Swing Low (5 page)

Once, after Elvira and I had started dating, I borrowed her father’s car to pick her up in the city. I parked it in front of
her dormitory (she was in nurses’ training. How I wish I were her patient now!) and went inside to meet her. She wasn’t in her room, however, and when I returned to the spot where I had parked the car, it was gone! This was the brand-new 1952 Oldsmobile of the man I had hoped would become my father-in-law. I ran wildly up and down the street in search of the car, berating myself for being such a country bumpkin as to leave the keys in the ignition, plotting my own mysterious disappearance, imagining the inevitable breakup between Elvira and me, bracing myself against my mother’s icy disapproval and my own abject shame, calculating the number of chicken heads I’d have to hack off for my father in order to make enough money to buy another 1952 Olds, when who should drive past as casually as can be, elbow sticking out of the window and a bright yellow scarf tied up around her shiny black hair, but Elvira. It took her a good half an hour before she could speak without erupting into raucous gales of laughter.

I agreed with her, eventually, that it had been an excellent practical joke, and even conceded to having the story told, in detail, to her girlfriends back at the dormitory, to her brothers back in town, to her father, who enjoyed it immensely, and to all of our friends.

I’ve decided to go for a walk! Have just realized in the same instant that my feet are bleeding. Never mind, I’ll try. The nurse came in and asked me what I was doing. I said I was going for a walk and I’d be back in time for breakfast. She gave me some pills and asked me to wait for a few minutes while she “cleared it.” Rather kind of her to play this game with me, I think. Pills taking effect, no walk.

It is
6:46
a.m. I have been unable to move. I did not go out as planned. I had hoped this wouldn’t happen. My optimism soars to such a peak that just as suddenly it plummets off the edge. The edge of … that place where optimism plummets. (I’m sorry.) I’m trying to be precise. I’m trying to write down the facts. Perhaps if I rest briefly … it’s still quite early. More later …

It is now
7:32
. I’m afraid that if I give in to sleep there will be no end. I’ll have wasted this opportunity to clarify things. I’ll have failed. I will force myself to begin again.

I recall a day. A large sparrow blocked the small entrance of the birdhouse I had built for a family of wrens. The sparrow was too big to get through the hole. My daughter Miriam (she was five or six) and I stood at the kitchen window and looked at the sparrow. Inside the birdhouse, we knew, were six or seven baby birds waiting hungrily for their mother to return with food. The sparrow, by blocking the entrance, was preventing the mother wren from returning home to feed her babies. We watched as the mother wren flew over the birdhouse, around and around, unable to land.

But why? asked Miriam. What good does it do the sparrow? I didn’t know either, and not knowing bothered me. I had assumed until that day that it was the circumstantial misery of human beings that made us enjoy the suffering of others. Or if not enjoy, exactly, then stand complacently by
and allow it to happen. But if birds did it too, I thought, then perhaps it was a baser instinct that arose naturally from all life. This thought depressed me horribly. I felt there was no hope for the world, that evil would inevitably triumph over good, and that there was, therefore, no point in striving for goodness. And yet I also felt that the struggle to be good was the purpose of life. Certainly of my life.

But never mind. Elvira, at the precise moment of what my older daughter at the time would have called my existential crisis, came to join my younger daughter and me at the window. What’s so interesting out there? she asked. We told her and in a flash she had grabbed a broom, run into the backyard, and shooed that sparrow away. The mother wren quickly flew into the birdhouse and, presumably, all was well again. Elvira came inside and told us, my daughter and me, that if the sparrow returned, we should simply do what she had done and
foadich met de zach
(a Low German expression meaning “be done with it”). Then, as though nothing significant had occurred, she cheerfully began to make supper.

Shoo the sparrow away and get on with supper. This is the first part of my new life strategy. Will worry less. I hope I don’t ask my next visitor for a broom, as a form of greeting. Why can’t I say hello, simply? I’m forgetting the basics. My brother popped in for a cameo a few minutes ago and said, How’s my big brother? and I said, pointing to the brochure, Those houses are all facing east, why do you think that is? It’s hard to backtrack after that. I mean hello, I’m fine, yourself? How goes the business of running hospitals in rural Manitoba? My feet keep bleeding, I don’t know why. That sort of thing. The wife and kids.

Well, the day has definitely begun. I hear the vacuum cleaner approaching from down the hall, and I imagine that the maid, or not the maid, and I will go through some type of scenario in which she offers to clean my room and I politely decline the offer. I can’t let her see the blood. In the meantime I absolutely must mobilize the troops and begin!

