All My Puny Sorrows

EN

I WAS DRIVING DOWN CORYDON AVENUE to the restaurant to meet Nic and Tina and my mom for dinner. I had forgotten where we had agreed to meet. I hoped that seeing the restaurant sign would somehow jog my memory so I drove slowly, like a parade float, peering at all the possibilities. But I was thinking about death. If I could get my hands on some barbiturates. And Seconal? There is some combination that if you take with milk … or not with milk. I couldn’t remember the recipe for death. Years ago when I was trying to make a living as a freelance journalist I went to Portland, Oregon, to write a magazine story on assisted suicide. While I was there my cousin Leni’s body was found in the Fraser River where she had pitched herself once and for all into the void. It involved a certain combination of drugs. What was it? Had I made a reservation for six p.m. or seven p.m. at Colosseo? Had I remembered to ask if we could sit on the terrace? Was it Seconal, that active ingredient? I’d have to check my Portland notes, if I still had them.

Nic worked in health science, maybe he could somehow fashion these necessary drugs from bits and pieces of whatever was lying around the office. Hey Nic, can you cobble something together that’ll knock her out for good? Or somehow we could find a doctor willing to bust into a hospital stash and steal them? Or maybe it’s not even stealing if a doctor takes them. Call of duty. Or a willing pharmacist? Maybe a gang. There are a thousand gangsters in Winnipeg with access to illegal drugs. Or guns.

All right, so the brain is an organ that’s made to solve problems so if the problem is life and its unlivability then a rational, working brain would choose to end it. No? I didn’t know what to do. It felt like someone was throwing darts at the side of my head, five seconds apart. It sounded naive to me now and selfish and fearful to say you must live, you must want to live, you have to live. That’s your one imperative, the single rule of the universe. Our family had once been one of those with normal crises like a baby (okay, two babies) born out of wedlock. Our family had once been one of those typical ones that only thinks about killing each other in the abstract. Now I couldn’t think or write. My fingers hated me. I was afraid that when I went to sleep I’d wake to find them wrapped around my throat.

I parked my mother’s car on a side street near the restaurant and phoned Finbar on his cell and left a message: if I were to help my sister die, would I be charged with murder? I hung up. I called back and left another message: I’m not planning to kill my sister, don’t get me wrong, I’m just wondering about the legal implications and all that stuff. Can you help me? I realized then that I wasn’t even sure what kind of law he practised. I think it might have been entertainment law.

I closed my eyes and tried to think. What is love? How do I love her? I was gripping the steering wheel the way my father used to, like he was towing a newly discovered planet behind him, one that held the secrets to the universe.

It was Seconal, definitely! That was the drug. And one hundred pills are necessary for a lethal dose. You empty the powder into something soft like yogurt and eat it. The alternative was Nembutal which was more expensive but easier to take because it came in liquid form. All you have to do is knock back a glass of Nembutal and Bob’s your uncle, as my aunt Tina would say. I wondered if my heart would give out from fear. Why are doctors so uncomfortable with helplessness. What if I’m caught and charged with murder? What will I do in jail? Where will Nora live? In Borneo? What if Elf doesn’t really want to die? What would my mother say? My cell went off and I gasped, I was so startled. It was a text from Nora: If Will’s coming, tell him it’s okay if Anders sleeps over. I texted back: It’s NOT okay! Nora again: You said it was okay if we were rehearsing late and the subways stopped. Me: Fine but he’ll sleep on the couch. Nora: Text Will and tell him not to tell Anders he has to sleep in the laundry room. Me: That’s not a bad idea! There’s an old futon in there and piles of dirty clothes to make forts with. Nora: Mom! Me: N, you’re only fourteen years old. Nora: I’m almost fifteen. God. Remember my birthday? Are you senile now?

Dinner passed like a Buñuel film. I kept an eye on my mother, on her face, her hands, expecting eyeballs to be severed, blood to flow. We were on the sunny terrace of a bustling Italian restaurant, my mother was a Pietà, she was Michelangelo’s Mary and my thoughts were murderous. Nic was pouring sangria wearily into a thousand glasses, my mother’s sister was grabbing hands and squeezing, talking fast and then asking what is Twitter?

She asked Nic about the camping expedition he made this last winter and somehow this led us to a discussion of Jack London’s “To Build a Fire.” We all had different theories for why Jack London has the dog abandon the dying man at the end of the story. And for some of us the word “abandon” wasn’t quite accurate. My mother and my aunt hadn’t read the story but they thought about it and in tandem concluded that the dog is going to get help. Nic believed that the dog understands that the man is now dying, freezing to death, and needs to be alone, the way a dog or cat prefers to be alone as it dies. So the dog leaves out of respect, giving the man his space. I didn’t believe in either of these theories. It’s a dog, I said, it senses that the man is dying or dead already so what can it do now? Nothing. It’s over. The dog takes off. It has to find some food and shelter, first things first. Its instinct is to survive. I mean, not to … did Jack London commit suicide? I looked at the rest of them apologetically.

