Really? I say. Paris? That’s so great, Elfie. I can’t believe it.
Her roommate, Melanie, says me neither from behind the curtain.
Elf turns to the curtain and says can I ask you to please mind your own business and Melanie tells her that she’s not here on business.
I leave them and go into the hallway and shuffle like a chain gang over to the little alcove that is fast becoming my favourite nook where I can sit alone and gaze down at the parking lot and out to the fields beyond it. We have a choice, I think to myself. We can take her at face value, as they say, and hope. Or we can assemble that elusive team now and I mean right now because she’s going home. I know it. She shall be released. I know that if she follows the rules and tells the nurses and the doctors that she’s feeling good, positive, not suicidal, not at all — are you kidding me? and be forced to say goodbye to the majesty of all of this? — that she will be home in time for dinner today.
I call Nic and he doesn’t answer. I go to the nurses’ station and am told that Janice is on her break. I ask if Elf is going to be discharged today and the nurse says who’s Elf and I say Elfrieda Von Riesen and the nurse says she doesn’t know and hasn’t heard.
I go back to Elf’s room and discover my mother singing a song to her in Plautdietsch. It’s called “Du.” Which means You. Elf is holding her hand. It’s a song about loving forever, even with the pain caused by loving so hard, a song she sang to us when we were kids.
Then things happen quickly. Janice comes back into Elf’s room. She’s smiling and she says hello all and tells us that Elf will probably be going home today just as soon as she’s seen the doctor and he gives her the green light. I imagine the doctor as Ben Kenobi passing Elf a sabre. My mother and I together say wow, that’s great, fantastic. Elf smiles at Janice and looks grateful.
Janice sits next to her on her bed and asks her if she’s really feeling well enough to go back home. We all know what she means. Elf says yes, definitely, she wants to get back to Nic and her real life. She’s combing her hair with her fingers. She’s willing to take the medication and will book follow-up appointments with her shrink. She’s ready. And she appreciates everything that’s been done for her while she’s been a patient here. She sounds like she’s giving a rehearsed speech at the Oscars. I give her a kiss on her cheek and say whew, that’s so great. That’s so great. My mother is sitting quietly with her hand on her heart, her eyes wide.
I’m panicking and confused. Janice says she’ll leave us alone for a bit while Elf gets her things together and I follow her out into the hallway. I ask her if it’s really a good idea that Elf goes home and she says she thinks it is and that she has no choice. She’s been admitted voluntarily, not against her will, so she can leave when she feels like it too. I ask her if it isn’t too soon and Janice says that it’s very important for the patient to feel empowered by being allowed to make big decisions.
Well, I said, a very big decision would be the decision to kill herself and nobody wants to let her make that one, right? Janice agrees and gets my point but says her hands are tied. And they really need the bed. And let’s give her the benefit of the doubt. Let’s just see what happens, she says. And adds that she has a good feeling about it. She tells me that Elf wants to play tennis with me as soon as it warms up a bit and I don’t know how to respond to that.
I try calling Nic on the phone and this time he answers. I tell him that Elf is coming home today and he’s surprised. This was the first he’d heard of it. So what do we do? I say and he says he’ll call that person about the team immediately. He says he’ll leave work early and pick up groceries and meet us all back at the house later in the afternoon.
I go back into Elf’s room and find her up and out of bed, looking for her clothes. I help her put some of her things into a plastic bag and then realize that I’ve misplaced my own plastic bag, the one with my manuscript in it, but I am strangely calm, and I think fine, okay, all right.
But then my mother says hey Yoli, is this yours? She’s been sitting on it. She peeks inside and says oh, is this the new thing? I say yeah and she asks me how many words I have. For some reason this question makes me laugh. I shake my head. Elf tells her the first letter is amazing. My mother waits, smiling, for an answer. I don’t have an answer. She guides me out into the hallway, her hand on the small of my back. She’s so short and she smells so good, like coconut milk. She hugs me in the hallway and tells me everything will be all right. I love that she tells me this again and again but I wonder sometimes if she thinks I’m an idiot. Regardless, she’s my mother and that’s what mothers say. Bob Marley says it too but he says every little thing gonna be all right and that strikes me as an appropriate qualifier even if all he was doing was getting enough syllables to match the music. I remember humming that refrain over and over, singing myself to sleep with those lyrics in the days before my father kneeled in the path of a fast-moving train.
That evening we celebrate Elf’s homecoming with spicy Indian food and good wine and Nic’s special stash of Armagnac that my mother gave him for Christmas two years ago. Elf is smiling, a little shy, beautiful and serene, as though she alone holds the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx. Her hands shake only slightly and she’s wearing a pale pink scarf around her throat. She’s put a bit of makeup on the scar above her eye. Her pants are too big on her now but Nic has fashioned some kind of funky rope belt for her to wear. Nic is thrilled to have her home. He is calling her my love and my darling. My mom calls her honeybunch. I would like to give Elf a note right now that says we promised but I don’t have a Sharpie thick enough to make my point. Nic is talking about Chinese literature and learning Mandarin and Elf is thumbing through a novel he’s taken out of the library for her to read. There’s no mention of Paris or tennis.
Listen! I want to shout at her. If anyone’s gonna kill themselves it should be me. I’m a terrible mother for leaving my kids’ father and other father. I’m a terrible wife for sleeping with another man. Men. I’m floundering in a dying non-career. Look at this beautiful home that you have and this loving man loving you in it! Every major city in the world happily throws thousands of dollars at you to play the piano and every man who ever meets you falls hard in love with you and becomes obsessed with you for life. Maybe it’s because you’ve perfected life that you are now ready to leave it behind. What else is there left to do? But I’m finding it hard to make eye contact with Elfrieda. She’s not looking at me. She barely lifts her head from the novel Nic has given her.
My mother is tired from her trip and basically from all time since Anno Domini but also refreshed and happy just to see Elf at home. Apparently she got stranded out at sea again this time. It happens to her every time she goes to an ocean. She just bobs along on her back enjoying the sun and the undulating waves and then gets too far out and can’t get back and has to be rescued. She doesn’t panic at all, just sort of slowly drifts away from the shore and waits to be noticed or missed. Her big thing is going out beyond the wake where it’s calm and she can bob in the moonlight far out at sea. That’s her biggest pleasure. Our family is trying to escape everything all at once, even gravity, even the shoreline. We don’t even know what we’re running away from. Maybe we’re just restless people. Maybe we’re adventurers. Maybe we’re terrified. Maybe we’re crazy. Maybe Planet Earth is not our real home. In Jamaica, my mom had to be dragged, laughing her head off, back to shore by three shirtless fishermen after she went flying off a banana boat and couldn’t manage to climb back onto it.