“There’s some skim in the back there,” Louise whispers to him.
“Yuck.” Sammy scowls. She looks in Ben’s mug. She says something in Cantonese. Ben responds in Cantonese and soon all of them are laughing, even Winston, who is Filipino.
Louise can’t understand. She is inadequately Chinese, her parents only ever succeeded in teaching her the words for ‘rice’, ‘thank you’, and ‘crazy’; if Sammy is telling them about Joanne, Louise has no defences.
She sneaks out. She goes into Ben’s makeshift bedroom. His shirts hang from the folding shoji screen, his comic books lean on the tchotchke cabinet. She lies on the couch and listens to the voices on the other side of the wall crest, then avalanche into laughter. Her cell phone is buzzing but she lacks the strength to get it out of her pocket.
Decorations from the funeral spool across the floor: a banner, white ribbons, huge framed photos of Chuck: Chuck on a bike hike, Chuck in Barcelona, Chuck meeting Jackie Chan. Louise has the distinction of being the last person Chuck ever met. He was almost gone, he looked nothing like the photos. “Hello Louise,” he said, “be brave.” He could barely speak, and she had worried about what he saw in her that propelled this message; the energy he was willing to expend to deliver it. Now she thinks it was a meaningless thing to say, as if he was just carrying out some kind of death bed protocol.
The kitchen door squeaks open and shut, and if the footsteps in the hallway are Ben’s, Louise will tell him now, of course she will, this is ludicrous.
“Hi,” he says. He moves her legs and sits down beside her. “None of us can stand to be in this house today. We’re going to the park. Can we give you a ride somewhere?” He lifts her hair and smooths it down her back, and she loves the feeling of his hand there.
Louise doesn’t know how to begin the sentence about Joanne. She can’t think of a good opening word.
She says, “Do you want me to come with you to the park?”
“If you want.” There’s a pause. “You don’t have somewhere else to be?”
Is this concern for her time, or for his? She doesn’t know him well enough to tell.
“I’ll come if you want me to,” she says.
“It’s up to you.”
Sammy is angry. There isn’t enough room in the station wagon for all five of them, plus Joy’s debris, and Winston has to sit in the hatch. Sammy takes Winston’s arm, holding his elbow as if his limb is a delicate thing she must protect.
Louise saw Sammy do the same thing with Chuck, fingers outstretched to catch her father’s arm every time it slipped from the bed, as he drifted in and out of consciousness. It was a tiny gesture that held such boundless love, that Louise felt embarrassed for having witnessed it. Seeing it resurface, over something so insignificant, irritates her.
It’s a Sunday in February, and everything has been petrified by the cold. Branches and rooftops have turned pale, and the sidewalks feel harder, as if the cement molecules are shrinking together for warmth. Toronto winters are rarely sunny, but when the sun comes out it seems to be overcompensating for the gloom. On the crest above Grenadier Pond, the sunlight slams into and off the ice, and they can barely see. Groups of people cluster on the vast, snow-covered surface of the pond, amused by the novelty of walking on water. The five of them wend their way down the long trail. Little dogs in hooded jackets scurry past.
Ben’s family pulls ahead of them and Louise says to Ben, “Are you all right?’
“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”
Her phone rings. She ignores it.
“Should you get that?”
“It’s just my mother.”
They have reached the edge of the pond. Sammy and Winston have taken Joy onto the ice and they are marching arm-in-arm across it. Louise puts her arm though Ben’s to slow him down.
“Can we talk? Over here.” She does not want anyone but him to see her face. She heads for a thicket of dead shrubbery. Ben steps off the path with her, straight into a puddle of slush.
“Oh. Shit.” His face screws up in disgust.
“I didn’t put that puddle there. It’s not my fault.”
“No one’s blaming you.”
He mumbles curses and her phone buzzes audibly.
“You should get that. It sounds like your mother is having an emergency.”
He tugs at a branch, looking for a tool to scrape his boot. His tugging turns violent. It looks like the whole shrub is going to come up at the roots.
“Careful. The bush,” she says. He tries to hide it but clear as day, his eyeballs roll. She should have chosen his feelings over the shrub’s.
She could wait to tell him about Joanne, next week or next month. But the worst is yet to come for him. The funeral is the easy part. In the photos from Joanne’s funeral, people were laughing so hard you could see the roofs of their mouths. It’s the afterwards that’s impossible, the bereavement version of the first day back to work in January. And Sammy will tattle first.
“I have something to tell you,” she says.
But they speak simultaneously. “If you have other places to be today, you should go. We could use some family time. Sorry. What did you say?”
It was different when she was willing to volunteer the information. Now she is on the spot and her anger comes in, sudden and hot.
“I’ve been getting the feeling I’m not wanted. Especially when your mom and sister insist on speaking Cantonese when they know I can’t understand.” She feels unhinged. Why is she saying these things?
He is quiet for a terrible moment. Then he says, “It’s rude for my mother and sister to speak their language the day after we buried my dad?”
He doesn’t break eye contact. He wants an answer, but there is none.
“I’m sorry. I should go. I should call my mother. I’ll come and say goodbye when I get things sorted out.” She is panicky and she talks too fast; it sounds as if she is saying sorry for leaving, not for causing so many problems when she meant to help.
He jams his hands in his pockets. “Sure. Sounds good.” He walks away. He steps down and rocks his weight into his heels and sails across the ice.
Louise’s hands are shaking but she focuses on the new texts from her mother that say, I am making macaroni soup for you and If you catch the 1:43 train dad can pick you up.
Louise still has Joanne’s number in this phone. Every time she has to call someone whose name begins with a ‘J’, the number’s there. She can’t bring herself to delete it, or get rid of the phone. She has tried to be careless, hoping the phone will fall in a toilet or get lost at the mall on its own. But instead stupendous advances in mobile technology have passed her by.
Ben has caught up to his family. He runs, then stops hard, skidding until he knocks Sammy into Winston. Louise expects Sammy to turn and yell at him, but instead they all laugh. There is an acid pain in Louise’s chest. They are recklessly cheerful. Most adults over the age of thirty have experienced some great loss in their lives. But you wouldn’t know it, walking around on any weekday evening, watching people’s vapid faces as they pay their bus fare and post their letters, as if nothing bad has ever happened to anyone.
Louise walks down to the edge of the pond. Ice crystals cluster around the dirt. Even if there wasn’t a treacherous mass of water below, it still seems counter-intuitive to walk on an unpredictable, bone-breaking surface. She can’t bring herself to make the necessary great leap. She tries bending her knees experimentally.
She has to go and say goodbye. She could just leave, but that would draw attention and require explanation. It will look as if she’s mad. She has tried so hard to be inconspicuous. She thought she’d been doing a good job of it, even when it was trying, but she now she sees she was wrong. When she had hoped to be supportive she’d made things worse.