Nic had a strange smile on his face. He was crying. His hand was covering his eyes. His watch was too big for him, the strap was sliding around on his arm and he sometimes had to hold his arm still, in a certain way, to keep the watch from falling right off.

That evening I did many things but came no closer to making a decision about killing my sister or not. I tucked my mother and my aunt into bed with their Kathy Reichs and Raymond Chandlers. They had buried fourteen brothers and sisters. They once had a family large enough to field two entire baseball teams. It was just the two of them now, out of sixteen kids. They had buried daughters and husbands and parents. Their world view was shaped by death, littered with bodies from the jungles of Bolivia to the far reaches of Outer Mongolia. My aunt whispered something to me in Plautdietsch and I thanked her. Schlope Schein, the words she used to repeat to Leni and me before we fell asleep, when we were young and new to this planet and long before my cousin painted her apartment lime green and then threw herself into the ice-cold Fraser River.

I went onto the balcony and phoned Radek and left a message on his machine. I’m sorry for being such a jerk, I said. Feel free to make me a villain in your opera. I’m trying to think of that Czech word you sometimes say but I can’t remember it now. So just … in summary … I’m really, really sorry. I breathed for a while wanting to say something else and then hung up.

I drove to Nic’s house but didn’t get out of the car. He had thin strands of rope tied to his roof and anchored to the ground with sandbags. They were taut, the strands, like strings on an upright bass. I guessed that he was using them to grow something, a beanstalk to heaven or maybe hops for his beer, if hops are things that grow vertically and wrap themselves around twine.

I drove to Julie’s house and met her on her porch. I don’t know what to do, I said. But she’s going to be okay? said Julie. Well, yeah, I think so. Do you have any wine?

We drank the wine and talked late into the night. Her children slept. We walked half a block to the riverbank and saw things, fish maybe, jumping in and out of the water like it was really hot and had startled them. Look, I said, and pointed to the Ste. Odile Hospital, way off in the distance, its towers and wings and giant neon cross. I wonder which window is hers, I said. We walked back to Julie’s house and checked the kids. They were still in their beds, still sleeping.

You can’t actually do that, said Julie when we were back in our chairs on the porch. I know, I said. But can’t I? No, she said. Not really. No. Because I’d be caught? Yeah, she said, but not even that. Because I’d feel guilty for the rest of my life? I don’t know, she said, I’m not sure. Would you do it together with Nic and your mom?

Yeah, I guess so, I said, but …

So you’d all be gathered around and then she’d take the stuff and die …

Yeah …

And this is the stuff that you heard about in Portland?

Yeah …

And then how would you explain that to, like, the cops?

I don’t know, I said. She’d do it herself, take the stuff.

Yeah, said Julie, but you wouldn’t have prevented her from killing herself.

I know …

And not only that, you would have provided her with the stuff to do it.

Yeah, I know …

So you’d be accessories or whatever.

Hmmm, yeah, I said, I know … Julie poured more wine into our glasses and we sat quietly for a while.

I know, I said. Nic and my mom could say goodbye to her and then leave and then I’d give her the stuff myself so it would seem like I was the only one responsible … they’d be totally off the hook. I don’t know …

But my gut instinct is that you shouldn’t do it.

Yeah, but she’ll do it anyway. That’s my gut instinct.

She might not though, I mean, she might … there might be some change.

Maybe, yeah.

Julie went in to answer her phone. I sat on her porch and waited. I banished mental images of my father’s broken body on the tracks by staring hard at the details of Julie’s porch. The door, the peeling yellow paint, the torn screen, the bicycles, the roller skates, the bag of fresh soil, the tiny ceramic elephant. I wondered what a sign would be, a sign pointing in a direction. I decided that if nobody walked down the sidewalk in the next ten seconds it was probably not a good idea to take Elf to Switzerland. It was very late, however, and cold and who would walk by? I counted to ten silently. A cat walked past. Confusing. I checked my phone and saw that Dan had e-mailed me and the subject heading was Remorse. My thumb hovered over various buttons on my phone and then I pushed delete and counted again to ten but before I’d finished Julie had come back outside and poured more wine.

