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Irina stared at the phone on the table in front of her, nervously fiddling with the paper in her hand. Just a few clicks, maybe two sentences, and Ilya would be happy as an elephant for the rest of the week. It just required Irina to be brave for a minute or two. She could do that, maybe.
She smoothed out the corners of the paper. Two weeks in her purse had made it curl and rip slightly at the edges. But she could still see the number on it. Irina breathed out.
Why was she so scared? She had run into Yuna Hollander at practice twice since Ilya’s first time. And at both, Yuna had been perfectly nice, understanding and sweet. And now Ilya wanted to spend time with her son.
Shane Hollander was everything Ilya wasn’t, as far as Irina could tell. He was round faced and soft where Ilya was all bony joints and sharp edges. Well behaved and nervous. Both things Ilya was very unfamiliar with, now that he had settled into his new life.
He was back to his usual chatty menace. Irina loved that. Now, if only she could be equally brave.
Standing up, Irina lifted the phone from its base, and carefully began typing in the numbers. She would do it. Somewhere in the background, Andrei was playing his music just slightly too loud. She’d bought him a cd-player for his eleventh birthday last week, and he seemed to enjoy it. She was happy about that, even if he sometimes played it too loud.
The phone rang once, twice, as Irina bit her lip, holding it to her ear. She ran through what she would say over and over in her head.
Hi, it is Irina. Ilya’s mama. How are you? Can Shane come to park with us tomorrow?
Easy. No problem. She had practiced it a few times, even written it down to be sure it came out correctly. During the few weeks they had been in Canada, her English had gotten a lot better, but she still stuttered through most interactions.
The phone rang twice more. Then the familiar click of someone answering. Irina straightened, her left hand clutching the cord from the phone hard.
“Hollander residence, David speaking.”
And Irina felt as if someone had wrapped a hand around her ribs. A static buzzing began rumbling through her head. Was she breathing? It didn’t feel like it. Every breath was short and fast and not nearly enough.
“Hello?” The deepness of the voice on the other end of the phone felt like a gut punch, and Irina swayed, frozen in place. Where was Yuna? This wasn’t what Irina had prepared for. Why hadn’t she expected Mr Hollander to answer the phone?
Her hands were getting sweaty, and the world felt as if it was tilting on its axis. Was that even possible? Her body reacted before she knew what she was reacting to. She knew Mr Hollander wasn’t Grigori. That he couldn’t hurt her through the phone, that he probably didn’t even want to hurt her.
Irina had talked to Yuna about Mr Hollander. Seen first hand how in love the dark haired woman was. But hearing his voice, so unexpectedly, it was enough to take her right back. Sitting on the floor of her old Moscow bedroom, as Grigori raged above her, bottle in hand.
Irina couldn’t breathe.
“Sorry,” she managed to mumble, before sliding down along the wall, phone forgotten in her hand.
Her head buried in her hands, Irina tried to focus. In for one, two. Out for three, four. Repeat. She had done this before. Her heart clenched. In. Out. In. Out.
Eventually, her breath settled enough for Irina to feel the tears that had been streaming down her face this whole time.
“Mama?” Irina opened her eyes slowly, and nearly burst into tears again at Ilya’s little face just a few centimeters from her own. “Mama, are you okay?”
She took a shuddering breath, and nodded once.
“Yes, baby. I am sorry for scaring you.”
Ilya shook his head.
“I wasn’t scared,” he said, and rolled back onto his heels, before getting up. He offered a little hand to her. “Did you talk to Shane’s mama? Can he come to the park?”
Irina let Ilya help her to her feet, brushing a few disheveled curls from her own face. The phone was hanging limp from its cord, the familiar tone of no one on the other end coming out steadily. It almost felt grounding.
Taking a deep breath, Irina looked down at her baby. And then she lied. Because she was apparently a fucking coward who couldn’t help a seven-year-old make friends.
“Sorry, Ilyushenka. He was busy.”
—---
Shame followed Irina for the next few days. Everytime Ilya looked at her, she had to force herself to smile, to not look away and hide. She felt almost disassociated from her body.
Only familiarity with routine got her through the rhythms of the days. She almost longed for the next week to come, when school would begin and the boys would be out of the house.
Still, being so empty almost seemed like a blessing. She didn’t feel the paralysing fear from her conversation with Mr Hollander. Nor did she feel much else either. But that was fine.
By Friday, the numbness had thinned enough for Irina to feel the edges of herself again. She made proper shchi for dinner, instead of frozen pizza for the fourth day in a row. Even Ilya seemed to have worn out from eating that for so long.
