by Miriam Toews
Finally he had enough signatures and he brought them to the town hall and they said all right already, go start your little library. They gave him a tiny, mildewed room in an old abandoned school and enough money to get some second-hand shelves and books to fill them. He was the happiest man in the world. He hired my sister to be the librarian and she was very thorough. She made an index card for every book. She included many details. She was a teenager with long straight black hair and enormous glasses and she kept things very organized. The two of them went off to work together. They had a million plans.
I look at Elf through the glass wall of the ICU and wave. She is watching me and Nic talk about her internal organs. She’s wearing an Alarm T-shirt that I gave her years ago one summer when we were both living in London, me in a dirty house full of punks and she in a pristine flat in Notting Hill with a diplomat of some sort who wasn’t Italian but liked to call Venice Venezia and Naples Napoli.
So she’ll live, I say to Nic. He nods and takes a deep breath and in the space of that breath is framed the question we need to ask ourselves.
I’m sitting on concrete steps outside the hospital and talking to my kids on the phone with the latest on Elf. Will has finished classes now and tells me he is willing to go back to Toronto to stay, again, with Nora whose big school dance recital is coming up while I’m in Winnipeg. But he’s starting a job in Queens in a couple of weeks doing landscape work for a guy his dad knows so he can’t stay forever. And he says he’ll do it, but asks me: can you please just give N a pep talk about not living like an animal?
Julie has gone back to work. She left me two cigarettes wrapped in tinfoil. Just then I get a text from Dan from Borneo. I need you. I text him back. What? Are you okay, Dan? He texts me back. Sorry, pushed send too soon. I need you to sign the divorce papers.
I delete it and light one of the cigarettes that Julie gave me and blow smoke gently, concentrating on my breath, on soft shapes. I tell myself to think, to focus. I briefly consider texting Radek but I don’t know what to say or how to say it. I get up and walk to the river for a look. The ice is gone now. The river is quieter. It’s probably okay to put a canoe into it now if that’s your only way home.
Now I’m sitting in the “family room” with my mother and my aunt. Nic has gone to get some food. My mother is recommending a book to my aunt. I know of the book. She is describing it as delightful. She asks me if I’ve heard of it and I say yeah, but I don’t want to read it. My mother tells me it’s a feel-good book, sometimes we need them, and I don’t say anything. What are you currently reading, Yoli? asks my aunt. Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night, I tell her. A French writer, dead, not the singer from Quebec. Where’s yours? my mother asks. And I say my feel-good book? And she says no, your manuscript. Still in a plastic Safeway bag? I nod and roll my eyes. My aunt asks me how many words I have and I tell her I don’t know, I can’t remember how to check on my computer. I don’t want to talk about it. My mother tells Tina that she doesn’t like books where the protagonist is established as Sad on page one. Okay, she’s sad! We get it, we know what sad is, and then the whole book is basically a description of the million and one ways in which our protagonist is sad. Gimme a break! Get on with it! Tina nods sagely and says yes and then something in Plautdietsch, probably something like heck yeah do we ever know what sad is. Sadness is what holds our bones in place. My cellphone vibrates and I look at the text. It’s Nic telling me that he’s in the cafeteria and that he just talked to Claudio. Claudio’s dealt with everything, the venues, the insurance, and just generally calling off the tour. Tina jumps in with her own variation on the theme of sadness. I text Nic back and say good, angry? Nic texts back no, concerned, helpful, stressed maybe, coming to Winnipeg from Budapest to see her.
My mother says that when she reads my rodeo stories she gets sad thinking that I have so much sadness in me that I make all those teenage heroines so sad. Why can’t they ever get the first-place ribbon? she asks. I tell her no, no, everyone has all that sadness in them, it’s not just me, and the writing helps to organize it, so no big deal. I text Nic back: When? He texts back immediately. Tomorrow. Claudio’s putting out a press release, saying it’s exhaustion and a request for privacy. My mother says ah, okay, but still … I wonder about you carrying that sorrow around with you, where it came from … and I finally understand what she needs to hear and that she’s talking about not just me but Elf too and I tell her that my sorrow was not created by her, that my childhood was a joyful thing, an island in the sun, that her mothering is impeccable, that she is not to blame.