It was late. Neighbours were switching out their lights. Bottles were being smashed in the back lanes. We decided to go inside and play a song on the organ that my mother had inexplicably delivered to Julie’s house in the middle of the night, that rainy night, weeks ago. David Bowie’s “Memory of a Free Festival.”

We both kind of sang, mumbled the lyrics, stumbled through. The sound of the organ fit with the elegiac tone of the song. We knew the song backwards and forwards, just not well. We held back, sang it comically and half-heartedly. I think that we both wanted to give ourselves up to the song, to sing it earnestly and boldly, the way it sat in our memories, but it was so late, the kids were sleeping, we were tired, and it was so late.

I was in the underground car park at the Ste. Odile Hospital screaming at a man who was standing next to his wife who was holding a young child. I had dropped my mother and my aunt off at the entrance to the intensive care ward and was attempting to park the car in a very tight space. I heard a guy saying hey, what the hell is your problem? I got out of the car and asked him what he meant. He said I was really close to his car, if I scraped his car or touched his car with my door or anything, my side-view mirror, there’d be hell to pay.

Hell to pay? I said. Did you actually just tell me there would be hell to pay if I touched your fucking car?

The guy was standing there with his wife and kid and they were all staring at me. I began to speak in a really loud voice. It wasn’t a scream, but it was crazy. I told him that I was about to go upstairs to see if my sister was dead or alive and that the spaces were really small, had he noticed that, and had I actually touched his stupid car, no, I hadn’t, my car was exactly between the lines, look at it, look at it, and had he ever loved a person more than a car or anyone other than himself?

I turned to his wife and asked her how she could be married to a man like this, how she could share a bed with this monster and conceive a child with him, the one she was holding in her arms, and I told her my own mother was upstairs trying to understand why her daughter wanted to die and that my aunt was also upstairs trying to understand why her daughter had wanted to die and that sometimes in life there were things we had to wonder about, things other than cars.

I was close to them. I persisted with my insane line of questioning. How can you be married to this man? Can’t you all see that my car isn’t touching your car?

They stared at me. The woman backed away from me with her child and said something to her husband who eventually shook his head violently to one side like he was trying to get water out of his ear and then walked away and joined his wife and kid.

I watched them leave. I crouched down beside my car, not close to his, and squatted there, trying to get my breath back. Then I went inside and got into the elevator and pushed a button, the one that would take me to Elf and the others. The man’s wife was in the elevator but the man and the kid weren’t there.

I’m sorry, I said to her, about all that. I waved in the direction of somewhere else. I’m sure you’ve got your own thing going on here. I’m really sorry, okay?

She stared at the floor numbers blinking on and off. I wanted to tell her that she had to tell me that it was okay, that she had to forgive me. That was how it worked. I told her again that I was really sorry. I’m so stressed out, I whispered. She stared at the numbers. We were going up. She got out, finally, without having said a word. I watched her walk away, down the corridor, she shifted her heavy purse from one shoulder to the other, and then the elevator doors closed.

My aunt was standing in the little vestibule next to the ICU ward in her purple track suit and her shiny white Reeboks. They were so small, like a child’s. She was holding a pencil. She was doing a sudoku. When she saw me she put the newspaper on the chair and gave me a hug. She told me that my mother was with Elfrieda, that Nicolas had just been there but had to go to work to deal with a valve problem, and that Elfrieda was awake and off the respirator. She told me she was going to get a coffee, did I want one? She asked me if I was all right. I told her what I had done, that I had told an innocent woman that her child had been conceived with a monster, and other things, and she told me it was okay, it was understandable.

But I just wanted that woman to tell me that too, I said.

My aunt nodded and told me that the woman would tell me that but probably not for a while, maybe years, and then only silently, in her thoughts, so I wouldn’t hear it but one day I’d be walking down some street and feel a kind of lightness come over me, like I could walk for miles, and that would be the moment when the woman from the parking lot had suddenly understood my horrible outburst, that it had nothing to do with her or her husband or her child, and that it was okay.

Forgiveness, sort of. Got that? said my aunt.

Okay, I said, so when I feel the lightness coming over me, on a street … I’m walking and …

Yes, said my aunt. Cream and no sugar, right?

She hustled off in her sportswear to find coffee and I looked at my mother and my sister through the glass wall. Elf’s eyes were closed, my mother was reading aloud to her. I couldn’t tell what book it was. She had a new sweater on, it had geese flying on it, she must have borrowed it from my aunt. My sister was so thin I imagined that I could see the outline of her heart. I went back to the waiting area and sat down and took my aunt’s sudoku and tried to finish it. I said how the hell do these fucking things work? to myself, but loudly, and a man looked at me and flared his nostrils. I fell asleep in the chair and when I woke up my mother and my aunt were gone.

