I CALLED ELF AND TOLD HER over the phone that soon I’d have the money to go to Zurich. I’d use credit cards. But the next morning my mother called to say they were giving her a day pass. They were letting her go home to celebrate her birthday, a concept I found curious in these circumstances. Or maybe Elf hadn’t regretted being born, necessarily.
I was so obsessed with making sure she stayed in the hospital until I had scraped together the money I needed to take her to Zurich that I’d completely forgotten about her birthday. My mother said that Nic was on his way to the hospital to pick her up and she was going to order a birthday cake to be delivered and buy some champagne and some flowers she could take over to their house, and it was going to be good. She said this emphatically, as though she were an oracle. It was a decision. I got off the phone with my mother and sat down in the palm of a moulded plastic hand-shaped chair that Nora had found in somebody’s garbage and said well, then she’s gone.
Nora came home later in the morning and I told her that Elf was going home for the day to celebrate her birthday. That’s so nice, said Nora. It’ll be hard for her to go back to the hospital though. I agreed. Very hard. I phoned Nic on his cellphone but there was no answer. I phoned my mother’s apartment but there was no answer. Nora asked me if I wanted to play tennis with her so we roamed around the apartment looking for balls and rackets and put on our ratty shorts and T-shirts and headed off to the court with the droopy net a few blocks down the street. We played many games, running far too much, missing almost everything, apologizing like girls and gasping for air. We had played four or five games and were almost done, sitting on the sidelines sharing an ice cream we’d bought off a truck, “It’s a Small World” blasting from its rooftop speaker. I had been trying to remember the words. It’s a world of what and a world of what? My cellphone rang and it was Dan. Oh no, I thought, not now. I answered it and he asked me if I was okay, where I was, what I was doing, and I answered all his questions accurately. Aren’t you in Borneo? I asked him. He said yes, he was. But Nic had called him in a panic when he hadn’t been able to reach me. Yoli, he said, I’m calling with bad news.
I asked him if my mother knew and he said no, Nic had tried calling her at home and on her cell but there was no answer.
She’s out looking for a cake, I said.
Ah, said Dan, okay. And he said that Nic had tried calling me but there was no answer.
Yeah, because of tennis …
Yoyo, he said. I handed my phone to Nora.
Please hold this, I said. I don’t want it.
Nora and I walked back to our apartment. She carried both rackets and the balls and I held her other hand, the free one. I thought it was strange that I could hear the subway rumbling there beneath the ground and then realized it was only my thoughts smashing against one another and attempting to rearrange themselves into something new.
The hospital called me several times. I didn’t answer at first because I was busy booking a flight to Winnipeg and calling my mom every minute with no success. Finally I answered the hospital’s call. It was somebody I’d never met. She called herself the executive director of something. She asked me if I’d received the news and I said yes. She told me she was very sorry. I hung up. She called back and asked if she could talk to me, if she could explain what had happened. I told her I knew what had happened. She spoke in a soft voice, very professional, no pauses, no openings, no debate. I watched Nora move around the apartment getting our things ready for the trip to Winnipeg. The woman asked me if I was alone and I said no. I told her I was sorry but I had to go, I had arrangements to make and I still hadn’t managed to get a hold of my mother. She told me that she understood but that she needed to explain some things.
How shall I frame this? she said.
I asked her: why did you let her go when every day and every night you promised that you wouldn’t? Were we playing a game? Was I not supposed to believe you? She asked me if I would hold for one tiny second, she had a call coming in from the police relating to my sister’s situation. Situation? I said. I sat on the floor and waited and waited and heard Lionel Richie’s “Three Times a Lady,” the same song being played over and over so that I had lost track of how many times a lady she was, and then eventually realized that I didn’t have to hold, that I didn’t have to do anything that the executive director asked me to do. That was the situation. I pushed the end button on my phone and stood up and went to help Nora with the packing.
I phoned Will but he didn’t answer his cell. I phoned his dad in Manhattan and explained what had happened. Would he please try to get a hold of Will and buy him a ticket to Winnipeg immediately. I’d pay him back. He told me he was sorry, that he’d pay for the ticket, that he’d leave work now and go and find Will who was probably at his landscaping job in Queens. He and I hadn’t really spoken in years. He’d known Elf, of course, way back. Now he was crying on the phone. I waited. I’m sorry, he said again. She was an iconoclast, he said. She was kind to me. She was so into everything. I thanked him. We said goodbye. I phoned Julie and told her what had happened and asked her to go to my mom’s apartment and wait for her there. I phoned two of my mom’s friends and told them what had happened and to go to my mom’s apartment and to wait for her there. I still couldn’t get Nic on his cell. I tried my mother again. She was at her apartment. It was too soon.
Are there lots of people there? I asked her.
No, why? she said. I’m here alone.
They’re on their way, I said. She asked me what happened.
Tell me, she said.