But when Quinn’s breathing becomes even and he has fallen into sleep, he rolls over to face me, his back nudging up against the wall as his mouth falls open. And when I get out of bed to turn off the overhead light, I pull the quilt up over his shoulder, and in his sleep he makes a pleased sound like a kind of thank-you.
The next morning I keep my eyes closed as I hear him getting out of bed. He is almost silent. He must have put on his socks before swinging his feet to the floor. It is only the building itself that betrays him, the floors and doors responding in their faint language of creaks and screeches. Quinn himself is soundless; he is sneaking. Feeling like a mother indulging some elaborate game of make-believe, I let him slip out of the apartment without breaking the illusion.
I count to ten before leaping out of bed and grabbing a black shirt and jeans and an elastic from my suitcase. I get downstairs in wrinkly, clinging clothes, hair knotted in a messy bun, just in time to see Quinn turning right on St. Laurent. The weekend bagel lineup is already snaking down past the ice cream shop, and I turn sideways to pass through the crowd. When I round the corner after him, I have a quake in my step, one knocking knee that might be trying to jar loose the guilty feeling from the part of me that can’t ignore what I’m doing. I breathe deep to let it go, but it roots there, somewhere under my ribcage.
A block ahead, Quinn is already at the intersection, scratching the back of his neck, that sunburn from the lawn mowing, or its cousin. How someone so tall could come out of me — it’s mystery physics. It’s Russian dolls in reverse.
I slow down in case he turns around, and I don’t pick up the pace until he’s crossing the next street. His walk is enough to help me spot him from a distance, and this early on a Sunday there isn’t too much movement on the Montreal streets. The city’s long Saturday nights take their toll.
I don’t know that I’ve ever made it clear to Quinn why there isn’t more I can tell him. It’s just that it happened so quickly. With all I’ve told him about sex and love and trust, I think I’ve let him imagine that Ravi was a boyfriend. But it was just a few weeks when Ravi was eighteen. I can barely remember his face as it was, only glimpses of it in relation to me. The side of his chin against my cheek, his thick bottom lip and those two days it was chapped. And now Quinn is the age his father was then. It is enough to make me stumble and check my shoelaces, still double-knotted. He is his father. He is the place where Ravi’s face ends in my memory.
I still remember that awful feeling when Ravi disappeared, like the slow curdling of a stagnant pool. Without Quinn, who knows how long I might have stood still. And since then, all this time and carefulness, this scrupulous steering away from any allusion to that first rejection. But I am safe now. Safe from him. I don’t know how or when it happened. Maybe only when the hurt was replaced with a new one.
Quinn goes into a shop, comes out with a newspaper. He seems so casual I have a surging moment of confidence when I am sure Evan must be wrong about my son looking for his father. But then Quinn tucks it tight under his arm, and in the slight motion of his head — as he bows down to check its snugness before snapping back up to look ahead — I think I recognize an old mannerism I didn’t even know I remembered. It’s an almost-march. Up ahead of me, he’s parading into battle in disguise as a regular teenager. When he was very small, Sadhana used to give him drills when he was afraid, an umbrella for a rifle, a blazer for a uniform, and three stomps around the apartment to conquer Brussels sprouts or trips to the doctor or twelve times twelve.
He is still a block ahead, at the corner, when a bus pulls up to the curb and he climbs aboard, emptying a fistful of change into the cash box. It is a bus that could take him north to Ravi’s riding, though there is no way of knowing if that’s his trajectory. He might be going to meet his friend Caro if she’s here for the weekend. I turn my back as it drives past before it makes a right at the next street, watching its reflection in the glass front of a store, looking for Quinn. He’s staring out the window, and for a moment I could swear we lock eyes except for the lack of recognition on his face. His image in the glass is faint and brooding. Almost a stranger if I squint.
