Nobody Ever Talks About Anything But the End

by Liz Levine

  I am worried about her getting through the airport and onto a plane. My mother had restricted her months before to domestic flights only, and I feel relieved she is not in Zimbabwe or Tanzania or any of the other remote locales she previously frequented for work.

  I realize that this Oxford scholar with a handful of degrees and a few languages in her repertoire couldn’t possibly hold down a job right now. I forward the voicemail to Lex and Mom and promise to get her onto an airplane. I drive her to the airport amidst insane tales of police at her hotel at 2 a.m. the night before and moments with the prime minister during the day.

  Just when I feel the truth coming into focus, it blurs. And I realize there’s really only one truth now: I always thought her illness was bad, but now I know. It is terrible.

  KIDS

  We were all kids once. Although I guess Katherine didn’t really get to be. But Judson, Tamara, and I, we were. And all of us were playful and giggly and in many ways the poster children for what it means to be a kid.

  What did become of us?

  Once we became ourselves, it was too late. We could never be just kids again.

  L

  LAUGHTER

  I am always captivated by how much fire likes oxygen. That you can stack the wood as tight and dense as you want, but only when it tastes the air does it burn. That tiny space between the logs that lets the light in… it’s the same for us. That little giggle that bubbles up, forces its way between the layers of grief and pain until the laughter is ignited like a flame and you can feel yourself breathing again.

  I remember laughing a lot through both of these losses. I remember laughing at the wake as we put up photos of Judson and poured him champagne. I remember laughing with my brother the morning Tamara died regarding how the rabbis would feel about cremation.

  I feel like I might be a terrible person to laugh in these sorts of moments.

  But it turns out, I’m not alone. When I talk to Mom about laughing and loss, she tells me, “After your grandfather’s death in Naples, the coroner called to report that ‘Mr. Cowan has arrived home in his pyjamas.’ ”

  She says she hung up and just burst into laughter.

  She also tells me that after Tamara’s death she booked an appointment with Tamara’s therapist. Upon her arrival at his office, he said, “I can’t help you now. I don’t deal with grief.”

  I can’t tell if the second story is funny or not. But I laugh anyway. I need to. And she needs to hear me laugh today.

  LOVE

  I feel like Tamara and I misunderstood each other. And I don’t mean Tamara in the full throttle of her illness, I mean always. And not “misunderstood” in the small, semantic, bickering sibling kind of way (though we had that, too) but in a more fundamental sense.

  Tamara loved me in the way that a lot of little sisters do: she copied me.

  I like the sweatshirt. She buys the sweatshirt.

  I listen to good music. She steals my mixed tapes.

  I learn to play guitar. She goes out and buys a guitar.

  She makes friends with my friends, hangs out in my “spots,” tells my stories from school before I get a chance to…

  …etc., etc., ad nauseam.

  It drove me crazy, and I just couldn’t understand that this was love.

  In Grade 7, I took Environmental Sciences in a moment when water was not talked about like gold and endangered species weren’t pictured on the front of magazines and Al Gore hadn’t made his documentary and people weren’t scared. Not like they are now. And I was hooked.

  I might have stuck with it all the way through to an actual career, but… Tamara. It became an obsession for my mini-me. She loved the subject matter and took easily to the science and details behind it. More than that, it was a place to force the dialogue with me, a place to compete with me, and it was in my wing of the school, with my teachers, in my space.

  So I backed off environmental science. I told myself that when it wasn’t my favourite teacher, Mrs. Bell, at the front of the room, I wasn’t really that interested in it after all. I told myself that Tamara deserved something that was truly hers.

  And I was convinced of that, that I was giving her something. But Tamara was angry at me. She was angry that I’d abandoned our “shared” passion. She felt betrayed. And it wouldn’t be the last time she felt that. As she got sicker and sicker, she must have felt that I betrayed her more and more.

  I loved Tamara in the way that a lot of big sisters do: I tried to protect her.

  She tells a lie. I call her out on it.

  She makes up a story. I make it OK with the teacher.

  She freaks out. I inform my mother.

  And I talk about her with my friends, our parents and siblings and psychologists, and I ask about her mental health…

  …etc., etc., ad nauseam.

  It drove her crazy, and she just couldn’t understand that this was love.

  LIES

  In the months that follow Judson’s death, I’m getting the space to process this loss. And the silence. No one mentions his name in front of me. People look awkward when I bring him up, especially if it’s a funny story. People won’t touch this issue. So it’s like he doesn’t exist.

  It’s. Way. Too. Much. Space. A giant Judson-sized hole. Judson: my first love, my first gay BFF, my best friend, that bitchy queen I know and love. His favourite saying was “I ain’t your ho!” And when he was really worked up, “I ain’t your ho, I ain’t his ho, I am my oooowwwwwn ho.” All arms and legs with giant blue eyes, a lopsided smile, and so far out of the closet he’s not even going back in for the mittens he forgot—Judson was most definitely his own ho.

