In . . .?”
“Epidemiology?” She pulled the cuffs of her jersey down over her palms and gripped her mug. “I went to do a PhD, but it never really took. I’m restarting, this fall, not a PhD, an MA in science writing, at Johns Hopkins, in Baltimore. I’m still fascinated by epidemiology, but I want to write about it more than I want to do it. Part of the reason I’m home—apart from that I always come back in the summer for a week or two—is that I’m interviewing a psychiatric epidemiologist at Harbord as part of my thesis. The MA programme’s only a year long, so I thought it would be good to get started.” Her manner had shifted decisively, as though she’d crossed the beam of a film projector. Now she projected confidence. “I want to take a magazine-feature approach, four profiles of epidemiologists, two Canadian, two American. They tend to be attached to universities, right, which are increasingly corporate funded, but many of these scientists, including the one I’ll be talking to here, are effectively in the business of exposing corporate malpractice. Environmental cover-ups, for example. So I’m wanting to investigate some of those delicate balances in their work.”
“I can tell you’ll do well,” I said.
She looked both pleased and offended—about right. I hate it when people say that sort of thing to me. Presumptuous, as though to flatter, or worse, condescend. Was I trying to sabotage myself?
“We should talk about your project,” she said. “My dad showed me your letter.”
“I had the impression that you were as close as family to Dr. Venkataraman and his late wife and son.”
“It’s true. Well, we are distantly related—Venkat Uncle is my mother’s third cousin, or second cousin once removed. I never had a brother,” she said, and cleared her throat. She wore a mangal sutra—a wedding chain—with a smaller than usual pendant that she would lift onto her chin when she was listening or thinking. “So Sundar was like that to us. We spent a lot of time at their house. When we were little, his mom would even invite me and my sister for sleepovers. I remember her brushing and braiding my hair in the morning. I think she enjoyed having girls around once in a while. And Sundar came on vacations with us a couple of times.”
I was taking notes, and encouraged her to continue.
“We saw less of him once he got to high school. He wouldn’t always come when his parents came over for dinner and what-not. I would see him around sometimes, though, and there was still something kind of special. Like, I remember once a picnic for the whole Indian community, at this lake. I must have been twelve or thirteen, and he brought his lunch over to where I was sitting and talked with me the whole time, about novels and music. I had just started junior high, and my friends weren’t huge readers. I remember making some funny or sarcastic comment, making him laugh. I felt so proud, or included. Worthy. But maybe there was no one better than me to sit with!”
She laughed, then looked around the café self-consciously. “I had friends who were boys, but never a proper boyfriend, until I met the guy I married. I wasn’t allowed to date when I was in high school, and by the time I got to university, it almost felt like I’d never learn how. Indian parents seem to think that’s how it will work, that you’ll meet someone when it’s time to get married, and boom. My parents disapprove of dating different people. But where are you supposed to get the life experience to make a good choice?”
“Did you think Sundar might have advised you on this, or been a model in some way?”
“Hard to imagine, but he’s frozen in time, right?” She had a distinctive way of working her brow. Her expression often seemed at odds with what she would say. “Our relationship never evolved. I always felt I had a lot in common with him, and looked up to him. After he left to go to UBC, we only saw him a few times. Like my sister, I think he really wanted to get out of here.”
“You didn’t feel that way?”
She shook her head. “Sundar . . . I like to think he wanted to be . . . not famous, he wasn’t crass, but something huge. Real but huge. I think he could have done it.” She had become hunched, her torso concave. “It seems like an important drive, to want to leave. I don’t have it. Do you think it could be because of the crash?”
That seemed pat, and unexpected. I thought to flip the question back: How had the crash affected her? How might it have been different for her sister? But before I could, her eye was caught.
I looked where she was looking: at a young man of about her age, black hair flopping into his eyes. I looked back at her. Her face was suffused, some soft burst of oxygen radiating from her. He came over to say hello. They chitchatted, gym or shopping or coffee-to-go, and she introduced us: Adrian, an old school chum, now in medical school in Toronto but home for a month or so to help his parents on the farm while his father underwent cancer treatment.
“A good friend?” I asked after he left.
“An old friend.” The tremulousness returned and she began steering our meeting toward the exit. “So you’re meeting my dad and Venkat Uncle today?”
“Your father this afternoon, and Dr. Venkataraman day after tomorrow, Monday morning. They both asked me to come to their offices.”
“What about my mom and my sister?”
“Ranjani, your sister, she’s in Vancouver, yes? I haven’t had a confirmation from her. Your mother hasn’t responded yet either.” I waited a moment and then said, hesitantly, “I would like to talk further, if you have time in your remaining days here.” She had withdrawn so dramatically that I felt aggressive. “Perhaps if you don’t know your schedule yet, you could call me? I am quite open.”
She agreed, but I watched her with a kind of fear as she left. Not that I wouldn’t see her again—if I wanted another interview, I would get it. She hadn’t the strength to decide against me. No—I was fearful for her. Was she ill? The therapy room is better for detecting nuances in tone of voice, or scent. Fever, for instance, hits me in the back of my sinuses, fur-like, medicinal in its own distorted way. Emotional states alter body chemistry, and so alter a person’s smell. Although I’m most acute with people I already know, there are patterns, and I have been doing this a long time.
I stayed and transcribed as I always did, immediately and exhaustively, expanding on my scribbled notes while her words, inflections and pauses were still fresh in my mind, and then began to annotate: her clothing, her posture, my speculations on her state of mind. She was charming to talk to, but an image came to mind: a piece of paper that could eternally be folded, to become a SWAN! fold-fold-fold; BOAT! fold-fold-fold; ORCHID! while only ever showing its outside. I could see the hands doing the folding, but not the person they belonged to.
Looking up in the midst of this, I noticed a woman of indeterminate age in a purple wool coat lumber in to take a stool at the counter. She lifted the veil of her hat to order an apple juice, and opened her beaded clutch. Gazing with childlike pleasure at her image in a small mirror, she retraced and reinforced her already racoonish kohl with a stubby eye pencil. Thirsty work. She ordered another juice, rummaged again in the purse and took out a pair of tweezers.
It was both performance and not. She would look around from time to time, as though pleased to be seen. But where did she imagine herself to be, as she began plucking her chin and upper lip, wiping the tweezers on her napkin, leaving little orange stripes of makeup?
Lohikarma, I would learn, held a special attraction for eccentrics. Its founder, John Harbord, was a remittance man and visionary who arrived in the Kootenay mountains in 1895 after seven years of travel from west to east
