Adam's Peak (11 page)

Clare exhaled. “I know what you mean. I mean, not that you're a—I meant myself.” Her cheeks flushed. “Sorry, I didn't—”

“No, no. It's okay. I know what you're saying. I think we're thinking the same thing.”

She was certain they weren't, but she returned his smile and let him go on.

“It's sort of the reason I offered you a ride. I know I've seen you a couple of times at the train station, and we've talked about the weather and stuff, but ... well ... you know.”

She nodded. By tiny increments, the awkwardness was once again abating.

“So ...” Adam rocked back on his heels. “Obviously I don't expect you to divulge your whole life story on a trip to the grocery store. You don't have to tell me anything, obviously. We could just ... Let's see. We could ...” He looked around. “We could talk about maple syrup. Or I could lecture you on post-colonialism. Or tell you about my brother's involvement with the CIA.” He shook his head. “No, wait a minute. I'm not supposed to talk about that.”

Clare laughed. “What's your brother really doing?”

“Rudy? He went back to Sri Lanka. He got a teaching job at some snooty private school in Colombo.”

Sri Lanka
, she repeated to herself.
Near India?
There were political troubles of some sort there, but that was all she knew. They carried on to the dairy case at the back of the store.

“It must be a different life there,” she said, and hoped the remark wasn't entirely banal.

“Yeah, I'm sure it is. I've never actually been ... but I've always wanted to. I think it would be a pretty intense experience, reconnecting with the roots. But you know how it is. Other things get in the way.” He paused. “I need to go, though. You need to know where you come from to really figure out who you are. Know what I mean?”

Clare looked past Adam and nodded mechanically. She thought of her own family holiday to Stanwick, the town where her parents grew up. She'd been ten at the time, afflicted with early menstruation and monstrous awkwardness. They'd stayed with Aunty Jean, and in Clare's mind the cold, ugly flat and its gossipy occupant came to represent the whole of Scotland. She couldn't agree with Adam, not at all. Figuring out who she was, if there was anything left to figure out, surely had more to do with getting away from her roots than with reconnecting. But she couldn't explain this.

“Why did your family leave Sri Lanka?” she said.

Adam placed his helmet on the dirt-streaked linoleum floor and stuffed his hands in his pockets.

“Well, my dad will tell you they left because of the political strife.”

The front door cowbell rang, and a man with a booming voice struck up a conversation with the grocer.

Adam rested one foot on his helmet. “That's what my father
says
, but I don't know.” He lowered his own voice. “I think he wanted to escape Sri Lanka all right, but I don't think it was anything political that motivated him. He actually gets off on political crisis.”

“Really?”

“Oh yeah. You remember referendum day, back in October? When all the Anglos around here were crapping themselves, thinking the country was falling apart?”

Clare nodded. She herself had spent the day considering the possibility of Quebec sovereignty giving her a legitimate reason for going to Vancouver.

“Well, you should've seen my dad. He was happy as Larry, sitting in front of the TV, watching the results seesaw back and forth. You would've thought he was watching a big cricket final.” The cowbell rang again. Adam frowned. “God, I hope I'm not boring you. I was wanting to get to know
you
better, and here I am doing all the talking.”

Clare shook her head. If she'd been the type of person to say such a thing, she would have told her neighbour that he was perhaps the most interesting person she'd ever spoken with.

“No, no. It's fine. I mean, it's really interesting. So, what do you think was the real reason your father wanted to leave?”

“Well ...” Adam jutted his jaw back and forth a few times. “I think it was something about Sri Lanka. You know, something older than the war, or more specific or something.” He nodded to himself. “Take his choice to come to Montreal—instead of Toronto, I mean. My dad knew lots of people in Toronto who would've helped him get settled, but he refused to go there. My aunt says he would-n't hear of it. Instead he comes here, where you're about as likely to find a Sri Lankan as—Well, how many Sri Lankans do you see around here?”

“Uh ...”

“Exactly. And when he filled out the immigration papers? He changed the spelling of our name. It used to be two words: Van—Twest. Now it's just one.” Adam bent down and picked up his helmet. “I know those are just details, but I think they mean something.”

