Chapter Text
"... and then I told her that I didn't understand her. I mean, she cried when Borya died too. She's sad, I can see that. And I want to help her. I want her to feel better. And the easiest thing to do would be to buy a new dog. Then it wouldn't be so bad coming home to a quiet house after a long day..."
Her client seemed caught up in his stream of words, and Galina just couldn't get him to stop. Maybe she had given up a little, at least for today. They were now talking about Grisha's dog for the fifth session in a row. Considering that at the beginning of therapy almost two years ago, they had talked about how difficult it was for him to leave the house for fear of being picked up by the KGB or one of the other organizations and interrogated about his journalistic work, she could count his progress as a success.
“I still believe that your wife is grieving at a different pace. People deal with loss differently. Perhaps you could ask your wife what she needs to feel better and then see if you can find a compromise together.”
The word “still” had slipped out. She was sure that the discussion about the dog was masking deeper relationship conflicts, but every time she tried to ask about it, Grisha blocked her.
She demonstratively placed her closed clipboard on the table and deliberately pushed the small clock, which was in Grisha's field of vision, a little closer to him. She was slowly getting nervous.
Fifteen minutes ago, she had tried to slowly end the session. Ten minutes ago, just as the session ended, she had put down her pen. Seven minutes ago, she had closed her clipboard. Sometimes she wished she hadn't deliberately hung the other clock in her field of vision so that her clients would never notice when she glanced at it.
Grisha continued talking. Galina sighed internally. What good were all her measures to give her clients as much privacy as possible if they ended up bumping into each other in the waiting room? She usually scheduled appointments with her “special” clients 20 minutes apart, but Ilya Rozanov was coming to see her for the first time today, and clients tended to arrive well ahead of their first session.
Time to switch from nonverbal communication to verbal communication. She stood up and looked at Grisha expectantly.
“Let's talk more about this next week. Unfortunately, our time is up for today. But I look forward to our next session.”
She walked to the door, leaving Grisha no choice but to follow her. It wasn't that she didn't understand him. Her office was often the only place in her clients' lives where they didn't have to perform. Their sessions were the only time they could fill freely. And it felt unnatural to cut off a conversation when it was deep and important. But that was the nature of psychotherapy.
Grisha finally seemed to understand the hint and muttered something about how quickly time had passed again as he put on his winter jacket. She waited until he had zipped up his jacket, said goodbye, and then opened the soundproof door for him.
Ilya Rozanov stood with his back to her and seemed very interested in the fake plant in her waiting area. His shoulders were tense, his feet seemed unable to decide whether to stay or run away. Judging by the magazines thrown on the side table and the fallen trow pillow on her blue couch, he had been waiting for a while and had done everything he could to distract himself from the fact that he was about to talk to a stranger about his feelings. So far, so normal.
At the same time, he seemed to be attentive enough to be aware of the needs of the previous client. It was unlikely that he was standing with his back to the door unconsciously. And her fake plant wasn't that interesting.
When Grisha disappeared from the waiting area, she straightened her shoulders and put on her “I'm totally harmless and you don't need to be afraid of me” face. And no, she hadn't practiced that face in front of the mirror at the beginning of her career.
“The plant is fake, I'm afraid,” she said in Russian.
She kept her tone light and made sure her Siberian accent came through. Her speech sounded harder and more angular than the melodic Russian spoken by Muscovites because of her emphasized consonants. At university in Russia, a lecturer had once told her that she sounded provincial.
Ilya turned around at the sound of her voice. He had pulled a ball cap down low over his face, so she could only guess at his eyes. But even without seeing his eyes, she could tell with certainty that he was exhausted. Not I didn't sleep well last night exhausted, but I don't know how to go on exhausted.
“That makes sense, I guess. No windows.” She immediately recognized the melodic sing-song of his Moscow dialect. He spoke as if someone had taken great care to ensure that he expressed himself “properly” during his childhood. Perhaps this was reinforced by the new and unfamiliar situation of facing a therapist.
“Sometimes it's better not to have the distraction of the outside world,” she said with a small smile. “And it's better for privacy.” "Oh."
During their brief phone call, he had asked if it would be possible to enter the building unrecognized. He didn't need to explain any further. Even as a non-hockey fan, she had noticed the commotion surrounding his transfer from Boston to Ottawa. She was certain that the media would not leave him alone if it came out that he was seeing a psychotherapist.
