Miriam Toews - All My Puny Sorrows

Please don’t let anybody other than family in to see Elf, I said. And you won’t let her go any time soon, will you?

No, of course not! she said. She’ll be here for a while, considering everything that’s happened. And by the way, that was an anomaly, that guy. He said he was her pastor and sailed right on by. I’m sorry.

Oh my god, I thought, the nurse actually apologized. No problem, I said, Elf dealt with it. But please don’t let her go.

We won’t, said the nurse, don’t worry, okay? Her eyes were kind and deeply set. I could have stared at them all afternoon, for the rest of my life.

Okay, thank you, I said, because there’s nobody at her place. Her husband is in Spain and there’s nobody there.

This was a refrain in my family. We were a Greek chorus. How many times would I beg hospitals not to let my people go? Elf and I begged and begged and begged the hospital in East Village not to let our father go but they let him go anyway and then he was gone for good. We are only family. And the doctors are busy packing as many appointments into a day as they can to pay for the next cycling holiday in the Pyrenees. The nurse reassured me. Nicolas, she said, had already talked to her, she knew he had gone to Spain, and she promised that Elfrieda wasn’t going anywhere any time soon. I struggled to stop myself from throwing my arms around her and telling her I loved her.

On the way out of the hospital I checked the messages on my phone. Dan was furious with Nora. Apparently she had somehow broken into his e-mail and put out a mass letter to all of his contacts declaring that he was gay and that it felt so good to finally tell the truth and that he hoped everyone would understand and let nothing change between them. Somehow, my ex implied in his message to me, it was my fault that our daughter had got a bit drunk with her friends and made a “bad choice.”

Those were ALL my contacts , he wrote. Work too. Everyone. And she’s just laughing about it and won’t apologize. Like mother, like daughter .

I texted him back and said but are you gay, really?

He texted back: Are you thirteen years old, really?

I texted back: Also, what work?

He texted back: It has nothing to do with rodeos so perhaps it’s beyond your realm of comprehension .

I texted back: Maybe she’s angry with you for always being in Borneo. How’s the surf? And then quickly turned off my cell.

I googled: can writing a novel kill you? And found nothing useful. I sped to my hippie lawyer’s office — he had a pierced ear and a goatee and lived in Wolseley, the same neighbourhood as Julie — and failed to get out of the car through the driver’s side, swore, slid across and ran inside and said I had four minutes to sign the papers and that nothing in the world would give me more joy than to scrawl my stupid name in triplicate on this particular document. I whipped out my Visa card and said let’s pay for this right now and seal the deal. I guess this is the cost of freedom! My lawyer’s secretary laughed but I could tell she pitied me. I was going insane. I ran back to my car, again failed to open the driver’s door, banged on the window and swore quietly into the wind which was turning into something other than a gentle breeze, maybe into a mistral, the wind that can make you crazy, so that in France you can be acquitted if you kill someone while it’s blowing. I ran around and slid in through the passenger side and sped to Jason the mechanic, my last night’s boyfriend. I drove directly into the garage, threw it into park and once again forgot about the door that never opens and slumped in my seat, defeated.

Jason emerged from under the hood of an SUV and opened the passenger door for me and said come here. I slid out headfirst like a newborn and he hugged me, and I told him about the driver’s door and that I had to be at the airport in twelve minutes to pick up my cousin Sheila and my uncle Frank who were flying in to be with my aunt, their mom and wife, who suddenly had to have heart surgery, and that I’d just officially gotten divorced. Jason rubbed my back. He told me that divorce was one of life’s top stressors — that and a death in the family— because it’s like a death, and that it was okay with him if I cried. He gave me a loaner to pick up my relatives and said he’d have the door fixed later in the afternoon, no worries, no charge.

I had forgotten about Julie. I sped to the Legion on Notre Dame. Horrible music was playing on the loaner car radio but I couldn’t figure out how to turn it off. She was sitting on the curb waiting for me, inebriated and holding on to a bunch of frozen steaks. She got in and I told her I was divorced. I know that, she said. No, but now — I just signed the papers — it’s a done deal. Congrassulations, she said. She tried to turn the radio off.

How does it feel?

To be officially divorced? I asked.

Officially divorced, she said. Those are two awful words. They shouldn’t even be words.

Last night I dreamt I heard a man telling me that a petroglyph dog equals eternal love.

I’ve heard that too, she said. How’s Elf?

Same, I said.

Are you still thinking of killing her? said Julie.

It’s not killing her. It’s helping her.

I know, said Julie, but are you?

Don’t tell anyone, I said. Elf hasn’t mentioned it to Nic or my mom. She just wants me to take her to Switzerland, the two of us.

Oh geez, said Julie, will you? Hey, what’s wrong with your eyes?

I told her I had to track down my one-time philosophy professor, Benito Zetina Morelos.

That sounds like a Bolaño novel, she said. Do you have his e-mail or his phone number? She took my hand and held it. I shook my head and told her I had to go to Kelvin High School and find him at the track, maybe. Tonight, she said, you should stay at my place and let me make a steak for you. I have wine. I think you really need protein. I can’t, I said, I have to get my mom and my cousin and my uncle to the hospital for six a.m., that’s when my aunt is having her surgery. And they’re all staying at my mom’s. Okay then tomorrow night, she said. I don’t think you should do the Switzerland thing. I don’t know, I said. Just because something’s legal doesn’t make it right, she said. Yeah, yeah, I said, but the core of the argument for it is maximizing individual autonomy and minimizing human suffering. Doesn’t that sound right? Are you hot? she said. She held a frozen steak to my forehead.

We drove to the airport and Julie stayed in the car right out front and snoozed with her arms full of meat while I went in to get my cousin and my uncle.

In the airport we hugged each other all at once, a team huddle but with nothing but a Hail Mary left in our playbook. We’d been through all of this before. We loved each other. We fought for each other. When worlds collapsed we were buried in the rubble together and when we were dug out of the rubble and rescued we all celebrated together. There wasn’t much to say about Elf and Tina. We were going directly to the hospital. We all talked at the same time in the car. Sheila about mountains and inoculations because she was both a mountain climber and a public health nurse and my uncle Frank about the toonie-sized hole in his leg and hyperbaric chambers because he was a diabetic and Julie about how she won her meat and me about car rallies in Morocco. I had a plan to join one that was for women only — we would drive from Dakar to somewhere else and sleep in the desert with camels and Bedouin guides. It might take us two months. Julie would be my partner. I hadn’t told her yet. What? she said. We sleep with Bedouin guides? She’d navigate, I said, and I’d drive. We’d take a mechanics course from Jason before we went and we’d be sponsored by Canada Post. This was my plan. My uncle said that considering how I was driving right now I probably had an excellent chance of winning the race and that it wouldn’t take me two months.