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Vodka. Sugar. Tea.
“I’m just going to—“
Everything was still for a moment after Yuna left. David glanced towards the door and Ilya slowly sipped his vodka, then Shane abruptly forced his chair back with a loud scrape across the floor.
“Shane?”
David let Rozanov take the lead but his eyes didn’t leave his son. He clocked the steadiness of his hands, the direction of his gaze, and the evenness of his breathing. Shane was fine. This was normal.
Shane reached back blindly to put his hand over Rozanov’s for a moment, knowing just where it would be, then spied his mother’s sweater on the back of her chair and rounded the table to grab it.
“She’ll get cold.”
It was July so the cool air was on the inside, but David just nodded at his son anyway and whether Shane took that as him actually believing the flimsy excuse or accepted it as giving him tacit permission to go talk to his mother alone, it didn’t matter. The result was the same. Shane turned back and glanced his fingers over Rozanov’s shoulder and then he was off to the deck and a conversation that David knew needed to happen, even if he didn’t know what it would be.
And then there were two.
Ilya Rozanov took another sip of his vodka and gave David a tight smile and then his eyes slid to the side, onto the blinds or the maybe an end table or maybe, probably, that framed picture of Shane playing U7, gap-toothed grin and Timbits jersey on display.
David was still processing the way everything had changed over the last hour or so, second guessing every reaction he’d had starting with his decision to leave Shane’s cottage and lie to himself that neither of them had actually seen him standing there. It was impulsive and he regretted it before he’d gotten halfway home, but he didn’t regret that it had brought them to this point, here and now, where maybe Shane could be as open and honest with them as he’d once been, when he was still that kid in the photo.
He’d actually always admired Rozanov as a player. He was cocky, sure, but mostly by hockey standards. If you actually paid attention to him on the ice, if you looked at what he did and not at what he said, he was a pretty good team player. And above and beyond that, you didn’t captain a room just by being a star. The C on his chest actually meant something, to David.
And he knew his wife knew that too, but she’d always been a little bit more invested in the culture of hockey than David was, and not just the game.
Beyond hockey, he knew absolutely nothing about Ilya Rozanov.
The silence stretched on. Ilya’s eyes found some more pictures on the wall, or the mantle, then something interesting about the ring his empty glass had left on the table.
“So,” David said finally, slapping both hands on the table lightly. “Roz— Ilya. Do you cook?”
Ilya’s eyes snapped back to him. “Do I cook?” he repeated, like those words didn’t make any sense to him.
“Those two are going to be a while, and it’ll be getting on dinnertime soon,” David said. “I know time gets a little wobbly in cottage country, but everyone is probably starting to get hungry.”
“I could eat,” admitted Ilya. David politely refrained from suggesting anything about having worked up an appetite. Ilya got up when David did and followed him over to the kitchen, hovering near the fridge with his hands behind his back.
He looked younger, right now, his face tensed in a way that was different from when he was on the ice. He looked like he was waiting to be told what to do, or maybe waiting for something else he was equally bracing himself to take.
Dry pasta. Salt. Sourdough bread.
“I was just going to make us some pasta,” David said, opening up a couple of cupboards until he remembered where they put it. They’d only been back up at the cottage for a day or so after some time back in Ottawa for work, hadn’t quite got back into the routine of it yet. “It’s easy enough to add more. You like spaghetti?”
“Of course,” said Ilya. “I am easy, promise.”
It was on the tip of David’s tongue to make a joke about that, too, but he thought about it for too long and then the moment was gone. The promise felt so sincere anyway, like Ilya was promising a lot more than just his dietary flexibility. David wanted to be able to tell him “you don’t have to be easy, you just have to be good to Shane” but it wasn’t that kind of moment either.
Instead, he reached down into the lower cupboard and pulled out a large pot, handing it over. There was just a moment of hesitation before Ilya’s hands came forward to take it from him.
“You can put a pot of water on to boil?”
“Of course I can boil. Also pickle, grill, fry… maybe bake a little,” he said, ticking them off on the fingers of his free hand.
“Hey, you never know,” David said, raising his hands in easy surrender before opening another cupboard to see what else they had handy. “I’d be happy enough with just the pasta but you know Shane, he’ll want something more balanced, and definitely no bread if he’s actually going to eat the rest.”
