Every Happy Family (4 page)

“Jillian, you came,” she says in her demure musical voice. She grabs Jill's face in both hands and kisses her one, two, three times on alternate cheeks.

“Hi,” says Jill with a laugh. Her mother is not usually this demonstrative.

“I was just going to get something on.” Nancy's eyes dart downward at her bathrobe. “Yes, I was.”

Jill glances past her towards the living room. Awful quiet. She tries not to picture them all in bed, listening. “I know you weren't expecting me.”

“Nonsense, you're always expected,” she says, eyes suddenly shiny wet, which makes Jill melt a little. “Let me take your coat.”

Jill puts her gifts on the table and removes her jacket. Maybe they can go for a drive, just the two of them. Down to the Cove for ice cream and talk about the situation with Pema after all. She's relieved to see the house looks exactly the same, clean and spare, everything in its place. But is that a sourness in the air?

“You've brought things,” says Nancy. “A pie? And a bottle? Am I forgetting some occasion?” She hangs Jill's jacket on a hanger, making it look complicated.

“No, no. Just thought I'd bring something to share. It's the Masters, isn't it?”

“Yes. The Masters.”

“I wore my green.” Jill plucks at her shirt.

Nancy smiles so wide her mouth looks misshapen. “How wonderful this is. You came.”

Jill shrugs, feeling sheepish now. “I came.”

“Take those to the kitchen. I'll go put on some clothes.”

“Your olive-green sweater?”

“What?”

“You're going to put on your olive-green sweater?”

“Olive-green sweater. Yes. This is so nice.”

Carrying bottle and pie, Jill walks behind Nancy towards the living room. There are no people sounds. Nancy pauses to turn and beam over her shoulder at Jill. “Just give us a few minutes,” she says and turns down the hall towards the bedrooms.

Us? Make sure everyone's decent, please.

She goes straight to the kitchen where the stink is strongest, puts down the bottle and opens the fridge to put in the pie.

“Ugh.” Behind a stack of plastic containers full of Danish is a reeking pack of partially eaten shrimp. Has everyone lost their sense of smell? She wraps the rotten seafood in two plastic bags and dumps it in the garbage. Notices boxes of Kleenex on the counter, a dozen or more, all with their box tops cut away. Whatever that's about.

Jill steps into the living room with its wonderful view of Burrard Inlet and the Northshore Mountains. Deep Cove really was a great place to grow up. She can thank her father for that much. The TV is on but muted, and captions run along the bottom in what looks like Spanish as a godlike camera pans down the tree-lined avenue of an immaculate golf green below. There is a single wineglass on the coffee table, one-third full, pink lipstick smearing the edge. She peers outside to the deck and its row of raised planters. There are no cages, no clever handles. Her neck muscles stiffen.

“You make yourself at home,” Nancy sings out. “It's
your home too
.”

Jill can't answer, can't make the simplest of sounds.

Mothers

Les and Jill sit on the edge of their bed, the bedroom door locked. She can feel the faint backbeat of Quinn's woofer through the floor and tries to recall if she heard Quinn's girlfriend leave. She hands Les the unfolded letter but holds onto the envelope.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Wright:

I am write to tell you that I thankful for you care for my daughter, Pema. I know she is take good care of and happy to be at Canada. I was very bad situation when I gave Pema away for you. Now I am good situation. I have new husband, also two sister for Pema. Kitsi is eleven, Maitri is four. Refuge village Jampaling very nice. Good job for my husband and I make money with sewing chuba. I miss my first daughter very much. I like to see her and ask that she come Nepal for visit to Jampaling. I will take very good care. I hope hear from you. Picture of Pema would make me very very happy.

Thank you. Datso Tsering

“When did you get this?” he asks, looking at the envelope in her hands.

There was to be no contact. It was right there in the contract. Jill reaches for the letter but Les pulls it closer to his chest, rereading it.

“Maybe she couldn't make out the fine print,” he says, ignoring her extended hand. “I know I would have been pretty stoked if my birth mother wrote me a letter like that.”

