Miriam Toews - All My Puny Sorrows

That shit’s inedible anyway, man, one of them said. I’d kick the tray over too if I was more coordinated.

Yeah, said the other guy. Yeah!

I said inedible, said the first guy.

I know, man. I heard you the first time.

Over all the other voices?

Ha, yeah, funny.

That’s what put you in the nuthouse?

No, it was stabbing that guy who broke into my shed.

Not the actual stabbing but the voices telling you to, though, right?

Yeah, you got it. The knife was real, though.

Yeah, that’s too bad. That’s the unfortunate piece of the story.

I liked these shuffling men. I really liked “unfortunate piece of the story.” I wanted to introduce these guys to Elf. I started to pick up the trays but the nurse said I shouldn’t. She’d get somebody, an orderly, to do it. I joked with the nurse that perhaps my sister’s lack of awareness of her surroundings was a genetic thing I shared with her, ha, but I received no laugh, no smile, remembered the description I had once read of an angry woman’s mouth resembling a pencil with two sharpened ends, and left. As I took the stairs down, two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate, I silently apologized to Elf for leaving her there on her own and made a mental list of the things I’d bring the next day: dark chocolate, egg salad sandwich, Heidegger’s On Time and Being (we do not say time is and being is, we say there is time and there is being), fingernail clippers, clean panties, not scissors or gutting knives, amusing anecdotes.

I drove away in my mother’s beater Chevy, careening down Pembina Highway, a bleak section of asphalt and derelict strip malls, blasting towards nothing, really, other than le foutoir , as Elf put it, of my life. She loved to use elegant-sounding French words to describe the detritus, a way to balance things out maybe, to polish up the agony until it shines like Polaris, her guiding light and possibly her true home.

I saw a bedding store with a sale sign all lit up in the window and pulled into the parking lot. I stood for ten minutes staring at pillows — down-filled pillows, synthetic fibre — filled pillows and other pillows. I took a few from the shelves and squeezed them, held them against the wall and tried to rest my head on them, feel them out. The salesperson told me I could test them on the testing bed. She laid a protective piece of fabric over the pillow and I lay down and rested my head for a minute. The salesperson told me she’d be back after I’d had time to test the others thoroughly. I thanked her and closed my eyes. I had a short power nap. When I woke up, the sales clerk was standing next to me, smiling, and for a second I remembered childhood and a certain peace that had accompanied it.

I bought Elf a shiny purple pillow the size of a rolled-up sleeping bag with silver dragonflies embroidered into the satin. I got back into my mom’s car and drove to the drive-through beer vendor at the Grant Park Inn and bought a two-four of Extra Old Stock, then stopped at a 7-Eleven and bought a pack of cigarettes, Player’s Extra Light. Whatever extra thing I could buy, I would. I bought an extra-big Oh Henry! bar too and drove to my mother’s high-rise apartment overlooking the Assiniboine River where I hunkered down with my supplies all ready to wait it out. It was spring breakup time when the ice on the river begins to thaw and crack and large frozen slabs grind and scrape against each other and make a horrible screaming noise as they’re dragged downstream by the current. Spring does not come easily to this city.

I stood on my mother’s balcony clutching the purple pillow with the silver dragonflies, shivering and smoking, plotting, thinking, trying to crack Elf’s secret code, the meaning of life, her life, the universe, time, being and drinking beer. I walked around the apartment looking at things belonging to my mother. I examined a photograph of my father taken two months before he died. He was watching Will play baseball in a park. Little League. He had on his big glasses. He looked relaxed. His arms were crossed and he was smiling. There was a photo of my mom with Nora when she was a baby, a newborn. They were looking deeply into one another’s eyes as though they were passing important secrets back and forth telepathically. I looked at a photograph stuck to the fridge of Elf performing in Milan. She was wearing a long black dress hemmed with staples. Her shoulder blades poked through the fabric. Her hair was really glossy. It was flopping down around her face as she bent over the keys. Sometimes when Elf plays, her ass lifts right off the bench, just an inch or two. She called me after that gig from a hotel, sobbing, telling me how cold she was, how lonely. But you’re in Italy, I’d said. Your favourite place in the world. She told me her loneliness was visceral, a sack of rocks she carried from one room to the next, city to city.

I dialed my mom’s cellphone to see if she could get service on her ship. Nothing.

There was a note on the dining room table. It was my mother telling me to please return her DVDs when I got a chance. I knew she was totally burned out from trying to keep Elf alive. The day before she flew to Fort Lauderdale to get on that ship she was bitten by a Rottweiler belonging to the crazy neighbour down the hall and she hadn’t even noticed until the blood began to seep through her winter coat and she had to get stitches and a tetanus shot. At night it was all she could do to collapse in front of her TV and watch every episode of every season of The Wire , methodically, like a zombie, one after the other after the other, the volume cranked because she was half deaf, falling asleep while a messed-up kid from Baltimore spoke to her from the TV set, comforted her in his way and told her what she already knew, that a boy’s gotta make his own way in this motherfuckin’ world.

The morning she left for the airport my mother accidentally pulled down the shower rod and curtain, the whole works. She showered anyway and when she came out she was smiling, her game face on, shiny and new and ready for an adventure. I asked her how it had worked without a curtain, wasn’t it … and she said no, no, it worked well, no problem at all. When I went into the bathroom there was an inch of water on the floor and everything, the toilet paper, the toiletries and makeup on the counter, all the clean towels, the artwork done by my kids, everything, was soaked. I realized that the idea of “working well” was a relative one for us and that in the context of our present lives my mother was right, it was absolutely fine, no problem. Elf was actually now safe, sort of, safer anyway while she was in the hospital than at home where she was alone most of the days while Nic was at work, so it was a good time for my mother to disappear for a couple of weeks and get some rest.

I stood on my mom’s balcony and listened to the ice breaking up. It sounded like gunfire, a mob scene playing out over a track of roaring animals. The moon was full and hanging low like a pregnant cat. I could see lights in the houses across the river. I saw people dancing. I could make them invisible with the tip of my finger and one eye closed. I phoned the hospital and asked to speak to Elf. I paced outside on the balcony while I waited for the hospital’s main switchboard to connect me to psych. I made the dancing couple appear. Disappear. Appear.

Hello?

Hello.

May I speak to Elfrieda?

Is this her sister?

Yes.

She appreciates the call.

Oh, great. But can I talk to her?

She’d prefer not to.

She’d prefer not to?

Yes.

Can you bring the phone to her?

We’d rather not.

Well, but.

Why don’t you try again later.

Can I speak to Janice please?