Everything Was Good-Bye

by Gurjinder Basran

  As I walked out, I heard my mother apologize for me, saying that I wasn’t myself. I wondered if I’d ever been myself.

  “Stop apologizing for me,” I yelled back at her. “All you ever do is apologize for us. When are you going to see that we never did anything wrong? None of us.” I said it to hurt her, to push my pain away, and she took it, carrying my burdens, holding me up through his passing.

  “His passing.” Someone had said it on the phone the other day, and though I couldn’t remember who, I couldn’t help remembering the phrase every morning when I reached for Liam’s watch on the nightstand, almost forgetting that it no longer kept time. He’d been wearing it when he fell, and though the face was cracked and the metal links were mangled, the second hand still moved—stuttering back and forth, commanding time in a new sequence. Each second was only an insignificant pass amounting to nothing.

  I held it to my ear, trying to establish that rhythm, attempting to adapt to the falsetto.

  3.24

  T he following day I went to the crematorium alone. Liam hadn’t believed in funerals and in a way I was glad—I didn’t want anyone else to see our ending. But as I stood by Liam’s side in the surreal periphery of parting, I wondered if the reason my mother had kept pictures of my father in his casket was because they gave her some proof of an ending, so that beginning again was not a betrayal. There I stood, unable to let Liam go, wondering why people said good-bye like this when only silence answered back. He didn’t seem real. None of it seemed real, and I kept closing my eyes and opening them, hoping that it wasn’t, wishing it wasn’t so.

  When the funeral director told me that it was time, I panicked and wondered if I should go with him. I’d been to many a service where the loved ones accompanied the body to the furnace, where they wrapped their grief around the heat that converted flesh and bone to cinders, yet I knew I couldn’t do it and I waited in the silence of the room, watching the silver-tipped dust float in and out of the light and nestle into the cracks of picture frames and burnished wood.

  After an hour the funeral director returned to tell me that the “process”—that’s what he kept calling it—would take several hours, and suggested I return another day to collect the remains.

  “The remains,” I repeated.

  When I didn’t move, he gently reminded me of the consultation we’d had in which he’d given me brochures detailing the process.

  “Of course,” I said, even though I hadn’t read his brochures. I didn’t want the cruel details, not then and not now.

  “Have you given any thought to the columbarium?” He asked as I got up.

  “No.”

  “Well, perhaps it might still be an option you may like to consider.Many families take comfort in having a place where they can visit their loved ones.”

  “Perhaps,” I said, though the idea of interning his ashes behind a marble plaque in a wall with hundreds of other souls horrified me. I couldn’t leave him there. It wasn’t what he would have wanted.

  I left the chapel and walked slowly towards my car, and would have been oblivious to the rain if not for the scent of coaxed earth. I paused to watch a funeral procession make its way out of an adjacent chapel in huddled groups. Black umbrellas opened all at once, blooming in the rain. I watched them move along the cobblestone path, across the green lawn, to the nearby cemetery, and I followed them, to stand on the outskirts. A little girl fidgeted, turning her head in towards her mother’s body—an almost in utero embrace.

  “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” The pastor’s voice was calm and open. The silence that hung between his words was like the loss itself, present but inaudible. He didn’t eulogize, he didn’t proselytize: he simply bore witness like we all did. These people, whoever they were, were dignified and austere in their grief and I took their strength as my own, mourned their loss as my own.

  After the service, when all the guests had left, I remained behind, standing in the rain, looking at the gaping hole in the ground as if it were an open sore, and repeated the only prayer I’d ever learned:

  Ik Onkar

  Satnam

  Karta purukh

  Nirbhau

  Nirvair

  Akal moorat

  Ajuni saibhang

  Gurparshad

  Jap.

