Bone and Bread (20 page)

Not long after, Sadhana was discharged. Perhaps seeing her friends had done her some good, because at last she opened up her mouth and took in food, and if she did not relish it, at least she did not gag and weep and act as if everyone at the hospital was intent upon her destruction.

As I gathered her things into a knapsack, the nurses on her floor tried to give me advice.

“Watch her like a hawk,” said a wry one named Helen. “She's trickier than most.” She and Sadhana had a sarcastic kind of rapport.

Another nurse with dark blonde curls snorted as she stripped the bed. “See you soon,” she said.

Sometimes it felt like death was something we were outrunning. It was hard to keep a baby alive. It was constant attention from morning till bedtime, and then, often enough, throughout the night as well. But Quinn's life in my hands felt secure compared to my sister's. Out of the hospital, she was losing weight fast, mostly to do with Uncle's haphazard guardianship. He yelled at her more often than not when it came to food, he had no patience, and for two months it wasn't clear whether it was her condition that was persisting or whether it was only a quarrel, a standoff with Uncle, that kept her from eating properly. Or at least that was how it seemed to me then. Now I know it was more complicated, that Sadhana was at least as helpless as we were. At the time, though, I was almost as angry at her as Uncle.

“It's stupid, you being here,” I said. She was back in the psych ward at the children's hospital, and it felt like her eight weeks at home had been a dream. We were in a visiting room with chairs and tables, board games stacked on low side tables. The game boxes looked battered, but I'd never seen anyone playing them. I found it hard to imagine depressive teenagers wanting to play Monopoly. At least Sadhana never would when I asked.

“Stupid,” repeated Sadhana. She was wearing a hospital gown over flannel boxer shorts, a concession to the nurses, who kept nagging her to put on clothes. With her legs tucked up sideways on the chair, the gown looked like a giant bib for a very messy eater. I was relieved that her legs were hidden. Even though I was used to them, it was hard not to keep staring at their scrawniness. I had Quinn on my lap, and he grappled at my plastic necklace while Sadhana made faces at him.

“Just try,” I said. “Just try getting better. Then you can come home.”

“I'm not coming home,” said Sadhana. “Some people don't.” She was in one of those moods when baiting me seemed to be her only pleasure. It seemed churlish to tell her to stop when she had so few opportunities for fun.

“What do you mean?” I asked, though I knew what she was getting at. Before we checked her back into the hospital, she was scared, she talked about death all the time. It was only a few days after she had been admitted that she started using it against me as a kind of threat. As a boast.

She had a notebook with her, and she pulled out a sheet of foolscap with writing on it. “I've started making my will,” she said. She flipped it out to face me, and I could see
The Last Will and Testament of Sadhana Kaur Singh
written across the top in fancy lettering, embellished on either side with vine leaves, clustering and veiny.

I knew this was bad, one of the warning signs, though I thought if she really wanted to kill herself, it would be easier to do at home. Still, it was possible that someone in the ward would try and help her, sneaking or trading pills. One of the therapists had warned us of suicide pacts, weight-loss competitions, dark things that girls did together. If Sadhana made any close friends, I was supposed to be worried.

“You can have my tape collection and all my books.” This was half moot, as Sadhana didn't have any books, at least not any that I didn't already regard as being held jointly — children's books that Mama had read to us, two shelves of them on the bookcase in our bedroom.

“What about your clothes?” I said, and I thought I saw her flinch before she shrugged.

“Well, I promised Marie my purple Esprit sweatshirt. The rest, I don't care.”

“Who's Marie?” I asked, suspicious.

“Just a friend. Quinn can have Floopy Bear.” Floopy Bear was Sadhana's mustard-coloured rag toy that Mama had sewn for her when she was a baby. It was something between a bear and a monkey, with flowered patchwork paws and ear linings, tail like a fat thumb. After fourteen years of companionship, it was threadbare, disgusting, and much beloved. It was probably even more prized than Princess Puss, my mousy cat born out of green corduroy and a blue backstitch.

