I silently agree with her, but only suggest that she stop the chemo for a few days as food is more important than anything to keep her strength up. She gives me a sad cackle and asks, “What strength?”
The poetry class gets off to a fine start with Dylan Thomas, whom I really love, and I am glad to see Janet Murdock. We grab a coffee together and I explain about Carl and Ma. She offers to take notes on her computer and will print them off for me if I miss classes. She’s such a kind girl. Jo has transferred to Waterloo University.
I pick up my novels for my Modern British Authors class, from Evelyn Waugh to Martin Amis. I am relieved that I feel excited, the first time for so long, and that I am still open to literature.
On my way home I stop at a Shoppers Drug Mart.
I email Carl at five o’clock: “Walk to Mutti’s for dins.” I’ve taken the car keys, which will annoy him as he still believes he can drive. I get a return email: “U tuk the dam kees.” At this point I phone Mutti and tell her to pick him up.
I make a reservation to take Ma out for dinner to Pangyea, which is only across the street from Manulife and a far cry from the Sinclair Hotel. Normally this would thrill her, but now she says she’s not well enough to even walk across the street, and that her mouth’s too raw to allow her to eat.
“You have to force yourself,” I say, “and give up the chemo.” I offer to go downstairs to the drugstore and get her some benzocaine, which would numb her mouth, but she says, “No, Sonja, even if I swallow food, I throw it up later.”
I don’t want to lose Ma. I make her some canned tomato soup with a lot of milk, and some Ritz Crackers to soak in it. She smiles at me, showing her new veneers, which she got for the wedding only seven months ago, back when we all had hope.
“You’re such a fine girl, Sonja, so good to your mother,” she whispers.
I pretend I have to go to the bathroom and I sit on the toilet and cry. I know that she’s going and there’s nothing I can do about it. Carl has left me too. Much later I read,
Light breaks where no sun shines;
Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart
Push in their tides.
I ask myself how Dylan Thomas could have written this and still have drunk himself to death. Ma smoked herself to death in the absence of hope, but I don’t understand Dylan.
I email Carl. “You OK?”
“Jerry here watting TV.”
They are drinking rye. Carl mixes alcohol with his painkillers and smiles at me when I tell him it’s dangerous. He loves me to be concerned about him.
I tuck Ma in bed and give her two Tylenol with codeine ground up in jam as she says she’s in pain. Her head rests on the pillow like a little girl, and when I kiss her cheek the skin slides over her sharp cheekbone and I smell soap and death, sweet, yet jagged and final.
“Love ya, Ma.”
“Poor Sonja, too much on your plate,” she sighs.
I go to the bathroom with my bag from the drugstore. The pregnancy test is positive. I cannot go ahead with this.
By Wednesday, Ma is in terrible pain and cannot get out of bed. She takes little sips of black tea but is becoming dehydrated, and the Tylenol is useless. I call an ambulance and go with her to Princess Margaret, where they attempt to hook her up to an intravenous, giving fluid and morphine.
“Little tiny veins,” complains the nurse, trying to insert the needle. I see a purple bruise spread in the crack of Ma’s shrunken arm. She smiles at me, and underneath my eyelids unshed tears burn.
“We’re going to make her comfortable,” explains the nurse, “a little morphine, she’s so slight only a little will have an effect.”
“She’s only forty-eight,” I say, a silly defensive comment, as if the years should insulate her from death.
“You’re her only relative?”
I nod and sign a “Do not resuscitate” directive. What needless cruelty it would be to prolong Ma’s suffering.
I go to the main-floor restaurant at Princess Margaret and collect a bagel, coffee, and yogurt with fruit at the bottom. I am bleeding memories. I go over the gifted coat, the Sinclair Hotel dinners, and Ma at the Helbigs, and how kind Carl was in the days when he still had kindness to spare. I hope I made it up to her for being the world’s most obnoxious teenager.
I email Carl: “Ma dying.”
He comes back with “Sory.” There are no complaints about breakfast and missing me. He has risen to the occasion.
