All My Puny Sorrows

SIX

“THERE WAS SOMETHING, I suppose, like a wild waterfall in the headlong, broken, plunging quality of Mary’s life. I stood and gazed at it roaring through the streets of Paris, visible only to me.”

Which is what Richard Holmes says about Mary Wollstonecraft when she’s in Paris “covering” the French Revolution. It’s in his book Footsteps, in which he follows difficult artistic people through their lives — though long after their deaths — and tries to figure them out, and therefore himself. I’m currently reading it desperately as though somewhere in its pages are contained the directions to hell’s only exit. It was my father and my sister who constantly beseeched my mother and me to read more, to find succour for life in books, to soothe our aches and pains with words and more words. Write it all down, my father would say when I went to him in tears about god knows what little injustice and here, read this, my sister would say chucking some tome at me when I asked her questions like, Is life a joke?

Well, Elf, no. I won’t take you to Switzerland.

Please, Yoli, I’m asking you to do this one last thing for me. In fact, I’m begging you.

No. And don’t say one last thing. That’s so morbid.

Do you love me?

Yes! Which is why!

No, but Yo, if you truly love me …

Does it work that way? Don’t you have to have a terminal illness?

I do.

You don’t.

I do.

Well, no, you don’t.

Yolandi.

Elfrieda! You are asking me to take you to Switzerland to be killed. Are you out of your fucking mind?

Yoli, said Elf. She was whispering. She mouthed the word please and I looked away.

Did Elf have a terminal illness? Was she cursed genetically from day one to want to die? Was every seemingly happy moment from her past, every smile, every song, every heartfelt hug and laugh and exuberant fist-pump and triumph, just a temporary detour from her innate longing for release and oblivion?

I remembered something I’d read, after my father’s suicide, in Al Alvarez’s book The Savage God. It had to do with some of the writers and artists who lived, and killed themselves, under Russia’s totalitarian regime: “And, as we bow in homage to their gifts and to their bright memory, we should bow compassionately before their suffering.”

I asked Elf if she was thinking at all of reasons to stay alive or if she was only trying to figure out an exit. She didn’t answer the question. I asked her if those forces were constantly battling it out in her mind and she said if they were then it was a lopsided fight like Rodney King versus the LAPD. I asked her if she had any idea how much I would miss her. She looked at me. Her eyes filled up with tears. I shook my head. She didn’t speak. I left the room. Then she called my name and I stopped and said, What.

You’re not a slut, she said. There’s no such thing. Didn’t I teach you anything?

I went to the nurses’ station and asked to speak to Janice. She came out of a little office holding tubes of paint and rolls of paper. Art therapy, she said. People love it. Yeah? I said. It’s easier for a lot of our patients to express themselves with these — she waved the tubes around — than with language.

She took me into a little room with a gurney in it and a calendar and a chair that wasn’t ripped. She pointed to the chair and I sat in it and she came over and put her hand on my shoulder. I took big breaths. She asked me how I was doing. I shook my head for such a long time. Just sat there with my index finger pressed to my lips, locking in the words, the way my father used to, staring at the calendar that was still in March when it should have been April and shaking my head. I wondered if she’d offer me a tube of paint and a piece of paper. She didn’t move her hand from my shoulder. Finally I asked Janice about the pills. I asked her what was in them. What was the active ingredient? Do they give her the impression that there is meaning to life or do they flatten her to the point where she doesn’t care if there is or isn’t? Or do they enhance what is already in her mind and make it all right so that Elf could conceivably jump out of bed some morning and say hooray, it’s true, there is no meaning to life but it’s okay and now that I really know it and have had it confirmed and can stop searching for it I can go on living!

Janice told me that she didn’t really know. She told me that it also didn’t make much difference because Elf was refusing to take them anyway. Yeah, I said, she either takes an awful lot of pills at once or none at all. Janice was trying to make me feel better now too, so she patted me on the shoulder and then told me to go home and sleep.

I said I’d go say goodbye to Elf first but she told me just to go and that she’d tell Elf I’d be back soon. I was staring at the calendar and Janice followed my gaze and then walked over to it and flipped the page so it was showing the right month.

She said well, we’ve taken care of that now and I said, Yes, thank you.

I took the stairs to the basement by accident — two, four, six, eight — and ended up locked in a tunnel. I walked for a while and pushed on several doors but none of them would open. I wondered how long it would take before I was found. I checked my BlackBerry but couldn’t get a signal. I saw footprints painted on the concrete floor. I followed them. They brought me to another locked door. I sat down in the tunnel and held my plastic Safeway bag in my lap. I looked up at the large pipes hanging from the ceiling of the tunnel. Then I took out my manuscript and held it in my hands for a while. I snapped the elastic holding it together a few times and put it back into the bag. I wondered if I would starve to death in the tunnel. Irony. Elf would feel bad, no? Jealous? A taste of her own medicine?

