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It had become a rule in the Hollander-Rozanov household that homework was done in the kitchen: not because they thought that their academically gifted daughter wouldn’t get her work done, but to create some separation between school and home. Her bedroom was meant for relaxing, and if Shane had anything to do with it, he would make sure that she had a place she could go where the stresses of the day could fade away and her brain could clear without the pressure that she put on herself.
Having an eighth grader meant that Shane was becoming very aware that his own knowledge of general academics may have peaked prior to that. He was the ‘homework help’ parent, something he wore like a badge of honor. He had been good at school, just like he was good at most things he tried, per his own ridiculously high standards for himself. But even he could admit having a child of above average intelligence wasn’t for the weak.
Ilya loved watching Shane help with homework; he always had this adorable scrunch of his eyebrows when he focused, and God, his glasses. He wore them more often these days, his eyes not as young as they once were, no matter how hard Shane tried to reject that reality. Ilya lived for it all. He would watch from the living room floor while Shane worked side by side with their oldest daughter, assisting as needed. Ilya usually stuck to playing with their toddler, stealing glances when he could of Shane hunched over their oldest daughter’s shoulder, intensely focused on a textbook or the computer screen. He’d turn back to their youngest, who was frequently talking Ilya’s ear off, and he would nod and think about how someday, she would be taking that spot at the table as well. He would grin to himself, knowing he had years left of that adorable eyebrow scrunch to admire.
The time spent at the table was longer these days; Mariya’s coursework becoming more demanding as she took more courses. She was in the highest-level classes she could take in her last year of middle school, putting her a year to two ahead depending on the subject by the time she would reach high school. Shane stared at the introductory biology textbook as Mariya made her study guide for her exam the next week, the words more foreign as he read along. He was sure that he knew what all those words meant at some point; but the memory of the concepts was so far gone that he couldn’t even consider them familiar.
The one thing that Shane tried his hardest to understand for his kid’s sake was math. It was his kryptonite growing up. The sight of a parabola still sent shivers down his spine just thinking about the emotional distress that resulted from his mother’s insistence that she enroll him in after school math in the fourth grade until he reached high school. ‘It’s a great program! You need the extra practice!’ she would say as Shane returned each day from his after-school tutoring session in a sour mood before he needed to head to hockey practice.
He was grateful that hockey ended up working out, and afforded him enough money to hire someone to do any form of financial math that needed to be done. He always put on a brave face when attempting to help his daughter with her math homework as she grew up, but the numbers still tended to confuse him and leave him in a daze after they finished each worksheet. It wasn’t until recently that he truly had no idea what he was looking at when he would review the textbook problems she had been assigned for the night. Honestly, Mariya didn’t usually need his help, but he liked to be involved and it gave them time to do something together. It would often turn into her teaching him, something he knew was an effective learning method from all of his research, or they would find YouTube tutorials together and try to solve the harder questions together.
Something that Ilya had never brought up to Shane was that he was actually very good at math. It never came up before, and he didn’t feel the need to say it. He would simply smirk to himself when they were struggling through a problem that he knew he could solve quite easily. It was fun for him to watch Shane struggle with something, and the more Shane struggled, the longer he got to admire the adorable, focused look on Shane’s face. It was a win-win, really. Shane got to spend time with Mariya, and Ilya got to file the beautiful view of it in the back of his mind for whenever he needed a little joy.
“Shane, Mashenka, we need to eat dinner, can you put the homework away for a little bit?” Ilya asked, Natalya on his hip as he pulled the baked chicken out of the oven.
Their response was delayed, finishing the section of the tutorial they were watching before responding, “we have to finish this question at least, we’re not even halfway done with this assignment yet,” Shane answered, taking off his glasses to rub his eyes. They’d been working on this for over two hours, neither him nor Mariya feeling more confident in factoring polynomials than when they started.
Ilya sighed, “eighth grade sounds very hard, doesn’t it, Zakya?” he whispered to Natalya as he set her on the counter to cut up her dinner into small pieces.
It took another fifteen minutes for Shane and Mariya to clear the table of textbooks and laptops to make enough room for dinner. Ilya pretended to be irritated, but it easily dissolved. It was mostly Natalya that was genuinely irritated, clearly ready to eat regardless of the state of her older sister’s homework. It was her whines that got Shane and Mariya to get a move on to put everything aside, just for dinnertime. Ilya plated everyone’s meals and set them at their seats at the table, enjoying the tired look on Shane’s face.
Conversation was limited at dinner that night, a result of the clouded exhaustion that was settled over Shane and Mariya. The conversation was overrun by their two-year-old, who almost never ran out of things to say. It was mostly nonsense, but Ilya missed having these nonsensical conversations that defined toddlerhood, and he promised himself he would listen to it as much as he could. Natalya would switch back and forth between Russian and English, and Mariya would occasionally engage to teach her new Russian words when she would pause. Mariya hardly ever spoke Russian anymore, a byproduct of growing up in an English-speaking society, but Ilya made sure to force her to speak it from time to time, just to make sure she didn’t lose it.
