Chapter Text
Shane is nine years old when his dad comes home with the piece of paper and an idea that changes everything.
It’s not even about Shane, is the thing.
“Marie was telling me about this program she’s part of,” David says over the dinner table. “It’s a respite program, for kids who live in the area that was most heavily affected by the Chernobyl disaster.”
“A respite program?” Yuna echoes back.
“They’re starting to see some serious health problems in people who live there. Thyroid cancer in children at over 100 times the usual rate.” Shane doesn’t know what cancer is, exactly, just that it’s a sickness where a person’s body starts to fight itself? “Families are sending their children to North America for the summer to give their bodies a break from the radiation. Not just the environmental radiation, but also in the water and the food. Apparently it’s been really successful. They've tested radiation levels in some kids before they go and after they come back.”
“You want us to host a kid from Ukraine.” Shane’s mother cuts right to the heart of it.
“The organization Marie works with is helping children from the western part of Russia. They took in a girl last year, and they’re having her back again this year. She gave me an application form, just in case.”
“David.” Shane watches his mother rub at her forehead. “We don’t speak Russian.”
“I know. They have translators to get us started. Marie said that they leaned on a lot of charades to get them started, but they picked up a few key words in Russian and their Russian kid caught on to English faster than they expected. A proper immersion experience, I guess.”
“You don’t think we have our hands full as it is? We both work full-time. It’s hard enough keeping Shane occupied and supervised for the summer.”
“Maybe this is a good thing! Look, the application asks about the people who live in the household. Maybe they’ll send us a kid Shane’s age, and they can play together for the summer. And, well, I know having a second one never worked out for us, but it might be a little bit like -”
“David.”
Shane pauses eating at the severe tone of his mother’s voice.
“Sorry,” his dad says quietly. “That was too far.”
He stops talking about the program, and starts asking Shane about how the second day back to school after the winter break had gone.
***
The application form is still sitting on their kitchen counter when Shane goes out to eat breakfast in the morning. He reads it while he eats, because he already has the cereal box memorized in both English and French, and it’s nice to look at something new. The application briefly gives the mission statement of the Ottawa Valley Aid for Chernobyl Children, and then requests a swath of information about the applicant host family: how many people live in their house, their ages and genders, their interests, how many bedrooms the house has, how many bathrooms, if there’s a backyard, if they’re close to amenities like libraries and parks.
“We have all these things,” Shane tells his mother, as she packs his lunch.
“We have what things, Shane?”
“That they’re asking for, if you want to have a kid come visit.”
“It’s a nice idea, love, but I’m not sure it fits our family, right now.”
“Do you think they’d send a boy who likes hockey?”
His mother pauses. “What do you mean?”
“If we put that I love hockey, will they send us a boy who loves hockey too? Lots of great players come from Russia. They must like playing it there, too. Maybe they’d send me a new friend.”
“I’m not sure it works like that, love,” she says gently.
“I think we could figure out how to be friends, if we both liked hockey, even if he didn’t speak any English,” Shane says wistfully.
***
His mother caves, when faced with two Hollander boys who want to pursue this endeavour. They submit the application, and Shane adds a letter he writes himself, asking if they can please send him a new friend who will play hockey with him all summer long.
***
There’s a phone call that happens a month later, followed shortly by someone who comes to see the house. The woman walks all through their space and takes notes about their house, and the guest room that they intend to loan to the visiting child.
“Would you be interested in taking two?” the woman asks, towards the end of the visit.
“We just have the queen bed, in the guest room,” Yuna says hesitantly.
“I don’t think it’ll be a problem. I don’t doubt that we have some families who are more than happy for their children to share a bed for the summer, if it means getting them both away for a couple months. And would you be willing to participate in the program for more than one year?”
“It would depend on how the first year went, I imagine,” David says tactfully. “But we’re not opposed to the idea.”
“Alright. Everything looks good, on my end. Let me bring this back to our office, and we’ll see who we can match you with. Thank you, Mr Hollander, Mrs Hollander. And thank you, Shane. We loved your letter.”
***
They get a call that they’ve been approved as a host family, and then the woman stops by their house again with an envelope for them.
The whole family is sat together on the sofa, awaiting the news. It’s taken four months to get to this point, and summer is really just around the corner. “We’re happy to tell you that we’ve paired you with the Rozanov family,” she says. “Two boys, Alexei and Ilya. Alexei is 13, and Ilya is 9. They live in Moscow now, although they were born much closer to the Belarusian border. They applied to our program last year, but we couldn’t find a good match that could take both of them. But it turns out that Ilya is a big fan of hockey, just like you, Shane! And we knew that it was meant to be.”
Shane smiles, pleased.
