Bone and Bread (15 page)

In the bedroom I used to share with my sister, Quinn exhales where he lies on my old mattress, the rasp of the springs as he shifts his weight like the answering breath of a lover.

“We can't sleep,” I say. In this room, the pronoun is always first-person plural. In this room, the air almost crackles with questions left unasked, and this time, it's Quinn I long to reach.
Did you see who I saw on television
?
How long will you blame me?
And our proximity just now seems to heighten our unease. My son is my idea of my son, who is made up of my past and his and all my memories and dreams for him and who he might become. But he is also himself and his body. The space he takes up in a room, the way he sleeps and eats. The things he wants to keep from me. The way parents and children slide from a physical relationship into something else, from contiguity to separation — it's continental drift, and it feels just as slow and significant. It feels stable, and then there's an ocean between you. It doesn't feel wrong. There will be an opening up to the world for both of us. But there is a desire for fixity, too. A bit of grieving.

Quinn's face in the half-dark is like a mask, his features at rest below eyes that seem to be retreating. The curtains are a pale striped cotton, a mere filter for light, and the shadows lying long across the room are tweaking my perspective. I think of the newscast, of Ravi onscreen, his declamation on the refugee family. It is impossible not to shudder at the inadequacy of memory to render a living face. Or maybe I shudder only at his refusal to remain in the past. I wonder through what trick of sympathetic physiognomy Quinn has managed to resemble my sister, with his strong cheekbones and wide, dark eyes. His father, for all his glamour, never had those cheekbones.

“Nope,” says Quinn. “We can't.” He rolls over onto his back and says, “Maybe I can move into her old apartment.”

“What?”

“Why not? She always talked about how cheap it was. And all-inclusive, right? I don't want to live in residence, share a room with someone.”

“You were lucky to get a spot.”

“Not if I don't want to live there.”

I try to think back to when we put in his application and made the arrangements. Was I the one pushing that through alone? Quinn was quiet, I remember, not too forthcoming, but that was at the beginning of the year, when two words together from him was something approaching chatty.

“Well, it's been rented, anyway, I'm sure. By now. There'll be a new lease.”

“So I've missed my chance.” There is an accusatory undertone there, and I retaliate.

“Well, you ought to have said you wanted to get an apartment. You ought to have said something before now.” There is an expectation, in becoming a parent, of accumulating blame, but my tally is already so high that I judge it to be worth the effort of deflecting.

Quinn turns over to face the wall. I wait for him to say something more, but before he does, I am asleep.

The morning breaks grey and wet, with the hiss and splash of cars on slick pavement. Quinn's bed is empty, his pyjamas neatly folded on top of his zipped suitcase. I notice my clothes from the day before heaped in a pile on the rug. Being under Uncle's roof is bringing out the opposite of our usual habits. Even through the rain I can smell the garlic-and-onion bagels in the ovens downstairs, as I get up, make coffee, and, after downing a cup, return to the bedroom.

I pull out the number from where I've folded it in my purse. When a woman picks up, I ask to speak to Libby Carr.

The woman on the other end sounds flustered, then surprised. “That's me.”

“Oh my goodness,” she says next, when I tell her my name. “Just one sec.” I hear a crash and then a rustling, as though the mouthpiece is being clutched to her body. Then her bold voice again, half breathless. “Just getting some privacy,” she says. “Well, some quiet, really.”

I wait. Then, after a beat, I say, “It's no problem.”

“Thanks so much for calling me back. I know it must seem a bit crazy.” Though her voice on my machine had been measured, she addresses me quickly, in rapid, almost musical cadences.

“It was unexpected,” I say. My dread of whatever it is that she wants to say seems at odds with her ebullience. But then again, it feels like decades that I've been mixing up fear and hope. I hardly know what I feel.

“It's wonderful of you to call me,” she says. “It's really terrific. So what do you think about getting together?”

“Well.” I remember her strange declaration on my answering machine.
There's something else you ought to know
. I wonder if there is any way she will just come out and say it, whatever it is. “In your message —”

She keeps on. “I've been having a hard time making sense of everything. Sadie being gone.” I can hear her breathing. “But . . .” She stops for a moment, and I can hear noises in the background at her end, a child talking. “I did offer my condolences at the funeral, but you probably don't remember. I'm not sure I even introduced myself.”

Stretching out my legs from where I sit on my old bed, I knead my toes into the pile of the brown and orange carpet. A monarch butterfly pattern, a giant shag square that used to be in Mama's bedroom, left in here as a compromise when neither Sadhana nor I could agree who should have it. I am still in my bathrobe. I've chosen to dive into what I would have preferred to put off. Leaning forward, I rest my elbows on my knees.

I do not remember a Libby. There was a man with thick, steely hair and a wool coat, who pressed his pity into my arm with a leather glove. A group of women in quick succession whom I thought might be members of Sadhana's knitting group, albeit with radically evolved haircuts and outfits. A blonde woman with waist-length ringlets who told me she'd sent an arrangement of pussy willows. She had been Juliet in a dance show that Sadhana and I had enjoyed, had mentioned for weeks afterwards in appreciation of the lean, muscular body of the male lead. Romeo of the ropy arms. I hadn't realized Sadhana even knew her. There was a soft handshake, too, from a young man with rubber plugs in his earlobes who looked as if he had been crying. But I cannot recall a single name, even if one was ever spoken.

