Everything Was Good-Bye (26 page)

When I got home I plopped onto the couch, ordered in my Chinese cravings and flipped on the news, watching it in several times zones. The barrage of media images from 9/11 that still plagued the screen numbed me, and I flipped through them, passing the commentaries so fast that they blurred into sound bites. I reached for the remote and pointed it at the tv like a gun, pressing the button as though I were pulling a trigger.

I sat back, staring at the packets of sweet-and-sour sauce, the chopsticks, and fried rice that littered the table like a drug addict’s paraphernalia. I threw it all back into the grease-stained bag it had come in, tossed it in the trash and sprayed air freshener across the room, masking the odour so Sunny wouldn’t complain about my eating it again. “Careful,” he’d said, patting my stomach. “You’ve put on a few. You’re going to get fat if you keep eating that shit.”

After cleaning the kitchen, I went to bed and pretended to sleep, listening for him at the front door, stabbing his key into the lock. He stumbled up the stairs, his keys rattling as they hit the table beside me. I could tell he was standing over me, a shadow, undressing, layer by layer. He slid in beside me, his whisky lips on my neck telling me that he missed me, his legs spreading mine, his face an inch from mine, fucking in measured thrusts until I pushed him back, telling him that I didn’t feel well. He pulled out and rolled over, jumping out of bed when he saw the sheets were stained in blood. He rushed to the washroom. “Jesus, Meena, why didn’t you tell me you had your period?”

“I don’t.” I followed him into the washroom, blood trickling down the inside of my thighs. I tried to speak, but my words loosened to nothing and the room disappeared into a thousand pinholes.

When I opened my eyes Sunny was crouched on the floor next to me, phone in his hand. “Meena! Thank God you’re okay.”

“What happened?” I tried to get up, but couldn’t.

Sunny put the phone down and helped me up. “You passed out and hit your head. Does it hurt?” he asked. I winced that it did. “I’m going to take you to the hospital to get checked. Here, lean on me,” he said and helped me get dressed.

“How are you feeling now? Are you okay?” He kept asking this all the way to hospital, glancing at me every few minutes, reaching for my hand as if he were checking to make sure I was still there.

It was two hours of waiting in the emergency room before my name was called. “About time,” Sunny said, glaring at the admitting nurse who had told him to “sit down sir,” every time he approached the desk asking why it was taking so long, his voice growing louder as he complained that others were being seen before me. But even after I’d been admitted and had donned a paper-thin hospital gown, we waited, listening to the sounds of the other sick and injured that were only partly contained by the draped partitions—the sounds of low moans and dry coughs, the sounds of res-pirators and the steady beats of cardiac monitors. Sunny read back issues of
People
cover to cover while I closed my eyes, pulling up the blankets and untucking the hospital corners, pretending to rest so he would stop
asking me if I needed anything. He hadn’t been this attentive since our honeymoon.

On the way to the hospital he’d been clenched with emotion, driving fast and zipping around corners, and he was red-eyed when he told me later that he thought he’d lost me. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

I opened my eyes when I heard Sunny pacing the bed’s perimeter, complaining about the wait. “Why don’t you go get some coffee? You look exhausted.”

“I’m not leaving you here alone.”

“I’ll still be here when you get back. Besides, I could use some tea. Can you bring me some?”

He nodded and kissed me on the forehead. It was only a few minutes after he left that the doctor pulled back the partition, pronouncing my name in syllables as he read it offthe clipboard. He flipped through the chart, reading my blood-work results, clicking and unclicking his pen before underlining something. He shone a light in my eyes, telling me to look left to right, up and down and made a note on his chart. He felt the small bump on the back of my head. “How are you feeling now?”

“Okay. Better.”

“It’ll hurt for a bit, but you don’t seem to be suffering from a concussion or anything serious like that.”

I smiled relief, but he didn’t notice because he was looking at the chart again.

“It says here that your last menstrual cycle was some time ago. Is that correct?”

I nodded, telling him that my periods were always irregular and stress made it worse.

“What kind of stress?” He perked up.