A new friend. Ilya.
***
The Hollanders go to the Ottawa airport in mid-June, accompanied by a Russian translator, Ivan, who volunteers with the OVAFCC organization. Shane used a bit of spare cardboard to make a sign with Ilya and Alexei’s names on it, copying the Cyrillic letters diligently after his dad had reminded him that the boys probably couldn’t read their own names in Latin script.
They had flown from Moscow to Amsterdam, and then continued on to Ottawa. Shane’s mother had reminded him that they had been travelling for most of the day, and that they were probably exhausted and didn’t speak much English, besides. “You’ll need to have some patience,” she reminds him again, while they stand near the doors where people spill out with their luggage and tired eyes.
The translator has a copy of school photos for both boys in a folder that he’s brought along, to help spot them in the crowd. Both are wearing crisp white shirts in their photos, hair cropped close to their skulls. They don’t look entirely like one another, but Shane supposes they look similar enough. He knows better than most that blood relation doesn’t necessary mean looking like the closest people in your family.
In the end, it isn’t hard to spot the Rozanov brothers, who come through with one big suitcase each. Ilya clutches his brother’s hand and looks around with wide eyes. Ivan waves at them, and Shane holds his little sign up a little higher.
Alexei clearly spots them, and guides his little brother over. “Hello,” he says stiffly in English, then pauses. He glances at the translator, then continues in Russian.
“Ah,” Ivan says. “He says that they are very grateful for you opening their home to them this summer, and that they will be well-behaved for you.” Alexei interjects with another quick bit of Russian. “Alexei says that he will take care of Ilya so that neither of them are a bother to you. He’s happy to look after your son, as well.” The translator looks a bit embarrassed. Shane thinks that Alexei looks determined, his chin set stiffly.
“Oh, no,” Yuna says quickly. “We haven’t brought them here so that he can work the whole time. It’s still their summer break. Please tell him that we hope he can have some fun and relaxation, while he’s here.”
Ivan echoes that back to the boys. Alexei’s face doesn’t change much. Shane worries, suddenly, that his grand plan to get a new hockey friend will maybe backfire on him. If they’re both so stern and unfriendly, he doesn’t think they’re going to want to hang out with him. Especially not Alexei, who is much older and taller and probably thinks that hanging out with a little kid his brother’s age is boring.
They all walk out to the airport parking lot, and Ivan follows them home in his own car. He stays for a couple of hours, long enough for him to relay all of the Hollander house rules to the Rozanovs, and for the boys to answer the veritable list of questions that Yuna and David have for them. Food preferences, sleep schedules, hobbies, things they’d like to have in their shared bedroom.
He leaves behind a business card with his phone number on it, available for any party to call him if they need him, although they’re encouraged to try and muddle through it themselves, first. David had asked Marie at work for advice, which meant that they were already pre-armed with a couple English-Russian dictionaries, and Shane’s mother had printed out a stack of little images with both the English and Russian words attached, for them to stick around the house to help with communication and language acquisition, on both sides. There’s an extra one on the fridge with lots of types of food on it, and another one with feelings listed – thirsty, hungry, hurt, tired, angry, happy.
Shane had asked her to make one for hockey, and he was now in possession of a laminated sheet of paper with all the most important words of his life illustrated across it. Hockey, stick, puck, net, helmet, skates, pads, pass, shoot, goal, assist, crease, faceoff, forward, defence, goalie, arena, boards.
He hopes that Ilya wants to talk to him tomorrow.
***
The Rozanovs are up early. They stay in their room until 7am, when they tiptoe quietly to the kitchen, where Yuna is already up and getting ready for work.
Shane joins them a little later. He still has one week left of school, although they aren’t going to do anything useful in his class, and he wishes that he could stay and get to know Alexei and Ilya a little better. Ilya has been very quiet so far, and Shane thinks that maybe he’s shy. Shane doesn’t think that he’s shy, just that he doesn’t always understand how everyone else seems to know how to act in a situation but he doesn’t. It’s not that he doesn’t want to make friends and talk to people, it’s just that it’s more complicated than everyone else makes it out to be.
Shane goes to school, and his mother goes to work, and the Rozanovs stay home with his dad all day. He sits in class and wonders what they’re doing. He can’t wait to go home again.
***
Ilya knows even less English than his brother, it turns out. He knows ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and ‘hello’ and ‘thank you,’ but he only utilizes them when presented with an option, or given something. He says ‘yes’ to mashed potatoes and ‘no’ to having seconds. He says ‘hello’ when Shane comes into the living room, having dropped his backpack in the front hall, and ‘thank you’ when Shane passes him the water jug at dinnertime.
