Everything Was Good-Bye (12 page)

After our mothers stopped working together, we saw Amarjit Auntie and Kal only during their annual holiday visits. Even though none of us celebrated Christmas in a religious way, they would arrive bearing a box of mandarin oranges and a nativity Christmas card. My mother, who had watched
The Sound of Music
too many times, always asked us to stand in a line and sing “Silent Night” to our guests. Kal stopped making the annual visit with his parents and new baby brother when he was thirteen. His parents were apologetic about it. They’d say things like, “You know how kids are these days. They want to be independent—no time for family.”

It wasn’t until I was in university that I saw him again. I’d taken my mother to visit them after Kal’s father had had his second stroke. While my mother and Amarjit Auntie slurped sugary tea, I spent the afternoon sticking to their plastic-encased sofa, tracing the tendrils of a spider plant
that had wrapped itself around the room. I was succumbing to a suffocat-ing boredom when Kal rushed past the living room. His mother called after him to take his muddy boots offand come and say hello. He turned around and filled the doorway with his six-foot frame. Amarjit Auntie told us that he had just come from work. I wanted to ask what work he did, but knew it was not my place to ask a question, and was glad when his mother elaborated, telling us that in addition to his studies, he ran a landscaping business.

He lowered his face into his neck and stretched his white T-shirt to wipe his sweaty face, momentarily revealing his torso. Strands of brown hair fell in his face and as he tossed them back, he caught me staring and grinned. The scar on his cheek disappeared into the cleft of his smile. I looked down into my teacup, letting the steam rise to my face to give my flush some legitimacy. We’d been friends ever since, and my mother hardly seemed to mind. “He’s like a brother to her,” she told everyone.

When we got to the reception hall, we sat in the car with the engine turned off, my mother madly rooting through her purse in search of the wedding card she needed me to address. “There it is.” She handed me the oversized card covered in swirly mint-green writing. Beneath a golden crucifix the message read: “Congratulations on your blessed union.” I’d tried to explain the inappropriateness to my mother, but she didn’t seem to care. “It is only a dollar,” she’d said, holding up the receipt. She watched me write their names on the card, then slipped a fifty-dollar note into the envelope and zipped it back into her purse. “Don’t forget to say hello to Jaspreet Auntie—she just had her heart surgery. And Shindoo Uncle’s son just got married—make sure you say congratulations. Oh, and Kuljit Auntie’s daughter had a baby boy. And don’t forget to be nice to Kishor Auntie, and Amarjit Auntie of course.” My face tightened at the thought of offering so many smiles to people who had been useless to me my entire life—would-be uncles who hugged me too hard, aunties who contained me in a one suspicious glare, snotty second cousins who retreated to their rooms and their Harlequin romances whenever we visited.

Now I watched these same extended families pour out of their cars and file into the hall. The withering bibis moved as if they had no joints, toddling and tender-footed, huffing with each step. The red-eyed, already drunk and tired uncles jingled keys in the pockets of their 1980s’ Pierre Cardin sports jackets; the aging aunties stopped every few feet to fuss with their daughters’ attire while their sons walked straight ahead to greet their friends. All the newly married and the soon-to-be-married men hung outside in the parking lot. They laughed too loud. Everything about them exaggerated—from their Boyz ii Men white suits to the symbolic gold khandas that hung from their rear-view mirrors like crucifixes.

As I walked by them, the Acura boys nudged Sunny in the rib cage, whispering. My mother stopped and turned towards them. They hid their cigarettes and folded their hands in an apologetic greeting. As Sunny leaned against the car in a
GQ
pose, everything about him slow motion, I wondered if he too drove a lowered car, a boom box on wheels that filled your body with bass and left you fuzzy-assed. We stared at each other with half-interest and curiosity, our subtle inquiry weighed down by our mothers’ preoccupation with marriage. He looked at me as though he were trying me on and when he dropped his gaze I felt used and discarded. I wanted him to look at me again but he didn’t. Turning, I linked arms with my mother and urged her into the hall beyond the reach of the men’s muffled laughter, which left me feeling the same kind of nausea that I got when I ate spoiled food or felt the beginnings of love.

The hall was decorated with fuchsia balloon arches and rented silk floral arrangements that were flecked with a coordinating glitter. The music was already blaring. As we walked by the second set of speakers and bass bins that would pound out bhangra beats all night long, I checked my purse for the emergency stash of Tylenol that I’d need to dull the sounds of my mother’s complaints about the music. “Over there,” I yelled to my mother, pointing out two empty seats close to Tej and Mandip. She nodded and manoeuvred through the intricate maze of tables and chairs, stopping every few feet to say hello to yet another auntie who was wearing too much gold jewellery, too much perfume, too much powder. It was all too much.

