Everything Was Good-Bye (25 page)

“These are the new ones?” He was standing behind me, but I could tell he was nodding, waiting for approval. The images were stark and haunting, black-and-grey landscapes, rain and clouds, a medieval sort of dirt. “What do you call them?”

“Human residue.” He pointed to a crushed pop can tangled in seaweed on a beach. “It’s representative of what we leave behind. Environmentally. And then this one,” he said, pointing to a reflection of a naked woman in still water, “is about emotional residue. How place and person aren’t singu-lar, how we assign memories to place and how that place becomes a symbol or a metaphor for something and… well, you get what I mean.”

I turned around. “I do… they’re beautiful.”

“You’re beautiful.” He put his palm on the side of my neck until I strained to it, surrendered to it. When he kissed me, my mouth parted, my eyes closed, everything about me stripped away. I thought of the woman in the poster, the lingerie still sitting in the bag by the door. I didn’t want to be her. I just wanted to be his.

Afterwards we lay on our backs, cigarettes in hand, the threads of

“What are we doing?” I asked.

Liam exhaled a ring of smoke into the air and watched it ripple before he reached across me and butted out the cigarette, extinguishing the orange glow, the dying sparks. I got up, sheets wrapped around me as I picked up my clothes, which lay in a puddle on the floor.

“Do you have to leave? You just got here.”

I dropped the sheets and pulled on my clothes, quickly fastening my bra. “Sunny will be waiting.”

“So, tell him that you’re running late.”

“I can’t. He already suspects and I can’t risk it.”

Liam rolled over and turned towards me. “Risk what?”

I sat on the edge of the bed next to him, my hand in his. “You.”

“Tell him… Leave him already.”

I sighed. “He’s not the kind of man you can just leave.”

He pulled me towards him. “Then just stay. Spend the night.”

I kissed him and got up, slipping on my blouse. “You know I can’t. If I don’t get back he’ll be… well, you know how he is.”

He sat up in bed. “No, I don’t know. Tell me, how is he, Meena?”

I sighed and reached for my purse. “He’s not you.”

“Have you been with him yet?”

I shook my head and turned around. “No. I told you already that I haven’t, that I won’t. That I– ”

“That you’ll what?” He got up and pulled on his pants, stretching his T-shirt over his head. “What will you do? He’s your husband. Are you really going to be able to tell him no?”

I didn’t answer.

“If you did wouldn’t he suspect? Can you really risk that, Meena?” He was staring at me, his eyes burrowing, accusing. “I mean, can you really risk anything?”

I reached for him and he shoved me away.

“Is this how it’s going to be? You come by and we fuck, what, a couple times a week?”

“No. Is that what you think this is?”

He ran his fingers through his hair, his hands arrested behind his head for a moment before he dropped them. “I don’t know what this is.”

3.11

N
either of us spoke of his leaving, though there were traces of it everywhere. Open boxes had been sealed and put into storage; his passport, which was always tucked between T-shirts in his bedside drawer, now lay face down on the dresser; his suitcase, usually housed in the closet, now lay open-jawed on the bed. Half empty, half full? I still couldn’t decide, and as I’d watched him pack over the course of the week, I’d wondered if even he could.

“Where will you go?”

“I don’t know. East. I’ll figure it out as I go.”

I imagined him hitching across Canada the way he’d told me he’d done after high school, riding in beat-up vans and trucks, walking for miles, buying prepackaged gas station food, eating at rest stops, sleeping in cheap motels.

“Do you need money?”

He pushed by me, stuffing more clothes into his suitcase. “No, I don’t need your money. I’m fine without it.” He pulled out dresser drawers, tipping the contents onto the bed, sorting them into loose piles. He emptied his medicine cabinet, tossing the half-empty bottles into the trash. I stood in the middle of the studio watching him move from task to task with the urgent precision of a planned departure.

The studio was as bare as it usually was; his bed was unmade, the fridge almost empty, his unwashed coffee mug in the sink, the shades half drawn, yet as he packed, pulling at his belongings, closing them into cases, I felt his leaving. It settled in my chest, echoing like a heart murmur.

I picked up a pile of his photographs. Pictures he’d taken of me. Pictures I’d taken of him. Black and white. “Don’t forget these.”

He didn’t look up. He didn’t take them from me.

