by Miriam Toews
After the funeral, people took turns going up onto the little stage and telling stories and recounting memories of Tina, a Mennonite tradition called freiwilligis. I saw relatives I hadn’t seen in years. Sheila was the convivial emcee of the event. Her husband Gordon had to say a few words off the cuff to kill time while Sheila tried to stop herself from crying long enough to do her thing at the microphone. Gordon thanked us all for coming and said what a shame that Tina, being the party animal she was, couldn’t be here to take part. Then Sheila rolled her eyes, somewhat more composed now, and took the microphone from Gordon. She said well, folks, in all her life my mother’s heart has never failed her … until now. She said a few more things and then opened up the mic for others. There was a table beside her covered with photographs of Tina in the various stages of her life. My favourite one was of her hanging out the window of her dad’s Oldsmobile when she was seventeen and waving goodbye, a giant grin on her face. See ya later, pioneers! I’m going to the city!
On the floor next to the microphone was a beautiful wooden urn, like a small wishing well, that held Tina’s ashes. One of my fifty-six cousins’ wives was up there talking about the way Tina sped around town in her van with the flame on the side and knew how to evade cops at every turn and while this woman was talking her little toddler son crawled up onto the stage and over to the wooden urn. He sat next to it and banged on it for a while and then, while his mother, oblivious, kept talking about Tina and all her charming qualities, her boldness, her tenderness, her zest for life, the little kid somehow managed to take the lid off the urn. We all watched, open-mouthed, as he started to sift through the ashes of Tina and then fling them around up there, having a heyday playing with his great-grandma’s remains, and his little white-shirt-and-shorts outfit grew black from the dust and so did his face. And then he started putting the ashes into his mouth with his little dusty hands and by this time everyone had noticed, and his father was up on the stage picking him up, a lot of people were laughing now (except for the perpetual disapprovers who looked on in stern horror) and his mom stopped talking at the microphone and turned around and she saw that the boy’s father now had everything under control and he brushed the ashes off the boy’s clothes and wiped his face and put the lid back on Tina’s urn and brought the child back to the table and the mother, my cousin’s wife, turned calmly back to the microphone and finished her story about Tina and her van and I learned another thing, which is that just because someone is eating the ashes of your protagonist doesn’t mean you stop telling the story.
I stood in the foyer of the church and spoke quietly to Nora on my cellphone. She thought she had broken her toe doing something weird on her friend’s mom’s treadmill and was distraught because she was sure she wouldn’t be able to dance in her final recital which was in a week. And Will had to get back to New York to start his summer job and her dad was still in Borneo. She was crying. Can you stay at Zoe’s place for a few days until I get back? I asked her. No, she said, Zoe’s parents were taking her to Churchill to see the polar bears, or something like that. What about with Anders? I asked. He’s stayed at our place enough times. That would be weird, she said, can’t you just come home?
FIFTEEN
WHEN I GOT BACK TO TORONTO I sat in my big brown chair for three hours staring at the wall. Nora’s toe wasn’t broken after all, only sprained, so she could do the final recital. She soaked her feet in warm water. She was always standing on one leg, the other one stretched into some unimaginable distorted pose. She asked me when Dan was coming home from Borneo. I don’t know, sweetheart, I said, and watched her wilt a bit, her shoulders slump and her eyes go dark. Do you think he’ll be back for the recital? she asked.
The ants were gone. Will had cleaned up the house and the three of us had Chinese takeout and watched some of the World Cup on TV before Nora went off somewhere with Anders and I drove Will back to the airport. I hugged him for a long time, overly long probably, in his opinion, but he didn’t try to break away. Are you okay? he mumbled, and I said yes, more or less. I love you, he said, you’re a good mother. Oh my god, I said, thank you! My eyes filled with tears instantly. You’re a good son! We stopped hugging and stood apart, smiling. And you’re a good sister, he said. The tears fell, it was hopeless. I apologized and Will waved it off. He took my hand and held it for a few seconds. And you’re a good brother! I added. Okay, mom, he said. I have to go. I’ll see you in a month or so. I’ll call tonight. I watched him amble through security, say a few casual words to the guy behind the conveyor belt, hand over his boarding pass for inspection, take off his belt and put it in a bin, all these gestures made with such precision, such calm. Total control. Or it seemed so. Was he a man now?
Nic and my mother were spending most of their time at the hospital with Elf. Our conversations were brief, like pit stops. Updates. We’re all alive? We’re all alive. Any changes? No changes. We were all in a bit of a stupor, a state of suspension. I spent hours on my computer researching our Swiss option and trying to figure out what I should do. I didn’t talk about it with anybody in Toronto. I went to the bank and asked a man in a small room if I could get a loan for twenty thousand dollars. I figured that would be more than enough to get us there and me back and pay for the “treatment” and a hotel, and even the cost of cremation and an urn. I put a pile of Rodeo Rhonda books on the desk. He asked me if I had collateral and I said no, I have nothing. I told him I hoped to get an advance on my next Rodeo book soon and I’d be able to pay them back then. He said I should come back and talk to another person next week with a copy of my book contract. I told him I didn’t have it yet, that my agent was working on it. I told him that I also had another book in the works (except I said boat accidentally, I have another boat in the works) but that I hadn’t finished it, and the guy said well, without a contract showing that I had funds coming in—from books or boats—there was no way that he could give me a loan.
