Everything Was Good-Bye (10 page)

“I won’t end up like him, drinking at the pub, talking about the fucking good old days like there were any.” As he detailed the how and when of departures, I wasn’t surprised—he always had a plan. Unlike me, he knew what he was doing, where he was going. He was sure of the only thing that mattered. Himself. I almost hated him for it. The longer he talked the less I heard, the emptier I felt. He was leaving and I would be alone with all of my inevitabilities, my life plodding at a steady and predictable pace. I looked up at the sweep of blue sky over Stanley Park and watched the cars drive over the Lions Gate Bridge, listening to the constant hum of back and forth: everyone was going somewhere except me. I hung my head, cursing myself for having thought that he and I were something.

“Maybe up north I could go work the oil rigs, or maybe I could hitch a ride east,” he said.

“Yeah, maybe you could. What’s stopping you?”

He looked at me and then looked away into the wind. He leaned over the dead bird, looking into the small sockets where black eyes should have been. He grabbed a stick and turned it over. “Meena, check this out,” he said, nudging it with his foot, pushing it towards the gulls.

“It’s already dead—you don’t need to kick it!” I got up and walked away, tears spilling from the corners of my eyes. Liam followed a few steps behind,
his voice drifting on the wind, cancelling out the things that memory would eventually devour. I imagined that in time we would look back and recall only the details that framed the beginnings of good-byes. We would remember the sandy remains of a dead crow, the cry of gulls overhead, the dense odour of the trapped inlet and the sound of the world passing us by.

On the way home, we stopped at the Carnegie Centre. Liam wanted to give his sleeping bag to one of the homeless people by the dumpsters behind the building; once he’d given a man there his shoes and driven home barefoot. As we continued walking along the streets and alleyways, he nodded as though he were tipping his hat, sometimes addressing the locals by name: “Pete, Jane, Mary… ”

“Like Mary Magdalene! Remember?” a woman said, howling with laughter.

“Remember what?” I asked him. He didn’t answer. I walked with my hand tightly knitted in his, rigid by his side, leaning into him when anyone spoke to me or came so close that I could smell their liquored breath and see into their cavernous mouths. Black tongues. Missing teeth. I avoided eye contact. Liam gave his sleeping bag to a man called Joe who went into a tirade any time his name was spoken out loud. He was sure the gov-ernment was after him. “They’re everywhere,” Joe said, his eyes wide and frantic. He smelled like piss, like rotten fruit—acidic. I held Liam’s hand tighter and when we got back to the car he scolded me for triple-checking the locks and harbouring bourgeoisie values. As we drove home in silence, I wondered if Liam would end up like these people—shoeless and crazy, fighting with their own paranoia, numbing their senses with tourniquets. Liam confessed that he felt sorry for them. He wanted to save them, even if it was only for a little while. It made me wonder if he felt the same way about me.

1.7

L
iam was leaving. It was all I could think about. Days passed. Nights were endured. I lay on my bed, not studying, not writing in my journal, not listening to music, just tossing from side to side, wrestling with the idea of him. Tej walked by my room and glanced in. I grabbed my Walkman and pressed play.

“Are you okay?”

I pretended not to hear. She asked again. I closed my eyes.

“I'm talking to you.”

I took my headset off . “What?”

She stood by my bed. “What's going on with you?”

“Nothing, I just want to be alone.”

“You know you can talk to me.”

“Right. Like I’m going to talk to you,” I said, pushing her away. “All you care about is your stupid wedding.”

“Th at's not true and you know it.”

“Look, I just want to be alone.”

“Meena.”

“Fuck, Tej, just leave me alone. Jesus.” I grabbed my jacket and ran out the front door, away from her cries for me to come back. I walked around the neighbourhood for an hour, until the sun met the western sky and
began its descent, until I found myself looping back to Liam’s house. I stood out front, waiting for him to notice me.

He opened the front door and let me inside, past the dog who was circling me like my own doubt. Liam called the dog off, rubbing the scruff of his neck until his bark subsided into a heavy pant. I smiled only because I didn’t know what else to do. All of my words were a jumble of thoughts and all I could manage was silence.

