Bone and Bread

by Saleema Nawaz

  “How’s it going?”

  “Can you just leave me alone for five minutes?” This rolls out on the same exasperated stream as the cursing, and I decide to ignore it.

  “I could call somebody,” I offer. “I know someone with a lot of tools. Better ones.”

  He tosses the hammer on the grass and shrugs. “Sure, if you want.”

  “It’s someone I’d like you to meet, actually.” I step out onto the deck. “Someone I’ve been seeing.”

  Quinn ducks his head and kicks at the grass in the area where the hammer landed. He waves his hand in a dismissal. “Let’s do it another time then, eh?”

  “Why?”

  “Because, okay? Because I’m busy. I want to finish this.”

  “But he can help.”

  “Whoever he is, I don’t need his help.” He looks up at me when I don’t respond, and says, with an adult kind of firmness that takes me aback, “Another time. I’m going over to Chris’s for dinner.” Chris is an old friend of his whose parents I know, though it has been a while since Quinn has mentioned him. I wonder if my son is telling me the truth.

  Next I see him hauling the whole mess into the shed, which he unlocks with a key from his key ring. He seems to have permanently appropriated it from the hooks by the back door, where all the extra keys and a couple of miscellaneous padlocks are kept hanging.

  “Am I too needy?” I call out.

  “What?” He backs out of the shed to cock his ear.

  “Am I too needy?”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “Forget I asked.”

  He says nothing, but I can tell from his face that he is already trying.

  Later, in the back of Evan’s truck, the blanket is chafing.

  “We’ve had better ideas,” I say.

  “What are you talking about?” says Evan. “This is the only way to judge how much room there is, by using your body as a yardstick.”

  “You’re the yardstick,” I say. My hand is below his belt.

  “Hardy har har.”

  I push gently on his chest and he rolls off me.

  We’re parked in Evan’s driveway, alongside the grey stucco house he shares with three university students from northern Ontario. The sun is just beginning to slip below the roof of the garage, and the shifting leaves of the maple filter the light in quicksilver flashes that run along the battered eavestroughing. The drone from the Queensway has petered out, and apart from its scattered rumblings the street is quiet.

  Evan is talkative tonight. Over a supper of spaghetti and meatballs, he navigated a conversation with me and his roommates, steering it from either shore of computer gaming or the remaining available storage space in my basement, where it was likely to founder. Instead, we spoke of Freud, of composting, of the impending obsolescence of my laptop — Don gave it six months, Brett a year. Nick declared it already dead, pretending to groan as I handed it to him to look at. He said, “You know these things are supposed to be portable, right?” But there wasn’t much time to linger over a discussion. In their house of four young men, supper is cutthroat, the only dinner bell the cook shouting, “Wolfpack!” in tribute to the fast ravishment to follow. As with most meals here, Evan seemed focused on civilizing the conversation while never drawing out the time spent at the table. I can tell he worries that when I see him with his roommates I will think he is too young. It used to be that every time I came over, he would say he was planning on moving out.

  “So, do you think one trip will do it?”

  We came out here with the camping blanket under the pretext of estimating how much of Sadhana’s stuff would fit in Evan’s truck. I can feel the heat of the sun-baked metal coming up through the wool.

  “Hard to say. I’m not good at visualizing. How much will this baby hold?”

  “A lot, I’d wager.” He inches back until the top of his head is at the cab, his feet pointing to the garage. He flattens one palm and brings his arm up against the side of the truck bed, squinting. “I’d guess this was, oh, about four point five feet by six point five, with a depth of eighteen inches. Packed tight, about fifteen cubic feet of volume.”

  “I’m not falling for that. You knew all along.”

  “Could be. Would you prefer a figure in standard two-cube boxes?”

  “I don’t have standard boxes. I’m eclectic.”

  Evan eases onto his side to look at me. “So how did it go?” After a moment, when I don’t answer, he says, “But all packed up, right?”

