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Yuna Hollander's favourite place in the entire world is at the rink, in the stands, watching her son show the entire world that he is the very best at what he does.
Less than five minutes in, she's up out of her seat like a rocket before the puck has even made it to the back of the net. She'd driven the two hours to watch him in front of a home crowd so the wall of sound that engulfs her almost seems a physical force, knocks the air right out of her lungs. She claps until her hands sting, skin tinted a tender pink, and is the last one to take her seat.
“That's my son!” she turns to tell the woman sitting next to her, the words spilling out as if she's back watching his U11 team play a friendly against a gaggle of kids from the next town over and not in an arena filled with people who make it their business to know almost everything they can about their team’s captain. Any true Metros fan would already recognise her; they usually got her up on the jumbotron at least once when she was in the crowd.
The woman smiles, polite. “You must be very proud.”
She's much younger than Yuna - his age, probably - with pretty hazel eyes and her boyfriend’s arm slung around her shoulders in a display of casual intimacy that makes Yuna's heart ache, though she doesn't allow herself to acknowledge it. She seems sweet, she thinks, and then immediately follows it up with a defeated, She's not single. Which is a baffling series of thoughts. She doesn't let herself think too hard about that either.
-
“Jesus, mom, would you just leave it, okay?!”
The dinner table falls silent in the wake of the outburst. Usually, David’s the first to snap Don’t speak to your mother like that! when Shane says anything that could be read as even vaguely ungrateful but, like her, he looks completely stunned, fork stilled halfway to his mouth.
Shane sighs, dropping his gaze to the plate of food in front of him. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have– I know you’re trying to… help. I do. But there is nothing more important to me than hockey right now. I can’t afford any distractions.”
Yuna nods, chastised.
Shane had told them that he was going to become the greatest hockey player in the MLH when he was six years old. She had smiled and ruffled his hair, Of course you will, honey, even as she felt her stomach drop at the thought.
It was all her fault, of course. She knew this. Had Shane been David’s son by a woman his parents might have approved of then that woman would not have had to lie in bed at night and worry about the other boys treating him differently, sniggering names beneath their breath, the coaches refusing to recognise his talent, passing him up for opportunities. That woman would not have had to worry about, if he did make it, how the fans or the media might treat him - in a sport that was famously intolerant of outsiders - were he not to deliver above and beyond their expectations. She would not have had to resolve to work twice as hard, be twice as relentless, in the hopes that this might make up for it, for the advantages that her genes had cost him.
She had driven him to every practice, the sun just cresting past the horizon in the summers and an inky black darkness enveloping them, giving no indication that the sun might ever appear, in the winters. A handful of the other parents loved to complain about it. They often wandered into the rink’s cafe area to sit with hands curled around a paper cup of bitter, watery coffee - from the machine because there was nowhere you could get an actual hot drink made for you that early in the morning - and list all the inconveniences of the whole ordeal - of which the lack of decent coffee was always a pressing one. They resented, it seemed, the fact that their boys couldn’t just walk themselves across town to practice, with their overstuffed kit bags slung on one shoulder, noses red and fingers tingling in the cold.
Not Yuna. Her favourite place has always been the bleachers, even back then when there were no roaring crowds in her son's jersey or handmade signs proclaiming his greatness. Even back when it was just a handful of parents watching their sons run drills - smiling politely at her and exchanging pleasantries but making it clear that she should not expect any more. She hadn't cared. Her eyes had been fixed on him the whole time, gaze soft and filled with adoration. The way he glided over the ice like he was born to be there. The look of him in all of his gear, adorably rounded by all of the padding, a good head shorter than the rest of the boys his age. She had always waved at him from the stands, and when he was that small he had not yet learned to be self-conscious enough to ignore her.
“All the other parents just sit in the cafe,” he had mumbled one morning on the way from the rink to the middle school, where Yuna would drop him off before heading home to quickly sort his kit bag so that it didn’t end up stinking the whole house out before rushing into work.
She’d sat in silence for a few beats until they rolled to a stop at a set of lights, thinking about the way that her eyes used to search for her parents in the stands every time she’d played for her high school volleyball team, even though she’d known they wouldn’t be there. They hadn’t even known she’d played, because the shorts they wore were far too short and she had known exactly what they would say about decency and modesty and shame (and how she didn’t have enough of any of them). They would have told her that the Canadian girls she hung out with at school were a bad influence on her, that she was not one of them and would never be one of them, as if they would rather she had no friends at all. They probably would’ve also told her that she was no longer allowed to play. By that age, Yuna had become pretty accustomed to lying to them, to becoming a completely different person within the four walls of her childhood home than she was out in the real world, so it hadn’t really been an issue. On game days, she told her parents that she was going round to Elise’s to study and would stuff her kit into her bag beneath textbooks and revision notes to get changed into in Elise’s bathroom.
(“Oh my god, your parents sound crazy!” she can remember Elise calling through the bathroom door that first time when Yuna had tried to explain why she’d never told them that she’d made the team. Her mouth had snapped open to defend them before she’d realised that it would be hypocritical to when she said things like that all the time. Still, something had twisted in her stomach as she'd half-heartedly responded, “Yeah, I know right.”)