“I will eat all your carbs,” said Ilya. “Even during season when I am skating. Shane hates it.”
David had to look over and give him a crooked smile at that. He knew exactly what Ilya was talking about. “Well, even if he doesn’t want any, it’s still going on the table,” he said. “More for the rest of us.”
“We ate hamburgers together,” Ilya added a moment later. “Buns and all. He is on off-season diet now.”
“He probably wouldn’t have had any vodka if he wasn’t,” said David.
“Is true,” agreed Ilya. “Ginger ale only. You have salt?”
“Yes, right,” said David, finding it in the cupboard next to the sink and shaking it from side to side for a moment to make sure it hadn’t clumped up since the last time they’d used it. It was damp this year; they’d just had a line of storms come through last week so heavy that they still had some puddles lingering in the low-lying areas of the yard.
Ilya took it from him, but paused with it in his hand for a moment. “Are you sure you don’t want to—?” He angled his head towards the front doors, where Yuna and Shane had disappeared. “I can do this for you. Pasta is easy.”
David shook his head. “They have their own way,” he said. “They’ll come back when they’re ready. I’ll have my moment with Shane another time.”
“Okay,” he said, accepting that at face value. “Okay.”
Carrots. Red lettuce. Onion.
It might not speak to any higher culinary skills, but Ilya Rozanov did know his way around a kitchen. Which, considering he was a fully grown adult, shouldn’t have been a surprise, but the way David had always imagined Ilya’s life, based solely on what he saw in the media, there was a lot more flash and a lot less domesticity.
It was clear David, and maybe most people other than Shane, hadn’t known much about him at all.
It was also clear that he was starting to relax more now that he had something to do, so David rolled with it.
“So you and Shane met the summer before your rookie year?” he said after pulling some vegetables out of the crisper. The door had been opened to this conversation, he felt, so it wouldn’t be too intrusive. “No, no, before that. It would have been the draft, wouldn’t it.”
“Mm, before that,” said Ilya without looking at him. He could have been genuinely focused on the pot of water, but it felt more like an excuse to not let David see his expression. “Regina.”
“Regina? Oh, you played each other at the Prospect Cup, of course,” he said. “I meant actually met. You know, talked to each other.”
“Yes, was Regina,” said Ilya again, though. “Shane was a very nice boy. Very polite. He said I am best skater.”
“Really?”
“Not really,” said Ilya with a slight smile that David managed to catch a glimpse of. “But we did talk. I said I would beat him.”
“Turns out you were right about that,” admitted David. “The first time, anyway. It was quite the topic of conversation in our household after that. Rozanov this and Rozanov that. He never told us that he spoke to you, though.”
“Hm, maybe he thought it was private,” said Ilya. David wasn’t sure what would have been private about it, but he wasn’t about to ask. “I like that. You were all obsessed with me.”
David didn’t even try to deny it. “I won’t tell you what was said.”
“Oh, I think I know what was said,” said Ilya with what could only be called a smirk. “But still, cannot be worse than what my father said about Shane Hollander.” He said the words like they should be written in all caps, and maybe underlined as well.
“I can only imagine,” said David. The only time he had ever encountered the Rozanov patriarch was seeing him across the room on draft day. They had never spoken a single word to one another. He had never seen him at a game, awards show, or any other MLH event. “Seems like you didn’t listen, though.”
“I was like that as a teenager,” said Ilya. “I was…what is the word?” He waved his hand for a moment before coming up with it. “Rebellious. I was rebellious. And good thing, too, yes?”
“Sure seems like it,” agreed David. “Seems to have gotten you someplace you’re happy to be.” He was mostly talking about his hockey career, but from the look the drifted across Ilya’s face, almost languidly, it was clear he was thinking about other things as well.
Tomato sauce. Oregano. Basil.
David rummaged around in the cupboard again, pulled out a jar of sauce. Yes, they could have thrown together something fresh and no, he was not interested in spending the time right now to simmer it for as long it would need to be good.
“Don’t tell anyone,” he said, “and help me hide the jar.” Ilya just snorted and checked on his pot, and David dropped the sauce along with a few extra spices into a fresh pan next to it to warm and simmer.