I sit by Ma and wait. I am missing my doctor’s appointment. I email the clinic: “Family emergency. Will rebook.”
Ma’s breathing has become ragged. It is four o’clock, and outside the snow, like soft white feathers, floats down, surrounding the street lights, and landing gently on the shoulders of those trudging up University. Ma gurgles.
“It won’t be long now,” whispers a nurse.
By five, Ma is gone.
19
SEEING DR. ANDERSON
“AND WHY WOULD YOU BELIEVE you weren’t pregnant?”
Dr. Harry Anderson, obstetrician and gynecologist, is round, smiling, pink, and bald, lacking the cadaverous quality of the surgeon and the heft of Dr. Folkes. He obviously likes his food, and it shows in his cheerful disposition and generous inclinations. He is kind enough to take me on Friday afternoon when his nurse tells him that my missed appointment was as a result of my mother’s death. I have given my blood and urine samples and he has done an internal, which was like being probed by the snout of a pink, hairless, but very affectionate pig.
“It only happened once,” I explain, “on October 14, the day before my birthday. I went off the pill in August to lose weight. The next day my husband had a severe concussion and I haven’t had sex since.”
“Doesn’t seem fair, does it?” muses Dr. Anderson. “But it only takes a single act, as some poor little teenagers discover. Hopefully your husband will recover enough to function sexually and to help in parenting a baby.”
“I can’t have this baby,” I blurt out. “I’m a student and my husband shows no signs of recovering. He is my baby. It’s out of the question.” I sound angry and argumentative, shooting the messenger as Dr. Folkes had complained.
Dr. Anderson has lost his smile. “These are personal choices, Mrs. Helbig, but if you choose the termination route, then you can’t wait much longer. You’re a healthy young woman and physically there seems to be no problem. I usually carry out an ultrasound in the fourth month to be sure. There’s a clinic on Wellesley that deals with these other matters.”
I obtain a card from Dr. Anderson’s nurse and telephone The Family Planning Centre when I return to the apartment. I tell them I am three months pregnant and that my physician advises me it is a matter of some urgency. My appointment is the following week on Thursday afternoon. This will give me the weekend after next to convalesce.
I gather up Ma’s things and bury my face in her fox collar. I will take her clothes to the Salvation Army as it is too sad to keep them. She is to be cremated and all I will have left will be a little urn of ashes, like the ashes from the thousands of Camel cigarettes she smoked.
I pile my new textbooks in the car seat beside me and head for Davenport. I am weary at the prospect of the long drive, both there and back. Sometimes I feel Carl is getting worse, and I have a growing impatience with him that at times makes me feel ashamed. Ma brought about her own death, but I knew why. Carl could have saved his life but refused. And now I must bear the result of his stubbornness and stupidity. I must pay for a night of sex, amazing though it was, by having the result of it suctioned from my body—a little, pulsating, live pink butterfly vacuumed away like so much debris—because his maker, his father, has made his future life impossible.
My cellphone rings. Carl is hoarse with excitement.
“You gotta hurry or I’m gonna be late.”
“What are you saying?” I phone back but he does not pick up.
I am stuck in traffic although it is only three-thirty. The pr
edicted snow flurries have started and I turn on the windshield wipers. The blades click back and forth, relentless. I turn on the news. Northern Ontario will be experiencing some six to eight inches. Next weekend, I decide, I will stay in Toronto, and read poetry and Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One: the funeral industry in California should be a diversion. I wonder what Dylan Thomas meant by saying that after the first death there is no other. Did he mean the enormity of loss cannot be duplicated? I think of Ma and then the loss of Carl’s mind. Is he regressing or merely shutting down?
My cell rings again.
“Look out the window, it’s probably a blizzard where you are. I’m doing my best,” I tell him.
“I can’t be late. Don’t you understand?”
“Late for what? Just what is your problem?” My voice is strident.
“Fuck, you don’t understand.”
He hangs up.
The stream of traffic starts again. There was an accident ahead and everyone was slowing down to look. Plato was right. People need a philosopher king.