I have just remembered my money problems. I am down to $141. How will I pay for this room? How will I remove the stains from the floor? I am beginning to panic, but not terribly so.

Sure enough, the maid is cross with me. You gotta have your room cleaned and re-towelled sometime, she hollered at me from outside the door. Why, I asked her, why must I? Because it’s my job, she said. Yes, but if I’m happy with things exactly the way they are, then why must you clean? Why must I have fresh towels? You don’t understand, she said, you don’t get it. Fair enough, I answered, but I don’t need clean towels. Thank you and good luck. Why I wished her good luck I haven’t a clue. The nurse came in then and apologized to the maid for me. This is not a hotel, Mel, she said kindly. We have to clean your room.

Very well. Jarring, mind you, but not the end of the world. I don’t know why I’m so reluctant to have the maid clean my room. I’d prefer a harmonious relationship with her, there’s no doubt of that. In any case, I can’t have her discovering the bloodstains on the floor, and now, as well, the paper I used to soak it up is ruined. Must remind daughter to bring more. And pens.

I can no longer make out the sound of the vacuum cleaner. She must have gone to another floor. I will make a sign for my doorknob that reads: C’mon in, patient is already disturbed.

I’ll just spend a few minutes looking out my window at my late brother-in-law’s house, directly across the street from the hospital. Births of family members in this hospital: my parents, Elvira’s parents, all of their children including Elvira and myself, our daughters. Deaths of family members in this hospital: Elvira’s parents, my parents, Elvira’s brother, who used to live across the street. His wife still does. I’m looking at her house. She has come to visit me many times. She is an angel, truly. (Will not tell me the truth about E.) On one of these visits I told her I had seen George in the corridor. No, no, honey, she said in Low German, George died several years ago. Don’t you remember? You wrote the obituary. Yes! I said, grateful to her for having reminded me, and he always wanted it longer. That’s right, sweetie, she said, that’s right. Occurred to me that he had wanted to make love to her one last time before dying. Almost made the mistake of asking her if he had.

W
hat I have seen: sunshine, house, trees, car, pavement, fountain.

I have always enjoyed the sun’s warmth and I feel, as I write this, that the sun is the last reminder of my good life on Earth. This is so ridiculous as to be embarrassing, but I feel as though the sun were my friend! Do you remember those books we used to read when we were very small? Where the young protagonists enjoy close imaginary relationships with planets and stars to the point where they are greeting them by name and, in their minds, bringing them into their homes and telling them their deepest secrets, hopes, and dreams?

That’s how I feel! The sunlight makes me feel at home, as though I own it, that it’s mine exclusively, that I’ve invented it, or that it’s a member of my family. The sun helps me remember the good times, and in remembering the good
times I can then safely say that in fact I’ve had good times. How’s that for my next non-greeting to visitor: In fact, I’ve had good times! or how about, The sun is my friend! (Is there no activity room in this place? Ping-pong or something?) I’ve begun to count the beats between my greetings and my visitors’ replies. Number of beats that passed between my last greeting of “I said I didn’t need any more towels” and visitor’s reply of “I didn’t bring towels, Mel”: four.

A construction site is barely visible (is it the housing development?) through my window and I have watched the men at work, marvelling at the level of skill and cooperation such a large-scale venture must require. I remember the house we built on First Street, a solid project, a cozy home for Elvira and me to begin … to begin.

In my files you’ll find old black-and-white photographs with serrated edges that capture the work in progress, the building of the house, from empty lot to finished product. A wide grin on my face, a nail in the corner of my mouth, a hammer in my hand, proud and slightly overwhelmed by the turn my life has taken, new wife, new home, baby on the way, and a job I love. In the evening my students would stroll past the house in progress and invariably lend a hand for an hour or two. In this photograph I weigh only a hundred and forty pounds, drowning in an oversized lumber jacket and wool cap, flaps and all, Elvira in a nightie, also smiling from ear to ear, her dark hair a little messy, the
morning sun pouring in through the windows of our brand-new kitchen. Elvira is wearing the First Nightgown! Every year I bought her a nightgown for Christmas, some sheer and flimsy, others prim and flannelly, depending, I suppose, on my mood at the time of purchase. Okay, where’s my new nightie, Mel? she would ask as we sat around the tree opening gifts. It became a tradition for Elvira to parade around our house on Christmas Eve in her new nightie as the girls and I looked on admiringly.