At the games, Elise’s mom had always made sure to wave at her from the crowd so that she wouldn't feel left out, but it hadn’t stopped her from glancing across the sea of faces just in case that time she might, by some miracle, find what she was hoping for.
“You can’t expect me to drive you all the way there and all the way back and then not even let me watch.” She’d been smiling as she said it, trying to infuse the words with more levity than she actually felt. Shane might not want to look for her, but if he ever did, he would find her. "I'll sit up at the back. And I won't wave," she'd offered - a compromise.
He’d taken a deep breath, as if to speak, but had not said anything, only crossed his arms across his chest and flicked his eyes away to look out of the passenger-side window.
For a long time she had waited patiently for the ‘terrible teens’ that the other hockey moms spoke about to rear their ugly head, for the answering back and the laziness and the contrarianism and the Go away! I hate you! You'll never understand! The type of behaviour that she could remember would have her mother holding her nose up high in the air and muttering under her breath in Japanese about white children and discipline (or lack thereof) whenever they caught glimpses of it in public.
It had never really come with Shane. Every time she had thought the switch might finally flick she had seen a similar set of events play out: him thinking better of it, silently acquiescing, holding everything inside instead. She liked to think that he'd known she had wanted what was best for him. That yes, she had worked him hard - consistently emphasised the importance of discipline, of dedication, of drive - but only because it was necessary.
She had done what she'd had to do.
And it had worked. Here he is. A generational talent. Youngest ever captain of the Metros. Two consecutive cup wins under his belt before he’s even hit 27. Known to be driven, disciplined, dedicated - a real role model to the young players coming up. The fans loved him. So did the execs. And, thanks to the MLH salary and the sponsorships and the brand deals, he had enough money holed away in investments and property that if he took a bad hit on the ice tomorrow (something that Yuna lived in near-constant fear of) that destroyed his chances of ever playing again, then he could still live out his days in relative comfort.
But isn’t he lonely?
There is nothing more important to me than hockey right now.
But don't you want there to be? she wants to ask. Don't you want to find someone you love more than the sport, more than your job? I know I told you that the only way you could achieve your dreams was to forsake everything but the ice but you’re here now. And it will not last forever - your body will only serve you so long - and you will have to live a whole life after it's done. Don't you want someone who will be there once it's over? Don't you want someone you can build a future with?
But when she draws a breath to broach the subject (delicately! she would do it delicately!) David puts his hand on her thigh beneath the table, squeezes gently. She closes her mouth, and he swiftly moves the conversation along. And that's the end of that.
-
“He would tell us, wouldn't he?” Yuna's been thinking about it all through the game and all the way home.
When Shane had met them for lunch in the time between the morning skate and the pre-game practice she had asked if he might like them to stay after. They could go for dinner together and dissect the game like they'd often done when he was in the Junior League, Yuna pointing out the weaknesses in his game for him to speak to the coach about focusing on when it came to the next practice. He’d looked vaguely uncomfortable about the suggestion, and the idea had quickly been brushed away by David.
“Yuna, he’s young and attractive and famous,” he had pointed out to her afterwards. “He doesn’t want to be spending his evenings with his parents.” Which begged the question of who he did want to be spending his evenings with. She has met his teammates - nice boys, polite, respectful - and she knows he has a couple of close friends among them. But a lot of them had wives and children already who presumably took up a good chunk of their time off-ice. And he wasn’t the type to enjoy the drinking and partying that a lot of the ones who weren’t settled seemed to indulge in. He also wasn’t the type who would want to spend each evening with someone new. So where did that leave him?
Alone, she had always thought. But then he’d been so shifty about his plans after the game.
She's spent so long worrying that he doesn't have anyone to share his life with that she's forgotten to worry that maybe he does.
On the doorstep of the house they raised him in, her brows draw together in concern as David turns the key in the lock and ushers both of them out of the cold. “He would tell us if… if…”
She can remember the three years that she and David had dated while they were at McGill. How lonely it had felt. She had wanted to be able to share him. He's so handsome, and thoughtful, and kind, she had dreamed about telling her mother, picturing herself twirling the cord of the telephone round her finger like a lovesick girl in a movie. You should see him on the ice, dad. You should just see him play. Maybe she could invite them to one of his games anyway, she had sometimes thought, just so that they might all exist in the same space for a little while. I think you'll like him, she'd wanted to say, and have the smile in her voice, evident even down the crackly phone line of the campus pay phones, make the next bit evident before she even had to say it. He makes me really happy.
“You're not going to tell mom and dad are you?” had been the first thing Mio had said.
They had been in the tiny kitchen of their childhood home because it was the 25th of December and in her first year of high school Yuna had decided that she was tired of not being able to join in when her friends spoke about the highlight of the holiday season and so she had bought cheap, tacky decorations and carefully wrapped gifts for each of her family members and insisted there had been a grand roast dinner. Because she didn’t think she’d ever seen her mother turn on the oven (generally it was used for storing saucepans, and everything they’d eaten was made on either the gas stove or in the tiny, weary-looking rice cooker that she had brought with her from Japan) the task itself had fallen to Yuna - and later Mio too.