I followed him up the stairs into the living room, which looked like every other dated 1970s’ living room—a white brick fireplace stained in soot, a wood-panelled feature wall, velveteen sofas, and a matching set of veneer end tables that anchored each corner of the room. The coffee table was covered in highball glasses, the contents of which had spilled and dribbled, rendering the table surface sticky with opalescent spheres. When he went into the other room, I picked up a half-empty glass and twirled its amber contents; the biting odour made my throat close. It smelled like the old Indian men who loitered in the athletic parks playing cards and chewing paan, muttering village obscenities through their toothy grins as they passed flasks around, each of them drawing a sharp breath after swal-lowing, exhaling low whistles, small-eyed and mean as they stared at us. I never understood what they were saying, but Harj assured me it was not good. Though Indian women were not permitted to drink, my mother kept a bottle of whisky in the house for her father. Once when he was visiting, Papaji drank to hallucination and grabbed Harj by the hair. Tej rushed into the room, pleading with him to stop as she avoided the blind swats of his cane. I rushed over and yanked the cane from him, the force of which pitched him forwards and rocked him back. He staggered for balance, trying to grab us as we fled from his reach. He fell, bumping his head on the coffee table, and dove into unconsciousness. When he had been still for a minute, Harj walked over and poked him with his cane. He stirred. His breath—long and loose as if he had never exhaled before—made us all laugh into tears. We’d thought we had killed him. Harj gathered his feet and Tej and I each grabbed an arm, hoisting him up onto the couch, ar-ranging him in an afternoon nap. I repositioned his turban, tilting it to the
left to hide the bump that had formed. Tej, still sobbing, went to her room. Harj grabbed his glass, and downed the remaining whisky in one gulp.

I put the glass down when Liam came back in the room. “You want some?” he asked, pointing to the bottle. I shook my head. He walked to the mantel and picked up one of the porcelain figurines of Mary holding Jesus, their painted faces faded to silhouettes by years of direct sunlight and hardened dust. “Secret stash,” he said, pulling a joint out of the hollow base. He handed it to me.

“No thanks.”

“Suit yourself.” He tucked the joint in his mouth and managed a flat James Dean smile as he mumbled, “You don’t smoke. You don’t drink. What do you do for fun?” I turned away from his truth-or-dare tone. I’d never played that game, even though I played out its daily scenarios— calculating risks, collecting perceptions, equalizing my choices down to agnostic indecision.

“Are you a virgin?” he asked, lighting the joint.

Nerves crept up my neck, needling me with insecurities. I picked up his parents’ wedding picture from the mantel, brushing the dust from the grooved wooden frame.

“They were really young.”

“Eighteen.” He took a long drag, exhaled slowly. He knocked her up.”

“I nodded and put the picture down, not sure what to say next.

“So are you?” he asked.

“Am I what?”

“A virgin.”

“Fuck, Liam. Don't be an ass.”

“What? I just want to know.” He sat down, waiting.

“Are you?” I asked.

He leaned forward. “I asked you first.” “

It’s none of your business.”

He blew smoke in my face. “Isn’t it?” The blue haze hung over him like a halo before disappearing into the sliver of dying light that pushed between the sheer draperies.

I turned away from him, wondering why he was being so cruel. I thought about leaving, but couldn’t. That much I knew. I glanced at his half-packed duffle bag by the couch. “Where will you go?” My pent-up curiosity about his leaving seemed to surprise him, though it had been pressing on me since the day he told me he was planning to go. “What about Montreal?” I asked. “Will you go there?”

“Je ne sais pas.” He answered with genuine French disinterest. He’d always talked about moving to Quebec. I could imagine him sitting at cafés, scribbling in notebooks, wearing sunglasses even when the weather didn’t call for it. Artists would befriend him. He would have lovers. Affairs. I didn’t stand a chance.

“Then where, if not Montreal?”

“I’m gonna crash at the house on the beach for a while. Until I can sort things out.”

“You can’t stay there.”

“Why not?”

“Because.” I crossed my arms over my chest.

“It’s not permanent. Just until I have a place to stay. It’ll be like camp-ing.”

“Indian people don’t camp.”

“Serious?”

“Yeah, if they want to rough it they pack a suitcase of cornflakes and toilet paper, and head to India for a month.”

“And would you like to go to India to rough it?”

“Maybe one day when I’m not in danger of having suitors sprung on me.”