And she had been able to calm him down. Because, as luck would have it, she was well equipped to deal with clients like him. Well, not exactly clients like him. Rather, Russian dissidents or politically persecuted people who had ended up in Canada's capital while fleeing the Russian state apparatus. Many of them only began to break down once they were safe. For some, the line between genuine persecution and paranoia was blurred. And sometimes Galina found it difficult to find that line for her clients.
What came more easily to her was creating a safe place for these uprooted people. And so, a few years ago, in addition to her regular office space, she rented rooms in the basement five floors below. They were perfect for her purposes. There was a direct and separate access from the underground parking garage, so that one encountered as few other people as possible in the hallways. The rooms were soundproofed by thick walls, there was no Wi-Fi down here, and she had installed a safe in the waiting room where clients could store their cell phones if they wanted to avoid being wiretapped. She had a deal with the building's security company that they would provide additional protection for her premises as needed.
She held out her hand to him. “I'm Galina. It's nice to meet you, Ilya.”
She deliberately pronounced his name in the Russian way. The soft L, the emphasis on the second syllable. Galina cringed every time Canadians botched Russian names. Her own name had sounded so foreign to her ears during her first year in Canada that she sometimes didn't respond when someone called her. Not out of spite. She simply hadn't felt addressed. Ilya shook her hand.
“It's nice to talk to someone in Russian.” In addition to the Moscow dialect, another tone crept into his voice that she couldn't quite place.
“Has it been a while?” she asked, whereupon he fell silent and looked up.
She suspected that he was remembering something, or at least trying to. Once they had known each other longer, she would learn to read his gestures and facial expressions like a book. She looked forward to it.
“It's been a long time.” He smiled wryly. “I may not be able to shut up.” Finally, she recognized the difference in tone.
His Russian had become lazy. English required a relaxed and wide-open jaw. Russian required more lip rounding and tongue tension. She knew this because in her early years in Canada, she had worked with a speech coach on her English pronunciation until her tongue felt knotted and her lips felt numb.
“That's what I'm here for. Would you like to come in?” She never assumed that anyone wanted to talk to her. Every conversation was voluntary, and she wanted her clients' active consent. More than once, someone had gotten cold feet in the waiting room and turned around. She didn't take it personally. It was scary to deal with your feelings and your own history.
“Of course, yes.” He followed her into the office and she let him close the door behind him. She watched him as he looked around her office. Whenever she took on a new client, she tried to see her room through their eyes. The room was just big enough not to feel confined, but small enough not to get lost in it.
“I sit here, right?” Ilya pointed to her couch and headed toward it. He had hung his winter coat on the hook next to the door.
She had deliberately pushed the sofa against one of the walls in a corner of the room. From the sofa, you could keep an eye on the door at all times. The sofa was wide enough so that clients could choose the distance between themselves and her armchair, which was opposite the sofa.
“Most people do. Are you nervous?” She had a client who preferred to sit on the floor. Another preferred to stand. As long as no one insisted on lying down on her couch, she was flexible. She wasn't a psychoanalyst, but she didn't hold it against people if they didn't know the difference.
“I'm very nervous. Is that weird?” She had noticed the short pause before his answer, the hesitation and deliberation. She was glad that he had obviously decided to tell the truth. “Not at all. Though I hope you'll find there's no reason to be. Please make yourself comfortable.”
He sat down directly opposite her in the middle of the couch. His back touched the backrest, but she doubted that he was putting much of his body weight on it. He sat with his legs spread wide, both feet firmly planted on the floor. His hands were folded in his lap, and she could see him kneading his fingers, even though he was trying to hide it. He still hadn't taken off his cap, although he had pushed it back a little further from his face. His eyes seemed to lie deep in their sockets. His body seemed unable to decide between fight and flight.
Galina was careful not to make any sudden movements as she sat down and reached for her clipboard. Ilya's tension threatened to spill over to her, but she didn't let it. She deliberately made herself comfortable in her chair, crossed one leg over the other, and looked at him in a friendly and open manner.
Ilya took a deep breath in and out. He turned around and looked at the clock right next to his head. He noticed the second clock on the small side table between the sofa and armchair in his field of vision. He saw the wood tissue box standing in the middle of the table, so that it could be reached equally easily from the sofa and the armchair. He flinched slightly at the sight of it. Yes, Ilya, sometimes people cry in this room. And it's more normal than you think.
Galina waited.
His gaze swept across the walls, lingering briefly on the fake plants she had spent far too much money on. Every time she sat down here, she missed her real plants on the wide windowsill of her south-west-facing window in her actual office.
