Page 24 of True North
JT was quiet for a minute. Misha glanced at him cautiously and saw JT watching him with a considering expression.
“What,” Misha said.
“You do not want to do this?” the phone asked. “I’m not trying to push you before you are ready.”
Misha wasn’t ready, and JTwaspushing. Misha couldn’t stay out of the world forever, though. What was his plan? To hide out in JT’s house for the rest of his life, taking naps and rearranging JT’s bookshelves? As tempting as that sounded, it would be a paltry existence. He was in Canada now, with no identifying documents and no easy way to return to Russia, and if he couldn’t speak English, he would continue to be helpless.
He also really wanted to be able to talk to JT without relying on his phone’s stupid robot voice.
So, fine: he would work with this Sveta, and he would be sincere about it. He would study hard and do any homework she assigned him. He wouldn’t be sullen. He would show JT he was taking it seriously and not wasting JT’s effort or money. How much did a tutor cost? More than Misha wanted to think about.
He was already so deeply in JT’s debt that he would never be able to pay off the balance. The phone, the new clothes, the shoes that had appeared in the mudroom in Misha’s size. All the food Misha ate. JT hadn’t breathed a word about any of it.
“Okay, ready,” Misha said, and managed a smile.
JT grinned at him from across the picnic table. “Yeah?”
Misha bent his head over his plate. “Yeah.”
* * *
Sveta was an unusually tall woman—taller than JT—with cropped gray hair and a strong nose. She looked severe as she climbed from her car and came up the walkway to the front door. Her dark blouse and dark pants only enhanced the effect. Misha watched nervously from the mudroom. She reminded him of his trigonometry teacher, who had never been anything but disappointed in him.
She rang the doorbell. Distantly, Misha heard JT open the door, and JT’s voice, and Sveta’s quieter response. Misha told himself to stop being a coward. He crept out of the mudroom and went down the short hallway to the foyer, where JT and Sveta were talking, and lurked in the doorway until JT glanced over and caught Misha’s eye.
JT beckoned him over. “This is Misha,” he said to Sveta, and then something else that Misha didn’t catch, but that made Sveta smile.
She didn’t look quite so severe when she smiled. She turned to Misha, extended her hand, and said, in Russian, “It’s very good to meet you, Mikhail.”
Like most Belarusians of her generation, her Russian was completely unaccented. Her handshake was firm and businesslike, but her expression held a warmth that eased some of Misha’s fears.
“Likewise,” he said. “Thank you for being willing to come all this way.”
The smile creases around her eyes deepened. “He’s paying me well, so it’s no trouble.”
Her words startled a laugh from Misha. Not so severe at all.
She and JT talked for a few minutes while Misha tried to look polite and attentive but mostly gazed out the sidelight windows at the plants lining JT’s driveway. They weren’t interesting, but a conversation he couldn’t follow easily was even less interesting. He heard his own name a few times and tried not to cringe at the thought of whatever they were saying about him.
At last, Sveta turned to Misha again and said, “He says it will be best if we work at the kitchen table. Can you show me the way?”
Misha glanced at JT, who nodded encouragingly. So far, all of this was less terrible than Misha had feared. Maybe he would survive the experience after all.
He led Sveta into the kitchen. JT had cleared the placemats to make a space for them to work at the end of the table closest to the windows. Sveta sat and reached into the canvas bag she had brought with her and pulled out a stack of books, a spiral-bound notebook, and a pen.
“We’ll speak Russian today,” she said, “but only today. For our next lesson, and from there on out, I’ll only speak English to you. That’s the best way for you to learn.”
Misha nodded. She was probably right, although even the effort of trying to understand JT was exhausting, and they relied on their phones most of the time, or that picture chart JT had ordered. Misha expected to be more or less catatonic after these lessons.
She went on, “Will you tell me how much English instruction you’ve had in the past? JT gave me the impression that you can speak a little.”
Misha shrugged and picked at a small chip in the veneer of the tabletop. “Some in school, growing up, but you know how that is.”
She smiled. “Rote memorization. Did you learn much more than the alphabet?”
“Barely even that. I started taking classes when I moved to Canada, and I learned enough to get by. Not great, but good enough for everyday conversation. But—” He stopped and tried to think of how to explain the past year of his life. He wasn’t sure what JT had told her and didn’t want to address his interlude in the woods if he didn’t have to. “My work schedule changed, and then I couldn’t take the classes anymore, so I’ve forgotten a lot of what I knew.”
Sveta nodded. “It’s easier the second time. You’ll have retained more than you think. And living with a native speaker will help, although you’ll have to make an effort to actuallyspeakto each other and not rely on technology to translate for you.”