Bone and Bread (40 page)

Ravi has one hand admonishing the air. “Bassam Essaid is exploiting our goodwill, our naiveté. If we allow this to stand as a precedent, there is no telling the kinds of criminals, the kinds of terrorists, who will be using these methods to come and stay in our country. Take it from me, now is the time for us to start cleaning house.”

Booing starts in earnest as an accompaniment to the existing heckling. Ravi has grown up to be what I suppose he always was. Short-sighted, conservative, and conceited. Sadhana despised him from the beginning, based only on the most cursory acquaintance. She saw, too, in a way I didn't, how willing I was to throw everything over, to toss away my whole life for the promise of one boy's affection.

Back behind the dwindling section of people still standing at attention, I wander into a diffuse group, still lingering at the food table or spread out on the squashed lawn, waiting for news of the tribunal. Evan is nowhere in sight, but I spot Libby sitting on the grass with her daughter. I think I draw nearer because I am curious, or still waiting for the arrival of some deferred reaction. Something like a purposeful rage.

Libby has Mouse between her legs, tucking dandelions into the elastics around her pigtails. She looks up at me with a wan face as I approach, but she seems calm and somehow ready for anything I might say. Her hair has been brushed until it is shining.

“You're here,” she says.

“For what it's worth.” With Ravi present, it is hard to keep track of the aim of the demonstration, let alone gauge its effectiveness.

Mouse grabs both of us and lays out her dandelion crown for Libby's approval.

“Beautiful, baby,” says Libby. I concur. Then Mouse dons her crown and holds out her cupped palm.

“Lucky penny, Mummy,” she says, and Libby digs out a coin from her pocket and gives it to her.

“For the fountain,” Libby says to me, as Mouse runs off towards the square's ornamental centrepiece. “For wishing.”

The penny is a bright speck against the grey sky as Mouse tosses it into the water. Then our attention is drawn away as the chanting starts up again, seemingly in relation to the smaller group of people who arrived just before Ravi and who are the only ones giving him bursts of enthusiastic applause. A line of protestors from the main demonstration is forming to prevent them from entering the square, and there is shouting from both sides that I can't make out. Ravi has stopped talking, although the association between him and the bulk of the dissenting group is not altogether clear. Some of them are carrying signs that read
IMMIGRANTS LÉGAUX SEULEMENT
and
QUÉBEC POUR LES QUÉBÉCOIS
. I see him approaching the standoff between the two lines, encouraging people to disperse.

“Boys,” says Libby, with a dismissive air. She holds out her wrist to me. Her palm is the colour of the papery husk of a ground cherry. Gooseberry lanterns, that's what Mama called them. It is also deeply lined. “Smell,” she says.

I oblige. I detect lemon, a trace of sandalwood and sweet musk. My nose brushes her skin.

“This is the perfume she was wearing,” she says, “those last few weeks. Sadie.” She pulls her arm back into her sleeve. “I bought it for her.”

Mouse has returned. Libby hugs her, holding her tight and teasing her corkscrew curls until the girl starts to squirm. Then Libby lets go, and her daughter flees towards the clown, who is now twisting balloon animals in spite of the light drizzle that has begun to fall.

Libby is waiting for me to say something, to accuse or absolve her. Or tell her what I'm going to do with her confession.

I'm sure my voice is going to come out shaky, but it sounds normal. “What do you think is going to happen with the tribunal?” I ask. Looking past her, I see Evan at last, moving away from the front, stopping to pet dogs and chatting with some of the protesters. There is a bloom of colour all around us as people begin donning rain jackets and opening umbrellas.

“I don't know.”

There is a tussle going on at the edge of the square now. A couple of the younger people on either side of the standoff are grappling each other's forearms as they each try to push back the opposite side, a grim game of Red Rover. Libby shifts away slightly, angling herself to face a line of police mustering at the other end of the street.

“We should get out of here,” I say.

But Libby doesn't seem to be listening. “Beena,” she says, “I didn't throw out the diary. I read it.” She looks more ashamed than I ever felt about reading Sadhana's diary when we were teenagers. “Sadie wasn't angry with you. And she wasn't sick. She was trying to do what she thought was the right thing.”

“Really.” It comes out as scoffing, but I register a jolt of hope.

“Yes, really,” says Libby. Turning back to me, she reaches for my arm but falls short, as though only managing the ghost of the gesture she wishes to make. “She just didn't want anyone to know until she had it all figured out.” Libby slips her hand into her bag and pulls out a slim green notebook. “Here.” She presses it into my hands.

“What do you mean?” I rub my thumb along the diary's soft paper cover with its pattern of cherry blossoms. Then, when a raindrop darkens the green with a wet splotch, I clutch it to my chest.

