by Miriam Toews
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.
SEVEN
LONG HUGS AT THE AIRPORT. We have missed each other. One of us is slightly tanned and smells like coconut and is wearing a T-shirt with a Scrabble tile on it with the letter P. We don’t know about tomorrow. I smell fear and realize that it’s coming from me. It feels like I don’t have quite enough skin, that parts of me that should be covered are exposed. And we hold on to each other for longer than usual. On the way home we stop in on Nic, it’s too late to go to the hospital to see Elf, and my mother tells us of her latest adventure at sea and we laugh a lot, too much, and Nic sits on Elf’s piano bench while we talk, occasionally turning around to plunk on the keys tunelessly, and then we all head home to our beds. But strange things happen in the night. I have a dream about Elf. She’s been discharged but nobody can find her. She’s not at home. We can’t reach her. Then I dream that grass is growing everywhere inside my house, it’s tall, silky grass. It’s coming up through the stairs. I don’t know how to get rid of it and I’m worried. Then, in my dream, the solution comes to me: do nothing. And in an instant my anxiety is gone and I’m at peace. I also have a dream that I have a stone angel like Margaret Laurence’s, the same one, and I have to take care of it, keep it safe and warm. In my dream the stone angel lies beside me in my bed, the blanket pulled up to her chin, her eyes perpetually staring up at the ceiling.
I wake up and call the nurses’ station at the hospital and ask if Elf is still there. They tell me she is. I lie in bed for a while listening to the ice breaking up, and hear my mother moving around in the living room. I get up to see if she is okay. When she sees me she tells me she has a bit of jet lag from the trip and can’t sleep. She is sitting at the dining room table playing online Scrabble with a stranger in Scotland. I tell her I met her cop friend and she frowns. He’s ambitious, she says. To be ambitious, in her opinion, is the lowest a person can sink. I hear a trumpet sound the beginning of a new game. The Holy Bible, King James Version, is sitting on the table beside her computer. I ask her if she’s been reading the Bible and she says yeah, well, you know with all of this … She makes a dismissive gesture. This life, I think she means. She tells me she has decided to read Psalms One but hasn’t liked it. She doesn’t like the way it talks about the ungodly as being like chaff in the wind, blown about, lost, so she reads Proverbs One instead but she doesn’t like that one much either. She doesn’t like the way it orders us to seek out knowledge and wisdom because … obviously!
She tells me the only reason she is reading the Bible right now is that she’s been communing with her dead sister Mary who has somehow indicated to her, from the grave, that she should read the Bible more often. I nod and tell my mother to say hi to Aunt Mary from me next time they talk. I wonder if that’s the real reason she’s reading the Bible or if this evening she needs hope and solace and is looking to that oldest of friends, her faith.
I ask her if she wants to play a few rounds of Dutch Blitz, the only Mennonite-sanctioned card game, because instead of sinful-connoting things like clubs and hearts and diamonds and spades on the cards it has ploughs and buckets and wagons and pumps and because it’s a game based on speed and concentration, not sneakiness, and the small room glo
ws when she smiles.
My mother sits in the torn orange chair and I sit perched on the edge of Elf’s bed. Elf lies smiling, her stitches have dissolved, and she has washed her face and brushed her hair. There’s been a change according to Janice. She tells us that she had a long conversation with Elf that morning and that she is showing signs of improvement. My mother asks what improvement means and Janice says it means that Elf has eaten her breakfast and taken her pills. In the past my mother would have rejoiced at these tiny victories but today she nods and says hmm, so she’s doing what she’s told to do. I know that this doesn’t please my mother. She believes in the fight, in sparks and pugilism, not meek subservience. On the other hand, she wants my sister to eat and take her medication. But wants Elf to want it herself.
I don’t know exactly what happened, Elf tells us, but I woke up feeling like a different person. I think I’m ready to do the tour. I’m going to call Claudio. I want to play tennis again. And maybe Nic and I will move to Paris.
If ever there was a delayed reaction for the ages this is it, a vast, forlorn space like the Badlands, a no man’s land, universes between her words and my mother’s and my response. My mother and my sister smile at each other like it’s a contest and I freeze. Rearguard action, I think. I stare out of the window and reflect on the similarity between writing and saving a life and the inevitable failure of one’s imagination and one’s goals and ambitions to create a character or a life worth saving. In life as in writing as in any type of creation that sets off to be a success, knowable and inspiring.
Really? I say. Paris? That’s so great, Elfie. I can’t believe it.