Elf had money but it was in a joint account with Nic and he’d notice if such a large chunk of it went missing. I phoned him and asked him if Elf had mentioned the idea of her coming to Toronto. No, he said, but if she wants to, why not? His voice was quieter than usual. He didn’t ask for details. He just said yeah, why not? Why not? I told him about the boat. I was obsessed with the boat. He said as far as he knew Elf wasn’t really into boating but maybe, why not?
I sent an e-mail to my publisher and told him Rodeo Rhonda number ten would be on his desk in less than a month. I wrote like crazy. I had a bit of money left from an arts grant I’d received for the harbourmaster book and a really tiny amount left from the sale of our house in Winnipeg. Every day I called Nic and my mom for updates. Nic went to the hospital, usually twice a day, and said as usual not much had changed, Elf’s psychiatrist is never available to talk, and my mom had stopped going quite as often because she just couldn’t bear it, there was no change, the staff berated Elf continuously for not following the programme and lectured my mother on tough love and threatened to electrify my sister’s brain with shock therapy—and I called the nurses’ desk to beg them and to be reassured that they wouldn’t let her go. The truth was, though, that she was dying in the hospital. The nurses told me they wouldn’t let her go. They told me to make myself some tea and calm down. I asked if I could speak to Elf and they said only if she comes out of her room and answers the phone herself in the rec area. Sometimes I would call the nurses’ desk late at night and ask if Elfrieda was there. One time they told me yes, she’s here, you need to go to bed. I was trying to tell the nurse over the phone don’t tell me I need to go to bed but somehow managed to stop at don’t—and then apologized.
I made arrangements with Nic to call me from his cell when he was visiting Elf, and he put the phone to her ear and I talked about our plan, that I was still figuring things out, what to do, that either way I’d see her soon, I had a bit more work to do and then I’d be back in Winnipeg. While I talked she breathed, I think, but didn’t speak. Then one time I called and
she spoke, suddenly. Her voice was clear and strong.
When are you coming to get me, Yoli? she said.
I lay in bed a lot during the days trying to work on my Rhonda book. I wondered if maybe Mexico would be a better option, a better place to die. It would be cheaper to get there. I imagined a hammock swaying gently like a cradle, a return to infancy, to the void, and then to nothing. Mexico was more about death than Switzerland was, in my mind. It was an earthier place, more chaotic and mysterious. It was a country that celebrated the Day of the Dead by partying in cemeteries. Switzerland was about sharp pocket knives, marking time and remaining neutral. Nora made us smoothies and we ate paleo meals, her new fad diet, a lot of meat and nuts, like cavemen. Her recital was sweet and elegant and moving. On the way home afterwards she and Anders spilled Slurpees and dropped things and groped at each other awkwardly in the back seat of the car. If Will had now “reached the shores of manhood” as my father would have said, Nora was still riding that gloriously messy wave of adolescence out there on the open sea, the shoreline only barely visible to the naked eye. It was spectacularly hot in our apartment and the branches from the cutaway trees were beginning to grow back and engulf us once again in green. We were moving backwards in time, into the darkness.
I called the hospital relentlessly at all hours of the day and night. She’s there? She’s here. She’s there? She’s here. You won’t let her go? We won’t let her go.
SIXTEEN
I CALLED ELF AND TOLD HER over the phone that soon I’d have the money to go to Zurich. I’d use credit cards. But the next morning my mother called to say they were giving her a day pass. They were letting her go home to celebrate her birthday, a concept I found curious in these circumstances. Or maybe Elf hadn’t regretted being born, necessarily.
I was so obsessed with making sure she stayed in the hospital until I had scraped together the money I needed to take her to Zurich that I’d completely forgotten about her birthday. My mother said that Nic was on his way to the hospital to pick her up and she was going to order a birthday cake to be delivered and buy some champagne and some flowers she could take over to their house, and it was going to be good. She said this emphatically, as though she were an oracle. It was a decision. I got off the phone with my mother and sat down in the palm of a moulded plastic hand-shaped chair that Nora had found in somebody’s garbage and said well, then she’s gone.
Nora came home later in the morning and I told her that Elf was going home for the day to celebrate her birthday. That’s so nice, said Nora. It’ll be hard for her to go back to the hospital though. I agreed. Very hard. I phoned Nic on his cellphone but there was no answer. I phoned my mother’s apartment but there was no answer. Nora asked me if I wanted to play tennis with her so we roamed around the apartment looking for balls and rackets and put on our ratty shorts and T-shirts and headed off to the court with the droopy net a few blocks down the street. We played many games, running far too much, missing almost everything, apologizing like girls and gasping for air. We had played four or five games and were almost done, sitting on the sidelines sharing an ice cream we’d bought off a truck, “It’s a Small World” blasting from its rooftop speaker. I had been trying to remember the words. It’s a world of what and a world of what? My cellphone rang and it was Dan. Oh no, I thought, not now. I answered it and he asked me if I was okay, where I was, what I was doing, and I answered all his questions accurately. Aren’t you in Borneo? I asked him. He said yes, he was. But Nic had called him in a panic when he hadn’t been able to reach me. Yoli, he said, I’m calling with bad news.