I got up again and walked in the opposite direction to the footprints and found another door. It was locked too. I went back to where I’d been sitting, following the footprints again, and then beyond that to a fork in the tunnels. I turned right and walked a while until I came to another door and I pushed on it and it opened. I was in an industrial kitchen or maybe I was in the morgue. Everything was made of stainless steel and the whole room hummed and shone. I walked through this room and through another door and straight into the emergency ward waiting room. A cop stood guarding something, I’m not sure what it was, but he told me to wash my hands. I told him they weren’t dirty and he said that he had to ask everyone to wash their hands. He pointed at a makeshift handwashing stand. I asked him if he could hold my bag then for a minute while I washed my hands and he nodded and took it. I washed my hands very slowly, very thoroughly, and while I was washing I looked at the cop holding my manuscript in his hand. It felt safe there. I wanted to leave it with him but I dried my hands and took the bag and thanked him for holding it and walked out to the wrong parking lot in search of my mother’s car.

Occasionally I sit in my mother’s car and grip the steering wheel as hard as I can until my knuckles go white and I breathe out the word Ellllllfffff. I’d punch a hole through the windshield if I didn’t think I’d break my hand. And if it wouldn’t create a big insurance nightmare, and a wicked draft in the winter. As a kid I used to go out to my bike and sit on it while it was in its stand going nowhere and I’d try out new swear words. I’d mutter them quietly under my breath, over and over, until they lost their sting and became ridiculous like Elf’s one-time mantra of love. This car thing is similar to that. It feels like a controlled experiment. My own mobile laboratory of rage. If I can say things over and over they’ll eventually lose their meaning and my anger will disappear. Elf, what are you fucking doing? I feel safe in the car, alone and protected. I can see people milling about in the parking lot but they can’t see me. Well, they can but they think I’m insane so they look away which is the same as being invisible.

I met Nic for a beer on his way home from work. He told me he’d had no luck getting a hold of any of the care-team members except for one social worker who said that she wasn’t sure there was still funding for that sort of thing. Nic had told her that he would pay for it himself, this team of bodyguards. The social worker wasn’t sure it worked that way and Nic had asked her then in which way does it work? He talked to me about his kayak, its progress. He needed to have certain bolts mailed to him from Minneapolis. He was quite sure that he’d be in the river by May. But maybe it’s just futile, I told him. To have her watched every second of the day. He agreed but what else were we supposed to do?

We drank our beer. He told me that Elf’s book had arrived in the mail. It was Final Exit, the book on how to kill yourself with plastic bags and whatnot. I said oh my god, throw it away! But he said he couldn’t do that because it would be an invasion of her privacy and an attack on her personal rights and freedoms. You don’t just throw out someone else’s mail. I argued with him for a while and he said maybe he could hide it away in a closet until she stopped being suicidal. And then what? I said. Haul it out and give it to her as a birthday surprise? Just throw the goddamn thing in the garbage. I can’t throw a book, any book, in the garbage, he said. I said okay, then mail it back to Amazon or wherever it came from. But it’s not mine, he said. All right, let me throw it out, I said. He said he can’t let me do that, it’s still not right.

Oh my god, Nic and I are having a fight. We don’t want to have a fight. Or maybe we do if it makes us feel like we’re doing something, getting somewhere, solving problems. Nic and I are approaching the task of caring for Elf from two entirely different angles, from a sterile laboratory and from the dark side of the moon. He is pragmatic, scientific, and believes in prescriptions, in doctors’ orders and in their omnipotence.

One of my latest ideas for saving Elf’s life is to have her parachuted into a strange and brutal place like Mogadishu or North Korea where she’d be forced to survive on her own in ways like never before. It was a risky plan. She could throw herself on the mercy of a child soldier and just get herself shot and that would be that or she could be jolted into a completely new notion of what it means to be alive and what is required to stay alive. Her adrenal gland would begin to work overtime and she’d be lifted up, energized, hunted, and desperate to outwit her attacker and survive. She would be utterly alone in this violent setting — though I would somehow have attached a live webcam to the side of her head or something like that so that I could track and monitor her progress. When I was convinced that she had established new parameters to living, found a new life strategy, as my father put it a couple of days before he ended it altogether, that she had come to thrive on the challenge, on the game of living, when she had come to the point of realizing that, like a normal person, lo and behold, she really didn’t want to die, I’d have her helicoptered out and we could go on like before, laughing, walking, breathing, getting pedicures, making plans for next week and Christmas and the spring and old age. But Nic prefers the idea of medication and regular exercise and he’s her primary caretaker, her husband, her immediate next of kin, so Elf won’t be jumping out of a plane into downtown Mogadishu with nothing but the shirt on her back and a camera strapped to her head any time soon.