I went to see Elf and she was alone in her room, staring up at the ceiling. I sat next to her and took her hand. It was dry and I reminded myself to bring hand cream next time. It smelled like burnt hair in there. I put my head down, way down, like I was trying not to be carsick, and I didn’t say anything. Elf told me that we were a painting.

You can talk! I said.

She told me that her throat was healing. She asked me if I knew of Edvard Munch’s painting The Sick Child. No, I said, but is this it? She said yeah, that it was inspired by Munch’s dying sister. I told her but you’re not dying. Look at you, you’re talking now. She asked me why we had to be humans. I put my head back down, way down, towards the floor.

Okay, okay, she said. Don’t do that. You look so defeated.

I said well for god’s sake, Elfie, how do you think I should look?

I need you to be okay, she said. I need you to—

Are you fucking kidding me? I said. You need me to be okay? Oh my god. Oh my god. Look at you!

Okay, said Elf. Shhhh. Please. Let’s not talk. I’m sorry.

Have you ever thought about what I might need? I said. Has it occurred to you ever in your life that I’m the one that’s colossally fucked up and could use some sisterly support every once in a while? Have you ever got on an airplane every two weeks to rush to my side when I’m feeling like shit and wanting to die? Has it ever occurred to you that I’m not okay, that everything in my life is embarrassing, that I got knocked up twice by two different guys and had two divorces and two affairs that were — are — not only a nightmare but also a cliché and that I’m broke and writing a shitty little book about boats that nobody wants to publish and sleeping around with men who … fucking ooze nicotine into their sheets from their entire bodies so they leave outlines like dead—

What? said Elf.

Has it ever occurred to you that I have also lost my father to suicide, that I also am having a hard time getting over it, and that I also am trying to find meaning in my pathetic, stupid life and that I also often think the whole thing is a ridiculous farce and that the only intelligent response to it is suicide but that I pull back from that conclusion because it creates a certain onus that is unpalatable? Like you’re fucking Virginia Woolf or one of those guys, way too cool to live or too smart or too in tune with the tragedy of it all or whatever, you want to create some bullshit legacy for yourself as brilliant and doomed—

Yolandi, said Elf. I told you—

You have this amazing guy who loves your ass off, an amazing career that the whole world respects and gives you shitloads of cash for, plus you could quit any time and just be labelled mysterious and eccentric and then go live in fucking Paris in the Marais or whatever that stupid … fucking … arrondissement— No, don’t try talking, don’t correct me with your superior knowledge of French, you have an amazing natural fucking beauty that never seems to fade, an amazing house that magically cleans itself—

I have a cleaning lady, Yo, said Elf. You have a very low-grade understanding of despair, by the way.

An amazing cleaning lady, I said, okay? You have a mother who thinks the sun shines out of your ass.

Yoli, said Elf.

Okay, so dad died. Whatever! He loved you! You have … What is your major fucking problem anyway?

Plus, said Elf, I have an amazing sister. But can you … shhhh.

I am not! I said. I’m a total fuck-up! Can you not understand that? Can you not understand that I need your help! That maybe you’re here for a reason which is to be a goddamn sister to me?

Yoli, she said. She sat up in her bed now and was whispering hard, livid. You do not understand a fucking thing, okay? You have had my goddamn help all along. I had to be perfect so you could fuck up and you were more than happy to do it. One of us had to show some fucking empathy, do you know that word, it’s a good one, you should learn it, one of us had to show some fucking empathy towards dad and all his acres of existential sadness. Who was that person? Was it you? Was it mom? No! It was me. Just so you could go waltzing around—

I don’t even know what you’re talking about, I said. Now you’re comparing yourself to Jesus Christ? You didn’t have to be anything. You chose to be on his team.

Because nobody else would be, said Elf.

That doesn’t mean we didn’t have empathy, I said. That means we chose life, or some semblance of it. You happen to be more like him than us — which is lucky for you in a million ways — but that doesn’t mean we didn’t fucking care.

Oh so you’re saying I’m doomed.

I am not saying you’re doomed! You’re saying you’re doomed. I’m saying you didn’t have to be anything. And since when do you swear?

Yes, I did have to be something, said Elf. Have you ever heard of family dynamics? And don’t you think I’m scared shitless?