I’m alone with Elfrieda. The sun is disappearing. The day before the day before my father killed himself he took my hand in his and said Yoli, it feels to me as though the lights are going out. We were sitting by a fountain in a park at noon.
Nic sat with Elf for hours and has gone home now. He’s furious because a neighbour of theirs saw Elf being loaded into the ambulance covered in blood and told a few other neighbours and now a reporter has called Nic asking about Elf’s condition. My mother and my aunt are also at home, resting. I tell Elf that we’re all meeting for dinner at Colosseo and that I wish she could be there with us. The tube is still in her throat and she can’t answer but if she could what would she say? I ask her if she can imagine life getting better. I ask her if her heart is broken. If life is torturing her. I tell her that I would help her if I could but I can’t. I don’t want to go to jail. I don’t want to kill her. I put my hands over my face in the half-light of her room. I’m afraid and when I think of my fear my knees start shaking again but the sound of her breathing machine is comforting and rhythmic. I offer to sing and a corner of her mouth moves, barely. I don’t know what to sing. I think for a minute and Elf looks at me as if she’s saying well? What’s it gonna be? I sing “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” from Jesus Christ Superstar. I’m dying of fear. Elf and I used to belt this one out together, a passionate ballad sung by Mary Magdalene about her new crush, Jesus. She’s a prostitute, jaded, and can’t believe how this barefoot, bearded guy undoes her. She wants him and she tries to normalize the idea of wanting to date Jesus by claiming he’s just another man, after all. I sing it quietly while the light fades and Elf disappears into the darkness of her glass room. Finally it’s completely dark in the room and I’ve stopped singing and the only sound is the artificial breathing of the respirator. Elf picks up the pad of paper lying on her stomach and writes something on it and passes it to me. How do you go on? she has written. I squint at the words for a minute or two. I hold them up to the tiny red light on her respirator to get a better look. I pass the paper back to her. She shakes her head and I return the pad of paper to her stomach. We both close our eyes and time passes. Five minutes? Half an hour?
Elf, I say, are you awake? Her eyes stay closed. Elf, I say. She doesn’t respond. I look at my cellphone. There are no messages. I look at the nurses through the glass. They’re in their brightly lit area, talking and laughing and taking notes but I can’t hear them. Elf, I say. Open your eyes. Still no reaction. I put my head gently down onto her stomach where the glass piano is. Elf, I whisper. I don’t know what to do.
We are silent.
Elf, I whisper again. How do you think Nic feels? Do you know what you’re doing? You’re killing people.
Now Elf shifts slightly and puts her hand on my head. I sit up and look at her. Her eyes are open. For once, she looks alarmed. She shakes her head, no, no, no.
Does it make you happy to think of Nic or mom finding your dead body? I’m whispering now too. I’ve become her torturer and I’m so ashamed. I’m so angry and so afraid. I don’t want the nurses to hear me. Elf twists my hand hard and it hurts. Her hands are strong still, from playing. I twist back and she makes a small noise that manages to escape the tube that’s rammed down her throat.
A nurse comes into the room and says oh, she hadn’t seen me sitting there in the dark. She’s new so we introduce ourselves. She turns the light on and sees
that both Elf and I are crying and apologizes and switches it off again. I’m overwhelmed by this small act of compassion. She offers to come back in a bit.
No, no, I say, it’s fine now.
I don’t look at Elf. I can feel her begging me not to leave and I pick up all my stuff and say okay, well, see you later, not sure when I’ll be back. I don’t look at her, she can’t speak, she can’t protest because of the tube, and I walk out of the room.