It begins to rain as I leave the bus stop, and the pink and purple impatiens in city planters are bowing under the deluge. The rain streams behind my ears and down my back, but the water is warm. Heading back to Mile End now, to Sadhana’s place, I pass a soccer game in the park where the players’ white and red uniforms are splattered with mud. In the newspaper boxes, I see headlines announcing that a second French-language school has kicked out a student for wearing a head covering that hides most of her face. NON À NIQAB: ÉTUDIANTE EXPULSÉE ENCORE.
Inside, I shrug out of my wet shirt and do a lap of my sister’s apartment to see what might have been overlooked. The place already looks a little less like hers, which is as much of a wound as a relief. I go around unhooking the frames and canvases from where they have been hanging, leaning them against the walls. I put on a dry black T-shirt from one of the unsealed boxes in the bedroom. The sealed boxes I begin grouping in the centre of each room to get a better handle on what is left to pack. The only way to deal with Sadhana’s things is to pretend they aren’t hers. Or that I am a professional mover and I have never before laid eyes on this set of blue dishes with the white flowers, this grey wool coat with the pink lining, the wall hooks shaped like four little silver birds. I’ll have to bring a screwdriver to take those down.
Anxious for a distraction, I pour myself a glass of water from the tap. I turn on Sadhana’s radio loud, out of habit. Sometimes when I was younger, I would make noises just to hear them stop. I used to rattle a pot full of cutlery in the sink or turn on the worst kind of talk radio, spinning up the knob until I could feel my shoulders squaring against the sound, my whole skin burning to get away. There was a point at which too loud became something physical, a horror. And then I’d stop, and for a second a real kind of relief would flood through me. I’d breathe slowly through my nose, in and out, like in one of Mama’s yoga classes. It was a trick, the sound and the silence. A physical shortcut to the most fleeting peace, like finally giving in to a sneeze after trying to hold it back. When Quinn was a baby and Sadhana was in the hospital, making and breaking a racket was one of the only ways I could get calm. I did it only when Quinn was awake, for fear of waking him, and he seemed to understand with a baby’s ancient wisdom that it was the kind of thing best left alone, a bit of private insanity between new mother and child that could be safely and tactfully ignored.
When I switch off the radio at the start of the hourly news break, there is no release. The thing that ends up startling me out of my agitation is a phone call from Libby.
“Did you see the news? The police raided the church.”
“No,” I say. At once, I wonder whether Ravi was involved, though I’ve no idea if he has that kind of influence. “No, that’s awful.” I think of peaceable Bassam in handcuffs and oblivious baby Léo in his mother’s arms, and a quake runs down my back. “What’s going to happen now?”
“I don’t know,” says Libby. There is a trace of excitement in her voice. “They didn’t find them.”
“What?”
“They weren’t there. And Father Cavanagh was gone, too. He left word with one of the other priests that he was going to visit his mother.”
“But are they okay?”
“I don’t know. But I know who might.”
I meet Libby in the late afternoon, outside the bakery of the large outdoor market, and as she approaches I try to remind myself that I still haven’t brought her around to talking about Sadhana’s last weeks. She is pulling an old-fashioned metal grocery cart in one hand and Mouse with the other. Two loaves of bread in paper wrappings are peeking out of a cloth bag looped around her shoulder.
“I hope this isn’t too embarrassing,” she says, indicating the cart. “I know we’re on a mission, but the fridge is empty and we live
just down the street. It really is the best way to carry things.” She pulls it along a few paces, the metal rods chattering in their frame. Mouse covers her face with her hands. “You see?” says Libby. “It makes my own daughter want to disown me.”
“It’s practical,” I say.
“It necessitates a certain system,” says Libby. “Root vegetables first. Bruisable fruit and other crushables at the top. Bread, you know. And eggs, god forbid.”
We wind up and down the rows of stalls, Libby pushing the clattering cart with one hand, still holding tight to Mouse’s sleeve with the other. The little girl seems desperate to get away from us, bobbing out from her mother to sniff at flowers or gawk at other children. Watching her, I remember a compulsion I had when I was her age to touch every unusual-looking object in the grocery store. Artichokes, yellow crookneck squash. A raw trout that gave up its iridescent scales to my sticky fingertips.