I asked him if my mother knew and he said no, Nic had tried calling her at home and on her cell but there was no answer.
She’s out looking for a cake, I said.
Ah, said Dan, okay. And he said that Nic had tried calling me but there was no answer.
Yeah, because of tennis …
Yoyo, he said. I handed my phone to Nora.
Please hold this, I said. I don’t want it.
Nora and I walked back to our apartment. She carried both rackets and the balls and I held her other hand, the free one. I thought it was strange that I could hear the subway rumbling there beneath the ground and then realized it was only my thoughts smashing against one another and attempting to rearrange themselves into something new.
The hospital called me several times. I didn’t answer at first because I was busy booking a flight to Winnipeg and calling my mom every minute with no success. Finally I answered the hospital’s call. It was somebody I’d never met. She called herself the executive director of something. She asked me if I’d received the news and I said yes. She told me she was very sorry. I hung up. She called back and asked if she could talk to me, if she could explain what had happened. I told her I knew what had happened. She spoke in a soft voice, very professional, no pauses, no openings, no debate. I watched Nora move around the apartment getting our things ready for the trip to Winnipeg. The woman asked me if I was alone and I said no. I told her I was sorry but I had to go, I had arrangements to make and I still hadn’t managed to get a hold of my mother. She told me that she understood but that she needed to explain some things.
How shall I frame this? she said.
I asked her: why did you let her go when every day and every night you promised that you wouldn’t? Were we playing a game? Was I not supposed to believe you? She asked me if I would hold for one tiny second, she had a call coming in from the police relating to my sister’s situation. Situation? I said. I sat on the floor and waited and waited and heard Lionel Richie’s “Three Times a Lady,” the same song being played over and over so that I had lost track of how many times a lady she was, and then eventually realized that I didn’t have to hold, that I didn’t have to do anything that the executive director asked me to do. That was the situation. I pushed the end button on my phone and stood up and went to help Nora with the packing.
I phoned Will but he didn’t answer his cell. I phoned his dad in Manhattan and explained what had happened. Would he please try to get a hold of Will and buy him a ticket to Winnipeg immediately. I’d pay him back. He told me he was sorry, that he’d pay for the ticket, that he’d leave work now and go and find Will who was probably at his landscaping job in Queens. He and I hadn’t really spoken in years. He’d known Elf, of course, way back. Now he was crying on the phone. I waited. I’m sorry, he said again. She was an iconoclast, he said. She was kind to me. She was so into everything. I thanked him. We said goodbye. I phoned Julie and told her what had happened and asked her to go to my mom’s apartment and wait for her there. I phoned two of my mom’s friends and told them what had happened and to go to my mom’s apartment and to wait for her there. I still couldn’t get Nic on his cell. I tried my mother again. She was at her apartment. It was too soon.
Are there lots of people there? I asked her.
No, why? she said. I’m here alone.
They’re on their way, I said. She asked me what happened.
Tell me, she said.
SEVENTEEN
LATE IN THE EVENING we were all together in Nic and Elf’s living room. Nora and I were still wearing the clothes we’d played tennis in. Do we have other clothes? I asked Nora. Yes, she said, we have dresses for the funeral and underwear. Will had arrived in a cab from the airport. Now he was in the bathroom. He was there a long time, crying by himself, the way young men and old women prefer to do it.
Nic told us that he had picked Elf up at the hospital and they went home and then she asked him to go to the library for her. Let’s have lunch first, he said, and she agreed. He said the lunch was wonderful. It was normal. It was nice. Just sitting across from her at the table like old times. Then he went to the library to get the books that she’d requested, it would only take twenty minutes, the library was nearby, and when he came back the house was empty.
What books did she want? Will asked. He’d come out of the bathroom now. Nic said books from her past, the ones she remembered had change
d her life in some way or had given her … that made her feel alive, I don’t know … His voice trailed off. Will said like which ones? Nic said like D. H. Lawrence, Shelley, Wordsworth … I don’t know. They’re over there.
He waved at a sloping tower of books beside the computer table. We all eyed them, briefly, then looked away. They had failed. We couldn’t look at them. We sat in the silent, yellow living room, my son and daughter on either side of their grandma, close, like sentries. They had their arms hooked through hers as if to keep her from floating upwards and disappearing like a helium balloon.
My mother was saying one thing a lot. Ain’t that the truth, she said, when Will said she should sit. Ain’t that the truth, she said, when Nora hugged her and said Elf was out of pain. Ain’t that the truth, she said, when Nic thanked her for giving birth to Elf, his one and only. Ain’t that the truth, she said, when all of us answered, quite in unison, with the word breathe after she had posed the question what now?