  FOUR FOR TOMORROW

  4.1

  T he seasons are changing in me, around me—life has become a perpetual solstice. The cold of it drives me to my bed for an afternoon nap. I always get sick when the seasons change. Harj used to say that it was my body revolting against time, making a desperate attempt to slow it or stall it somehow. She said I was never ready to let go. As a child I mourned the slack of a tulip stalk, sobbed for bleeding roses, lamented the crackle of autumn, and for winter I had no words. I took to my bed with a spring chill, a summer cold, an autumn flu or a winter’s worry, hibernating under the billowy warmth of the blanket that my mother had stuffed with cotton batting. I remember how she drew the needle in and out of the quilt; she had a rhythm. Everything does, and when I find mine I can venture out again. I wonder when that will be, if that will be. I feel I’ve been under for as long as Liam has been gone.

  Leena climbs up on my bed. “Mama, can you tie my cape?”

  I sit up to take the white pillowcase she is holding. “Playing Hansel and Gretel again?” I ask, knotting the ends. She nods as I tie the makeshift cloak around her shoulders. She read “Hansel and Gretel” last week, and the day after she announced that she was much smarter than Gretel and would have scattered rosebuds or blossoms on the path—something that was brightly coloured yet bitter to eat. “All you need now is a basket,” I say, getting out of bed. “Let’s get one from the kitchen.” I hand her the basket, lead her into the garden and watch her scatter the petals along the ground. Such a sweet way back to a mother who hides her tears in smiles. I try to keep my grief hidden from her, but I know she sees it, just as I saw it in my mother’s eyes—a thin veil of ice over water, a tipping of elements that held her in balance.

  I pick up the clipping shears from where I dropped them yesterday and attempt to resume clipping the rose bushes. Under Kal’s short tutelage Liam became a novice gardener and was learning to trim the roses so they would twine into the lattice fence. I hated gardening, and every time Liam asked me if I wanted to join him, I asked him why he bothered with something so anticlimactic. So much effort for such a short bloom. “The seasons are a metaphor for life. Each stage falling into the next with no thought of an end,” he answered.

  “With no thought of an end,” I mutter as the blooms fall to my feet. I kneel down and sift through the soil and clutch the heart-shaped petals in my hand and wonder about this seasonality, the succession of days building into life. I wonder if we survive the cycles of life or whether we just surrender into each with our regrets tucked into something new. I clench my fist like a choking memory, the petals stain my hands and the sugary smell of spring lingers even after I try to wash it away.

  “Mama, come find me!” Leena yells from the far corner of the garden.

  “Coming!” I follow the trail that she’s left; her way back is my way forward. I jump up onto the tree-house ladder’s lowest rung and grab Leena’s spindly ankle. “Nibble nibble… who is nibbling at my house?” I say, laughing as she pulls her legs up in a giggle fit.

  “No fair, I wasn’t ready yet!” She tosses her unruly locks from her face, jumps down from the ladder and scatters the last of her blossoms on the ground. My mother tells me that Leena looks like me, except for her eyes. His eyes. Liam’s eyes. She says his name now.

  Leena drops her empty basket, picks up one of the dead canes and swats the air with it. “Mama, when is Uncle Kal coming to pick me up? I want to play pirates!”

  “Did someone say pirates?” Kal asks from the deck, before running down the stairs. Leena laughs as he chases her around the garden with his hand hooked in his shirt like a claw. He lifts her up and shakes her upside down until
a few pennies rattle out of her pockets. “Ah, treasure,” he says, turning her upright again. Dizzy now, she staggers like a drunken sailor, picking up her loot.

  Kal walks over and kisses me on the cheek, takes the shears and shows me how it should be done. “Did you finish that writing assignment?”

  “No, I wasn’t in the mood.”

  “Well, maybe while we’re gone. I thought I’d take Leena to see that new Disney movie she’s been on about.”

  As we talk, Leena tugs at Kal’s shirt and waits as patiently as any four-year-old can before yelling that it’s time to go. I wave from the door, blowing kisses, reminding them to have fun and to be back before bedtime.

