All My Puny Sorrows (22 page)

I think the main thing, he said, is that it should really rock.

What should rock? I asked him.

The story, he said, it should just move really fast, like pedal to the metal, so it doesn’t get boring. Plus, it’s hard to write, right? You want to go in, get the job done, and get out. Like when I worked for Renee’s septic tank cleaning.

I considered this and realized that it was the best writing advice I’d received in years. In all my life. When he dropped me off and asked if maybe we could see each other again while I
was in the city, grab a coffee or something, a movie, I told him I wasn’t sure how long I’d be there. I hadn’t told him about Elf. Cool, he said, let’s keep in touch. We kissed. I went into the lobby and waved goodbye to him through the tinted window, smiling and letting out a barely whispered monosyllabic admonishment to myself. Stop.

I took the stairs two at a time all the way up to my mom’s place, repeating my incantation—stop, stop, stop—with every angry footfall and trying to remember what my friend in Toronto had told me recently: that in ten years time shame will be all the rage, talking about it, dissecting it and banishing it. We’d had a bit of an argument then because I told him that it was ludicrous to think that we could just talk our way out of shame, that shame was necessary, that it prevented us from repeating shameful actions and that it motivated us to say we were sorry and to seek forgiveness and to empathize with our fellow humans and to feel the pain of self-loathing which motivated some of us to write books as a futile attempt at atonement, and shame also helped, I told my friend, to fuck up relationships and fucked-up relationships are the life force of books and movies and theatre so sure, let’s get rid of shame but then we can kiss art goodbye too. But now, as I climbed these concrete steps holding my hands and fingers to my nose to check if I reeked of sex or motor oil, I longed for a life without shame.

I found my mother playing online Scrabble with a woman from Romania whose code name was Mankiller. The games are timed
and she had to make a move quickly. But Yoyo, she said as I moved past her, Nic’s going to Spain tomorrow. I nodded and told her I knew that.

I went to my room and googled
purchasing Nembutal in Spain
but only found references to injectable Viagra. Then I googled
euthanasia for mentally ill
and found out that in Switzerland it’s legal but hasn’t been exercised that much. It’s legal to help a person kill herself in Switzerland if there isn’t any selfish motivation behind it. And you don’t have to be a Swiss citizen to be protected under the law. Aha! Now I understood why Elf had begged me to take her there.

I weighed my options. They were heavy. Get Elf to Mexico and buy Nembutal in a pet store on a dusty side street of a sleepy, non-touristy town and then make sure she opens the bottle herself and that I don’t encourage her in any way. Although the definition of
encouragement
might be cloudy under these circumstances. Get Nic and my mom to agree to this plan. Or: Take Elf to Zurich and do it all legally except that it might not work if the doctors decide that her pain is not great enough to warrant a mercy killing. Get Nic and my mom to agree to this plan. Suddenly I was feeling hopeful. But I wasn’t sure if I should be hedging my bets, telling Elf that I was thinking of going with her to Switzerland or Mexico but also encouraging her to live. If I told her about the Nembutal plan she’d have only one thing on her mind, and even if there had been only tiny amoeba-sized hopes inside her, of wanting to live, they’d disappear immediately in the light of this new possibility. Also, there was nothing stopping her, when she was released from the hospital, from going to Switzerland or Mexico on her own, except that it would defeat the purpose
of not being alone in her last moments of life and if Nic wasn’t on board he’d notice she was gone and that money was missing from the account and he would try to stop her. What would she do?

I heard the trumpets sound the end of my mom’s game with Mankiller and the slap of her laptop computer closing. Then she was there, standing in the doorway. How are you, sweetheart? she asked. What have you been up to? Having unprotected sex with your mechanic and researching ways to kill your daughter. Not much, I said, got the stuff from the car. Doing some work.

My mother talked to me about Canadian mines in Honduras, the travesty of it all, her rage against the world having found this particular nook to make itself at home in tonight. Tomorrow it would be something else, Muslim gardeners from Oshawa being held without trial in Guantanamo and languishing in solitary confinement, or any situation that was either randomly awful or awful but entirely outside the ability of an ordinary mortal to stop it from happening. The mines are destroying these villages, she said. Destroying these communities. And stripping the land of all its resources. Prime Minister Harper condones it and the wealthy owners of the mines just fly over from time to time in their helicopters laughing. I know, I said, it’s unbelievable. It’s horrible.