The two of them had been standing shoulder to shoulder in the cramped space and it had partly been the way that they’d both been looking down at their own individual tasks - which allowed her to feel like she were simply letting the words float out into the air instead of actively telling her sister - that had given her the confidence to finally let the secret spill past her lips. It had partly been the fact that she couldn’t imagine keeping it to herself any longer without it killing her.
By then, she and David had been together for just over two years, long enough that she naturally fit her body into the curve of his side whenever they were in a room together, the shape of being with him familiar and reassuring. For their anniversary - three days before school had broken up for the winter vacation - they had both agreed that they didn’t want to do anything elaborate. He’d met her after her classes had finished and they’d walked to the rink as the last of the daylight faded, scarves pulled up high and breath fogging the air.
She had always loved the ice. Her father had set both her and her sister on skates almost as soon as they could walk; this was the only national language of Canada he had learned to speak fluently without an accent, he had liked to say. She had taken up figure skating, managing to stick at it for a few years despite hating the delicacy of it - the way that even strength had to be made to appear dainty - because he had said it was important they try. It was what Canadian girls did. One of the acceptable things to borrow amidst a sea of things they were expected not to allow themselves to take on: short skirts and boyfriends and the practised ease of answering back, standing up for themselves.
David had also been skating since before he was old enough to remember it, but he always pretended to slip and stumble about for the first ten seconds on the ice, just to see her roll her eyes. Was that a hint of a smile? I’m pretty sure I saw a hint of a smile! he’d insist and she’d have to lie and protest her innocence every time.
They’d skated lazy, loose circles around the edge alongside the four-year-olds, her fingers threaded through his. He'd seemed blissfully unbothered by the pinched mouths and sideways looks they occasionally caught, the tutting that came as they passed one woman and her child, wobbling on his skates. And because he didn’t notice any of it, neither did she - not really. For an hour, the cold air and the glow of the lights off ice and the warmth of his hand were all that existed, and that felt like enough.
Later (in the tiny back bedroom of the tiny student flat that he shared with four other guys who all called her “Hollzy’s girl” - Oi Cherry! Grab a beer for Hollzy’s girl would’ya? and Fuck’s sake Deano! Don't say shit like that in front of Hollzy’s girl! - in a way that should've made her mad - I actually have a name of my own, thanks - but instead split her face into a grin that she struggled to hide) they had kissed and kissed and kissed until she was dizzy with it.
It had taken some time for her to learn how to let herself enjoy it. He’d not kissed her for almost a month after the first time because he claimed that she had stood, stiff as a board, as his warm hand had cradled her jaw and his soft lips moved against hers. She had wanted to be able to refute this, but hadn’t remembered what her body was doing at all, only the dizzy, lightheaded rush of heat through her veins. When he’d stopped only seconds later and she’d thought she might die, she’d felt a terrible knowledge settle over her: she could feel hunger too. This was something that boys would want to do to her, she had always been told, but she had never even considered that it might also be something she wanted to do to them.
By the time that she had found herself trapped under him two years to the day after she had noticed him staring at her from across a dingy bar, she had learned that she could kiss him for hours and never get tired of it. She had writhed against the soft cotton of his bedsheets, fingers sunk into his hair so that she could keep him exactly where she wanted him, mouth wet and soft and desperate. He had been suspended over her on his strong arms corded with wiry muscle (with which he had once socked his teammate clean in the jaw for saying something that had been so inconsequential a drop in the ocean of casually racist remarks Yuna had experienced in her years that she didn’t even remember exactly what it was) a careful distance kept between their bodies.
When she had run a hand over his bicep and pulled away from the kiss, David had pressed his mouth to her skin in a trail of kisses down her neck.
She’d felt her heartbeat racing in her chest. “Do you…” she had started, before changing her mind. “I mean– You can…” Her whole life she had taught herself to feign confidence, to walk into a room as if she knew she belonged there and speak as if she knew the value of what she was saying because she knew she could not trust anyone else to believe these things for her. Still, sometimes he made her forget it all.
He'd stopped kissing her neck, which had done a little to help her ability to process thoughts into speech, but any positive effects had been wiped out almost immediately when she’d caught sight of him. His lips had been pink and slick and parted only slightly when he’d murmured, “You ok?”
“I think I'm ready,” she whispered into the scrap of air between them. “To … If you want.”
She'd expected a grin like a kid on Christmas. Her friends had laughed when she’d told them that he said he didn’t mind waiting, informing her lovingly - but firmly - that this was a lie. Men were predictable, apparently, hockey players doubly so. Except that over the months he had continued to be unpredictable. “God, he must be crazy about you,” they had started to insist, voices a little wistful.
It wasn't as if they hadn't done anything. They'd kissed. Often. They'd touched. She’d watched his face fall slack and open as he’d ground his hips against her thigh, the palm of her hand, able to think of nothing beyond how he looked as he came undone, the way he mumbled her name into her skin. He’d begged her to let him put his mouth on her after that first time, except he had used much coarser language. She had blushed and squirmed as he’d feverishly pleaded and hoped that none of this gave away quite how badly she had wanted to say yes, please, make me feel good, make me forget it all, please. As a compromise, she’d allowed him to slip a hand into her jeans and stroke over the damp cotton he found there until the heavy feeling coiling tighter and tighter low in her stomach had snapped, her body ringing with a bright, gleaming euphoria. He'd whispered that she was beautiful as he worked her through it, and even though she had known that probably all guys said this to girls they had just brought to orgasm in the hopes that it might lead to them getting to do it again, it had still made her heart flutter.
