All My Puny Sorrows

TWELVE

JASON HAD SUGGESTED I COME to the garage that evening before they closed at nine p.m. I waved goodbye to my mother who was still on the phone and she blew me a kiss. I walked the three blocks to the garage and found a man peering into my mother’s car. All I could see was his curved back and some thinning brown hair. I said hi and he stood up. He was wearing a T-shirt that had an old copy of Jack Kerouac’s The Subterraneans emblazoned on the front of it. Then I realized that he was the Jason I’d known in first-year university at the University of Manitoba, the guy from my CanLit class who borrowed my notes all the time and wore yellow cords and gave me pot as payment. We called him Sad Jason then because his girlfriend had broken up with him and he couldn’t concentrate on anything.

I thought it might be you when you said your name was Yolandi on the phone, he said. It’s not like there’s a plethora of them around.

And then all I could think of was my younger self, the person I was before I’d become all of these other selves: a soon-to-be-divorced woman in her forties who’d clumsily left her husband even if for reasons I’d thought were valid at the time, a grotesquely undiscerning lover, an adult daughter who nagged her elderly mother about the use of clichés, a sister who couldn’t say the right things to save a life and thereby was flipping over to becoming homicidal, a writer who bogusly claimed to know about ocean freighters and a “death tourist.” I stood there in Sad Jason’s garage and wept until he awkwardly came over to where I was standing and gingerly put his greasy arms around me and said hey, it’s okay, don’t cry. It’s just a car.

Jason was in the process of getting a divorce from his wife who had stopped seeing him in a romantic light and he was currently sort of dating a clown who worked for the Calgary Stampede luring bulls away from fallen cowboys. I told him that I’d been involved in rodeos too, in a way, and that I was also divorced, almost, living in Toronto, here to see family and things weren’t going too well at the moment but you know, tomorrow and tomorrow and … He suggested we pick up a six of something and drive out to the floodway to catch up and to watch the river rise and the northern lights that the CBC had said were happening tonight at the edge of town. Well, they’d be happening elsewhere, he acknowledged, but we had to get away from the lights of the city in order to see them.

Jason and I had within a moment become something we hadn’t foreseen back in that CanLit class a hundred years ago. We were so old. The word no flooded my senses and all of my better instincts and I said yeah, sounds good. In his car I asked him if he still smoked pot and he said no, not so much. Well, lately, because of the relationship thing, but otherwise not really. We drove into the darkness of southeastern Manitoba.

We parked by the floodway, under the stars, and drank beer and talked about the past. Does it all kind of kill you? he said. It does, I agreed. We tried but failed to see the northern lights. I sat back in the passenger seat and put my legs up on his dashboard and I closed my eyes. It smelled like vanilla in his car. He had a million air fresheners hanging from his rear-view mirror. He told me he was sorry about all the dog hair in the car. It was really dark. We weren’t listening to music. He sat with his hands on his thighs and peered out the windshield. He rolled down the window and then asked if it was too cold. I asked him if he’d ever been to a port city like Rotterdam. He said yeah, actually, he had, good times, good times.

I apologized for being strange. He told me it was okay, it’s how he remembered me. He kissed me very softly on my cheek. I kept my eyes closed and smiled. I took his hand and put it on my leg and he asked me about my boyfriend or my husband or you know. He stroked my leg. Same as you, I said, this is nothing. He stopped touching me and kissing me. I opened my eyes and apologized again for saying the wrong thing, a stupid thing. I told him it was nice to talk. He didn’t say anything but he nodded and then I started kissing him and he didn’t stop me. I asked him if he remembered coming over to my squalid apartment in Osborne Village with a suitcase full of knives. He said oh, was I planning to carve you up? I said no, you were cooking! Oh, yeah, he said, he remembered. We were clumsy and straightforward. I sat on his lap and then felt around for the lever on the side of the seat and pulled it up so that he fell backwards fast, horizontal now, and the moon lit up one corner of his face. Sorry, sorry, I said. I imagined that we were young and horny and very happy.

Afterwards he asked me why I’d asked him about Rotterdam. I told him that I was trying to write a book in which, at the end, one person was marooned at sea, helpless, and the other person was standing on the shore, hurt and mad. He told me that sounded really good, interesting, and I thanked him. Then, driving back into the city, he said no offence but wouldn’t he be able to explain to her that he was trapped on this boat? In these times with technology and stuff? A text or whatever? I know, I said, but for some reason he can’t. Okay, said Jason, but what reason? I told him that I was having structural problems and he said he told me he thought my structure was amazing and worked really well and I said ha ha, thanks, yours too. (Oh boy.)

