Elfrieda! Do you remember that day? She opened her eyes, finally, and nodded. I told her she had always looked out for me in situations like that one. She smiled, a big open smile. I pointed to the dragonfly pillow next to her head and told her that I’d brought her a gift. She seemed so inordinately happy about it. For me? Thank you! It’s beautiful! She held it close to her body and thanked me again, more than she should have. It’s just a pillow, I said. She asked me what I had in the plastic Safeway bag that I’d been dragging around with me all over town, and I told her it was my novel, a bunch of marked-up pages held together with an elastic band.
A new Rodeo book?
No, the book book. The real book.
You’ve finally written it? That’s great! She asked me if I’d read to her from it and I said no. Just a paragraph? No. A sentence? No. Half a sentence! One word? No. A letter? I said okay, that I would read the first letter of the novel. She smiled and closed her eyes and sort of burrowed into her bed like she was preparing herself for a delicious treat. I asked her if she was ready and she nodded, still smiling, eyes closed. I stood and cleared my throat and paused and then began to read.
L.
She sighed and lifted her chin to the ceiling, opened her eyes and told me it was beautiful, BEAUTIFUL, and true, the best thing I’d written yet. I thanked her and shoved the page back into the plastic Safeway bag.
She asked me well, can you at least tell me what it’s about, in a word? I told her yeah, sisters. And I glared at her and then I began to cry, inconsolable, for a good twenty minutes curled up in that torn vinyl chair by the window and she reached out and touched my foot, my calf, she stroked my leg, the part of it she could reach from the bed, and told me she was so sorry. I asked her what she was sorry for but she didn’t say anything. I asked her again, my voice sounded harsh and vindictive, what was she sorry for? I slapped my hand against the reinforced window, quadruple paned to prevent jumpers from crashing through it, and it startled her. But again she answered me with silence and those huge green eyes fringed with ridiculously long lashes, dusky, haunted like my father’s with pupils sunken ships in all that green.
I didn’t give her the satisfaction of hearing me tell her I understand, that it’s okay, that I forgive her, that she doesn’t need to be forgiven, that I’ll always love her, that I’ll keep her heart in my pencil case. I looked away and calmly took out my BlackBerry to check for more important messages. Will had texted: Nora is completely unreasonable. When are you back? How’s Elf? Do you know where my basketball needle is? I texted back: Yes. Not sure. Alive. Try the junk drawer. Love you. I googled “suicide gene” but cancelled the search at the last second. I didn’t want to know. Plus, I already knew.
People ask: but how does this happen? To think that even with all the security measures we employ these days to keep things out — fences and motion detectors and cameras and sunscreen and vitamins and deadbolts and chains and bike helmets and spinning classes and guards and gates — we can have secret killers lurking within us? That we can turn on our happy selves the way tumours invade healthy, wholesome organs, the way “normal” moms suddenly throw their infants off the balcony is … who wants to think about that shit?
When my sister was born my father planted a Russian olive shrub in the backyard. When I was born he planted a mountain ash. When we were kids Elf explained to me that the Russian olive was a tough shrub with four-inch thorns that managed to thrive in places where everything else died. She told me that the mountain ash was called a rowan in Europe and that it was used to ward off witches. So, she said. We’re protected from everything. Well, I said, you mean witches. We’re only protected from witches.
I left the room and wandered around the hallways and nodded at the nurses at the nurses’ station and walked into a linen closet by accident thinking it was a bathroom and out again, knocking over mops and cleaning products and muttering apologies, and back into Elf’s room, fresh smile, tears rubbed away, my face by now a lurid mess of colours and grime, and I’m trying to comfort myself. I’m singing, not really singing, the Boss (because he’s authoritative). “Thunder Road” … The anthemic tune that lit a fire in our plain girl hearts back in the eighties — serenading our own reflections with hairbrush microphones or belting it into the wind from the backs of half-ton trucks or the tops of towering hay bales — and that I’m calling on to give me hope once again.
I collapsed back into the orange chair and asked Elf to tell me about something. She wanted to know about what and I said anything, just tell me about something. Tell me about your secret lovers. She told me that lovers are secret for the reason that they’re not spoken about and I nodded in agreement, that’s true, that’s intractable, I could take a page out of her book, but tell me anyway. Tell me about that guy, what was his name? Huge Boil. Elf grimaced and moaned and said Hugh Boyle was not a lover, he was a friend and I said so tell me about him, what was he like in bed? We didn’t go to bed, said Elf, and I said okay, no problem, where’d you do it? On the floor? The fire escape? She shook her head. Okay, what about that other guy, Penis Breath? Ah, now she smiled. Denis Brecht, she said, was lovely but is ancient history. I’m a married woman now. You are? I asked. When did you get married? Okay, she said, you know what I mean. I told her that I am actually a married woman but have no husband. You, I told her, are not a married woman but have a husband. Whatever, Yoli, she said. She yawned. It was sweet of you to come back but I’m the one who needs to apologize. No, no, c’mon, I said. You must meet so many suave men with exciting accents and encyclopedic knowledge of European civilization, I said. Are you being sarcastic? she wondered.
She asked me about the hotshit lawyer guy in Toronto and I shook my head.
What’s his name again? she said.
Finbar.
What? Oh my god, that’s right. Finbar! I can’t believe you’re sleeping with a lawyer, first of all, and then with a lawyer named Finbar.
What’s wrong with sleeping with a lawyer? I asked.
Well, nothing, she said, in theory. Just that you are, or were, is funny. She asked me if I was still seeing him and I told her I don’t know and then I spilled all the details of my shambolic existence, that Finbar is not the only guy and she said Yolandi! How many? And I said only two but I’m so tired and overwhelmed and ashamed that I honestly can’t remember if that’s true or not. And one of them is in love with you, actually, and is only sleeping with me by proxy. She asked me if Finbar knows about the other guy and who is he and again I just shook my head no, yes, I don’t think I told him. And besides he wouldn’t care, and I told her okay, I know, this isn’t my proudest moment or anything, it’s some weird animal reaction to sixteen years of monogamy with Dan, so okay I’ve become a two-bit whore, whatever, burn me to death and she pointed to herself and then held her arms out to the psych ward spilling out around her to indicate where she was, empathy and a joke, my big sister, I love her, and we laughed a bit. A tiny bit. Not laughing, really, at all. And she said she hopes I’m using protection and this struck me as hilarious, coming from her.