Everything Was Good-Bye (24 page)

He was gone. It was like he’d never been there, like he’d never happened, like he’d been an event, not a person.

3.8

K
al and I stood at the arrival gates, watching Sunny and his parents walk through the sliding glass doors towards us, all of them weary-eyed, switching their loads from one hand to another and craning their necks to see through the mass of smiling people holding flowers for loved ones. I waved and stepped out of the crowd.

Sunny hugged me with both arms. “God, it’s so good to be home.”

His mother nodded vigorously. She was hobbling with her carry-on bag, which Kal quickly relieved her of. She straightened her leg, flexing and pointing her toes, stumbling to one side as if she were about to topple over. I caught her by the arm. “My sciatica. Such a long flight.” My father-in-law made a mocking face when she wasn’t looking. I hugged him briefly before returning to my mother-in-law’s aid. “My legs, my legs.” I hooked my arm in hers and helped her sit down.

“We’ll be home soon.” I motioned to Kal and asked him to get her some water. She made a production of not wanting us to go to any trouble. “No ice,” she said, yelling it repeatedly as he went to get her some anyway.

“You and Dad stay here and Sunny and I will get the luggage.”

Sunny and I waited hand in hand at the carousel, watching the luggage drop down the slide. I stared up at the flight information—the ever-changing arrivals and departures, delays and cancellations panning across
the bottom of the screen like tickertape—and I read each detail as if it meant something.

“Did you miss me?” Sunny asked, pulling me closer, his arm about my shoulder, loose but still possessive.

“What kind of question is that? Of course I did.” When he didn’t say anything I looked up at him. He had a dingy tan, as if layers and weeks of filth had solidified on his flesh and even yellowed the whites of his eyes, making him look suspicious, making me feel suspect.

I smiled as I pulled away, pointing to the luggage. “I think those are ours.”

Sunny’s mother hobbled over, directing us on how to stack the suitcases on the trolley so they didn’t topple over. “Wait until you see all the saris. Such fine embroidery; there is nothing like it here. Oy, be careful with that one,” she said to Sunny. “That bag has the parshaad in it… a blessing all the way from the Golden Temple for you, Surinder. For your children.”

Kal grabbed the rest of the bags and loaded his truck with the luggage, while Sunny’s parents piled into the back of my car. “Oh, my joints,” Sunny’s mother said. “My arthritis was so bad there that I didn’t get out of bed for days. Ask Sunny. Sunny, isn’t that right?”

Sunny nodded and shut the door. He reached for my keys. “I’ll drive.”

“It’s okay. You’re probably tired.”

“I said I’ll drive.”

I nodded and sat in the front seat listening to my mother-in-law’s chatter subside into sleep. Phlegm rattled in her throat. My father-in-law stared out the window, adjusting his glasses and eyes to the light. “You okay, Dad?”

He smiled. “Oh, fine. Very fine.”

Sunny’s mother unpacked her suitcases, covering the carpet with swatches of silk and satin—the clothes she had bought—while I put on the water for tea. “And this one is for your mother, and this one is for your oldest sister and this one is for you,” she yelled from the family room.

Kal came into the kitchen holding the box of sweets that my mother-in-law had brought in her carry-on bag. “And this little piggy went to market and this little piggy stayed home and this little piggy went wee wee all the way home,” he mocked. I snapped him with a tea towel and told him to be quiet before we both got into trouble.

“Oh, all the fun is in here! What are you two laughing about?” my father-in-law asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

My father-in-law slapped Kal on the back. “ Tell me, how is my nephew? Has he found a wife yet?”

“Are you asking me or him?” I asked.

“You, of course. You are his cousin-brother’s wife, his bhabiji. It is your duty to find him a wife.”

Kal waved his hands in refusal. “No thanks, Chachaji. I don’t need a wife. I have a girlfriend.”

My father-in-law dismissed the remark with a sour face. “A girlfriend is not a wife… Look at Sunny and Meena. Don’t you want what they have, what he has?”

Kal didn’t seem to know how to answer and I looked away, not wanting to watch his struggle or interpret the meaning of his silence.

“Girlfriend. Nonsense,” Sunny’s father continued. “You know I was eighteen when I got married. I never even saw your Chachiji’s face. The day after the wedding, I left for Canada. I didn’t see her for two years.”