“She wanted to take care of it all for you,” says Libby. “Everything to do with your son and Ravi — she wanted to protect you from that. Look after you in the one way she could.” Her voice, for once, is soft. “You know, the way you looked after her.”

I know what she says must be borne out by the notebook, or she wouldn't have given it to me. Libby's words and Sadhana's plan coalesce into a kind of dizziness of relief.

The diary is such a small thing, now that I'm holding it.

I thrust it back at her.

But Libby steps back, shaking her head. “Living with what happened, even without that around . . .” She slips her hands into her back pockets, as though to keep them at bay. “No, I don't want it.”

“But you were together.” And when I hear myself say it, I really understand it for the first time. “There must be things in there, maybe, that matter.”

Libby nods. “Lovely things.” Her lips tremble. “But those parts I know by heart.”

Twenty yards down the street, riot police beat on their shields with nightsticks. After this drumming menace, they begin to march in our direction. People all around us are scrambling to their feet to get away. Libby looks around and leaves me with an apology as she hurries over to Mouse, who is being herded away by the clown to the opposite side of the trees.

I get up and walk away towards the fountain, past the peripheral blur of a black dog, unleashed and bounding after the children. The diary is in my hands and yet I don't think I want it. Relieved as I am, I'm still afraid of what else it might say about me. Sadhana's other diaries have been sealed up, unread, in a box, and maybe that is where this one belongs, too.

It's raining harder, the square emptying of people. The fountain, surrounded just a few minutes ago, is already deserted, and as raindrops strike the water, they generate a rippling mass of circles that radiate and overlap. Spouting iron fish froth the pool from the centre, and drawing near enough to hear the soft bubbling of the water, I remember the moment of lightness I'd felt, releasing Sadhana's ashes to the river.

I shift my weight from one foot to the other. There is a comfortable kind of loneliness is a place that belongs to everybody. Looking to the dark bottom of the granite basin, I see its precious coating of coins bright and dull, the tokens of hundreds of wishes. I feel in my pocket for change and find nothing except some Kleenex. But the diary is in my hand, a light, flat rectangle with so much of my hope riding on it.

I toss it in the fountain with a flick of the wrist, and it only takes a moment to sink to the bottom.

Before I can register what I've done, I hear the charged bark of a megaphone and Evan emerges from somewhere to grab me by the elbow. He helps me scramble out of the way as the police move in, faster than I would have guessed, from the adjoining side. He uses one arm to steer us back through the remaining crowd and the other to keep a tight lock on me.

“They're reading the riot act,” says Evan. We are making slow progress to the edge of the park that hasn't already been hemmed in. “We've got to disperse.”

Behind us, I can hear the outraged cries of people being arrested. Locating Quinn and Caro beyond the northwest corner of the square, Evan ensures that we are all together and accounted for.

“Mom, you okay?”

Standing next to my son, I can almost feel the bleakness coming off him. “Are you?” He nods.

“I saw someone get wrestled into handcuffs,” says Evan. “Looks like he took a couple of bad punches.”

“From who?” says Quinn.

Evan ignores the question, which means it was the cops. To me, he says, “You don't look so good either.”

I hardly know how I feel. But there is too much to explain. “I'm fine,” I say.

Evan reacts to the lie by taking his leave. “Call me later if you want to talk.” He seems both rueful and amused. I hope there is enough time left to us to exercise the patience we talked about. “Bye, Quinn.”

“Bye.” My son watches him walk away before pulling me into step with him and Caro.

“I sort of know the people at this place where we're going,” Caro says now. She doesn't seem dismayed by the arrival of the police, and I wonder if that has anything to do with the footage in the camera she's clutching. “It'll be fun.”

The three of us get caught up in the remains of the group of protesters as it straggles north to a house run by a sympathetic collective. We are a jumbled and roving assemblage, clusters now dawdling, now shooting ahead like sprung elastics. We're in the rear of the procession, where the general attitude is one of defeat. Not that anyone is yet aware of the tribunal's decision, but it looks bad, the peaceful protest marred by a brawl, or the start of one.

Two people walking just behind us are discussing whether they'll still have the heart to continue organizing in support of refugees if they have to keep contending with counter-protests. But as we quicken our pace, we move into the ranks of those who are spinning the day's events into a patchy heroism.

“We gave the fascists what they came for,” says a guy with a line of blood on his cheek. His listener slaps him on the back.

“I think more of them got arrested, too.” The same guy high-fives Quinn. Just for turning up, we are allowed to belong.

Were it not for Quinn and Caro, I'd walk straight past the party, straight down to the train tracks, and follow them all the way to Ottawa. Yet I'd rather not be alone.

“That was interesting,” I say with effort. Quinn nods. His long strides have a bounce at the knees. “Fascinating speeches, especially the last one.” Quinn cracks a half-smile but it turns dour.

