by Miriam Toews
You’re at the hospital? I asked again.
Yes, we drove here directly to see Elf but on the way, out by Deacon’s corner, Tina passed out again in the van.
What? That’s so strange.
I know. And so I just drove up to Emergency here immediately and now they’ve admitted her. And they’ve put a cast on her arm. She broke it when she fainted.
Auntie Tina?
Yes, she’s having some kind of pain in her chest. She’s in acute cardiology, on the fifth floor.
Seriously?
Yes, so …
Okay, I said.
I hung up. I called right back and apologized. I meant to say okay, I’ll be right there. My mother laughed. I laughed a bit too. I knew she was holding back tears. I told her again that I’d be right there and she whispered something I couldn’t make out. Had she said what’s the difference? My mother has been in and out of Emergency a thousand times with her own heart and breathing issues but this was the first time Tina had landed there as far as I knew.
On the way back to the hospital I thought about my crazy outburst in the parking lot. It’s my past, I said out loud to nobody in the car. I had figured it out. I was Sigmund Freud. Mennonite men in church with tight collars and bulging necks accusing me of preposterous acts and damning me to some underground fire when I hadn’t done a thing. I was an innocent child. Elf was an innocent child. My father was an innocent child. My cousin was an innocent child. You can’t flagrantly march around the fronts of churches waving your arms in the air and scaring people with threats and accusations just because your family was slaughtered in Russia and you were forced to run and hide in a pile of manure when you were little. What you do at the pulpit would be considered lunatic behaviour on the street. You can’t go around terrorizing people and making them feel small and shitty and then call them evil when they destroy themselves. You will never walk down a street and feel a lightness come over you. You will never fly.
A heart attack comes from the pain of remembering. That was something I’d read somewhere, maybe in the Hobo Museum newsletter, which ended each obituary with “We’ll see you down the road!” So Elfrieda was reminding my aunt of her own daughter’s suicide? Of the agony that precedes it and the helplessness and terror she felt trying to prevent it from happening? Or does a heart attack come from clogged arteries and fat around the waist and a two-pack-a-day habit and trans fats, not memories of pain and horror and unbearable sorrow? Because maybe one causes the other. Cardiologists and shrinks should join forces and start new hospitals. I’ll get a petition going like my father did for a library and Elf did for Stevie Ray Vaughan being the world’s best guitarist. I’m quite sure the continents will fuse back together before cardiology and psychiatry join forces.
My aunt’s track suit and her tiny white runners were stuffed into a plastic bag that was labelled: Property of Ste. Odile Hospital. She and my mother were joking around in Plautdietsch, keeping their fear to themselves as usual. When I showed up they said ah, good, you’re here. We’re fighting about a word. Its meaning. I asked which word and they both started to laugh again.
There were already things written on Tina’s plaster cast. Phone numbers. And a Bible verse. The nurse came over and did some things to my aunt with needles and tubes. I asked if she’d had a heart attack and the nurse said no but a coronary event of some sort. She showed us a sketch of my aunt’s arteries. Two of them were severely blocked. My aunt said she desperately needed a Starbucks coffee from downstairs. The nurse said well, perhaps in a bit. Not now.
I told my aunt and my mother that I would go see Elf and then return to them with Starbucks coffee for everyone. They both commended my plan exuberantly, too exuberantly, as though I had just figured out how to storm the Bastille. I went to the sixth floor to tell Elf the news, that Auntie Tina was having a coronary event on the floor below her. Elf’s eyes opened wide and she tapped her throat.
Can’t talk? I said.
I was annoyed, crazy with misdirected rage, and not hiding it well. She shook her head. I asked where Nic was and she shook her head again.
I went out to ask the nurse why she couldn’t talk. The nurse said there had been some complications but hopefully she’d regain her voice by tomorrow or the next day. Having to do with the Javex? I said. The nurse looked away, down at her clipboard. She didn’t want me to say Javex. We’re not sure, she said. But what else could it be? I said. A choice of hers? You’ll have to talk to the doctor, she said. I’d love to, I said, but I think he’s taken a restraining order out on me. The nurse refused to look at me. We were a tainted family, deranged.