Ilya still looked a little stiff next to him, like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it was better than earlier. Better than that kicked puppy face that he’d been wearing when he and Shane had walked in the door. David didn’t have anything more for him to do at the moment, so he let the quiet moment between them settle until Ilya spoke again.
“Shane says you played hockey? At school?”
He nodded. Definitely a safe topic. “Back in the early 90s. Feels like a lifetime ago,” he admitted. “Full scholarship, though. Hockey got me where I am today.”
“Do you still play? Maybe beer league?”
“Oh, I still get on the ice,” he said, “but nothing organised. I’m a pencil-pusher now. I think those days are behind me.”
“No such thing. We should play some time,” said Ilya decisively. “For fun.”
“I don’t think I could keep up.”.
“For fun,” Ilya said again. “I will go slow for you. Maybe put weights on my ankles for extra drag.”
David had to laugh at that. “Well, in that case…” he said, leaving the rest unsaid. It was true he did like to get out there, but he hadn’t been able to keep up with Shane since Shane had hit double digits. “You know, Yuna played for McGill, too.”
“Hockey for McGill?” said Ilya, eyes wide suddenly and very interested. “Yuna played hockey?”
“It’s how we met. She was so good.” Memories of that time in their lives came unbidden, the good parts of it, the way she flew across the ice, her unbridled joy at winning, the way her hair stuck to their faces afterwards when he wrapped his arms around her before she even had a chance to shower. Not the parts where she knew all too intimately what Shane would be facing in a hockey world that was still overwhelmingly white. “You couldn’t keep your eyes off her when she skated. She’s was Shane’s first teacher, from the time he could stand up on blades.”
“Shane never tells me this!” said Ilya. “She will play too, when we play for fun.”
“You probably won’t have to twist her arm,” he said. “I would, uh, like to see it.”
“Good,” said Ilya. “Shane needs more fun.”
Yuna needed more fun too, David thought. Maybe they would be reminded how much they loved hockey before it became all business for the both of them. Oh, he knew Shane loved hockey more than he loved anything. Well, almost anything, maybe. But David still remembered what it was like before they realised that Shane had the potential to be exceptional, and especially before everyone else realised that too.
Cucumber. Celery. Bell peppers.
He saw Ilya’s hand hovering between two drawers, neither of them opened, and felt stupid when he realised why.
“Please,” he said, “make yourself at home. Utensils are on the right and everything else is on the left. Yuna hates that we have a junk drawer but it was always a staple when I was growing up. Where else am I going to keep my batteries and take-out menus?”
“Shane has them alphabetized,” said Ilya with a small smile as he opened the drawer on the right and pulled out a spoon, then reached back in. “What in the world is this?”
The hard plastic straw had no less than four loops in it, and a very careworn picture of Disney’s Aladdin in the middle.
“Oh, that was Shane’s, growing up,” he said as Ilya examined it curiously. “It was the only one he would use, from the moment he first got it until… well, I’m not even sure when. Possibly right through middle school. I think he liked the way it felt in his hands, until his hands got too big.”
“It is…. ridiculous,” said Ilya, the first real smile David had seen spreading across his face. “I love it.”
“Never could bear to get rid of it,” said David, as Ilya finally put it back. “Not sure Shane even knows its still there.”
“Oh, he will know,” Ilya vowed. “I will make sure he remembers.”
There were reminders of Shane’s childhood all over the cottage, even more here than at their home in Ottawa, and he had to wonder if there was a similar history of Ilya Rozanov, somewhere in Russia. Not just a hockey history but everything else, too.
David grabbed a few more vegetables for the salad, everything still wrapped and fresh from town, setting a cutting board and knife in front of Ilya and figuring he would know what to do with them. He had started to resume an expectant posture again, and David figured keeping his hands busy was the best remedy.
“So you didn’t go back to Russia to see your family this summer?” he asked tentatively as the chopped vegetables started to pile up.
“Ah, no,” said Ilya. David could see his shoulders tense, the way he focused intently on the knife in his hand as he chopped the celery. He almost changed the subject then and there, but then Ilya kept talking, matter-of-factly. “My mother is dead since I was young. My father is also dead.”
“I’m sorry. And that everyone?”
“There is my brother,” said Ilya, making it sound like an admission. “We do not talk.”
“Because of… you and Shane?”
