Come See About Me (30 page)

“Thank you,” the
boy replies in a very small voice.

After that I
have pirates, princesses, fairies, devils, super heroes, arch villains,
doctors, vampires, a banana, fire hydrant, cheerleader, panda and a girl who I
think is supposed to be Madonna circa 1985 show up on my doorstep. Amongst the
older kids and teenagers who begin to arrive later, anything retro or undead
seems to make for a popular costume: zombie cheerleaders, brides, cops,
hippies—there’s even a zombie cow. But my favorite costume of the night, one
I’d consider wearing someday, belongs to a teenage girl who looks stunningly
gorgeous in a blue geisha/dragon lady outfit. It’s as short as a miniskirt at
the front but flows down to her ankles at the back and she’s wearing it with
her long dark hair up and black patent leather platform shoes that must be six
inches high.

“How are you
walking around in those without falling over?” I ask and she says it’s been
crazy, that she keeps grabbing onto her friend, who’s standing next to her in
some kind of silver disco diva thing. I tell them they both look great and they
say “thanks” at the exact same time, which the girl in silver explains they do
all the time.

By the end of
the night I have a total of only five fun size chocolate bars left and eat them
all within the first ten minutes of watching
Crazy Heart
on TV. For a
minute I find myself thinking about Liam and whether he’s at the fundraiser
yet, and the very next minute I’m wondering what Bastien would have thought of
the geisha/dragon lady outfit on me.

The night we
lost our virginity to each other, in the moments just before it happened, he
said, “I’m glad neither of us have done this before; it makes it even more
special. We can teach each other at the same time.” We’d already taught each
other a lot by then, with fingers and mouths, and I remember his body so well,
what his touch felt like on my skin, that I know I’ll never stop longing for
him.

He didn’t live
long enough to be curious about what it would be like to sleep with someone
else—or if he did, I didn’t know it—but if we’d stayed together for years and
years, would he have begun to wonder? Would he have wanted to break it off and
sleep with other girls at twenty-three or twenty-six? Why am I even questioning
that now? If I arbitrarily decide he would’ve been with someone besides me
would that absolve me of my guilt over what I’m doing with Liam?

I could ask
myself these questions over and over and never do things any differently, so
what’s the point? Is a certain amount of guilt just something I have to learn
to live with?

Chas is lucky
that he doesn’t have to ask himself such questions any longer. I’m lucky that I
still have a best friend. Even as doubts are coursing through my brain, I know
that’s the most important thing now, and when I go to visit Yunhee the next
morning I’m so happy that you’d never guess I had a care in the world. She’s
lying in bed with her head raised slightly, looking stronger than when I saw
her two days ago.

Chas is sitting
next to her, his hands still bandaged. “Hey,” he says happily when he sees me.
He jumps from his chair and throws his arms around me in a quick hug. We bonded
over that day and night spent waiting for news of Yunhee and I guess even if I
didn’t see him for five years I’d still, upon bumping into him on a Toronto
street, feel as if we were friends.

After Chas and I
let go, I edge by him and kiss Yunhee on the cheek. “How’s the patient today?”
I ask her.

Yunhee frowns,
looking like a little girl again. “They say I haven’t been getting up and
walking enough. The nurse is going to come back in an hour to take me. I’m kind
of dreading it.”

“But other than
that she’s doing pretty well,” Chas says, looking from me to Yunhee. “Right?”

“I’m starting to
hate fucking Jell-O,” she says. “Dyed gelatin is not food.”

Chas smiles
tenderly. “Yeah, okay, well, she’s a little cranky today.” He pulls the second
chair closer to Yunhee’s bed and motions for me to sit in the first.

“I would be
too,” I say. “Hospitals suck.”

“They’re
actually pretty good here,” Yunhee tells us. “I just suck at being a patient.”
Her eyebrows rise as her frown begins to disappear. “Never mind, you have
stuff
you have to tell me. I can’t remember the guy’s name—I was still pretty out of
it when you were here last.”

“It’s Liam,” I
say, conscious of Chas next to me. “He’s Irish.”

“Irish?” Yunhee
repeats. “Like Irish-Canadian or Irish-Irish?”

