Everything Was Good-Bye (19 page)

“Check,” I said, sitting back into the chair, my arms crossed.

He drummed his fingers against his lips and leaned over the board.

“Clever girl. Very clever girl.” He scratched his balding head, looking utterly stupefied and pleased as I left the room.

That evening’s dinner party was like all the others. All the guests huddled in groups, soda-fuelled children played hide-and-seek in the hallways, and the men—Sunny included—stood in the living room, their never-empty glasses in hand, while I sat a prisoner of my kitchen mates, who
crowed and delighted as they listed the births, deaths and marital status of relations as if they were accomplishments.

Occasionally I looked around, peeking into the living room that smelled of warm alcohol and aftershave, that hummed with hockey talk, and fortune hunting. Talk of new cars, luxury cars, sports cars. German or Japanese? Selling land, buying land, old country and new country, buying low and selling high, tearing down and building up. Kal was stuck in the middle of one such conversation between two uncles who were de-bating the longterm value of real estate over mutual funds, their voices blurring the ends of unfinished sentences. Kal just nodded, agreeing with them both, stepping back from their encroachment of his personal space. “Yes, Uncleji, you have a point.” He leaned against the wall, and opened the nearby window, closing his eyes momentarily. I saw him exhale, and it almost took my breath away.

I heard my mother-in-law call from the other room. “Surinder!… Where did she go now? Always disappearing when I need her help.”

Kal looked up when he heard my name. I smiled, and lifted my hand in a hesitant wave. He mouthed “How are you,” and as I left to join my mother-in-law in the kitchen I thought how much it looked like “I love you.” I mouthed it to myself, letting the words roll over my tongue, tap my palette and hollow out my throat like a long kiss. I remembered his kisses. His mouth, the soft part of his lips, a hesitation, an inclination, an instiga-tion of what came next. I wondered if he remembered when we were lovers or if he had forgotten those few weeks in university, when the summer heat was unbearable, when our bodies pulling offeach other’s felt like peeling flesh. I wondered if he’d forgotten the time when I was not his cousin’s wife. When I was his friend, when I was his lover. When I was his.

Sunny thought it was inappropriate for me to have a male friend, even if it was his cousin, and shortly after we were married he insisted that I not be seen with anyone but him. Though he’d always been possessive, it was his mother who had encouraged this development, chiming in his ears all the things that people might say. One evening when I chose to go to a movie with Kal rather than sit and watch television with her, she complained to Sunny, conspiring against me, telling him how bad it looked for a married
woman to be out with another man. When I came home, Sunny was waiting for me, demanding to know why I had gone out without his permission. I could tell by his rambling accusations that he was drunk and that any defence I offered would fall on deaf ears. He would not be appeased, and abruptly stopped my half-hearted attempts with a closed fist to the face. I fell back in shock and pain, not being able to distinguish which had caused more hurt.

The next morning he’d sent me flowers at the office. I watched those flowers wither and fall away from themselves, and let the remains sit in a crystal vase until the water converted the stems to sludge, the bitter odour reminding me to throw them out. Before tossing them away, I’d pulled at the cloying petals, landing on “he loves me not.” I avoided telling Kal what had happened, and after a time our friendship buckled in the silence and I was relegated to the position of another man’s wife, our talk limited to family matters.

Occasionally Sunny invited Kal and his girlfriend Irmila to dinner, even though we both disliked her politics, the controversies she spun for the sake of conversation, if not for the controversy itself. She seemed to enjoy the way Sunny loosened his tie when she engaged him in capitalist debate, locking her eyes on him as she seduced him with opinions, connections and names. She dropped names as if they were articles of clothing, and word by word, confused men like Kal into believing that her anger was passion. Her lack of beauty was diminished or made invisible by her avail-ability and willingness, both of which were subtle and vulgar.

“Meena. Let’s get going.” Sunny was standing at my side, keys in hand. “But your mom… she expects us to stay and she needs my help.”

“I said let’s get going.” I nodded and went to offer up excuses to his mother, who was on the verge of tears at our leaving early.

“But you haven’t even had dinner yet.”

