I change the subject to something I’ve been wanting to ask. “Do you think the stress of a fight could kill someone? Give them a heart attack?”
“Like a physical fight?”
“No, a disagreement.”
Evan takes a small sip of his drink and a moment to consider. “Maybe? I guess it has to do with blood pressure. Maybe in the heat of the moment it could be too much for someone.”
“That’s just it,” I say. “People don’t die of a heart attack for no reason. They get angry or they’re shovelling snow or playing football or something.” As I say this, I realize I am giving voice to something I have been thinking for a long time. “Even people with weak hearts.”
“What are you trying to get at, exactly?”
“I’m saying something happened to my sister.” Evan’s point about the heat of the moment helps me discard my own role in the theory, so even as I say this aloud I feel the possibility of absolution. Our fight, however it may have broken Quinn’s heart, did not break Sadhana’s. The hope almost makes me want to cry.
Evan puts down his glass. He reaches out and clasps my arms below the elbows with a light touch. “What about all the startling things that happen every day?” He is offering alternatives as though my guilty conscience is still hanging in the balance. “An alarm clock going off or an ambulance driving by with its siren. A mouse running across the floor.”
“I wonder.” I imagine an argument with Libby, or maybe with a downstairs neighbour. I remember there was a woman who once made a noise complaint after a party. Our fight may have been old news by the time of Sadhana’s death, but what else could have happened in her life in the meantime?
“It could have been anything, Beena,” says Evan, as if I’d spoken aloud. “She could have carried too many groceries up the stairs. If her heart was really that bad, it could have given out. They call it a ticker, don’t they? Sometimes they run down.”
“That’s what her doctor implied.”
“And she was sick for how long with her eating disorder?”
“Eighteen years, on and off.”
“So.”
“Yeah.” I see his point, and for once, I feel it to be true.
Evan checks his watch. “When is Quinn getting home?”
“Soon.”
While my silence still leaves room for him to imagine that I accept his analysis, Evan finishes his drink and urges me to give him a tour of the bedroom.
Later, when I’m alone washing the dishes, I remember what my sister said to me that last time, before I hung up in her ear. Not her last words, but her last to me in this world: “This is the kind of thing that gets followed to its end, Bee. Ravi is the answer to a question and Quinn can’t just leave him alone. You can’t ask him to.” This logic is less hateful to me now, or I am. I was someone else then, I must have been, to have hung up like that, to have harboured that fury. At least, this kind of rupture is the only path I have found to mercy: if that was me, it isn’t now. I dry each tumbler by hand before replacing them in the cupboard with the mindfulness of a person forging new habits. Now a call only ends once I hear the click and the dial tone in my own ear.
Speaking the words to Evan has given them purchase in the world, and the bare assertion is no more than simple truth. Something did happen to my sister, a mental illness at the very least. But the way that she died, the heart attack, suggests something more.
Fetching my purse, I pull out Sadhana’s day-planner, which I have been carrying around since I found it. I turn to November, looking carefully now for some confirmation that she followed through on her pact to help Quinn find his father, despite our argument. Knowing Sadhana, she wouldn’t have stopped just because I asked her. Once her mind was set on something, she rarely swerved. For all I know, the email draft I found might have been sent by Sadhana long before our fight. But if she knew what Ravi was up to, the kind of beliefs he’d adopted, and it seems that she did, then why would she have been so eager to help Quinn?
Unless that was her agenda all along — to show Quinn exactly the kind of man his father was.
The longer I think about it, the likelier it seems, though I can only guess that it was my aversion to his very name that led her to avoid explaining things. More and more, regret has simply become the shadow I would cast if I stood in the sun.
I open the planner on the counter. I’ve been avoiding it. It isn’t the diary, and maybe that’s why, or maybe it’s the heartrendingly precise scrawls under every date or the futility of the empty pages, but I can see once I finally look that the planner is full of information for the fearless biographer. It contains nothing so blatant as Help Quinn or Call Ravi, but there is more than one instance of Call R with a line through it, which I stare at until I remember her friend Rachelle Dupuis. Then, on November thirteenth, a note, Meet RP, next to the words Bombay Palace. This, too, has a line through it. And on November twenty-ninth, below the cryptic mention of Juniper Berries, a note to Call RP, with no location. That last hateful day with nothing crossed out.
I put down the day-planner, pace from the kitchen to the living room and back before once again taking it up. The notion that she’d talked to him, met with him. It bewildered as a possibility, but now it wounds as a certainty. The mention of Bombay Palace, his chosen location for our upcoming meeting, leaves no room for doubt, and even though I now believe Sadhana planned to expose him either to Quinn or to his constituents as a moral fraud, there is a sting of betrayal in the realization. Growing up, there was so little in my life that was separate from Sadhana. Ravi may not have been someone worth boasting about, but at least, when he was around, he was part of my story alone.
Getting changed into my pyjamas, I wonder if Sadhana ever made that last call to Ravi. If she was really trying to undermine me, yet again, in Quinn’s affections — by helping him where I was unwilling. And what she would say if she knew my jealousy extended even beyond death.