I think the main thing, he said, is that it should really rock.

What should rock? I asked him.

The story, he said, it should just move really fast, like pedal to the metal, so it doesn’t get boring. Plus, it’s hard to write, right? You want to go in, get the job done, and get out. Like when I worked for Renee’s septic tank cleaning.

I considered this and realized that it was the best writing advice I’d received in years. In all my life. When he dropped me off and asked if maybe we could see each other again while I was in the city, grab a coffee or something, a movie, I told him I wasn’t sure how long I’d be there. I hadn’t told him about Elf. Cool, he said, let’s keep in touch. We kissed. I went into the lobby and waved goodbye to him through the tinted window, smiling and letting out a barely whispered monosyllabic admonishment to myself. Stop.

I took the stairs two at a time all the way up to my mom’s place, repeating my incantation — stop, stop, stop — with every angry footfall and trying to remember what my friend in Toronto had told me recently: that in ten years time shame will be all the rage, talking about it, dissecting it and banishing it. We’d had a bit of an argument then because I told him that it was ludicrous to think that we could just talk our way out of shame, that shame was necessary, that it prevented us from repeating shameful actions and that it motivated us to say we were sorry and to seek forgiveness and to empathize with our fellow humans and to feel the pain of self-loathing which motivated some of us to write books as a futile attempt at atonement, and shame also helped, I told my friend, to fuck up relationships and fucked-up relationships are the life force of books and movies and theatre so sure, let’s get rid of shame but then we can kiss art goodbye too. But now, as I climbed these concrete steps holding my hands and fingers to my nose to check if I reeked of sex or motor oil, I longed for a life without shame.

I found my mother playing online Scrabble with a woman from Romania whose code name was Mankiller. The games are timed and she had to make a move quickly. But Yoyo, she said as I moved past her, Nic’s going to Spain tomorrow. I nodded and told her I knew that.

I went to my room and googled purchasing Nembutal in Spain but only found references to injectable Viagra. Then I googled euthanasia for mentally ill and found out that in Switzerland it’s legal but hasn’t been exercised that much. It’s legal to help a person kill herself in Switzerland if there isn’t any selfish motivation behind it. And you don’t have to be a Swiss citizen to be protected under the law. Aha! Now I understood why Elf had begged me to take her there.

I weighed my options. They were heavy. Get Elf to Mexico and buy Nembutal in a pet store on a dusty side street of a sleepy, non-touristy town and then make sure she opens the bottle herself and that I don’t encourage her in any way. Although the definition of encouragement might be cloudy under these circumstances. Get Nic and my mom to agree to this plan. Or: Take Elf to Zurich and do it all legally except that it might not work if the doctors decide that her pain is not great enough to warrant a mercy killing. Get Nic and my mom to agree to this plan. Suddenly I was feeling hopeful. But I wasn’t sure if I should be hedging my bets, telling Elf that I was thinking of going with her to Switzerland or Mexico but also encouraging her to live. If I told her about the Nembutal plan she’d have only one thing on her mind, and even if there had been only tiny amoeba-sized hopes inside her, of wanting to live, they’d disappear immediately in the light of this new possibility. Also, there was nothing stopping her, when she was released from the hospital, from going to Switzerland or Mexico on her own, except that it would defeat the purpose of not being alone in her last moments of life and if Nic wasn’t on board he’d notice she was gone and that money was missing from the account and he would try to stop her. What would she do?

I heard the trumpets sound the end of my mom’s game with Mankiller and the slap of her laptop computer closing. Then she was there, standing in the doorway. How are you, sweetheart? she asked. What have you been up to? Having unprotected sex with your mechanic and researching ways to kill your daughter. Not much, I said, got the stuff from the car. Doing some work.

My mother talked to me about Canadian mines in Honduras, the travesty of it all, her rage against the world having found this particular nook to make itself at home in tonight. Tomorrow it would be something else, Muslim gardeners from Oshawa being held without trial in Guantanamo and languishing in solitary confinement, or any situation that was either randomly awful or awful but entirely outside the ability of an ordinary mortal to stop it from happening. The mines are destroying these villages, she said. Destroying these communities. And stripping the land of all its resources. Prime Minister Harper condones it and the wealthy owners of the mines just fly over from time to time in their helicopters laughing. I know, I said, it’s unbelievable. It’s horrible.