It is! she said. Our tax dollars are being spent on a sanctioned and systematic destruction of the Honduran people and nobody—

I know, I said. It’s really … it’s so awful. I could feel my right eyelid twitching. I lay down on my bed and closed my eyes. I ran through the symptoms of depression I’d read on a
sign attached to the back of a city bus, part of some campaign to educate the public on mental illness. A sense of unreality, I thought. Yes.

Sorry, honey, you’re tired, I know.

You are too, aren’t you?

I guess I am.

I picked up the book lying next to me on the bed and flipped through it. Hey, listen to this, I said. Have you heard of this Portuguese guy called Fernando Pessoa?

Is he with the Jays?

No, he’s a poet, this is his book, but he’s dead now. He killed himself.

Oh brother, she said. Who hasn’t.

But listen to this: “In the plausible intimacy of approaching evening, as I stand waiting for the stars to begin at the window of this fourth floor room that looks out on the infinite, my dreams move to the rhythm required by long journeys to countries as yet unknown, or to countries that are simply hypothetical or impossible.”

My mother said yup, that’s about the long and short of it, isn’t it?

She changed the subject. She told me that Elf’s smile was like my father’s. It’s so surprising. I forget about it sometimes and then whoah!

I know, I said. She has an amazing smile.

Yoli, said my mother.

Yeah? I answered. I put my arms around her. She was sobbing, suddenly, shaking. A keening wail I’d never heard from her before. I held her as tightly as I could and kissed her soft, white hair.

She’s a human being, my mother whispered.

We held our embrace in the doorway for a long time. I agreed with her. I said yes. Finally my mother was able to catch her breath and speak. She couldn’t bear to see Elf in the psych ward. That prison, she said. They do nothing. If she doesn’t take the pills they won’t talk to her. They wait and they badger and they badger and they wait and they badger. She began to cry again, this time quietly. She’s a human being, she said again. Oh, Elfrieda, my Elfrieda.

We walked to the couch and sat down. I held her hand and struggled to come up with words of consolation. I got up and told her I was going to make us each a cup of tea. When it was finished brewing I brought two cups of camomile tea to the living room. My mom was lying on the couch with a whodunit on her chest. Mom, I whispered, you should sleep now. The hospital again bright and early tomorrow. Isn’t Auntie Tina being released? My mother opened her eyes.

It’s called discharged. Yeah, she is.

I’d rather be released than discharged, I said.

True, she said, it sounds more agreeable.

I went to bed and lay there awake and thinking. I returned Nora’s text about the lawyer:
He’s my friend. His name is Finbar. Just checking up on you. I’m not JW
. I returned the text from my ex-husband:
Yeah, I can sign them tomorrow sometime when I’m not at the hospital. Your timing, man
. Then I texted Nora again:
And keep crumbs off the counters
. I texted Will:
If the Swede wants to spend the night, fine. The heart wants what the heart wants
. He texted back:
Are you drunk?
Eventually I heard the shower begin to spray water all over the bathroom, a shower curtain I said to myself, a shower curtain, get one, and I drifted off.

That night I had a dream that I was in a small village called Tough and I was somehow responsible for writing the soundtrack to the town. I was summoned to the home of an older couple who lived in Tough and they sat me down at their old Heintzman piano and said well, get started. I told them no, this shouldn’t be me, this should be my sister. They patted my back and smiled. They brought me a jug of ice water and a glass. Hay bales surrounded the town and they were supposed to be some kind of wall or barrier. They were supposed to keep the citizens of Tough safe. When I said but they’re only hay bales, the older couple, kind people who shuffled around their house purposefully, told me not to worry about it but just to focus on the score. I asked them where we were, in which country, and they pointed at the piano and reminded me of my task. There was no time for small talk.

Early, early in the morning Nic called me and asked if I could drive him to the airport and then just take his car back to my mom’s for her to use. Normally he’d take the bus he said, but he was running late and still not even sure he should go and if I didn’t come to take him he’d probably just go back to bed with a bag of weed and cry himself to sleep.

