Everything Was Good-Bye (28 page)

“It’s your stuff. From the settlement.”

“Yes, I know that, but how did you get into the house?” “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“They said that you let them in.”

“Did they?” He was quiet for a moment. “Well, they’re wrong. Maybe you left the door unlocked or something. Apparently pregnancy makes women absent-minded.”

“Sunny stop it… I saw you last night. I saw you.”

“Stop. You want me to stop—no, Meena, I haven’t started yet. You think you can just walk away. No. Things aren’t over until I say they are.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You figure it out,” he said, and hung up.

I sat on the sofa, phone in hand, watching the men stack the rest of the boxes against the wall before leaving. The next day I had the locks changed.

3.16

T
ej ran a razor blade through the packing tape, slicing the box open. She dug her hands into the Styrofoam chips, pulling out pieces of fine china. “Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked, carrying them outside to where Serena was pricing items.

“Yeah. Time to start over,” I said, bending over and lifting up a box of glassware. “To let go.” I hadn’t opened the boxes since Sunny had had them delivered, and finally after a month of staring at the piles and stacked furniture knew I had to get rid of them, to remove him from my life a piece at a time.

Serena yelled from across the lawn like a referee calling a foul: “No lifting for you. Go sit down. We got it.”

“I’m fine,” I assured her and unpacked the box, adding it to the rest of my belongings that were strewn on the lawn. It felt strange to bargain the value of things, to watch the piles of designer decor fall into hands of junk collectors and treasure hunters. They held crystal up to the light, inspecting the diamond cut of the glass, and tested out the dining room chairs as if they were Goldilocks.

“How much for this?”

I recognized the voice. It was Irmila. She was wearing a paisley strapless summer dress, and flip-flops. Her hair had grown and grazed her tanned shoulders, making me wonder if she and Kal had been on vacation or had
spent their summer lying on the beach. “This one? How much?” she repeated, holding up a hand-painted ceramic vase from Chile.

“Thirty-five,” I said.

She perched her sunglasses on her head and squinted. “Surinder? I mean, Meena, is that you?”

“How are you, Irmila?”

“Good. Wow, look at you.” She stared at my abdomen with the same amount of shock that everyone did. “I didn’t realize you were so far along. When are you due?”

“Not until October.”

“Wow, you still have a ways to go,” she said, counting offthe three months on her fingers. “A Libra or maybe a Scorpio, just like Kal.”

“How is he? Kal?”

“Good, really good,” she said, admiring the house. “
We’re
doing well
.
We’re thinking of buying a house soon… I forgot that you lived in this neighbourhood. Kal will be so surprised when I tell him that I bumped into you… Thirty-five, then?” she asked, reaching into her wallet.

“Tell you what, just take it.”

“No, I couldn’t really.”

“Please.”

She thanked me and tucked the vase under her arm.

Kal knocked on my front door later than evening, the same vase in his hands. He handed it to me when I opened the door. “I gave it to her,” I said.

“And I am giving it back.” I invited him in and he took offhis coat while looking around the room. “I haven’t done much decorating yet.”

He turned towards me. “You’ve been busy. I mean, look at you.” He paused and smiled. “You look great.”

“You seem surprised.”

“Not surprised, happy. Pregnancy suits you.”

“Thanks.”

We were both quiet for a moment.

“So Irmila tells me it was quite a yard sale.”

I smiled at his small talk, almost surprised that we’d been reduced to it. “Yeah it went well. Whatever we didn’t sell we donated to charity.”

He nodded, and looked out the window, pressing his palm against it. “These are single-pane windows. You’ll want to change them before the winter. I can look into it if you like.”

“Thanks, but I’ve already hired someone to do it before the baby comes.” “The
baby.”
He whispered it slowly, the word popping from his mouth in syllables. “I still can’t get used to the idea.”

“The idea of what?”

“You as a mother.”

“Tell me about it.” I laughed and motioned to him. “Come, let me show you the baby’s room.” The sound of our footsteps filled the space that conversation should have. I opened the door to the nursery. “Serena helped me decorate.”