Irina wondered, later, if she had just come back to herself a few hours before she did, if perhaps they could have avoided the whole debacle that followed the shchi dinner that friday. But unfortunately she didn’t.
“Ilya, don’t dunk your bread so hard. You get soup everywhere,” Irina berated her youngest son, as she watched the soup leak from his bread onto the new table cloth she had put on. So much for trying to keep it nice.
A quick glance over at Andrei told Irina that her oldest son had yet to touch his food. He was sitting, head down and arms crossed, glaring at the table as if it had personally wronged him.
Just like Ilya, Andrei had inherited her curls, though much darker, and they were getting slightly too long. He looked like a little thunder cloud.
A little Grigori, an unhelpful voice in her head supplied. She tried to force it away. It wasn’t his fault he looked like his father.
“Andryusha, are you not hungry?” She tried, as she scooped up some of her own soup. Andrei pushed the bowl away from him, hard. Soup splattered everywhere, soaking the new table cloth, as little bits of cabbage and meat splattered across the bread basket.
In the corner of her eye, Irina registered the way Ilya pulled himself back against his chair, as if sensing the change in the air. Recognizing the fury they were about to witness. Irina forced herself to keep calm. She couldn’t go back to being numb because of an eleven-year-old.
“Andrei! Now everything is ruined!” Irina said, getting too her feet to try and save the bread. Andrei followed her up, staring her down from the other side of the table.
“Everything is already ruined! You ruined it! I hate you!” He shouted, his voice explosive. Irina flinched. Her body reacted before she could stop it. She knew Andrei had seen it. Noticed the way his body tensed for a second, before he was moving.
A book from the coffee table connected with the wall, followed by a vase of flowers. Andrei was on a warpath, and Irina could do nothing.
“My love. Andrei, please stop!” She shouted, trying and failing to reach him. Another book came surging through the air, and hit Irina in the forehead. “Fuck!”
Irina was clutching her head, already feeling a bump beginning to form, when she heard the unmistakable sound of the front door opening. She forced her eyes open, and only glimpsed the back of Andrei’s hoodie as he disappeared down the hall.
“Mama!” Ilya howled, out of his chair and running towards her. Irina grabbed his arm, a little harder than she meant.
“You stay here. I need to get Andrei.” She didn’t wait to see what response the seven-year-old gave her, instead turning around and running after his brother, still in her house slippers.
—---
Twenty minutes later, a cold, shaking, utterly terrified Irina Rozanova dragged herself back into her apartment. By the time she had made it outside, Andrei had been nowhere to be found.
She had searched every possible hiding place around their building. Even the store around the corner and the halls of the next building over. Her beautiful boy was simply gone. Vanished into the late summer evening.
Irina was crying. But also hating herself for crying. She had done so much of that this week. Why wouldn’t it ever stop?
Ilya was sitting on the couch, clutching his stuffed rabbit to his chest. It had been a gift from his aunt when he was born, and he refused to sleep without it. Irina ached inside.
“Mama?” Ilya whispered, voice small as Irina sank into the couch next to him. Irina just grabbed him, pulling him into her lap, and burrowed her nose in his soft curls. “Where is Andrei?”
Tears mixed with curls.
“Shane said his mama is very smart. Maybe she knows?” Ilya said, twisting the ear of his bunny and looking up at her. Irina pulled back, sniffling. Perhaps Ilya had a point.
The second she stood by the phone, number dialed, ready to hit the call button, Irina froze. What exactly was she doing? This wasn’t why Yuna had given her their number. And what if Mr Hollander picked up again? What if she became all weird and numb again? She couldn’t do that.
Irina took a few deep breaths, and hit call. Each ring in her ear felt ten thousand times louder than it should. Ilya burrowed his little head into Irina’s hip, holding onto her waist. The air smelled like soup, but there was nothing comforting about that anymore.
“Hollander residence, this is David speaking.”
Irina froze. It was him again. Mr Hollander. In her stress, Irina hadn’t even prepared what to say. She swallowed, Her hand on Ilya’s shoulder felt grounding.
“Yuna?” She managed to say, voice shaking just a little. “Is Yuna- eh- home?”
“Yeah, I’ll get her.”
Some shuffling and distant noises followed, before the familiar warmth of Yuna Hollander’s voice filled Irina’s ear.
“Hello, this is Yuna.”
Irina let out a sob. It was getting hard to breathe between all this crying. She was just so tired and scared and so alone.
“Irina?” Yuna said it slowly, as if afraid of getting it wrong.
“Da,” Irina whispered wetly.
“Are you okay? Ilya?”
“Yes, okay. But- Andrei is um,” she had to stop to let out another sob before continuing. “Andrei gone. Run out of house and just gone.”
