colleen is like kris jenner 2.0. always there. always lurking in the shadows (reflection in this case) like free your son from this torturous environment, hide the crucifix and LET HIM BE GAY.
momager colleen! she doesn't know hockey, doesn't have the knowledge or the reputation or the network of a rick celebrini or even a yanic and july perreault, but she knows she has a special boy! she knows she has to raise a winner. god-given responsibility, when you're blessed with a son as special and talented and perfect as hers. it's a sin, to squander god's gifts.
and sometimes that means picking up her entire life and moving to the middle of nowhere, michigan, for a biweekly bisected two years of her life. cooking for three and buying eggs in bulk and pretending she doesn't see the cameras and cruelty. sometimes that means leaving her eldest daughter to her own devices a little more than was wise, maybe, because grace doesn't call and she doesn't text and she's always on her phone, how is she going to get a husband that way; but then, grace was a good girl and she understood her brother needed their mother more, colleen isn't sure what happened. sometimes that means flying out to the opposite end of an entire country, a whole continent, really, over 50 times a year because colleen can't talk to her son's coach, who doesn't understand his potential, and she can't help her son rehab his shoulder (and thank god it wasn't worse, she can't even think about the what ifs there), but she can be there for him even when he loses! she's no stranger to watching him lose. she did it for two whole years in michigan, and she told him it was all for the best, that if he believed and prayed and persisted it would all work out. and it did! his team may have lost, and lost, and lost. but her son scored goals, her son set records, her son was drafted fourth overall to the san jose sharks.
and sometimes, colleen ignores the way will has tethered himself heart and soul to this strange blunt goofy difficult talented boy, who is polite but not polished, kind but not nice (or is it nice but not kind? she's not sure, but she's sure one of the two is lacking), the franchise star instead of her son and she can't even resent him for it because he's the star of the entire league, he's feeding her son so many points and fans and smiles. he makes her son so happy. she overlooks how they lean into each other's breaths, how they spend eight-ten-fourteen hours a day together, how they orbit each other, us against the world, even when there's no enemy to circle up against. she ignores how they don't finish each other's sentences but that's only because they don't need to finish their sentences at all. no-look passes, even off the ice.
and anyway, what is there to worry about? nothing, really. nothing she can point to. so she goes on a podcast and talks about how they don't get sick of each other, and tells herself it's to generate clicks. she talks to father jeremy about how the apostle paul dealt with the unnamed, unknowable thorn in his side, for no reason at all -- just pious curiosity. she hosts her annual fourth of july celebration at the cape for her son and his little college friends, and of course will vote is there as always, and that dear boy ryan (so polite, so handsome, and catholic to boot; imagine if he had been drafted to the sharks), no californian-canadian first overalls, and she takes a picture of them in the sun, tanned and freckled and coordinated in neutrals, with her son's foot pressed tight, laces kissing, against his friend's. and she's thrown away all the empty cans first, out of sight, but there must have been so many, because later when she's popping in the kitchen to restock the watermelon she thinks she hears something from the back right yellow guest room, where ryan is staying; but of course that can't be right, he wears a crucifix.
secretly, she's glad macklin couldn't make it.
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