Taking the helmet to be a cue, Clare opened the dairy case and reached for a carton of eggs. But Adam kept talking.

“My father grew up on a tea estate.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. His father was the head honcho. I think they were quite well off, by Ceylon standards. Anyway, his sister—my aunt—always tells these fantastic stories, about the fancy parties they went to, the workings of the factory, the servants. It's great. But if I ask my dad about those days, he just gets edgy and strange.” Adam reached out and took the eggs from Clare. “My guess is he was getting as far away as he could from that whole scene. Not that the political stuff was irrelevant. He really worries about my brother and my aunt. He worries about all of us.” He shrugged and smiled. “It's kinda stuffy in here. Should we get going?”

Digesting this sudden glut of information, Clare followed Adam to the checkout, where he placed the eggs on the counter then took out his wallet.

“Et les deux réglisses aussi,” he said to the grocer, in perfectly adequate French.

With a start, she realized he was about to pay for her eggs.

“Oh, no. Wait.” She fished for her money.

Adam, however, shook his head. “No, let me. Next time Dad and I run out of eggs, I'll come over and get some from you. We can be real neighbours.” He slid a twenty-dollar bill across the counter, and the wrinkled grocer stabbed a button on his cash register. Clare stared at the “Oui” sticker on the side of the register then glanced back at Adam, putting away his change, and smiled awkwardly.

Outside, the temperature had continued to rise, and the air smelled of springtime mud and thawing dog shit. As Adam helped her with her chinstrap, Clare studied the dark whiskers peeking out from his light brown cheeks and the flat, dark mole at the base of his throat.

“I'm thinking of moving to Vancouver,” she blurted, pleased with the remark and the unexpected surge of confidence that prompted it.

Adam's eyes widened. “Wow! Big change!”

“Yeah. But I think I need it. It'll be good for me.”

She readied herself to explain, somehow,
why
such a change would be good for her. Adam seemed, for a few seconds, to be considering what she'd said. Then he nodded.

“Yeah, I know what you mean. When I was in Vancouver for the Gay Games, I started thinking I could really make a life for myself out there. It's such a different scene.” He put on his own helmet. “But I don't know. There's a lot keeping me here. What about your mom? You'd move that far away from her?”

It wasn't at all what she'd expected. It was possibly a criticism, though she wasn't sure.

“I haven't planned anything definite yet. It's just an idea.”

“Yeah? Well, keep me posted.”

They mounted the motorcycle. Adam advanced a few inches with his feet, then he looked back. “I thought I might take a ride up Mount Royal. Would you like to come?”

Clare stared down at the carton of eggs wedged between the two of them. “I need to get back,” she said. “But thanks.”

She regretted it, of course. Even before Adam dropped her off at the end of her driveway, she regretted her refusal, but there was no easy way to let him know she'd changed her mind. The parting didn't seem to be final, however. As she unzipped his jacket, he waved his hand dismissively.
“
Just hang on to it. I'll come by for it later
,”
he said, smiling, then he sped away in the direction of the Boulevard.

LYING IN BED THAT NIGH
, she tried to imagine Adam's eyes, but their colour had escaped her. She got up and raised the blind, and the bedroom flooded with the glare of the street lamp outside. It was past midnight, and it seemed that in the dead of night, winter had returned to Morgan Hill Road. “Like a patient etherized upon a table,” Clare recited, though she couldn't remember where the line came from. Across the street, the Vantwests' house was dark. Adam hadn't been by yet for the jacket. It hung in Clare's closet, secret and exotic as the vibrator.

Wrapped in her bathrobe, she went to the studio and picked up the phone. She'd been trying Emma's number all evening, getting the answering machine every time. She'd wanted to tell her about the ride, but strangely the desire was waning. She sat on the loveseat with the receiver in her hand until the disconnect signal struck up its panicky alarm, then she hung up. Falling asleep was out of the question, so she crept downstairs, the sound of her steps muffled by the steady respirator-drone of the furnace. She went to the den and turned on the light.