I get as far as the parking lot and then I run back to Elf’s room. I rush in and apologize and she puts her arms up to hug me. I catch my breath as she holds me. I sit up after a minute or two and she taps her heart. You love me? I say. She nods. But there’s more that she wants to say. I pick up the pad of paper that has fallen to the floor and she writes that she is sorry too. She doesn’t want to kill anybody but herself. I know, I say, I nod. I’m afraid of dying alone, she writes, and I nod again. Then she writes the word Switzerland on the paper and circles it and passes it to me. I smile and fold the paper until it’s the size of a pill and put it back into my bag. Let me think, I tell her. Give me time to think.
TEN
I WAS DRIVING DOWN CORYDON AVENUE to the restaurant to meet Nic and Tina and my mom for dinner. I had forgotten where we had agreed to meet. I hoped that seeing the restaurant sign would somehow jog my memory so I drove slowly, like a parade float, peering at all the possibilities. But I was thinking about death. If I could get my hands on some barbiturates. And Seconal? There is some combination that if you take with milk … or not with milk. I couldn’t remember the recipe for death. Years ago when I was trying to make a living as a freelance journalist I went to Portland, Oregon, to write a magazine story on assisted suicide. While I was there my cousin Leni’s body was found in the Fraser River where she had pitched herself once and for all into the void. It involved a certain combination of drugs. What was it? Had I made a reservation for six p.m. or seven p.m. at Colosseo? Had I remembered to ask if we could sit on the terrace? Was it Seconal, that active ingredient? I’d have to check my Portland notes, if I still had them.
Nic worked in health science, maybe he could somehow fashion these necessary drugs from bits and pieces of whatever was lying around the office. Hey Nic, can you cobble something together that’ll knock her out for good? Or somehow we could find a doctor willing to bust into a hospital stash and steal them? Or maybe it’s not even stealing if a doctor takes them. Call of duty. Or a willing pharmacist? Maybe a gang. There are a thousand gangsters in Winnipeg with access to illegal drugs. Or guns.
All right, so the brain is an organ that’s made to solve problems so if the problem is life and its unlivability then a rational, working brain would choose to end it. No? I didn’t know what to do. It felt like someone was throwing darts at the side of my head, five seconds apart. It sounded naive to me now and selfish and fearful to say you must live, you must want to live, you have to live. That’s your one imperative, the single rule of the universe. Our family had once been one of those with normal crises like a baby (okay, two babies) born out of wedlock. Our family had once been one of those typical ones that only thinks about killing each other in the abstract. Now I couldn’t think or write. My fingers hated me. I was afraid that when I went to sleep I’d wake to find them wrapped around my throat.
I parked my mother’s car on a side street near the restaurant and phoned Finbar on his cell and left a message: if I were to help my sister die, would I be charged with murder? I hung up. I called back and left another message: I’m not planning to kill my sister, don’t get me wrong, I’m just wondering about the legal implications and all that stuff. Can you help me? I realized then that I wasn’t even sure what kind of law he practised. I think it might have been entertainment law.
I closed my eyes and tried to think. What is love? How do I love her? I was gripping the steering wheel the way my father used to, like he was towing a newly discovered planet behind him, one that held the secrets to the universe.
It was Seconal, definitely! That was the drug. And one hundred pills are necessary for a lethal dose. You empty the powder into something soft like yogurt and eat it. The alternative was Nembutal which was more expensive but easier to take because it came in liquid form. All you have to do is knock back a glass of Nembutal and Bob’s your uncle, as my aunt Tina would say. I wondered if my heart would give out from fear. Why are doctors so uncomfortable with helplessness. What if I’m caught and charged with murder? What will I do in jail? Where will Nora live? In Borneo? What if Elf doesn’t really want to die? What would my mother say? My cell went off and I gasped, I was so startled. It was a text from Nora: If Will’s coming, tell him it’s okay if Anders sleeps over. I texted back: It’s NOT okay! Nora again: You said it was okay if we were rehearsing late and the subways stopped. Me: Fine but he’ll sleep on the couch. Nora: Text Will and tell him not to tell Anders he has to sleep in the laundry room. Me: That’s not a bad idea! There’s an old futon in there and piles of dirty clothes to make forts with. Nora: Mom! Me: N, you’re only fourteen years old. Nora: I’m almost fifteen. God. Remember my birthday? Are you senile now?