It is! she said. Our tax dollars are being spent on a sanctioned and systematic destruction of the Honduran people and nobody—

I know, I said. It’s really … it’s so awful. I could feel my right eyelid twitching. I lay down on my bed and closed my eyes. I ran through the symptoms of depression I’d read on a sign attached to the back of a city bus, part of some campaign to educate the public on mental illness. A sense of unreality, I thought. Yes.

Sorry, honey, you’re tired, I know.

You are too, aren’t you?

I guess I am.

I picked up the book lying next to me on the bed and flipped through it. Hey, listen to this, I said. Have you heard of this Portuguese guy called Fernando Pessoa?

Is he with the Jays?

No, he’s a poet, this is his book, but he’s dead now. He killed himself.

Oh brother, she said. Who hasn’t.

But listen to this: “In the plausible intimacy of approaching evening, as I stand waiting for the stars to begin at the window of this fourth floor room that looks out on the infinite, my dreams move to the rhythm required by long journeys to countries as yet unknown, or to countries that are simply hypothetical or impossible.”

My mother said yup, that’s about the long and short of it, isn’t it?

She changed the subject. She told me that Elf’s smile was like my father’s. It’s so surprising. I forget about it sometimes and then whoah!

I know, I said. She has an amazing smile.

Yoli, said my mother.

Yeah? I answered. I put my arms around her. She was sobbing, suddenly, shaking. A keening wail I’d never heard from her before. I held her as tightly as I could and kissed her soft, white hair.

She’s a human being, my mother whispered.

We held our embrace in the doorway for a long time. I agreed with her. I said yes. Finally my mother was able to catch her breath and speak. She couldn’t bear to see Elf in the psych ward. That prison, she said. They do nothing. If she doesn’t take the pills they won’t talk to her. They wait and they badger and they badger and they wait and they badger. She began to cry again, this time quietly. She’s a human being, she said again. Oh, Elfrieda, my Elfrieda.

We walked to the couch and sat down. I held her hand and struggled to come up with words of consolation. I got up and told her I was going to make us each a cup of tea. When it was finished brewing I brought two cups of camomile tea to the living room. My mom was lying on the couch with a whodunit on her chest. Mom, I whispered, you should sleep now. The hospital again bright and early tomorrow. Isn’t Auntie Tina being released? My mother opened her eyes.

It’s called discharged. Yeah, she is.

I’d rather be released than discharged, I said.

True, she said, it sounds more agreeable.

I went to bed and lay there awake and thinking. I returned Nora’s text about the lawyer: He’s my friend. His name is Finbar. Just checking up on you. I’m not JW. I returned the text from my ex-husband: Yeah, I can sign them tomorrow sometime when I’m not at the hospital. Your timing, man. Then I texted Nora again: And keep crumbs off the counters. I texted Will: If the Swede wants to spend the night, fine. The heart wants what the heart wants. He texted back: Are you drunk? Eventually I heard the shower begin to spray water all over the bathroom, a shower curtain I said to myself, a shower curtain, get one, and I drifted off.

That night I had a dream that I was in a small village called Tough and I was somehow responsible for writing the soundtrack to the town. I was summoned to the home of an older couple who lived in Tough and they sat me down at their old Heintzman piano and said well, get started. I told them no, this shouldn’t be me, this should be my sister. They patted my back and smiled. They brought me a jug of ice water and a glass. Hay bales surrounded the town and they were supposed to be some kind of wall or barrier. They were supposed to keep the citizens of Tough safe. When I said but they’re only hay bales, the older couple, kind people who shuffled around their house purposefully, told me not to worry about it but just to focus on the score. I asked them where we were, in which country, and they pointed at the piano and reminded me of my task. There was no time for small talk.

Early, early in the morning Nic called me and asked if I could drive him to the airport and then just take his car back to my mom’s for her to use. Normally he’d take the bus he said, but he was running late and still not even sure he should go and if I didn’t come to take him he’d probably just go back to bed with a bag of weed and cry himself to sleep.

