Every Happy Family (22 page)

Illuminated by the sun through the window, her hair races down her back to brush her waist. There are no streaks of blue or green, no glitter or beaded braids, just a clean beautiful black. How he loves her hair. He's allowed to love her hair.

She flips the page of the yearbook with a casual whip of one finger. He doesn't buy her cool for a minute, senses the space between them loud with anticipation and is convinced she feels the same about him as he does about her and that girls are simply better at hiding their desire, usually even from themselves.

Another flip of her finger, a tilt of her face, and he's convinced otherwise. It's just him who's the pervert here. Pema is his sister. No, biologically she's not. He'd looked online to see how common or uncommon it was to have the hots for an adopted sibling. It was common enough if a child was adopted when the child and siblings were older but rare if they grew up together from an early age like him and Pema. Which only made him feel worse, rare being another word for deviant pervert.

Oh shut up and get it done already. Wuss. He inhales deeply and breathes out her name. “Pema.”

She whips around as if startled – did she really not know he was here?

“Hi.” He waves. “Remember me? Beau?”

She snorts, tucks her hair behind one ear and turns back to her book. “I did recall a Beau somewhere in the distant past. We were close in fact. But after he went off to some fancy school, he forgot I existed.” The resigned weight of her shoulders makes him instantly lonely. “Then I went away, tried writing him long, wonderful letters and never heard from the shithead.”

“I am a shithead, and I'm sorry.”

She flips the page.

“Thanks for those letters,” he says, nodding though she can't see him. “They were great.”

“Yeah, they were.”

“I'd like to meet your other family. Maitri sounds almost as much fun as you were as a kid.”

No response.

“She looks a lot like you. Saw your photos on Facebook.”

“But you're not even on Facebook.”

“I have my ways,” he says trying for humour.

She sighs into a full-body clench, as if holding back from yelling at him.

“Pema, I had my reasons for keeping my distance. And they weren't because I didn't want to see you.”

“Well, that certainly makes sense.” She tosses the book aside and swings her legs around the corner of the bed to give him her full attention which, he can't help thinking, is all he's ever wanted. Hit with unbearable shyness about what he's about to confess, he looks out the window. “I don't know if I can explain it.” His intention is to move towards her, but his feet aren't budging. What he used to consider his safe place is now a minefield.

He feels her waiting, maybe starting to give up on him all over again. He focuses on her knees, exactly as if he were going in for a tackle, which enables him to move across the threshold of her doorway. Once in the room, he keeps going. The bed dips as he sits beside her and his eyes fix on the line where her chuba just barely touches the knee of his unwashed jeans. She doesn't move away; he prays this is a good sign.

When he dares look up, her lips are firmly closed and her eyes cynical. He smiles and her eyebrows rise, expectant. No, fuck, he can't. He'll challenge her to a game of ping pong instead.

“So, hey,” he says.

“What?” Pema says. She scratches at the back of her head then checks her fingernails.

Be more wrong
, Satomi told him.
Be more of a fuck-up.
At this moment he can't think of anyone he hates more in the world than Satomi. Except maybe himself.

His heart whooshes in his ears. “What I want to say is,” he begins then, knowing words won't cut it, tentatively reaches out a hand and scoops Pema's surprisingly heavy hair up and away from her neck with the intention of planting a kiss. He leans over and she jerks back.

“Are you checking my hair for lice?” she says.

“I...I...I...”

Their eyes lock and he lets himself be seen. She blinks as the idea of what else he might have been doing dawns, and he sees it's not a rose-coloured dawn but more of a pornographic flip book of their childhood years. In an instant he understands he's grossly wrong about his desire being mutual. And before the idea of him being “in love” with her imprints in her brain, and every future time together is spent in hateful embarrassment, he abruptly drops her hair and screws up his face. “That's your parting gift to Dad? Lice?”

“I do not have lice, Beau.”

“I was sure I saw a pod –”

She hits his shoulder with the butt of her palm, just like old times, and he scrambles to the door and yells out, “Pema's got lice!” And he's running away from her smacks – “Nepali lice, extra large, Himalayan” – trips on the hamper and stumbles to the floor. Pema laughs her bleating laugh and he's a kid again, sitting on the floor and she's just his attractive older sister. That's all. Because that's the way it has to be.

As soon as Jill returns from the bathroom with Les and gets him settled back in his chair, Nancy wants help out of hers.

“Can you tell me, please, where is the teachers' bathroom?” says Nancy elegantly and with a gracious smile.

As Jill points her mother in the right direction, she hears scuffling upstairs followed by Pema's inimitable laughter and her heart melts with nostalgia.

“I'm starved,” says Les.

She turns to him. “Really?” For weeks Les has claimed to have lost his appetite.

“Can we save the shenanigans for after the meal?”

“I guess so.” She wonders if he's delaying facing the ceremony and only hopes the professional celebrant was right when she said this passage was even more important for the person dying than for those left behind.

Annie's bald head peeks in at the patio doors. “Am I allowed in?”

“Yes,” croaks Les.

“Did you know,” she says, stepping inside, “that Einstein was epileptic?”

“Is the oven on?” Jill wonders aloud.

Annie peers over her sunglasses at the stove. “Yes it is. And Plato too.”

“I can't seem to find the teachers' bathroom,” calls Nancy.

“Einstein, what?” Les asks.

“To your right, Mom.”

“Holly was just telling me about her mother, who's epileptic.”

“Beau?” calls Jill. She needs him to start the barbeque.

“You sent him to his room, I think,” says Les.

“She says swallowing one's tongue during a fit is an urban myth,” continues Annie. “That it's not humanly possible.”

