All My Puny Sorrows

by Miriam Toews

  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 g
rounds 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 w
as 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?