Bone and Bread (39 page)

“Great,” I say. “I hope it will make a difference.” The meeting with the Essaid family has stayed with me, as well as the love I have read into their faces. I wonder if there is any chance that Ravi will yield to my threats and throw his support behind them.

“I hope so, too.”

As we near the swing set, Quinn cuts off the path and collapses into one of the swings. “So I called him up,” he says next. He makes an upside-down V with his sneakers. “My father.”

“You did.”

“We got together this morning. Caro came, too, though he didn't like that.” Quinn looks over at me, and there is a question in his eyes. “Actually, he thought you sent me.”

“I see.”

There is a small grey cloud hanging over the park, clear sky darkening beyond it in the distance. The rain is holding to a drizzle, but my shirt is wet through across the shoulders. There is no telling what Ravi might have said to Quinn about me. At this point, I'm not sure which worries me more: lies or the truth. More likely, some tricky combination. Politician-speak. I say nothing.

“He seemed concerned you were going to tell his wife or something.”

“The newspapers, actually.”

Quinn looks bewildered, and I'm about to break into an explanation of the point of the whole thing, the deal I thought I'd struck to help the Essaids, but he heads me off.

“You can't,” he says.

“Why not?”

“I promised we wouldn't say anything for now. He wants a relationship, when the time is right.”

“Oh, Quinn.”

“No.” He gets up and steps through the mud of the swing set pit back to the path. “You're out of this now.”

The day of the demonstration breaks overcast, the kitchen curtains pulling back to reveal a sky the colour of murky dishwater. I make coffee and Quinn and I sit quietly drinking it, eyes down into our cups.

“I'm kind of excited,” he says. Quinn is trying to make amends by being talkative and by making certain we don't discuss Ravi. “I've never been to something like this before.”

“Be careful,” I say. “There might be some unpredictable people in attendance.” But it is the kind of concern that ebbs with disclosure. Quinn rolls his eyes as though I am being crazy.

“I'm serious.” As the words leave my mouth, I remember scoffing at the same caution when it was counselled by Evan.

“I know.”

“If you see a police officer,” I say, “you run the other way.”

“Except your boyfriend.”

The word makes me flinch. “Right.”

This morning he is drinking his coffee black, his lips recoiling after every sip.

“Are you going with Caro?”

“Meeting her. She's probably already heading over with her video camera and three extra memory cards.”

“Great,” I say. “I'll see you there.” Before the demonstration, Quinn is working a short shift down at the shop, where Uncle is waiting to train him on the cash register. As for Quinn working as a bagel boy, I've shelved my objections for now. I'll need to save them for dealing with Ravi, if some relationship develops there. Quinn watches me as I let myself out.

“Don't get arrested,” I say.

“I'll try.” And then, seeing my face: “I won't.”

The government building housing the Department of Immigration is faced by a small park the size of a single city block. With eight small maples, six flowerboxes, and a large Victorian iron fountain, it is more of an idea of a park than an actual green space. There are benches and picnic tables nailed down at intervals across the concrete square that surrounds one weedy stretch of grass. It is a place where the employees can take their lunch and feel some relief.

When I finally arrive, I see that a sizeable crowd has already gathered. There is a clown wearing flippers handing out balloons. She doesn't speak but pulls faces and putters a squat little circle dance around the children and parents who approach, her arms pumping like a runner. A young man in fatigues is helping Cherise dish out free samosas and spicy rice and beans to a long lineup. And all around me, among the people eating and carrying signs, are people distributing leaflets to passersby and employees from the adjoining office towers.

I spot Caro standing on the end of one of the benches, wielding her video camera. Quinn is at her side, holding a microphone attached to what looks like a boom rigged out of an extendable curtain rod. I catch his eye across the grass. The air is full of energy and chatter, the city smell of exhaust, and the bite of cooked green chilies. I wave and he waves back. Whatever happened between him and Ravi, Quinn seems intact. I wonder if they hugged. What on earth they might have said.

The demonstration is scheduled to start at three o'clock. I don't yet see any sign of Libby. My stomach is unsettled enough to keep me away from the food table, but all around me the mood is light. The word being passed around is that the police are unlikely to get involved, and Evan agrees. He has turned up looking ill at ease in jeans and a black T-shirt, shaking his head to stave off any questions about why he has decided to come.

“The police will hold off unless it gets violent,” he says. “No matter what, they'll wait until most of the public has gone home. After all, part of justice is the appearance of justice.” He peers around. “Do they have coffee here?”

“That's cynical.”

“Not really. Not if you believe that appearances can be deceiving.”

“This is all some kind of end-justifies-the-means thing, then.”

He points to a table with a large stainless steel urn where a small queue is forming, and he starts moving towards it. “Sometimes it does.” He looks at me. “You know it does.”

That Evan's morality would have complexity is something that hasn't crossed my mind. I wonder for the hundredth time what Sadhana would have made of him. She had a way of summing people up that I never could manage. Uncle was a stodgy vassal, Ravi a shirking coward, or sometimes a fetal pig. Quinn as a little kid was, more often than not, a jam-fisted monkey. Whether she could see these realities or created them, the effect was the same: she knew the world better than I did.

Evan returns, not with one coffee but two, a gesture that might be nothing but politeness but to me feels more like a valentine. I brush his fingers as I take the cup and he gives me a tight smile.

“I'm sorry,” I say, and it comes out in a whisper. The crowd is starting to fall silent in response to some setup activity on the front steps of the building.