“What, like an arranged marriage?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Would you actually get one”?

“I dont know. Probably.” I was almost surprised by my truth-telling.Lying was so much easier with everyone but him.

He returned my truth with a dare and led me to his room.

It wasn’t how I imagined it would be or how other girls had told me it would be. He didn’t try to kiss me, he didn’t tell me he loved me, he didn’t ask me if I would; he simply took offhis clothes and waited for me to take offmine. There we stood naked in the half-light, featureless and lonely, the push and pull of emotions between us. Our hands mimicked eyes and our mouths mimicked hands. Our shadows tumbled in the room, crowding the walls with shades of ourselves.

After, we stared at the ceiling as if it were sky. Liam’s heavy breath filled the room. He reached for my hand. “Are you okay?”

I nodded.

“Did I hurt you?”

“No, it’s fine. I’m fine,” I said, even though I could still feel him: the fractioned distinction of pleasure and pain. I turned on my side to hide the tears that were welling up. “I should go.” I whispered it, lingering on the three words that betrayed me. I wanted to tell him that I loved him.

Liam sat up and offered to drive me home, just as the front door opened. The dog yelped. A man spoke, his gravel tone spinning profanities.

I scrambled out of bed, searching for my clothes in the tangle of sheets. Liam handed me my shirt. “It’ll be fine. Just get dressed.”

After he left the room I crumpled the bloodstained sheets into a ball and threw them into the corner. The room still smelled like sex, which made me wonder if I did too. I sniffed my skin, then reached for his cologne and doused myself in it. I yanked my clothes on, pushing my arms into sleeves, lining up seams, fumbling with buttons, listening to his father’s footsteps trudging up the stairs, then his slurred temper.

“Well, look who decided to come home… I told you a million times to keep your dog outside… Don’t just stare at me. Do it.”

“Come on, Darwin,” Liam replied.

I looked at myself in the mirror. My cheeks were flushed, my neck and breasts covered with broken blood vessels. I pulled my hair up to get a better look, examining the marks with my fingertips, tracing the subtle remains of slow-mouthed bites so different from the hickeys that the girls at school hid with scarves. I stood back, looking at myself once more, wondering if anyone would be able to tell that I’d had sex. I opened Liam’s top dresser and routed through his cigar box of junk looking for something I could take—something he wouldn’t notice was gone until he needed it—and after sifting through paperclips, postcards and foreign currency, I settled on a roll of undeveloped film.

I heard a slide door open and close, Darwin’s paws scratching against a window and then Liam’s voice reassuring him, “It’s okay. I’m right here.”

I walked down the hallway. I waited for Liam, wondering if I should say something to his father, who was slumped on the sofa watching tv without the sound. Liam came back into the room, offering me a sidelong apology.

His father looked up. “Who are you?” His question sounded like an ac-cusation and I wondered how to answer. I found myself searching the row of porcelain nativity figurines on the mantel for an answer, but none came.

“This is my friend, Meena. Meena, this is my dad—Jack.” Liam spit out his name like a swear word. His father glared at Liam and then me.

“Meena— that’s Indian, right?”

I nodded.

He sat up straight, and looked at me with interest. “You don’t look Indian, maybe Italian or Greek but not Indian. You probably get that a lot, huh, on account of the fact that your skin is pretty light.”

I didn’t answer.

“I bet if you changed your name, no one would even know.”

“Jack!” Liam cursed, seemingly embarrassed by such a racist comment.I wasn’t bothered by it. People had told me all my life that I didn’t look Indian. I used to wonder what an Indian was supposed to look like, and yet became glad that whatever it was, I didn’t look it. When I was in Grade 1 I told everyone in school my name was Maria not Meena.

“Don’t ‘Jack’ me. I’m your father. You call me Dad, or nothing at all.” Liam folded his arms and waited. A snarl spread from Jack’s eyes to his
mouth. “So, Meena, that must be short for what? Meenpreet? Meenjeet?” He laughed, muttering the variations of Punjabi names in a rhyming sequence the same way the kids at school used to, and yet I knew his teasing was ignorant not cruel.

“We should go,” Liam said, reaching for my hand. We walked down the steps.

“Liam!” his dad shouted.

I waited at the foot of the stairs as Liam ran back up. “What?”