  “Just about. A little bit left to do.”

  “That’s good,” says Evan, lying back down. I follow his eyes up to the sky, cobalt now, with cirrus clouds moving south.

  Evan says, “I remember going with my mother to help my aunt pack up my cousin’s room.” Evan’s cousin Lissa, I know, killed herself by drinking insecticide when they were teenagers, apparently over a guy, a shaggy-haired boy who dumped her on their three-month anniversary. It is Evan’s brush with tragedy, his reference point for unassailable grief. There was a frantic drive and then a helicopter, an airlift to the nearest hospital, and he’s told me that he cannot erase the image of his aunt and uncle, each holding one of Lissa’s cold hands and filled with superlative and already futile hope as the paramedics kept her heart beating with epinephrine. He wasn’t there, but he overheard his parents talking about it.

  Now Evan’s own chest rises and falls in an emptying breath. His eyes flicker shut, and when he opens them again to the growing night, I think I see a whole prairie of sky looking out of his blue eyes. The depth and solidity of winterized pain.

  “This was only years later that my aunt could bring herself to touch her things,” he says. “On the advice of her psychiatrist. In the end, my mom and I went over and did everything while my aunt baked peach and rhubarb pies downstairs.”

  “That must have been hard on you and your mother.”

  “It was. But it made it easier, knowing we could help like that. And some of it was nice, actually. Remembering Lissa. I’d stopped thinking about her for so long. I was in university by the time we did this.” He smiles. “She was so goofy. When we were kids, we used to do musicals at Christmas, and she always tried to teach me this pretend tap dance and get furious when I couldn’t figure out what the hell she was doing.”

  “That sounds funny.”

  “It was. If you ever make it to Saskatchewan, you can see the videos.” He gives me a quick glance.

  “I’d like that.” I let my eyes close, and I can feel Evan’s fingers tracing the rise and fall of my hip. “What happened to the guy?”

  “What guy?”

  “The guy. The guy she was in love with.”

  “Oh. I don’t know. You mean, you wonder what effect it had on him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I wonder.” Evan sits up and pushes himself down past the tailgate. He holds out his hand to help me out, and the cool touch of his palms on the surface of my warm skin makes me feel both steadied and fevered. “But I hope he didn’t let it ruin his life.”

  At home, I open my bedroom window and hold my face to the screen to feel the kiss of the cool air on my cheek. But almost nothing stirs. It is a hot summer night like the ones of my childhood. It reminds me of the slowness of being young, of all the time I spent longing to be older and for the happiness that would come from being free. And later, the time I spent waiting for Ravi. The lies I told myself in the meantime.

  Leaving the window open, I slip into bed with Sadhana’s laptop, enter my son’s name, and continue going through my sister’s files. Libby and Sadhana beam out at me again from the screen as I perform a search of the hard drive. FIND: RAVI. While the computer dredges its contents in a rapid, scrolling cycle, I dial Libby’s cellphone number.

  Her voice is languid, as soft as tissue falling.

  “Did I distu
rb you?” I shake my hair out of my eyes.

  “Beena. You called.” She sounds glad, even surprised.

  “I said I would, didn’t I?” Even as I utter the words, I’m certain I made no such promise. I rush on. “Actually, I have a question.”

  “Shoot.”

  “What do you know about Quebec First? Or Mouvement Québec, in French?”

  “Ah.” Libby lets out her breath slowly. “The province’s freshly minted fascists.”

  “That bad?”

  “Worse. And already popular. Goes to show what money and novelty will get you. Have you been to their website?”

  “Not yet.” I look over at Sadhana’s laptop, but it is still hurdling through my last request. The fan is whirring now.

  “It’s depressingly flashy,” says Libby. There is a creak as of worn springs, as if she is in bed, too. “If the party gets votes at the rates they’re polling at, there’s going to be a new player in town after the upcoming election. Or so I’ve heard.”

  “So what’s their angle?”

