Miriam Toews - All My Puny Sorrows

I parked my mother’s car on a side street near the restaurant and phoned Finbar on his cell and left a message: if I were to help my sister die, would I be charged with murder? I hung up. I called back and left another message: I’m not planning to kill my sister, don’t get me wrong, I’m just wondering about the legal implications and all that stuff. Can you help me? I realized then that I wasn’t even sure what kind of law he practised. I think it might have been entertainment law.

I closed my eyes and tried to think. What is love? How do I love her? I was gripping the steering wheel the way my father used to, like he was towing a newly discovered planet behind him, one that held the secrets to the universe.

It was Seconal, definitely! That was the drug. And one hundred pills are necessary for a lethal dose. You empty the powder into something soft like yogurt and eat it. The alternative was Nembutal which was more expensive but easier to take because it came in liquid form. All you have to do is knock back a glass of Nembutal and Bob’s your uncle, as my aunt Tina would say. I wondered if my heart would give out from fear. Why are doctors so uncomfortable with helplessness. What if I’m caught and charged with murder? What will I do in jail? Where will Nora live? In Borneo? What if Elf doesn’t really want to die? What would my mother say? My cell went off and I gasped, I was so startled. It was a text from Nora: If Will’s coming, tell him it’s okay if Anders sleeps over . I texted back: It’s NOT okay! Nora again: You said it was okay if we were rehearsing late and the subways stopped . Me: Fine but he’ll sleep on the couch . Nora: Text Will and tell him not to tell Anders he has to sleep in the laundry room . Me: That’s not a bad idea! There’s an old futon in there and piles of dirty clothes to make forts with . Nora: Mom! Me: N, you’re only fourteen years old . Nora: I’m almost fifteen. God. Remember my birthday? Are you senile now?

Dinner passed like a Buñuel film. I kept an eye on my mother, on her face, her hands, expecting eyeballs to be severed, blood to flow. We were on the sunny terrace of a bustling Italian restaurant, my mother was a Pietà , she was Michelangelo’s Mary and my thoughts were murderous. Nic was pouring sangria wearily into a thousand glasses, my mother’s sister was grabbing hands and squeezing, talking fast and then asking what is Twitter?

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.