“Oh, come on,” I said. She always went too far, she was always too thorough.

“What?”

“Well, what about your earrings, then? The ones that used to belong to Mama's grandmother?.” Silver and amber, tiny and dangling. I couldn't remember how Sadhana had secured them for herself, but I was sure it was at the end of a long conversation with Mama, after which Sadhana came straight into our room and tucked them directly into her jewel­lery box. There were lots of things like that, little interests and pleasures that she and Mama seemed to share. Except that I was never convinced that they really did share them, that it was ever anything but Sadhana playing, flexing her skills. Trying things on.

“The earrings.” Sadhana frowned at the will. It made a snapping sound as she flicked it with her pen, and Quinn flailed a fist in its direction. She held out her pen for him to grab and his fingers curled around it. “Fine, I guess.”

Sadhana folded away the will then, as a very thin girl with limp blonde hair came in and sat in a chair by the window. She had a deep hollow below her brow bone, a face more wasted than my sister's.

“Hi, Cynthia,” said Sadhana, cocking her head to one side. “Hi, Cindy.”

Cynthia, or Cindy, stared. “Hi,” she said. She was wearing a huge wool sweater, and the front pieces of her hair were held back with pink barrettes. She was pulling her fingers with their bitten-down nails in and out of the corner of her mouth, and she seemed nervous. I didn't blame her, as Sadhana didn't sound altogether friendly.

“Cindy, this is my sister, Beena,” said Sadhana. “You remember me talking about her in group.” Cindy nodded, her eyes trailing over to me. Then, “Beena, this is Cindy, another Ana.”

“Pardon?”

“She has anorexia.”

“Oh.” Cindy and I exchanged hellos, and Sadhana watched, plucking with one hand at the fraying armrest of her chair. Cindy seemed tentative but friendly in a meek way. It was hard to imagine another reason for her to come into the visiting room besides wanting to speak to my sister. The windows only looked out to the parking lot, two acres of grey asphalt bounded by grey stone walls. Even with the windows closed, the sounds of the street leaked through, shrieks of cars braking as ambulances pulled straight out into rush hour. The air conditioning, too, was chilly. In the anorexia ward, they kept it turned down because the girls got too cold.

I took the pen from Quinn, beaded with spit, and wiped it off on my denim skirt. In protest, Quinn shook his foot until one of his baby shoes fell off. Cindy leaned down to pick it up.

“Cute baby,” she said to me. She fitted the shoe back on as Quinn regarded her with open-mouthed curiosity.

“Thanks.”

Cindy folded herself back into her seat. She had a thick rolled-up tube of papers in her hand. She looked over them at my sister. “I wonder,” she said, “how long they expect us to keep choking down this crap they're trying to pass off as food? I mean, they know we're sick, right?”

Sadhana said, “Don't make excuses for your disease.” She didn't crack a smile. It wasn't clear to me whether she was serious or just poking fun at one of their therapist's usual sayings. It didn't seem to be obvious to Cindy either, who made a small sound and looked away. The papers she was clutching unfurled in her lap, flattening into a glossy pile. She was just bending her head to them when Sadhana hooted.

“Did you catch your anorexia from magazines?” she asked, snatching the small stack and holding them up to show me.
Vogue
,
Harper's Bazaar
,
Seventeen
.

“Sadhana,” I said. Quinn was fussing, wriggling on my lap.

“What?” She tugged with one hand at the edges of her blue gown, pulling it taut. Her knees poked up underneath like tent poles. “I'm helping. Leila says we're supposed to call people on their shit.”

“I have a feeling this isn't what she meant.”

Cindy's mouth tightened as she started up. She grabbed at the magazines Sadhana was waving back and forth, just out of reach, until she finally seized them and stalked out.

I turned to my sister. “What's wrong with you?” I asked.

“It's just so boring. Wanting to look like a model.”

“And you're not boring?”