Once dinner was finished, Ilya set Natalya free to the living room and washed the dishes while Shane and Mariya took their spot back at the table once it was wiped down, locked back into question nine. They had seven more problems to complete before they were finished, and at this rate, they wouldn’t be done until it was time for bed.
“Love, what did your teacher say about these ones? These ones are different than the other ones we worked on,” Shane asked, his eyes beginning to cross at the combinations of letters and numbers, which have now stacked on top of each other in three lines, needing to be simplified.
Mariya sighed, “she said nothing. These are the flipped classroom ones. The answers are in the back of the book but you still have to show the work for correctness, so we have to figure it out.”
“What is flipped classroom?” Ilya asked from the sink.
Shane and Mariya looked at him with equal disgust at the concept, “it’s this ridiculous thing where we have to do the problems at home without being taught how to do it and then they finally teach us after we’ve tried to figure it out,” Mariya explained, clearly vexed.
“All the research says it’s a very effective teaching method, though it can be very frustrating,” Shane supplied, trying to stay upbeat, but his tone indicated that his patience was wearing thin.
Ilya paused washing the dishes, “sounds very frustrating, book does not teach it well?”
“Not at all,” Shane answered for Mariya, who nodded along with him.
“I’m sure you will figure it out,” Ilya encouraged as he finished the dishes. Shane and Mariya both brushed his statement off, clicking onto yet another YouTube tutorial in attempts to make sense of the complex equations. Ilya watched from the sink, the concepts familiar. He solved the problem in his head before the video finished, feeling proud of himself when he reached the right answer. He made a plan in the back of his mind that if they were still struggling by the time he settled Natalya into bed, he would step in. Until then, he would sit back and enjoy the wrinkled lines on the bridge of Shane’s nose as he became more frustrated, like little bunny.
Ilya spent the next hour going through the bedtime routine for their youngest after Shane took a break to give his snuggles and say his goodnights to her. He played soft music as they always did during bath time, speaking softly to her in Russian as he washed her hair, “Your sister is very smart. You are too, Zakya, but I hope you have a little more fun, I think. She is very serious sometimes, and I don’t think you have it in you to be so serious,” he rambled. She looked up at him with big, sleepy eyes as he rinsed out the baby shampoo, clearly enjoying the warmth of the tub. Bedtime was the only time she slowed down in their home; Shane called her the Energizer Bunny, always bouncing off the walls, which was where Ilya found his nickname for her.
Once she was in her pajamas and they settled in after a story in the rocking chair, Ilya marveled at the baby that laid in his arms, drifting off to sleep. When she was at home with them, she was full of excitement and always had something to say, which Shane frequently attributed to Ilya. To those that didn’t really know Ilya, she seemed to take after Shane. When they were out in public, she was painfully shy; just as he had been when he was young. She would attach herself to his leg when the park was too busy, or the store was crowded. She was terrified of new people. They were slowly working on this as she became more capable of being social, Ilya thinking back to what could have helped in his own childhood. He’d never been allowed to be so shy, and he wondered what he would’ve been like if he’d been supported rather than strong-armed into putting himself out there for the world to tear apart. The more he thought about it, there were so many little things from his childhood that nobody in his life now knew about. Perhaps it could be in small moments that he could share them. It didn’t need a grand declaration, but maybe it could be through a math problem or a gentle nudge forward that he could allow those he loved most to know the smallest details of who he had been so long ago, without the guise of his harshened personality that he was forced to take up.
He set Natalya down in her bed with a gentle kiss to her forehead and clicked the nightlight on, then gently padded down the stairs. The sight of the kitchen table had hardly changed, with only the addition of the whiteboard on the table, having thrown away too many pieces of notebook paper by that point. He let out a deep breath as he walked over to the kitchen.
“How is it going?” he asked, planting a kiss on top of Mariya’s head and settling his hands on the back of her chair.
She groaned loudly before putting her head down on the table, “Not good. We’re only on question eleven and I’m so tired.”
Ilya looked to Shane, who appeared equally as exhausted, his hair mussed from how many times he’d run his hands through them. He had the cap of the whiteboard marker between his teeth, sticking out of his lips, which made Ilya smirk to himself, sexy teacher.
“I don’t know if we’re going to be able to get this all done. I can’t figure out what these are supposed to be and the book is no help.”
“Can I see?” Ilya asked.
Mariya and Shane both looked at him, surprised. He’d helped with homework from time to time when she was younger, but once she got older, he always said that the English words were too hard for him to understand. Neither quite believed it, but they let it go. Ilya knew that Shane enjoyed doing it, so he conceded his role and let him take it over.
“Trust me, just let me see the book,” Ilya insisted.
Neither Mariya nor Shane were in the position to deny his help, so they slid the book over to him. Ilya looked at the question thoughtfully, the gears in his head working as he made sense of what the problem was asking. The English was hard, but after seeing an example it easily made sense. That was one thing he held onto when he struggled to learn English; at least numbers were fairly universal.