“No, no,” said Ilya, then after a pause, “Yes. Not exactly. Is many things. He does not know about all that, not for sure. Maybe not at all.”
“That must be hard,” said David carefully.
“It is what it is,” said Ilya, shrugging in a way that suggested it mattered a lot. “Wishing things were different does not make them so.” He paused, and David didn’t speak into the silence in case there was more. “I would like to see my niece.”
“You couldn’t go back, just for her?”
“Maybe when she is older, apart from him,” said Ilya. “If he has not poisoned her too much. Maybe she will come here. Russia is…” He paused again, and David could imagine the many ways he could finish that sentence. Russia had to be a lot of things, to Ilya. “It is not safe now, for me.”
Ah. He didn’t have to spell that one out for David to understand, and maybe for the first time he really felt what this relationship with Shane had to mean to Ilya. How it was not casual. How it couldn’t be. How maybe, despite their mutual protests, it never really had been.
“I was sorry to hear about your father,” he said. “It must have been hard, being so far away.”
“Yes, sometimes,” said Ilya. “Thank you. He was… no, no. Sorry. Is not a topic for happy family meal.”
“You don’t have to talk about it,” said David, mildly and in a way, he hoped, that suggested it would be okay if he did.
“Is only that he liked me more at the end, when he didn’t remember so much how I disappointed him,” said Ilya. “That is what makes me sad. Is nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” said David, but he didn’t push. “I find it hard to imagine you being a disappointment to anyone, with everything you’ve accomplished.”
“Yes, well, things are different, in Russia,” said Ilya, and he was looking away and David did not make him look back even though he thought, if he did, he would be able to read a lot more in Ilya’s expression than in his words.
“Yes, I suppose they are.”
Cheese. Garlic. Butter.
The stop-and-start conversation felt very natural now, like they were still feeling their way around one another but were comfortable enough to not need to fill all of the silences as they worked side by side. He threw together the salad, found the grated parmesan at the back of the fridge, crushed a little extra garlic for the bread, and even gave Ilya a friendly elbow as he reached past him to reclaim the salt.
Which is why he was surprised when he looked up from doing a drive-by stir and taste of the sauce and realised that Ilya had stopped working and was just staring at him, an unreadable expression on his face.
“Are you okay?” he said automatically. Instinctively. He reached out for Ilya’s shoulder but hesitated at the last moment, unsure if the contact would be welcome. But Ilya leaned into the touch and David’s hand closed over his bicep, squeezing lightly. “Ilya?”
“You are so kind,” he said finally. “I knew you would be good to Shane, I told him so, but I did not know…”
David puzzled over that one for a moment, until suddenly it became very clear. “You didn’t think we’d be good to you, too.” And yet he’d come. He didn’t think they’d be good to him but for Shane, he’d come anyway.
“You have no reason,” said Ilya. David was used to Shane avoiding his eyes, but it always seemed more deliberate when Ilya was looking away. “Before I came, you hated me.”
“Hate’s a strong word,” said David. “People use it too lightly when it comes to sports. Maybe if they didn’t, we could’ve met a lot sooner.”
“Maybe,” said Ilya, his voice sounding thick. “Maybe not. It is still very complicated, me and Shane.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said David, squeezing his arm again in what he hoped was a comforting way. “You make my son happy. Seems pretty uncomplicated to me. The rest is just noise.”
“Is not just noise,” said Ilya. “MLH is not just noise. Russia is not just noise.”
“No,” agreed David. There were a lot of implications there, and things he and Shane really would have to navigate one day. “But today, right here, it’s just noise. Shane brought you home to us and he’s never done that before, with anyone, so that means something. I don’t think it needs to be any more complicated than that. I guess…” This was a reach, but it made sense, in context. “I guess maybe it didn’t go so well when you told other people about.. this? About you?”
Ilya looked down, away, anywhere but at David’s eyes. “Is first time,” he said. “I have never told before.”
“Oh, wow,” said David, nodding his head a few times as he took that in. “Wow. Well, hey, that can’t have been easy, especially starting with, you know. Us. I’m… I’m proud of you.”
Ilya made a noise, almost a sob, and leaned forward, and a moment later David was wrapping his arms around him, hugging him like he would have hugged his own son. Ilya didn’t make another sound but he leaned fully into it, and when David let him go, his eyes were glistening.