“Are many of your clients Russian?” he asked.
She couldn't quite figure out why this information was important to him. Was he worried about meeting people he knew from home? Or was it just a question to buy time?
“A few. I'm the only Russian-speaking psychologist in town, I believe. As you probably know, mental health isn't a popular concept among our people.”
She opted for the noncommittal answer. If she had given a specific answer, she would probably have said: About 20% of my clients are Russian, the rest are Canadian. There aren't that many differences between them; people are people, no matter what culture they grow up in. The main difference between the two is that some only come when their problems have been chronic for years. And I don't sit in a windowless room with most of the others.
“No. It isn't. Not for hockey players either.” His tone sounded a little too matter-of-fact.
“That's true. But you're a Russian hockey player, and you've been outspoken about mental health issues. The charity you started is doing good work,” she said. “I've been following your progress with it. I'm very impressed.”
She made this move deliberately, trying to gently nudge him in the direction of why he had contacted her in the first place. And her admiration for his foundation was genuine. She appreciated it when professional athletes donated their time and money to a good cause. She and her colleagues in the Ottawa therapist community had talked a lot about this new foundation. Some of her colleagues worked on projects supported by the foundation.
“Oh. Thank you.” His finger kneading intensified. Was he uncomfortable with the praise? She couldn't tell. She waited another moment, watching Ilya as his gaze slid to the pictures on the wall behind her.
Art prints by Rothko. She had chosen them primarily because they brought some color into the room and provided an anchor point for her clients' gaze when they didn't want to look her in the eye. A client had recently told her that Rothko's real name was Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz and that he was born in Dvinsk, which was then part of Russia. Rothko had said that he wanted to paint pictures that didn't need language. Since then, Galina had liked the pictures even more than before, even if it was a little silly.
Ilya remained silent.
„You told me you haven't tried therapy before, even though you seem to be quite knowledgeable about mental health. What made you decide to book this appointment?" Most people appreciated being able to hand over responsibility for the conversation to her.
She had asked about previous therapy sessions on the phone. If he had been in therapy before, she would have asked for previous assessments and diagnosis and perhaps obtained a waiver of confidentiality in order to speak with the previous therapist. Galina liked to know in advance what to expect from a new client.
“I think I might be depressed. Sometimes.” The words came so quickly that it seemed almost uncontrolled.
Then he fell silent again.
She waited, wondering if this realization was new, if he had ever said it out loud to anyone else or even to himself before.
“Your mother suffered from depression,” she said.
He had talked about it at the press conference, and she had had to swallow hard when she saw the report on the news. A young Russian man who had spoken publicly about his mother's mental illness and suicide. At the time, she had wondered if he knew how special that actually was and what a courageous person it made him.
She had also wondered if he himself had received help. She had hoped that there were sports psychologists or team doctors on his team who took care of the players' mental health. Then she had thought about how backward the entire NHL sometimes seemed. It suited her to worry about a stranger hockey player on TV with whom she seemed to share nothing but her country of birth. And yet she had been so annoyed with herself that she had changed the channel.
“Would you like to talk about her?” Galina asked gently. “That might be a good place to start.”
“I'll try.” Ilya took a deep breath and closed his eyes briefly, as if to collect himself.
“She was a beautiful woman.” Galina had to suppress a smile, which would have been completely inappropriate in this situation.
In Russian socialization, a woman's beauty is often the first thing that is said about her. Before intelligence, before character, before anything else. These were not the words of a boy whose mother had committed suicide. It was a phrase that had been drummed into him over the years. Perhaps by his father?
She leaned back.
"And she was a very unhappy woman. Not every day. At least, I didn't notice it every day. It took me a while to notice anything anyway. At first, I was still too young, and somehow it seemed normal that she was sometimes so tired and didn't respond properly. I remember asking Andrei, my brother who is four years older than me, if everything was okay with Mom. I don't know exactly how old I was, maybe six?"
His words now came faster, as if they had been pent up for a long time. Perhaps his whole life.
"Andrei just said that Mom wasn't quite right in the head. I don't think he understood what he was saying. Looking back, it sounds more like he was just parroting what our father always said. But I didn't understand that at the time. God, I didn't understand anything. I didn't know what he meant by that. In the evenings, when she put me to bed, I tried to look inside her nose and ears. I wanted to see if I could see what was wrong with her head." He let out a quiet, sad laugh.
