All My Puny Sorrows (12 page)

Do you think you’re still suffering from your grandparents being massacred in Russia? I ask her.

Am I suffering? she asks. It was just my grandmother. She couldn’t run because she was nine months pregnant. My grandfather made it with the other kids.

Do you think that all that stuff can still affect us even now?

She shrugs and takes a big haul off her illicit cigar.

LONG HUGS AT THE AIRPORT
. We have missed each other. One of us is slightly tanned and smells like coconut and is wearing a T-shirt with a Scrabble tile on it with the letter
P
. We don’t know about tomorrow. I smell fear and realize that it’s coming from me. It feels like I don’t have quite enough skin, that parts of me that should be covered are exposed. And we hold on to each other for longer than usual. On the way home we stop in on Nic, it’s too late to go to the hospital to see Elf, and my mother tells us of her latest adventure at sea and we laugh a lot, too much, and Nic sits on Elf’s piano bench
while we talk, occasionally turning around to plunk on the keys tunelessly, and then we all head home to our beds. But strange things happen in the night. I have a dream about Elf. She’s been discharged but nobody can find her. She’s not at home. We can’t reach her. Then I dream that grass is growing everywhere inside my house, it’s tall, silky grass. It’s coming up through the stairs. I don’t know how to get rid of it and I’m worried. Then, in my dream, the solution comes to me: do nothing. And in an instant my anxiety is gone and I’m at peace. I also have a dream that I have a stone angel like Margaret Laurence’s, the same one, and I have to take care of it, keep it safe and warm. In my dream the stone angel lies beside me in my bed, the blanket pulled up to her chin, her eyes perpetually staring up at the ceiling.

I wake up and call the nurses’ station at the hospital and ask if Elf is still there. They tell me she is. I lie in bed for a while listening to the ice breaking up, and hear my mother moving around in the living room. I get up to see if she is okay. When she sees me she tells me she has a bit of jet lag from the trip and can’t sleep. She is sitting at the dining room table playing online Scrabble with a stranger in Scotland. I tell her I met her cop friend and she frowns. He’s ambitious, she says. To be ambitious, in her opinion, is the lowest a person can sink. I hear a trumpet sound the beginning of a new game. The Holy Bible, King James Version, is sitting on the table beside her computer. I ask her if she’s been reading the Bible and she says yeah, well, you know with all of this … She makes a dismissive gesture. This life, I think she means. She tells me she has decided to read Psalms One but hasn’t liked it. She doesn’t like the way it talks about the ungodly as being like chaff in the wind, blown about, lost, so she reads Proverbs One instead but she doesn’t like that
one much either. She doesn’t like the way it orders us to seek out knowledge and wisdom because … obviously!

She tells me the only reason she is reading the Bible right now is that she’s been communing with her dead sister Mary who has somehow indicated to her, from the grave, that she should read the Bible more often. I nod and tell my mother to say hi to Aunt Mary from me next time they talk. I wonder if that’s the real reason she’s reading the Bible or if this evening she needs hope and solace and is looking to that oldest of friends, her faith.

I ask her if she wants to play a few rounds of Dutch Blitz, the only Mennonite-sanctioned card game, because instead of sinful-connoting things like clubs and hearts and diamonds and spades on the cards it has ploughs and buckets and wagons and pumps and because it’s a game based on speed and concentration, not sneakiness, and the small room glows when she smiles.

My mother sits in the torn orange chair and I sit perched on the edge of Elf’s bed. Elf lies smiling, her stitches have dissolved, and she has washed her face and brushed her hair. There’s been a change according to Janice. She tells us that she had a long conversation with Elf that morning and that she is showing signs of improvement. My mother asks what improvement means and Janice says it means that Elf has eaten her breakfast and taken her pills. In the past my mother would have rejoiced at these tiny victories but today she nods and says hmm, so she’s doing what she’s told to do. I know that this doesn’t please my mother. She believes in the fight, in sparks and pugilism, not
meek subservience. On the other hand, she wants my sister to eat and take her medication. But wants Elf to want it herself.