It was then that I saw Kal. He was standing in the bar line, which snaked around the hall. As I tried to catch his attention, my friend Aman rushed over, pulling me aside. My mother continued into the crowd.

“So, have you seen anyone yet?” Aman asked.

“Like who? What are you now, part of the iia?”

“I was just worried I may have missed something because it took so long at the salon,” she said, pointing to her updo.

“They did a good job.”

“You should have come too. You could have gotten your hair done, maybe even a manicure or pedicure—I mean, look around, there isn’t an unmarried girl, other than you, who isn’t all done up.”

“Thanks,” I said, looking down at my feet.

“I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just that if you want to get married to a guy like Sunny, you have to market yourself to the aunties
,
” she said, referring to a group of middle-aged women clutching their purses. I watched them eyeing young women lustfully, wondering whose hips would bear children easily, whose breasts would produce enough milk to feed their grandsons.

“I’m not the one who wants to get married.”

Aman had kept a scrapbook with pictures of saris, wedding cakes, ice sculptures, invitations and honeymoon destinations since she was twelve. Last year she had gone to India and shopped for her wedding clothes; this year she was shopping for a husband. He had to look like a tall version of Shahrukh Khan, have a university degree and some kind of professional designation, and drive either a bmw or a Mercedes. I envied how much and how little she wanted.

She folded her hands as one of the grandmothers of somebody’s son looked over. “Sat Sri Akal Auntie.”

“Don’t you ever get sick of all this?” I asked, ducking from the auntie’s darting eyes.

Aman smoothed her crusty, side-swept bangs. “Of what?”

“The hypocrisy.” I motioned to the line of young men at the bar. A blonde girl leaned her breasts towards their requests for rum and Cokes. “All of these women looking for suitable girls for their unsuitable boys.”

“They’re not all bad.”

“No, you’re right. There is Kal.”

“Kal? Oh my God! Who would want to marry someone who shovels manure onto other people’s lawns,” she said, searching through her clam-shell clutch. “I can’t believe that he and Sunny are related.”

“Stop being such a snob.”

“I’m not a snob,” she said, reapplying her signature maroon lipstick. “I just don’t understand why you guys are friends.”

“Funny, he says the same thing about you.” I waved him over. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

She dropped her lipstick back into her gold purse. “What if Sunny’s mom sees you with him? People will think you’re together.”

“Who cares what people think?” I replied. “Besides, everyone knows we’re old family friends. No one will think otherwise.”

“I figured you could use a drink by now.” Kal handed me a tumbler. Aman yanked it from my hand. “Meena, you can’t drink that. What will people think?”

I took it back. “That it’s a Coke.”

“Until they smell it on your breath.”

Kal picked up a nearby wedding favour—mints wrapped in lavender tulle—and passed it to me. I pulled the ribbon offand handed Aman a mint. “In case you want to have a drink.”

She popped the candy in her mouth and smiled at someone across the room. “I have to go say hello to my cousin. Try not to get too corrupted while I’m gone,” she said, shooting her disapproval at Kal.

“Hi to you, too!” Kal yelled as she walked away, and then, lowering his voice, said: “Remind me again, why are you guys friends?”

“She asks the same about you.”

“I called you today, but I got stuck talking to your mom,” he said, chewing an ice cube. “She really likes me; she wouldn’t stop talking.”

“Trust me,” I said, interrupting my words with rum. “She wouldn’t like you so much if she ever found out.” He fell silent like he always did. On the day he told me he’d met someone else, I’d bumped into an old classmate at
the mall. We’d stood there, exchanging stilted questions about high school, about what we had done since, until he finally said that he’d recently heard from Liam. I was relieved at the mention of his name. It reminded me that he existed even if it was apart from me, that he was more than a memory and less than a dream. But as I walked away I was reminded that memory was bound by rules of completion. Liam was further from me than the past. My memory could not contain his possibilities; he had moved on, and without any effort, so had I. That was the part I had forgotten. When I’d gone to see Kal that last time, he could tell why I was there. We knew each other’s details; we hoarded them and occasionally whored ourselves to them. I remembered his earthy scent, his breath on my neck, quick and hot, his mouth parched on my name until I was just an exhale, and I pulled him to me faster, trying to forget.