“He ran away?”
Irina managed to answer a soft yes. She could hear Yuna fumbling around with something on the other end of the line.
“What is your address? We’re coming over.”
—---
If Irina could describe Yuna Hollander with one word, it would be efficient. Barely fifteen minutes after hanging up, she was at Irina’s door, husband, son and police officer in tow.
They managed to herd Ilya and Shane into Ilya’s bedroom, distracted by toys and a pack of cookies. If Ilya hadn’t been so scared for his brother, Irina suspected he would have been delighted. Perhaps showing Shane his collection of Russian toy cars would help calm him down.
The police officer didn’t seem particularly interested in anything Irina tried to say in her fumbling English, constantly turning towards Yuna as if expecting her to explain it to him instead.
Irina burned with anger and shame. She was a grown woman. Andrei was her son. He was missing, and she was being treated like a child.
This stupid immigrant who can’t even keep control over her children.
At least her crying had stopped in favour of gut wrenching fear and boiling anger.
It took way too long for the police officer to get out his radio, and send out an alert for units to keep look-out for a curly haired eleven-year-old. It had probably been an hour since Andrei had stormed out of the apartment.
“You need to stay here. If he isn’t back in twenty four hours, then you can call us again, okay?” The police officer said to Irina, slowly and loudly, as if she was deaf as well as dumb. Yuna got up to argue. What kind of police just let an eleven-year-old run around a big city alone? Had they no shame? No fucking common sense?
Irina just breathed deeply, and tried not to panic. There had never been any men in this apartment while she had lived there. Now there were two.
David Hollander was standing awkwardly off to the side. He didn’t seem threatening, but he was big. Quite clearly a hockey player. The police officer, on the other hand, was smaller. But he was much worse. The condensation in his voice, the way he spoke down to her. It reminded her of her husband. Irina wanted to curl into a ball.
“I’ll go look too. Won’t hurt,” Mr Hollander mumbled after the police had left, and then he also disappeared from Irina’s home. The quiet felt deafening.
“Tea?” Yuna asked, as if this was her house, and she was offering it to Irina.
“Oh, da. I make.” Irina began to get up, but Yuna’s warm hand on her shoulder pushed her back onto the couch.
“I make. You sit, please.”
A few minutes later, Irina was sat with a cup of steaming black tea, whilst Yuna puttled around her kitchen, cleaning up. If Irina hadn’t been so bone weary, she would have helped. She wanted to help. Another woman shouldn’t be cleaning up her house like this.
“We need to throw this out,” Yuna said, and held up the fractured pieces of the vase Andrei had thrown in the wall. Irina felt tears well in her eyes.
The vase wasn’t anything special. It was old, bright red with blue, green and gold stripes on it. In Russia, Irina would never even have looked twice at it. Gaudy and ugly, she would have thought. But here? It was one of the first things she had bought for the apartment. Her own apartment.
It had caught her eye as she walked past it in the window of a second hand shop. Ugly and red and so, so reminiscent of the Sobor Vasiliya Blazhennogo back home that she had almost ran inside to buy it. And now it was ruined. Just like everything else.
God, had she really ruined everything, like Andrei had said? It was her fault her boy was so miserable. So sad and quiet and angry in a country that didn’t care about him.
She’d just turned nineteen when Andrei was born. She had still been a child herself, she understood now. But then, when he had first opened his big eyes and stared up at her, she had felt so grown up. Here was this whole little person, who she was supposed to love and cherish and protect. She had vowed that day to always protect him.
And she thought she had done that. Hidden away the bruises Grigori left on her. Kept her crying quiet and her smiles big. Run away to a foreign country and given him everything she had and was. In the process it had never become clear to her that maybe she was the one he needed protection from.
So as Yuna stood there, holding the broken pieces of the vase, Irina broke down again. She was tired of how easily tears found her, tired of feeling like she was made of glass.
Yuna sat down next to her, and put her arms around her. Irina wished she could be embarrassed about this, but instead she leaned into the touch. She had so few people here in Canada. So few that were willing to help and show up. But Yuna had.
“He’ll be okay. I’m sure he’s a smart kid,” Yuna whispered into Irina’s hair.
“He hate me. My fault. Everything,” Irina hiccuped. That made Yuna freeze for a second, before pulling back. She out her hands on Irina’s shoulders, forcing their eyes to meet.
“Nothing is your fault, okay? You saved your boys. I don’t know exactly what happened in Russia, but I know that you saved them. Nothing is your fault.”
She said it so securely. So decidedly that it left no room for Irina to argue. Instead she just melted back into her new friend's arms, and nodded slightly.