Well then what is this all about? Why are you here? Some kind of preemptive strike? Do the thing you most fear in order to overcome your fear of doing it in the first place? I’m afraid of killing myself so I think I’ll just kill myself and then I’ll be able to go on living without fear … oh wait! This one’s a little different. The logisitics are a bit—

Yoli, I’m trying to explain to you this incredible pressure I’ve felt to …

Quit then! Stop being perfect! That doesn’t mean you die, you moron. Can’t you just be like the rest of us, normal and sad and fucked up and alive and remorseful? Get fat and start smoking and play the piano badly. Whatever! At least you know that you will eventually get what you want most in life—

What do I want most in life?

Death!

Yoli.

So why don’t you just wait for it to happen. Exercise some patience and all your dreams will come true. Guaranteed. What I want most in life is completely unattainable and everybody knows it.

What’s that? Elf said. Legalized marijuana?

True love, I said. And yet I’m sticking around unreasonably and knowing it’s impossible because who knows? I want to find out. I live hopefully.

Well, Yoli, your logic is skewed. You’re contradicting yourself. You are quite certain that your dream of true love, whatever that is, will never come true but on the off-chance that it might come true you will stick around to find out. I know that my so-called dream of death will come true so therefore, according to your own argument, I should be free to leave. There’s nothing to find out. No big surprises in the wings and nothing to hope for.

That’s not what I said!

I think it is.

Listen, I said. Don’t you think that mom has suffered enough with dad and all that shit and now, what, you love the perverse idea of a fucking encore?

Yoli, that’s so cruel. That’s beyond—

You’re just dying for a curtain call, aren’t you?

I’m not perfect, said Elf. I didn’t mean—

Yeah, I’ll say! I said. If you were perfect you’d stick around. See how life goes, how the kids do, do you ever think about Will and Nora and what this all means to—

Yolandi, shut up now, said Elf. Of course I do. I think about them all the time.

Bullshit! I said. If you thought of them, ever, just once—

Yolandi, stop it.

Stop what? I said. Stop making sense? Stop telling the truth? Sense drives you crazy?

You tell me, said Elf.

We stopped talking for a long, long time. A long time. Nurses came and went attaching and detaching things. Hundreds of thousands of babies were born while we weren’t talking. The continents continued to separate at the same pace as fingernails growing.

Yoli, look, she said finally. Can you just talk to me?

About what? I asked her.

Anything, she said.

Sure, I said, but you ask me to talk like you have some kind of hidden script you want me to follow and then when I veer from it — because I don’t even know what it is in the first place — you’re like no, no, don’t talk. You don’t want me to talk about the past because it’s too painful because there were good times, there was life, and it might persuade you to change your mind and you don’t want me to talk about the future because you don’t see one and so what — okay, I’ll talk about this second. I just inhaled. The sun moved behind a cloud. I exhaled. You’re in bed. A second is passing. Another one. Oh … and another one! I’m inhaling again.

She put her hand up and I took it. I held it, like we were champions of something stupid but hard-won, like a whistling tournament, but at a World Championship level. Just then Claudio appeared at the door carrying an extravagant bouquet of flowers. Ciao! He was wearing a patterned blue scarf, folded flat into his woollen coat. His black leather shoes glistened. Yolandi, you look beautiful! (I love Claudio.) He kissed me on both cheeks. Elfrieda, my darling, and he kissed her forehead just above the new scar. Claudio, I’m so sorry, she said. He spoke to her in Italian, ma cosa ti è successo, tesoro, but she shook her head, no, don’t, as though the language of her heart had no place here or that it reminded her of beauty and love and laughter and those things were bullets now, sharp teeth and shards of glass and cheap plastic toys you step on in the nighttime.

Elfrieda, we are together here, that’s all that matters. He put the flowers on the side table and took her hand. You rescued me from Budapest, he said. He said he liked the way Budapest was beautiful and elegant and crumbling, decaying, plucky and sad, but when he spent too long there, everything started to depress him. And he said he had meetings, lunches, dinners, and he began to feel crumbling, decaying, and sad. He told us he sat in a warm hot spring that exploded from the ground, the way he had as a young man, surrounded by art nouveau architecture, it was like bathing in a cathedral. The sky was pink. The scent of lilacs filled the air. Fat Russian gangsters in tiny bathing suits played chess while their bleached blond wives hung scowling from their necks and arms festooned with gold and silver. Barbarians!

Claudio spoke English well, only a faint trace of his Italian accent. Those Russians are the descendants of the guys who slaughtered the Mennonites, I thought. Now they wear bikini trunks. Then he told us he had been standing on one of the bridges over the Danube and looking down he saw a guy sitting on the riverbank. Is it blue? I said. No, it’s filthy I’m afraid, and not at all blue. Is it beautiful? I asked. Well, yes, it could be described as beautiful.

That’s true, Elf said.

Well there was this tramp, or — do you call them hobos?