I don’t know exactly what happened, Elf tells us, but I woke up feeling like a different person. I think I’m ready to do the tour. I’m going to call Claudio. I want to play tennis again. And maybe Nic and I will move to Paris.

If ever there was a delayed reaction for the ages this is it, a vast, forlorn space like the Badlands, a no man’s land, universes between her words and my mother’s and my response. My mother and my sister smile at each other like it’s a contest and I freeze. Rearguard action, I think. I stare out of the window and reflect on the similarity between writing and saving a life and the inevitable failure of one’s imagination and one’s goals and ambitions to create a character or a life worth saving. In life as in writing as in any type of creation that sets off to be a success, knowable and inspiring.

Really? I say. Paris? That’s so great, Elfie. I can’t believe it.

Her roommate, Melanie, says me neither from behind the curtain.

Elf turns to the curtain and says can I ask you to please mind your own business and Melanie tells her that she’s not here on business.

I leave them and go into the hallway and shuffle like a chain gang over to the little alcove that is fast becoming my favourite nook where I can sit alone and gaze down at the parking lot and out to the fields beyond it. We have a choice, I think to myself. We can take her at face value, as they say, and hope. Or we can assemble that elusive team now and I mean right now because
she’s going home. I know it. She shall be released. I know that if she follows the rules and tells the nurses and the doctors that she’s feeling good, positive, not suicidal, not at all—are you kidding me? and be forced to say goodbye to the majesty of all of this?—that she will be home in time for dinner today.

I call Nic and he doesn’t answer. I go to the nurses’ station and am told that Janice is on her break. I ask if Elf is going to be discharged today and the nurse says who’s Elf and I say Elfrieda Von Riesen and the nurse says she doesn’t know and hasn’t heard.

I go back to Elf’s room and discover my mother singing a song to her in Plautdietsch. It’s called “Du.” Which means You. Elf is holding her hand. It’s a song about loving forever, even with the pain caused by loving so hard, a song she sang to us when we were kids.

Then things happen quickly. Janice comes back into Elf’s room. She’s smiling and she says hello all and tells us that Elf will probably be going home today just as soon as she’s seen the doctor and he gives her the green light. I imagine the doctor as Ben Kenobi passing Elf a sabre. My mother and I together say wow, that’s great, fantastic. Elf smiles at Janice and looks grateful.

Janice sits next to her on her bed and asks her if she’s really feeling well enough to go back home. We all know what she means. Elf says yes, definitely, she wants to get back to Nic and her real life. She’s combing her hair with her fingers. She’s willing to take the medication and will book follow-up appointments with her shrink. She’s ready. And she appreciates everything that’s been done for her while she’s been a patient here. She sounds like she’s giving a rehearsed speech at the Oscars.
I give her a kiss on her cheek and say whew, that’s so great. That’s so great. My mother is sitting quietly with her hand on her heart, her eyes wide.

I’m panicking and confused. Janice says she’ll leave us alone for a bit while Elf gets her things together and I follow her out into the hallway. I ask her if it’s really a good idea that Elf goes home and she says she thinks it is and that she has no choice. She’s been admitted voluntarily, not against her will, so she can leave when she feels like it too. I ask her if it isn’t too soon and Janice says that it’s very important for the patient to feel empowered by being allowed to make big decisions.

Well, I said, a very big decision would be the decision to kill herself and nobody wants to let her make that one, right? Janice agrees and gets my point but says her hands are tied. And they really need the bed. And let’s give her the benefit of the doubt. Let’s just see what happens, she says. And adds that she has a good feeling about it. She tells me that Elf wants to play tennis with me as soon as it warms up a bit and I don’t know how to respond to that.

I try calling Nic on the phone and this time he answers. I tell him that Elf is coming home today and he’s surprised. This was the first he’d heard of it. So what do we do? I say and he says he’ll call that person about the team immediately. He says he’ll leave work early and pick up groceries and meet us all back at the house later in the afternoon.

I go back into Elf’s room and find her up and out of bed, looking for her clothes. I help her put some of her things into a plastic bag and then realize that I’ve misplaced my own plastic bag, the one with my manuscript in it, but I am strangely calm, and I think fine, okay, all right.