I picked him up and he told me that the driver’s door wasn’t working properly and had to remain closed all the time. To get into the driver’s seat you had to slide over from the passenger side, over the gearshift and all that jazz. I told Nic I’d have it fixed because I didn’t think my mom would be able to do all that manoeuvring every time. On the way to the airport he rubbed his face and asked himself out loud what he was doing. He put his leg up on the dash and rested his elbow on his knee and his head on his hand and closed his eyes.

You’ll have fun, I said. It’ll be good to see your dad. Are you meeting him in Montreal?

I won’t have fun, he said. But it’ll be a break. No, I’m meeting him in Madrid. I wish I was going with Elf.

Exactly, I said. You need a break. You’ll check e-mail, right?

Every moment, so if there’s any change …

Yeah, I’ll let you know, don’t worry. What did the nurse say yesterday?

Not much, just that Elf would be there for a while. We were silent, driving, staring.

You know, I said, does she ever talk to you about Switzerland?

What do you mean? he said. No, I don’t think so. Why?

Just that she’d like to go or anything like that?

No, he said. Never. She wants to go to Paris.

You mean like live there with you? I asked.

I could get work there, he said. And we both speak French …

I said that would be amazing. So she talks about that? About wanting to go when she’s better?

Often, said Nic. I mean, I don’t know when it’ll happen, but we like to think about it. She just has to get through this thing. She has to get the right meds. It can take months to determine the correct dosage and combination.

Or years, I said. And providing she’s even willing to take them.

Which usually she isn’t, he said.

Which usually she isn’t, I agreed.

He took a book out of his bag and wrote something on one of the pages.

What are you reading?

Thomas Bernhard, he said. The Loser.

Nic, I said, that’s not even funny.

I know, but I am, you asked. Oh, can you give her these? He opened his backpack and gave me a sheaf of papers. They’re e-mails from people. For Elf. Fans. Friends. Claudio sent them. Nic turned away to look out the window. We were close to the airport, following the little airplane signs, through industrial zones and windowless gentlemen’s clubs and massive potholes.

Does anybody ever fix this city? I said. Nic said nothing. We got to the airport and again thanked each other for the efforts being made to help Elf. We hugged and said goodbye, au revoir and adios. All he had was a backpack and it looked half empty. I wondered if he’d bothered to pack anything at all besides his Bernhard and his favourite Chinese authors. How many days again? I called after him. He was walking through revolving doors, trying to negotiate his way through with his pack. He held up both hands like he was under arrest. Ten.

I drove back to my mom’s place. I parked in visitor parking and went running up the stairs to her apartment. Ready to go? I asked her. Nic’s off? she said. Yup, I said, back in ten days. The driver’s door is broken but I’ll try to get it fixed this afternoon. Then I remembered the divorce papers that I’d agreed to sign that afternoon. Could the signing wait one more day, I wondered, after sixteen years of marriage?

When we got to the hospital we couldn’t find Elf. The nurse at the ICU desk said she’d been moved to the Palaveri Building, Psych 2 which was buildings away across the campus or whatever hospital grounds are called. We went down to the fifth floor to check on Auntie Tina and she was asleep but hooked up to more machines than before. She was pale, her mouth a gaping rictus of surprise. Maybe. The nurse said things weren’t looking quite as good as they had been yesterday. There were tiny letters written on her cast, notes to herself it seemed. Cancel book club. Cancel tai chi. Cancel hair appointment. She wouldn’t be going home today after all.

The nurse was wondering if Tina’s kids were on their way from Vancouver and my mom said yes, my niece is coming, and Tina’s husband, but what’s going on?

She said Tina would need to have surgery quickly, in a day or two, to ward off a massive coronary. They were getting her ready for open-heart surgery, injecting her with some type of fluid and keeping her calm, and trying to find an available surgeon to do the operation. But the nurse seemed relaxed about the whole thing. It’s like this sometimes, she said to my mom. Your sister is strong and otherwise very healthy so the operation will be very routine. She’ll probably be able to drive her van back to Vancouver after a few weeks.