He pretended not to see as Ilya hastily wiped them dry and turned back to the stove.
“I would give Shane everything,” he said after a moment. “I want you to know.”
“I believe you,” said David. “But you deserve things, too.”
“Maybe,” said Ilya. “Maybe.”
David could recognize a hurt that wasn’t going to be healed in a day. He would leave it there, for now, but he wouldn’t forget. Ilya Rozanov had been a surprise in more ways than one, but in none of those ways was he a bad one.
Wine. Ginger ale. Vodka.
“Everything else is almost done,” said David, after letting the moment sit until a change of topic felt welcome. “Probably time to toss that pasta in.”
“Da,” said Ilya, his hands moving quickly and efficiently. David wasn’t even sure he realised he’d answered in Russian, or if that even mattered when it was a word virtually everyone knew. Whether it signalled comfort, or discomfort, or just distraction, or nothing at all.
When Yuna and Shane came back into the house a few minutes later, Shane made a beeline for the washroom but Yuna said, “Smells amazing in here,” before disappearing into the master bedroom. David was happy to give them these few more moments, understood the need for them without anything needing to be said.
He saw Ilya look towards the washroom, his gaze once again soft and uncertain, but then he clenched and unclenched his fists a couple of times, rolled his shoulders, and set his hands back on the kitchen counter while he continued to watch the boiling pot.
“Guess we’d better finish up and get this on the table,” David said, interrupting his silence. “If I know my wife, she’s going to go into business mode before much longer.”
“Ah,” said Ilya. “She is planner, like her son.”
“Even more.”
“Not possible,” said Ilya, hesitating only a moment before turning his head and giving David a cheeky grin, as if he hadn’t spent the last few minutes standing there worrying about Shane.
David dabbed the corner of his eye one last time, erasing any evidence of their own conversation. “I won’t tell Shane that we—“
“Did not happen. Is nothing to tell.”
“Right,” said David. Or at least, there was nothing to tell right now. Maybe later, maybe when Ilya and Shane were back at the cottage in the quiet of the evening, maybe then Ilya would feel comfortable letting that wall down again. But that part, that was none of David’s business.
It took hardly any time at all to put out some plates, some hot pads, some utensils. David briefly entertained the idea of making things a little nicer, a little more formal. Something to maybe recognise that this was a moment they might want to remember one day. But only briefly, because nobody wanted formality right now, they wanted comfort, and that was something he could deliver.
“That pasta should be just about ready if you want to check it.”
Ilya slurped down a noodle and gave David a thumbs up before draining it.
“Just toss it with the sauce and leave it in the pot, we’re not fancy here,” said David, then risked one more comment before his wife and his son were back to hear. “Listen, I think you’re good for him, and I’m glad Shane has you.”
Ilya made a small noise and stared resolutely at the tongs in his hand. David just patted him once on the shoulder before bringing the bread to the table, giving them both a little space before they had to face anyone again.
Shane came straight back to the table after washing up but Yuna joined David in the kitchen, wrapping her arms around his waist from behind and resting her cheek against his shoulder for a moment.
“All good?” he murmured.
“We’re good,” she said, then kissed his shoulder and let him go, smoothing the back of his shirt with her hands as though she had wrinkled it unforgivably through the simple act of seeking comfort. As though David would ever have cared.
The light was just starting to make that almost imperceptible turn from afternoon into early evening, and it brought with it a hundred memories of a hundred meals at this table, only for the first time in a long time, the table felt complete.
“So what did you guys talk about while we were gone?” asked Yuna when they were finally all seated again.
“Hockey,” said Ilya, putting some pasta on his own plate, and then on Shane’s as well. “What else is there?”
“Right, hockey,” said Shane, giving Ilya a crooked smile, like he didn’t believe a word of it but was going to let it go anyway. It was a glimpse of a kind of familiarity between them that David had to admit he had not often seen in his son. Had maybe never seen before, not really.
He was still sorry about how this had dinner come about, how he had inadvertently invaded their privacy, but he couldn’t bring himself to be sorry that he knew, now. That the mortifying moment between them had turned into this, into the start of a future that none of them had properly imagined before.
“Eat,” said Ilya, and Shane actually did, and whatever happened now, David felt like these boys, both of them, were going to be okay.