“No.” Sadhana clasped her hands together behind her neck with false insouciance, stretching her bony legs out over the armrest. “I'm an orphan.” She had a look of mingled insolence and rage, a grim scowl topped by a defiant glare. She was waiting for me to comfort her, but just then I felt that there was no room in her for my sympathy. Or my pain. For anything that I could try to share.

I stood up. “Well, I think you are. I think all of this is beyond dull. At least, now it is.” And since Quinn was hungry and working himself up to a bawl, I carried him back down the hall to Sadhana's ward and to all the other skinny girls who didn't belong to me. I knew she wouldn't follow.

On the phone with Evan, after a long, silent bus ride back home to Ottawa, I mention Quinn's extended absences in Montreal. “He said he was at the library studying for his exams, but I'm not sure I believe him.”

Evan says, “Maybe he's looking for his father.”

“What makes you say that?” I've avoided mentioning to Evan the fleeting sight of Ravi on television, just as I've avoided thinking about it myself.

“He's from there, right? I would, I think, if I were Quinn. If I hadn't already.”

As far as I can tell, Evan's relationship with his own father is one of admiration verging on awe. His father is a dairy farmer whose father was a dairy farmer. Evan's brother is going to carry on with the farm one day, but Evan says his dad always encouraged them to pursue their own interests.

“You think Quinn's already looked?” Years ago, when we first got the internet hooked up at home, I had tried to look for Ravi online. I typed his name into a search bar on the computer, and, after half an hour of clicking, to my great relief, there had been no real leads. Dozens of hits for Ravi Patels all over North America, but none that seemed any likelier than another. There were two hundred R. Patels in Toronto and more than fifty in Montreal. I wondered then if he had gone to India. There were more than a few hundred Ravi Patels there. Thousands, or at least too many to count. Not quite John Smith, but almost. At the time, I thought maybe he had become afraid of me, after all.

“He could have. You say he's on the computer all the time at home.”

Quinn is already up and eating breakfast in the kitchen, but when I come in, he stands and starts zipping up his knapsack. He hadn't wanted to come back to Ottawa in time for school on Monday, but I'd insisted.

“Only three weeks left of high school,” I'd said. “Don't you want to savour them?” He had responded with an un­equivocal no but failed to offer any more objections after Uncle weighed in against him.

“Morning,” I say now.

As he slings his bag over one shoulder, he makes a wordless sound in his throat that might be only the swallowing of his cereal.

“Leaving?” I ask. It's early, just after seven, but the school is already open for business. There are orchestra rehearsals, Greek lessons, free tables in the art room before classes start at eight fifteen. Not that Quinn does any of those things. I wonder if he has started smoking and gets there before the bell to hang around the side the building to share cigarettes and flirt with the smoker girls. I stare at his baggy shorts and T-shirt and try to assess whether his fashion has changed from the slightly preppy standard of his friends in the gifted class to something else. I wonder if he still even has the same friends. He hasn't mentioned a name I recognize, or any name, in months.

“Mm-hmm.”

“See you later then,” I call with forced cheer as he legs past me towards the front door, but it sounds less like a patient reminder of my unconditional love than a vague threat.

After Quinn is gone, Evan rings the doorbell with his nose, hands full with two large cups of milky coffee.

“I have the day off,” he says. His face as he hands me the coffee reveals an agenda of enjoyment. “Let's roll.”

Parking the truck at the two-thirds mark, just off Elgin Street, we launch a downtown stroll targeting the Byward Market. Evan stops at a farmer's stall for a net bag full of green apples he vows to make into a tart. Taking one out, he raises it up to the light. “It almost seems a shame to bite into it,” he says. “It looks too perfect.”

I pluck it from his grasp and drop it back in the bag, which he holds opens for me. “I'm more concerned about this dessert you've promised to make.”

