After Elias

by Eddy Boudel Tan

  “I gave myself to him. Anything and everything he wanted, I gave to him. One day I learned I was with child. José seemed so happy. We would be married, be a family. We would raise this child together. We would watch the sun rise and set in Spain. All of this he told me, and all of it I believed.”

  Maria appears younger in the light filtered through the panes of glass above. Something hopeful shines in her eyes, a wilful naïveté, despite knowing full well how this story ends.

  “I was fooled,” she says, her voice barely louder than a whisper. “All of those words meant nothing. José met another woman, and they left the island together. I do not even know where they went. I accepted the truth — my dreams were nothing more than dreams — and gave birth to my beloved Jacinta. I have no regrets, but José changed me. His promises, his lies. Now, I do not believe the words that people say.”

  “José deceived you. He didn’t deserve your love. You and Jacinta are better off without him.”

  “Perhaps,” she says. “My point is that one never really knows the truth inside another’s heart. Sometimes their intentions are hidden away.”

  I turn my head toward her, and she’s already looking at me. Our eyes meet, and I realize this isn’t just another story. It’s a parable with a lesson, and it’s directed at me.

  “What are you trying to tell me?” I ask. My legs ache. I can feel the gentle prick of a needle, then another.

  “Even the people closest to you can hide behind a mask. You think you know them when in fact their true selves are strangers. It is not your fault. People are deceitful. You can never truly know anyone other than yourself.”

  The needles are sharper now, and the anger washes over me suddenly. “You know nothing about me,” I say. “You know nothing about Elias.”

  “Señor Coen, be calm,” she says. “I am trying to help you.”

  “Then please stop. I am sorry for what José did to you, but don’t you dare think it has anything to do with me. I know Elias. He would never have abandoned me.”

  My throat tightens. I need to get out of here. My legs throb as I struggle to stand. My fists open and close to keep from going numb.

  “I only want to help.” Maria is still sitting on the floor, looking up at me with such pity.

  “Then just do your job.”

  I stride out of the English Garden as quickly as I can, relieved to breathe in air that isn’t poisoned by its gloom.

  YALETOWN

  Three years before the crash

  There are two kinds of silence between lovers. There is the sort you can sink into like a favourite old chair — comfortable and broken in, with the satisfaction of knowing that the familiarity has been earned. Then there is the sort as tense as a piano string, when both parties know that one wrong word is all it would take for it to snap.

  I have always found silence unsettling. Are they bored by me? Am I not interesting enough? I often felt the need to fill these quiet interludes with noise, a mundane observation or question I didn’t care to hear the answer to, simply to avoid the heightened sense of self-awareness that comes with the quiet.

  Elias helped me gain some control over this fear. He had always been a curiously inconsistent man. As with other aspects of his personality, his conversational ability would go from one extreme to the other with no discernible trigger. He could talk emphatically for hours on any given subject, then retreat to his cave of silence from which he would not be coaxed out. It made dinner parties interesting as I never knew which Elias would be present — the conversationalist or the mute. It was the same in private and, after several failed attempts to maintain a steady hum of dialogue between us, I learned to settle into the regular quiet he needed.

  That night we drove in silence, and it wasn’t the comfortable kind. Tension heated the car as if it were consuming the chilliness of the winter air and replacing it with the warm simmer of resentment. Elias sat rigidly in the passenger seat, staring out the windshield rather intensely at the street lights that passed by. I tried to concentrate on driving but couldn’t help ruminating on our last conversation. It played over and over in my mind.

  Earlier that day, I had made the mistake of leaving a browser window open on the computer we shared. It was nothing scandalous: just a map of the Mexican state of Veracruz and a list of auto repair shops in the region. Elias didn’t have to be a detective to realize I was searching for his family.

  I expected him to be angry, but I had underestimated the volume of his anger. My usual methods of avoiding conflict didn’t work as he confronted me, hands twitching and sweat forming along the base of his thick hair. He let me explain myself, and I had nothing useful to say. I couldn’t articulate why I was searching for his family based on the small amount of information he had given me. I had no end goal in mind, no reasonable motive. I wouldn’t have taken any sort of action if I was successful in locating them. The only explanation I could offer was curiosity, which was reductive and not quite accurate.

  “It’s none of your business!” he had shouted. “My family does not concern you. I have told you everything you need to know.”

  I let him berate me, which seemed to make him more upset. There was no use in fighting back or trying to explain myself further. I didn’t want the argument to escalate, but I didn’t apologize either. Why was it such a crime to show interest in my partner’s past?

  “You will never do this again, do you hear me? You will not ask about them. You will not look for information on them. As far as you’re concerned, they do not exist. Do you understand?” he had said, his index finger pointed steadily at my face. I think I hated him then.

  There we were, two hours later, driving through the city in silence toward a Christmas party, of all things. We should have cancelled, but that would have required some degree of interaction and agreement. Besides, we were both too stubborn to take such drastic action. We showered, dressed, and headed out the door as planned, on schedule, and with minimal acknowledgement of each other’s existence.