But then my mother says hey Yoli, is this yours? She’s been sitting on it. She peeks inside and says oh, is this the new thing? I say yeah and she asks me how many words I have. For some reason this question makes me laugh. I shake my head. Elf tells her the first letter is amazing. My mother waits, smiling, for an answer. I don’t have an answer. She guides me out into the hallway, her hand on the small of my back. She’s so short and she smells so good, like coconut milk. She hugs me in the hallway and tells me everything will be all right. I love that she tells me this again and again but I wonder sometimes if she thinks I’m an idiot. Regardless, she’s my mother and that’s what mothers say. Bob Marley says it too but he says every
little
thing gonna be all right and that strikes me as an appropriate qualifier even if all he was doing was getting enough syllables to match the music. I remember humming that refrain over and over, singing myself to sleep with those lyrics in the days before my father kneeled in the path of a fast-moving train.

That evening we celebrate Elf’s homecoming with spicy Indian food and good wine and Nic’s special stash of Armagnac that my mother gave him for Christmas two years ago. Elf is smiling, a little shy, beautiful and serene, as though she alone holds the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx. Her hands shake only slightly and she’s wearing a pale pink scarf around her throat. She’s put a bit of makeup on the scar above her eye. Her pants are too big on her now but Nic has fashioned some kind of funky rope belt for her to wear. Nic is thrilled to have her home. He is calling her my love and my darling. My mom calls her honeybunch. I would like to give Elf a note right now
that says we promised but I don’t have a Sharpie thick enough to make my point. Nic is talking about Chinese literature and learning Mandarin and Elf is thumbing through a novel he’s taken out of the library for her to read. There’s no mention of Paris or tennis.

Listen! I want to shout at her. If anyone’s gonna kill themselves it should be me. I’m a terrible mother for leaving my kids’ father and other father. I’m a terrible wife for sleeping with another man. Men. I’m floundering in a dying non-career. Look at this beautiful home that you have and this loving man loving you in it! Every major city in the world happily throws thousands of dollars at you to play the piano and every man who ever meets you falls hard in love with you and becomes obsessed with you for life. Maybe it’s because you’ve perfected life that you are now ready to leave it behind. What else is there left to do? But I’m finding it hard to make eye contact with Elfrieda. She’s not looking at me. She barely lifts her head from the novel Nic has given her.

My mother is tired from her trip and basically from all time since Anno Domini but also refreshed and happy just to see Elf at home. Apparently she got stranded out at sea again this time. It happens to her every time she goes to an ocean. She just bobs along on her back enjoying the sun and the undulating waves and then gets too far out and can’t get back and has to be rescued. She doesn’t panic at all, just sort of slowly drifts away from the shore and waits to be noticed or missed. Her big thing is going out beyond the wake where it’s calm and she can bob in the moonlight far out at sea. That’s her biggest pleasure. Our family is trying to escape everything all at once, even gravity, even the shoreline. We don’t even know what we’re
running away from. Maybe we’re just restless people. Maybe we’re adventurers. Maybe we’re terrified. Maybe we’re crazy. Maybe Planet Earth is not our real home. In Jamaica, my mom had to be dragged, laughing her head off, back to shore by three shirtless fishermen after she went flying off a banana boat and couldn’t manage to climb back onto it.

Nic goes into the kitchen to get more drinks and I follow him and whisper what about the team, is it happening? He and I go downstairs on the pretence of getting more beer from the basement fridge and he tells me that this team is more mythical than anything. Apparently, with budget cuts and changes in policy and … He’s speaking but my mind drifts as I stare at the spine of
The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire
, a book lying all by itself randomly on the concrete basement floor as if it has been thrown down in a hurry … It’s not really an option but he’ll continue to pursue other possibilities. I go to the book and pick it up and hand it to Nic. But possibilities of what? I ask him. What are we talking about? He takes the book, says I know, really, and breathes out heavily. In the meantime he’s made arrangements with Margaret, a friend of theirs, to stay with Elf for a few hours every day and my mother too will obviously visit every day. I know, I say, but Elf’s supposedly going on a five-city tour in two weeks. Look at her, do you honestly think she can tour? Have you talked to Claudio?