  “You mean, what are they all about?” I make a small sound of assent and Libby continues. “Well, their platform is anti-immigration, or at least half of it is. They’re careful, though, to have a fair number of candidates of colour, all with acceptable Quebec pedigrees and perfect French.” The volume of her voice, which has been rising over the course of her explanation, drops back down. “The other half is tax cuts for corporations and privatization of medical services.”

  “They’re up front about this?”

  “More or less. It’s all doublespeak when they talk to the press, of course. But I’ve skimmed through their platform in the original language. The French version is a little bit more explicit.”

  “It’s hard to believe they’re so popular.”

  “Is it? Maybe it is.” Libby sighs. “I’m surprised you haven’t heard more about them. Sadie mentioned you guys used to know one of the candidates.”

  “She said that?”

  “Your old boyfriend, wasn’t it? Or hers?”

  “He wasn’t my boyfriend.” It comes out definitive. Automatic. “Or hers.”

  “I’m sorry.” For a moment, it sounds like tears are strangling her voice. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “I’m not upset.” Her overreaction moderates my own. “I’m surprised Sadhana mentioned him to you, that’s all.”

  “She —” Libby pauses. “Well, he just came up. Maybe you don’t know he’s made it a bit of a personal crusade to get a family deported that Sadhana was trying to help.”

  “I saw him on the news.” I close my eyes for a second, remembering. Those lips, that brow. The luscious black curls. A spell when we were teenagers, the thrall of his beauty has burgeoned into a kind of glamour. A face to put on posters. “And the refugee family.”

  “They miss her too, you know,” says Libby. “The Essaids. I went to see them and they told me.”

  I let my head come to rest on the pillow. “Let’s get together in a few days. I’ll be back in Montreal.”

  “I’ll be waiting.” Her tone is a strange mix of jokey and solemn. “We never did have our talk.”

  I hang up. Sadhana’s computer, when I pull it towards me, is almost hot to the touch. The churning seems to be slowing, and after one long moment the search box shrinks to show the list of findings. There is just one result, in a document titled EMAIL DRAFTS, dated November eighth. I click it open.

  Ravi, you might not remember me. I’m Beena’s sister. You might not remember your son either, but he is an incredible young man you don’t deserve to get to know. But that’s what he wants. Call me tomorrow or I’ll call you. And I have a feeling you really don’t want me to leave a message.

  She was not better. For a long time she was only worse.

  The third time Sadhana came home from the hospital, Uncle said, “I hope you have learned your lesson now. You had better not try anything like that again.”

  Sadhana overturned her bowl and fled from the table.

  Uncle glared at me as Sadhana’s untouched supper oozed out over the tablecloth. “If your sister dies of this, it will be her own fault.” He handed me his napkin to clean it up, which was as close as he’d ever come to an apology.

  After Quinn was born, I did not return to high school, finishing instead by correspondence. This suited Uncle, who viewed it as fitting that I should continue to hide myself and my shame from the world. Due to her illness, Sadhana fell behind in her studies, which added to her hopelessness. In the evenings, she babysat while I attended night classes at the university. Most nights when I got home from school, she would be writing in her diary or watching Quinn sleep, her textbooks untouched on the kitchen table.

  “You’re never going to graduate this way,” I said.

  “I’m never going to graduate anyway.”

  “Yes, you are. Now get cracking while I make us some supper.”

  It was because of Sadhana that I learned to cook. I’d more or less stopped around when Mama died, and just after that was when Sadhana started poring over cookbooks. But afterwards, when she got out of the hospital for the first time, she told me it would be easier for her to eat if she spent less time thinking about food. So I shopped and cooked and put a plate down in front of her and talked her ear off until she’d eaten enough to leave the table. I got used to the sight of her crying and chewing, silently, as I made my efforts to distract her. I tried to plan meals for when Quinn was napping so my attention wouldn’t be divided. Later, Quinn and I both learned to pace our eating, chewing and swallowing with a geological slowness.