Sadhana and I never went to the market much after Mama died, the place was too full of her, the flip of her orange hair over her shoulder as she looked back at us before leaning in to choose a tomato. The tomatoes themselves, even: the fresh, sweet fullness of them, with a little salt jiggered onto them by the vendors. There were no ripe tomatoes left in a world without Mama. The touch of her hands on every vegetable felt like an initiation into her secret world where ordinary objects could be infused with a kind of goodness based on how well they fulfilled a particular function. A leek resting upon her palms became a thing to marvel over. She got us to hold our fingers up to it, to compare the circumferences. We agreed that any leek that looked as thick as Papa’s fingers was truly a magnificent vegetable. Every time we went to the market there was something new to enthuse over: peaches as firm as tennis balls, onions that could make your eyes water from across the room, Indian mangoes the colour of the sun.
And Mama made us smell everything she bought. One time, when I exclaimed over an apple, she told me to take a bite. “Whenever you eat,” she told me, putting one into my hand, “you should remember to be happy to be alive.”
Now, to Libby, I say, “What else do you need?” So far the cart contains only a giant cauliflower and six cucumbers. “I thought we were going to talk to someone.”
“We are.”
We continue wandering, and with successive exchanges that never feel anything less than haphazard, the cage of the cart fills up with carrots and peppers and watermelon. Romaine lettuce and grapefruit and brie. Then Mouse asks for some pears, and an immoderate bag of at least fifteen pears is the last thing added to the pile.
“We’re going somewhere, right?” I say as Libby tucks a handful of change into the pocket of her jeans. “This isn’t just a shopping expedition.”
“Multitasking. Don’t worry.”
A row of handicraft stalls lines the northern end of the market. Artisanal honey, lavender soap, foie gras from only the finest force-fed francophone ducks. “Lobsters!” screams Mouse. Dodging two families and a strolling couple, she darts over to the poissonnerie on the opposite side. “One sec,” says Libby, dashing after her, leaving the cart.
The cart and I have paused in front of a booth full of knitted wool handicrafts. Tags penned in jewel-toned calligraphy are pinned to some of the items on display: Mission Mitts $16, Gloves for Ghana $22, Truce Toques $18, Sanctuary Scarves $24.
“Why do they need gloves in Ghana?” I ask. Two women are working in the booth and they both look over at me. I bite my lip. “Just wondering.”
The woman nearest to me responds as she pins another pair to the back of the booth. Her burgundy hair is cut close to her head and comes to a shaved point like an arrow at the nape of her neck. “Gloves for Ghanaians in Canada. It’s to welcome new immigrants who won’t be arriving with winter gear.”
“Ah.” As she turns and steps closer to refold one of the scarves on the table, I see the larger sign affixed to the display behind her: ALL PROCEEDS SUPPORT THE ONGOING ADVOCACY WORK OF NO BORDERS.
“No Borders,” I say aloud. Peering at their faces, I recognize them, or the people they used to be. The women I wanted to know. Sadhana’s friends. “You must have known my sister.”
“Who’s your sister?” asks the woman with the short hair, and though the line of her jaw is sharper now than it was, I remember her name. Anne-Marie.
“Good,” says Libby, reappearing at my side without Mouse, who remains immobilized in front of the lobster aquarium. “You found them.” She introduces me to Anne-Marie and Cherise, who exchange a look.
“This is where we were going,” Libby says to me, as though answering a question my puzzled face seems to be asking.
Cherise says, “I remember you. You went to Ottawa with your little boy.”
I nod. “We were wondering about the Essaids,” I say. “If they’re okay.”
“They’re somewhere safe,” says Anne-Marie. She begins pairing the mitts so that the price tags face upwards. I see her thumb stroke one of the striped cuffs.
“We were hoping to stop by,” said Libby. “Let them know that our thoughts are with them.”
The women exchange a look. “We’ll tell them,” says Cherise. Her smile, when it turns up, is familiar. Cherub cheeks.
“Where are they now?” I ask.