I picked him up and he told me that the driver’s door wasn’t working properly and had to remain closed all the time. To get into the driver’s seat you had to slide over from the passenger side, over the gearshift and all that jazz. I told Nic I’d have it fixed because I didn’t think my mom would be able to do all that manoeuvring every time. On the way to the airport he rubbed his face and asked himself out loud what he was doing.
He put his leg up on the dash and rested his elbow on his knee and his head on his hand and closed his eyes.

You’ll have fun, I said. It’ll be good to see your dad. Are you meeting him in Montreal?

I won’t have fun, he said. But it’ll be a break. No, I’m meeting him in Madrid. I wish I was going with Elf.

Exactly, I said. You need a break. You’ll check e-mail, right?

Every moment, so if there’s any change …

Yeah, I’ll let you know, don’t worry. What did the nurse say yesterday?

Not much, just that Elf would be there for a while. We were silent, driving, staring.

You know, I said, does she ever talk to you about Switzerland?

What do you mean? he said. No, I don’t think so. Why?

Just that she’d like to go or anything like that?

No, he said. Never. She wants to go to Paris.

You mean like live there with you? I asked.

I could get work there, he said. And we both speak French …

I said that would be amazing. So she talks about that? About wanting to go when she’s better?

Often, said Nic. I mean, I don’t know when it’ll happen, but we like to think about it. She just has to get through this thing. She has to get the right meds. It can take months to determine the correct dosage and combination.

Or years, I said. And providing she’s even willing to take them.

Which usually she isn’t, he said.

Which usually she isn’t, I agreed.

He took a book out of his bag and wrote something on one of the pages.

What are you reading?

Thomas Bernhard, he said.
The Loser
.

Nic, I said, that’s not even funny.

I know, but I am, you asked. Oh, can you give her these? He opened his backpack and gave me a sheaf of papers. They’re e-mails from people. For Elf. Fans. Friends. Claudio sent them. Nic turned away to look out the window. We were close to the airport, following the little airplane signs, through industrial zones and windowless gentlemen’s clubs and massive potholes.

Does anybody ever fix this city? I said. Nic said nothing. We got to the airport and again thanked each other for the efforts being made to help Elf. We hugged and said goodbye, au revoir and adios. All he had was a backpack and it looked half empty. I wondered if he’d bothered to pack anything at all besides his Bernhard and his favourite Chinese authors. How many days again? I called after him. He was walking through revolving doors, trying to negotiate his way through with his pack. He held up both hands like he was under arrest. Ten.

I drove back to my mom’s place. I parked in visitor parking and went running up the stairs to her apartment. Ready to go? I asked her. Nic’s off? she said. Yup, I said, back in ten days. The driver’s door is broken but I’ll try to get it fixed this afternoon. Then I remembered the divorce papers that I’d agreed to sign that afternoon. Could the signing wait one more day, I wondered, after sixteen years of marriage?

When we got to the hospital we couldn’t find Elf. The nurse at the ICU desk said she’d been moved to the Palaveri Building, Psych 2 which was buildings away across the campus
or whatever hospital grounds are called. We went down to the fifth floor to check on Auntie Tina and she was asleep but hooked up to more machines than before. She was pale, her mouth a gaping rictus of surprise. Maybe. The nurse said things weren’t looking quite as good as they had been yesterday. There were tiny letters written on her cast, notes to herself it seemed. Cancel book club. Cancel tai chi. Cancel hair appointment. She wouldn’t be going home today after all.

The nurse was wondering if Tina’s kids were on their way from Vancouver and my mom said yes, my niece is coming, and Tina’s husband, but what’s going on?

She said Tina would need to have surgery quickly, in a day or two, to ward off a massive coronary. They were getting her ready for open-heart surgery, injecting her with some type of fluid and keeping her calm, and trying to find an available surgeon to do the operation. But the nurse seemed relaxed about the whole thing. It’s like this sometimes, she said to my mom. Your sister is strong and otherwise very healthy so the operation will be very routine. She’ll probably be able to drive her van back to Vancouver after a few weeks.