I held them out farther, shaking them like an offering. “Here’s your fucking human residue.” My voice bounced offthe walls and back at me.

He snatched them from me, shoving them into his already crammed duffle bag so that the photographs folded and collapsed on themselves. There was quiet except for the sound of a persistent car horn. He ducked his head out the window, yelling at the cabbie that he would be a minute.

“So this is it? Just like that.”

He zipped up his duffle bag. “No, not just like that, Meena. You and I were never
just
like that.” He picked up his suitcase and slung his bag over his other shoulder.

I watched him leave the building, and as the cab pulled away from the curb, I ran outside, my arm half extended like a desperate a plea for him to come back or a frantic reminder that he had forgotten something. Someone.

After he’d left, I drove around the city, feeling as if I were sitting with a ghost, as if he were there next to me not speaking, not answering my thoughts. “What do I do?” I asked it over and over again. “What am I supposed to do?” No answer. Of course no answer. “What are you going to do now, Meena?” I slammed my foot on the gas pedal and drove faster. I thought of the way Liam and I used to drive to the beach when we were teenagers, my feet on the dashboard, windows rolled down, hair flying, singing along with the songs on the radio. We were almost free.

The sun was going down as I finished circling the Stanley Park Cause-way for the second time. The sky was silver and gold, clean-lined and layered, reflecting itself onto the glass towers and office buildings that
crowded the downtown core, that boxed everyone in. Inside those towers people were looking out of their floor-to-ceiling glass windows and watching the light change. They were also glancing now and then at wall clocks and soon, like me, they would see that it was time to go home, time to watch reality television and the local news while only partly aware that they would simply be wasting time, waiting for the next day, the possibility and inevitability of it all. The thought would scare them to death. It did me.

When I got home Kal and Irmila were over and Sunny was talking loud, trying to open a bottle of champagne that uncorked just as I walked in.

“Hey, good timing.” Sunny motioned for me to come quickly, handed me a glass and filled it with the champagne that was frothing out of the bottle neck.

“What’s all this?” I asked, not quite looking at anyone straight on.

Sunny poured glasses for Irmila and Kal. “Well, do you want to tell her the good news or should I?” Sunny asked, his glass poised for a toast.

Irmila held out her hand, displaying her ring finger. “We’re engaged.”

“Engaged? Wow. I had no idea the two of you were so serious.”

Kal put his arm around Irmila, who seemed taken aback by my comment. “Well, we are,” he said.

“Of course. Of course you are. I didn’t mean it… I’m sorry, I’ve just had quite a day.” I felt dizzy and hollow, nauseous from crying. Sadness had become a physical thing. “Can you excuse me for a moment?” I handed Sunny my glass and rushed into the bathroom, where I gagged dry heaves. My face was red, my eyes were puffy from crying. “Allergies,” I would tell Sunny if he asked me why. I splashed cold water on my face, trying to snap myself back into the pretense of marriage.

Sunny knocked on the door. “Babe, you okay?”

I ran the water. “Yeah, out in a minute.”

When I emerged, Irmila and Kal were sitting comfortably as if they intended to stay a while. I sat across from them, only half listening to the details of how he had proposed, how she’d said yes, when they would be
married, how happy his parents were, how they loved her like a daughter. As she spoke, gushing like an ugly schoolgirl who’d finally got a date, Kal stared at her, falling deeper into every word, looking at her with a love that surprised me.

“Meena, I thought we should take these two out to celebrate. I made reservations for seven.” He looked at his watch. “We should probably get going.” Sunny put his arm around Kal, and slapped his back in just the way that the leading man would do in the old Hollywood movies that Liam and I used to watch.

Irmila smiled all during dinner, talking over everyone, laughing with her head back and eyes closed, the conversation pivoting around her. She was entirely herself and when she asked the server how each meal was prepared, if the greens were organic, if the salmon was fresh or farmed, I could tell it bothered Kal because he joked about it, and then afterwards they bickered in a playful way, pawing at each other like kittens. I said very little for fear that I would say too much, that my smile would crack into a thousand sorrows, and occasionally I went to the ladies’ room to cry in the privacy of a stall.

When I came out the last time, Kal was on his way to the men’s room. “Your eyes. They’re red.”

“Allergies. It’s the pollen.”

“Meena, you’re not allergic to anything.”