Do you know that hobo is an acronym for Homeward Bound? I said to Elf.

Yes, she said. From Woody Guthrie. I’m surprised that you know that.

I also know that there’s a Hobo Museum in Britt, Ohio, I said. I love reading their newsletter, especially posts from Nowhere Man and Mad Mary. When somebody dies they say he caught the Westbound.

Elf smiled. Curious, she said.

Hm, well, Claudio pressed on, I look down at the man who is just sitting there on the riverbank staring at the water, at the sky, at the things around him. He’s holding a can of beer. Then he gets up and picks up an empty bottle lying next to him and walks down one cement stair that goes right into the river, the bottom of his pants are getting wet, and he looks around as if he’s making sure nobody is watching. I thought he was going to jump in and drown himself, but he didn’t go any farther. He leaned over and filled the bottle with some of the river water. Then he went back and sat down again, where he was. I was so relieved. My heart was pounding while I was watching all this from the bridge. But then I thought, oh dear, he’s going to drink the river water — but he doesn’t. He simply sits there for a while, with his beer can and the bottle with the river water, and stares some more. Then slowly he takes the bottle and pours a little bit of it into his beer can. And then he drinks from the beer can. I was watching this and I thought, how awful, don’t drink it. Of course he did, and for whatever reason it upset me deeply and I wanted to get out of Budapest.

He drank the river water? said Elf.

Yes, he added the dirty river water to his beer to make it last longer, Claudio said.

And you thought that was pathetic? said Elf.

Yes, just terribly sad.

He could have drowned himself instead, I said. Do you think that would have been better?

Of course not, but I certainly didn’t want him to have to drink river water.

Well, said Elf, I guess he made—

Yeah, a choice, I said. I get it. I think that he shouldn’t have had to make that choice.

I don’t want to drink the river water, said Elf.

I’d rather drink the river water than drown in it, I said.

I understand that, said Elf.

So you’re saying you have pride and I don’t and that a person with deep character, integrity, all that, would absolutely throw himself in before he resorted to drinking river water? What about the courage you need to understand and accept that you need the beer and you have to make it last longer? What about the grace you require in order to accept the gift of life?

Claudio apologized and said he hadn’t meant to upset us, it was only something he saw.

Elf said she had let everyone down.

Not at all, said Claudio. All the musicians already have other, what do you say, gigs and everyone sends you their love … Antanas, and Otto and Ekko and Bridget and Friedrich.

How is Friedrich?

Oh, the same, trouble with women, money … Claudio laughed but looked stricken.

Is everybody very upset with me?

Of course not! I’m taking care of everything, Elfrieda. You needn’t give it another thought. We’ve got insurance for these things, as you know, it’s nothing more than a small inconvenience, and one that is of no real concern in the grand scheme of things. He made a gesture. Pfft. Non è niente. He offered a few more reassurances and then said he had better go. He had to get back to the airport. When he leant to kiss Elfrieda on two cheeks she grabbed him for a hug.

I’ll walk you out, I said.

Ciao, Claudio, Elf said, and it sounded like a sob. Ciao, ciao.

Claudio and I stood in the hallway next to a large canvas sack filled halfway with bloody sheets.

Let’s walk a bit? I said. He put his arm around my shoulder briefly and asked me how I was, really.

Oh, don’t ask, I said. I’ll cry. But thanks. How are you? Let’s go down to the main floor.

Well, considering … I’m so sorry, Yolandi, I’m just sick over this.

Yeah … She’ll probably be okay, I said. I mean not for the tour but—

No, I suppose not, said Claudio. What a shame. I mean for her, for everybody.

Yeah.

Anyway, Yolandi, you needn’t bother yourself with it. As you know, Elfrieda and I have been through many trials and it is to be expected. It’s nothing.

Sì. Va bene.

Ah, you would like to speak Italian?

No. I mean yes, but …

No, no, I understand, he said.

We walked slowly past doors with numbers on them. In one doorway an old woman in a nightgown stood clutching a large round clock. She had a green handbag wedged under one arm. What time is it? she asked us.

I’m sorry? said Claudio.

What time is it? she said. She showed us her clock.

It’s nearly half past four, said Claudio.

What? she said. What?

It’s four-thirty, I said.

It’s four-thirty? she said. It’s four-thirty!

Yes.

Is this your husband? she asked me. She pointed at Claudio.

No, I said.

Your father?

No.

Your brother?

No, I said. He’s my friend. Claudio introduced himself and held his hand out to shake hers but she was holding the clock tightly with both hands so couldn’t follow through.