For a long time that was all she had allowed him to do, though - never permitting his fingers to sneak beneath the elastic of her underwear - because she had been made to understand since she was a child that there parts of her self that were not hers to give away, that belonged to her husband.
She’d made this clear to him from early on, and maybe that had been the reason that his response to her invitation had not been to scream fucking finally! but to look at her so intently that she had felt the urge to scramble away, just in case he saw something he didn’t like. His mouth had opened to speak.
She'd cut him off with a kiss. “I want to. I want you.”
Because what did it matter in the end? Whether she had a ring on her finger or not? She had known - even on their second anniversary, probably much earlier in fact - that David was her husband.
“Obviously I'm not going to tell mom and dad,” she had scoffed, as if it was crazy for Mio to have even asked, as if she was offended that the suggestion had been made. She'd felt Mio’s eyes linger on her as she'd turned away to attend to the potatoes parboiling on the stove and had skewered a fork deep into the heart of one just for something to do. It had slid right off the prongs and landed back in the pot with a splash. She'd swallowed the lump in her throat. “Obviously,” she'd repeated to herself. “Obviously.”
“He'd tell us, wouldn't he?” she asks again.
David gathers her up into his arms and holds her very tight, but he does not answer her question.
-
I’m sorry is the first thing he says when he wakes up.
Yuna’s in that hazy halfway place between waking and sleep but her eyes snap open instantly at the soft rustling of fabric against fabric. She rushes to him, ignoring the strain in her neck from the way her head had lolled against her shoulder as she’d tried to force herself to get some sleep. She takes one of his hands between her own.
His eyelids seem heavy as they drag open, as if it takes a great effort.
“I’m here,” she reassures him. “It’s ok. Mom’s here.”
She had insisted that she had to be when the nurse tried to usher her away, stating that visiting hours were over. What if he needs something? She’d been told that there was a call button by the bed and that his monitor was hooked up to a system that would alert a nurse were there any dramatic changes. Yuna had only shaken her head. They didn’t understand. I have to be here, she had insisted, slipping into the voice and delighting in the defeated sigh that had followed, the reluctant acquiescence.
His eyes flit around the room, taking in what can be made out in the soft glow of the lamp by his bed and the sterile, artificial white that diffuses in from the corridor through a window in the door. His eyebrows draw together, as if he’s confused by what he’s seeing.
“How are you feeling? Should I call a nurse?” she asks. They had put him on something for the pain but had mentioned that they might need to up the dosage if he felt it was still too much to manage.
He ignores her questions and shifts, trying to sit up. His lips emit a high yelp that dissolves into a pained groan and Yuna flinches, heart lurching in her chest. “No. No. Don’t move. Just– You stay. What do you need? I’ll get it. I’ll sort it.”
He listens to her with eyes closed, face pinched tight. Slowly, he lets a long, deep breath whistle through a tiny part in his lips. She watches his chest deflate with the motion.
“Shane?” She realises she’s clutching his hand so tightly that it’s probably hurting and forces herself to relax her grip. She doesn’t know what to do. It feels so helpless. She can remember the days of scraped knees and grazed palms and bruised shins when he would run to her and expect that she could fix anything. Should I kiss it better? That should work now too. There should be something she can do.
“Honey, do you… do you remember the game?” she asks, voice delicate. The doctors had said that there was no serious damage but with head injuries like this there was always a chance of retrograde amnesia; it was the most recent memories that he was most likely to lose, and she should inform them straight away if there was any worry over his ability to recall recent events. “Do you remember what happened?”
He swallows. “I’m sorry.” His voice is just barely a whisper - so tiny, vulnerable - and Yuna’s face falls, chest tight.
“Oh, honey. What for?” She strokes the side of his face, careful to avoid the bruises beneath her eyes. He doesn’t lean into the touch, but he doesn’t pull away either. She encourages his face toward her. “Come on, look at me. There’s nothing to be sorry for.
He shakes his head. The muscles in his jaw are clenched. “It was stupid. I was so–” He sighs. “Fuck. I can’t– I can’t play? Can I?” His voice is light, tentative, as if there’s still a part of him that’s wishing for the best. She can see the tears swelling in his eyes that she knows he won’t let spill because he hasn’t cried in front of her since he was in single digits.
Come now, there’s no need for tears, she can remember telling him often, wiping his damp cheeks with the edge of her sleeve. You should only cry once in a blue moon, repeating a phrase that she could remember a teacher using with her when she’d been his age.
He'd looked baffled by the phrase, eyebrows knitting. But the moon is never blue.
She'd just sighed, not wanting to explain, choosing instead to tell him, Exactly, because that was during the few years that he’d seemed to get upset by everything - when a room was too loud or when other kids started laughing at a joke he didn’t understand or when the she made him wear thick gloves out in the winter even though they were apparently too itchy against his skin. The other mothers had confidently told her that this was just attention-seeking behaviour and it was best to make it clear that this wouldn’t get the outcome that he wanted, or he’d only end up doing it more. She wishes she could go back and tell herself not to listen to them, tell her son that he can let himself feel whatever he needs to in front of her, be firm enough in this message that it might somehow shield him from the snickered laughter and pansy! and boys don’t cry! that he would one day have to face and would ultimately be the thing that trained the habit out of him.