He took the whiteboard from Shane, writing the problem out and simplifying the terms perfectly using the different rules that Shane and Mariya had written out on a piece of paper. Shane watched in absolute awe as Ilya focused. Ilya’s tongue poked out of the side of his mouth as he scribbled on the board, drawing arrows to show where the numbers moved to in the next step.
Mariya sat watching, her jaw dropping slightly watching her Papa work through it with ease. Once Ilya finished, he circled the final answer and flipped to the bookmarked page at the back of the book, confirming his answer was right, smiling to himself as he turned over the board to his family.
“Papa! Why didn’t you say something sooner that you know how to do this? HOW do you know how to do this?” Mariya asked, exasperated.
“There are lots of things that you don’t know about me. Was very good at math in school, and Dad likes to help you, so I let him.”
“But Dad sucks at math! Like so bad! I end up teaching him every night when we do it!”
“Hey! I don’t suck at math!” Shane shot back.
Ilya and Mariya both look over at him, and then to each other. For the first time that night, Mariya starts laughing along with Ilya.
“Math is not one of your talents, moya Lyubov. Just ask your mother,” Ilya giggled.
Mariya laughed even harder, “Oh, I’m asking grandma about this.”
Shane groaned, “I got better at it. But why have you never thought to speak up and say that you’re a math genius while we struggled over here?”
“You never asked, and I like to watch you struggle. Is good for both of you occasionally.”
Ilya steered the ship back on course, assisting with the last few problems of the assignment. He couldn’t really explain what he was doing, never learning the terms for things in English, but he could show it. Mariya watched as he grouped things together, pointing to the rules on the paper and parsing down the large equation into a more manageable one. It was starting to click for Mariya, and Ilya felt so proud of himself. Shane watched from the side, just appreciating watching Ilya’s brain work in a way he didn’t know he could. It’s not that Shane wasn't aware that Ilya was intelligent, he was just still learning its depths.
Both Mariya and Shane sighed with relief as they circled the answer to question sixteen half an hour later, finally reaching the end of the assigned work. Ilya grinned as he packed Mariya’s textbooks and folders into her backpack, setting it by the front door where it would live until the next day.
“I think it is time for everyone to get ready for bed,” Ilya said, looking at two-thirds of his exhausted family still sat at the table.
Mariya shook her head, clearing the stupor she’d been in for hours, “Yes. I’m going to bed. From now on, you are helping with math. Dad, you’ve been replaced, sorry to tell you like this,” she said as she stood from the table, leaning over to hug Shane who was still sat with his head in his hands leaned on the table.
“I’m not offended, don’t worry. But I’ll still help with everything else, that I can do,” Shane admitted defeat as he stood.
Mariya said her goodnights and a thank you to her Papa before disappearing up the stairs to take a well-deserved shower before bed. Shane crossed the floor to meet Ilya in the living room, a small smile appearing on his face. Ilya still managed to surprise him, even after all these years.
“That was incredibly hot, just so you know,” Shane said quietly, wrapping his arms around Ilya’s waist.
“Maybe that is new thing we can try, sexy teacher and student,” Ilya suggested, laughing.
Shane laughed and leaned in to kiss him, “I knew I wasn’t good at math, but I didn’t think I was that bad.”
“You are very bad at it, but it’s very cute to watch you focus.”
“I am still scarred from Kumon, and you let me struggle through that because I look cute doing it?” Shane joked.
Confusion was painted on Ilya's face, “What the fuck is Kumon?”
Shane’s cheeks reddened, “It’s an after-school program for when you’re really bad at math. My mom made me do it for years because I kept crying attempting to do long division in fourth grade.”
Ilya beamed, “are you telling me you were in the stupid class?”
“There’s no such thing as the stupid class! I just needed more help!”
“You were in the stupid class.”
“Okay, maybe I was. But not for anything else, I was exceptional at everything else,” Shane justified.
Ilya smiled down at Shane, amused, “I’m sure you were. I was exceptional at everything. Including math.”
“I’m sure you were. You’re much smarter than you let on,” Shane said, leading Ilya to the couch where they laid, tangled up in each other, enjoying the quiet that had settled over their home.
Ilya considered this, “Maybe because it was never something that mattered. I wasn’t going to do anything with it, so why focus on it? Once I moved here and could barely speak English, nobody knew I was smart anyway,” Ilya said, a small ripple of sadness washing through his mind as he said it out loud.
Shane stared up at Ilya as if he hung the stars, moving his hand to caress his jaw, “because it’s who you are. Just because you can’t always say it in a way that makes people think you’re smart, you still show it.”
Ilya grinned, comforted at the thought that even if he couldn’t get all the words right, others might still be able to see it, “so you are saying I am the best at everything?”
“Don’t push it, but secretly I might be thinking it.”
“Should we put Masha in Kumon?”
“I will divorce you before I allow our children to go through that trauma.”