“Just the usual. Is something the matter?” I asked.

“Well no, not really. Your test results are all good, but… they also indi-cate that you’re pregnant.”

“Pregnant?”

“Yes, about eight weeks.”

“What? I can’t be… what about the bleeding… ”

“Spotting and fainting are not that unusual for a first trimester, but we’ll schedule an ultrasound just to be sure everything’s fine.”

I nodded, barely listening as he went on about prenatal care, vitamins and birthing classes. I placed my hand on my stomach as if something would be revealed to me besides my fear. Sunny came back in holding two coffees, worried when he saw the expression on my face.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

Before the doctor could speak, I told him it was nothing.

But when we got home I couldn’t look at him. His sympathy only made me retreat further into my own guilt, into the quiet of secrets that could not be kept.

3.13

I
stood at the departure gate waiting with the red-eyed to board a flight to Montreal. I’d packed while Sunny was sleeping, moving around him on tiptoes, frightened that he would wake up before I left, that I might have to answer to him. I packed only what I needed immediately, thinking that if I needed anything else I could replace it when I got there, or learn to live without it. I called my mother from the airport. She scolded me for calling so early—the ringing phone had alarmed her. I imagined her sitting up in her bed, wild and frightened, her loose hair spilling over her shoulders, unruly strands curled at her temples like fine silver threads. “I’ll see you this weekend… Dinner on Sunday, don’t forget, and remind Sunny.” I nodded, even though by then I would have put thousands of miles between us.

I checked my wallet for my id, boarding pass and Liam’s address several times, touching each like a talisman. In the days after I’d learned of my pregnancy, I’d tried to call him, but only ever got his voice mail. I’d listen to his voice, “This is Liam. You know what to do,” and each time I’d wondered if I did know what to do and hung up wondering for hours after. Hours, during which I would have dinner with Sunny, talking about the random details of our days, listing them, embellishing them, adding them up, as if after some time they would appreciate and eventually perhaps be worth something and we could say, like so many aging married couples did, that
it had been worth it. That having been there with each other despite ourselves was a worthy accomplishment on its own.

Whenever Sunny talked about the future, near and far, I’d hide my eyes, ducking into myself the way a bird would tuck its head under its wing to protect itself from the rain and cold. A few days before deciding to leave I called Liam again, prepared to tell him everything, but this time my attempt was greeted by an out-of-service recording. I told myself that it was better this way; I needed to say it to him, see the reaction in his eyes when he learned that he was to be a father. Hearing his silence in the distance wasn’t enough. I had to go to him. I’d imagined that he’d be relieved to see me, elated by the news of my pregnancy. He’d swing me around in his arms, my feet dangling in the air. We would live together in a Victorian townhouse, which we would lovingly restore. We would put the baby in the stroller and walk around the neighbourhood at dusk or window-shop on the weekends. We would grow old and never even know it.

Worried and anxious, I hadn’t slept the night before, but now was too restless to sleep on the plane, so I sat flipping through the in-flight magazine and monitored our flight path on the seatback screen. I wondered what the weather was like in Montreal, if there would be snow on the ground. I hadn’t packed for it, not even gloves; the practicalities of this trip had got lost in my hurry, and if they hadn’t been perhaps I would have lost my courage in the planning. “Just go,” I’d told myself. “Just go.”

A little boy in the seat ahead of me popped his head up and down, peeking through the headrests, smiling a silly cracker-encrusted grin. His mother was rocking a baby in her arms and whispered to the boy not to bother the nice lady, in the kind of voice that mothers often use when their children are embarrassing them. The boy kicked his legs and thrashed backwards, knocking his seat into the reclined position. The woman stood up, baby still in her arms, and apologized.

“It’s all right, really,” I told her, offering the little boy a smile. “It’s a long flight.”

She looked relieved. “Do you have children?”

“Actually no, not yet. But I am expecting.” It was the first time I’d said it and I was amazed at the ease with which I’d said it. I wanted to say it again, to wrap my mouth around each word and digest it slowly.

“How far along?”

“Ten weeks.”

“Congratulations. You must be very excited.”