  I usually feel a tired brand of dread when arriving at a party, as though my body simultaneously recognizes how draining it will be and its potential for social embarrassment. This time I felt relieved as Decker opened the door with his signature cheer. We needed the noise of people and music to drown out the silence between us.

  “Merry Christmas, boys!” Decker said, wearing a knitted sweater depicting a winter barnyard scene, complete with a red barn and three inexplicable reindeer. He pulled us in for one of his wholehearted hugs. I watched Elias smile broadly as he greeted Decker with such warmth and grace.

  Man, he’s good.

  Decker attempted to take our coats while juggling the bottle of elderflower tonic and German stollen we had brought for him. He stayed away from alcohol — his mother has always had a troublesome relationship with the bottle — but I had witnessed him experiment with beer once in university. It turned out that drunk Decker was a less tidy, less sensible version of the very tidy and very sensible young man I had grown to love. I haven’t seen him touch alcohol since.

  His shoebox-sized apartment wasn’t exactly a spacious venue for a large gathering, but that never stopped him from hosting them. They usually involved a gauntlet of people impossible to cross without being intercepted for conversations or introductions, and that night was no different. The general rule for one of Decker’s parties was to avoid wearing white as someone would inevitably bump into you with a glass of red wine or other such dark-tinted liquid. The space felt even more cramped with strings of Christmas lights dangling from the ceiling, as well as the fact that every guest seemed to be wearing an elaborate dress or a woolly, festive sweater.

  We hadn’t even made it past the front hall when the first interception of the night happened. Decker’s girlfriend, Samantha, pounced on us like a stealthy, chipper panther in a dress the colour of Merlot. Strategic colour choice, I thought as she pulled us both in for a three-way hug, smothering me in her long blond hair. She smelled like
cinnamon.

  We chatted with Samantha briefly until she was pulled away by another guest. I didn’t have a chance to say a word before Elias walked away from me and into the kitchen. It was clear that he intended to ignore me for the rest of the night.

  I went straight for the bar and poured myself a glass of wine, which I guzzled in less time than it took to find the alcohol content on the label: 13.5 percent. I refilled my glass with a sloshing purple torrent while scanning the room for Elias. He was talking to Mason, one of Decker’s squash-league buddies and arguably the most attractive man in the room.

  Strategic choice in conversation partner.

  The wine left my mouth feeling dry and raw, though I had barely tasted it.

  Two can play at that game.

  I searched for a handsome man who could tell me jokes I would laugh at loudly, but I couldn’t avoid being intercepted by old university friends, most of whom were female and not conducive to stoking the flames of jealousy.

  After what felt like a never-ending drip of the same conversation — What’s new? How have you been? How’s work? — I was relieved to see Vivi step into the room. Amid the blur of ironic sweaters and jewel-toned holiday attire, Vivi stood out like a vampire in a crowd of silly elves. She wore a leather jacket over a slinky black dress, her delicate neck bound by a velvet choker. Even the shade of red on her lips was distinct in the room saturated with a similar colour.

  “How much have you had to drink?” She interrogated me without even the pretense of a greeting.

  “Merry Christmas to you too. Only a couple glasses, if you insist on being my mother.”

  “You already have that constipated look you get whenever you drink, so slow down. I saw your car outside.”

  “What look? And I’m fine, although it would be nice if I didn’t always have to be the designated driver.”

  “Elias doesn’t drive and you refuse to take cabs or transit, so that doesn’t leave many other options, does it? Just slow it down with the wine. Your teeth are already purple.”

  Vivi was right, as always, even about the teeth. I tried to be discreet as I rubbed them with the sleeve of my shirt.

  “Speaking of Elias, he doesn’t seem like his usual antisocial self,” she said after confirming my teeth were restored to an acceptable shade. “I just saw him with Mason. What the hell would they have to talk about?”

  “He’s pissed at me, and now he’s trying to prove something. What exactly, I don’t know. Maybe that he doesn’t need me as much as I think he does. Or that he could find someone far more attractive than I am. It’s pointless. I already know both of these things are true.”

  “What did you do?” Vivi asked, looking at me with her smoky eyes as though she’d already drawn the conclusion I was at fault.

  After placing my wineglass clumsily on a shelf, my fingers struggled to undo the top button of my shirt’s collar. The room felt suddenly warmer, the air stifling. The collar loosened at last, and the skin of my neck felt like heated rubber as I inhaled deeply.

  “Let’s get some air,” I said, pulling Vivi away from the suffocating noise and warmth toward the balcony. This was our typical escape route for when our extroversion reserves began to dry up. Thanks to the winter chill, we had the balcony to ourselves. Vivi lit a cigarette. The end burned more brightly than the pale light that drifted from a single lamp above the door. The city lights twinkled around us in the dark.

  Yaletown back then was among my least loved neighbourhoods in the city, a place of dilettantes and pretenders, but it was difficult to ignore its allure from our vantage point on the thirty-third floor. Its residential towers competed for the sky, creating canyons of glass and concrete. We were surrounded by uniform boxes of light suspended in the air, each one a tidy compartment of people and possessions that represented a life.