He looks so young like this, something about the oversized hospital gown and shiny eyes that easily shaves off the years. She wants to gather him up in her arms the way she had done when he was tiny enough that she didn’t even need a reason for it. He didn’t need to be in pain or have just won a match; she could just hold him close to her because she wanted to feel the weight of him in her arms, remind herself that he was real and she had made him and carried him and brought him into this world. That it was her job to do everything in her power to guide him and nurture him and shield him from what might hurt him.
It would be too awkward trying to contort herself around the hospital bed. And she would likely hurt him. And even if neither of those things were true, he probably wouldn’t want her to anyway.
She settles for smoothing down his hair with the backs of his fingers instead. “No, honey. You’ll probably have to sit out the rest of the season.” She tries to school her face into a reassuring smile, but is sure it ends up somewhere closer to a grimace.
He groans deeply, as if this pain is as tangible as the fractured collarbone. “I’m sorry.”
The first time he had played in the Junior League he had been nearly silent the entire car ride home and had taken himself straight to his room when they’d gotten home, dumping his bags unceremoniously by the door. She had shot a concerned look at David, who had only looked equally bewildered back, before she had started on the task of sorting through his cluttered kit bag and putting on a load of washing and discarding the littered scraps of protein bar wrappers in the bin.
An hour later, when they had agreed that someone should go check on him, she had found him in bed, the outline of his body curled up into a ball clear under the duvet.
She’d sat down on the edge of his bed, mattress dipping beneath her weight. Her hand had hovered over where she thought his shoulder might be, not sure whether he would welcome the touch or not. “Shane, honey, is everything ok?” The room had been quiet and still. “Shane?”
His voice had been muffled under fabric but the words were clear enough to split Yuna's heart clean in two. “Are you disappointed in me?”
(He'd almost made a hat trick with only 100 seconds left on the clock but had shot just wide of the net. The score had still been tied by the end of regulation. They'd lost in overtime.)
She has said it all before.
You don't need to be sorry. There is nothing to apologise for. You could never disappoint me. I'm so proud of you. So so proud of you. Always.
She stands by the side of the hospital bed with the warmth of his hand between hers and says it all again for him.
I love you so much. Nothing could ever change that. Nothing you say or do or think could make me love you any less. Nothing. Do you understand?
There will soon come a time when she'll have to repeat it, she's sure.
Do you believe me? It is more important to me than anything else in the world that you believe me.
He doesn’t. He can’t. Or she wouldn’t need to say it so often.
I’ve failed, haven't I? she thinks. This was the only thing that ever mattered, and I’ve failed at it.
-
She sits in her parents’ living room and seethes.
There is a Metros game playing on the TV. There is always a Metros game playing when she comes round. If there isn’t one scheduled for the day she visits, there will be one waiting - taped in advance - because hockey is the only thing they have left in common, apart from the blood in their veins. It gives them something to talk about; they had learned a long time ago that it was best not to push her for conversation outside of this.
She maintains that it isn't her fault. There are too many things she is expected not to speak of, anyway. Easier not to talk than to take on the work of carefully editing her own memories into ones they will want to hear.
In the eight years that they had not spoken she had sometimes found herself trying to justify it all - usually when friends would say, “Sorry that’s so awful!” in a way that made her think they really meant They're awful and Yuna would feel the urge to jump to her parents’ defence and point out that they didn’t get it, couldn’t ever get it, because they had not grown up the way that she had. They had not had to watch their parents ignore the sideways glances and mutters and spit on the pavement in front of them and the dog down the road that had been trained to bark and snarl at only them. They had not had to watch their father carefully sweep up glass from the living room carpet, urging their mother to move the girls somewhere safe, away from any windows. They had not had to watch their mother’s face twist when they suggested that they should go to the police.
One of the core principles of marriage was mutual respect - she had imagined pointing out to her friends - and, after the life they'd lived, how could they believe that a white man could ever have that with her?
It had been a nice, comforting reality to construct because of the way it made everything so fixable: if they could just see him - see how he was with her, with Shane, the adoration in his eyes - then everything would be understood.
But they hadn’t ever asked. Hadn’t asked if he worked hard to keep a roof over their heads, or if he drank or stayed out late or gambled, if he treated her right. Hadn’t even wanted to know if he was still in the picture. Maybe they’d hoped that he wasn’t.
So Yuna sits and watches the game and doesn’t talk about anything other than the Metros’ prospects this year. In the face of her stony silence, her parents pour their affection into Shane instead, and that’s something else they share, she supposes, their love for him. They spoil him rotten, are endlessly impressed by everything he does. She brings them photos of him at his games which end up proudly displayed on the mantelpiece.
When he was little, they had diligently listened first to his incoherent babblings and then, later, his ramblings on hockey. Her father had found his old almanacs to gift him and had quizzed him on the statistics contained in them. By about seven years old he could recite by heart all the Cup winning teams in order since its inception in 1893 - and would, if you gave him the chance to.