“It’s a girl?” he asked, glancing at the stack of baby clothes on the dresser.

“Yeah. This is her at twenty weeks.” I showed him the ultrasound picture, outlining her features. “Pretty amazing, isn’t she?”

Kal looked right at me. “Yeah, she is amazing indeed.”

I put the photo down and smiled. “It’s good to see you again.”

“I don’t know why I haven’t come around sooner. I just—I’m sorry.”

I fiddled with the stack of baby clothes, unfolding and refolding the tiny pink sleeper sets. “It’s okay. You have your own life and Sunny is your cousin. It’s all complicated. I get it. I really do.” The baby kicked. I winced and reached for the door jamb to steady myself. I rested my hand on my stomach, pressing in on her foot. Kal watched, mesmerized. “You want to feel?” He nodded and placed his hand on my stomach. “That’s her head,” I said, moving his hand. “And that is a foot.” His hand jumped with her kick. “I swear she does somersaults in there.”

He placed his palm back on my abdomen, both of us quiet as we imagined her universe in mine. His face brightened as she squirmed beneath his palm. “Wow. That’s so amazing. You’re lucky.” He moved his hand away. “Irmila doesn’t want kids.”

I sat down in the rocking chair. “Maybe she’ll change her mind.”

“Maybe… But sometimes I wonder if we should even get married. How do I know that she’s the one?”

“If you’re looking for advice on love, you’re probably asking the wrong person. I’ve managed to make quite a mess of things.” I tried to laugh.

“Did you love Liam?

I shook my head and smiled. “I did… and I do.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t know… With him, I mean with us… love was a lot like faith.” “So, what, you just believed?”

“Yeah, sort of.”

“And that was enough?”

“It had to be.”

Kal paused and looked out the window. “Meena, Liam called the other day. He asked about you.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Nothing… It’s not for me to tell.”

I didn’t say anything.

“He’s living on the Sunshine Coast now.” Kal reached into his pocket and handed me a piece of paper.

“What’s this?” I asked, taking it from him.

“It’s his phone number. I thought you might want to call him.”

3.17

M
y contractions started in the middle of the night and by the time I called Serena my water had broken and I was delirious with fatigue, crying for my mother, desperate for something or someone to numb the rolling pain of steady contractions, the tension and pull of being split from the inside out.

Once I was admitted to the hospital, the nurses examined me, telling me not to push even if I wanted to. After a few minutes they called the doctor. The baby was breach and kicking to come into the world feet first. Serena propped me up, telling me to breathe. The nurse administered an iv drip to slow my contractions. “Is there anyone you want us to call?” she asked, a preface to the explanation of complications and “sign here” forms being thrust in my face. I motioned to Serena to get me my purse and handed the nurse Liam’s phone number.

By the time I was allowed to push, I was only half alert, pain taking my mind to other places, pulling me back, tossing me away. Moments were like rooms, long and narrow, something to get lost in, something to run out of. I dreamed with my eyes open.

It was two states of physicality, opposing forces so strong that even inside the pain there was a fervour and an ecstasy where my thoughts deferred to the design of my body and being. Serena held my hand, said
things—reassuring things that, once said, evaporated into my screams of being broken and torn.

Three hours later, Leena was turned and tugged from me. My body relaxed and spasmed in the shock of afterbirth. The intense cold trauma of being two and then one settled on my skin like a thousand needles. I held her for a moment, felt her against my breast, fists batting at the air. I couldn’t hear her screams. The moment was outside of sound. I fought joyful fatigue. My eyelids were weighted. My body, now sewn, felt full of stones. I slept in a flood of night.

When I woke it was to the soft shapes of dawn, to the sound of Liam’s voice. He was holding Leena in his arms, staring out the window. “It’s okay. I’ve got you. You’re fine. You’re fine.”

3.18

L
iam spent most days and some nights at the house until some nights became every night and his staying was no longer a question. When he moved in, he dropped his suitcases at the door, his definitive arrival our homecoming, Leena’s birth an impetus for everything. He unpacked quickly, hanging his clothes in the closet, piling his books on the nightstand, storing his camera equipment in the hall closet, and when he was done he sat down next to me and looked around the living room, his eyes acclimatizing.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” I asked.

