Bone and Bread (41 page)

“I wish you could have known your grandmother,” I say. “She was truly an unusual woman. And she would have liked this party.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes, she had some remarkable friends. And she never missed an opportunity to celebrate.” These are things I've said before, but Quinn always listens as if it were the first time. He turns to look at me as he moves through the kitchen. “If she were here,” I go on, “she probably would have baked a cake in the shape of a courthouse or filled the whole house with balloons. She was never afraid of throwing herself into things.”

Mama's courage was where our inheritance went astray. The trust she had in her own choices, to follow without doubt the call of her heart, wherever it might lead. Instead of doing whatever else might have been expected. Choosing to be free, choosing to always be choosing, never following. Choosing everything instead of being or seeing only one thing or the other.

Quinn comes back to the table with a loaf of bread and some peanut butter. Before he sits down, he hunts around in the drawers and cupboards, but all he can find is a single plate and a spoon.

“I'm not sure people actually live here,” he says. There is no blind on the kitchen window, and though the sun is still up, we can see the gibbous waning moon rising in the east.

We tear off pieces of bread with our hands and scoop the peanut butter on top. The first bite reveals to me my own hunger, and the second tells me something else, that I am alive. That I am here in a kitchen with my son, and we are eating together and we are alive. And the work of getting closer, of loving harder, is the work of a whole life.

I gratefully acknowledge the support of this project by the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. I would also like to thank the Banff Centre, where I started writing this novel, and Yaddo, where I began to revise it, as well as the Quebec Writers' Federation mentorship program. I am infinitely grateful for the friendships and pages that emerged from these opportunities.

Thanks again to
The New Quarterly
for first publishing the story from which this novel evolved and to the Blue Metropolis literary festival where the issue was launched. Thank you to my agent, Martha Magor Webb, for her insightful reading and belief in these characters.

Profound thanks to my brilliant editor, Melanie Little, for her faith, respect, precision and encouragement, and for understanding everything. Much gratitude also to Sarah MacLachlan, Jared Bland, Kate McQuaid, and all the kind and capable souls at House of Anansi Press who lent their time and expertise to this novel in many different capacities. Thank you to Alysia Shewchuk for the remarkable cover design.

Thanks to Alice Zorn above all for her friendship, as well as for her astute reading of this manuscript, and to Ian McGillis for valuable comments on early pages. Ongoing gratitude to those writerly friends who have been kind enough to read, listen, or commiserate: Matthew Anderson, Jonathan Ball, Linda Besner, Erin Bockstael, Lina Gordaneer, Leigh Kotsilidis, Bob Kotyk, Erin Laing, and Kathleen Winter. Thank you to Atika Mirza for sparking Beena's name. Thank you to all the kind, brilliant, beautiful people I am privileged to spend time with — I don't know what I would do without you. Thank you, too, to friends at a distance for warmth in correspondence. For endless friendship and support, thank you to Mylissa Falkner, Kat Kitching, Jessica Lim, Vivienne Macy, and Rajam Raghunathan.

Love and thanks to my mother, my grandmother, and all of my Ainsworth family. Love and thanks to Vivi and the Webster family. Love and all to Derek.

SALEEMA NAWAZ
is the author of the short story collection
Mother Superior
and winner of the prestigious Writers' Trust of Canada/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize. Born and raised in Ottawa, Ontario, she currently lives in Montreal, Quebec.