In order to see Ravi, I have to lie to everybody. Quinn, Uncle, Evan. Even Libby. Quinn and I are back in Montreal for another long weekend, and when Libby calls, I find myself making excuses to avoid another invitation. Her friendship still takes me by surprise, but I better understand her loneliness now, her loss. And maybe she senses the same kind of loneliness in me.
The way I leave it, the only people with any interest in my whereabouts think I’m going to meet Sophie, an old friend from high school. But Sophie doesn’t exist. I remember, as I walk at dusk from the bus stop the precautions one normally takes when meeting strangers these days: a busy, well-lit public place. Tell someone where you’re going.
It’s a small neighbourhood restaurant, just six tables. There is a large wall-hanging printed with elephants. Two televisions are suspended in opposite corners, showing the same soccer game. The commentary is in a language I don’t understand, and one of the sets is turned up too loud.
The waiter at Bombay Palace seems to be seething in his own private fury, showing me to a table in silence that seems about to be broken any minute with a harsh word. He drops a menu on the table, and when I say I am waiting for someone, he gets another from the counter and tosses it on top of the first. I cast around to see if I can detect the source of his anger, but I seem to be the only contender. There is a host buffing silverware behind the counter, but he, too, seems to have his own grievances, which may or may not be related to the progress of the soccer game.
Ravi comes in, and I stand up. The surprise I thought I would feel in his presence is absent. He looks like his poster, without the beaming.
“Hi Beena,” he says. I find I cannot greet him, my mouth fixed in as grim a line as the waiter’s.
He breaks into politician mode then. He steps behind me and pulls out my chair. “Have you tried this place before? The food is delicious.”
I recover my voice, stepping away from the table. “I don’t understand what we’re doin
g here. Do you expect us to sit down and have a meal?”
For a moment I see him waver, as though he thought his polish and bravado could carry him through this. “Do you want to go outside?”
“No, on second thought, I feel safer here.” I sit down and spread my napkin across my lap. He stares for a moment, then jerks out his own chair and drops into it.
“What have you told the reporter?”
“There is no reporter. Not yet.”
“So what do you want?” This comes out heavily, as if the question itself is a concession.
“The refugee family you’re going after. I want you to back off.” I am surprised that this is what comes out.
“God, what is it with you and your sister?” He takes hold of the menu but doesn’t open it. I keep my hands on the edge of the table, afraid to disrupt the flow of information. “The man is here illegally.”
“And what have you done to deserve to be here?”
“I was born here,” he says in all seriousness. Even indignation.
I laugh in his face. “According to you, being born doesn’t count for much.”
His face startles into something like shame before he turns it into a frown. “That was a long time ago.”
“I know. Your son is almost old enough to vote.”
Ravi flinches, and I see creases line his forehead. He is older than me, I remember. I wonder if he has a career apart from politics, anything to fall back on. The day I visited the campaign office, Libby had said something about Ravi’s wife being wealthy. Political careers need money at the back of them. I wonder how far a man might go to hide a child if he thought he might lose everything.
When he says nothing, I say, “So you saw my sister.”
“Yes,” he says. “That bitch.”
“You know she’s dead, right?” I get to my feet. “I guess I’m calling the papers.”
“Hold on, hold on. No, I didn’t know.” The dour waiter finally appears, and Ravi waves him off. “Another minute, please.”
Ravi lowers his voice so I have to lean in. “I’m sorry. Look, I had no idea. What happened?”
“Like you care. Just keep going. You saw Sadhana.”
He is starting to look nervous. “Sure, I met with her. We met a few times, actually. We talked. She seemed a hell of a lot more interested in me than you do.”
His narcissism hasn’t changed. I sit back down. “And?”
“Then she gave me a piece of her mind.”
I’m picturing the way she would have done it, soothing his wariness with a few polite questions before lashing out with a torrent of vitriol. She would have enjoyed it. She would have done a better job than I was doing.
“Probably not enough of it,” I say.
“You’re entitled to your opinion. And once she was done abusing me, she let me ask about my son.”
“Your son, right.” My scoffing nearly makes me spill my water. “And what do you mean, you met a few times?”
“Just twice. She told me so much about him, I asked her if she could bring some pictures the next time.”
“Pictures?”
“Photos.” Ravi’s voice is soft but even. “I think he seems like a fine young man. There might even be a little something of me in him.”
I ignore this. “And?” Sadhana’s secrets were truly unfathomable.
“She brought them. We looked at them together. Then she said she thought that it was time for me to meet him.”
“And?”
“And I told her it was impossible.”
“You’re sure you haven’t met him?” I say. And then, “Why impossible?”
“Of course I’m sure. And it’s impossible because I have a career, Beena. A family. A whole lot of people depending on me to be someone they can trust.”
“So you’d prefer to keep lying to them?”
He starts to answer, but I cut him off. “Were you supposed to talk to her again on November twenty-ninth? Did she say anything else to you about Quinn?”