I went back into Elf’s room and stood at the foot of her bed. For a second I felt like her executioner come to offer her a last meal and a smoke. The world has gone a bit dark, eh? She blinked. You’d concur? I said. She blinked again.
I sat there for a while looking at my manuscript. I read a page to myself, it didn’t make me happy, and then gently placed it upside down on Elf’s flat stomach. Then another and another. I continued to read and place pages gently on my sister’s body and she lay very still, hardly breathing, so they wouldn’t fall. Finally I told her that I was going back down to the fifth floor to check on Tina and to bring them Starbucks coffee. She nodded and rolled her eyes a bit because I’d said Starbucks. It’s all they have here, I said. I gathered up my pages from her stomach. Elf smiled and touched my hand. She held it for a few seconds. I realized that I’d forgotten the moisturizing cream. I knew she meant for me to tell our aunt that she loved her, that she hoped she’d be okay. I told Elf that I would tell our aunt those things and she nodded. I wanted to say: imagine mom losing her sister. How horrible, no? But it wasn’t that dire, it was only an event, and I had no more energy, after taking on psychiatry, cardiology and Mennonite evangelism, for haranguing.
On the way to the Starbucks in the lobby I got a call from Finbar. He asked me what the hell I’d been talking about. You want to kill your sister? he said. I’m a lawyer, for god’s sake. Don’t tell me these things. No, I don’t, I said. But I’m wondering if I should. Yolandi, he said, you’re exhausted and stressed out. You can’t kill your sister. You can’t do anything for her other than what you’re doing right now. I told him I wasn’t doing anything for her right now and he said that I was there, that’s what mattered. Was there something he could do for me? I asked him to drive past my apartment in Toronto and see if there were signs of life from Nora and Will and maybe he could knock on the door and ask them if they were okay and why Nora wasn’t answering her phone. Although I already knew why. It was because she had poisoned Will and dragged his body into a closet and was having unprotected sex all over the house with her fifteen-year-old Swedish dancer boyfriend and she didn’t have the time or the inclination to talk to her sad old disapproving mother in the midst of it all. Consider it done, he said. He promised to call later that day.
To my surprise I met a family I knew from East Village in a waiting room in the cardiology ward, where they were watching TV. They asked me what I was doing there. I told them my aunt was here, a patient. They said is that Tina Loewen? But doesn’t she live in Vancouver? I said yeah, she’s here visiting. She’s here for an event, a coronary event. They didn’t laugh.
We made some small talk. They told me that the woman’s brother was having heart surgery, a valve replacement. Straightforward. He’d be doing his standard three-mile jog within a week of being discharged.
They had great faith in the doctors. They believed in rain dances and placating the gods with human sacrifices as well. Probably. Their brother’s surgeon was the best in town, they adored him. They told me that their oldest son, a guy my age, had done his PhD in economics at Oxford. Cool, wow, I said. I remembered that son, Gerhard, had teased me mercilessly when I wet my pants in grade one. He called me and Julie lezzies for holding hands at recess. He drew swastikas all over his jeans and notebooks. And now he’s in London, said his mother, a policy analyst. He’s basically paid to thi
nk, she said. Imagine! It seems that every time he delivers a lecture he’s offered a scholarship to some university or another the very next day. It’s tempting, she laughs. But of course he has to consider his wife and kids. She has a busy career of her own, curator for the Tate Modern and ambassador to Rwanda, and the kids are in good schools—rubbing shoulders with royalty, no less—that they wouldn’t want to leave.
Ahhh … I managed to say.
You know, he saw your sister Elfrieda play with the London Philharmonic and he said it was the most amazing thing he’d ever heard. Thankfully the church has finally seen fit to allow musical instruments into the community. We were always supportive of her piano playing, by the way. Your mother and I used to bump into each other at the post office sometimes and share a giggle about the hidden piano and I always told her to keep at it, to keep paying for those lessons because Elfrieda has a real gift. God would approve even if the elders didn’t. To think that somehow I contributed to her fame! I think Gerhard used to have a crush on her. Didn’t he, honey? She was talking to her husband.