She knew he'd say that. Just knew it. Finally he hands over the letter and, mouth set, she folds it, gets up and walks across the room to the dresser.

“Must have taken a lot of courage to write this,” he continues.

Courage? She's never wanted to think of Pema's birth mother as possessing any qualities whatsoever. In those early years, it perversely comforted Jill to imagine the woman being desperately poor and uneducated, if not mute and thought-free, but never did she dare think courageous.

“Imagine giving away your three-year-old.”

She couldn't imagine it then and still can't. She can't even try.

“And not burying that memory in the deepest of holes. I think that takes a lot of courage.”

It's love, thinks Jill. Love that made Datso give Pema up in hopes of a better life, and love that makes her want her back. But I love her too.

“Pema's too young,” she says, and from this safer distance turns to face him. “It would be utterly confusing. When she's eighteen and an adult, she can go to Nepal or Tibet or wherever she wants. It'll be hard enough then.” She slips the letter back into the envelope, imagines taking a lighter to it. “To show this to her now” – she scoffs and waves it in the air – “would confuse the hell out of her.”

Les remains his imperturbable self. An annoying trait she's always attributed to his being raised an only child by two staid older parents. They would discuss the purchase of a new pair of shoes for days.

Jill needs to explain further. “She's fourteen, a hormone soup. She dyes her hair every other week, because she doesn't know who or what she is.”

“I didn't say we should show it to her right away,” he says, treading lightly. “But I'm also not sure about waiting four years.”

“You've waited forty-seven.”

In his infinite patience, Les lets the comment slide and her harshness bounce back on her. It was a low blow and she hates herself for it, but can't apologize.

“Annie thinks they found her by the way.”

She resents the weightless optimism in his tone.

“Annie always thinks they found her,” she says. “Don't tell Annie about this, please, whatever you do. It would take about ten seconds before Pema got wind.”

Behind her, Les sighs. “I love Pema too, you know.”

Jill grits her teeth.

“Let's at least send the poor woman a picture of her daughter,” he says.

Jill opens the drawer and tucks the letter inside. With her back turned, she closes her eyes and evens her tone to match his. “I've just lost the person I knew as my mother. I can't lose my daughter too.” She wants him to say he completely understands, to come hold her, to be with her on this.

“So many mothers,” he says in a far-off voice. “Like brush fires.”

It hits Jill that, since last weekend, her own chances of losing her mind some day have increased exponentially. Perhaps the dementia is starting right here, right now. A slow unravelling, an involuntary loosening of her grip on life. And any control she believes she has over her life is part of the delusion.

A frantic-sounding laugh is heard from Quinn's room below.

Quinn's hands shake as, naked beside his bed, he touches the cool, clean skin of Lauren's waist, his stomach on fire from the three rum shots he downed in the bathroom before brushing his teeth a second time. He wishes to God the lights were off, but she wanted them on and he glances at the window blinds for any gaps. Hears voices from the family room on the far side of the wall and stops breathing, anticipates his mother's mortifying knock on his bedroom door. He can't shake the feeling that Jill somehow knows what he's up to. And the even weirder feeling that he wants her to know.

“What's wrong?” asks Lauren.

“Nothing.”

Pressed up against him, Lauren runs the points of her fingernails through his hair and he is temporarily paralyzed with pleasure. She kisses him with intention and he knows it's his turn to kiss back with the same. He keeps his eyes firmly closed and is embarrassed how his growing penis pushes at her. As the rum blurs the edges of his self-consciousness, he tells himself he's going to be able to keep it up this time. Maybe Lauren will try something new. There's still that residual sense coming off her, though he fears it's fading, that the fault had been hers.

Eight Months Later

QUINN

After the party, there's a cab. Jewish guy calls the front seat.

Dreading making his one phone call, Quinn sits on the bench in the jail cell and works a grass stain on his new grey boat shoes. With each heartbeat, blood pounds past his ears hammering home how much he drank last night, his mouth so dry it hurts to swallow.