My cell rings.
“Stop bothering me,” I yell and turn off my cell. I don’t feel my usual guilt.
It is six-thirty when I pull into the driveway. The light is on over the door and Carl is standing on the first step, balanced on his skates, fully dressed in his Bruins uniform. His helmet is covered with snow and he holds a hockey stick in his gloved hand.
“We’re late for the first period,” he shouts. “Give me the keys to the car.”
I approach him slowly and when I touch his face it is like ice, and his eyes are half hidden by snow. The fresh snow covering our cedar hedge sparkles in the porch light.
“They cancelled the game,” I tell him softly. “The plane with the other Bruins couldn’t land because of the snowstorm. You’ll play next week.”
We enter the house together and I go upstairs to start his bath. He sits obediently, waiting for me to remove his skates. I pull off his gloves and his fingers are rigid with cold. I take off his helmet and wipe the snow from his eyes. I rub each hand between mine, in turn, one after the other.
“Try to take off your skates,” I beg, “You put them on, after all.”
“You turned off your cell.”
“It was the storm,” I lie.
He removes his skates and we trudge upstairs. I slowly remove his shin pads, hockey pants, jersey, and shoulder and elbow pads, and he co-operates. He now stands before me naked, and I smell the sharp sweat from his armpits and the stench of stale urine from his tangled pubic hair. His penis hangs flaccid.
“You didn’t take a bath,” I scold, “not for a whole week. What will I do with you?” He smiles happily, savouring my concern.
As he sits in the tub I massage his scalp gently with my own lavender shampoo, wipe his eyes with a hot cloth, and soap his ears with my fingers. Soon they will be pink again. I lather his back, rub it with a cloth, and turn on more hot water as his arms are still cold.
“Wash your pits and down below,” I order.
I think of Ma and her little joke about possible and I feel like crying. He is finally finished and he climbs from the tub, clean and triumphant.
“Why is it so difficult for you to do this on your own?”
He does not reply and declines my offer of food.
I lie down beside him. He always turns away from me. I place my arm around him.
“Can you sleep without your pills?”
He does not answer so I conclude he can.
“Do you remember in Boston, the night before the last game?”
He does not answer. It was the second bleed, he can’t remember.
“What would you do if I were pregnant?”
There is a sharp intake of breath and I feel his back stiffen, then it crumbles, and I hear him sob, deep sobs, right from his gut.
“Carl, stop it. I’m not pregnant.”
But he ignores me. “What good would I be to a kid? I couldn’t even push him in a swing or play ball. I would be a shit of a father, lyin’ in the dark, livin’ on pills.”
I rub his back gently, in circles.
“But I always wanted you to have my kid, I remember that part of it. He would be so smart. I don’t forget everything.”
My heart is bursting. Fuck hockey. Fuck everything.
“Go to sleep, darling. I’m not pregnant, so it’s silly to talk about it.”
“I missed you.”
“I know. I missed you too.”
THE WAITING ROOM of an abortion clinic is not like the waiting room of a doctor or dentist. It lacks the bustling efficiency. The magazines sit unread. Near the door sits a teenager; her eyes are swollen and she wears a nose ring. On her forearm is tattooed the name Chris, surrounded by the outline of a blue heart.
“Sometimes,” said Ma, “you can move too quickly to throw away something that is precious, something that can cause future joy.”
I stand up.
“You’re next, Mrs. Helbig.”
I am to go before the teenager, age discrimination in an abortion clinic.
“I’ve changed my mind,” I say.
“You should have let us know,” said the receptionist with a disapproving pout. “We changed our schedule to take you.”
“Sorry,” I say, “but I didn’t know it would happen.”
On the way out I hug the teenager. She stiffens in surprise, no doubt thinking I am mad.
“Good luck,” I tell her.
Outside it is growing darker and the flakes are falling again. Light breaks where no sun shines, I think to myself.
THE NEXT MONTH I look at my ultrasound with Dr. Anderson. “You can see his penis,” he says pointing, “and his arm is up.”