“Andrei will come back to you, I promise.”
—---
Irina wasn’t sure what to do. Two hours had passed since the police had left, and there had been no news. Andrei had been gone for three hours at least.
Ilya had come crawling into her lap half an hour ago, the novelty of playing with his friend having worn off. Now, Yuna was sitting in one corner of the couch, swaying a grumpy Shane, whilst Irina petted her little Ilyusha.
She was just about to open her mouth, say something to thank the other woman, when there was a sudden knock on the door. It opened before either Yuna or Irina could react, but that didn’t matter, because there, in the doorway, stood Andrei and David.
Irina put Ilya down, and jumped to her feet.
“Oh, my baby! My baby!” She called out in Russian, falling to her knees as she pressed Andrei against her. He was cold, wrapped up in what she thought might be Mr Hollander’s flannel shirt, and his slippers were soaked.
“I was so worried!” More words tumbled out of her mouth, as she pressed kisses to any part of Andrei’s face she could reach, and petted his hair. Andrei accepted her love, and she felt so relieved that she could pass out.
Ilya had suddenly materialised beside her, looking up at his big brother almost shyly.
“Where did you go?” He asked, so innocently that it knocked Irina’s breath out of her. Andrei looked at his soaked slippers, and shrugged.
“I don’t know.”
Ilya seemed to think about it for a second.
“Back to papa?” He whispered finally, eyes wide with worry. Andrei’s look mirrored him, and for a few brief seconds, they really did look alike. Equal in their terror for a man that could no longer reach them.
“No! Not papa. Just away. I took the bus. But it was so cold. I am sorry mama!” Then Andrei was crying, and Irina tightened her arms around both her boys. She loved them so much.
Ten minutes later, Andrei was in the shower, as Irina warmed milk on the stove for him. The Hollanders were getting dressed to leave. Before they could go, Irina reached out carefully, and put a hand on David’s arm.
“How- um- how you know to go?” She stuttered out in unsure English. David’s mouth twitched, like he was about to smile.
“I noticed the bus stop outside. Figured it might be worth seeing where it ended its journey.” David shrugged a little. “It’s what I did as a kid, when I ran away.”
“You ran away?” Irina stared at him with wide eyes, and David smiled.
“Yes, a few times. It’s not an uncommon way for young boys to deal with big emotions, I think. A good way to calm down alone. It’s the getting back home part that is often a problem.”
Irina let go of his arm, deep in her thoughts. She didn’t know David at all, but he seemed like a good, kind man, with good, strong morals and values. A proper person. And despite that, he had been the type of child that ran away from home. Maybe this was good. Maybe there was hope for her Andrei too.
Ilya waved goodbye to Shane from the balcony, whilst Irina poured the milk into two cups for them. The Hollanders had finally left, leaving behind an exhausted Irina, with both her children, and an apartment much cleaner than they had found it. She would forever be in their debt.
—---
Three days after the incident with Andrei, Irina came home from getting the post to find that Ilya wasn’t in his room. And not in the living room or kitchen. Irina could feel the way her heart began to speed up, the now horribly familiar panic starting to rise.
“No, no, no,” she whispered frantically, as she tore open the door to the bathroom. No Ilya. She stepped back into the hallway, her breath coming out in short bursts. Shit. No. Not her little one too.
The light cadence of Ilya’s laughter hit her ears as if from thousands of miles away. It broke through the rush of blood in her ears. Almost dazed, she slumped against the wall, breathing hard as if she had been running.
When she had calmed down enough, Irina followed the sound of her little boy, and stopped in front of the slightly ajar door to Andrei’s room. In the little opening, she could just see the edge of his bed, and how Andrei was sitting there, carefully nodding his head to the music playing from his cd-player. He had his back to her, but Irina could see how relaxed he seemed.
On the floor in front of him, Ilya was having some sort of interpretive dance party, banging his head completely off beat whilst shaking his arms and doing something strange with his feet.
Tears welled into Irina’s eyes before she could do anything about it. She could feel the way her cheeks stretched out, a smile so wide she wondered if her face could crack under the pressure. Softly, she pressed her hand to her mouth, trying to calm down a little, as a tear began its slow descent from her eye. A wet sob escaped her lips.
“You look dumb,” Andrei said, leaning back on his hands as he regarded his little brother sceptically. Ilya stuck his tongue out.
“You are dumb. Dancing is fun!” He said, and jumped a little more as if to prove his point.
Irina felt like she could melt, as Andrei leaned forward, and, a little awkwardly, ruffled Ilya’s blond curls. Was this even real? One of her biggest wishes upon leaving Russia had been that her boys would become actual brothers. And here they were.