once the Mass started. It was as if I were a kid again and serving morning Mass in front of pews filled with murmuring kerchieved women, their rosary beads clacking against the backs of oaken pews.

Toward the end of Mass the soprano soloist sang a song in French. I think beauty transcends language; this was one of the most moving songs I'd ever heard, yet I didn't understand a word of it. Later my mother told me the song was “Ceux qui sen vont.” It means “To Those Who Leave,” she said.

“I wish I remembered my French,” I told her.

“Your heart remembers,” she said.

Take this to the bank; in relationships between the sexes, one family crisis, successfully negotiated, equals one hundred good dates. “Thanks for coming here with me,” I said to Faith when, long after dark, we left my mother's house for the drive back to Boston.

“You'd do it for me,” she said.

“I would. But not as gracefully.”

“Do you ever miss it? Catholicism?” she asked.

“Sometimes. I miss the comfort of it. Most of those people in church, especially the old frogs … I envy them their certainty. And you?”

“Same thing. God's gone but I miss Him.”

“What would it take to make you believe again?” I asked.

Faith hesitated a minute. “I think if the world went dark and the dead rose from their graves and God stepped out of the sky and told everyone that bitch Hazel Anne Worthington didn't have both feet behind the three-point arc and that CC really won the Massachusetts girls hoops title and then God handed me the trophy in front of the billions of risen souls and Hazel Anne Fucking Worthington.”

Had to laugh at that. We rode a few miles in silence. We'd just gone through the Hampton, New Hampshire, toll booths when I said, “We ought to make some time to talk about us. Where we're going. Weren't we going to talk about that after the holidays?”

“We'll talk, JP. But not in a car. Not tonight.”

That was the second time I'd brought up our long-term prospects only to have Faith ice the conversational puck.

I snapped on the radio and punched up the Bruins game just in time to hear announcer Mike Emerson say that Gaston Deveau had given Boston a 1–0 lead over the Maple Leafs on a power-play goal at 2:58 of the first period. “Jeez. Packy put Gaston on the first power-play unit. That's a shocker,” I said. But it wasn't as much of a shock as what Emerson said a few seconds later, which was “A great glove save by Kent Wilson to rob Toronto's Ken Brewer.”

“What's with Kent Wilson starting again? Do we have a quarterback controversy here?” Faith asked.

“I'll find out tomorrow,” I said. But I was pretty sure I knew why Wilson was starting. I explained it to Faith: “If the Mad Hatter brings up a new kid and the kid plays well, then it lowers my value and Rinky Higgins's value and gives Hattigan leverage in contract talks.”

“By the way, your mother asked me why Hattigan hasn't met with Denny Moran to start working out your new deal.”

“How the hell does she know that?”

“Denny—excuse me, Dennis—told her.”

“Jesus Christ, I'm thirty-one years old and my agent is tattletaling to my mother.”

“You sure that's all he's doing?” Faith said, and laughed another of her rich throaty laughs.

“Look. If the Bruins don't sign me, then I'm an unrestricted free agent. There'll be plenty of offers.”

“Great. You want to go to Vancouver? Dallas maybe? How 'bout them Stars?” Faith asked, and began singing Alabama's “If You're Going to Play in Texas (You've Got to Have a Fiddle in the Band).”

“No. I'll give Boston a hometown discount. I'll play here for less than I'd make somewhere else. I told Denny that. It's just that the Mad Hatter wants every edge he can get before they start talking. And the longer he delays, the greater the chance my stock will fall. Or Kent Wilson's might rise, which amounts to the same thing.”

“If the team loses you to unrestricted free agency, then they don't get anything in return, right?”

“Right,” I said.

“Then it'd be best for them to trade you now and get something for you than to just let you walk away. So why wouldn't Hattigan deal you?”

“Could happen,” I said. “A lot of teams would like an experienced goaltender for the playoffs.” I told Faith that if I was traded it would have to be by March 18, the NHL's trade deadline, about eight weeks away.

“If they deal you will you go?” she asked.

“Have to. I'm not exactly in Cam Carter's financial position,” I said.

“And where will a trade leave us?”

“First, I don't think I'll get traded. We're going to the playoffs and my playoff record is better than my regular-season record. Rinky has never even played two consecutive playoff games. Second, you're in your last year of med school. You'll be a doctor. You can work wherever you want,” I said.

“Jean Pierre, we have to talk,” Faith said.

“But not tonight,” I said in high-pitched chiding mimicry.

“How about tomorrow night? Dinner? My place. I'll cook.”

“Done deal,” I said just as Mike Emerson's voice on the radio told me that Toronto had tied the game on a fifty-footer. I felt bad for the team. But I have to confess there was a part of me that was glad Kent Wilson had let in a softy. I don't feel that way when Rinky plays. OK, maybe I don't want him to play his way to immortality, but I want him to win because I want the team to win. And while I have nothing against Kent Wilson—we barely said hello in training camp—I knew a great game by Kent would put more pressure on me. As if I didn't have enough of that already.

Toronto beat us—and Kent Wilson—2–1.

*   *   *

The first thing to catch my eye when I walked into the dressing room Sunday morning was the makeshift nameplate—black felt-tip pen on white adhesive tape—over one of the spare lockers. “
KENT WILSON
” it read. Two goalies on a team is a necessity. Three is a problem. It means there's always going to be someone who's unhappy because he's not playing and not even dressing. More mind games by the Mad Hatter, I thought, but I made it a point to introduce myself to Wilson as soon as he walked into the room. The kid's only doing what I did ten years ago and what any rookie would do—trying to play as well as he can and maybe make it to the Show.