“She was always there for me and Andrei. She didn't work, at least I don't remember her doing so. She was so young when she married my father. It was never talked about openly, but I don't think she consciously decided to get married. I think she got pregnant and then they had to get married.”
“What did your father do for a living?” Galina interrupted only because she wanted to get a clearer picture of the family situation.
“He was a police officer.” It was obvious that Ilya didn't want to say any more, and that was enough for Galina. In the 1980s, promotions depended on 'moral suitability'. An illegitimate child would have been a stain on his personnel file.
"My parents never argued loudly. But they often disagreed with each other. I noticed that, I noticed how my mother always took a back seat. How she never spoke her mind. It made me so angry. I tried to defend her. I wanted to look after her, I wanted to protect her. I yelled at my father, but he just laughed at me. She stroked my hair and said, ‘Ilyusha, this is my fight,’ but she didn't fight. She just endured."
Galina noted: early experiences of helplessness, parentification?, lack of support in his environment, mother sometimes loving, sometimes depressed and absent? She wrote in her own mixture of Cyrillic and English, which deliberately no one but her could read.
“After her death, my brother Andrei said: ‘They only got married because of me. You were the attempt to save it. But you failed.’ He said it very calmly. Right after the funeral. And he was right. I couldn't protect her. Not from our father and not from herself.” Ilya's flow of words faltered and he swallowed hard.
Galina knew from a purely professional standpoint that Ilya's brother had probably also been extremely overwhelmed by the situation. She tried to remember how old Ilya had been when their mother committed suicide, maybe twelve? That had made Andrei, at sixteen, still a child. From a purely professional standpoint, she also knew that Andrei's statement was an attempt to come to terms with his own helplessness. In her private self, which she kept well in check during sessions, the desire arose to slap the sixteen-year-old Andrei and bring him to his senses. She wrote: brotherly relationship?
"It is very understandable that you felt responsible for your mother's suicide, or even still feel that way. But let me say this clearly: you were not to blame for her suicide. She made that decision on her own, you were still a child. It was not your job to protect her."
Galina was aware that these words would not get through to Ilya. The other perceived truth was too deeply rooted in his being for that. But she would never let it go without comment when a child blamed themselves for the suicide of a parent.
“Yes, maybe.” Ilya made a nervous gesture with his hand, as if to brush aside her objection. The cruel thing about perceived truths was that they were incredibly resistant to external influences. They influenced our entire perception of reality, like a pair of glasses that filtered all information. Everything that fit into the system was processed with a factor of 100, everything else was thrown into the shredder. Galina noted: feelings of guilt, influencing identity.
"It's important to me that no one gets the impression that she was a bad mother. She was the best I could have had. Sure, Andrei and I were difficult at times. We always argued a lot. But she was always fair. She tried to mediate between us. She took me to the ice rink for the very first time. I had just learned to walk. I can't remember it myself, but there was a photo of it. Unfortunately, I don't know where the photo ended up. In the photo, I'm standing next to my mother, looking very intimidated, and she's holding my hand tightly. I was afraid of the ice, afraid of the skates, and even more afraid of the other children. They were so loud and wild. Can you imagine that I was once a shy child?"
Ilya took off his cap and placed it next to him.
He unconsciously ran his hands through his hair, lingering for a moment at his hairline at the nape of his neck. Galina knew the gesture from numerous clients and from herself. Self-soothing when emotions ran too high. She could well imagine that Ilya had not always been the loud and confident ice hockey star. She could imagine even better that he had done everything in his power to ensure that no one saw behind his mask.
She was honored that he seemed to trust her enough to let the other part of himself shine through.
"But there were days when she didn't function properly. I don't know how else to describe it. Most days, I would come home from school and she would have already cooked dinner and wanted to know how my day had been. But sometimes I would come home and she would just be sitting at the kitchen table, not moving. I could see that she had been crying, even though she hid it from me. Her eyes were swollen and her makeup was a little too heavy, as if she had tried to cover up the sadness on her face. I would then try to cook something from the ingredients in the refrigerator. Most of the time, it was Makarony s sosiskami. I always drowned the pasta in ketchup because that usually made her laugh. Sometimes she would scold me, but that was still better than this non-version of herself."
Ilya paused briefly and seemed to be thinking. She let him be, as she had the impression that memories were coming back to him that he hadn't thought about in a long time.
She continued to look at him attentively, signaling with her whole being: I am here, I am listening to you.