  The house is too quiet without her. I turn on the lights in the kitchen, the television set in the living room and the stereo in my bedroom, hoping that some task will be illuminated in these acts. I open the closet door; Liam’s clothes are all lined up in a row. They don’t smell like him anymore and I wonder if it’s time to give them away. My therapist suggested I do this years ago as part of the healing process, but every time I threw something away or packed up a box for charity I felt I’d lost him all over again and ended up rummaging through thrift-store bins until I had bought everything back. I run my hands along the collar of one of his favourite shirts and try to imagine someone else wearing it. The idea fills me with dread and I shut the closet door.

  It is six o’clock.

  I sit at my desk and try to write. No words come.

  I sort through a stack of books and stare at the draft of the memoir that I wrote before he died. “You’re almost there,” he’d said as he read the pages, dropping them in a pile as he went. I wanted to correct him and say “We’re almost there,” but never did.

  It is seven o’clock

  I call my mother. She is reading the flyers. She tells me where apple juice is on sale. We share silence.

  It is seven-thirty.

  I call Serena. I leave her a message. The rambling kind that, when it ends, does so abruptly.

  It is eight o’ clock.

  I wait at the front door for Leena to come home. She arrives, candy-faced and sugar-smiling. Overtired, she struggles for sleep.

  It is nine o’clock.

  I make myself a cup of chai. I watch television even though there is nothing worth watching.

  It is ten o’clock.

  I wonder if Kal will be coming back. I want him to but don’t know how to ask. There are so many questions in the asking that neither of us has answers for. We just take what the other one can give. And even then, we take it quietly. We say nothing after. We lie separately, staring at the ceiling, far from each other’s arms, the space where Liam and I lay a chasm between us. Just as he falls asleep, I nudge him awake; I never let him stay. I tell him that Leena still comes into my room when she has nightmares and I don’t want her to find him in my bed.

  Although this is true, he knows it isn’t the real reason that I won’t let him stay but accepts it anyway. Accepts me any way.

  It is ten-thirty.

  I pick up my cup of cold chai and go downstairs to reheat it for the third time. I know I won’t drink it. I’ll just watch it turn in the microwave, listen to the oscillating hum over rain, count the rain drops that hit the window, watch them spread into veins that stretch across my reflection and wonder why all I know how to do is wait. But for what I still don’t know.

  It is eleven o’clock.

  A knock at the door.

  “Is it too late?” Kal asks.

  “No, it’s fine.” I open the door barely the width of half his shoulder. His arm scrapes the door jamb and rain beads off his jacket onto the hardwood floor.

  “One hell of a storm tonight,” he says as he hangs his coat up. “Leena asleep?”

  I nod and follow him into the living room, where he turns offthree of the four lamps before sitting down. “She had a great time at the movies. Thanks for taking her.”

  “I had a good time too. She’s a great kid… Liam would’ve been proud of the way you’ve raised her. She’s pretty incredible.”

  A silence follows. I never know what to say when he speaks of Liam so I say nothing.

  “You know I love her like my own.” Kal puts his arm over my shoulder and pulls me closer. “I love you both like–”

  I raise my shoulders, pushing his words from my ears.

  “What is it?” he asks.

  “Nothing.” I rush out of the room as though I’ve suddenly remembered that I’ve left milk boiling on the stove.

  “When, Meena? When is it going to be something?” He follows me into the kitchen.

  “What about Irmila?”

  “What about her? She’s the one that filed for the divorce.”

  I take my cup of chai out of the microwave and tip it into the sink, watch it circle the drain. “You could work things out.”

  “What’s there to work out? We don’t want the same things.”

  “And by things, you mean kids.”

  He nodded. “You know I want a family. I want what you have.”

  “You mean what I had.”

  “No, I mean what you have right now. You’re so lucky to have Leena…Sometimes I think you spend so much time missing Liam that you can’t feel anything for anyone else.”

  “This isn’t about me. It’s about you… You could still work it out with Irmila if you wanted to.”

