All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews

Author:Miriam Toews [Toews, Miriam]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-345-80802-8
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2014-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

My aunt was standing in the little vestibule next to the ICU ward in her purple track suit and her shiny white Reeboks. They were so small, like a child’s. She was holding a pencil. She was doing a sudoku. When she saw me she put the newspaper on the chair and gave me a hug. She told me that my mother was with Elfrieda, that Nicolas had just been there but had to go to work to deal with a valve problem, and that Elfrieda was awake and off the respirator. She told me she was going to get a coffee, did I want one? She asked me if I was all right. I told her what I had done, that I had told an innocent woman that her child had been conceived with a monster, and other things, and she told me it was okay, it was understandable.

But I just wanted that woman to tell me that too, I said.

My aunt nodded and told me that the woman would tell me that but probably not for a while, maybe years, and then only silently, in her thoughts, so I wouldn’t hear it but one day I’d be walking down some street and feel a kind of lightness come over me, like I could walk for miles, and that would be the moment when the woman from the parking lot had suddenly understood my horrible outburst, that it had nothing to do with her or her husband or her child, and that it was okay.

Forgiveness, sort of. Got that? said my aunt.

Okay, I said, so when I feel the lightness coming over me, on a street … I’m walking and …

Yes, said my aunt. Cream and no sugar, right?

She hustled off in her sportswear to find coffee and I looked at my mother and my sister through the glass wall. Elf’s eyes were closed, my mother was reading aloud to her. I couldn’t tell what book it was. She had a new sweater on, it had geese flying on it, she must have borrowed it from my aunt. My sister was so thin I imagined that I could see the outline of her heart. I went back to the waiting area and sat down and took my aunt’s sudoku and tried to finish it. I said how the hell do these fucking things work? to myself, but loudly, and a man looked at me and flared his nostrils. I fell asleep in the chair and when I woke up my mother and my aunt were gone.

I went to see Elf and she was alone in her room, staring up at the ceiling. I sat next to her and took her hand. It was dry and I reminded myself to bring hand cream next time. It smelled like burnt hair in there. I put my head down, way down, like I was trying not to be carsick, and I didn’t say anything. Elf told me that we were a painting.

You can talk! I said.

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