Dinner passed like a Buñuel film. I kept an eye on my mother, on her face, her hands, expecting eyeballs to be severed, blood to flow. We were on the sunny terrace of a bustling Italian restaurant, my mother was a Pietà, she was Michelangelo’s Mary and my thoughts were murderous. Nic was pouring sangria wearily into a thousand glasses, my mother’s sister was grabbing hands and squeezing, talking fast and then asking what is Twitter?
She asked Nic about the camping expedition he made this last winter and somehow this led us to a discussion of Jack London’s “To Build a Fire.” We all had different theories for why Jack London has the dog abandon the dying man at the end of the story. And for some of us the word “abandon” wasn’t quite accurate. My mother and my aunt hadn’t read the story but they thought about it and in tandem concluded that the dog is going to get help. Nic believed that the dog understands that the man is now dying, freezing to death, and needs to be alone, the way a dog or cat prefers to be alone as it dies. So the dog leaves out of respect, giving the man his space. I didn’t believe in either of these theories. It’s a dog, I said, it senses that the man is dying or dead already so what can it do now? Nothing. It’s over. The dog takes off. It has to find some food and shelter, first things first. Its instinct is to survive. I mean, not to … did Jack London commit suicide? I looked at the rest of them apologetically.
Nic had a strange smile on his face. He was crying. His hand was covering his eyes. His watch was too big for him, the strap was sliding around on his arm and he sometimes had to hold his arm still, in a certain way, to keep the watch from falling right off.
That evening I did many things but came no closer to making a decision about killing my sister or not. I tucked my mother and my aunt into bed with their Kathy Reichs and Raymond Chandlers. They had buried fourteen brothers and sisters. They once had a family large enough to field two entire baseball teams. It was just the two of them now, out of sixteen kids. They had buried daughters and husbands and parents. Their world view was shaped by death, littered with bodies from the jungles of Bolivia to the far reaches of Outer Mongolia. My aunt whispered something to me in Plautdietsch and I thanked her. Schlope Schein, the words she used to repeat to Leni and me before we fell asleep, when we were young and new to this planet and long before my cousin painted her apartment lime green and then threw herself into the ice-cold Fraser River.
I went onto the balcony and phoned Radek and left a message on his machine. I’m sorry for being such a jerk, I said. Feel free to make me a villain in your opera. I’m trying to think of that Czech word you sometimes say but I can’t remember it now. So just … in summary … I’m really, really sorry. I breathed for a while wanting to say something else and then hung up.
I drove to Nic’s house but didn’t get out of the car. He had thin strands of rope tied to his roof and anchored to the ground with sandbags. They were ta
ut, the strands, like strings on an upright bass. I guessed that he was using them to grow something, a beanstalk to heaven or maybe hops for his beer, if hops are things that grow vertically and wrap themselves around twine.
I drove to Julie’s house and met her on her porch. I don’t know what to do, I said. But she’s going to be okay? said Julie. Well, yeah, I think so. Do you have any wine?
We drank the wine and talked late into the night. Her children slept. We walked half a block to the riverbank and saw things, fish maybe, jumping in and out of the water like it was really hot and had startled them. Look, I said, and pointed to the Ste. Odile Hospital, way off in the distance, its towers and wings and giant neon cross. I wonder which window is hers, I said. We walked back to Julie’s house and checked the kids. They were still in their beds, still sleeping.
You can’t actually do that, said Julie when we were back in our chairs on the porch. I know, I said. But can’t I? No, she said. Not really. No. Because I’d be caught? Yeah, she said, but not even that. Because I’d feel guilty for the rest of my life? I don’t know, she said, I’m not sure. Would you do it together with Nic and your mom?
Yeah, I guess so, I said, but …
So you’d all be gathered around and then she’d take the stuff and die …
Yeah …
And this is the stuff that you heard about in Portland?
Yeah …
And then how would you explain that to, like, the cops?