“I know, but Sunny’s tired.”

“Well, at least take some food home.” She reached into the kitchen cupboard and pulled out assorted Tupperware which, unlike my mother’s
collection of recycled yogurt containers, had matching snap-on lids. “How many rotis?” she asked, handing me the tinfoil. “Wrap them tight so they don’t dry out.” She stacked the containers of daal into a bag, which she handed to me with a heavy sigh. “He just got here and already they’re leaving,” she said to my father-in-law, who came to my side and kissed me on the cheek.

“We’ll see you soon, hmm?” He pulled me to his side and walked me to the door. “Everything okay? You look upset.”

“No, not upset. It’s just. I should go… He’s waiting. You know how he gets when he has to wait.”

My father-in-law nodded as if he were having trouble remembering or not wanting to remember. “Visit soon, hmm? We have a chess game to finish.”

I told him that I would and rushed out to meet Sunny, who was already waiting in the car, engine started. He pulled out before I even had my seat belt on, rolling down the window to wave at some acquaintances who had honked, his smile fading as soon as the tinted window shut.

The windshield wipers squawked, pushing the rain into fanning ripples of blurred visibility. Sunny leaned forward, squinting into the narrow band of light on the road, the car veering back and forth over the yellow line. I stared out the window, my reflection overlaid on the passing night. I thought to tell him to slow down, but instead pressed my right foot into the mat as if I could brake for him, as if I could make him stop. Once before when he was drunk and I was insisting he let me drive, he’d pulled the car over and with no hint of emotion told me to get out, leaving me on the side of the road in the pouring rain. By the time I’d made my way home, I was cold and wet through, my sari laced in mud, my mascara running down my face like black tears, my hair dripping in tangles. Humiliated and angry, I packed my bags and returned to my mother’s house, staying only until she insisted on returning me to the Gills, as though I were something that didn’t belong to her anymore. Sunny’s mother had stood at the door, greeting us in obligatory hugs before ushering us into the family room, where Sunny and his dad were seated on the leather sectional. As we dipped countless digestive biscuits into our tea, watching the crumbs resurface
and cling to the sides of the teacups, our parents made small talk around our marital problems, lightening the burden of blame. I sat glancing at the walls, which were covered with black tapestries depicting Ram and Sita, their outlines cheapened with sequins, while Sunny sat in the corner, watching the hockey game that was muted on the tv, occasionally looking up when he heard his name mentioned. We listened, letting their talk wrap around us, joining us in something that was not love.

The minute we got home, Sunny took offhis coat and picked up the phone.

“It’s late,” I said.

He didn’t answer.

“Who are you calling?”

“Checking my messages.”

I could tell by his expression that whatever message he was waiting for and had been waiting for was still not there. Jasmine hadn’t called. She’d moved on. He dropped the phone into the cradle and retreated to the den, telling me he had some work to finish.

“Now? At this hour?”

“I didn’t hear you complain when I paid offyour mom’s mortgage,” he said, shutting me out.

I stared at the closed door, watching the light beneath shade with his passing step, wondering whether to go in and try to lure him from his bad mood, but instead reached for the stack of mail and sifted through the magazine subscription renewal notices from
Better Homes and Gardens
and
Canadian
House & Home
. After we’d first moved into the loft—which Sunny had agreed to buy as an investment—I’d set out to make it into a home and spent every weekend amassing paintings, art pieces and furniture. I was hoping to fill the open space, but no matter what I filled the emptiness with it wasn’t enough and eventually I hired a contractor to frame walls and rooms where none had been. “Rooms have purpose; they contain things,” I told Sunny when he baulked at the idea and expense of adding freestanding brick walls to support a second-storey master suite.

Sunny hated the bright colours and dark wood I chose and wanted a palette of black and white. I told him the world wasn’t black and white, even though I knew his life was. He believed in a choice of opposites: yes and no, right and wrong, love and hate. There was no in-between for him. He once told me that this ability to act quickly, deduce situations and calculate risks to come up with the best possible outcome was what made him successful in business. It was what would make him the youngest partner in the law firm. It was what made him somebody.

I knocked on the study door, waiting for a word before opening it.