"I don't know how else to describe it. But sometimes it really felt like she was inhabiting her body on some days, and on other days she wasn't really there. I mean, her body was there, but her soul wasn't. Her face was strange, she smiled, but it felt wrong. Sad. It often scared me."
Ilya touched his ear and massaged his earlobe, which had turned red. He was ashamed.
"It's perfectly normal for a child to be scared when their mother's personality changes like that. As children, we all depend on our parents to survive. We use our parents to find our way in the world. We observe our parents very closely to figure out how to assess situations. When that image is inconsistent, it stresses us out. That wasn't your mother's intention, she probably did the best she could. But it's okay and understandable that you were scared because of it."
Galina spoke deliberately calmly and a tad slower than usual. Ilya had become faster and faster in the last few minutes, his hands now resting on his knees, fidgeting with the fabric of his pants.
"I always paid close attention to how she was feeling. And I tried everything to cheer her up. My father didn't seem to care how she was doing. He always scolded her when she didn't cook or didn't dress nicely enough. Andrei was away a lot. I can't even say where exactly he was. Is that strange? I think it's strange. I should know where my brother was during that time."
Galina assumed that Andrei had tried to escape the situation. Maybe he had been spending a lot of time with friends. She noted: feels solely responsible for mother, monitors behavior, hypervigilance. Ilya didn't seem to expect an answer, he was already continuing to talk.
"She was always happiest when I played well at hockey. Not that she put pressure on me or anything. She was just always happy when I was happy. And when I won, I was usually happy. Hockey was somehow safe. There were clear rules, I knew exactly what to do and what not to do. A goal was a goal, no matter how loud the silence in our home was at the time. I always skated over to her and she cheered and God... some days I still want to do that and then I look for her in these huge crowds and it takes me a moment to realize that she's not there anymore and she'll never be there again."
Ilya paused again. His cheeks had turned red and Galina could see that his eyes were slowly filling with tears. She doubted he had ever spoken these words out loud. That he had allowed himself to admit these words to himself. He was visibly struggling with himself, trying to blink away the tears. They wouldn't go away.
The little boy inside him finally had room to speak. He wasn't going to let himself be driven away so easily.
“I can really imagine the moment when you realize she's not sitting in the crowd. It must feel like a punch in the stomach every time.” Galina consciously visualized the image for him, adding a physical component, deepening the emotional experience.
Ilya blinked even more.
"It's okay that this makes you sad. Because it's infinitely sad that your mother is no longer here. It's completely okay and normal that you don't feel well in these moments. It's completely normal that it feels strange because the people around you don't understand why you suddenly stop cheering. It's okay not to be okay."
Galina had said and heard this sentence thousands of times in English. Her own therapist had said it to her far more often than she would ever admit to anyone else. It had become part of her English personality. She could say it in English and mean every word. And at the same time, she noticed every time how difficult it was for her to say this sentence in Russian.
It was as if her tongue refused to utter what felt like a lie. The Russian part of her intuitively wanted to argue that one had to pull oneself together. That no one should notice how one really felt. That only a stoic Russian was a good Russian. She stuffed the Russian part of herself into a corner of her being and slammed the door shut.
“It's okay not to be okay,” she repeated, this time really meaning every word.
It was a bit as if Ilya had just been waiting for permission. His eyes welled up and his hand wandered to his chest. He reached through the fabric of his shirt for an object on a necklace and closed his eyes. Galina gave him a moment. She deepened her own breathing, inhaling through her nose and exhaling through her mouth, letting it become a little louder than usual. She gave Ilya a rhythm he could adjust to.
Ilya sobbed once. He slapped his hand over his mouth and tried to stifle the sound before it became real. She handed him the box of tissues, making a mental note that he was one of the clients who didn't reach for them on his own.
“It's okay. Everything can be here. I can handle it. We'll look at as many memories as you want. And when you don't want to anymore, we'll stop.” The words came intuitively, but they were not without thought.
Ilya, who had been avoiding her gaze the whole time, looked her straight in the face. Seemed to read it, matching her words with her facial expressions. She wondered if he did this deliberately. She let him see her genuine empathy.
“You know she killed herself when I was 12?” His voice sounded rough, a bit like a wounded animal bracing itself for an attack.
“Yes, I saw your press conference when you talked about it. I thought it was extremely brave of you to speak so openly about it,” she said.
She didn't say, 'I was worried about you.' That was her issue, which was related to her own story.