Who are you? She had found herself thinking, watching her father smilingly entertain his grandson’s obsession with a patience and sensitivity and interest that even Yuna felt she struggled to perform sometimes, needing a break from it all. She’d watched them closely, interrogating the warm affection on her father’s face and trying her best to map it on the image she remembered from her childhood. Who was he? Where did he go?
He had become someone who noticed, apparently, when Shane decided to grow his hair out, or when he got a scar on the round of his shoulder. My, hasn’t he grown?! both he and her mother had cooed every time they turned up, usually before she and Shane had even made it in off the doorstep. He’ll be tall when he's older, her mother had always insisted, even when he had been one of the shortest in his year at school. Isn’t he handsome?! She would take his face in her hands, pointing out his freckles, his fair skin. (Yuna had been told not to play out in the sun in the summers when she was younger, her complexion always a shade darker than Mio’s, and she still struggles not to hate the way she so easily catches the sun when they holiday somewhere warm and bright.) Yuna had felt her jaw tighten every time and would find herself wanting to tear all the hair from her head in messy handfuls and scream that everything they had mentioned was David’s; that these were all things that David had given him; and, while they're at it, that it was David who had encouraged her to bring him at all when Yuna had wanted nothing more than to scream down the phone that she would never, ever set foot under their roof again.
A good daughter obeys her father, she had wanted to remind them. She was not to come home. Or had they forgotten that? Because Yuna could still remember the cold, unforgiving finality in her father’s tone with such startling clarity that even now her palms sometimes slick with sweat when she thinks of it. Her throat seizes up, her chest feels tight, the memory so sharp to her that it takes nothing to trick her body into believing she’s back in the moment again. You made your choice, she had wanted to spit into the telephone. Instead she’d been silent for long enough that the voice had asked, “Yuna, are you there?” and then she had hung up.
She’d cried for an hour after. David had found her and held her as she’d tried to explain through hiccupping breaths. The son of a family friend had seen her out in the city centre with a toddler in a stroller. He'd told Mio. Mio had told her parents. Apparently her parents had found their number in the phone book, which meant that eight years ago someone had paid enough attention to the wedding invite before it had ended up in the bin to remember David’s last name.
“You should do whatever you want,” he’d told her when the body-wracking sobs had subsided and she’d finally calmed enough to ask him what he thought she should do.
“But…?” she’d prompted, having heard the word in his tone without him having to say it.
He’d sighed. “But it might be nice for him to have a chance at a relationship with his grandparents.” His voice had been tender, sanguine. She had never been close to her parents, even before, and her grandparents had only ever existed as crackling, disembodied voices on brief, expensive international phone calls but she had known what it meant to him. Family. She was aware of what he had given up.
“Ok,” she’d agreed, “I'll go,” feeling brave in the comfort of his embrace, his warmth.
The door had swung open the second she’d rang the bell, as if they had been waiting behind it all morning in anticipation. That first visit (and for a couple of subsequent ones - before they learned better) they had tried to ask her awkward, nervous questions about her life, carefully tiptoeing around the things they didn’t want to know. She had answered their enquiries monosyllabically wherever possible. She had not asked anything in return - the photos on the mantelpiece informed her that they had been back to Japan for a holiday at some point and that Mio had two children of her own already and that they had gotten rid of every picture of her from before her departure from the family. She hadn’t cared to learn any more.
Her mother had cooked okonomiyaki - her favourite as a child - and her face had fallen when Yuna had refused a plate. “I’ve just eaten,” she’d lied, voice cold, because she had lived under that roof long enough to know the most effective ways to twist the knife, no matter how many years it had been.
“Well take some home, then. I’ve made too much for the two of us,” she’d suggested. Let me feed you, her eyes had begged. Let me nourish you. Let the way I care for you say all the things I can’t.
Yuna had shaken her head, nose scrunching slightly. “It’s alright. I’m good.”
She can remember the days when her father prowled through the house like a caged beast - restless, frustrated, dissatisfied - his anger bleeding from him in a low red thrum that saturated everything until the air itself vibrated with it, every moment stretched taut and ready to snap. They had learned to read his mood by his footsteps, had learned to become smaller than themselves - herself, her mother, her sister - three shadows on the walls, quiet as breath, eyes flicking nervously around the space and bodies alert to any hint of movement. The whole house one big powder keg.
It was not his fault, her mother had explained when she had tucked them into bed, a sympathetic smile on her face. He had been an engineer back home, she’d said. As if that had explained anything.
Now it is she who settles over the house like a dark cloud, whose silent resentment hums so loud that it threatens to shatter everything, who sits in his armchair and watches the game while everyone else tiptoes around her and prays they will not put a foot wrong.
“It was not easy for us either, Yuna,” her mother had once told her when they had been left alone in the front room together, Shane out in the garden with his grandfather, picking fresh berries from the little vegetable patch that grew there because apparently in his retirement he had finally decided to learn how to tend to, how to nurture, how to create the perfect conditions to allow the things placed in his care to grow healthily. Her voice had been delicate and full of sorrow and although Yuna had understood what she was trying to say she had still silently stood up from her seat and walked straight to the back door. “Ok, honey, time to say goodbye. Grab your things. I’ll wait in the car, yeah?”