He looked at Leena asleep in my arms and put his arm around my shoulder and pulled us both into his quiet embrace, then kissed the top of my head. “Yeah, this is all I want.”

That same night Liam stood over the crib watching the rise and fall of Leena’s chest, his finger tracing the outline of her rosebud lips, listening to her soft breath and deep sighs, all the while waiting for her to stir, waiting for an excuse to pick her up and hold her.

When she stirred, he brought her into bed, snuggling her between our warm bodies, and we stayed like that for weeks, existing around her in a pattern of feeding, sleeping and diaper-changing.

When we woke up, the past seemed to recede and for the first time we made plans that were only partly about ourselves.

“We could tear down this wall. Open up the space.” Liam took out a measuring tape. “What do you think?” I didn’t answer. “And out here,” he continued, opening the patio doors, “we can build Leena a playhouse, plant roses, maybe some honeysuckle. I already talked to Kal about it.”

I folded my arms across my chest. “Did you now?”

“And up here… ” he was running up to the third-floor attic, “would be your writing studio. You could put the desk here, by the window,” he said, measuring the space. “It’ll be perfect.”

“Liam, I don’t know.”

“Just picture it… just try and see it.”

“I am trying. I just don’t see the need for it. I don’t even write much anymore.”

“Meena, I remember your stack of journals. You write.”

“Keeping a journal is not the same as writing.”

“Is that what you think or is that what your mom told you?”

“Don’t bring my mother into this.” Liam followed me down the stairs.

“You’ve never even met her. What do you know about me or my mother?”

Liam stood behind me at the patio doors where only a few minutes ago we’d been making plans, talking about the future as if the past were another place far from this tree-lined street, far from this house, far from our family. “Look, I didn’t mean it like that.” He put both his arms around me. “I just want you to have all the things that you always wanted. That’s all.”

“I know. I guess I just miss her… I miss talking to her. Sometimes I call her just so I can hear her pick up, just so I can hear her say hello… and then I look at Leena, how beautiful and perfect she is, and wonder why my mom doesn’t want to know her own grandchild. I hate her for that… but I still miss her.”

“She’s your mom. Of course you miss her. I still miss my mother and she left when I was six.” He went on to tell me that after high school he’d found her address in his father’s things and hitched a ride to Saskatoon. When he’d arrived at her house, she was in the backyard, pinning a load of laundry to dry. He’d watched her for a while, not saying anything, mesmerized by the everydayness of the moment—the sheets billowing, the dust gathering, the sunlight in her eyes. “When she saw me she didn’t say anything
but my name. And even then it was like a question, her voice raised on the end… We went inside, she made coffee and I sat at the kitchen table staring at the fridge covered in some other kids’ artwork… You know, I’d had all these questions for her, about why she left, but for whatever reason I couldn’t ask them.”

“You didn’t ask her anything?”

“No. It didn’t seem to matter anymore… When I left she gave me a hug and told me that she thought about me every day.”

“Have you talked to her since?”

“No. I don’t see the point.”

“The point is she’s your mother.”

“But she didn’t want to be my mother. That’s why she left. She didn’t have to tell me for me to understand it… I could tell by the way she looked at me, the relief in her eyes when I said I was just passing through.”

“Well, maybe she’s changed.”

“People don’t change—not really. Sometimes you just have to make it easy for them and let them go.”

I nodded, though it didn’t seem easy at all. I couldn’t let go the way he could, because it wasn’t what I’d been taught, because no matter what my mother told me, no matter how harshly she spoke to me or did not speak to me, I knew that she hadn’t let me go, not really. When Harj left home, she could have done what other parents might have done, and removed every bit of her daughter, cutting Harj out of family pictures, burning her clothes and books until nothing was left but the haunting of a smouldering pyre. But she hadn’t done this to Harj, and from what Serena had told me, I knew that she hadn’t done this to me either. My winter coat was still in the closet, my worn paperbacks still lay on the bedside table, and my pictures still rested on the mantel.