Miriam Toews - All My Puny Sorrows

I dropped them off at the hospital, told them that my mom was in the psych wing with Elf and Tina was in cardio waiting for them. I’d call my mom on her cellphone in a couple of hours and then come and pick everyone up again and we’d go somewhere and have dinner.

Righto, boss, said my uncle Frank hobbling off to see his wife, while Sheila, like her mother, grabbed me hard and told me we’d get through all of it, we’d fight our way through. I have fifty-six first cousins alone on this side, most of them male, not to mention all of their various spouses and kids, but Sheila is the toughest of them all. She could easily saw off your arm in the wilderness if it was caught in a trap and that was your only way to escape. She fell off a mountain once and lay there with a crushed left leg for an entire day and night until the rescue helicopter figured out how to drop his ladder into the tiny crevice where she had fallen. She told the pilot that she fought off unconsciousness by alphabetizing the first names of every one of her cousins and then going through each one in her mind and describing them to an imaginary audience. She told me she had put me in the S category, for Swivelhead. Sheila’s family and my family are part of the Poor Cousin contingent. We have Rich Cousins who are extremely rich because they are the sons of the sons (our uncles, all dead) who inherited the lucrative family business from our grandfather, the father of Tina and my mother. In the Menno cosmology that’s how it goes down. The sons inherit the wealth and pass it on to their sons and to their sons and to their sons and the daughters get sweet fuck all. We Poor Cousins don’t care at all though, except for when we’re on welfare, broke, starving, unable to buy cool high-tops for our children or pay for their university tuition or purchase massive fourth homes on private islands with helicopter landing pads. But whatever, we descendants of the Girl Line may not have wealth and proper windows in our drafty homes but at least we have rage and we will build empires with that, gentlemen.

Julie came with me to the track at Kelvin High but we couldn’t see Benito Zetina Morelos there, just students sitting on the track smoking pot and acting cool. When do you have to pick up your kids? I asked Julie. I don’t, she said. Mike has them today which is why I allowed myself the smallest of pleasures at the Legion this afternoon.

Let’s go to Garbage Hill, I told her.

Garbage Hill used to be a garbage dump until they planted grass on it and now it’s a place where you can hang out in the summer and toboggan in the winter even though there are giant signs saying No Tobogganing! It had been given some pretty name but nobody remembered it and the sign had been graffitied over. Everyone called it Garbage Hill, even the mayor who wasn’t much of a mayor but more of an auctioneer selling off bits and pieces of the city to the highest bidder. It’s not very high, not much of a hill really, but it’s the highest point in Winnipeg and I thought I needed to get as close to God as I could though for what I wasn’t sure, either to pray to him for mercy or to crush his skull. Or to thank him. This last piece was advice given to me by my aunt Tina when my father died. She told me that even if I didn’t wholeheartedly believe in the existence of God it felt good to close your eyes and make a mental list of all the things you were grateful for.

Julie and I sat cross-legged on the top of the hill in the prickly brown grass and reminisced about a photo shoot she’d done there four hundred years ago when we were triumphant high-schoolers.

Are you tired? she asked.

I’m making a list in my head, I told her.

Of what?

Things I’m thankful for.

Am I on it?

Are you on it! I said.

She closed her eyes and made her own list.

Can it be something as small as discovering that your bread isn’t mouldy after all so there’ll be toast for the kids for breakfast? she asked.

Yes, I said. My eyes were still closed. Right now I’m thanking God for twist-offs.

Oh, good one, she said. And prehensile thumbs.

Are you still drunk? I asked her.

No, she said.

So, I googled it and it’ll cost me—

What did you google?

The Swiss clinic in Zurich.

Oh! Okay.

I googled it and it’ll cost five thousand two hundred and sixty-three dollars and sixteen cents for the treatment and another nine thousand two hundred and ten dollars and fifty-three cents for related costs.

What are related costs? she said.

Medical costs and official fees and a funeral.

But you wouldn’t have the funeral there, would you?

No, that’s true, I’d bring her body back.

But cremated? she asked.

Yeah, definitely. So that costs too, I imagine.

How much does it cost? she said.

I have no idea.

I still don’t think you should do it, she said. I think it’s only for people who are dying anyway.

No, I said, it’s for mentally ill people too — it’s called “weariness of life” and they have the same rights as anybody else who wants to die according to Swiss law. You can argue that she is dying. She’s weary of life, that’s for sure.

We looked at the city, the sky, ourselves. Julie smiled and said my name. I said hers. I don’t know, she said.

I don’t want her to die, I said, but she’s begging me. She’s literally begging me. What do I do?

Julie shook her head and said she didn’t know. Then she suggested that I wait a bit, see if the treatment or pills would work for her this time, just wait it out. I could do that, I agreed, but was afraid they’d let her go and that would be it, she’d be gone.

But this whole Zurich thing seems so improbable, said Julie.

I know, I said, but it’s not, it’s possible, and I could do it for her. I should do it for her.

Well, not necessarily, said Julie. Just wait a bit, see what happens.

Twenty-one percent of the patients at the Swiss clinic are patients who aren’t physically terminally ill but who are weary of life.

Do you think you could live with yourself if you did it? she asked.

Or if I didn’t? I said.

Either way, she said.

I had to get back to the hospital to pick up the crew and forage for food somewhere because we had to eat after all, again, eating — it seemed so embarrassing and ridiculous at this point— and Julie was going to see her Jungian therapist. Don’t tell him about this conversation, I said. Don’t worry, said Julie, everything is confidential. No but seriously, I said, they can report things to the cops if they think there’s the possibility of a crime or whatever. She hugged me. She promised not to tell anyone about our conversation, including her therapist. You’re trembling, she said. I can feel your heart banging away at your rib cage. We heard voices in the distance. A woman saying okay, you know what, seriously? Fuck you. And a guy saying oh, okay, seriously, you know what? Fuck you . Then the woman: Do you know how much money I spent? And the guy: Do you know how much money I spent?

Wow, said Julie. You’d really want that guy on your debating team. Amazing rebuttals, dude.

Just then a Frisbee came sailing past our heads, missing Julie by a hair.

Oh my god, she said, do you realize that the word dude could have been the last word I spoke on earth? Would you promise to tell people it was something different, for my sake?

I would, I said. You can count on me. Like what word would you like?

Oh, I don’t know, she said. Like presto or something.

You mean like as in now you see me, now you don’t?

Yeah, she said.

Okay, I said. I’ll tell your kids and parents and everyone that your last word was presto .