2.2

I
slid into my cubicle, unnoticed if not for the one Plexiglas wall that reminded me I was working in a fishbowl. I pressed my hand to my temple and propped my elbow on the desk, trying to block out the white noise of mundane chatter and the glow of fluorescent lights. “You’re kidding… she said that… and then what did you say… you’re kidding… and then what did she say… yeah, yeah… are you serious?” On and on it went. If only my co-workers recognized that we had only the illusion of privacy. I was tired of hearing their personal telephone conversations and of seeing their pin-ups, their postcards, their boyfriends in heart-shaped frames and their bikini-clad vacation pictures tacked around them. I didn’t have a candy drawer, colourful Post-it Notes, novelty pens, pithy quotes on plaques, or a Hallmark figurine collection lining the top of my computer monitor. If I was away from my desk, you wouldn’t even know that anyone ever sat there.

I already missed the anonymity that university had given me. There I’d learned how to blend in, disappear even, but here I found myself ill-equipped for the small talk, the water-cooler conversation, and in most cases nodded far more than was required or comfortable. “Did you watch
Survivor?”
I would nod, even if I’d only heard the highlights on the
Larry & Willy
morning radio show. “What did you do this weekend?” I never knew how to answer. As my peers recounted the details of their weekend binge drinking and club hopping, I smiled and laughed along, wishing that
I knew what it would be like to have that sense of independent reckless-ness.

When I’d first started working at the pr firm, I’d gone out with them once or twice, but after spending the evenings abandoned at an empty table of coats and purses, watching their coupled silhouettes on the dance floor, I was almost grateful that my mother insisted I be home by eleven. After that I made excuses for why I couldn’t go out after work, telling them that I had a headache or other plans—anything was better than telling them the truth, that at twenty-four I still lived at home, arguing with my mother about arranged marriage. I found that avoiding social situations was easiest and tied myself up in extra projects that made me look too busy to talk. While others took their breaks together, I made up false errands and wandered around the city. Sometimes I would eat my lunch on the steps of the art gallery like Liam and I used to or sip my coffee from a to-go cup on the park bench in front of the Burrard Street Station watching people, wondering who they were and where they were going as they rushed by in such purposeful madness. Occasionally I’d walk by the stands of postcards and spin through them, wondering if Liam was still a col-lector. Sometimes I bought one.

One day, instead of wandering the city, I’d eaten in my car. Trish from marketing saw me sitting with my bagged lunch, and though I jumped out of the car talking about the “crazy” traffic, I knew she’d told everyone what she’d seen because when I went back to the office they all stared at me with what resembled pity.

Now Liza was peering over the top of my cubicle, the scent of her musk and the jingle of her charm bracelet preceding her. “Geee-off ’s back today,” she said, giggling, purposefully mispronouncing Geoff ’s name as I had accidentally done when I’d first met him. Even though he’d laughed it offby explaining that his parents were hippies who refused to spell his name the easy way, I felt bad for making a joke of it and apologized to the point of discomfort. “He’s in the copy room.” She handed me a fax and strained her neck, shooing me along.

The room smelled like ink, warm paper and the spark of overloaded circuits. It was my favourite spot in the office and Geoffand I often loitered
there, cracking jokes and catching up in the way I didn’t seem to be able to do with anyone else.

“How are you? How was your vacation?” I asked, feeding my paper into the fax machine. He said “Good,” without looking up from the photo-copier. The fax sound screeched through the awkward silence. He turned around and ran his fingers through his hair, which looked lighter against his fresh tan. It was always a relief and a disappointment to see him. Besides Liza he was the only real friend I had at work, and when he’d asked me out he was surprised that I’d said no—all of my actions, all of our conversations pointed to “yes.” But all I could give him was a cryptic “I’m sorry, I can’t.” Sometimes I wished I could tell him that it wasn’t him. That it was me—that I wasn’t allowed to date, that I had never had a real boyfriend, that there was no point in going out with any white guy because inevitably I would have to marry an Indian guy like Sunny or end up being disowned. When my cousin wouldn’t give in to her family’s ultimatums, Mamaji tore his name from hers and never spoke of her again. Every time he came to our house, he would look at me so long that I saw her missing in his eyes, felt his disappointment in his general detachment. I wanted to tell Geoff all of this, but knew that this truth was more hurtful than an enigmatic lie, so when he asked me why, I simply told him that it was complicated. He shook his head and said, “No, it’s not… but you are.”