“You know, I can't say I remember much about anyone I met that day. But thank you for coming. I'm sure Sadhana — well . . .” I break off. No need to speak for the dead. “Anyway.” It seems clear that this woman wants to speak in person, and I feel ungracious declining. “Um, sure. Okay, let's meet.”

“Wonderful,” says Libby. She sounds both eager and exultant. “That's great. So, when's good for you? You live in Ottawa, right?”

“I do, but I'm here now. For the weekend.”

“Aha, I see the area code.” I hear a tapping, like a fingernail against a call-display screen. “You're in Montreal. That's perfect. I'm free today, if you are.”

“I'm clearing out her place, actually,” I say. “Finally. I've sort of been postponing it.”

“Oh, that must be hard.” Her voice thickens. “I'm sorry. God.”

I close my eyes. Some emotion bristles between us on the line like static, but I can't tell if it is grief or sympathy. I let her suggest a time and place.

“I'll see you then,” I say, scarcely believing it, and after bidding her goodbye, hang up.

I am almost late to meet her. After waiting around for Quinn to return to the apartment, I finally give up, leaving him a note on the kitchen table. Then I head in the direction of Sadhana's place, stopping for a salad and a slice of quiche at a restaurant we'd often dined at. A block farther, when I pass a post office, I stop in to buy scissors and some rolls of packing tape. At every intersection, I notice, there are campaign posters affixed to telephone poles, and out of curiosity, I check along both main streets that Quinn may have taken. I count six different political parties, but I see no signs for Ravi.

At last, noting the time, I decide to take the long way around the park to meet Libby rather than get started with everything at Sadhana's. Although the café is only a few blocks from my sister's apartment, I somehow find myself almost out of breath by the time I get there, anticipation lodged like a stitch in my side.

“Beena! Hey,” she calls, catching sight of me. Clad in loose jeans and a thin grey shirt, Libby Carr is standing behind a table laden with a pitcher of sangria and two wine glasses. She has her hand cupped over her eyes, watching for me against the dazzle of the afternoon sun. She'd described herself as “a skinny blonde with bad shoes.” When I told her that didn't narrow it down much, she said she'd seen photos of me and not to worry. But I could have guessed who she was. Apart from her expectant posture, she has a complex, interrogative gaze and a long, pretty face tapering to a decisive chin. She looks like someone Sadhana would be friends with. Maybe even the girl from the photograph on the merry-go-round.

I walk to her quickly, aware of people's eyes on us after Libby's loud greeting. She is perhaps thirty, with dirty blonde hair that hangs well past her armpits. She gives the impression of height but sits before I can compare. Once I'm seated, she sort of laughs, then reaches out across the table for my hand and shakes it with what I think of as an American kind of vigour, a physical friendliness. I am aware of a tingling in my elbow.

“I'm so glad you decided to come,” she says. “I hope you don't mind that I ordered for us. The waitress seemed totally frazzled, and I thought I'd better get something. But if you want something else, go ahead. I can finish this myself.” She laughs again, a little loudly. There is a boldness to her voice that seems self-consciously reined in, possibly for my benefit. A hurricane losing strength over land. “I'm kidding, I think.” It occurs to me she might be nervous.

“This is fine, thanks.” I draw my chair in closer to the wrought-iron table. The café is popular and we are surrounded on all sides by other patrons, those of us unfortunate enough to be only two people together all relegated to the row of smaller tables placed down the middle length of the patio. Waitresses in black aprons stream past on either side. “I hope you haven't been waiting long.”

“No, you're perfect. You're right on time. I got here early.” Libby takes hold of the two plastic stir sticks and swirls them in the pitcher, looking at me. Slices of orange and lime bob in the drink. “Oh wow, it's so freaky meeting people's siblings,” she says. “Seeing resemblances.”

“Sure.” I hope she doesn't say anything about whether or not I look like Sadhana. The comparisons have always struck me as unflattering, even when that hasn't been the intention.

“Good genes,” is all she says, cocking her head to evaluate. “Both of you.” She shakes her head then, waves her hand. “Oh god, I'm sorry. I don't know what I'm saying.”

“No, I — it's okay.” In a blink, an image comes to me of Sadhana, unmoving on the floor of her kitchen, and a quiver seizes my back. The vision I'd dreaded at her apartment has arrived without warning. I try to keep my eyes trained on Libby's sober face.

“I've been having a hard time these past six months,” she is saying, pouring sangria into a glass for me. She holds the stir sticks in a V, straining out the fruit, then in a neat motion nudges in a few slices with barely a splash. “I've been wanting to call you for a long time, actually, but I had to sort of work up the nerve. I did call you once or twice before she died, but I hung up when you answered the phone.”

“You did?” I feel as if I must have misheard something. Libby is talking mostly into her glass. “Why?”

“Yeah,” she says, as though I haven't asked. The calls, I guess, were to do with whatever it is she wants to tell me. She goes on, “Sadie and I were very close.”

I let the statement alone to see how it fills up, as Libby presses her lips together, and her eyelids flicker rapidly as I try to read her. There is a subtle defensiveness in her expression I can't quite account for. “I miss her, too,” I say at last. “And I'm glad you left me that message. I needed a push to come back here to pack up her things.”