We left my aunt sleeping, for the time being, and went off in search of Elf. We took an elevator to the basement and walked through yet another hospital tunnel, baffled and angry. My mother was exhausted but trying to tell me more about Honduran mines. Each step was killing her but there was no place to rest, it was just a smooth empty tunnel like the large intestine of a starving person. I walked ahead of my mom, a little frantic and looking for the door that would take us up to the Psych 2 building. I called to her and my voice echoed. Mom om om om om. She stood still in the centre of the tunnel, she was tiny, an inch tall, and put her hands on her hips. Trouble lights were strung along the ceiling of the tunnel and cast an orange glow on everything. I jogged back to her and asked her how she was doing. She nodded and smiled and took big breaths.

I didn’t tell you about how much water they’re using, she gasped. She was referring to the mining companies.

I honestly don’t know where the door is, I said. She nodded again, smiling, like a mortally injured field commander sending silent, brave messages to his men to go on without him, there was a war to fight. Like the words on Yeats’s grave at the foot of Benbulben in Sligo county: Cast a cold Eye On Life, on Death. Horseman, pass by. All we could do was take small, slow steps towards something that might lie ahead, like a door.

We stopped and started, waiting each time for my mom to catch her breath. Soon I stopped saying things because she’d always respond a bit too enthusiastically, valiantly, and even those outbursts of air, like volleys of ammo, were tiring her out. Finally we saw a door that said Exit on it and I pushed it open and we escaped into a stairwell. We had to take several flights up, out of the basement, to the nearest elevator that would take us to the fourth floor, to the Psych 2 ward, and to Elf.

When the elevator doors opened on the fourth floor, there was Radek! His violin was strapped to his back like an underwater oxygen tank. I asked him what he was doing here and he said he’d come to see Elfrieda. I had to tell her how much her piano has meant to me, he said.

Oh, I said. I could have passed that along. But thanks.

He looked at my mom. I’m Radek, he said, and held out his hand. My mom said she was pleased to meet him and she left us there in front of the elevators. The rumour said that your sister was in the psychiatry department, he said. That it’s serious, suicide.

Who told you that? I said.

I just wanted to meet her, he said, but they told me visiting hours is over. He asked me how I was and put his hand on my shoulder.

For a second I thought you were here to find me, I said. I guess I had forgotten that you’d moved on.

Wasn’t it you who moved on? he said.

Are you planning to serenade her with your violin? I asked. I smiled hoping it would erase the cattiness, the jealousy embedded in the question.

I had only wanted to wish her well, to thank her.

I know, I said. I get it. I’ll tell her.

But how are you? he said.

I’m fine.

Are you? he said. It must not be true then.

I have to go. I’m really sorry for … you know, everything.

All of this. What I said.

Your time will come, he said.

What is that supposed to mean? I said. I had begun to walk away.

I mean your happiness, he said.

Oh, okay, it sounded more like a threat. But thanks, Radek. I’m sorry.

I’m sorry too.

I turned around and walked back to where he was and shook his hand. I know your libretto thing will be amazing.

And your boat book too. Or … rodeo?

Boat.

Ah yes, boat.

We smiled. We said goodbye.

My mom was sitting outside Elf’s room, on a chair near the nurses’ desk, mustering up her courage to be cheerful, an ambassador of hope, and catching her breath. I went in and sat down beside Elf on her bed and said hey, I’m here. There was nothing in this room but two single beds, one empty, and two small desks with small chairs. There was a small, high window with a cage on it and Jesus dying on a small cross over the door. Elf was motionless in her bed, also small, silent, her face to the wall. I put my hand on her bony hip like a lover in the night. She murmured hi but didn’t turn to look at me. Is that you, Swivelhead? she said. I told her that Nic had left for Spain that morning, although she already knew that, that mom was sitting outside catching her breath, that Aunt Tina’s condition had worsened a bit and now she needed surgery. I asked her how she was feeling. She didn’t answer. I have some fan mail for you, I said. I put the pile of papers on her empty desk. She didn’t answer.

Elf, I said, does Nic know you want to go to Switzerland? She slowly turned then to look at me and shook her head.

He wouldn’t let me, she whispered, he wouldn’t take me. Don’t tell him.

Okay, but I’m so … I don’t know what to do.

Won’t you take me? she asked. Yoli, please. She was serious. Her eyes were bullets. I shook my head, no, I’m not sure about that. What about mom? Have you told her? Elf shook her head again and took hold of my arm.

