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 hat
e 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.
Driving back to Evan’s, four litres of paint stowed in the back and two new flashlights at my feet, I wonder aloud who Quinn’s friend could be. “I’m positive I’ve never seen her before,” I say. “And Quinn went out of his way not to tell me her name.”
“You remind me of my mother,” says Evan, and before I can verbalize my horror, he clarifies, “I mean your shameless curiosity about your son’s business.” He’s amused.
“You think I should leave him alone.”
“Not exactly. But he’s grown. He’s entitled to keep his own secrets. Just as you keep yours.”
When I get home, I look for Quinn, intent for a moment on telling him about Evan. Evan has volunteered to drive Sadhana’s things from Montreal if I ever finish packing them, and if I take him up on his offer, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to avoid introducing him to Quinn. It will be a relief to tell him about the affair. And after all, it is not even really an affair, since Evan and I are both single, and Quinn, I decide as I unlock the door, will probably not even find it interesting. He has known me to date a few men in the past, but after the first bungled romance he witnessed, he seems to assume that a breakup is not only a likelihood but an inevitability, liable to strike before any relationship of mine can cause him much personal inconvenience. A bit insulting, from my point of view, but I can see the self-preservation at work in his belief and have no better reason to object.
I call out for him as I slam the door shut and kick off my sandals, but there is no response. How he must hate that — this is the thought that occurs to me in the space of silence of him not answering. His mother hallooing for him the second she walks in the door. Do I always do this? I try to remember. I hope I am not needy. Children are supposed to need their parents, not the other way around.
No sign of Quinn’s knapsack, but there is a pile of mail, the tidy white envelopes of bills splayed uniformly on the counter. He’s here. There is a message still flashing on the machine. When I press Play, Libby’s powerful, lilting voice comes blaring out of the speaker. Someone has turned the volume all the way up, and I hasten to turn it down.
“Hi, Beena, it’s me again. Just wanted to say it was nice meeting you and I’d like to do it again soon. Hope everything went okay at the apartment.” In the pause, I can hear the slight squeak of the machine’s worn cassette tape. “Give me a call the next time you’re in town and we’ll have a nice chat.” She ends on a bright note, though the promise of another meeting makes me anxious, reminding me of Libby’s café tears.
I press the button to delete the message. If Quinn heard her leave it, the flashin
g light means he didn’t bother to listen twice. Even if he did, I suppose, she didn’t mention anything about Sadhana.
I find him in the backyard, kneeling on the grass, surrounded by wood and scattered papers, and the full assortment of our tool collection ranged along the edge of the deck. I squeeze onto the step, planting my feet to the left of a plastic tub of nails.
“Hey, Ma.” He sits back on his heels and straightens his glasses. Then he pushes some wood out from directly behind him and sits right down on the grass, stretching his legs.
“Hi,” I say, pleased that I rate a break. “What’s all this?”
“I’m building a dolly. Trying to build.”
“What for?”
“For a friend. A friend who needs it to help film something.” The girl, it has to be the girl. That business about the wiring just a lie, like my flashlights.
“I see.” I look out over the assembled materials with an eye for the stated project, but it isn’t clear how it’s going to come together. Then I spot some red wheels poking up out of the grass. “Oh, your skateboard,” I say, pointing.
“Yeah, well, I don’t really use it much ever.”
“You know, you weren’t that bad.” He gave it a try the summer he turned eleven. One weekend when she was visiting, Sadhana bought him a deck and we walked him over to the remotest parking lot we could think of so he could practice out of sight of the other kids on our street, a few of whom were already alarmingly advanced. We stood around — Sadhana chugging club soda while I sipped a milkshake — and tried not to look involved. He got to the point where he could roll along just fine, if a bit stiffly, but I never saw him try his luck against a curb.
“I sucked,” he says. “But whatever.”
“I love the sound of a skateboard coming down the street.”
“Want to try before I sacrifice it for the dolly?”
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
I leave him to it, but I pop my head out later, remembering my plan to tell him about Evan.
The hammering breaks off into swearing, a string of expletives defaming our substandard Vise-Grips.
Bone and Bread Page 18