Caro is more upbeat. “I think the whole thing is so inspiring, people banding together for a cause.” She checks her camera bag. “Do you think everyone is going to be okay? I might have caught something that can help anyone who was arrested if it goes to trial.”

From our first steps over the threshold, I can sense the gathering has a frenzied edge, fuelled by outrage and exhilaration. It is still early on a Monday evening, but both the kitchen counter and the freezer top are being used to mix drinks and hold opened bottles of wine. At the front of the house, in the living room, a DJ named Spangler is spinning real records on a row of silver turntables. I blink at the records as we go in. Spangler does not look old enough to have even had to contend with cassette tapes. Much of the group is already dancing. Quinn, Caro, and I move past the most boisterous of these festivities and tuck ourselves into the breakfast nook by the back door, well out of the bar and fridge traffic, where we can be ignored.

“This reminds me of that party,” says Quinn. “Remember? When I had to sleep in that broom closet?”

“What on earth,” says Caro, laughing.

“Pantry,” I correct him. I say to Caro, “It was at my sister's place.”

Quinn has to raise his voice as the music flares. “It would be hard to fall asleep at this one.”

“Not for you,” I say, making the usual family joke. He smiles.

Then Caro broaches the subject of Ravi with no hesitation, and I remember that Quinn asked her along to their meeting. “You could still get to know him,” she says. “Lots of people have dads who are jerks.”

Quinn tenses as though he's afraid of my reaction, but I sit back, well out of it.

“I don't think so,” he says. “And I don't care what I promised him.” He looks at me. “About not telling, I mean.”

“Neither do I,” I say, getting up to use the bathroom. There is no need to sort out our separate deals and agreements. Revenge seems like it will take too much energy, too much care. But when I return to the kitchen, I hear Quinn and Caro scheming. They have their backs to me where I hover near an open cooler of beer.

“I can get into the website, no problem,” says Quinn. “How much footage did you get when we met?”

“The hidden-camera stuff? Enough,” she says. “No need to credit me.”

“Don't worry,” says Quinn. “Maybe I'll tip off the papers, too.”

My fingers tighten around a beer. Sometimes Quinn hacks into websites, pulling pranks. In January, he pulled a stunt with his school's home page that nearly got him suspended. Whatever they are planning now would be a crime, and an obvious one, and Evan's horror at what I tried to do to Ravi is still fresh in my mind. I tell myself that I am going to intervene and repeat it until I am convinced enough to let it go for now.

“Calm down, everyone,” I say, coming back to the table. The two of them at least look nervous.

“What's going to happen to the Essaid family?” says Caro. “Have you heard?”

“They're staying.” The news is rippling through the house on a wave of elation, and I can make out shouting and toasting from the hall before the music is turned up.

“That's wonderful,” says Caro. “A happy ending.” She might mean for them or for the movie she's planning, or both. She hops to her feet. “I'm going to go get some interviews.”

In the kitchen, as in life, Quinn and I are stuck with one another. I'm not in a mood to make conversation with strangers, and though Quinn has a restlessness in his twitching legs, he's staying put. There is something of a kettle hum about him, the way his mouth keeps moving as if he is about to let loose a speech.

It isn't easy to figure out what to say. All I can comprehend is relief at what Libby claims to have read in the diary — Sadhana's happiness in those last weeks. Her forgiveness. There is still time to decide whether to tell Quinn what I've done with the diary. But steering clear of that dilemma, all that's left for us to talk about are other topics we'd rather avoid.

“Are you sorry you met him?” I say.

“There isn't any point to being sorry,” he says. He's having trouble looking at me, but I wait. He's holding a beer in a grip fierce enough to imply his skepticism about my permission. So far he's only had the one sip.

“What?” I say. “It's okay.”

“You really don't mind?” he says, looking now, tapping the bottle.

“It's legal, or almost. You're nearly eighteen.”

“Not the question.”

“It's fine. Really.” In emphasis, I take a drink from my own beer, and Quinn looks dubious.

“It's too weird.”

“Why? Auntie S always gave you sips of her wine.”

Her name between us in any form is still a blow, but it doesn't sting or spin the room the way it used to, given everything that has been happening over the past week.

Quinn nods and shrugs. “It's different with you,” he says. “You were always the one in charge.”

There is something in Quinn's face that makes me realize he thinks he can get to the bottom of everything if we just keep talking — even Sadhana's death. I've no idea where he might have obtained this trait, certainly not through inheritance. Even after hearing Libby's account of what happened, I feel a long way from understanding how or why accident and illness should have intersected the way they did.

“I never felt like I was in charge,” I say. “I'm not sure that I was.” I always sensed I was only reacting, making way for Sadhana's condition or pushing back against it, as the situation required. “Anyway, it's hard to say much of anything about the way things really were.”