  Sadhana couldn’t eat if anyone was watching her, and yet someone had to be there or she wouldn’t eat at all. What turned out to work best was a stream of chatter at the table. I’d save up stories from the headlines, nothing too newsy or off-putting, and begin my recitation as soon as I put the food down on the table. The three-legged dog that learned to skateboard, or the giant boa constrictor that got loose inside a mall in Toronto. It was important that the stories have a happy ending.

  At some point, we turned to crossword puzzles. Uncle had left one on the table one morning, and Sadhana’s gaze drifted over it as I rambled on about the world’s largest ball of twine. She put down her fork and reached for a pencil, which I grabbed first.

  “I’ll read out the clues and fill them in,” I said. And that was our new system. We didn’t always have to use it, but from then on we kept a puzzle on hand, just in case.

  Eventually, we moved out, leaving Uncle on his own above the bagel shop. It was the summer before I turned nineteen, and we found an apartment together downtown. It was better with just the three of us. Sadhana was still sick and spent another month in the hospital, but before Quinn’s fourth birthday she had crossed the stage and accepted her high school diploma. A little too thin still, for her usual grace, and not with the classmates she’d started out with, but recovered and good-humoured and humble enough to thank those teachers, afterwards, who had offered her so much leeway and extra help. The teachers had seen things that Uncle could not; namely, that things such as leeway and extra help were sometimes necessary. For Uncle, a thing either was or it wasn’t. We did not tell him about Sadhana’s commencement, and he did not show up.

  For Quinn’s fourth birthday party, we had a cake in the shape of a school bus, which was something from his favourite TV show. Our own birthdays we acknowledged but did not always celebrate. Mama’s absence was always between us. The first one we spent in our new apartment, we put Quinn to bed before getting drunk on cheap champagne that had us weeping and recriminatory before midnight. Since then, we had been careful about how fully we dared give ourselves over to the occasion.

  Quinn hopped around the kitchen in his birthday fervour. “Is Uncle coming over?” Quinn had the kind of appreciation for Uncle that was made possible only by seeing him ve
ry rarely.

  “No,” said Sadhana.

  “We’ll take you to see him at the shop tomorrow.”

  “Can he have some cake?” Quinn must have detected some tremor of our dislike, for he always acted as Uncle’s advocate in this way.

  “Okay, we’ll save him some.” I ignored Sadhana, who scowled as she went to the fridge to take out the icing.

  For birthday meals, we started with the cake and worked backwards. There was no point in risking satiation. Quinn’s intensity of cake focus, after an afternoon spent observing the process, was nearly evangelical. It made me worry how many of Sadhana’s food issues might inadvertently be passed along.

  He endured our final preparations from where we’d banished him in front of the television, his head swivelling over to keep tabs on our progress. The apartment was small enough that the remote control for the TV could be operated from the kitchen counter. Technically, it was a bachelor, with one large central room where we had our beds in a complicated arrangement with curtain dividers, as well as a mess of oversized cushions, a kitchen table, a desk, and a giant bin that never seemed large enough to contain all of Quinn’s toys.

  “That’s my cake,” said Quinn, when he could sit no longer. He came and stood on his tiptoes by the counter. The icing Sadhana had gotten exactly right: a virulent shade of orangey yellow.

  “That’s right.”

  “Is it almost done? I think it’s almost done now.”

  “It’s done. Go sit at the table.”

  Quinn closed his eyes after the cake was set before him and gripped the table with both hands as he began to wish in earnest. I was anxious about having taught him something that, strictly considered, seemed like a lie.

  “What are you so worried about?” Sadhana had said, when I told her of my discomfort. “He’ll figure it out. Didn’t you used to wish for things that could never happen?”

  “I did. I wished I could fly. I wasted a lot of wishes on that.”

  “Wasted?” Sadhana laughed. “Now you sound like you believe in it, too.”