“No. The twenty-ninth? I don’t know. I don’t think so.” He scowls as he turns the menu over in his hands and slides it back onto the table. “As far as I was concerned there was nothing more to say. She flipped her lid, and I left.”
“What do you mean, flipped?”
“She threatened me about going public. But I could tell she didn’t mean it. She told me to change my tune about the Essaid case, too.”
So I was right. The commentary on the soccer game has been accompanied by jangling music almost as loud, and as Ravi’s gaze keeps drifting above my head I wonder if his eyes are straying to the screen behind me. Both Bombay Palace employees are watching the other television from behind the bar.
“She didn’t call you? You know that’s the day she died, right?” I picture Sadhana screaming at him over the phone and her heart seizing. I watch him carefully for alarm or confusion, but there is only the continuing aggrieved air of ruffled conceit. He sighs and brings his eyes back to meet mine.
“No. And I didn’t know that. I didn’t even know she passed away, remember?”
I get up and grab my purse from the back of my chair. “Well, there’s a new deal now. One week for you to support Bassam Essaid and his family and Father Cavanagh, or everybody finds out. And stay away from Quinn.” I wait until he nods, then I push in my chair and walk out.
There is nothing in his face, or our history, to trust.
The next morning I wake at eight and Quinn’s bed is already empty. Uncle is sitting at the kitchen table in his apron with his coffee and newspaper. He began work before the sun and it is already his first break of the day.
“Your boy is intent on catching the worm,” he says, when he sees me poke my head into the kitchen to check for Quinn. “You just missed him. Off to the library.”
I sink into the nearest chair. “The city seems to energize him.”
Uncle spreads out a page to read below the fold. “Young men have a lot of energy. Always it is the way.”
“Well, at home he sleeps in.”
“Mmm.” As Uncle scans the columns, his whole face angles downward, his beard coming down to tickle his neck. He has reading glasses now, little half-moons. He lowers the paper and peers at me. “Have you had a chance to look through your sister’s mail?”
“No. Not yet.”
“I wonder if there is something from the tax people, the revenue agency. She was worried about being audited.”
“Really? I don’t know. I’ll check.”
“It isn’t urgent, Beena. I’m only curious. I’ve already sent them all the papers they need now. For the estate and so on.”
I stop halfway into the kitchen, one foot on the linoleum. There are so many things I haven’t thought of that Uncle has already taken in hand. “I appreciate everything you’ve done,” I say, at once feeling and sounding awkward. “You’ve taken care of so much.”
“You’re welcome.”
I am reminded of a fact once confided in us by Mama, that Uncle had spent the better part of his youth before he came to Canada taking care of his ailing mother, who by all accounts had been a difficult woman to get along with. Papa, as the elder brother as well as a trained pastry chef and perpetual disappointment, had felt sufficiently disowned to more or less stay away. I wonder how Uncle must have felt when we were thrust upon him as teenagers, the rest of his life consigned again to duty.
Uncle gets up from the table. “Quinn said to say he wouldn’t be home for supper. He tells me the university library never closes and they have a cafeteria there.”
“How convenient.”
“He’s a good boy,” says Uncle. “I was thinking — while you’re here, if he needs something to do, I could use him in the shop. And if he likes it, he could work in the fall, a shift here and there.”
Quinn as o
ne of the bagel boys. The idea is disagreeable. “We’ll see, Uncle.”
“We have a computer program for the books, but there are other things he could set up for me. Something for the inventory and the schedule.”
He, too, is worried about Quinn’s day-long sojourns from the apartment. We are to become conspirators in constraining him.
I watch Quinn carefully after he gets back, but there is no sign of a change in him. There is also no way to ask him point-blank without giving myself away. Did you see your father today? Ravi’s denial doesn’t carry much weight with me. And though Quinn has never been very up on current events, I know it can only be a matter of time, here in Montreal, before news of his father penetrates his consciousness — if he hasn’t already been following his career. But my son seems as he ever does. Calm and quiet. For all our silences in Ottawa, our lives were still running alongside one another. There was a comfort in knowing most of the basic facts. At Uncle’s, a space has opened up; the hours Quinn used to spend on the computer or at his friends’ houses have now been turned over to the city and whatever he does out of the apartment all day.
“Good day?” I say.
“Decent.”
If I don’t ask him what he’s been doing, he can’t refuse to tell me, and the fragile balance of our truce doesn’t have to be dissolved. He drops his heavy knapsack on the floor before he starts scrounging for leftovers. At the table with a bowl of curry and rice, he pulls out an unfinished crossword pilfered from Uncle’s recycling box, but stows it when he sees me looking over his shoulder.
Then he gets ready for bed, brushing his teeth and washing his face in a comprehensive ritual almost as long as Sadhana’s. His long black hair flips back from his forehead like a coxcomb after he buries his wet face in the orange towel. In the bedroom, I lie under my blankets and face his side of the room as he takes a thick paperback from his bag, reading with the front pages curled back like a magazine, hiding the cover. Then, exhausted by my watchfulness, he sleeps, his body turned away from me. It is only nine-thirty at night.
Bone and Bread Page 31