The only good thing about having Kent Wilson around is that I face fewer shots in practice.

At the end of practice Packy called us over to a corner of the rink well out of earshot of the beat writers. All coaches do this as if newspaper reports will compromise national security on what they say. All Packy said was that I'd start Tuesday at home against Washington and Thursday at Pittsburgh and that Rinky would be the backup. Three minutes later Packy was telling Lynne Abbott: “I haven't made up my mind yet” about which goalie would start on Tuesday and that Thursday was “too far away to even think about.” Coaches don't lie because they're bad people. They lie because the flow of information is one of the few things they can control. Coaches like control.

*   *   *

I was nervous driving to Faith's house late Sunday afternoon. The only time I'd ever talked about marriage was with Lisa years ago. And we didn't really plan it as much as we drifted into it. I hoped Faith and I were on that same easy, natural path and that our conversation would end in an unofficial engagement with a wedding date to be named later. I figured if we wrapped it up fast we'd have time to watch the NFL Wild Card playoff between Green Bay and San Francisco. A pretty good match, I thought. But that was before I knew about the Match.

“Part of the problem I have—I mean
we
have, Jean Pierre—is the Match,” Faith said almost before I had my coat off. She told me that the Match is the national program that assigns graduating medical school students to internships at hospitals across the country. Students can research and apply for various internships listed on the Internet. But it's the hospital that has the final say. Students get assigned to an internship. And those students who don't get a match, or don't want to accept the one they get, have to scramble for whatever leftover openings they can find. “We find out on March 17,” she said. “It's sort of like a trade deadline for med students. We report to our hospitals July 1.”

“So you could get sent to Utah or some godforsaken place?” I asked.

“Theoretically but not really,” she said. “I'm applying to Mass General here in Boston—”

“Great. Walking distance from the Garden,” I said, interrupting her.

“—and to Lake Champlain Medical Center in Vermont. It'll be one of those two,” she said, putting a handful of shrimp into a sauté pan.

“Lake Champlain is a goddamn par-five from here,” I said. “So which one do you think it'll be?”

“Whichever one I want.”

“Getting a little cocky, aren't we?”

“Put it this way, Jean Pierre, they both want the quarter mil I'll pledge to their capital campaigns.”

“That's crass and arrogant,” I said.

“That's reality,” she said. “Life's a power sweep, JP. Saint Vincent Lombardi said that, according to my father.” I looked at her. Looking back at me were the same Clint Eastwood eyes I'd seen in the basketball pictures in her father's den. Faith McNeil was about to take the medical establishment to the hoop. I was afraid she might take me too.

“So how's the decision shaping up?” I asked.

“Mass General is one of the biggest and best hospitals in the country. But if I go there I'm a spare part. Just another body on the JVs. Lake Champlain is opening a new oncology center. If I go there I'm on the varsity. I'm a player. And I want to be a player, JP. Always have.”

“So where would that leave us? Besides two hundred and fifty miles apart.”

“We can't know that until we know where you're going to be playing.”

“I think I'm going to be right here in Boston for four or five more seasons. But you never know. Sometimes a contending team will rent a player for the playoffs.”

“
Rent
a player?”

“They'll find a guy like me who's got only a few months to go on his contract, then trade for him, knowing they have to pay him only through the playoffs. Sometimes that's all they want him for.”

“Then what?” Faith asked.

“Then the player is a free agent and can sign with anyone. It could be a nice deal financially but I dread being traded. I have the job I want. Let's assume I keep it.”

“Well, we'll always have summers together. Even if I'm in Vermont I'll get to Boston as often as I can. But they tell me the first year of a medical internship is rough. You work about a million hours. We wouldn't see each other much for the first year.”

I sat in a kitchen chair feeling—and maybe looking—like a losing boxer slumped in his corner between rounds. “It's one thing to put your career above me but I think you're putting it above
us,
” I said.

“And what are you doing by playing into athletic old age? It's not like we need the money.”

“Playing hockey is what I do, Faith. It's all I know how to do. All I've ever done. Or all I've ever done well.”

“I want to be good at what I do, too,” she said. “And I think I can be. And for a long time…”

She didn't want to say what I knew came next, so I finished the thought for her: “… and what you'll be doing is a lot more valuable than what I do,” I said. “So should I tell the Boston Garden JumboTron guy to forget showing the scene where I propose on bended goalie pad?”

“Not forget it. Maybe postpone it for a year.”

“Faith, if you're not the best-looking single woman in northern Vermont you'll be in the top five. You're going to get hit on by every doctor in that hospital. And the married ones first.”

“I've been known to hit back,” she said, placing two dishes of shrimp pasta on the table, then pulling the cork from a chilled bottle of Pinot Blanc and looking at me again. Clint Eastwood was gone this time. “There's no one else, Jean Pierre. And I don't plan for there to be anyone else … not until you and I know for sure. I lost on my first marriage. I don't like losing. I'll pay the price to win.”

“But not if it means taking one excellent internship that would keep us together over another excellent internship that will keep us apart but advance your career?”

“Let's not fight. It reminds me of my first marriage. It's why I kept putting off this conversation.”

“There's no one else in my life either. And I don't want there to be. But I need time to think about this. Give me a few days, OK?”

“Sure. I think there are ways to do this. But there'll have to be a lot of compromise.”