Yolandi, she said, listen to me. Listen very carefully, okay? Mom and Nic can’t know. They wouldn’t let me go. Nic still believes in some kind of medicine that will cure me and mom believes in … I don’t know what exactly, maybe God, or odds, I don’t know, but she’ll never give up. I’m begging you, Yoli, you’re the only one who understands. Don’t you?

Do you mean we would sneak off to Zurich? I asked. Just the two of us? That would never work.

Why not?

Because doctors there have to determine that you’re sane!

I am sane, she said. So you’ve checked it out already?

I googled it.

And it makes sense, right? said Elf.

I don’t know about that, I said. I couldn’t look at her. Her eyes were huge. Her nails were hurting me.

Yoli, she said. I’m afraid to die alone.

Well what about not dying at all? I said.

Yoli, she said. I feel like I’m begging for my life.

Okay but Nic would obviously notice within five minutes that you were gone and he’d find you, he’d figure it out somehow, some kind of paper trail and then he’d hate me and mom would have a heart attack and it probably wouldn’t even work out. It’s just so improbable, Elf, it’s ridiculous. You can’t just sneak off to freaking Zurich in the night. It’s not like a neighbour’s backyard pool—

Yoli, if you love—

I DO love you! God!

I heard our mother speaking in her calm but lethal voice outside Elf’s door. She was telling the nurse that Elf hadn’t seen a doctor in days. The nurse told my mom the doctor was very busy. My mom told the nurse what she had told me the night before, that Elf was a human being. The nurse wasn’t Janice. My mom was asking where Janice was. The nurse who was not Janice was telling my mom that she agreed with her, Elf was a human being, but that she was also a patient in the hospital and was expected to co-operate. Why? asked my mother. What does co-operation have to do with her getting well? Is co-operation even a symptom of mental health or just something you need from the patients to be able to control every last damn person here with medication and browbeating? She’ll eat when she feels like eating. Like you, like me, not when we’re told to eat. And if she doesn’t want to talk, so what? My daughter is more intelligent than the entire psychiatric staff put—

Mom! I said. Come in here. My mom came into the room and the nurse escaped to her post.

Sweetheart, my mom said, and kissed Elf on the brow. Elf smiled and said hi and asked her if she was okay and said she was shocked to hear about Auntie Tina needing surgery.

Oh I’m absolutely fine, said my mom. And Tina will be okay. I had the exact same surgery, remember? After that safari? How are you? Elf shrugged and looked around the shitty room in a type of awe like it was one of the great cathedrals of Europe.

How does the poem go again? I asked my mom.

What? she said. What poem?

That Ezra Pound poem. Your favourite one.

Oh! “In a Station of the Metro”?

Yeah, that’s it, I said. What is it about it that you like so much? I don’t know, said my mom. It’s short. She laughed. Why do you ask?

I don’t know, I said, no reason. I was just curious. I have to sign my divorce papers this afternoon.

The Vegas wedding was legit? said Elf. She turned to our mother. You know about Pound’s fascist leanings, don’t you, mom?

Honey, the nurses want you to eat a little something, said my mom. I didn’t know he was a fascist!

How are the kids? my sister asked.

My mother looked at me.

Good, I think, I said. Will’s occupying some politician’s office today in Toronto protesting a crime bill or something like that and you can watch a live feed of it online. He’s staying with Nora.

What do you mean? asked my mom.

You can watch it while it’s happening, I said. On your computer.

Good grief, said my mom. What channel?

Elf smiled faintly and said to say hi to him and Nora. She asked what had been happening the last time I checked out the live feed of his protest. Honey, is this a hard day for you? asked my mom. We both looked at her. They were batting balloons around and some of them were lying in sleeping bags, I said. The cops came and then left again so who knows. Will said they’ll leave if the cops ask them to. What crime bill? asked my mom. Having to do with prisons and policing, I said. He’s an anarchist now.

Will is? said my mom. Oh no!

No, no, I’m kidding, I said, unsure if I was or wasn’t. I had forgotten about my mother’s Russian association with murderous anarchists. She excused herself to use the bathroom and I whispered to Elf just let me think, okay? And you think too, like really think.

Yo, I have thought, said Elf. That’s all I’ve been doing. Is it not obvious?

I know, I said, but can’t you just think about it a bit longer? Or then stop thinking and start just observing things around you. I can’t do it without Nic being there, definitely not — plus this is so crazy. It’s not—

Why not? said Elf. I’m not his child. I can go with or without his permission. Obviously I want him to be there with us but he would never let it happen. We could go now while he’s away.