“Can I tell you more about it?” He asked like a little boy who had learned that people weren't interested in the truth. That they preferred to believe their own version of the story.
“I'd like to learn more about it. Especially how it has affected you.” It was the truth.
He took a deep breath, closed his eyes briefly, and pressed his fingers against them. Her brain rattled off all the neurophysiological explanations for the gesture.
She knew that her brain was providing her with this information in order to ground herself.
Judging by his emotional expression so far, Ilya would not recapitulate the facts soberly. She would contain these emotions, categorize, and process them.
“Alright. Okay.” Nothing was okay, and they both knew he was stalling for time.
“It's strange, I can still see the images clearly. It's like a movie playing over and over in my head. Sometimes I wish I could delete it.” More stalling, Galina noted traumatic memory.
“Would you like to start at the point when everything was still okay?” Sometimes it helped to give the brain a secure starting point.
"Yes... It was a normal fall day. I had practice and took the metro home. I always took my skates and stick home with me after practice. I got yelled at so often on the metro because my stick was in the way. But they were the most valuable things I owned, and somehow it felt good to have proof at home that there was another version of me out there. One where I knew what I was doing."
Galina could picture little Ilya squeezing into a crowded wagon and being scolded by a babushka to be careful where he put his stick.
“But that day was different,” she gently steered him back to the actual topic.
"Yes. I felt it when I unlocked the door. It often happened that our apartment was quiet in the afternoons. My father was at work, Andrei God knows where. My mother couldn't sleep well and often lay down again in the afternoon. I don't know exactly why, but I had an urgent need to look for my mother. The silence was too loud, somehow threatening. I didn't take off my shoes. I just walked into the apartment with my street shoes on, can you imagine that? I think I even left the apartment door open."
Galina could imagine it, sometimes the body knew before the brain that something was wrong.
"I went straight to my parents' bedroom. The curtains were drawn, but the little bedside lamp on my mother's side of the bed was on. It was a very cozy light, and somehow it was extremely creepy. I couldn't really see the bed from the door. I stood in the doorway. For at least two minutes. I didn't want to wake her up. And I was scared, but I didn't know what of. I could only see her hand. It was hanging out of the bed. It looked so wrong. Somehow the color was wrong, bluish. I thought she was cold. I wanted to cover her up."
Livor mortis.
Galina noted mother had already been dead for several hours when she was found.
"I put my stick down by the bedroom door and went to her with my skates over my shoulder. Her eyes were closed. She looked peaceful. She was covered up to her chest and was wearing her favorite nightgown. I took her hand and wanted to put it under the blanket. Her hand was ice cold. Much colder than usual. I couldn't bend her arm properly. Not as if she were resisting. It felt strange."
Rigor mortis.
"That was the first time I really looked at her face. Her lips looked grayish-blue. Just like they always did when she had been outside too long. But it was warm in the room. I didn't understand. I wanted to wake her up. I wanted to ask her why she was so cold. I spoke to her, but she didn't respond. I shouted 'Mama' loudly. She didn't like it when I shouted. She didn't respond. I touched her shoulder and her skin was so cold. I grabbed her tightly and shook her, and my ice skates fell off my shoulder. I still had them on my shoulder the whole time and didn't notice. And then they fell on my mother and it must have hurt, I had sharpened the blades that morning. I started apologizing to her. I didn't want to hurt her. But she didn't respond. She just didn't respond, no matter how hard I shook her. I shouted 'Mama' louder and louder. It didn't sound like my voice. I didn't realize I was screaming. I just wanted her to wake up!"
Ilya had been getting faster and faster, his hands systematically crumpling his tissue into a ball. Galina doubted he had noticed. She handed him a new tissue. He took it without looking at her.
"Someone must have heard me. I don't know who. Suddenly, someone was there and pulled me away from her. I can't remember what happened next. I was no longer in the apartment. I don't remember her being picked up. I also don't remember Andrei or my father coming home.“
Galina underlined the word traumatic memory. The experience had been too much, the brain had pulled the main fuse and decided that the little twelve-year-old boy didn't need any more bad memories. The brain was merciful when reality was not.
She thought it likely that Ilya was still reliving the discovery scene even today. Discovery scene. What a clinical term for an infinitely cruel experience. She wrote intrusive memories? flashbacks? nightmares?.