She always leaves within a couple of hours of getting there anyway, even though the round trip drive from Ottawa takes at least double that time. Her parents hug him in the doorway, holding him tight enough that you would think it might be decades before they would see him again, rather than six to twelve months depending on how long it takes Yuna to feel that she had the strength to go through it all again. They ruffle his hair and tell him to work hard at school or be good for his mother or, when he's older, avoid breaking too many hearts, accompanied by a wry smile.
Usually, they hug her too. They’re stiff, perfunctory things. Especially from her father. She feels uneasy in the embrace, body rigid and tense. She can't remember ever receiving a hug from him as a child, and it becomes clear that it is not a skill that can be acquired later in life.
She wonders if David resents her for it. For turning her nose up at something that he will probably never get but she knows he would kill for: the opportunity to offer up his forgiveness to those who have done him wrong; a chance to let go of all of this hurt.
He probably does.
But she is not as good a person as he is. And she has carried it too long. And it has grown too large. And it has become something more than hurt, something uglier. She wouldn't know how to let go of it now. She couldn't learn to put it down, she doesn't think, not even if she wanted to.
-
“Did you ask?”
The second intermission of the Admirals-Raiders game will finish up soon and Shane’s eyes are already glued to the tv, as if he doesn’t want to risk missing even a second of it when play does start up again. He’s been watching so intently all game and Yuna can't tell if it’s a masochistic thing - a way of pressing the bruise of the fact that he should be there, would be if his arm wasn’t in a sling and the Metros hadn’t dropped out of playoffs contention almost as soon as they’d lost him. Maybe a good mother would turn it off and insist that they do something else. But what would that something else even be?
His body turns to her first, as if it knows via muscle memory how it’s supposed to respond when Yuna asks a question even if his brain hasn’t got the memo yet. When his head does finally snap round to look at her, eyes dragged reluctantly from the screen, his brow draws together. “Pardon?”
Her mouth breaks into a smile and she rolls her eyes lovingly. “Rose! Did you ask if she wanted to come and visit?”
Yuna wants nothing in the world more than she wants to meet the first woman her son has dated since his rookie season, perhaps the only woman he has ever dated seriously. She wants to corner her in the kitchen and ask What is he like? When he’s not in front of cameras? When I’m not in the room? Is he happy? Does he seem happy to you? When you’re together? When you're alone? When he can be himself? Sometimes I look into his eyes and I see this bottomless well of sadness that he can barely contain from spilling over. But maybe that’s just with me? Hopefully it's just with me. Hopefully it's just because of what I have become to him. Because I was the one who shook him by the shoulders and screamed “it is not enough to be good you must be perfect you must be faultless you must be better than the rest of them and then some because everything you are ever given you will have to fight for tooth and nail they will not hand you anything for free” and now it is impossible for him to be happy with me in the room because in reality no one can ever be perfect and so in my presence he will always feel like a failure.
She wants to ask Does he talk about me? Does he complain? When you're lying in bed and the room is dark and hushed and secrets become so easy to spill? Does he tell you I was too hard on him? Put him under too much pressure when he was far too young to be able to carry it? Slave driver. Tiger mom. Only ever cared about the success and the fame and the money. As if he hadn't told me at six years old that he wanted to be the greatest player in the MLH, only to turn around and resent me for working as hard as I could to make it so.
And it's ok. Really, it's fine, she wants to tell her. I can live with that. I can. I can be the villain. As long as I know that he is happy. Sometimes. Somewhere. With someone. As long as I know he can still carve out a life he wants to live from what I have given him.
That's probably a bit much for the first time meeting the parents. They've only been together a few months. She'll have to workshop ways of getting to some of that information without scaring the poor girl off before things with her and Shane have even really had a chance to get started.
She lets out a deep breath. “I know she's busy, but she's important to you and we'd really love to meet her.”
He still winces a little. She doesn’t think he even knows he’s doing it, never seems to realise how easily his features give him away even when his words remain so carefully guarded. “No, sorry. I forgot. I’ll…” The sentence trails off, and he turns back to the game.
Yuna’s about to say Why don’t you send her a text now then, hmm? when he clears his throat. “Actually we… well, I mean, we actually broke up. A… while ago.”
The news lands like a shock right in the centre of her chest. He had been on his own for so long, walls carefully and stubbornly built up around himself, that she had half assumed that the first person to push past them would be the one he spent the rest of his life with - the same way it had been with her when she’d met David. She thinks there's a chance that it hadn't even occurred to her that he and Rose might ever break up, never mind so quickly. And they still speak so often. He's called her multiple times just in the few past weeks that he's been back at home recovering from this injury. Was that healthy? Or was it him pining over something he couldn't have? Should Yuna step in and tell him that it's hard to move on when you're still clinging to the past? He's been so secretive about his romantic life for so long that she realises she hasn't actually had much opportunity to learn how to navigate supporting him with things like this.
She remembers too late that stunned silence is probably not the appropriate response. “Oh honey, I’m so sorry,” she coos, softening her voice into something meant to comfort, and her face into a sympathetic expression.
