All My Puny Sorrows (17 page)

She asked Nic about the camping expedition he made this last winter and somehow this led us to a discussion of Jack London’s “To Build a Fire.” We all had different theories for why Jack London has the dog abandon the dying man at the end of the story. And for some of us the word “abandon” wasn’t quite accurate. My mother and my aunt hadn’t read the story but they thought about it and in tandem concluded that the dog is going to get help. Nic believed that the dog understands that the man is now dying, freezing to death, and needs to be alone, the way a dog or cat prefers to be alone as it dies. So the dog leaves out of respect, giving the man his space. I didn’t believe in either of these theories. It’s a dog, I said, it senses that the man is dying or dead already so what can it do now? Nothing. It’s over. The dog takes off. It has to find some food and shelter, first things first. Its instinct is to survive. I mean, not to … did Jack London commit suicide? I looked at the rest of them apologetically.

Nic had a strange smile on his face. He was crying. His hand was covering his eyes. His watch was too big for him, the strap was sliding around on his arm and he sometimes had to hold his arm still, in a certain way, to keep the watch from falling right off.

That evening I did many things but came no closer to making a decision about killing my sister or not. I tucked my mother and my aunt into bed with their Kathy Reichs and Raymond Chandlers. They had buried fourteen brothers and sisters. They once had a family large enough to field two entire baseball teams. It was just the two of them now, out of sixteen kids. They had buried daughters and husbands and parents. Their world view was shaped by death, littered with bodies from the jungles of Bolivia to the far reaches of Outer Mongolia. My aunt whispered something to me in Plautdietsch and I thanked her.
Schlope Schein
, the words she used to repeat to Leni and me before we fell asleep, when we were young and new to this planet and long before my cousin painted her apartment lime green and then threw herself into the ice-cold Fraser River.

I went onto the balcony and phoned Radek and left a message on his machine. I’m sorry for being such a jerk, I said. Feel free to make me a villain in your opera. I’m trying to think of that Czech word you sometimes say but I can’t remember it now. So just … in summary … I’m really, really sorry. I breathed for a while wanting to say something else and then hung up.

I drove to Nic’s house but didn’t get out of the car. He had thin strands of rope tied to his roof and anchored to the ground with sandbags. They were taut, the strands, like strings on an upright bass. I guessed that he was using them to grow something, a beanstalk to heaven or maybe hops for his beer, if hops are things that grow vertically and wrap themselves around twine.

I drove to Julie’s house and met her on her porch. I don’t know what to do, I said. But she’s going to be okay? said Julie. Well, yeah, I think so. Do you have any wine?

We drank the wine and talked late into the night. Her children slept. We walked half a block to the riverbank and saw things, fish maybe, jumping in and out of the water like it was really hot and had startled them. Look, I said, and pointed to the Ste. Odile Hospital, way off in the distance, its towers and wings and giant neon cross. I wonder which window is hers, I said. We walked back to Julie’s house and checked the kids. They were still in their beds, still sleeping.

You can’t actually do that, said Julie when we were back in our chairs on the porch. I know, I said. But can’t I? No, she said. Not really. No. Because I’d be caught? Yeah, she said, but not even that. Because I’d feel guilty for the rest of my life? I don’t know, she said, I’m not sure. Would you do it together with Nic and your mom?

Yeah, I guess so, I said, but …

So you’d all be gathered around and then she’d take the stuff and die …

Yeah …

And this is the stuff that you heard about in Portland?

Yeah …

And then how would you explain that to, like, the cops?

I don’t know, I said. She’d do it herself, take the stuff.

Yeah, said Julie, but you wouldn’t have
prevented
her from killing herself.

I know …

And not only that, you would have provided her with the stuff to do it.

Yeah, I know …

So you’d be accessories or whatever.

Hmmm, yeah, I said, I know … Julie poured more wine into our glasses and we sat quietly for a while.

I know, I said. Nic and my mom could say goodbye to her and then leave and then I’d give her the stuff myself so it would seem like I was the only one responsible … they’d be totally off the hook. I don’t know …

But my gut instinct is that you shouldn’t do it.