"I remember coming back to the apartment late at night. I think a neighbor brought me home. My father was sitting in the kitchen drinking. Andrei was drinking too. Neither of them noticed me. They were completely out of it. I looked for my mom, even though I knew she wasn't there. I knew she was dead. But I didn't want to believe it. I lay down in her bed. My ice skates were still on her side of the bed. I covered myself with her blanket. I pressed my face tightly into her pillow. It smelled like her and her perfume. It was as if she had just gotten up to get a glass of water. Later, when I smelled her perfume on another woman, I felt infinitely sick. Once, I threw up in the middle of the metro."
The brain stored all sensory impressions related to the traumatic experience. To regulate herself, Galina asked herself what kind of perfume his mother had used.
"I just wanted to sleep. I never wanted to wake up again. Or wake up and have her standing in front of me, telling me it was all a joke and laughing with me. I couldn't sleep. I lay in her bed all night, just breathing. I didn't cry. My mother was dead and I couldn't cry. I was just frozen. My father didn't come to bed. He sat in the kitchen with Andrei all night. I don't think the two of them talked. It was endlessly quiet. All I could hear was the clinking of glasses on the kitchen table and the occasional pouring of more vodka."
Professionally, Galina knew that the father and brother were overwhelmed. Professionally, she knew that these men had never learned any other way of dealing with emotions. Especially not in Russia. Professionally, she also knew that no one could prepare a person for such a situation. And yet she would have loved to travel back in time and give the twelve-year-old Ilya a big hug and promise him that everything would be all right, even if it would have been a lie.
He continued speaking before she could put her thoughts into words.
“Her necklace was lying on the bedside table. She never took it off. I only ever knew her with the necklace. I believe she took it off so that I would still have something of hers. I believe she wanted me to have it. I want to believe that.”
He reached under his collar and pulled out a necklace with a gold Russian Orthodox cross pendant. He showed it briefly to Galina before clasping it tightly in his right hand.
“I put it on that night and haven't taken it off since. Not once. Not for a second.” Galina wondered if he had been injured during his career, if he had needed surgery, and if he had argued with the doctors until they allowed him to keep the necklace on. She could well imagine it.
"A new day dawned, as if nothing had happened. My father and Andrei came out of the kitchen. They looked devastated. My father was still wearing his uniform, which was completely crumpled. I don't know if they were both crying. I remember exactly how my father stood in the doorway. He said, ‘Ilya, you have to get up now.’ He sounded very stern, and I was afraid of him. I quickly tucked my mother's necklace under my sweater. I was afraid he would take it away from me. My legs were shaking. I was incredibly thirsty. I didn't dare ask for a glass of water."
“Would you like a glass of water now?” Galina pointed to the bottle and glasses next to her. She deliberately brought him back to the here and now.
“Thanks, I'm fine.” She could tell that Ilya wanted to finish the story. He had already told the worst part and now wanted to come to the end. She let him.
"My father told me and Andrei to listen to him carefully. He put on his police face. I unconsciously stood up straight. I was afraid of him. He said: your mother had a terrible accident. She wanted to lie down and accidentally took too many sleeping pills. She is dead. The funeral is next Saturday. I expect you to behave yourselves. Don't disgrace me like your mother did."
At some point during the night, the father must have decided that suicide was absolutely unacceptable. Suicide would have meant no priest, no service, no burial in the consecrated part of the cemetery. A suicide in the family would have been tantamount to social death. For that, he had willingly accepted the emotional death of his sons.
Galina controlled her own anger and took a deep breath.
“Did you believe him?” Galina asked.
“No. Not at all. But I didn't say anything.” He took a slow, shaky breath. "He moved on so quickly. He wanted to forget about her. Wanted me and Andrei to forget her too. It was like...he was disgusted by her. The worst thing was that I felt like she would disappear completely if we stopped thinking about her. They say that a person is only really dead when you stop thinking about them. I think that's why I wear her necklace. It helps me not to forget my mother."
Galina wrote down necklace is anchor and shackle.
“That's why we named the foundation after her. I want to help, I want other people to never have to go through what she did. But I also want other people to know her name. I want to make sure she stays here, even if something happens to me. In case I can't remember her anymore someday.” Galina wrote down excessive sense of responsibility.
Ilya took a deep breath and slowly let the air out again. His body language had changed. He had let himself fall back into the cushions, giving his whole weight to the backrest behind him. His shoulders slumped, his hair tousled by his hands. His right hand still held the necklace, but his grip had softened. He looked like a marionette whose strings had been cut and who now had to find his place in the world again.
“I'm sorry,” Galina said. “That's a horrific thing for anyone to go through. Especially a child.”