I leaned in the doorway. He was looking out the window, Scotch on the rocks in hand, his back to me. “I’m going to bed.”

“So go.” He didn’t turn around.

I sat down in the club chair across from his desk, wringing my hands, unsure of what to say or where to look. He still didn’t turn. I heard him clamp down on a piece of ice, fracturing it into small pieces.

“Are you thinking about her?”

Now he turned. His jaw flickered before his eyes did. “Not now, Meena.” “Why? Why don’t we ever talk about it?”

He stared at me impatiently. “Because I don’t see the point.”

“You don’t. Of course
you
don’t. Tell me Sunny, what do you think it says about you that you married me because your parents made you?”

He fisted the glass down and walked around the desk, grabbing my wrist, twisting it slightly before pulling it to his mouth in a kiss. “Hmm, probably as much as it says about you, Surinder.” I yanked my hand from his mouth and stood up to leave, his temper defeating mine. “Come on, babe. Don’t look so upset. You and I are more alike then you think.” He reached for my hand. “We do what we need to do to get what we want,” he said, pulling me back hard and fast, taking what he wanted—always taking.

That night I wanted him to stop, but like all the other times I just lay there and let him; the only time he told me that he loved me was when he came. He only loved me in the leaving.

3.2

T
he day before Sunny and his parents left for India, the sky finally fell. It had threatened snow since Christmas, and now it delivered, covering the streets and cars in mounds and piles. Everything was lost and white. Cars were abandoned and shops closed early; children stayed home from school and took to the local hills, sleds and crazy carpets in tow. Sunny stared out the window watching thick flakes swirl to the ground in varying degrees, his eyes measuring accumulations. As day turned into grey light, the city tunnelled into a deep quiet, a dreaded calm like the sound of power lines and televisions turning offlate at night when sleep was still hours away.

Sunny reached for the phone. “Delayed. Cancelled.” That was all he said when his mother called to commiserate about the weather conditions. When she had suggested the trip, I’d answered with an appropriate hesitation, telling her that I couldn’t get the time offfrom work. Her disappointment was short-lived; she remembered my body’s response to India—the nausea that had plagued our first trip was reason enough for me to avoid a second one. I’d spent that entire month white-fisted and body-clenched, dripping with heat and exhaustion while touring the holy temples that dotted the vast country. The stench of feces, pollution, dirt and decay sank into me like weighted stones, altering the way I breathed to short inhales and long exhales that left me in a perpetual state of light-headedness. I
was drawn into the sinkhole eyes of beggars; Sunny reminded me not to look at them, not to encourage the child beggars, the blinds beggars, the lame beggars, yet I stared into their eyes looking for something beyond the want. Whenever I would stop to stare, Sunny would cuffhis arm in mine and pull me along.

His mother’s sympathy for my illness thinned to irritation, and the following year, when I hadn’t produced a grandchild, she told me it was during that trip that she’d realized I was too weak to conceive. Then she began consulting with gurus and various other holy men on what was to be done about my fertility. I was told to drink rosewater tea and forego the consumption of any meat. I wore a roped necklace of charmed talismans stuffed with fennel and garlic that left a noosed imprint on the back of my neck long after I’d taken it off. She and Sunny’s aunties concocted large vats of herbal remedies and would stand over the steel pots stirring like old hags at cauldrons. After a time I stopped humouring her homeopathy and threw out whatever she gave me, occasionally placating her hopes with missed periods that signified nothing. I grew to enjoy her disappointment when she saw my tampon wrappers in the wastebasket. I thought it was the least she deserved after I realized that she had taken an indiscreet in-ventory of all that was hidden in my room. Once I’d caught her in the act of looking through my dresser drawer, her hands slicing through layers of lingerie as if she were looking for evidence of something. I waited until she’d left before trying to assess what she had taken this time, but found nothing gone, perhaps because there was no longer anything to take that I had not already given up. A few months after the wedding my father-in-law had found one of my half-filled journals among her things and without telling her, handed it back to me like an offering. “Put it somewhere safe. Somewhere secret,” he’d said. I hadn’t written a word since.