“It was mutual,” he rushes to tell her, tone defensive. The heaviness in the air, the way his jaw is tight, tells her that maybe it’s not so simple.
“She seemed like such a nice girl.”
He nods at the screen. “Yeah she was. Is. Nice. We’ll… I think we’ll be friends for a long time.” His tone is carefully detached, wary of letting any emotion slip through the cracks. There is a slight pause, as if he’s considering whether he should stop here or keep going; she can see his jaw working around words that he can’t quite get out of his throat.
She can remember the days when he had told her everything, when he had diligently walked her through every event of his day in chronological order on the way back from school, when he could not find an interesting looking leaf or learn a new fact about his favourite hockey player or decide that he didn’t like the feeling of his feet in his socks without her immediately hearing out about it.
She waits, hopes that it might still be possible for him to trust her the way he had as a child before he had learned the art of keeping a secret.
He sighs. “We’re just… We weren’t… compatible, I guess,” he says finally. “Not like that.”
Yuna looks very intently at her son’s profile and finally admits to herself something that she thinks she has known for a very long time. She feels her expression soften, knows that if she could see herself from the outside her eyes would contain an ocean of grief. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asks, silently pleading for him to understand that she is not talking about the break-up, about Rose Landry. Please let me in, she thinks. I can be better. I can do it right this time, I promise.
(She knows he won't. She knows how hard it is to hand out second chances.)
He waves her off without turning away from the game, where Hunter and Rozanov are now taking their places at centre ice. “No, it’s fine. It just… wasn’t ever going to work, you know.” His mouth twists into a familiar, self-deprecating smile. “Hollywood actress – random hockey nobody,” he explains, tilting his head first left then right as if to illustrate that these two concepts are fundamentally opposed, as if that's all he might have meant by compatible.
The third period kicks off. She is vaguely aware of blurs of motion on the screen in the corner of her vision, commentators voices a low, muffled buzz, that reminds her of the way sounds deaden and flatten when the world is covered in a blanket of snow.
She should call David back through. He'll not want to miss the game.
What does it feel like when you're having a heart attack? she wonders.
She forces the muscles of her jaw to work her mouth open and closed well enough for her to be able to push words out of her chest. “You can talk to me, you know. About anything. Anything. I want–”
“Sure, mom.” He nods distractedly, only half-listening, eyes glued to the screen. She chooses to believe that this is out of interest in the sport that he has always adored and not as an excuse to not have to engage with her.
Her hand twitches minutely. She wants to reach for him, smooth down his hair the way she had when he was a boy. But he's so far away, the sliver of sofa between them enough to contain oceans, to span galaxies. “I love you so much,” her voice sounds thick, heavy. She worries she might cry. “Nothing could ever change that. Nothing could ever make me stop.” She's said it a million times over the years. More. Before he could even understand her, before he could hear, before he even existed outside of her own body.
But she's said other things too.
(“Well, of course not! You're still young, honey. I mean, I didn't feel… that way until your dad, and I was nearly 19 by then! You have to give it time and… and let it come naturally.”
He'd been 16 years old but had looked much younger perched on the side of his bed and anxiously fiddling with the end of his sleeves. He'd nodded silently and fixed his gaze on the floor as she'd spoken. She can remember wishing that he would look at her, even if it was just in tiny bursts - the way he had minutes before, his eyes nervously flicking up to gauge her reaction as he told her that he wasn't sure if he liked his girlfriend Katie, wasn't sure he'd ever like her… like that.
She'd sighed affectionately, and moved closer so that she could stroke the backs of her fingers over the side of his head, following the curve of his ear. “You'll know,” she'd told him, voice soft. “When it's the right time, and the right girl, you'll know.”)
Yuna's head is swimming. She thinks she might be about to black out but she also feels as if she could throw up. I didn't realise, she wants to tell him. I hadn't even considered. It was so stupid of me - I can see that now - and there are so many things I would do differently, but I thought I was helping. You have to understand that I thought I was helping I was trying to help oh god what have I done I was trying to help.
She should say all of this, but she finds that she can't. Her throat seizes up. Her tongue lays like lead in her mouth. It is too late; there have been too many words that have gone unsaid and too many wounds that have been left to fester.
(He has been made to live with this hurt for too long. By now, she knows, it will have morphed into something uglier. By now, he will have spent so much time learning to carry it that he will not know how to put it down.)
He lifts his good shoulder in a dismissive half-shrug. “I know, mom. I love you too,” he replies by rote.
It is only that moment that she realises that you can say something too often, that there comes a point where it loses all meaning, like a word repeated over and over until it seems to unravel itself back into a collection of incomprehensible sounds.
Finally, he turns to her and she almost wishes he hadn't. The smile that he shoots her does not reach his eyes. “If I do need to talk about anything, I'll tell you.”
Yuna tries to smile back as if she's satisfied with this answer.
They both pretend that they believe each other. It comes naturally. They have had a lot of practice.
-
It is a sunny afternoon in the middle of August when Yuna learns that she was wrong. She learns that her favourite place is not amongst a crowd roaring her son's name, but in his arms, tears in both of their eyes. She learns that it is not too late - not yet. She learns that although nothing can be taken back and it cannot be rewritten, it can be forgiven. It can be forgiven. It can be forgiven.