Hmmm? What? he said.
She rolled her eyes. And what have you been up to? she asked.
Oh, I don’t know really, I said. Not much. Learning how to be a good loser.
Just then my mother came into the room looking as weary as a human being can look and not be dead. She greeted these people in a friendly, wary manner. They spoke in Plautdietsch for a while. They told her they were sorry about Tina. Thanks, my mom said, she’ll be all right. (She threw down a Plautdietsch expression here that the East Villagers nodded to appreciatively.) They don’t think she needs surgery, just possibly a certain type of heart medication.
Then Nic came into the room. He’d just heard about Tina. He was wearing a blue polyester-cotton blend dress shirt that had giant sweat stains under the arms. There was tomato sauce or blood on his chin. Half of his collar was turned up and he looked like a kid who’d insisted on getting ready for school all by himself.
Good grief, he said, and gave us each a hug. How is she? My mother explained again. Yikes, he said. I’m really sorry. Elf’s still in ICU, said my mom. Yeah, said Nic, I was just there. Wait, said the East Village people, Elfrieda is in the ICU? What happened to her?
She cut her wrists and drank poison, said my mom. Nic and I stared at my mother. Her throat closed but she didn’t die, said my mom. Not this time. She’ll probably be okay too. Everyone will survive eventually. And what brings you here this evening?
Nic and I allowed for a minute or two of this gong show and then pulled the plug. C’mon, mom, let’s get you home. You need to rest. I knew, as soon as the words were out of my mouth, that she’d resist. She was on the rampage, combative as hell and prepared to stamp out any ember of hope or kindness. I’m not tired, she said. But perhaps you need to rest. She was either being petulant or presenting a wonderful, almighty challenge.
Nic said he’d go say hi to Tina and then sit with Elf for a while longer, maybe read to her or play his guitar quietly. Any news from the doc? he said. Beats me, said my mom. I’d call him but I don’t think he gets cell service at the Quarry Oaks Golf Club.
Her throat isn’t right, I said. Nic said yeah, he knew that and asked me what I thought it meant. I don’t know exactly, I said, but maybe there’s an infection now that’s making it painful for her to talk. We waved our hands around to fill the gaps. We need to phone Tina’s kids, said my mom. Yeah, we’ll grab some dinner first and then go home and call, I told her. She’s stable, right? The nurses said? Yeah, said my mom. They’ll just keep her overnight for observation. Nic said he’d call me later if there was any news on Elf. I tugged on my mother’s sleeve like a four-year-old. C’mon, let’s get out of here, I said. I second that emotion, she said.
I waved goodbye to the successful people and told them to say hi to their son. They called after my mom and said all the best with Tina and Elf.
She didn’t really hear what they’d said and answered back I’ll see ya in the funny papers!
Nora had texted me from Toronto: A guy in a suit knocked on the door and asked me if I was all right. He said he was your friend. Are you a Jehovah’s Witness now? How’s Elf?
We drove down Corydon Avenue towards my mother’s apartment. How are you doing? she asked me. Fine, fine, I said. I wanted to tell her that I felt I was dying from rage and that I felt guilty about everything and that when I was a kid I woke up every morning singing, that I couldn’t wait to leap out of bed and rush out of the house into the magical kingdom that was my world, that dust made visible in sunbeams gave me real authentic joy, that my sparkly golden banana-seated bike with the very high sissy bar took my breath away, the majesty of it, that it was mine, that there was no freer soul in the world than me at age nine, and that now I woke up every morning reminding myself that control is an illusion, taking deep breaths and counting to ten trying to ward off panic attacks and hoping that my own hands hadn’t managed to strangle me while I slept. Nora texted: We have carpenter ants now. I texted back: Good. Put them to work rebuilding the broken door.
My mother patted my leg, don’t text and drive honey, she said. I remained silent, she said something like this too shall pass and I wanted to swerve into oncoming traffic. What will you say next! I asked her. Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?