You better not be thinking of stealing my purse, she said. She backed away from us into the shadows of her room.

No, no, of course not, said Claudio. I took his arm and pulled him gently away from the woman.

My house key is in this bag! we heard her yell. She had come back into the hallway. She was still holding the clock. Claudio and I turned around, nodded and smiled, and then kept walking. A nurse told her to hush, Milly, hush.

She’s never going back home, I told Claudio.

No? Why not? he said.

Because it’s been sold, I said. Her nephew told me. From here she’ll go to a nursing home.

But she keeps the key to her house, said Claudio.

It’s the only thing in her bag, I said. She never lets go of it, or the clock, even when she’s sleeping.

Yoli, said Claudio. We will find a replacement for those last concerts, there’s still time. Please tell Elfrieda, again, not to worry about anything. Nothing at all. Claudio stopped walking and put his hands on my shoulders and told me he was sorry. Yolandi, he said, your sister is a rare individual. She is like no other person I’ve ever known. You must keep her alive. You must try everything. Everything.

I … yeah, I will … we are … Claudio was wiping tears from his eyes. I patted his shoulder. It’s okay … she’ll be okay, I said. I really think she’ll be okay. I smiled hard.

Claudio hugged me. He said he had to run, he had a car waiting outside, but we’d meet again. His cellphone rang. Arrivederci, Claudio, I said. And thanks, thank you, grazie for the beautiful flowers.

When I came back into the room, Elf said, I know. Don’t be mad. And don’t preach, okay? Gift of life. You sounded like an old Mennonite, like what’s his name.

I’m not mad, I said. I am an old Mennonite. So are you. You’re so resentful of everything.

That’s true, said Elf. That’s very true.

Yeah, but of what exactly?

Elf said nothing.

Hey, I said. I had a dream that I was leaving everyone I knew, that everyone I knew and loved had gathered together on a sunny afternoon to wave goodbye to me. I didn’t want to go then, when I saw them all gathered and was reminded of their love, but I had to go.

Elf asked me, Did you see me in that dream? I said yes, of course, you were there too, smiling and waving. Elf asked me if I had ever read Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I said no. This is the first line, she said, and recited it: “Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.”

Okay, I said, interesting. And then how does it go?

Read it yourself, she said. I can’t believe you haven’t read it. Maybe instead of poring over the Hobo Museum newsletter you could revisit an old classic.

I told her that it seemed like we were having some kind of Karate Kid conversation here, was she trying to impart wisdom or something? You’re still lecturing me on what to read, I said. That’s good. Elf told me her throat was sore, she couldn’t talk anymore. Yeah, okay, sure, I said.

You don’t believe me, she whispered.

Yeah, yeah, of course I do.

We were quiet. Elf drifted in and out of sleep or something resembling sleep. I sat on the chair next to her. I imagined running headlong through the glass walls and shattering them to smithereens. The day before my father died he dreamed that he had somersaulted boyishly through concrete walls. Over and over and over and over and out!

I had my manuscript with me, still in the plastic Safeway bag. I took it out of my bag and wrote A Life Time of Resentment on the cover. Then I crossed that out and wrote A Devotion to Sadness (which according to Chateaubriand in his The Genius of Christianity is “the noblest achievement of civilization” so take that Mennonite busybodies who tell me in sanctimonious singsong and with bland pat-a-cake faces that my father’s suicide was evil) then Smithereens, then Untitled. Then Entitled. Then I crossed it all out and sketched Elf in her bed.

I watched Elf sleep and I watched the nurses scurry around and laugh with each other behind their desk. I knew they couldn’t stand having Elf there, a failed suicide. A nutcase. They were terse with her and no doctor ever came to talk to us. I went to the counter and asked if I could speak to Elf’s psychiatrist. They told me that he had been called away to an emergency. I left the room and went downstairs to find my mother and my aunt and to text Nora in Toronto. I couldn’t find them in the cafeteria and Nora wasn’t texting back. I went back up to Intensive Care and there was Elf’s doctor. He was standing at the nurses’ desk. He was wearing a visor, like a jeweller. He was wearing ankle socks. He was the psychiatrist. I walked over to him and introduced myself and asked him if he had talked with Elfrieda lately.

I tried to, he said, but she wouldn’t speak.

Sometimes she doesn’t, that’s true. But she’s willing to write things down on paper.

I don’t have time for reading while I’m on the job, he said. He smiled and two of the nurses giggled like they were standing next to Elvis in Girls! Girls! Girls!

Yeah, I said. Ha. But I mean—

Look, he said. I’m not interested in passing a notebook back and forth between us and waiting while she scribbles things down. It’s ridiculous.