Sadhana was never happy with surfaces. If new love was a drug, then she wanted to break it down to the chemical level rather than enjoy the high. She'd prod and poke and ask impossible questions to make sure things weren't floating by on appearances. I'd seen her do it at parties and on the few double dates we endured. We'd be at a dessert place after a movie, sharing two slices of cake between the four of us, all eating with absurd parity and pace, when she'd suddenly turn to her date and ask him where he'd rank her on the beauty scale compared to everyone he'd ever kissed. She'd tried to pass the habit along to me, but I was always resistant. There was no way I was going to pose to a new boyfriend some ridiculous moral or aesthetic quandary, such as whom he'd choose to save from a fire, me or his favourite first cousin.

Walking along the canal beside Evan, I can almost hear her at my back, whispering subtle sabotage under the guise of necessary truth.
Ask him if he has a hero complex and you just seem like the closest person who needs saving
.
Ask him if he's had bad luck with girls his own age and he's just moving on up to the next-most-desperate age bracket.
Questions that skip the investigation and move straight to accusation, the real root at the base of all her musings.

“You're quiet,” says Evan.

“That's nothing new, is it?”

“I suppose not.” He reaches to clasp my hand. With the other, I point out Quinn's high school, just a dozen yards away on the other side of a bank of trees and benches.

“That building there with the silver roof. And the one beside it.”

“That close? And you're risking being seen with me.”

“Well, it's early yet.” Just past ten, before even the most unabashed slackers would begin skipping class.

“It doesn't seem fair to keep them in on a day like this. Pure gorgeousness.” And it is. Fully warm without being hot, a clarity to the morning as the sunlight skims and dazzles off the surface of the water.

“And what are we doing with the rest of our fair day? You've been alluding to big stuff.”

“I was thinking of painting my bedroom,” he says. “And bringing you along to help choose the colour.”

“And for grunt labour?” I shift my train of thought from picnics to renovations.

“For management of operations.”

“Ah. But I thought you were planning on moving out.”

Evan gives me a quick look. “Do you want me to?”

“No.” Although if I think about it, I really do. “Your roommates are nice.”

“They are.” Evan is emphatic. “Good guys, and smart. I'd go crazy if I only hung out with cops all the time.”

At the hardware store, a nightmare in orange and huge, towering aisles, I follow Evan as he leads us past hulking lawnmowers and gleaming light fixtures to the paint section. Though the scale of the place is alienating, the whole store has a warm, earthy smell that makes me think of food.

“It's the sawdust,” Evan says. “Though I wouldn't recommend eating it.” And then the rows of paint chips are spread before us in a rainbow grid and he asks me to choose.

“What?” I look at him in surprise. “I thought I was here for consultation. As in, ‘Select one of these four nearly identical shades to which I've already narrowed it down.'”

“No way. I want you to pick.”

I try to picture his bedroom, the colour of the walls as they are now, and I find I can't do it with any certainty. Grey maybe, or dirty white. Or maybe a clean, gleaming white that only looks shadow-coloured in the near dark of the late evenings I've spent there, the fading light dampened by the thick cotton blanket Evan hangs as a curtain over the room's one window.

“What's wrong with the way it is now?”

“Too unintentional. I haven't changed anything.”

“I think it's fine.” I make a slight move towards the closest section of green samples but pull back my hand as Evan leans in. “It's fine,” I say again.

“I'd like it to be better than fine. As my dad would say, it needs a sprucing.” Evan plucks a handful of paint chips, mostly green, but a few in scales of yellow and rose. He waves them under my nose. “You really hate choosing, don't you?”

“All by myself, yes. Anyway, it's your room. What makes me the expert?” I realize then that he hasn't seen the surfaces inside my house yet, the walls still the same colour they were when I moved in, all tans and taupes and flat cream, the generic palette of real estate. He imagines, maybe, a coordinated design scheme, something other than the cumulative effect of years of ad hoc acquisitions and very little removal. “You think I have feminine expertise on the subject,” I say, with some accusation.

“Hoped rather than thought.” Evan deals out the chips along the counter of an empty cashier's booth. “I'm going to build some shelves, too. Stain them a dark chocolate. Do you like the sound of that?”