“Can I get some water in here?” he croaks at the soundproof door at the end of the hall where a muted conversation between receptionist and cop is visible through the door's long rectangular window. There's got to be a camera and mic in here somewhere and he's being heard over the phlegm-rattled snores of the guy in the cell across from his.

“Please?” A fresh thorn of pain momentarily blinds his right eye. How much did he drink?

Beside him, in the back seat is?

He flashes on being ten when neighbourhood kids, a year older and meaner, held him down, stripped him naked and hid his clothes. A nightmare come true, he had to run the long block home, using bushes and speed as cover. When his mom found out she went straight to the kids' homes and confronted their parents. He's not sure which was more humiliating, but the kids never bothered him again.

I didn't do it, he'll tell her and closes his eyes to shake down his dehydrated brain for whatever the hell he did do last night.

The cabbie wears a purple turban, his profile the spitting image of Auntie Annie's bust of Nefertiti.

What he does remember is the promise to help Mom move offices this morning. She probably tried to call his cellphone, which hopefully is still in his jacket, wherever that is – he pats the inside pocket of his vest – along with his wallet. Did the cops really empty the contents of his pockets into a Baggie, or is he imagining it?

God he's tired, though he did sleep or pass out at some point, because he remembers waking up. His neighbour's snoring stops cold, causing Quinn's shoulders to drop an inch, though he wasn't aware they were tensed. If he can only get a glass of – the man gasps, draws in a long rippled breath and resumes his stuttering blats. Sleep apnea. His girlfriend Lauren has a sweeter version of the same. His ex-girlfriend.

As she leans forward to direct turban guy, the top of Vanessa's thong makes a hot pink T – for touch – above the waist of her jeans. He bends to kiss Vanessa's blinding white skin but Todd stops him.

Vanessa and Todd were in the back seat with him.

He unties his laces and ties them again, redoes the left one to match the degree of tightness of the right. Pictures his bed and imagines lying in it and staring up at the Lego projects suspended from the ceiling. Star Wars ships, space stations, lunar vehicles. It was the only toy he ever asked for as a kid, and he had accumulated enough pieces, he once figured out, to build a human-sized single-car garage. He used to hide his creations from his brother, Beau, the human cruise missile, as Dad called him. There was nothing Beau got more pleasure from than destroying things Quinn felt protective of.

He follows Vanessa out of the cab. Todd grabs his arm. “Not yours.”

Who even laid the charge against him? Vanessa?

“You tell us, Lothario,” he remembers one of cops saying. A female cop?

He lies down on the cot's starchy pillow, fingers the scab forming between his nose and lip. A second scratch, along his neck, is also a mystery. Hit with the whirlies, he sits up again.

Shrugs off Todd with an elbow to the face.

Like splinters working their way to the surface, his lost memories appear in bits and shards to be nervously pieced together. Like last weekend when he'd woken up on top of Mount Doug to a strange dog licking his face. He gradually remembered the bottle of whiskey and the fire he'd made in the woods to burn the epic poem he'd written to Lauren, though the night climb up the mountain is still patchy. Two weeks before that incident, he'd woken up in a stranger's car. He'd been walking home from downtown, late, it had been raining and he must have wisely sought dry shelter. Luckily he woke up early and got out of there before the owner found him and called the police. He looks around the cinder-block walls. Not so lucky this time.

It scares him that he can get so drunk he's basically unconscious yet still moving around doing things. Because at that point, who exactly is making the decisions?

•••

Quinn hands in his final exam of the term: history of structures. Feels light-headed, empty, as if all that crammed information had actual weight and substance. Is pretty sure he aced it. Since Lauren dumped him, three weeks and five days ago in the room in which they first made love, he's had nothing to do but study.

Out in the hall, a group of fellow architecture students are coaxing people to go celebrate.