“Things were simple back then,” Kal said.

My father-in-law paused with faraway eyes. “Some things were simple, yes, and some things were complicated… but we made it work. It was our duty.” He looked around. “Isn’t that right?” he shouted to my mother-in-law, who was talking with Sunny.

“What, heh?” she yelled. “Kal, I need you. Come here.”

“Duty calls,” he said, excusing himself.

My father-in-law reached for a glass from the shelf.

“What can I get you, Dad?”

He moved me out of his way. “I can get it.” He poured himself a glass of tap water and gulped it down. “Much better than India’s.”

“Did you have a good time? See all your old friends?”

He nodded. “Yes, old is right. We are all very old now.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know.” He sat down on a nearby chair. He looked thinner, his chest slightly concave as if parts of him had disappeared into himself and the only mass left was what little air there was in his lungs. Every time he went to India he seemed to come back a little less himself.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

He nodded and patted his heart with his whole hand. “It’s the coming and going of it.” He looked at me, but his eyes were elsewhere. “We were not meant to leave the people we love so many times.”

“No, I don’t suppose we were.” I kissed my father-in-law on the cheek, pressing my hand on his shoulder as I walked by. He held my hand and patted it with his own, in that paper-thin way old people have when they offer empathy for the luxurious problems of youth.

I went downstairs and shut myself in the washroom, flushing the toilet every few moments so I wouldn’t be bothered. I reached into my purse looking for my phone, becoming frantic when I couldn’t find it, knowing that Liam was somewhere waiting for me to call. I dumped the contents on the floor and sifted through the side pockets, hoping that it was there, that it had slipped inside the lining. After a few minutes I gave up, went back into the living room and asked if anyone had seen my phone.

Sunny produced it from his pocket. “Who’s Liam?”

“What?” I was sure my face went red.

“Liam. He’s on your display.” Sunny flipped the phone open before handing it back to me. “He’s called, like ten times.”

Kal glanced at me. “Liam… isn’t that the new guy at work. I remember you mentioned him to me?”

I stumbled. “Yeah. I’ve been helping him out until he gets up to speed.”

Kal and I were quiet for a moment.

“Well, aren’t you going to call him?” Sunny asked.

I shook my head and dropped the phone in my bag. “Maybe later… Are you ready to go? You must be tired?”

Sunny looked at his watch and agreed. “It’s 3 a.m. in India,” he said to his mother, who was yawning herself.

“Better you go. Get some rest,” she said.

The apartment seemed different with Sunny in it and as he moved about the bedroom changing out of his clothes, his presence surprised me as though he were a shadow appearing and disappearing from the corner of my eye—slightly out of sight, out of reach. I picked up his clothes as he dropped them, taking the change out of the pockets and folding everything into a neat pile on the leather bench in front of the bed. I sat down and ran my hands over the leather, thinking of how only a few days ago I’d made love to Liam there. I looked up, catching Sunny’s backside in the full-length mirror across from the bed. His body was chiselled, his upper body overdeveloped by brutish workouts and protein shakes that did nothing to enhance his thin legs. “Chicken Legs,” I’d teased, before realizing how sensitive he was about them.

He pulled the sheets back and got into bed. “Are you coming?”

I lay down next to him. He put his arm around me and fell asleep. I waited until his breath was loud and his eyes had rolled beneath their lids before moving his arm and creeping out of bed to call Liam. I shut the door behind me and turned the television on. The screen light flickered through the dark living room. I dialled and waited, my palms sweating on the receiver, my breath amplified and reverberating in the mouthpiece. The call went to voice mail. I hung up and dialled again. I paced the length of the room, then sat down on the edge of the couch. Voice mail. I hung up and dialled again. I got up, paced some more and sat down again, pulling at strands of hair, twirling them between my fingers, cupping the receiver, pressing it into my ear. “Pick up, pick up,” I whispered over and over, rocking back and forth ever so slightly, every time listening to his casual voice on the other end, so cavalier, so fucking cavalier in his “It’s Liam… leave a message or don’t” bullshit. I slammed the phone down.