I looked over into the dining room. “I should go back in.”

“Irmila and I had dinner with Liam the other night.”

“Who?” I asked, pretending to look through my purse for something. “Meena, don’t. Not with me.”

I looked up. “What, Kal? What would you like me to say?”

“I know he’s gone.”

“And–”

“I know you must be upset, but… it’s better this way.”

“Better for whom?” I asked, walking away before he could answer.

3.12

I
felt the SkyTrain’s motion in the sway of my head. I could tell by the curves and the long stretches of straight track when it was time to get offand knew that it was soon but not yet. I opened my eyes as the door slid open and shut, watched everyone readjust to make room for more passengers. The train was crammed with college students laden with books and with middle-aged women wearing comfortable shoes and carrying their emptied bag lunches and high heels in gym bags. They were the type of women who sat behind reception desks and had not changed their makeup and hairstyles in years. They had their heads buried in grocery-store paper-back novels, Harlequin romances or bad mysteries—anything that took them away from their life, this commuter life where on each train ride they came up against their misspent youth, which had got them to no place but here. Every time a group of teenagers got on the train, laughing and exaggerated, trendy and rebellious in the way they touched and flirted as if they were entitled, these women looked on with the bespectacled stares of librarians. But the men on the train—in their poorly tailored suits and scuffed shoes, their newspapers stuffed into the side pockets of worn brief-cases—didn’t notice much and stared straight ahead with weary astonish-ment. I wondered where they were all going and if they would be relieved when they got there.

The train doors opened and closed and the mix of men and women, young and old, filed in and out, the exchange as easy as breathing. Those who remained sat tightly, moulding their round bodies to the small squares seats, pulling and tugging at the hems of their spring raincoats, not wanting to infringe on their neighbours’ space yet looking up occasionally to find some eyes to look away from. I, too, pulled in my imaginary bor-ders, closing them around me as I looked out the window, staring into my opaque reflection, faceless until I suddenly heard my name like a question. It was Irmila.

Since I’d last seen her she’d cut her hair, and she was now sporting long, blunt bangs that made her look more severe and sophisticated than I remembered. I’d avoided her and Kal since that night at dinner a few weeks ago, and seeing her now only seemed to remind me of Liam’s absence, the pit and ache in my stomach since he’d left, the lingering guilt and want of him. I shrank into myself, willing myself to disappear, hoping she wouldn’t come over, but within an instant she was sure of her recognition and trot-ted down the aisle, carrying a brown bag of groceries overflowing with vegetables, excusing herself as she brushed by glazed commuters.

She sat down with a huffin the handicapped seat next to me. “Hey, Surinder. What a surprise. You on your way home?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I was out visiting my mom.”

“She lives in Surrey, right?”

“No. Delta.”

“Oh. It’s almost the same… so many Indians. I don’t know how you can stand it.”

I didn’t bother answering. She was all about rhetorical questions. “How have you been?” I asked.

“Busy.” She made a dramatic eyebrows-up face. “We’ve been planning the engagement party and it’s just out of control. I wanted to keep it small, but Kal’s parents want this big, Indian-type… You know how it is. Everyone on the guest list is an uncle or an auntie. Plus work is just madness.” She knelt down and picked up one of the apples that had fallen out of the bag and was rolling away. “Organic… do you eat organic?”

I shook my head that I didn’t. “Sunny isn’t into it.”

“I never ate it before either, but Liam got me into it. You remember him. I think you met him, that photographer at the gallery that night… anyways, I was talking to him the other day and he–”

“You talked to him?”

“Yes, we talk all the time. We’re old friends.”

“Did he ask about me?” I asked, without thinking.

“No, why would he?” She stood up, bracing herself against the metal rail as the train slowed and the next stop was announced.

“No reason.”

She threw her purse over her shoulder. “This is my stop,” she said. “We’ll have to get together some time soon.” I could tell by the way she crinkled her eyes that she was only being polite and probably made the false promise of “let’s do lunch or coffee” every time she bumped into anyone who might be remotely useful to her in the future. “Say hi to Sunny for me,” she said, and plowed into the rush of commuters getting offthe train. I nodded that I would and watched her being carried offin the crowd, wishing she’d be trampled. Ever since her engagement, I’d hated her more than she deserved, and now that I knew that she talked to Liam I hated her for that too.