Miriam Toews - All My Puny Sorrows

She did eventually come home again from Norway and a bunch of other places. She moved back home with my parents and stayed in bed and cried for hours at a time or stared at the wall. There were dark circles around her eyes and she was sombre, listless and then strangely exuberant and then despondent again. By that time I had moved away from East Village to Winnipeg and had two kids with two different guys … as a type of social experiment. Just kidding. As a type of social failure. And I was scrambling around trying to make money and to study and master (and fail at mastering) the art of being an adult.

I’d visit my parents and Elf, with my little kids in tow, Will was four and Nora was a baby, and I’d lie in the bed next to Elf and we’d look at each other and smile and hold each other while the kids crawled around on top of us. She wrote letters to me during that time. Long, funny letters about death, about strength, about Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath and the intricacy of despair on pink stationery in coloured felt-tipped markers. Then, after a few months, she slowly got her health back. She started playing the piano again and doing a few concerts and then she met a guy, Nic, who adored her and now they live together in Winnipeg, which means Muddy Waters, number one on the Exotic City Index — the coldest city in the world and yet the hottest, the farthest from the sun and yet the brightest, where two fierce, wild rivers meet to join forces and conquer man. Nic took piano lessons from Elf for a few months. That’s how they met, but Nic admitted later that the only reason he took piano lessons from her was so that he could sit next to her on the little bench and have her gently place his fingers on the keys. He even bought her a new piano bench, although as soon as she saw it she commanded that he rip off its soft padding — What the heck is that doing there? — as if playing music is about comfort.

Nic loves Elf’s odd requests, each one is like a holiday for him. Nic is a very precise guy. He believes in textbooks and manuals and recipes and hat and collar sizes. He can’t stand the wonky looseness of “small,” “medium” or “large.” When Elf suggested he learn to play around the notes he almost lost his mind to bliss and the craziness of it all. And he’s not a Mennonite, which is important — in a man — for Elf. Mennonite men have wasted too much of her time already, trying to harvest her soul and shackle her to shame. Nic is a medical scientist. I think he’s trying to rid the world of stomach parasites but I’m not exactly sure. My mother tells her friends he’s working on a cure for diarrhea. She’s skeptical of cures. And Nic, she’ll say, I do see dead people. And I converse with them. They’re as alive to me as the living, perhaps more so. How does “your science” explain that? Nic and Elf always talk about living in Paris because there’s some kind of lab there where he could work and because they both love to speak French and argue politics and wear scarves all year round and console themselves with old-world beauty, but so far they’re still here in Muddy Waters, the Paris of the Northwest Passage.

Elf has beautiful hands, not ravaged by time or sun because she doesn’t go out much. But the hospital has taken her rings. I don’t know why. I guess you could choke on a ring if you decided to swallow it, or pound it against your head for several weeks non-stop until you did some damage. You could throw it into a fast river and dive for it.

How are you feeling right now? Janice is saying.

If I squint across the room at Elf I can change her eyes into dark forests and her lashes into tangled branches. Her green eyes are replicas of my father’s, spooky and beautiful and unprotected from the raw bloodiness of the world.

Fine. She smiles feebly. Dick Riculous.

I’m sorry? says Janice.

She’s quoting our mother, I say. She says things like that. Chuck you Farley. You know. She means ridiculous.

Elfrieda, you’re not being ridiculed, okay? says Janice. Right? Yoli, are you ridiculing Elf?

No, I say, not at all.

And neither am I, says Janice. Okay?

Neither am I, says a voice unexpectedly from behind the curtain, her roommate.

Janice smiles patiently. Thanks, Melanie, she calls out.

Any time, says Melanie.

So we can safely say you are not ridiculous, Elfrieda.

Well, it’s called self-ridicule, whispers Elf, but so quietly that Janice doesn’t hear it.

Was it good seeing Nic and your mother? asks Janice. Elf nods obediently. And isn’t it great to see Yolandi? You must miss her now that she’s not in Winnipeg.

Janice turns to look at me with some kind of look, I don’t know, and I feel the need to apologize. Nobody moves away from Winnipeg, especially to Toronto, and escapes condemnation. It’s like the opposite of the Welcome Wagon. It’s like leaving the Crips for the Bloods. Elf rolls her eyes and touches the stitches in her head with her finger, one after the other. She’s counting them. Some clanking sounds are emanating from the hallway and a man is moaning. I want you to know that you’re safe here, Elfrieda, says Janice. Elf nods and looks longingly at the slab of Plexiglas next to her bed, the window.

How about if I give the two of you some time to yourselves, says Janice.

She leaves and I smile at Elf and she says come here, Swiv, and I get up and walk two steps to her bed and I sit on the edge of it and flop on top of her and she smoothes my hair and sighs under the weight of my head. I go back and sit on my orange vinyl visitor chair and blow my nose and stare at her.

Yolandi, she says, I can’t do it.

I know, I say. You’ve made that point.

I can’t do the tour. There’s no way I can do the tour.

I know, I say. It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry. None of it matters.

I really can’t do the tour, she says.

You don’t have to do anything, I reassure her again. Claudio will understand.

No, says Elf, he’ll be upset.

Only because you’re not … because you’re here … He’ll just want you to feel better. He knows about all this stuff. Friend first, agent second, that’s what he always says, right? He’s weathered your storms before, Elfie, he’ll do it again.

And so will Maurice be angry, says Elf, he’ll go crazy. He’s been planning this for years.

Who’s Maurice …?

And remember Andras, the guy you met in Stockholm … when you saw me play?

Yeah, so?

I just can’t do this tour, Yolandi, says Elf. He’s coming all the way from Jerusalem.

Who is?

Isaak. And a bunch of other people.

So what? I say. All those guys will understand and if they don’t it doesn’t matter. It’s not your fault. Remember what mom used to say? “Shred the guilt.” Remember?

She asks me what that horrible sound is and I tell her I think it’s dishes falling onto the concrete floor in the corridor, but she asks me if somebody is being shackled out there in the hallway and I say no, of course not and she begins to tell me that it happens, she’s seen it, that she’s terrified, have I heard of Bedlam, and she doesn’t want to let anybody down. She says how sorry she is and I tell her nobody is angry, we want her to be okay, to live. She asks me how Will and Nora are, my kids, and I tell her fine, fine, and she covers her face with her hands. I tell her that she and I could mock life together, it’s a joke anyway, agreed, okay? Agreed! But we don’t have to die. We’ll be soldiers together. We’ll be like conjoined twins. All the time, even when we’re in different cities. I’m desperate for words.

A chaplain comes into the room and asks Elfrieda if she is Elfrieda Von Riesen and Elf says no. The chaplain peers at her in wonderment and then tells me he could have sworn that Elf was Elfrieda Von Riesen, the pianist.