Well, she laughed, I know you’re ideologically opposed to clichés, but yes, that one is apt, no?
No, I said. Everything will be all right in the end and if it’s not all right then it’s not the end.
Is that one of those? she asked.
Yeah, it’s one of those, but I don’t think I said it right. And what do you mean, ideologically opposed? Being original isn’t an ideology.
Okay, she said, but believing in originality is though, right?
I guess so. Do you know that people are happier when they stop trying to be happy? That’s some study they did.
Well, I could have told you that, said my mom.
My phone was buzzing away, texts from men wanting divorces and children wanting me to condone underage sex and kill insects from three thousand kilometres away.
So what happens to Rhonda the Rodeo Girl this time? asked my mother. Is she still … what was she, fourteen?
No, this is my book book, my real book.
Oh right! Of course. What’s it about again?
Oh, I don’t know, I said. You don’t have to make a fake effort to show interest—you’re exhausted.
No, Yoli, she said, I do want to know and if anything it will help me to take my mind off things for a minute or two.
It’s about a harbourmaster.
What? A what? said my mom. I thought it was about sisters.
Yeah, that too, but initially a harbourmaster. He’s the guy, or woman I guess—but in my story he’s a guy—who steers the big ships out of the harbour and then climbs down a little rope ladder when the ship is safely out at sea, and into a little boat that’s been driving along beside the ship, and then he goes back home. But in my story the weather is too bad for him to climb down onto the little boat, the captain won’t let him, the ladder is too flimsy and it’s way too dangerous, they misjudged the storm that they thought was still two days away, so the harbourmaster has to go all the way to Rotterdam with the ship because that’s the first port of call.
Oh, said my mom. Well, that’s fascinating.
Okay, well it’s not fascinating, I said. I just wanted to write a book that didn’t end with a rodeo competition, you know?
Oh, but they’re so exciting.
Well, not this time, mom. I’ve got all the excitement up front.
So then what happens once he’s left the harbour?
He misses this crucial meeting he had planned for that evening and everything goes wrong.
But can’t he call whomever he’s supposed to meet and reschedule?
Well, I’m not sure but yeah, right, that’s a bit of a credibility problem I’m having because he should be able to but
then there’d be no crisis, no book.
Right, said my mom. Perhaps he’s forgotten his cellphone?
Well no, because there would be an entire crew on the ship and communication technology and all that, that he could use.
Okay, but, said my mom, maybe he does call the person he’s supposed to be meeting but he or she doesn’t get the message on time? You know, they miss each other in some way.
Yeah, that makes more sense I think. But I just like the idea of this guy not being able to get off this ship and not being at all prepared for a journey to Rotterdam.
Right, hmmm, said my mom. And then the sisters part? Does he meet sisters on the boat?
No, I said, the sisters part is in his imagination as he sits on the deck staring at the sea.
Oh! Okay … memories of sisters.
Sort of, yeah, he just has thoughts— Hey, do you hear that?
What?
That clanking. Hang on.
I pulled the car into the parking lot of an “ice crematorium” called the Marble Slab (Jesus Christ!) and turned off the engine. I got out and walked around the car, staring and unsure, like I was looking at the latest Damien Hirst installation. I got back into the car and tried to start it again. Nothing. The engine wasn’t turning over. That’s odd, said my mom. Don’t worry, I said. I thought of Anatole France angrily telling his amour that he would bite his fists until they bled. I tried again. And again. Nothing.
The car’s dead, I said.
My mother shook her head and grinned. She started to laugh. I looked at her. I took her hand and plopped the useless key into her palm. I smiled and she kept on laughing for a while.
Oh boy, she said. Her body shook. This is getting really funny.
She suggested that we get out of the car and walk to Kristina’s, the Greek restaurant next to Fresh. Yeah, I said, good idea, especially the walking part.
At the restaurant we had a surprisingly upbeat conversation about men and sex and guilt and children. Is there anything else? We drank an entire bottle of red wine. We also talked about Nic. Do you think he’s okay? I asked my mom. Well, that depends on what you mean by okay, she said. He’s holding up.