Nic goes into the kitchen to get more drinks and I follow him and whisper what about the team, is it happening? He and I go downstairs on the pretence of getting more beer from the basement fridge and he tells me that this team is more mythical than anything. Apparently, with budget cuts and changes in policy and … He’s speaking but my mind drifts as I stare at the spine of The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, a book lying all by itself randomly on the concrete basement floor as if it has been thrown down in a hurry … It’s not really an option but he’ll continue to pursue other possibilities. I go to the book and pick it up and hand it to Nic. But possibilities of what? I ask him. What are we talking about? He takes the book, says I know, really, and breathes out heavily. In the meantime he’s made arrangements with Margaret, a friend of theirs, to stay with Elf for a few hours every day and my mother too will obviously visit every day. I know, I say, but Elf’s supposedly going on a five-city tour in two weeks. Look at her, do you honestly think she can tour? Have you talked to Claudio?
God, he says. He hasn’t talked to Claudio. He doesn’t know, all he knows is that touring terrifies her before she goes and then makes her feel exhilarated when she’s actually doing it. I tell him I have to go back to Toronto quickly. Will has to get back to New York for his exams and Dan is still in Borneo and I can’t leave Nora by herself, unsupervised, for longer than a day or two. As soon as her classes end I’ll come back here with her and we can spend the summer. I’ll see Elf every day if she’s not on tour. He understands and says he’s got everything under control and there are airplanes, right? And telephones.
We go back upstairs and my mother is telling Elf about her Scrabble ratings. She’s got an average of thirteen hundred and something and Elf is nodding, impressed, pretending she hasn’t heard it before. My mother tells Elf she made the word cunt the other day at the club. It’s a valid word! she says. Were you challenged? asks Elf. Nah, says my mom, the young guy I was playing with was so embarrassed he couldn’t even look at me, this old grandma laying down a dirty word. Elf smiles. She’s not saying much, though. But what is there to say? How is she feeling? Is this impromptu gathering a grotesque, fake sideshow in her opinion? Does she wonder what exactly we’re celebrating? Her failure to properly execute her plan to die? Or is she genuinely happy and relieved to be here?
C’mon, Elf! I think. Stop your hands from shaking and say something. Address your nation and let us know there’s reason to have faith in the future. Yes, there are airplanes and telephones.
I want to ask Elf if she’s afraid. I’m short of breath again. I’m smiling and trying to cover up my panic and discreetly suck oxygen into my lungs. I’d like to take Elf with me back to Toronto. I’d like for us all, my mother, my sister, my kids, Nic, Julie, her kids — even Dan and Finbar and Radek — to live in a tiny isolated community in a remote part of the world where all we have to look at is each other and we are only ever a few metres apart. It would be like an old Mennonite community in Siberia but with happiness.
Eventually we all leave. Elf is sitting at the piano, her hands moving soundlessly across the keys. When she gets up from the bench to say goodbye to my mom and me there are tears on her face. My mother lives only a few blocks away and decides to walk. She says she needs the exercise. Elf and I watch her cross the street safely, like a kid, and we all wave.
I tell Elf I love her, that I will miss her, but that I’ll be back in Winnipeg soon. Can I see her in Toronto when she’s there playing? Maybe, she says. But she’ll only be there for sixteen hours. She’ll rehearse, sleep, eat, perform, go back to the hotel, sleep, get up early to fly away. Rosamund, Claudio’s assistant, will be travelling with her this time. She tells me she loves me too. That she wants to know more about Toronto, my life there, and she asks me to write her letters, not e-mails but old-fashioned letters that will come to her in the mail in envelopes with stamps on them. I tell her I will, definitely, and will she write me back? She says she will, absolutely. Rock-solid.
I’m holding her wrists, my fingers encircle her tiny bones, and I squeeze hard until she says ouch and I apologize and let go. We don’t talk about the meaning of life, about scars, about stitches, or the number of words that we have or promises that we’ve made in the faraway past.
Then I drive around the perimeter of the city like a dog marking its territory, over bridges and under bridges, the way I used to stalk the edges of my small hometown. This is mine. Nothing bad will happen here if I patrol the streets like a crazed vigilante. Welcome to Winnipeg, the population will not change. I drop in on Julie and tell her I’m leaving early the next morning now, and I agree to call her as soon as I’m back in Toronto and I stop in at Radek’s and say goodbye and I thank him for the food and for the shelter from the storm and when he scratches his head and says yeah but … I shrug and shrug and smile and back away and continue to thank him for his sweetness, for his grace, for his time.
I drive my mother’s car like it’s a Panzer and the streets are my enemy, and I’m feeling bad and stupid and mean. I think about setting up an appointment with a therapist when I get back to Toronto but tell myself I can’t afford it. I’ll work harder, that’s all. Besides, what would I talk about with a therapist? When my father killed himself I went to see one and he suggested I write my father a letter. It wasn’t clear what I was supposed to say in the letter. I thanked the therapist and left thinking but my father is dead now. He won’t receive this letter. What’s the point? Can I just have my one hundred and fifty-five dollars back to buy some Chardonnay and a bag of weed?
When I get back to my mother’s apartment she is sleeping, snoring very loudly, and season something of The Wire is blaring on her TV set and a small space heater is making noise too and the ice is still tearing itself apart on the river that runs beneath her. I stand next to her bed and look at her for a while wondering if her sleep is peaceful, if it’s the only relief she knows. I go into the spare bedroom and lie down in my clothes on top of the covers. It seems futile now to undress and go to bed in a serious way because I have to get up soon and go to the airport. I fall asleep and then wake up to a commotion in the living room. My mother is up and talking to a man.
The story is: My mom woke up and went out onto the balcony for a look at the night sky and while she was doing that she happened to see this man, Shelby, parking his truck in the parking lot. She suddenly had a plan. She called down to Shelby to see if he’d be interested in hauling her old electric organ over to Julie’s house for her kids to practise on. She really needed someone with a truck. She would pay him. He said sure. They had a conversation in the middle of the night with her standing in her nightgown on the balcony like Juliet’s nursemaid. Now Shelby was in the apartment measuring the organ and wondering how he’d carry it down to the truck.
My mother said oh good, Yoyo, you’re up.
So Shelby and I carried the organ to his truck and my mother held the apartment doors open with her nightgown flapping wildly in the wind. It started to rain. Soon it was pouring. My mother ran upstairs to get a garbage bag to cover the organ while it was in the truck being driven to Julie’s house in the middle of the night. I asked my mother if Julie was expecting this delivery at this time and she said no, but we would deal with that when we got there.