“Quinn, come to Mandy's and my place,” says a sad-faced girl named Rebecca, the corners of her eyes and mouth listing downward as though plagued by gravity. “You can't study any more so you have no excuse this time.”

“You
have
to come,” booms Ritchie. He drapes a sloppy hand on Quinn's shoulder and yells, “It's time we brought you down to our level.” Twenty years old and already sporting a paunch, Ritchie's the type of guy for whom loud is funny.

All term, Quinn has refused these kinds of offers because he's not comfortable in groups. Groups have too many variables, which therefore make it impossible to know where you stand. It was complicated work, some made it a career, and he had enough on his plate with his job, Lauren and maintaining an A average in order to keep his scholarship. He'd made a decision early on to remain an unknown quantity here in school, with the hope of being labelled enigmatic.

“Do you even have a personality?” Lauren had asked last month during their fight and her fit of confession, her face as helpfully earnest as a dog's. “Or have I been projecting mine onto you?” She didn't have a cynical bone in her body and these questions – for which he had no immediate answer and would later turn over and over in his mind searching for one – were asked with absolute sincerity.

“You never initiate,” she said, leaving the sentence dangling. He finished it in his head:
You never initiate anything. You never initiate anything good.
“So I never know what it is
you
want.”

“Sorry,” he said, because he didn't know how to fix himself and he was ready to agree he needed fixing. He could initiate things when the outcome affected only him but when other people were involved, the possibilities multiplied infinitely, beyond sight. He was also sorry because he loved her, as much as he knew how. He loved the way she dragged her nails through his hair when they kissed, loved the erotic hollows of her armpits, her glaring excitement over random things – a new singer, a YouTube prank, a book – and sure, he loved her initiative. Stupid him thought she was fine deciding what movies to watch, where to eat, how often they should spend the night together. She'd seemed thrilled when he let her “outfit” him like her favourite indie rocker: black jeans, boat shoes, pinstripe vest over a T-shirt. He'd never had “a look” before and was grateful.

“I can't tell if you want to see me or even want to make love to me,” she said, and the punctuating tears made his gut clench. “Just once,” she continued with an emotional gulp of air, “I would like to have to fend you off.” She paused then, her glistening eyes hopeful, as if to afford him one last chance.

But Quinn didn't have it in him to force himself on anybody, especially not on demand. That
was
what she was asking for? Sex? Six months in, that mindless thrusting abandon still required several booster shots of rum.

“Maybe I don't say it aloud, but I do love you,” he said instead, worried as soon as the words were out that they sounded cliché. He was seriously planning to take her hand, then move in for a “forceful” kiss. But in his moment of deliberation, she'd turned and walked away.

“Yeah, come with us,” says the girl named Mandy, who looks as down-to-earth and easy as her name.

Vanessa hooks her arm in his. “It'll be fun.”

Matching architectural style to personality – his private game – Quinn had decided Mandy was a simple brick rancher
circa
1950 with large, friendly windows. Vanessa, the drop-dead gorgeous girl in the program, who acted like a bimbo yet got the highest grades (besides him), was a complex and innovative subway system with deco mosaic detail. He'd fantasized about Vanessa. She was in that category, fantasy, because he understood that neither his personality nor his looks warranted someone this pretty. His brother Beau got the looks and he got the brains. He's come to accept it, but it does bother him that Beau is suddenly broader in the shoulders and soon to be taller.

“Don't tell us you don't drink,” shouts Ritchie.

“Okay, I won't tell you.”

“You don't drink?” Rebecca looks extra sad.

“Is it a religious thing?” asks a quirky Jewish guy whose name, Jehoy-something, Quinn can't pronounce. “You a Muzz?”

“I drink, all right? Like a fish.”

“Fish don't actually drink,” Vanessa says, dragging her reddish-blonde curls over one shoulder.

She sounds literal and serious, and it strikes him that in some fundamental way she might be as boring as he is.

“So you're coming then.” Todd sounds impatient and this is not a question.