“I know,” he says at a normal volume. “But I need to absorb all this.”

I don't know if he means my flailing attempt at extortion or Ravi's being back in the picture, but it's a fair plea either way. Evan may be the most reasonable person ever to be angry with me.

“Absorb all what?” I ask anyway. I understand the problem of integrating new facets into a picture of a whole personality. If I knew what to make of Libby's confession, I could share it with Evan, but I'm afraid of how he'll react. I can hardly imagine what he might think of her negligence. What I'll start to think.

“I need time,” says Evan, “to absorb how secretive you are.” His voice is matter-of-fact, but his face is glum. “How untrusting.”

The demonstration formally begins with a series of speeches in both English and French, but for me, all the tense energy of the event seems to locate itself in the three inches separating me from Evan. I tug on his sleeve. “Don't be mad.”

Evan sighs. He takes one hand from his cup as if to touch my shoulder, but ends up dropping it into his pocket. “Let's just be patient with each other, shall we?”

There are vans from both the English and French media parked around the square, and two men shouldering television cameras aimed at the makeshift podium. A member of the Algerian community talks about Bassam Essaid's struggle to leave that country and his efforts to assist other refugees and new immigrants. A representative from Amnesty International condemns the deportation order. Then Anne-Marie gets up on behalf of No Borders to talk about the exclusionary principles of the immigration system and the lack of basic rights faced by migrant workers. When she finishes speaking, a young man mounts the steps of the immigration building and leads the crowd in a chant culminating in claps and cheers, whistling and the waving of signs. Through a squealing megaphone, he encourages everyone present to stick around until the tribunal hearing is over, to show solidarity with the Essaid family. I check my watch and see that the hearing is not scheduled to begin for another fifteen minutes.

As the demonstration prepares to enter a holding pattern, the silence stretched out for the speeches starts to perforate as individual conversations begin to materialize here and there throughout the crowd. Then Evan says, “Do you hear that?”

Somewhere beyond the square, there is the sound of a march, another megaphone call-and-response being carried out by a group approaching in the distance. “Latecomers?” I say, just as they round the corner to the square.

It is a rally on the move, smaller and older, on the whole, than the group already occupying the square. A chorus of boos goes up, but hemmed in near the centre, I am not close enough to see what is happening.

“People opposed,” guesses Evan.

Our attention is distracted from the new arrivals when a black Mercedes zooms up the street between the park and the government block, causing a commotion along the edge of the throng where people had started drifting off the sidewalk. The driver gets out to hold open the door, and the man who emerges from the car is Ravi, dressed in a suit and tie, dark hair shiny and slicked just so. A young woman climbs out from the other side and establishes a portable microphone and PA system on the steps before disappearing through the doors of the immigration building, trailing a coil of extension cord.

“Who's that now?” says Evan.

“That's him,” I say, exaltation coming to me in a rush. “That's Quinn's father.”

Ravi must truly be scared of exposure, I realize, to reverse his position on Bassam Essaid. He mounts the steps and adjusts the microphone stand. I can't spot Quinn, and I grab Evan's arm for leverage to get up on my tiptoes and scan the crowd.

“That's him?” says Evan, shaking me off as he raises his elbow to cup his eyes against the sun. He sounds bewildered. I make a motion for him to be quiet, and from the corner of my eye I see his back stiffen. Every question I let fall by the wayside is like a little bit of love, let go.

As soon as Ravi starts to speak I realize he has not come to support the Essaids. He introduces himself, mentioning that he is a political candidate. Speaking first in French, he hits a rhetorical rhythm I recognize from televised debates, a predictable cadence as penetrating as a light rain, before repeating himself in English. No matter what the language, I find it hard to focus.

“I am here at the request of my voters, who want to ensure that Quebec is a safe place for the newcomers we welcome.”

“Did you know he would be here?” Evan is looking back and forth between me and Ravi, as if he is not sure which of us is the real source of his concern.

“No.” I want to kiss Evan, to soothe away his unease, but his whole face forbids me. There is some kind of insecurity there, or maybe even jealousy. “Maybe I could have guessed if I'd thought about it.”

Spotting Quinn across the square, I can tell that his father's appearance is unexpected for him, too. He is staring at Ravi with a fixed, hard look. Caro, at his side in a polka-dot dress, is filming.

“At Quebec First, we are pro-immigration. My own parents came to this country before I was born, and together they made a life here. Quebec was a place where they could flourish. What we want is to pace immigration at a rate that will allow new immigrants to acclimatize to our culture and values. So that they, too, can have a chance to flourish.”

A woman shouts, “So why do you want to spend three percent of our GDP to increase the birth rate?” Someone on the other side of Evan asks, not loud enough, “Why is your motto ‘Reconquer Quebec'?”

“Raising the birth rate is a simple question of economics, madam.” I miss Ravi's elaboration on this concept, jostled as I am by a stream of people exiting the square. When Ravi returns to his subject, emphatic now that the bulk of the crowd is against him, he says, “Bassam Essaid is a self-proclaimed atheist, who is preying on our religious conventions in order to flout the laws of this country.”

“Who wrote this for him?” I say. “Flout?” I am jeering instead of breaking calm, trying to figure out how to make good on my threats, and if they matter. Quinn is the one who matters now, not my vendetta and maybe not even the truth. Given Libby's confession, I now believe Ravi when he said he never spoke to my sister again. Yet he seems so cowardly up there, appealing to the very worst in people's natures.

But Evan is no longer beside me to answer.