  I’m filling this giant empty space with cocaine.

  It has become a game I play. How often can I be high and get away with it? Who will figure it out first? How do I cover my tracks? I lie really well, and the only rule is that I can’t get caught… so as it turns out, I am winning the game!

  And by that, I mean I’m losing. Badly.

  Because now it’s been a year and a half and no one knows. My boss is totally oblivious, and my friends don’t bug me about not coming out on the weekend. They think I’m just working through this loss. My boyfriend, Anthony, knows that something’s wrong, but he’s giving me space. He tiptoes around me. We don’t eat meals together anymore. Sometimes (when I’m high) I burst through the door with a million things to say, and he sits and listens and puts whatever he’s doing away. Other times (when I’m coming down) I come home and just growl at him and curl my lip, and he has learned to make himself busy.

  I’ve been given so much space I’m falling through the cracks.

  And I’m running out of money for the month, so I can’t buy any more. I don’t know if I can stop this by myself. But I’ve been lying for so long I can’t tell the truth now. I need a reason to be clean. I just need a sign.

  As I stumble through the door one day, I bark at Anthony, “Why wasn’t the door locked?”

  There’s silence from upstairs and then his voice, “I ain’t your ho.”

  He’s right. In the moment that I realize that I am my own ho, a little piece of that Judson-sized hole is filled in and my last baggie of blow is flushed down the toilet.

  LAST WORDS

  November 10, 2016

  LIZ

  Got your message last night. I’m directing my first movie right now and not done until mid next week. We will talk once I wrap. Lots of love.

  TAMARA

  lots of love back!

  November 13

  TAMARA

  How are you doing?

  Sending you virtual hugs.

  LIZ

  See text above!

  November 14

  TAMARA

  Why are you always so bitchy? It takes as much effort to send a virtual hug as to say see text above. You are a pretty crappy big sister who has offered almost zero support through schizophrenia diagnosis and hellish months of hospitals, meds and side effects. I thi
nk a few phone calls and texts this month is pretty pathetic. We have never been close but you could try.

  LIZ

  Sorry you see it that way.

  TAMARA

  I am sure it is just my

  perspective. I know you have tried.

  And I know you have amazing talents

  and skills. I love you I just don’t love

  myself these days.

  LIZ:

  Awww honey. Know that you are loved. Understand that we are all here for you, albeit in different ways, and know that it will just take time to build your own self worth and your relationships back to where you want and deserve them to be. Please understand that I have spent 40 years building to what I have done in the past few months. It won’t help us grow if I feel attacked at a time like this—I have worked to be there for you and I’m sorry if you feel like i have failed but there is a lot between us that needs healing so getting a text like this puts us backwards when we have come so far since you started on your healing journey. Let's try and stay forward focused, open and positive and tell each other what we need (love) instead of pointing fingers (bitchy, crappy sister).

  Be patient: with yourself, and with us.

  Be gentle: on yourself and those trying to support you.

  Be love: as often as possible to yourself and others—even when it’s not easy.

  All that patience, gentleness and love WILL come back to you in spades.

  Now here’s what I need: to go finish this movie knowing that you are OK!! xoxoxoxoxoxo

  TAMARA

  Thank you for the message I am proud of you. Go finish the movie and know that I love and admire you.

  November 17

  TAMARA

  I hear you told mom you were stressed about our last exchange. I am sorry it stressed you out. You are an amazing talented person and super busy. I had no right to pull on you. I hope you are good and that your projects succeed beyond your wildest dreams.

  None of this matters anyway. I didn’t call her back for three weeks before she died.

  M

  MATH

  A whole bunch of little things can add up to a big thing.

  MIRROR

  I see sisters everywhere.

  Which is strange. Because I never saw us as sisters.

  MIRAGE

  When it happened, I thought I was seeing things. It is 1 a.m., maybe 1:30 a.m., over Christmas holidays, and I am walking from my friend’s to my family home in Toronto. As I turn a corner, he steps out of the shadows. Well over 6 feet tall, a baseball cap and these impossibly long arms with a slight tilt to his head. I stop. My brain is reeling, and I have to remind myself to breathe. I can feel panic welling up inside me as he gets closer.

  My feet are glued to the cement. I can see his smile—it is really him. I am actually confused for a moment—not yearning for the possibility of being confused—but actually unsure. And then he’s there. Beside me.

  It’s Josh.

  MOM

  My mother invented a world for us. She built it, one tiny brick at a time. It started before I was even born. Mom wasn’t supposed to have kids, or at least her body wasn’t. She went on fertility drugs before she had me—Elizabeth (consecrated to God) Aimee (beloved) Levine.

  Nearly four years later, by some sort of miracle, or maybe just the universe recognizing that she was the best mom ever, she had quadruplets.