  “No. It’s too late. You know her. She’s always thought that I loved you and well, now I realize that she’s probably right.” He presses his body against mine and I close my eyes to the weight of him, wondering who is giving and who is taking in this portrayal of love, in my betrayal of love.

  Afterwards, I shower. I know the pulse muffles the sound of my tears and the soapy water excuses my red eyes. When I emerge, Kal is half-dressed. I wonder if he heard me crying this time.

  “Do you hate me for this?” he asks, stretching his sweater over his head. I find it difficult to answer the question and look away as he buttons his pants. In a way, I do hate him. I hate both of us for being a reminder of everything we’ve lost. Even my mother warned me, asking me what I would tell Leena when she was older. Would I tell her that I was once married to the man who was imprisoned for killing her father? A man who was Kal’s cousin. “The wounds are too deep, too close,” my mother told me. “You cannot heal one another.” I tried to take her advice, but couldn’t.

  Kal is waiting for an answer. Unlike Liam, he is frightened of my silence. “I don’t hate you, I just don’t know what this is. Are we friends? Are we lovers? I just feel like I can’t give you what you need.”

  “What I need is you.”

  “And is this enough?” I ask.

  “It has to be,” he says, walking out the door.

  I rush down the stairs after him. “Kal, wait.”

  He stops at the front door. “I’ll wait, Meena… I’ve always waited.”

  I let him go, but stand at the closed door with my hand pressed against it until I hear Leena’s voice behind me.

  “Is he coming back?” she asks, her eyes half obscured by the tumbling curls she refuses to let me cut.

  I smile, scoop her up in my arms and brush the hair from her eyes. “Yes, but not today.”

  “Is he going to be my daddy?” I smile, though inside I feel old wounds opening.

  “You have a daddy,” I say, placing her into her bed, smoothing out her rumpled sheets. “He loved you very much.”

  She looks at Liam’s picture by her bed. “Does it hurt to be dead?” “No,” I answer, punctuating my answer with a kiss on her nose before getting up to leave.

  “What does it feel like?”

  I climb into bed with her. “I’m not sure. Maybe like sleep.”

  “Like in “Sleeping Beauty?”

  “Yeah, kind of.”

  “Will he ever wake up?” she looks up at me with his eyes.

  I wrap my hand in hers and snuggle in, caressing her hair. “No, he won’t.” I ho
ld her close until her breath softens and she falls into the long length of a dream. “It’s okay, I’ve got you, you’re fine… you’re fine.”

  A Penguin Readers Guide

  Everything Was Good-bye

  About the Book

  An Interview with Gurjinder Basran

  Discussion Questions

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  Set in lower mainland British Columbia, Everything Was Good-bye is a moving modern-day story about a young Indo-Canadian woman named Meena who’s struggling to find her place in the world. Caught between the traditional values of her family and her desire to have the same freedom as other Canadian women, Meena is faced with difficult choices— and her decisions will lead to tragic consequences for everyone involved.

  We first meet Meena as a seventeen-year-old girl in her last year of high school. Her family immigrated to Canada when she was still a baby, and soon after that her father was killed in a workplace accident, leaving her mother with the task of raising six daughters on her own. It is an onerous task not only because she must support the family, but she must also ensure that her daughters are all placed in acceptable arranged marriages. As the youngest daughter, Meena is expected to obey her mother and follow in her sisters’ footsteps: “We dressed modestly, hiding our flesh, living somewhere deep inside our skins—chaste and quiet.” But as a headstrong and rebellious teenager, Meena refuses to accept the role that has been assigned to her.

  In school, Meena is an outcast—she doesn’t fit in with any of the social groups—until she meets Liam, who seems to be the only one who accepts her for who she is. Her mother forbids her from seeing him for fear of ugly rumours spreading in the close-knit Punjabi community, but Meena recklessly disobeys. Upon graduation, Liam announces that he wants to run away to Toronto and asks Meena to come with him. Torn between her desire to be with him and her obligations to her family, she hesitates, and he disappears.