Nic and I stare off at the red booths of the restaurant and sip our beer and wonder and think. We have stopped arguing. I tell Nic that Claudio called me at the hospital, that he suspects something isn’t right. I tell him that one of us definitely has to call him back. Nic sighs and says yeah, he knows, but what if she changes her mind and I remind him of how many millions of times she’s said she can’t do the tour and Nic says yeah, she always says that and then she does the thing and she’s on top of the world. But only because she’s survived it, I say. But then it doesn’t take long before she realizes that she hadn’t wanted to be rescued in the first place. I think that when she feels like she can’t play anymore then her life is over.

Yeah, says Nic. Well, he’s been calling me too. I don’t answer. But I feel guilty about it.

It is so quiet in this restaurant. I ask Nic if he is also feeling the earth rotate on its axis. He reminds me that we’re in a revolving restaurant at the top of Fort Garry Place in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and that the day is such and such. I thank him. I apologize for giving him a hard time about the phone call and the book and he waves it away and says no, no. I want to hug him. I want to thank him for loving my sister and her rights and freedoms. I ask him if the waiter will stop this thing, the building, to let us off and he says yeah, there’s gotta be a switch somewhere. Or we could wave our arms in the air and yell faster, I say. We play a little tug of war with the check. I’ll get this. No, I’ll get this. We walk out into a tornado, it seems — it’s a prairie wind — and Nic tells me that in the days and weeks after I left for Toronto Elf had adopted a new mantra.

What was it? I ask him.

Yolandi, he says.

Me? You mean my name?

She joked that maybe she’d be able to will you back into existence.

I was only in Toronto, I say, not dead. Besides, she told me that her mantras inevitably dissolve into meaninglessness and then begin to terrify her. And I’m fighting tears again. And apologizing to Nic for something. He tells me that Elf feels the same way about days, about the days constantly coming around, over and over, the sun rises, birds begin to sing, there is a moment of possibility, of excruciating hope, and then it’s over, things darken, the day is simply another tease. There is no delivery from the torment of the days. It’s the repetition of things that kills her? I ask. Nic sighs. He doesn’t know. I trip over the uneven sidewalk and swear. He catches my elbow. Two boys walk past us with a canoe on their heads. We think they’re boys but all we can see are hairy calves and beat-up sneakers, oversized basketball shorts and bare backs. No heads or arms. By the amount of hair and muscle on their calves and their narrow waists I’d say they’re about fourteen or fifteen years old.

I wouldn’t put that in the river right now, Nic calls out to them. It’s too dangerous.

The boys stop and awkwardly turn themselves around, canoe and all, to listen.

We’re not, one of them says. Four brown legs and a canoe on their heads for a surface, they are a designer table, strange and beautiful.

Seriously, says Nic, the river is crazy right now. It’s moving at 380 cubic metres a second and it still has some ice on it.

The boys say nothing but the canoe shifts slightly and then we hear them softly mumbling to each other under the boat.

Don’t do it, says Nic. Maybe in a week or so. Then suddenly in one beautiful, fluid motion the boys lift the canoe off their heads, flip it over like a pancake and lay it down on the grassy boulevard next to the sidewalk.

Oh, hi, says Nic. I wave hello and smile. The boys are grim, young and tired.

What about downstream? says one of them, and Nic shakes his head vigorously.

No, no, not in any direction. Just stay out of the river for the time being. What’s the rush?

The boys tell us they’re trying to get to Roseau River Reserve.

That’s miles away, says Nic. That’s near the U.S. border, isn’t it?

We know, says one of the boys. We’re from there.

The boys tell us that they want to get home, back to their real mom. They’re foster kids in the city and they hate it and their foster parents beat them up and starve them, and the Warriors are trying to recruit them for operations and they’re going home, that’s it.

Now we have a situation, as the cops would call it. Neither Nic nor I know what to say or do. The boys shrug and mumble more things to themselves and bend to pick up the canoe, tipping it up and onto their shoulders.

You don’t have life jackets, I say. The boys ignore me.

Yeah, he says. Listen. Hang on. The boys have already begun to walk away. They stop walking again, but they don’t put the canoe back onto the ground. Nic and I walk over to where the boys are and stand next to them with the canoe acting as a barrier between us like a confessional booth.

You guys can’t do this, says Nic to the front, the bow, of the boat. His voice is low and stern, mano a mano. Nothing happens. The boys breathe in silence and the canoe gently bobs up and down a bit on top of them. Nic asks the boys if they have somebody waiting for them in Roseau River.

Yeah, everyone— I think it is the smaller one’s voice. We live there.

