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Ilya is standing outside, staring into the water, feeling the sun. Way back, at the start, the first lonely week in Ottawa after the move when he had nothing but his thoughts for company, his feet had led him to his now-favorite spot by the Rideau Canal, overlooking the Fairmont. Some time after he told Shane that he was serious about moving to Ottawa and signing with the Centaurs, Shane said to him that the canal would freeze over in the winter and parts of it would be turned into a skateway. “We could… you know? Like a date. When you’re finally here.” These words were whispered in the crook of Ilya’s neck, right before Shane began kissing his way from his pulse to his chest, then to his thighs, until he got to where Ilya really wanted him.
Two years in and not having gone makes it wishful thinking on Shane’s part. On Ilya’s, he doesn’t much know. He hasn’t really confronted the meat of it yet. It didn’t really matter. The canal wasn’t frozen over now. It’s mid-June, warm summer. Ilya wishes it was winter; not because he wanted to take Shane skating, but because he misses the cold—his one little reminder of home. He takes a deep breath, exhales, then wonders, perhaps, if this is why he’s never brought Shane here: the one place now, in the world, where he can indulge in uninterrupted longing.
He hadn’t believed it, at first. When he saw his mother’s small, crumpled up body on their bathroom floor, so still and so unlike who she had been just the night before—loud, boisterous laughter spilling from her red lips, wide-eyed and alive, alive, alive—Ilya’s first thought was that she was only sleeping.
Later, at the funeral, while furtive glances were being thrown at him standing dry-eyed and blank-faced in the corner, Ilya had heard the whispers of 'poor kid, to think that she let him see her like that.' Ilya remembers those words finally cracking his composure. How the scowl formed on his face as he thought that, surely, his mother never meant for him to find her like that. Bad-timing; she just didn’t know how fast the pills would take her. Irina Rozanova was many things: sad, beautiful, funny, lonely. Now, she is dead. But she was never cruel. Never to Ilya, at least. And even if she was, well, Ilya has always been the forgiving sort. A bottomless well.
Shane is the first to speak at dinner, his fork still hanging mid-air between the plate and his mouth. Ilya, before Shane could actually breach the silence, has long predicted the question, and so he resists the urge to mouth the words along with Shane who asks: “Where were you this afternoon?”
“Hmm?”
“You weren’t here when I arrived,” Shane continues, tilting his head. “I had to use the key.”
“Ah, yes. I was out.”
“Out where?”
Why all the questions? Ilya wants to ask him, but he knows it would be unfair to Shane. And, also, because he knows that saying the words would lead to more—more questions, more words, more and more and more and Ilya has no room for it all, no space to hold and entertain them. He can’t begin to explain any of it to Shane. He could barely make sense of it himself.
“Just out,” he finally says, avoiding Shane’s gaze. If he didn’t think there was a problem before, he definitely does now. But Ilya knows that Shane has an ocean of patience for him, no end in sight, so he just listens as Shane sighs, brings his fork to his mouth, and lets it go.
Moscow is landlocked. The closest coast is up north, over a thousand kilometers away, the shores of the White Sea. Arkhangelsk is the nearest city, probably, sitting on the banks of the Northern Dvina. Or was it the biggest? Ilya could no longer recall. He hasn’t been to Russia since his father died, and he finds it’s much easier to forget a place when the only way to ever go back to it is in memory. When he was younger, his mom used to take him and Alexei… somewhere. This, too, he could not fully remember. But he does recall the warm August sun at the tail-end of summer, and the sand scraping against the soles of his feet. The way her laughter rang so loud it drowned out the sound of the gentle waves melting against the shore. It’s a game of close-almost-approximation: close enough to a beach, almost a happy time, an approximation of a warm memory.
Ottawa is also landlocked, with the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean over a thousand kilometers away. A funny coincidence. Ilya could pretend it’s just like Moscow, if he really wanted to. If he could delude himself enough, even when the signs outside his house are written in English and not in Cyrillic. Whatever inland waters it has still freezes, then thaws, then freezes again. And while it doesn’t have his mother, it does have Shane and the life he chose, the life he wanted, and the promise that someday it will all be worth it.
Of course, Ilya understands that this, too, is a game.
Someday, Ilya thinks during the drive up to the cottage, as he looks at Shane from the corner of his eye, covered in the warm light filtering through the glass of the windshield. Someday.
Irina Rozanova’s face is hazy in his memory. At twelve, her features were a clear imprint in his mind; at twenty-nine, time has eroded most of everything. Ilya could only really remember her smile, the way her lips framed a row of perfect white teeth. He supposes they might look the same, because he never really looked like his father. When he gazes, now, at his reflection in the lake, he wonders if the ripples could turn the image into something else. Give him a glimpse of her face, maybe; a gift, after everything he’s given up. Through the sound of the water, he can hear her honeyed voice crooning in his ear saying Ilyusha, my dear Ilyusha. My baby boy. I love you, I love you, I love you. This, too, is wishful thinking. Irina had been too sick in the end. Love hadn’t been enough.
Shane’s voice rings out from behind him, calling him through the door and beckoning him back in. But Ilya is not yet done standing outside, staring into the water, feeling the sun.