Yeah, but she’ll do it anyway. That’s
my
gut instinct.

She might not though, I mean, she might … there might be some change.

Maybe, yeah.

Julie went in to answer her phone. I sat on her porch and waited. I banished mental images of my father’s broken body on the tracks by staring hard at the details of Julie’s porch. The door, the peeling yellow paint, the torn screen, the bicycles, the roller skates, the bag of fresh soil, the tiny ceramic elephant. I wondered what a sign would be, a sign pointing in a direction. I decided that if nobody walked down the sidewalk in the next ten seconds it was probably not a good idea to take Elf to Switzerland. It was very late, however, and cold and who would walk by? I counted to ten silently. A cat walked past. Confusing. I checked my phone and saw that Dan had e-mailed me and the subject heading was Remorse. My thumb hovered over various buttons on my phone and then I pushed delete and counted again to ten but before I’d finished Julie had come back outside and poured more wine.

It was late. Neighbours were switching out their lights. Bottles were being smashed in the back lanes. We decided to go inside and play a song on the organ that my mother had inexplicably delivered to Julie’s house in the middle of the night, that rainy night, weeks ago. David Bowie’s “Memory of a Free Festival.”

We both kind of sang, mumbled the lyrics, stumbled through. The sound of the organ fit with the elegiac tone of the song. We knew the song backwards and forwards, just not well. We held back, sang it comically and half-heartedly. I think that we both wanted to give ourselves up to the song, to sing it earnestly and boldly, the way it sat in our memories, but it was so late, the kids were sleeping, we were tired, and it was so late.

I was in the underground car park at the Ste. Odile Hospital screaming at a man who was standing next to his wife who was holding a young child. I had dropped my mother and my aunt off at the entrance to the intensive care ward and was attempting to park the car in a very tight space. I heard a guy saying hey, what the hell is your problem? I got out of the car and asked him what he meant. He said I was really close to his car, if I scraped his car or touched his car with my door or anything, my side-view mirror, there’d be hell to pay.

Hell to pay? I said. Did you actually just tell me there would be hell to pay if I touched your fucking car?

The guy was standing there with his wife and kid and they were all staring at me. I began to speak in a really loud voice. It wasn’t a scream, but it was crazy. I told him that I was about to go upstairs to see if my sister was dead or alive and that the spaces were really small, had he noticed that, and had I actually
touched his stupid car, no, I hadn’t, my car was exactly between the lines, look at it, look at it, and had he ever loved a person more than a car or anyone other than himself?

I turned to his wife and asked her how she could be married to a man like this, how she could share a bed with this monster and conceive a child with him, the one she was holding in her arms, and I told her my own mother was upstairs trying to understand why her daughter wanted to die and that my aunt was also upstairs trying to understand why her daughter had wanted to die and that sometimes in life there were things we had to wonder about, things other than cars.

I was close to them. I persisted with my insane line of questioning. How can you be married to this man? Can’t you all see that my car isn’t touching your car?

They stared at me. The woman backed away from me with her child and said something to her husband who eventually shook his head violently to one side like he was trying to get water out of his ear and then walked away and joined his wife and kid.

I watched them leave. I crouched down beside my car, not close to his, and squatted there, trying to get my breath back. Then I went inside and got into the elevator and pushed a button, the one that would take me to Elf and the others. The man’s wife was in the elevator but the man and the kid weren’t there.

I’m sorry, I said to her, about all that. I waved in the direction of somewhere else. I’m sure you’ve got your own thing going on here. I’m really sorry, okay?

She stared at the floor numbers blinking on and off. I wanted to tell her that she had to tell me that it was okay, that she had to forgive me. That was how it worked. I told her again
that I was really sorry. I’m so stressed out, I whispered. She stared at the numbers. We were going up. She got out, finally, without having said a word. I watched her walk away, down the corridor, she shifted her heavy purse from one shoulder to the other, and then the elevator doors closed.