It was the truth. He knew that. She could see it in his nod. He also knew that he mostly suppressed the memory of that day. She was curious about his coping mechanisms. She knew he must have had powerful ones, because if he hadn't, he wouldn't be sitting in front of her today. He might not even be alive.
Their time was almost up, Ilyas's gaze wandered to the clock in front of him. He found his way back to his adult self. Good.
“I might be done for today. That was a lot.”
He was right about that. There were clients she had to spend weeks convincing to swim with her in the sea of their emotions. Ilya had just taken a dive without knowing how deep the sea was or how stormy the waves were. She wrote down more co-regulation, prone to emotional instability.
“It was. How do you feel now?”
Ilya took a moment before answering. She liked that he didn't fob her off with the pre-programmed'fine'.
“Tired. But better, maybe. I would like to do this again.”
That made her smile. She had become curious and she liked Ilya.
“Would you like to come back in one week or two? Does that fit in with your schedule?” Galina had never had an NHL player in therapy before. It would be difficult to arrange regular appointments in some weeks. She hoped Ilya was willing to do online therapy. It would be a shame if the process suffered because of the constant road trips.
"I'd prefer two weeks. I think I need some time to get my head straight." She liked that he wasn't using the game schedule as an excuse.
“That's perfectly fine. It's completely normal to feel a little shattered right now. You've just been through some tough emotional work. Since you told me that your mother committed suicide and you said at the beginning of our conversation that you often feel depressed, I have to ask you an important question at the end: Do you yourself have suicidal thoughts?” She looked at him attentively.
"Oh, you know. Just the normal amount." Ilya had switched to English, and she knew why. She knew the meme. She may have been 44, but she wasn't living under a rock. She raised her eyebrows.
"The normal amount should be zero, you know? And even though I'm open to humor, this is the one topic where I need an honest answer if we're going to work together." She hoped that her seriousness would not scare him off. But there were clear rules, and she intended to stick to them. He swallowed.
"I can understand that. I can assure you that I won't hurt myself right now. I couldn't do that to..." He bit his tongue before he could continue speaking. She didn't press for names. She only registered the 'right now' in his sentence. It would have to suffice until their next session. She wrote regularly check for suicidal tendencies.
They agreed on a new appointment, and Galina deliberately scheduled it for the end of her working day.
Ilya gathered his tissues and found the trash can next to the front door. He seemed surprised by the amount of tissues.
“Do you think there's something wrong with me?” He had already put on his coat, his hand already on the doorknob. “Wrong?”
“Am I depressed? Mentally ill? Am I...going to get worse?” The question seemed to make him visibly uncomfortable. He had just gone through a suicide assessment. He must have realized that she was doing this for a reason.
“You're here,” she said kindly. “I'm afraid I can't give you any answers this early on, but being here is an important step in the right direction.”
She would have liked to give a concrete answer, but that would have been completely unprofessional at this point. She had primarily listened today, and even though she had received many diagnostic clues, she had not verified any of her diagnostic hypotheses.
“Slow and steady, right?” Ilya said in English. His Russian accent wrapped itself around his words like a velvet cloak. She wondered if he switched to English to distance himself emotionally, or whether the proverb hadn't occurred to him in Russian.
“Exactly.”
He sighed. “I hate slow things.” She had to laugh. It just burst out of her. He sounded like a sulking child.
“I've heard you like fast cars. Maybe you can think of this as building a Ferrari, instead of driving one.” She liked the image. Her head often spewed out metaphors, and sometimes she wondered where they all came from.
She could see that part of him didn't like the idea of completely rebuilding himself. But she wasn't going to lie to him. If he really wanted to work on himself, they first had to identify all the injured parts, then figure out which parts he had repaired and whether they were sustainable in the long run. They would have to build new parts and then test the whole thing on numerous test tracks.
It was a process that would take years, not weeks. She was curious to see how much determination Ilya would show.
After he left the room, she turned the ventilation up to the highest setting. She would have preferred to open a window. But when she closed her eyes, she could pretend it wasn't the air conditioning playing with her hair, but the icy November storm in Novosibirsk. She welcomed the cold on her skin, straightened the sofa cushions, checked the level in her tissue box, and then locked the door.
She took her notes to her actual office. In the hallways, she encountered the other tenants in the office building. It was the end of the workday, and there was cheerful chatter in the corridors. She retrieved her swim bag from the closet in the office.
She looked forward to simply being a body carried by the water.