“I am. We are.” I told her that I was on my way to Montreal to see my husband, who was a photographer, and I was somewhat surprised at how easily the lies formed and how comfortable they felt, how later they lulled me into a dream that left me only once we landed. Liam was not my husband. My husband was in Vancouver. By now, Sunny would be at the office, sitting at his desk, talking on the phone, toying with his pen, rearranging papers in piles, unaware that I had left him. I felt sorry and sad for both of us.

While others rushed to the baggage carousels, I sat in the waiting area listening to the French and English flight announcements of arrivals and departures, summoning the courage to keep leaving. It was a process, not an act. I had to do it bit by bit. I set my watch to Montreal time. I took off my wedding ring.

The taxi driver pulled over, pointing to the address that I’d given him. It was a rundown Victorian carved into apartments, the gabled roof lined with birds. The kind of place inhabited by university students with radical views and big dreams, old women with sad immigrant pasts and gypsy-king men like Liam. There was a dusting of snow on the steps and on the plastic patio chair that sat by the front door. It looked like the place that Liam had told me about, only he had left out the crumbling state, the missing bricks in the facade. He always made everything seem better than it was. Even me.

I rang the bell. No one came. I sat on the stoop, my suitcase propped by the dirty screen door. I watched people pass like time. An old woman with an ill-fitting silver wig and a map of a face, deep lines, red lips, a mask of years. She did not smile. A young couple in love, their hands in each other’s pockets, lips mashing. I had to look away. A little girl in a red wool coat
walking with her mother, staring back at me as if she knew why I was there. Her breath made smoke.

After an hour, a bearded man wearing layered T-shirts and a toque stopped at the steps of the old Victorian, his bike slung over his shoulder. “Can I help you?”

“You live here?” He nodded and I stood up, moving out of his way. “I’m looking for Liam.”

He picked up his bike and walked up the steps, dropping it wheel-first onto the front porch. “He hasn’t been around for months.” He pulled out his keys and unlocked the door, turning away as though he’d either forgotten or didn’t care that I was even there.

“Do you know where I can find him?” I asked.

“Not sure. Last time I heard from him he was in Vancouver.”

I nodded. “Right, Vancouver.” I turned around, hobbling down the steps, my luggage tumbling behind me, my feet frozen into the point of my shoes as I walked away, yanking my suitcase wheels free through the cobblestone streets, heading west.

Sunny was sitting in the shadows of the living room, staring out the window into the lit apartments across the street, watching the comings and goings of other people’s lives, no more interesting than our own. People watching television in the dark, the room lit by flashing images, couples fighting in muted gestures, all of them existing side by side in small rooms, quiet and contained. I had been gone less than a day, yet the back and forth of time zones and memories left me feeling like my whole life had played out in one day. Perhaps this was what people meant when they said their life flashed before their eyes.

“You’re back.”

I dropped my bag by the door. “Things didn’t go as I planned.”

He turned towards me, the grinding of his jaw visible in the half-light.“I bet.”

“Pardon?” I stepped back as he stepped forward.

“What do you think I am, stupid? Did you think you could keep it from me?”

“Let me explain.”

“No. You don’t need to. You see, our doctor called today.” He paused, waiting for me to speak. I fell mute. “He wanted to book your ultrasound.”

I could see his eyes now and turned away from them. “I was going to tell you.”

“What? What were you going to tell me? That you’re a fucking whore?” He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me back and forth, my head snapping first from the motion and then from his fist. I fell back, stumbling over my suitcase. He grabbed me before I hit the ground and pinned me against the wall, my throat in his hands. “Who is he? Is that where you went? To be with him?” He let go, kicking me as I slid down the wall gasping for air in the dark, my breath overlapping his.

3.14

T
he next morning I left, carrying the same suitcase that I’d come home with. I checked into the Fairmont Hotel wearing movie-star sunglasses to hide my eyes, now mottled in green and yellow, edged in what looked like a thick line of black marker. The attendant at the front desk tried to be polite about it, pretending not to notice my broken-down appearance, speaking to me with well-scripted manners.