Miriam Toews - All My Puny Sorrows

My mother says that when she reads my rodeo stories she gets sad thinking that I have so much sadness in me that I make all those teenage heroines so sad. Why can’t they ever get the first-place ribbon? she asks. I tell her no, no, everyone has all that sadness in them, it’s not just me, and the writing helps to organize it, so no big deal. I text Nic back: When? He texts back immediately. Tomorrow . Claudio’s putting out a press release, saying it’s exhaustion and a request for privacy. My mother says ah, okay, but still … I wonder about you carrying that sorrow around with you, where it came from … and I finally understand what she needs to hear and that she’s talking about not just me but Elf too and I tell her that my sorrow was not created by her, that my childhood was a joyful thing, an island in the sun, that her mothering is impeccable, that she is not to blame.

I’m alone with Elfrieda. The sun is disappearing. The day before the day before my father killed himself he took my hand in his and said Yoli, it feels to me as though the lights are going out. We were sitting by a fountain in a park at noon.

Nic sat with Elf for hours and has gone home now. He’s furious because a neighbour of theirs saw Elf being loaded into the ambulance covered in blood and told a few other neighbours and now a reporter has called Nic asking about Elf’s condition. My mother and my aunt are also at home, resting. I tell Elf that we’re all meeting for dinner at Colosseo and that I wish she could be there with us. The tube is still in her throat and she can’t answer but if she could what would she say? I ask her if she can imagine life getting better. I ask her if her heart is broken. If life is torturing her. I tell her that I would help her if I could but I can’t. I don’t want to go to jail. I don’t want to kill her. I put my hands over my face in the half-light of her room. I’m afraid and when I think of my fear my knees start shaking again but the sound of her breathing machine is comforting and rhythmic. I offer to sing and a corner of her mouth moves, barely. I don’t know what to sing. I think for a minute and Elf looks at me as if she’s saying well? What’s it gonna be? I sing “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” from Jesus Christ Superstar . I’m dying of fear. Elf and I used to belt this one out together, a passionate ballad sung by Mary Magdalene about her new crush, Jesus. She’s a prostitute, jaded, and can’t believe how this barefoot, bearded guy undoes her. She wants him and she tries to normalize the idea of wanting to date Jesus by claiming he’s just another man, after all. I sing it quietly while the light fades and Elf disappears into the darkness of her glass room. Finally it’s completely dark in the room and I’ve stopped singing and the only sound is the artificial breathing of the respirator. Elf picks up the pad of paper lying on her stomach and writes something on it and passes it to me. How do you go on? she has written. I squint at the words for a minute or two. I hold them up to the tiny red light on her respirator to get a better look. I pass the paper back to her. She shakes her head and I return the pad of paper to her stomach. We both close our eyes and time passes. Five minutes? Half an hour?

Elf, I say, are you awake? Her eyes stay closed. Elf, I say. She doesn’t respond. I look at my cellphone. There are no messages. I look at the nurses through the glass. They’re in their brightly lit area, talking and laughing and taking notes but I can’t hear them. Elf, I say. Open your eyes. Still no reaction. I put my head gently down onto her stomach where the glass piano is. Elf, I whisper. I don’t know what to do.

We are silent.

Elf, I whisper again. How do you think Nic feels? Do you know what you’re doing? You’re killing people.

Now Elf shifts slightly and puts her hand on my head. I sit up and look at her. Her eyes are open. For once, she looks alarmed. She shakes her head, no, no, no.

Does it make you happy to think of Nic or mom finding your dead body? I’m whispering now too. I’ve become her torturer and I’m so ashamed. I’m so angry and so afraid. I don’t want the nurses to hear me. Elf twists my hand hard and it hurts. Her hands are strong still, from playing. I twist back and she makes a small noise that manages to escape the tube that’s rammed down her throat.

A nurse comes into the room and says oh, she hadn’t seen me sitting there in the dark. She’s new so we introduce ourselves. She turns the light on and sees that both Elf and I are crying and apologizes and switches it off again. I’m overwhelmed by this small act of compassion. She offers to come back in a bit.

No, no, I say, it’s fine now.

I don’t look at Elf. I can feel her begging me not to leave and I pick up all my stuff and say okay, well, see you later, not sure when I’ll be back. I don’t look at her, she can’t speak, she can’t protest because of the tube, and I walk out of the room.

I get as far as the parking lot and then I run back to Elf’s room. I rush in and apologize and she puts her arms up to hug me. I catch my breath as she holds me. I sit up after a minute or two and she taps her heart. You love me? I say. She nods. But there’s more that she wants to say. I pick up the pad of paper that has fallen to the floor and she writes that she is sorry too. She doesn’t want to kill anybody but herself. I know, I say, I nod. I’m afraid of dying alone, she writes, and I nod again. Then she writes the word Switzerland on the paper and circles it and passes it to me. I smile and fold the paper until it’s the size of a pill and put it back into my bag. Let me think, I tell her. Give me time to think.

I WAS DRIVING DOWN CORYDON AVENUE to the restaurant to meet Nic and Tina and my mom for dinner. I had forgotten where we had agreed to meet. I hoped that seeing the restaurant sign would somehow jog my memory so I drove slowly, like a parade float, peering at all the possibilities. But I was thinking about death. If I could get my hands on some barbiturates. And Seconal? There is some combination that if you take with milk … or not with milk. I couldn’t remember the recipe for death. Years ago when I was trying to make a living as a freelance journalist I went to Portland, Oregon, to write a magazine story on assisted suicide. While I was there my cousin Leni’s body was found in the Fraser River where she had pitched herself once and for all into the void. It involved a certain combination of drugs. What was it? Had I made a reservation for six p.m. or seven p.m. at Colosseo? Had I remembered to ask if we could sit on the terrace? Was it Seconal, that active ingredient? I’d have to check my Portland notes, if I still had them.

Nic worked in health science, maybe he could somehow fashion these necessary drugs from bits and pieces of whatever was lying around the office. Hey Nic, can you cobble something together that’ll knock her out for good? Or somehow we could find a doctor willing to bust into a hospital stash and steal them? Or maybe it’s not even stealing if a doctor takes them. Call of duty. Or a willing pharmacist? Maybe a gang. There are a thousand gangsters in Winnipeg with access to illegal drugs. Or guns.

All right, so the brain is an organ that’s made to solve problems so if the problem is life and its unlivability then a rational, working brain would choose to end it. No? I didn’t know what to do. It felt like someone was throwing darts at the side of my head, five seconds apart. It sounded naive to me now and selfish and fearful to say you must live, you must want to live, you have to live. That’s your one imperative, the single rule of the universe. Our family had once been one of those with normal crises like a baby (okay, two babies) born out of wedlock. Our family had once been one of those typical ones that only thinks about killing each other in the abstract. Now I couldn’t think or write. My fingers hated me. I was afraid that when I went to sleep I’d wake to find them wrapped around my throat.