Miriam Toews - All My Puny Sorrows

I went to Nic and Elf’s house and parked in their driveway. It was finally dark. I watched Nic through the window for a minute as he sat, also in darkness, staring at his barely glowing computer. It was time for us to talk about Elfrieda, our nightly conference that would leave us no closer to a solution but would at least reinforce our solidarity in the cause of keeping her alive. We sat in the living room among piles of music books and Mandarin novels, Nic’s latest fascination, sipping herbal tea from the last of their clean cups, and exchanged thoughts like: She seemed slightly more upbeat today, more willing to engage in conversation, didn’t you think? Well, yeah, maybe … What about that fresh cut? That fall? Do you know, is she taking her meds? She says she is but … The nurse told me today that we weren’t supposed to bring her food from the outside, that if she was hungry she was supposed to get out of bed and walk to the communal eating area at regular mealtimes. Yeah … but she won’t. She’ll just starve. Well, they won’t let her do that. No, you’re sure? Hmmm …

We still hadn’t heard back from the “team” of psychiatric home care workers and were beginning to wonder if it actually existed. We wanted to know how often the team would be able to visit or how much it would cost. We agreed that the cost didn’t matter and Nic said he’d call the contact person again the next morning from work and I offered to try once again to meet with Elf’s psychiatrist, which was like trying to meet with the head of the Gambino family. I wasn’t even sure if he existed. Or at least, I said, I would talk to one of the senior nurses who was familiar with Elf’s case history, and basically beg anyone who would listen not to let her go home until we had this other plan in place or until she really, seriously had turned a corner, as they say.

And what about the tour? I said.

Fuck the tour, said Nic.

Yeah, I said. I agree with you. But we’ve got to deal with it. She’s worried about letting everyone down.

I know. Nic stood up and grabbed a piece of paper off the piano. Messages for Elfrieda, he said. Jean-Louis, Felix, Theodor, Hans, Andrea, I don’t know half these people.

Have you told Claudio?

No. No … He’s been leaving messages though. The Free Press wants to do a profile for a music anthology, and BBC Music Magazine wants to do something as well. Ha!

Nic returned to the table and leaned his chin on folded hands. His eyes were bloodshot. His whole face seemed kind of bloodshot. He smiled, because he was brave.

Tired? I asked.

Epically, he said.

He got up to put on a record, vinyl was his thing now. He liked the step-by-stepness of it, the process. He held the record the way people hold records, not with his fingers but with his palms. He blew on it. The music was a soft whisper, one acoustic guitar, no voices. When he came back to the table he asked me to look at his eyes.

They’re seeping, he said. Like I have an infection or something.

Pink eye? I asked.

I don’t know, he said. They always seem to be running, just clear liquid, not pus. I lie in bed and all this liquid dribbles out the sides. Maybe I should see a doctor, or optometrist or something.

You’re crying, Nic.

No …

Yes. That’s what they call crying.

But all the time? he asked. I’m not even conscious of it then.

It’s a new kind of crying, I said. For new times. I leaned over and put my hands on his shoulders and then on the sides of his face in the same way that he’d held his record.

We sat quietly for a while then Nic told me Elf was supposed to be doing a run-through in three weeks, two days before the opening. I said there was no way she would be ready and he agreed because all she talks about is not being able to do the tour, and the sooner concerned parties got the news the better. Then I told him to just call Claudio, he would deal with it, the way he’s always dealt with it.

I’ll phone Claudio if you want, I said.

Well, maybe we should hold off a bit.

I think he needs to know now.

Listen, I know what Claudio will say, said Nic. He’ll say, let’s wait and see. He’ll think she can come out of it again, like she did last time. He’ll say performing saved her life and that’s what it will do again.

Maybe.

And maybe he’s right and she should be pushed a little bit and she’ll be okay.

Yeah, I said.

But … she obviously doesn’t have to do the tour if she doesn’t want to do the tour, said Nic. It doesn’t matter in the big picture. I’m just saying that she might suddenly decide she really wants to do it and then …

Yeah, so we shouldn’t cancel now, I said.

Nic’s head fell to the table, slowly, like a snowflake. His arm was stretched out beneath it, his empty palm in the shape of a little cup.

Nic, I said. Hey Nic, you should go to bed.

We did then what we always did at the end of our talks. We sighed, rubbed our faces, grimaced, smiled, shrugged, and then we talked about a few other things, like the kayak that Nic is building from scratch in his basement, and his plan to finish it soon and in springtime carry it on his head down to the river which is only a block away and paddle upstream to somewhere, that will be the hard part, and then drift downstream all the way home again.

I left him sitting at his computer, his face lit up like Boris Karloff in the ghostly funnel of the monitor’s light. I wondered what he was looking at. What sorts of things do you google when your favourite person in the world is determined to leave it? I got into my mother’s car and checked my phone. A text from Nora in Toronto: How’s Elf? I need your permission to get my belly button pierced. Pleeeze???? Love you! Another one from Radek inviting me over. He’s a sad-eyed Czech violinist that I met when I was walking with Julie on her delivery route the last time I visited Winnipeg. (He was actually the reason why I accompanied her on her route. She had mentioned that she delivered mail to a really handsome European guy who also seemed lonely and desperate. Like you, Yoli, she’d said.) He had come to Winnipeg to write a libretto. But who hasn’t? It’s a dark and fecund corner of the world, this confluence of muddy waters, one that begs the question of hey, how do we set words to life’s tragic score? Radek and I don’t speak the same language, not really, but he listens to me patiently, comprehending, well, I don’t really know what — that if he sits tight for an hour or two listening to me ramble on about my failings in a language he doesn’t really understand he’ll eventually, inshallah, get laid?

Just now I’m worried that “get laid” is a term no longer used but I’m too ashamed to ask Nora for an update. I’m at an age where I’m stuck between two generations, one using the term “getting laid” and the other “hooking up,” so what are you supposed to call it? I sat in the little kitchen of the attic apartment Radek is renting on Academy Road and talked to him about Elf, about her despair, her numbness, her “hour of lead” as Emily Dickinson puts it, and my house-of-cards plan to make her want to live, and about futility and rage and the seas on the moon named Serenity and Cleverness and which one would he prefer to live next to (Serenity) and did he know there was a glacier somewhere in Canada called Disappointment and that it feeds into Disappointment River and that the Disappointment River empties into the Disappointment Basin but that there is no Disappointment stopper in the basin? And Radek nodded and poured me wine and made me food and when he walked past me on his way to the kitchen to stir the pasta or the rice he kissed me on the back of my neck. He is very pale with black wiry hair that covers his entire body. He jokes in broken English that he is not quite fully evolved and I tell him that I admire him for not burning it or ripping it all away like North Americans who are terrified of hair and fur in general. Body hair is the final frontier in the fight for the liberation of women, Radek. I’m so exhausted . He nodded, ah, yes?