“Can you put in the potatoes for me, please?” Jill asks Annie. “I need to find Beau.”

“Sure, Jill. Is that something on the back of your dress?” Annie points. “Or am I just seeing things?” She barks out a laugh.

Hell, she forgot about changing her dress. “Yes, I, I sat in something. I'm going to change.”

Down the hall Nancy is struggling with the locks on the front door. “That's not the bathroom, Mom,” says Jill and guides Nancy to the right door, waits until she's safely inside and is about to say don't lock it
because sometimes the lock sticks
when she hears the doorknob turn and click. She goes to find Beau when he comes barrelling down the stairs.

“Whoa!” Jill takes an unsteady step backwards and thumps against the wall.

“I can't run in this chuba,” complains Pema as she trots down after him.

“I need Beau on the barbeque. Barbeque Beau,” Jill calls after him. “On the bob bob kabobs.”

Pema laughs and so does Jill. “I'll tell him,” says Pema, going after him.

Jill retraces her steps to the kitchen, needing to put the timer on for those potatoes. Reclined in his chair, Les's eyes are closed though she can't imagine he's really asleep, what with all this commotion. This locomotion. Loco, motion.

“What should I put the timer on for?” says Annie, standing at the stove.

“Thirty-five.”

“Shall I get out the kabobs?”

“Yes, Beau's going to cook them.” Jill absently picks up and drinks from someone's wineglass, realizes what it is she's doing and puts it down. She heads to the bedroom to change and once there, tired and, she has to admit, more than a bit drunk, she eyes the bed longingly before steering herself to the closet. What to wear now? Loose beige silk pants and top; dressy looking but as comfortable as pajamas. Same shoes. So things aren't going quite as planned, are a little out of order, but that's all right. After dinner, with some food in her stomach to counter the wine, she'll get things back on track. Yes, she will. Will it so. There is no will, once dead. Despite the paperwork.

Dressed, she's making her way back to the kitchen when she hears a doorknob rattling.

“Hello? This door won't open.” It's Nancy in the bathroom.

Jill lays her forehead against the door. “Where oh where are you, Kenneth? Mom was your job.”

“Kenneth?” says Nancy.

Some minutes of poking the opened end of a paper clip into the doorknob and Jill gets the lock mechanism to release. She finds Nancy sitting primly on the closed toilet seat, her purse on her lap. She's wearing her skirt and slip, her shoes are off and her lavender-coloured blouse hangs from the hook on the back of the door. On the floor at her feet is a silver scatter of hundreds of paper clips. Jill looks at the bent paper clip in her hand and back to the floor, wonders what it all means.

“I tried to use my tickets to get out of here,” says Nancy, with a defeated glance at her shoes.

Jill retrieves the blouse and asks her mom to put her arm into the sleeve.

“Use your tickets, he said,” mumbles Nancy. Never one to cry or make a scene, Nancy breathes hard through her nose, clearly upset but trying not to show it.

Jill steers her mother's other hand into the other sleeve, eases the shirt up over her shoulders. “I'm sorry, Mom. Wish I knew what you're talking –” Jill's hand flies to her mouth. “Dad,” she says and Nancy nods, her eyes filming over with what looks like relief and gratitude.

Jill's father, in his crudely funny way, referred to breasts as tickets. “Use your tickets,” he used to joke when Nancy was on her way to buy a new appliance, tires for the car, insurance. That's why she undoes her shirt in front of the male nurses at the care facility, thinks Jill, her stomach dropping. Because she's so desperate to get out.

Jill feels her own tears rise and sniffs them back. Now's not the time, she reprimands herself and finishes buttoning Nancy's shirt. She has an impossibly sentimental moment of imagining them all under one roof again, she, Nancy and Kenneth with his new baby, sharing chores and taking care of each other. Their lives gone backwards. Or come full circle. The next second she realizes the idea's mental and that once again she's trying to save everyone.

“There's no need to use your tickets for anything,” she says, feeling the need to address it. “Nobody takes those tickets any more.” That doesn't sound right.

“Oh, I see,” says Nancy as if she actually understands.

“I'm going to get you closer by, Mom,” she says. “I promise.” Even if I have to use my own damn tickets.

Nancy seems visibly to relax so Jill does too.

Jill helps her on with her shoes then starts to sweep up the paper clips. “What would you think about you, me and Kenneth living in the same city again. All close by. Wouldn't that be nice?”

“Who's Kenneth?” demands Nancy.

Since Jill seems to have disappeared, Annie has taken over dinner preparations. Nothing makes her more crazy-happy than being useful to this family of hers. She discovers tomatoes in the fridge beside the Greek salad, takes them out and starts chopping. Having a task to focus on helps to settle down the flying animals, the sunglasses only a partial deterrent. She puts the covered tray of naan bread in the oven with the potatoes, and when Pema offers to help, puts her in charge of hunting down Les's recipe for the salad dressing. She can't figure out what the bowls of chopped mango and scallion in the fridge could be for, nor the toasted pine nuts on the counter, and leaves those to Jill, wherever she is, then realizes she hasn't seen Kenneth in a long time. Maybe the two of them are off somewhere having a sister-brother spat, she thinks enviously.

Holly appears, stinking of cigarettes, and offers her services.

“Everybody's getting hungry,” says Annie, thinking aloud. “Is that it?”

She gives her the bowl of tzatziki to take to the dining room along with a bottle of red wine. “Opener's over there.” She points. “It should breathe, though I must admit I have no clue why.”

“Oxygen neutralizes the acids and tannins, makes it smoother,” says Holly, expertly screwing in the opener.

“You're a bucket of information, girl, are you not?” Annie says before realizing she's speaking to an alcoholic.