Suspension bridge is how he thinks of Todd, the one guy in the class he considers dangerous. Long limbed and long nosed, Todd has close-set eyes, white-blond hair and the cockiness of someone much better looking.

“Yes, okay. I'm coming.”

Somebody behind him claps.

“Let the games begin.” Todd starts towards the door and the group follows, jostling Quinn along. Ritchie, who has a car, takes orders and money. When Quinn orders a twenty-sixer of rum and a litre of coke, Todd smirks and says, “This should be good.”

“Just being economical.” Quinn pictures the near-empty rum bottle under his bathroom sink. He doesn't drink like a fish every day, just enough to free him from second-guessing and making knots out of everything – like how things could have gone differently with Lauren if only he hadn't hesitated. At the very least, he could have stopped her from leaving, should have stopped her. Oh god, maybe even now she's waiting for him to initiate something more than text messages. To which she hasn't responded. He's on a sidewalk with these people. Maybe he shouldn't be. Maybe he should call, be walking in Lauren's direction. Maybe she would beam at the sight of him, helpless in joy. Maybe she'd sneer and close the door. Likely something in between. It had gotten complicated.

With its large rooms, low ceilings and shortage of windows, the girls' basement suite feels like a spacious cave. Somehow, maybe because of their mustard shade of yellow, the walls feel carpeted though they aren't. Around the circular coffee table sit a legless brown corduroy couch, a matching chair and two stained beanbag chairs. A tree branch has been rammed into a pot of rocks in the corner, random things hanging from its branches: key chain, candy cane, baby's soother, shoelace. A string of melancholy blue Christmas lights swoops across one wall.

The bottles – wine, beer, rum, cider, two litres of Coke – and assorted glasses are plunked on the table along with a bowl of red and green tortilla chips and salsa. Quinn takes a seat at the far end of the couch. When Vanessa sits at the other end and smiles at him, he responds with a finger-waggling wave.

Dork. He pours a shot, knocks it back when no one's looking and quickly mixes another with Coke.

Ritchie has produced a deck of cards from his backpack. “Ring of Fire,” he calls out as he shuffles them, and people groan or laugh or both. “We need an extra glass,” he yells to whoever's banging around in the kitchen. Todd appears with an extra glass and asks Quinn if he minds moving over.

“No, sure.” As he slides over, the middle cushion dips violently backwards and sideways, throwing him onto Vanessa.

“Sorry,” mumbles Quinn, removing his hand from her thigh.

She laughs. “There are some missing springs there.”

“Yeah.” He adjusts forward to even ground, wonders if Todd, now nonchalantly examining the bottles on the table, knew perfectly well about the springs.

“Mind if I do?” Todd tips his chin at Quinn's rum.

“I'm happy sharing,” says Quinn. Did he just sound like a kindergartner?

“It's nice you're here,” says Vanessa, giving his knee a pat.

“Nice, too.” What did he just say? He reaches for his drink. He could be home painting his newest miniature. He'd had to order four different figurines – maiden, farmer, dragon, scholar – to get the parts he needed: a staff to represent Lauren's love of Greek mythology; a dragon tail to make the mermaid tail and represent her love of the ocean; a book because she was an avid reader. It had taken him an entire weekend to solder the tiny parts, and he was proud of how it turned out. He'd planned to paint the hair brown with red highlights like Lauren's, the eyes her grassy shade of green, and paint on tiny fangs because of her guilty obsession with the Twilight series. Before she dumped him, the miniature was going to be one of her Christmas presents, and he's debating if it would be pathetic to give it to her anyway. He'd texted her last weekend. “Missing you, Laur. Wanting to hold you, and more.” The word “want,” he felt, was key. When he didn't hear back, he texted and said that his personality was “accommodating” – that was the descriptive he'd settled on because it contained the word dating – and that, if given the chance, he'd be more “demonstrative.” He chose that word because it contained the word demon, a.k.a. vampire. His mother, the linguist, taught him that words had subliminal power beyond their intended meanings.

“You're from here, right?” Vanessa asks.