3.9

W
recked with jet lag, Sunny napped most days and retreated to his den late at night to catch up on missed work, consider new invest-ments and watch online porn. One night, after I’d refused him, he got out of bed and went into his study. I heard him make himself a drink, turn on the computer, lean back in his chair and then nothing, nothing but the silence and the ache of a man before he comes, the moments when moments seem to open and close, collapsing on themselves. I closed my eyes and thought of Liam’s body fused on mine, how when it was over neither of us moved and we would lie there, entwined and helpless.

I reached for the phone and called him, skipping the formalities of greetings when he picked up. “I miss you.”

He was silent. “I miss you too.”

“I’m sorry about the other day. It was hard to talk and Sunny–”

“It’s okay,” he said, cutting me offon Sunny’s name as if he didn’t want to hear it, to imagine it.

I stared at the ceiling, the dark of the room. “I miss you.”

“I know… I do too.”

We were quiet, full of short sentences that amounted to nothing but the punctuation of absence: “I miss you,” “I love you,” “I want you,” “I’m sorry.” The three-word strings tugged and pulled at us, superseding the need for talk and explanations, justifications and ramifications.

“I should go. I just wanted to hear you.” I imagined him nodding, staring out the window, or looking at the pictures he’d taken that day, retouch-ing them, making them better. “When will you be back?”

“Soon.”

That was all he said.

Over the course of the next few days, I had long conversations with the idea of him, rehearsing all the things that I would tell him when we were together. When I was at work, I wrote out my thoughts in longhand, making him into a story, and when I read it back it frightened me so much that I shredded the papers into bits and tossed them into the trash, only to mourn them five minutes later. I retrieved the fragments and stuffed them into my purse as if I were stuffing my heart back into my chest.

When the wait was unbearable, I called him from my closed office door and from the washroom stalls of restaurants where Sunny and I dined with his parents, just to hear his voice on the answering machine, relieved that the sound of him matched my memory. I held the line, listening to the dial tone until the recorded voice told me to hang up, to try my call again, to ask for assistance.

3.10

I
walked by a lingerie shop on Robson Street, transfixed by the lace-and-satin window dressing, the poster of a woman wearing a black bustier and fishnet stockings, lying across a bed, her hair tousled and mouth parted. She had a look about her, wanting and vulnerable, a certain surrender. I wanted to be her, and turned back and opened the door to the shop. I fingered the fine lace intimates, bypassing the Valentine’s Day markdown items that looked tawdry, used almost, the way burned-down candles and dirty wine glasses look on the morning after. Everything in the store smelled like roses and talc powder, so delicate that I was afraid to touch them. The salesperson noticed my hesitation and came over.

“Can I help you?”

“What’s on the poster?” I pointed to the window. “Do you have that?”

She nodded. “Yes, just. It’s brand new.” She pulled one offthe rack.“This one looks about your size,” she said, measuring the cups against my breasts. I was embarrassed, even though I was the only customer in the store.

“Here we are.” She handed me the panties. “Do you want to try the stockings as well?”

I nodded and followed her around the store as she picked up an assort-ment of other things that she thought I might like.

“Is it a special occasion?” she asked, helping me into the change room, which was both cabaret and brothel in its decor of draped red velvet. All it lacked was a stripper pole.

“An anniversary,” I said, without thinking.

“Well, let me know if you need any sizes.”

I undressed and pulled the flimsy garment offthe hanger, avoiding my naked self in the mirror. I fastened the countless hooks and eyes, and snapped the garter on the stockings, plumping my breasts into the wired bustier cups. I slipped my high heels on again and stepped back, looking at myself in the three-way mirror. I cupped my breasts and pouted, smiled just enough, closed my eyes halfway until I looked like what I was, an adul-teress on her way to another man’s bed.

Liam was never as I’d imagined him. He was tired and unshaven; his clothes were wrinkled and still smelled like the sea’s salty decay; his smile when seeing me at his door was half-hearted, his embrace part relief and part torture.

“I missed you.” He said it like a confession, something to be ashamed of, something he didn’t want or had no choice in. We stood there in each other’s arms, silent, eyes closed, almost swaying, anticipating the rhythms of each other. “Come here,” he said, pulling away. “I want to show you what I’ve been working on.”