No way.

What do you mean just observing? It’s impossible not to have thoughts. Even if they’re superficial that doesn’t mean there isn’t some form of brain activity—

I know, I said, but don’t you want him to—

Hey why don’t I get some lunch from the cafeteria and bring it here, said my mom. We hadn’t noticed she was back from the washroom. We can have lunch in here, the three of us! And I’ll check on Tina on my way back.

They won’t let you, said Elf. I’m supposed to go to the cafeteria at mealtimes.

I’ll hide it, said my mom. I’ll smuggle it in.

Let me go, I said. You can barely breathe. They’ll end up admitting you too. And I have a backpack for stashing the food.

A nurse came in with an enormous bouquet of flowers. These came for you just now, said the nurse. Aren’t they beautiful?

Oh, they are! said my mother. Wow! I nodded and smiled and leaned over to smell them.

From Joanna and Ekko. Is Ekko her husband or something? I asked. Elf nodded. The nurse said she’d try to find a vase big enough for the flowers. I thanked her profusely. I was trying to get her to approve of at least one of our miscreant members.

Well these are a lovely addition to the room, don’t you think, Elf, said my mom. How thoughtful of them!

Look at these blue ones, I said. How do you get blue flowers?

Honey, said my mom. Blue flowers do exist in nature. They’re symbols of something, I think. In poetry.

Oh really? I said.

Of inspiration, maybe, or of the infinite, said my mother. Die blaue blume.

Can you take them out? said Elf. Can you take them away?

I flew into my aunt’s room, said hi, ta-dah! I put the giant bouquet onto her bedside table and she laughed. My goodness! How delightful! she said. They’re from Elf, I said.

I told her I was sorry about the latest developments, that Elf and my mom and I were going to have a quick lunch and then my mom and I would both come back here, to her ward, and visit properly. She waved off any urgency, meh, relax, if your mother can do it I can do it, and laughed again. She was talking about the surgery. She held up her arm, the one with the plaster cast, and said it was really bugging her. Did I want to write something on it? I wrote I love you, Auntie Tina! She looked at it and told me she loved me too. She asked me to get her a pen or a stir stick or something that she could stick into her cast so she could scratch her arm. It was driving her nuts. What are these numbers? I asked her. She told me she had written down Sheila’s and Esther’s cellphone numbers on her cast. Sheila and Esther were her daughters, my cousins. They were older than me and Leni, their sister who died, and often babysat us by giving us giant bags of red Twizzlers as hush money and sneaking out with their boyfriends. Leni and I would wait for them to leave and then go out and wander around town by ourselves until we’d eaten all the Twizzlers and the bedtime siren had gone off at the fire hall. Tina asked me to bring her a Starbucks coffee — but don’t tell the nurses. Just sneak it in. Small black. I told her I was a mule already, no problem, she could count on me.

I went over to the nurses’ desk and asked if they knew when she’d have her surgery. Tomorrow morning at six, they told me. With Dr. Kevorkian. At least that’s what it sounded like to me. I went back to my aunt’s bed. So, tomorrow! I said. I sounded hysterical to myself.

Yup, said my aunt. Going under the knife. They’ve been drawing on my body, mapping it all out. Cut along the dotted line. What a hoot.

I asked her about my cousins, her kids, were they both coming.

Sheila called, she said, and she and Frank are getting here this afternoon.

I quickly e-mailed Sheila from my BlackBerry and told her to send me her flight info and I’d pick them up at the airport. Frank was my uncle, Tina’s stalwart and jokey husband. He could barely walk from diabetes but he was game to travel here to be by Tina’s side. I kissed my aunt and she held me tightly, incredible strength for a pre-op heart patient, and looked me in the eye. Yolandi, she said, give my love to Elfrieda. Tell her I love her and tell her that I know she loves me too. She needs to hear that.

I promised I would and turned to go.

Also! called my aunt from her bed. We are Loewens! (That was their maiden name — my mother’s and Tina’s.) That means lions!

I smiled and nodded — and I murmured to the nurse passing me that my aunt was the king of the jungle so please handle her with care. The nurse laughed and squeezed my arm. Nurses in cardio are far more playful and friendly than they are in psych.

If you have to end up in the hospital, try to focus all your pain in your heart rather than your head.