Okay, so how about this, says Nic. I’ll give you money for two bus tickets to Roseau River and you leave the canoe with me. I’ll bungee it to my car and keep it for you at my place and you can pick it up whenever it suits you, when you’re back in the city, or whatever. I’ll write down my address for you. How much are bus tickets to Roseau River? he asks.

There’s no response from under the canoe.

Tell you what, says Nic. I’m going to get my car now and drive it back here, so just hang on. Yoli, can you write down my address for these guys.

Probably around twenty bucks, says one of the boys. Twenty bucks each. Nic leaves to get his car and the boys fling the canoe down onto the grass again and sit down on top of it, waiting.

So what’s Roseau River like? I say. The boys shrug and stare off in the direction of the river. I am writing Nic’s address on a scrap of paper as he pulls up and parks. He hands the boys some money, enough cash for the bus tickets to Roseau River.

How about we drive you to the bus depot? he asks. The smaller boy says okay but the other boy says nah, we’ll get there ourselves. He leans over to take the cash from Nic, and the two begin to walk away towards Portage and Main, away from the river.

Hey, hang on, I call, you’ll need his address. I run after them and hand one of the boys the scrap of paper. He looks at it for a few seconds and puts it into his pocket and says c’mon to the other kid and they’re off, on their way to something they remember as being better than where they are.

Do you think they’ll buy bus tickets? I ask Nic. We’re driving back to his house with the canoe on the roof of the car.

Who knows, says Nic, but there was no way they were putting this thing into the river.

Do you think they’ll come back for the canoe?

Probably not, says Nic, but I hope so. It might be a borrowed canoe, if you get my drift.

You saved their lives, I say, and Nic waves it all away like he’d done earlier with the check from the restaurant, like he does with all falsely inflated proclamations that can’t be proven in a lab. My phone goes off and I read a text from Nora: I’ve been banned for like a lifetime from Winners for having a testers war with Mercedes. Will ripped the screen breaking in. No key. Xxxxoooo

I am talking to a police officer. I’ve been stopped on Sherbrook Street for texting while driving. I’m on my way over to Julie’s for a quick coffee before I have to pick up my mother at the airport. Somebody worth risking your life and your pocketbook for, I presume? says the cop. Pocketbook? I repeat. Well yes, I say, it’s my daughter. I just had to send her a quick message. But okay, sorry, the law and everything. How much is it?

Well, says the cop, one of the main things we hope the driver takes away from this particular lesson is the severity of the crime. The cost is administrative, minimal, but the offence itself is egregious, potentially.

That’s true, I say, um … How much is it?

He asks to see my car registration and when I show it to him — it’s my mother’s car — he slaps the roof and says no way! I play Scrabble with Lottie down at the Waverley Club. You’re her daughter? I smile too and say yep, one of them. Upshot of it all (that’s an archery term, by the way, meaning the last shot of the competition) is that the cop spends ten minutes telling me how crazy he is about Lottie — she kicks my ass, man, she kicks my ass every time! Are you aware of her vocabulary? — and then pulls out his pad to write me a ticket. Just doing my job, he says You know, you, my friend, are an asshole, I say. That’s seven letters, incidentally, a-s-s-h-o-l-e, a good bingo word.

The cop leans into the car. You’re not really supposed to call cops assholes. He sounds apologetic. We finally agree that he’ll give me a warning only and I promise to pull over next time I want to send someone a text and I won’t tell my mom that he’s been a bit of a jerk.

I sense she’s already slightly contemptuous of me being a cop, he says. She really hates authority, man, have you noticed?

I’ll pick my mother up at the airport later that evening. She will have taken a boat, a train, a plane, a cab and another plane and a car to get home. I picture it all in my mind, all the various legs of her journey, and am comforted by this effort of hers to come back to us.

Julie and I sit on her back steps and are quietly amused by the sweet antics of Shadow, the family dog she has joint custody of along with her kids. She has made us smoothies with mint from her garden and we eat the perogies and salad she’s managed to whip up magically in her chaotic kitchen that has bicycles and guitars in it. She used to play bass guitar in a band called Sons and Lovers. She has just bought this house and is in the process of fixing it up. She shows me a dildo she found wedged behind a cabinet in the bathroom.

I’m going to smoke a cigar, she says. Don’t tell Judson. Judson is a guy she’s been seeing on and off since splitting up with her husband. He says it’s a condition of our relationship that I don’t smoke, she says.

We laugh. We are tired. Too tired to confront conditions.

Shadow the dog is too old and arthritic to run but is still very excited by the idea of running so Julie plays a game she calls Run for Shadow and it involves her saying things like shed or fence and then running there herself while Shadow sits still in the yard and barks excitedly. When Julie has exhausted herself playing Run for Shadow she plops down beside me on the back steps and finishes her cigar.

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.