I know, I said. I understand. It can be laborious but I’m just, I mean, you’re a shrink, right, so you must have seen this sort of thing before?

Of course I understand it, he said, I just don’t have time for it.

No? I ask.

Look, he says, if she wants to get better she’ll have to make an attempt to communicate normally. That’s all I’m saying.

I know, I said, that’s … But she’s a psych patient, right? I mean isn’t she supposed to have some eccentricities? I mean doesn’t she — isn’t it challenging for you? I mean, like, in the field of psychotherapy. Wouldn’t you welcome this opportunity to really apply all of your studies to—

Excuse me, you’re who again? he said.

I told you. I’m her sister. My name’s Yolandi. I honestly believe that her silence is a way of her unfitting herself for the real world, do you know what I mean? You can’t take it personally. It’s her way—

Of course I know what you mean, he said. I’m not sure that I agree with you but of course I understand you. I’m telling you that I don’t have time for a silly game that—

Silly game? I said. Sorry, I said, but did you just call it a silly game?

He was walking away from me. Wait! I said. Wait. Wait, wait. A silly game? The shrink stopped and turned to look at me.

After just one visit with her you’re refusing to help? I said. You’re some kind of esteemed psychiatrist. You’re just fucking dismissing her out of hand right in front of her? My sister is vulnerable. She’s tortured. She’s your patient! She’s begging for help but wants to assert one small vestige of individual power over her life. Surely even a first-year psych student would understand the significance of that stance. Are you not … do you not have any professional curiosity, even? Are you alive or what the fuck?

I’ll have to ask you to keep your voice down, said one of his nurses from behind her bunker. She aimed a semi-automatic machine gun at my head. The shrink spread his legs and folded his arms and stared at me while I ranted. He smiled at the nurse and shrugged and appeared to be enjoying himself, like I was a giant wave he was really looking forward to surfing later in the day after pounding back a pitcher of margaritas with his buddies.

Are you so hostile and impatient and complacent that you won’t even let her communicate with you with words written down on a piece of paper? I said. Why can’t you just do your job? I don’t want to argue but I mean are you honestly telling me that you won’t listen to her?

Listen, said the shrink. You’re not the first family member to take out your frustration on me. Okay? Are you finished? I’m sorry. He walked away, down the hallway and into a room.

Because, I shouted after him, if you won’t help her then who will?

I apologized to the nurses for causing a scene. I’m so angry, I said. I’m so desperate. I’m so terrified. I’m so angry. I don’t know what to do. I repeated these phrases. The nurses nodded and one of them said yes, that’s understandable. Your sister isn’t co-operating and—

I cut her off. I said no, please. Please don’t blame it on my sister. I just can’t bear to hear that right now. She’s not evil. I was whispering. I willed myself not to raise my voice. I can’t take that right now, I said. I didn’t say she was evil, said the nurse, I said she wasn’t— I put my hands up around my head like I was trying on a new pair of headphones. I had lost my mind. I thanked them for their something or other and left Intensive Care.

I walked down six flights of stairs but on the second one my cell rang and I said hello. Hey Yolandi, said the voice on the other end. It’s Joanna. (Somebody from the orchestra.) I just wanted to tell you how very sorry we are about Elfrieda and I’m wondering if there’s anything we can do. I’d like to send something. I just don’t know what. Flowers?

Imagine a psychiatrist sitting down with a broken human being saying, I am here for you, I am committed to your care, I want to make you feel better, I want to return your joy to you, I don’t know how I will do it but I will find out and then I will apply one hundred percent of my abilities, my training, my compassion and my curiosity to your health — to your well-being, to your joy. I am here for you and I will work very hard to help you. I promise. If I fail it will be my failure, not yours. I am the professional. I am the expert. You are experiencing great pain right now and it is my job and my mission to cure you from your pain. I am absolutely committed to your care. (At this point I could hear Joanna saying Yolandi? Yolandi?) I know you are suffering. I know you are afraid. I love you. I want to cure you and I won’t stop trying to help you. You are my patient. I am your doctor. You are my patient. Imagine a doctor phoning you at all hours of the day and night to tell you that he or she had been reading some new stuff on the subject of whatever and was really excited about how it might help you. Imagine a doctor calling you in an important meeting and saying listen, I’m so sorry to bother you but I’ve been thinking really hard about your problems and I’d like to try something completely new. I need to see you immediately! I’m absolutely committed to your care! I think this might help you. I won’t give up on you.

Yolandi? said Joanna. Are you okay?

Sorry, I said, hi. I’m sorry. Sorry.

Are you—

Yeah, flowers. Good, thank you.