They go to sleep early again, and Shane thinks about the page of hockey terms sitting on the desk in his bedroom.
***
It isn’t until Shane is done school for the year that he gets the chance he’s been waiting for all week. Since January, when they first filled out that application.
“Do you want to play hockey?” he asks Ilya, slowly and clearly like his dad told him to. He holds out the page and points at the hockey player image, with the Russian word underneath. “Hockey?” he says again. “With me?” he adds, pointing at his chest.
Ilya looks at the page, and for the first time, Shane sees a smile lighten up his entire face. Gone is the boy who moved silently from room to room, who went to bed without prompting and woke with the sun.
He points at the same picture and nods enthusiastically. Shane points towards the door that connects to the garage, and then beckons Ilya to follow. He has a few sticks stashed out there, and a cardboard box full of street hockey balls. His roller blades are tucked onto a shelf so that no one trips over them again, like the time his dad nearly took a header into the wall. He gestures Ilya towards the sticks, and watches as the boy reaches unerringly for the longest one. He was a little taller than Shane, which Shane tried not to take personally. His mom kept telling him that he was due for another growth spurt any day.
He doesn’t put on his roller blades to play, because he doesn’t have a second pair for Ilya, and that seems unfair. But he drags out his battered net and tosses a ball down to the ground, and gives it a gentle tap to Ilya. The OVAFCC lady had said that Ilya liked hockey, but she hadn’t said if he played it at all. Shane was pretty sure that he wouldn’t care if Ilya was terrible at hockey, if only he could have someone to play it with, instead of shooting at the net by himself all afternoon.
Ilya is not terrible at hockey.
Shane’s gentle passes get snappier, and then Ilya lunges to try and steal the ball off the blade of his stick, a wide grin on his face. And then they’re jostling each other on the driveway over the little orange ball, and Shane can’t help the laughter that bubbles out of his chest.
Alexei sits on the front porch stairs and watches them play, a book in his hand.
***
Shane has a stash of video tapes that he keeps in his room, of games that he recorded off the television. Some of the games are better than others, but he has a few favourites that he likes to rewatch sometimes. Most of the recordings he has feature the Metros, because they’re pretty good and an Original Six team too, but he has a handful of Centaurs games too, because his dad has loved the Centaurs for his whole life, and always tells Shane that the Centaurs will make it to the Cup, one day.
He and Ilya sit on the floor in front of the TV and work through Shane’s catalog of hockey games. They don’t need to share a language in order to appreciate a good game together.
***
Ilya and Alexei are still on their best behaviour, even a month into their stay. Ivan calls once a week to check in, talking to both boys on the phone for a little while before chatting with Yuna or David.
Alexei’s English is poor, but he slowly grows his vocabulary as the summer passes. He studies the laminated sheet on the fridge, and gets Shane to read him the words in English so that he can repeat them back. His accent is so thick that sometimes he can barely tell if Alexei is saying the word properly. He points to the Russian word and then at Alexei, who dutifully says it aloud so Shane can parrot it back. Ilya laughs from where he sits at the kitchen counter, eating an apple. Shane figures that his accent must be pretty awful, too.
***
Ilya bursts into tears over dinner halfway through the summer. He pushes his dinner plate away, hard, and babbles in Russian through his sobs. Alexei hushes him urgently, but Ilya cries and cries. Shane knows it’s not polite to stare, but he can’t help but look at the way that Ilya’s face scrunches up as the tears run down his cheeks.
“What’s wrong?” Yuna says worriedly. She grabs the dictionary, with its corners that have gotten quite worn over the last month, and looks up ‘wrong’ so that she can point to it for Alexei.
Alexei hums. He flips through the dictionary for a bit, until he seems happy with the word he’s found.
Homesick.
***
They call the translator, out-of-band, and put Alexei on the phone with him. It only takes a few minutes for Ivan to explain that Ilya misses his mother and her cooking, and that he misses cabbage and sour cream and pickled things.
After Ilya settles again, and they all have something to eat, Shane’s parents hustle them all into the car, and they drive twenty minutes to a European grocery store across town. Yuna pushes a little cart and encourages the boys to add the things that they want to have.
Shane thinks that Ilya nearly cries again when he picks up a jar of pickles with a label that Shane can’t read at all.
***
Shane thought that maybe he’d be able to have a proper conversation with Ilya by the end of the summer. He hadn’t realized how slow it was, to learn a new language. Alexei is still a stronger speaker than Ilya, although Ilya is certainly catching up. Still, it’s tediously slow to talk to him about anything, especially if it’s not about food or hockey.
Still, he likes spending time with Ilya. He thinks that Ilya is having fun, too.