Her father's presence here was unmistakable, especially at night. Clare remembered waking regularly as a child to the squeal of the swivel chair, the click of the desk lamp. She didn't know what her father did in his den in the middle of the night—it never occurred to her to find out—but she imagined that he just sat, and that in those moments of quiet sitting, he was more himself than at any other time.

From a crammed collection of buckled hardcover volumes on the bookshelf, she extracted Alastair's atlas. The dried glue of the spine
crackled when she opened it. Its pages were lumped together in musty parcels, weathered along their edges, though surprisingly unblemished inside. She turned first to the map of Canada at the front and eyed the distance from Montreal to Vancouver. It was at once too far and not far enough. Searching for her next target, she discovered that the book opened quite naturally to page seventy-two, where, next to the pale pink triangle of India, she found Ceylon. It was a tiny green drop, marked only with the capital city, Colombo, and a few other places. She pictured Rudy Vantwest lecturing to a group of uniformed students in a classroom furnished with teak desks and leather-bound books. Then she looked around at the furnishings of her father's den—Time-Life books, wall-to-wall carpeting, functional shelves. In this room, her ride on Adam's motorcycle seemed as distant and unreal as the country represented by that tiny green mark on page seventy-two. As irretrievable as the colour of Adam's eyes.

R
UDY SAT AT HIS GRANDFATHER'S DESK
with a stack of essays and his brother's letter. The essays, barring Kanda's, were tedious. Adam's letter needed a response, but he'd been stalling, grateful that the post office wouldn't be open for another couple of days. With a determined breath, he slid the thing out of its crumpled envelope and opened it for the hundredth time. It was written in red ink, in a large, loopy script.

Hey there Rudy,

Happy Easter big brother! What will you and Aunty be getting up to for the holiday? One thing I can say for sure is you'll be eating better than us! As Susie and I discovered at Christmas, we don't have a freakin' clue what we're doing when it comes to Sri Lankan culinary delights. Susie's pretty ho-hum about it all anyway. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but she and Mark seem to be on the outs again. Yep. Rumour has it he'll be staying in Toronto for Easter, I think this may be the end of it. But anyway, S. and Z. are supposed to be here Friday night. It should cheer Dad up. Things between me and him have been up and down as usual. I
wonder sometimes if I should get a place of my own or maybe even get out of Montreal altogether. Sometimes I think it'd be best for me and Dad both, but as a professional student it's hard to give up the perks while I'm still working on my thesis. (Don't worry, I won't bore you with any more details on that front right now, although I have to say that Dad has developed quite a surprising interest in the post-colonial politics of Ceylon!) Anyway, my financial woes aren't the real issue re. moving out. The big thing is I wouldn't want Dad thinking I've abandoned him. He hates my “lifestyle” as he calls it, but he loves me. I don't mean this in a nasty way but I think Dad loves me most, in a way. Just the circumstances, you know. And despite everything, I love him. Me staying here with him and him not kicking me out is the way it gets acknowledged I guess. But I tell ya, it's murder sometimes. He's on this thing now where he tells me that if there's anything he did wrong in the past, could I just forgive him and try to get my life on track. Meaning: “convert” (or at least pretend I'm straight), finish the damn thesis, and get a real job. He gets almost choked up, and I feel so helpless. Sometimes I really do wish I could change for him but it's not gonna happen. And you know, even if it would have been possible for Dad to somehow influence the way I'd “turn out,” it wouldn't have made any difference. The way I am has nothing to do with Dad. I'm the way I am because of Mum. I'm sure of it, Rudy. When she died, I became two people, her and me. It's the reason I feel so connected to her home-land, even though I've never been there, and it's the reason I have this feminine spirit I can't deny, not even for Dad. I assume other people are born gay or bi because of their genes, but it's different with me. It's like my body has two souls. Anyway Rudy, I hope you won't think I'm turning into some kind of wing-nut. I know my explanation would sound flaky to most people, but it makes perfect sense to me. I just wanted someone to know these things, and you being so far away makes it a bit easier, if you know what I mean. (Can you
imagine me trying to tell Dad that my queerness is a tribute to Mum?!?) Anyhow, sorry for getting deep on you. You and Aunty have a happy Easter, okay? Ciao, machan.