My aunt was standing in the little vestibule next to the ICU ward in her purple track suit and her shiny white Reeboks. They were so small, like a child’s. She was holding a pencil. She was doing a sudoku. When she saw me she put the newspaper on the chair and gave me a hug. She told me that my mother was with Elfrieda, that Nicolas had just been there but had to go to work to deal with a valve problem, and that Elfrieda was awake and off the respirator. She told me she was going to get a coffee, did I want one? She asked me if I was all right. I told her what I had done, that I had told an innocent woman that her child had been conceived with a monster, and other things, and she told me it was okay, it was understandable.

But I just wanted that woman to tell me that too, I said.

My aunt nodded and told me that the woman would tell me that but probably not for a while, maybe years, and then only silently, in her thoughts, so I wouldn’t hear it but one day I’d be walking down some street and feel a kind of lightness come over me, like I could walk for miles, and that would be the moment when the woman from the parking lot had suddenly understood my horrible outburst, that it had nothing to do with her or her husband or her child, and that it was okay.

Forgiveness, sort of. Got that? said my aunt.

Okay, I said, so when I feel the lightness coming over me, on a street … I’m walking and …

Yes, said my aunt. Cream and no sugar, right?

She hustled off in her sportswear to find coffee and I looked at my mother and my sister through the glass wall. Elf’s eyes were closed, my mother was reading aloud to her. I couldn’t tell what book it was. She had a new sweater on, it had geese flying on it, she must have borrowed it from my aunt. My sister was so thin I imagined that I could see the outline of her heart. I went back to the waiting area and sat down and took my aunt’s sudoku and tried to finish it. I said how the hell do these fucking things work? to myself, but loudly, and a man looked at me and flared his nostrils. I fell asleep in the chair and when I woke up my mother and my aunt were gone.

I went to see Elf and she was alone in her room, staring up at the ceiling. I sat next to her and took her hand. It was dry and I reminded myself to bring hand cream next time. It smelled like burnt hair in there. I put my head down, way down, like I was trying not to be carsick, and I didn’t say anything. Elf told me that we were a painting.

You can talk! I said.

She told me that her throat was healing. She asked me if I knew of Edvard Munch’s painting
The Sick Child
. No, I said, but is this it? She said yeah, that it was inspired by Munch’s dying sister. I told her but you’re not dying. Look at you, you’re talking now. She asked me why we had to be humans. I put my head back down, way down, towards the floor.

Okay, okay, she said. Don’t do that. You look so defeated.

I said well for god’s sake, Elfie, how do you think I should look?

I need you to be okay, she said. I need you to—

Are you fucking kidding me? I said. You need
me
to be okay? Oh my god. Oh my god. Look at you!

Okay, said Elf. Shhhh. Please. Let’s not talk. I’m sorry.

Have you ever thought about what
I
might need? I said. Has it occurred to you ever in your life that I’m the one that’s colossally fucked up and could use some sisterly support every once in a while? Have you ever got on an airplane every two weeks to rush to my side when I’m feeling like shit and wanting to die? Has it ever occurred to you that I’m
not
okay, that everything in my life is embarrassing, that I got knocked up twice by two different guys and had two divorces and two affairs that were—are—not only a nightmare but also a cliché and that I’m broke and writing a shitty little book about boats that nobody wants to publish and sleeping around with men who … fucking ooze nicotine into their sheets from their entire bodies so they leave outlines like dead—

What? said Elf.

Has it ever occurred to you that I have also lost my father to suicide, that I also am having a hard time getting over it, and that I also am trying to find meaning in my pathetic, stupid life and that I also often think the whole thing is a ridiculous farce and that the only intelligent response to it is suicide but that I pull back from that conclusion because it creates a certain onus that is unpalatable? Like you’re fucking Virginia Woolf or one of those guys, way too cool to live or too smart or too in tune with the tragedy of it all or whatever, you want to create some bullshit legacy for yourself as brilliant and doomed—

Yolandi, said Elf. I told you—

You have this amazing guy who loves your ass off, an amazing career that the whole world respects and gives you shitloads of cash for, plus you could quit any time and just be labelled mysterious and eccentric and then go live in fucking Paris in the Marais or whatever that stupid … fucking … arrondissement— No, don’t try talking, don’t correct me with your superior knowledge of French, you have an amazing natural fucking beauty that never seems to fade, an amazing house that magically cleans itself—