Miriam Toews - All My Puny Sorrows

I stood in the foyer of the church and spoke quietly to Nora on my cellphone. She thought she had broken her toe doing something weird on her friend’s mom’s treadmill and was distraught because she was sure she wouldn’t be able to dance in her final recital which was in a week. And Will had to get back to New York to start his summer job and her dad was still in Borneo. She was crying. Can you stay at Zoe’s place for a few days until I get back? I asked her. No, she said, Zoe’s parents were taking her to Churchill to see the polar bears, or something like that. What about with Anders? I asked. He’s stayed at our place enough times. That would be weird, she said, can’t you just come home?

WHEN I GOT BACK TO TORONTO I sat in my big brown chair for three hours staring at the wall. Nora’s toe wasn’t broken after all, only sprained, so she could do the final recital. She soaked her feet in warm water. She was always standing on one leg, the other one stretched into some unimaginable distorted pose. She asked me when Dan was coming home from Borneo. I don’t know, sweetheart, I said, and watched her wilt a bit, her shoulders slump and her eyes go dark. Do you think he’ll be back for the recital? she asked.

The ants were gone. Will had cleaned up the house and the three of us had Chinese takeout and watched some of the World Cup on TV before Nora went off somewhere with Anders and I drove Will back to the airport. I hugged him for a long time, overly long probably, in his opinion, but he didn’t try to break away. Are you okay? he mumbled, and I said yes, more or less. I love you, he said, you’re a good mother. Oh my god, I said, thank you! My eyes filled with tears instantly. You’re a good son! We stopped hugging and stood apart, smiling. And you’re a good sister, he said. The tears fell, it was hopeless. I apologized and Will waved it off. He took my hand and held it for a few seconds. And you’re a good brother! I added. Okay, mom, he said. I have to go. I’ll see you in a month or so. I’ll call tonight. I watched him amble through security, say a few casual words to the guy behind the conveyor belt, hand over his boarding pass for inspection, take off his belt and put it in a bin, all these gestures made with such precision, such calm. Total control. Or it seemed so. Was he a man now?

Nic and my mother were spending most of their time at the hospital with Elf. Our conversations were brief, like pit stops. Updates. We’re all alive? We’re all alive. Any changes? No changes. We were all in a bit of a stupor, a state of suspension. I spent hours on my computer researching our Swiss option and trying to figure out what I should do. I didn’t talk about it with anybody in Toronto. I went to the bank and asked a man in a small room if I could get a loan for twenty thousand dollars. I figured that would be more than enough to get us there and me back and pay for the “treatment” and a hotel, and even the cost of cremation and an urn. I put a pile of Rodeo Rhonda books on the desk. He asked me if I had collateral and I said no, I have nothing. I told him I hoped to get an advance on my next Rodeo book soon and I’d be able to pay them back then. He said I should come back and talk to another person next week with a copy of my book contract. I told him I didn’t have it yet, that my agent was working on it. I told him that I also had another book in the works (except I said boat accidentally, I have another boat in the works) but that I hadn’t finished it, and the guy said well, without a contract showing that I had funds coming in — from books or boats — there was no way that he could give me a loan.

Elf had money but it was in a joint account with Nic and he’d notice if such a large chunk of it went missing. I phoned him and asked him if Elf had mentioned the idea of her coming to Toronto. No, he said, but if she wants to, why not? His voice was quieter than usual. He didn’t ask for details. He just said yeah, why not? Why not? I told him about the boat. I was obsessed with the boat. He said as far as he knew Elf wasn’t really into boating but maybe, why not?

I sent an e-mail to my publisher and told him Rodeo Rhonda number ten would be on his desk in less than a month. I wrote like crazy. I had a bit of money left from an arts grant I’d received for the harbourmaster book and a really tiny amount left from the sale of our house in Winnipeg. Every day I called Nic and my mom for updates. Nic went to the hospital, usually twice a day, and said as usual not much had changed, Elf’s psychiatrist is never available to talk, and my mom had stopped going quite as often because she just couldn’t bear it, there was no change, the staff berated Elf continuously for not following the programme and lectured my mother on tough love and threatened to electrify my sister’s brain with shock therapy — and I called the nurses’ desk to beg them and to be reassured that they wouldn’t let her go. The truth was, though, that she was dying in the hospital. The nurses told me they wouldn’t let her go. They told me to make myself some tea and calm down. I asked if I could speak to Elf and they said only if she comes out of her room and answers the phone herself in the rec area. Sometimes I would call the nurses’ desk late at night and ask if Elfrieda was there. One time they told me yes, she’s here, you need to go to bed. I was trying to tell the nurse over the phone don’t tell me I need to go to bed but somehow managed to stop at don’t — and then apologized.

I made arrangements with Nic to call me from his cell when he was visiting Elf, and he put the phone to her ear and I talked about our plan, that I was still figuring things out, what to do, that either way I’d see her soon, I had a bit more work to do and then I’d be back in Winnipeg. While I talked she breathed, I think, but didn’t speak. Then one time I called and she spoke, suddenly. Her voice was clear and strong.

When are you coming to get me, Yoli? she said.

I lay in bed a lot during the days trying to work on my Rhonda book. I wondered if maybe Mexico would be a better option, a better place to die. It would be cheaper to get there. I imagined a hammock swaying gently like a cradle, a return to infancy, to the void, and then to nothing. Mexico was more about death than Switzerland was, in my mind. It was an earthier place, more chaotic and mysterious. It was a country that celebrated the Day of the Dead by partying in cemeteries. Switzerland was about sharp pocket knives, marking time and remaining neutral. Nora made us smoothies and we ate paleo meals, her new fad diet, a lot of meat and nuts, like cavemen. Her recital was sweet and elegant and moving. On the way home afterwards she and Anders spilled Slurpees and dropped things and groped at each other awkwardly in the back seat of the car. If Will had now “reached the shores of manhood” as my father would have said, Nora was still riding that gloriously messy wave of adolescence out there on the open sea, the shoreline only barely visible to the naked eye. It was spectacularly hot in our apartment and the branches from the cutaway trees were beginning to grow back and engulf us once again in green. We were moving backwards in time, into the darkness.

I called the hospital relentlessly at all hours of the day and night. She’s there? She’s here. She’s there? She’s here. You won’t let her go? We won’t let her go.

I CALLED ELF AND TOLD HER over the phone that soon I’d have the money to go to Zurich. I’d use credit cards. But the next morning my mother called to say they were giving her a day pass. They were letting her go home to celebrate her birthday, a concept I found curious in these circumstances. Or maybe Elf hadn’t regretted being born, necessarily.