“Somewhere safe,” says Anne-Marie again, running one hand through her cropped hair and crossing her arms. “Bassam mentioned that you visited right before the raid.”
“We both did,” says Libby.
Anne-Marie nods but studies my face. “And you know Ravi Patel.”
“Used to know,” I say. The implication dawns on me. “Trust me, I had nothing to do with it.”
“It’s better,” said Anne-Marie, “if we don’t have to trust you.”
I feel my indignation rising, but Libby takes the bag full of bread from her shoulder and presses it into Cherise’s hands. Then she adds the cheese from the cart and some of the pears, piling the food into the woman’s arms.
“Give this to them,” she says, and Cherise nods. “What will happen to them now?”
Cherise leans closer over the counter of the booth. “Well, there’s an appeal —”
“Everyone knew what church they were at,” I say, worried now, replaying my conversation with Ravi. “It was on the news.”
“We know,” says Cherise. “We know it’s not your fault. But we’re not telling anyone about the new location. Not even everyone in No Borders.”
Libby touches her hand to my arm. “So what happens now?” she repeats.
“There’s a judicial review. Bassam’s lawyer filed an appeal, and there’s going to be a hearing in front of a tribunal with the immigration board. On Monday.” Cherise pauses to put down the food on one of the chairs behind her. “They think he’s not going to show up. That’s why they wanted him in custody.”
“We’re planning a demonstration,” says Anne-Marie, “to show they’re not alone.”
Though I feel mortified by their mistrust, there is something comforting about looking at these women who were friends with my sister for so many years. I find myself wanting to memorize their faces. “We’ll be there,” I say.
Libby calls out to Mouse and grasps hold of the cart, which screeches in response as she starts to push.
“We will overcome,” says Libby, half laughing, as we both fall in step with her.
The day of the big move of Sadhana’s belongings, Evan runs a fever. I get up at eight to meet him at my sister’s apartment. The night before, I’d reserved a parking spot outside the building, using two of Sadhana’s kitchen chairs spaced out along the street with a length of masking tape running between them.
“You’re sick,” I tell him when he arrives. His sluggish descent from the truck is accompanied by the slightest of groans, and his hands on my back are hot paddles.
“It’s not nice to tell a man he looks like shit before he’
s even had a cup of coffee,” he says. He turns his head and rubs an arm across his shining forehead.
“Let’s postpone it.”
“We can’t. This is my only weekend off before the lease is up.”
“I know.”
Quinn comes a few minutes later, hair still wet from the shower, and puts the chairs up on the sidewalk while Evan parks the truck. The pitch of Quinn’s overt resentment seems to be lower than it was on the drive to Gatineau, unless it’s just too early for him to have turned it up to full force. Or maybe his anger is wearing out, like a shirt that’s been through the wash too many times, letting the real Quinn show through bit by bit. Courtesy by way of exhaustion.
“Where’s your uncle?” asks Evan, checking the rear-view mirror as he shuts off the engine.
“Coming,” I say. “He’s probably just checking in at the store.”
Upstairs, Sadhana’s apartment strikes me again with its warm silence, its thick-as-a-fog emptiness, and the faint somnolent hum that makes me want to curl up in her bed. I poll Evan on its palpable morbidity while Quinn is in the bathroom.
“It’s the humidity,” he says. “That’s all.” He rubs the small of my back.
“You’re one to talk. You’re hot as a grill. Sit down.”
Uncle arrives with a minimum of fanfare. When I introduce him to Evan, he surprises me by reaching out his hand, which Evan declines with a wave at his sweating face, which at this point most closely resembles melting tallow.
“Don’t want to get you sick, sir, if I can help it.”
We fall into a rhythm in which I drag the smallest boxes to the top of the stairs, then Quinn ferries them down the stairs and passes them off to Uncle. My uncle works the truck bed like a game of Sudoku whose emergent solution is apparent only to him, arranging the boxes in an ever-shifting puzzle to maximize the space. Evan readies what he can of the remaining larger boxes and furniture pieces in line near the door.
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