“Well, I like chocolate.” It's becoming more and more apparent that Evan's redecorating project is both a confession that he's staying in his apartment and an attempt to mollify me as to his decision. “But suit yourself.” I find myself feeling irritated.

As Evan ponders aloud some imagined virtues of yellow over green (“Yellow flatters your complexion and green makes me look washed out”), he makes me laugh once or twice, until finally I stab out at one of the faint green blocks. “This one, okay? This one.”

“‘Verdant,'” reads Evan. “A fine choice, m'lady.” Then, as I cock my head sharply to the right, he says, “What?”

“I thought I heard — one sec.”

Doubting my ears, I walk to the end of the aisle and look around. And there he is. Quinn stopping for a moment, then disappearing around a corner, a sandy-haired girl in glasses at his side. They have their arms full of power bars and extension cords and a few other miscellaneous items I can't identify from this distance.

I hurry back and grab at Evan's wrist, his heavy wristwatch. “How long have we been here?” It's just after eleven.

“What's the matter?”

“It's Quinn. Oh shit. Shit.”

“What about Quinn? Is something the matter?” Evan has his hand on my elbow, eyes scanning mine, peace-officer mode to my hysterical woman. “Did somebody just call you?”

“No, he's here. He's
here
. What is he doing here?”

“I thought he was at school,” says Evan, letting go.

“So did I. Shit.” I pull Evan into the next aisle, away from the exposed area around the paint-mixing kiosk and cash register. Leaning back against the hanging rows of sponge brushes and roller refills, I try to guess which way Quinn will be heading.

Evan puts one hand in his pocket and rocks back on his heels. He has an air of forced casualness. “So are we going to go say hello?”

“No,” I say. “Not you. Not like this.”

Evan nods. Then he says, “But I want to see. Okay?” He doesn't wait but strikes out towards the end of the aisle when I fail to object. He peers around the corner, then, perhaps remembering that he is still a stranger to Quinn, steps right out into the aisle and examines a display of stainless steel cookware, pausing once or twice to give a long glance in both directions, as though looking for a salesperson. I can guess when Evan sees him as there is a moment where his eyes pop a little before he blinks and looks away.

“He's tall,” he says, returning.

“I told you.” More than a touch of pride there, even in the midst of panic. “Is he coming back this way?”

“Yeah. What do you want me to do?”

“Get the paint. I'll meet you at the truck.”

Leaving Evan behind me, I walk away towards the front of the store, trying to look absorbed. But I see Quinn right away, and he spots me at almost the same instant.

“Mom,” he calls out. The girl at his side slows her pace before turning and melting into the crowd of shoppers clogging the area near the cash registers.

“Quinn,” I say. “What are you doing here?”

“I had a spare period before lunch.”

“And this is the new teen hangout.”

“Reno's all the rage, Mom.”

“Quinn.”

He sighs. “I came with a friend,” he says, gesturing vaguely, though the girl he came with is no longer in sight. “She drove. She needed to pick up some things for her dad.”

“That's a lot of power cords.”

“They're having some wiring problems at their new house.”

“Where is she? I'd like to meet her.”

“Do you have to?” There is a pleading there, as well as a slight edge of annoyance to his question.

Behind him, I see his friend now waiting in line, and I wonder if Evan has already checked through or is still waiting for his paint to be mixed and shaken. I let out a breath. “No. No, I guess not.”

“Thanks.” He turns and sees her and starts moving away. “I'll see you later.” Then he stops. “Wait. What are you doing here?”

“Oh. I thought we needed a flashlight. One of those hand-cranked ones. Two, actually. In case of disaster.” I fold my arms, hugging them in, adding, “I haven't found them yet.”

“Right. Okay, bye.” He joins his friend at the farthest cash register, where I watch until they both look up, no doubt to check whether or not I've left yet. I hold up my hand for a moment and smile, while Quinn glares and the girl gives a small wave in return.