  Nothing slowed my mother down. Not even Katherine’s death. She would have a child on her shoulder, one in her arms being fed, one being rocked in a car seat at her feet, and me, jumping around, singing, playing, vying for attention. And somehow she had enough for all of us. Not just for the things we needed, like food, or the things that were good for us, like hugs. She had room for everything that we needed and everything that we wanted and the things we didn’t know we needed or wanted until she gave them to us.

  After school, snacks would be on the table. My mom would take a cheese slicer and peel off long, thin strips of cheddar cheese for each of us and then pretend to read from them, like a letter. These imaginary notes were full of praise and support, and we all had to sit around the table and hear them before we could eat them with our slices of crisp green apple.

  She wanted us to have it all—our house filled with games and toys and musical instruments and sporting equipment. Life was a whirlwind of music lessons, sports games, summer camps, cottages. In the summer, she taught us to drive boats, swim, fish, and to love the out-of-doors. During the school year, she taught us to read, how to cook things, and to paint and draw and sing.

  She transferred this same energy to the holidays. We celebrated Easter and Passover, we got chocolate eggs and matzo, we lit the menorah on Hanukkah, and decorated a tree for Christmas. And while it might seem strange to some, to her it was about choice and about experience. It was about what she believed and about what she loved to do, but also about what we would choose for ourselves. She was open to, and endlessly fascinated by, our choices.

  And she was truly a momma bear—she would growl at those who slighted us. She went to every parent-teacher night, fought for us, circled around and got involved with our friends’ parents, sniffed out where we were going and what we were doing. She encouraged our freedom and our sense of discovery but was happiest when the four of us were close to her, around the kitchen table.

  With all of that, she was protecting us, her cubs. Protecting the sickest or the weakest first. She was following her instincts. The instincts that birthed us, raised us, and raised us up. For all the frustration I may feel, I know this: She didn’t know that it would hurt the strongest among us. She hoped it would save the weakest among us. And today I know that she feels she failed us.

  But she didn’t. When it came to Tamara, I gave up. She never did.

  To: Tamara, Allan, Alexis, Michael, Peter, Liz, Dr. G

  March 25, 2015

  Dear Tamara,

  All that any of us has wanted is to know you are FULLY engaged in a course of treatment that you can commit to, in order to really know the real value and benefits, or not.

  As a worried Mom, today, with your email to Dr. G., is the first somewhat easier breath I have taken knowing you have reached out once again to risk professional help.

  We have all been so alarmed by your recent thinking and actions that Allan and I knew that we HAD to sit down with you to beg you to try the route of professional help once more.

  I have been on this tortuous journey with you Tamara, all the way back to last fall with Dr. D and meeting you at your appointments. I know the meds are lousy but when you were on them briefly, just before your last birthday, everyone said that you were calmer and “better” when here at that time, but by Thanksgiving you had stopped them and seemed much more “off” as I have said to you.

  There are many different meds, and bodies do adjust a bit and/or being admitted to hospital to get the right medication for YOU, might be a possibility, and I would be right there with you.

  These are not easy words to write.

  You know you have had my support always, be it the 5,000 recent texts or 6,000 recent emails, the dinners, the drives, the celebrations, the films, the financial gifts, and my admiration for all of your many talents and caring qualities…………………………… but your reluctance to really deal with your health, beyond job search and exercise has created unpleasant exchanges and very scary behaviours and responses, and I do not believe we can all be “wrong.”

  There is not one member of this family or extended family who does not want to see you healthy, really healthy, not just functioning, and your suffering has been excruciatingly painful for me to watch, cause I am the mother!!!

  Please, for yourself, first and foremost, but for all of us, move forward on all fronts with all the treatment you can, and however hard it is, we are all cheering for you, and are here for you!

  There is really nothing more I can say……………………

  Xo

  Mom


  For everything Mom has done for us, the only thing I want to do in return is make this feeling that she has failed go away. But I can’t. And in fact, my very existence only serves to reinforce it.

  MULTIPLES

  Lex said, “When I was born, I was a quadruplet, but Katherine died when we were so young that I only really remember being a triplet.”

  He’s not wrong. Since Katherine never came home from the hospital, they were always (to everyone’s memory save my mother’s, I’m sure) The Triplets.

  After they were born, my father came home and told me their names: Katherine, Peter, Alexis, and Tamara. I am outraged. Why do I have to wait until tomorrow to know her name? I want to know now! I don’t fully understand that her name is Tamara (not “tomorrow”) until they all come home weeks later. Well, Peter, Alexis, and Tamara come home. But in this moment I’m not worried about who might be missing. I’m overwhelmed with newcomers. And I have a sister and she is tiny and perfect and here, now.

  They have matching everything. There are three identical cribs lined up in the upstairs bedroom. Three high chairs at the kitchen table. Then there is the stroller, three babies long, which makes anyone on the street with a heart need to stop and peer in and comment. My home is filled with bins of cloth diapers (bless my mother) and dozens of plastic bottles and stacks of cloths and towels and bins and really anything that could be used to wipe down an infant (or in this case, three).