“Irish like he
has an accent, prefers tea to coffee and has spent his whole life in Dublin.”
I’m not going any further down this road with Chas sitting next to me and I
point to the empty bed next to Yunhee’s and say, “Hey, what happened to your
neighbor?”

Yunhee glances
at the empty bed too. “They discharged her this morning. I’m sure they’ll
probably have someone else to fill the bed any second now.”

“And where’s
your mom today? Is she staying with Vishaya in your apartment?”

“Yeah. My sister
and my dad had to go back to Ottawa but my mom’s there. She said she had a
couple of things she wanted to do today before she came into the hospital.
Vishaya’s been great. I had to get her to do a sweep of my room and remove any
incriminating evidence before my mom arrived, which is slightly ridiculous
considering that I’m twenty.”

Chas smiles and
adds, “But still preferable to her finding anything.”

The three of us
talk a bit about Mr. and Mrs. Kang’s reaction to Chas. As far as they know he
and Yunhee are just friends, but Chas says he feels like there’s an
undercurrent of awkwardness whenever he’s around them. He thinks they suspect
and disapprove.

Then a woman
comes by to drop off more Jell-O for Yunhee and she glowers at it as though
it’s a serving of rancid eggs wrapped neatly in plastic. Chas says he better
get going because he has a class but that he hopes Yunhee at least tries to eat
her Jell-O. He kisses her on the head and says he’ll call her tomorrow and be
back for a visit the day after that.

With the two of
us alone in the room, Yunhee levels a solemn look at me and says, “Okay, he’s
gone. Tell me what’s going on with Liam before the nurse comes to take me for a
walk.”

I disclose
nearly everything (omitting the sexual details but not the wheres and whens of
their occurrence), beginning with the day I hurt my ankle and ending with this
past Saturday night. The disapproval in Yunhee’s eyes when I admit we didn’t
use a condom the first time makes me drop my gaze and say, “Dumb, believe me, I
know.” But I assure her that I went for the emergency contraception pill the
very next morning and won’t make the same mistake twice.

The guilt is
trickier to deal with and I confess that too, laying my heart bare about the
depth of my confusion until Yunhee interrupts and says all the things I knew
she’d say but still can’t entirely bring myself to believe—that aside from
Bastien, and maybe my parents, she knows me better than anyone and that I was
torn apart by Bastien’s death to the point that I couldn’t function for months,
so I shouldn’t for a minute believe that physically being with someone else
diminishes my love for Bastien; it only means I’m human.

“That sounds
good when you say it,” I tell her, “but inside I can’t stop feeling like I’m
wrong to sleep with Liam, like I’m being weak, like I’m cheating.” I ball my
hands in my lap and stare at the red and yellow blanket folded across the edge
of Yunhee’s bed. “And that all those months I spent barely leaving our
apartment and then his aunt’s house must have been, on a certain level, a kind
of self-indulgent faking because otherwise, how could I feel so empty without
Bastien and still want to be with someone else? Both those things can’t be
true.”

Yunhee sighs, a
pensive smile forming on her lips. “I think they can. Anyway, you said you’re
supposed to see Liam again on Wednesday, so it doesn’t sound like you’re
planning to stop this thing. Why torture yourself? It’s like you’re trying to
have it both ways, like you think you can be emotionally faithful if you’re
beating yourself up about having sex with another guy.” Yunhee frowns at the
red Jell-O on the tray table in front of her and reluctantly clasps her spoon.
“The red is the grossest. I could’ve sworn I checked juice instead of Jell-O on
the menu.”

That’s a problem
that I have a chance of solving and I say, “So what would you like? Juice?”

“Or some other
kind of Jell-O. Anything other than red, I could handle.”

I pick up the
Jell-O and tell her I’ll be back in a minute. In the hallway I head for the
nursing station with the Jell-O in my hand and explain the situation to a
harried looking nurse who says she’ll call the diet kitchen and have them send
a replacement to Yunhee’s room.

When I get back
Yunhee’s eyes are shut and as I sit down next to her she opens them and says,
“Don’t go yet. I’m still awake, I just get tired.”

“I can sit here
while you’re sleeping,” I offer.