“Why?” says Quinn, as if there is no such thing as an unanswerable question. He scrutinizes me through glasses that have slid half an inch down his nose.

“There are some things we won't ever know,” I say. All the times I might have behaved differently, and the hundreds of ways I might have changed what happened. “I mean, definitively.”

“Like what? There are things people said that about fifty years ago, and look how far science has come. Look at all the genetic research going on. Look at particle physics.”

Even when he's being annoying, I love to hear him debate. “I mean historical mysteries,” I say. “Where the facts are gone and there's no way of getting them back.”

“You can put the facts back.”

“What?”

“You can tell the truth.”

“I don't get it.”

Quinn holds me in a level gaze. “I found the website for Quebec First. It's kids' stuff.”

“Don't do it.”

“They might actually win the election.”

“They could press charges. You could go to jail.”

“Okay, I won't.” But he has a familiar defiant look on his face. My sister's face. The smart-aleck look of no regrets. And though we have not said her name again, our thoughts are still running along the same lines.

“I wish we had taken better care of her,” he says.

“Quinn, all I've done my whole life was try to help her.”

“It didn't seem like it, the way you were at therapy. You hated it.”

“No, I didn't.”

“Yes, you did. You were always so mean. So different from what you're normally like. I could never understand it.”

“She was better than those people.” I'm just as surprised as Quinn when this comes out.

“Mom.”

“Well, she was. And she had real problems. Some of those girls —” I break off, remembering some of the faces from Sadhana's first hospital stay. Tender-hearted Cynthia, who wanted to be Sadhana's friend. Laurel of the infinite sarcasm. Their helpless inability to understand or communicate their own pain. Of the family therapy sessions that came later, with Quinn, I remember very little of the other young women. Only their parents, wondering what they had done wrong. The way they cried in those plastic chairs in front of everyone, the sniffling that made shivers of disgust creep up my spine. I remember thinking that I would never let myself feel so guilty. Though I judged them, too, even more harshly than they judged themselves.

“I'm sorry,” I say. “Ignore me.”

Quinn leans his head back against the wall and closes his eyes. “Are you going to marry him?”

“Evan?” I am surprised. “That's not even on the table.”

“But would you?”

“I don't know.” I am not even sure how to repair the day's damage. My carelessness with his feelings and everything I've failed to explain.

But tonight Quinn will not be put off. The alcohol and the excitement have made him tenacious. “Do you think she was still angry with us?”

“No.” It gives me some peace to say this. But pain, too, now, knowing it was mostly my anger holding us apart. That, and, if what Libby said is true, Sadhana's wish to mediate things between Quinn and Ravi. To put that inquiry to rest.

“I wish we could know for sure.”

“I'm sorry,” I whisper.

“Mom?” He leans forward across the table. I shake my head.

“What about the last time you talked?” he presses. “Before the fight, I mean.”

I've been dwelling on those final exchanges for so long that the months before them have slipped out of focus. “No,” I say, a little harsher than I intended, and he draws back.

“Fine. I'll go first.” Quinn tips back his bottle, wipes his mouth with the side of his thumb. “She told me things were going well.” He sounds defiant. “We talked about where I was going to go to school, and if I got all my applications in on time.” He takes another sip of his beer and starts talking in a rush. “She asked me if I liked anyone. She said she thought she might be at the start of something new, but it was complicated.”

“You never told me that.”

“Now you know what it feels like.”

“She always told you more than she told me,” I say, thinking over what Quinn has reported. “We were never as close as you thought. Not in the way you imagine, anyway.”

“I don't believe you.” Every lacuna he considers a lie.

I wonder whether there will ever be an understanding between us, and how heavy this question is as it comes to me, as heavy almost as the guilt I have been trying to shed, this notion that even between the two of us, close as we are, there may be no simplicity. Nor was there always understanding between me and Sadhana. And with such a gap to bridge even between the people you ought to be nearest to in the world, people who share your whole history and language, or even blood, anything as simple as friendship begins to seem miraculous. Let alone love. Let alone forgiveness. The people gathered around us, the great goodwill directed to the cause of the Essaids, all that might even be easier. Caring about the well-being of strangers. Tending to principles instead of to people with all of their flaws.

“At a certain point, you're going to have to take my word for it, kid.”

Quinn makes the slightest of motions, a movement of his shoulder towards his ear, that hints at concession. It is no wonder he is skeptical. He is my son, mine and Sadhana's, and I am glad that he is clever and full of doubt and sees me more clearly for who I am than as simply the woman who is his mother.

He pushes his chair back from the table. “I guess we've never been a normal family,” he says, getting up to move to the fridge. He is looking inside for something, and though I wonder at the propriety of this, people are coming in and out of the kitchen for drinks and nobody else gives him a second glance as he roots around.