***
When he looks into the room that they share, it’s hard for Shane to believe that two boys have been living in that space all summer.
None of their belongings sit out. All their clothes are tucked neatly away in the dresser and the closet, and their suitcases have been relegated to living under the bed. They brought very few toys and books with them, and they live in the little cupboard on the far wall. Shane is pretty sure that Alexei has read the same four books at least two times each. They’d taken him to the library, but the Russian-language section was appallingly small, and most of it had been deemed inappropriate for a 13-year-old, besides.
The Rozanov brothers still sit with straight spines at every meal, and say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ no matter what they’re served. Shane tries not to feel like they’re showing him up, like he can’t possibly sit at the table and tell his dad that he won’t eat the spinach in the pasta because it’s been wilted and now it’s too slimy in his mouth.
They never make too much noise, and Alexei in particularly tries to do chores that Shane’s parents won’t allow him to do. He’d tried to take out the garbage one day, during the first week of hosting, before David had shaken his head and lifted the bag right out of his hands. He’d carefully watched David mow the lawn, and then pointed at the shed and mimed pushing the lawnmower two weeks later, when the grass was getting too long again.
“You don’t have to earn your keep, here,” Yuna kept telling Alexei, through the translator.
Shane wonders if his parents might not prefer to have a son who does the garbage and the lawn and always minds the younger kids. He chokes down another bite of the wilted spinach.
***
The Hollanders take the Rozanovs on little day trips to see the parts of Canada that surround them. They go to Parliament Hill, which isn’t particularly interesting to a group of young boys, but the Canadian Museum of Nature doesn’t need much translating to be appealing. They look at the dinosaur bones, and the taxidermied Canadian animals, like the grizzly bear and the moose, both of which are too large for Shane to ever want to encounter in real life.
They introduce them to Canadian foods, the stereotypical ones like beavertails and poutine. David buys them a bag of ketchup chips to try, and another of all dressed, and laughs when Ilya can’t seem to pick a favourite.
They leave the city entirely and drive a couple hours west to visit the cottage for a few days. There’s a whole new set of words that they need to learn for this place: lake, forest, swim, boat, hike, fish, holiday. Ilya pretends not to hear his own name when he’s called out of the lake to come have dinner.
***
The end of August comes sooner than Shane would like. The Rozanovs need to be back home by the last week of summer, before they start school again on September 1st. He and Ilya have played hockey together almost every day, and watched an old game when it’s been too rainy to play outside. He thinks Alexei likes him a little better now, more than he used to. At least he tolerates him well enough. Shane’s learned a handful of Russian words, because he thinks it’s only fair that he tries to learn a new language while they are too, but it’s so difficult and he worries he’ll lose it all by next summer.
“Why don’t you boys write to each other, during the year?” Yuna suggests, a few days before they’re due to leave. She writes the Hollanders' address on a piece of paper and makes Ilya tuck it carefully into his suitcase. Alexei writes their home address as well, and Shane pins it to the bulletin board in his bedroom. He tucks the English-Russian dictionaries in with his collection of hockey books.
***
Shane doesn’t know what to do, as they stand at the airport and wait to get Alexei and Ilya checked in for their flight. It’s strange, for his summertime playmate to suddenly be gone, across the ocean and unreachable except for letters sent through the mail at an appallingly slow speed. Even if his parents were willing to pay for long-distance calling, what would he say? Their entire friendship is based upon their shared love of hockey, and the hours they’ve spent playing together on the driveway, or sat with their knees touching in front of the television to watch a game that happened two years ago. They can barely hold a conversation in-person, much less on the phone where they won't be able to see each other act out the words they're saying.
He tucks his hands into his pockets, feeling awkward as the person behind the desk checks the two passports. He follows his parents, as far as they’ve able to go before it’s time to let the brothers continue on themselves.
“We’ve loved having you,” Yuna says, scooping Alexei into a hug before catching Ilya as well. “Thank you for coming. Come back next summer, okay?”
“Have a safe trip home,” David says. “We’ll keep practicing our Russian, if you keep working on your English.”
Shane isn’t sure what to say, except, “I’ll miss you,” he tells Ilya earnestly. He will. For all that they don’t share a language, and they’ve been muddling through with fragments of thoughts and solitary words that have to carry the meaning of an entire sentence, Ilya is perhaps the best friend he’s ever had.
“Bye,” Ilya says, and grabs him for a tight hug. Shane thinks that he wouldn’t like if anyone else tried to do that to him, but he likes the way that Ilya squeezes him hard. “Write,” he says, and sketches his hand through the air.
“I will,” Shane promises. “Bye, Ilya. Bye, Alexei.”
He waves and waves until he can’t see them anymore. He's already thinking about next summer.