“He’s waving at me,” I say, “thanking me for saving his life.”
“As you wish,” replies Dr. Anderson, smiling as usual.
20
OVERTIME
CARL’S DEPRESSION IS GETTING WORSE. I spoke to Jerry Henley about it after one of his visits. He suggested that Carl join The Choir for a brief game of non-contact pickup hockey at the Davenport Arena, as they reserve an after-hours session twice a month. It is a Saturday night and I help him get ready. He seems excited, actually smiling at me, and I suspect he thinks he is going to play for the Bruins.
“Nothing too rough,” I instruct Jerry, “he gets dizzy and nauseated, but it would be wonderful if he enjoyed this. It would really buck him up.”
Ma’s expression. Is it true, I ask myself, thinking of Oscar Wilde, that all women eventually end up like their mothers?
“Wanna come?” asks Jerry. He and I are now buddies, brought together by our mutual concern for Carl.
“No way,” I say. “It would worry the shit out of me to watch.”
I talk to Jerry now in what I think of as “Carl language,” or what used to be “Carl language,” and I swear as much as I can. It seems to relax everyone, including me.
Carl and Jerry have been gone an hour, and I have become relaxed enough to actually read The Waste Land when I hear them at the door.
Jerry looks at me and shakes his head. “Acting like a crazy man,” he says softly, “all over the ice. Then he goes down and can’t get up. Complains about his head all the way home—says it’s comin’ apart. But then he says, ‘At least we beat the Canucks.’ Right out of it. He thinks he’s still with the Bruins.”
Frontal lobe dementia, I think to myself, fear flickering in my throat, but I merely say, “Guess he’s not ready, but nice try.”
Jerry helps me take off Carl’s skates, which he’d refused to take off in the change room at the arena, and he sits in his gear in a chair in the living room, looking into space. “Let’s have a drink to celebrate,” Carl says suddenly, “it’s not often we beat the bastards like this.”
Jerry looks at me and shrugs apologetically, as if in a strange and symbiotic way he’s responsible for Carl’s dementia.
I pour them both large shots of rye. “I’ll go up and get your ba
th ready,” I say to Carl. “It’ll warm you up and help your head.”
“I have,” Carl informs Jerry, his voice bright, “the best wife in the world. Bet your wife doesn’t give you a bath every weekend and wash every part of you.”
Jerry is embarrassed. He lowers his head and gives me a furtive, almost shy glance. There is no wife.
“I’m sure she would if he asked her,” I reply. “Lots of wives give their husbands baths, don’t they, Jerry?”
I give Jerry a quick wink. I may as well make a joke of it.
“Christ,” whispers Jerry, on his way out, “this is fuckin’ awful.”
“He has good and bad days,” I explain. “He’s not always delusional.”
The bath is not a success. His head pounds and nothing alleviates the pain. I finally give him one OxyContin.
“What’s wrong? You want me to suffer? I might as well be dead anyways.”
“Take one more,” I say, “but only one.” I don’t want to fight with him, not over one lousy pill.
March not April is the cruellest month, and not because anything is twitching and coming to life except Carl Helbig Jr., who grows restless. The wind blows bitter, and Sheila’s Brush, the snowstorm that takes place after Saint Patrick’s Day, March 17, to remind Canadians that winter is not yet past, takes place on March 20. On the last week of March I take Carl with me to Toronto to see Dr. Judith Weiner, a noted neuropsychologist affiliated with Mount Sinai Hospital. She has examined Dr. Folkes’ MRI and MRS results, both from the February and October concussions. She orders another MRI and MRS and conducts a battery of tests and interviews throughout the week. She is crisp, immaculate, and clinically detached, and sits across her desk, speaking to me in her low but definite voice.
“There was a second bleed and some frontal lobe damage, followed by what appears to be pronounced dementia in certain areas. There may well be some chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which cannot be fully determined until a post-mortem. Should he die, I would urge you to donate your husband’s brain to the researchers at Boston University.”
Sonja & Carl Page 21