“No, I’ll sleep
after I walk, but listen, promise me you’ll stop thinking this thing with Liam
makes you a bad person.” I tell her I’ll work on it and then she adds, very
gingerly, “The only thing you should worry about is whether
you’re
okay
with this. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it,
but now that you’re getting it together you don’t want to let yourself get too
attached to someone who’s not looking to get attached, right?”

“My head’s
nowhere near there yet,” I assure her. “I mean, I like him but I think knowing
this is short-term makes it easier rather than harder.”

“Like dipping
your foot into the water before you jump into a pool,” Yunhee notes. “You know,
one of the weirdest things about what happened to Chas and me is that now he
keeps acting like we’re serious. Before you showed up today he was asking if I
thought my parents would let him stay with us if he comes to visit me in
Ottawa.”

“What did you
tell him?” I ask.

“I said that I
didn’t think my parents would even be cool with putting him in the spare room,
that we’re probably better off waiting until I’m back to see each other.” She
pauses as the same woman who delivered the Jell-O earlier saunters in with a
container of grape gelatin to replace the red Yunhee’s grown sick of.

“Thanks,” Yunhee
says to the woman before turning her attention back to me. “He didn’t really
look happy about that, but it’s not something I can put much energy into
worrying about now.”

“You need to
concentrate on getting better,” I agree.

Yunhee’s
swallowing the last of her Jell-O when a nurse coasts into the room, announcing
that it’s time for her walk. I say goodbye to Yunhee and tell her I’ll be back
for another visit soon. “Keep me posted on the important stuff,” she says,
reciting the phone number to her room.

I take the train
back to Oakville and walk over to the pet supply store near the Shoppers Drug
Mart to buy hamster food and fresh bedding for Armstrong. The larger packages
are more economical but also more difficult to lug home without a car. I pick
the jumbo packs anyway; I walk constantly and therefore can’t be entirely out
of shape, but I could stand to build up the muscles in my arms.

Since Yunhee got
out of ICU I feel like almost anything’s possible. Nothing ever happens in a
vacuum. It seems that nearly losing Yunhee has either changed Chas’s feelings,
or revealed to him what they truly are. Once she’s recovered and come back to
Toronto, things could change for them. Or not. Regardless, Yunhee will return
to school and work hard to catch up on assignments and essays. I’d be more than
a year behind if I enrolled for next fall but I could catch up a little too,
maybe take a couple of summer classes starting next May. Maybe…

Could I do that
and still live in Abigail’s house? Would that be too much to ask of her?

Abigail calls
later in the day, as though she can sense that I’ve been thinking of her, but I
still need more time to sift through things in my mind—at least until after
Christmas—and mention nothing about school. “I’ve called a few times recently
but you either haven’t been home or haven’t been able to the come to the
phone,” Abigail says in careful tone.

I don’t want her
to think I’ve been relapsing and quickly explain about Yunhee being in hospital
and the scare it’s given me. “And so I’ve spent some days sleeping downtown in
her apartment too,” I add, “so that I wouldn’t have to come all the way back
here in between hospital visits.” I’ve been too busy concentrating on Yunhee
this past week to think about Abigail much, but now that I’m talking to her it
instantly becomes clear that I can’t tell her about Liam. Even if she had no
connection to Bastien I don’t think she’d understand any kind of romantic
relationship that involves being picked up at eleven-thirty at night and
dropped off again two to three hours later. But as the aunt of the boy I loved,
who has allowed me to stay in her home and given me the time and space to try
to put my life back together, confiding that there’s someone else—even someone
who in the scheme of things doesn’t matter—is plainly impossible.

Abigail’s going
to be back in Oakville from November fifteenth to the twenty-seventh, which
will make hiding the truth difficult, but with Liam’s play closing on December
third, and with him presumably leaving town shortly afterwards, I can’t afford
to take a twelve-day break. I’ll have to be stealthy; I don’t like the thought
of that, but it’s still not enough to make me stop.

When it comes to
Liam I’ve obviously decided on a course of action. Our time together will be
brief and I’ll take advantage of it while I can. There aren’t many Liams
walking around unattached out there; it will probably be a very long time
before I get involved with anyone, physically or otherwise, again.