  In one box across the street, a young woman held yoga poses on the carpeted floor while two small children in pyjamas spun around her. They climbed over and under furniture, mouths open with squeals I couldn’t hear, but were unsuccessful in disturbing their mother’s state of peace.

  Another box in the building next door revealed a grey-haired woman wrapped in a blanket. She sat pensively by the window sipping wine from a glass, the uncorked bottle on the table next to her. There were no Christmas decorations, no coloured lights.

  In the box four levels below her, two athletic young men kissed each other on a couch as the television cast a seductive glow on their contorting bodies. An innocent movie night had evolved into something else.

  Their windows were screens displaying vignettes of everyday life, as though each box were its own reality show or zoo exhibit. The city was filled with people who were inside looking inside somewhere else. Everyone was both spectator and performer. The scene could go from mundane to lonesome to impassioned by looking left or right or up or down.

  I wondered what a spectator would have thought about the scene that played out in my apartment earlier in the evening — and cringed.

  “So tell me. What did you do?” Vivi asked, smoke billowing from her red lips. I never admitted to her that she was one of the few people who could still make this habit look cool in our overly informed age.

  She was silent while I recounted what had happened, her eyes squinting and relaxing at various points as she waited to deliver her verdict. I thought I’d been successful in eliciting sympathy through my biased version of events when she said, “You shouldn’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong.” I was about to interject in defence when she continued. “But Elias definitely overreacted. You’ve been together for five years now, right? You know hardly anything about his family, or his past. He can’t keep that from you and expect you not to care.”

  “Right? It’s not like I would have tried contacting them. His parents are heartless goons. He’s gotten on with his life and doesn’t want anything to do with them. I am fully on his side with that.”

  “Then what possessed you to track them down to begin with?” she asked with a skeptical gleam in her eyes and the cigarette poised between her fingertips.

  “I guess I just wanted to know more. Perhaps see what they look like. Find out what their names are. I don’t know anything about what happened besides what Elias told me years ago, and he’s refused to talk about it ever since. The only way to learn anything new would be to find it on my own.”

  “Well, give it a rest, Sherlock,” she said, punching me playfully just below the collarbone. The pain was unexpected, and I flinched more dramatically than I should have.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, shooting me a look of suspicion and concern.

  “Nothing.” I tried to shrug it off with a feeble laugh, knowing it would only insult Vivi’s ability to see through every mask I wear. Without a word, she grabbed my shirt and undid a few buttons, pulling the sides apart so violently I thought the remaining buttons would pop off. I wished I were invisible underneath, that my bare skin would be hidden beneath the dim light.

  “This is happening again?” Her eyes travelled from my chest to my face, and I knew the lonely lamp above us was enough to expose me. I wanted to change the subject while another part of me hoped she’d be outraged, but her voice remained unnervingly calm. “Did this happen tonight?”

  “It’s not a big deal. I’m fine.” I shivered in the cold, gently pushing her hands away. My fingers felt unsteady as they buttoned my shirt back up. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  She searched my eyes, then turned away, marched back inside, and closed the balcony door loudly behind her. My first instinct was to follow after her, to stop her, but my legs wouldn’t move. I stood outside in the cold and watched her through the window. I watched as she pushed her way through the crowd. I watched her take Elias firmly by the arm, pulling him away from the conversation he was having. I watched the look on his face go from confused to indignant, then I couldn’t watch anymore. Time to change the channel.

  I turned to the balcony’s edge and loo
ked into the glowing boxes across the street. The young family was now cuddled up on the couch, the children giggling along to the book their mother was reading to them. The grey-haired woman was no longer visible in her box, but the wineglass and bottle sat on the table, both empty. The box with the two athletic boys was now dark. The show was over.

  I gazed out at the lives on display around me, safe in my darkness and my silence.

  OTRA LUNA

  Four days after the crash

  “She had her whole life ahead of her. It was just beginning. Holly had such big dreams. She was going to start medical school in the fall. She always wanted to be a pediatrician, you know. Holly just wanted to help …”

  The woman on the television can’t finish her sentence. She seemed composed during most of the interview, but all of a sudden her face distorts as she chokes on her words. It must be surreal to her. One moment, her life is ordinary, then she remembers that her only daughter, the future pediatrician, perished in the ocean while flying home from a study-abroad year in Berlin. I wonder if it’s the realization that she’s referring to Holly in the past tense that triggers the grief.

  I found these stories comforting for a short while. I watched the news coverage and read the articles that paraded these poor, unlucky souls in front of a mournful, entertained audience.

  I read about the twenty-seven-year-old German science prodigy who was on his way to lead a groundbreaking study. It was expected to revolutionize our understanding of human genetics.

  I watched an interview with a thirty-six-year-old Canadian dentist who had taken an earlier flight than his wife because of an error with the booking. He didn’t learn what happened to her until after his flight touched down safely at the airport. He was inconsolable.