she heard the word
team
was four runaway horses. There’sno
I
in
team
, is there Yoli? She was quoting our high school basketball coach and she said that expression had always terrified her. What would this team do with her? she asked. What would Elf do with the team? Make lists? Set goals? Embrace life? Start a journal? Turn that frown upside down? She kept unearthing huge fundamental problems with the whole concept. Oh my god, Nicolas, she’d said. Journey? Health? Listen to yourself. I had also been listening to Nic and thought it sounded pretty good but Elf was up in arms, gnashing her teeth against the smarmy self-help racket that existed only to sell books and anaesthetize the vulnerable and allow the so-called “helping” profession to bask in self-congratulation for having done what they could. They’d make lists! They’d set goals! They’d encourage their patients to do one “fun” thing a day! (Oh you should have heard the derision in Elf’s voice when she said the word
fun
like she’d just spit out the word
Eichmann
or
Mengele
.)
The experts involved had the hardest time understanding our family’s extreme hostility to the entire health network.
We
had the hardest time understanding our family’s extreme hostility to the entire health network. When my mother had her lawn mower accident and was lying there in the grass next to two of her toes and the paramedics leapt out of their ambulance and ran over to her she looked at them and said what on earth are you guys doing here? When the doctor told my mother that I’d need a tonsillectomy she told him, yeah we can probably do that ourselves at home but thanks.
Mostly we just didn’t want Elf to be left alone. Nic would have to get back to his work eradicating the runs and I would eventually have to return home to Toronto to relieve Will of his babysitting duties so that he could get back to his classeson overthrowing the one percent. In the Mohawk language, Toronto is spelled
Tkaronto
and means “trees standing in water.” (I appreciate that our Canadian cities were named after things like mud and trees and water, especially when they are now given such monikers by overachievers as the Financial Hub or the Technology Centre or the Publishing Capital or the Most Cosmopolitan City in the World.) But in the meantime, this evening, I was going to share a bottle of wine with Julie, on the front porch of her rickety house in Wolseley, an inner-city neighbourhood where massive elm trees create a cathedral ceiling of speckled shade, while her kids watched a video inside.
Julie and I grew up together in East Village. We’re second cousins and our mothers are also best friends. (For that matter, Elf and I are also cousins, and sisters, but to understand this you have to know that only eighteen or so initiative-taking Mennonites came to Canada from Russia to get away from the Anarchist army, so … you know.) Julie and I bathed together as children, invented a game called Hide the Soap and experimented touching tongues with each other when it slowly became horrifyingly clear to us that it would be a thing we’d have to do a lot of in the future if we were to have normal lives with boys and men.
Julie’s a letter carrier, a hard-core postie who walks fifteen miles a day with two twenty-pound bags of mail on each of her shoulders. When it rains she opens one of those green mailboxes you see on corners with a key from a giant metal ring and sits inside it, smoking and listening to BBC News podcasts on her headphones. She’s been reprimanded several times by her supervisor for that and countless other acts ofinsubordination, like rolling up the waistband of her Canada Post–issued “skort” to make it sexier. Sometimes she gets a one-day or a two-day or a three-day suspension, depending on the severity of her crime, and that’s fine with her because then she can hang out with her kids before they go to school rather than having to wake them in the dark
team
was four runaway horses. There’sno
I
in
team
, is there Yoli? She was quoting our high school basketball coach and she said that expression had always terrified her. What would this team do with her? she asked. What would Elf do with the team? Make lists? Set goals? Embrace life? Start a journal? Turn that frown upside down? She kept unearthing huge fundamental problems with the whole concept. Oh my god, Nicolas, she’d said. Journey? Health? Listen to yourself. I had also been listening to Nic and thought it sounded pretty good but Elf was up in arms, gnashing her teeth against the smarmy self-help racket that existed only to sell books and anaesthetize the vulnerable and allow the so-called “helping” profession to bask in self-congratulation for having done what they could. They’d make lists! They’d set goals! They’d encourage their patients to do one “fun” thing a day! (Oh you should have heard the derision in Elf’s voice when she said the word
fun
like she’d just spit out the word
Eichmann
or
Mengele
.)
The experts involved had the hardest time understanding our family’s extreme hostility to the entire health network.
We
had the hardest time understanding our family’s extreme hostility to the entire health network. When my mother had her lawn mower accident and was lying there in the grass next to two of her toes and the paramedics leapt out of their ambulance and ran over to her she looked at them and said what on earth are you guys doing here? When the doctor told my mother that I’d need a tonsillectomy she told him, yeah we can probably do that ourselves at home but thanks.
Mostly we just didn’t want Elf to be left alone. Nic would have to get back to his work eradicating the runs and I would eventually have to return home to Toronto to relieve Will of his babysitting duties so that he could get back to his classeson overthrowing the one percent. In the Mohawk language, Toronto is spelled
Tkaronto
and means “trees standing in water.” (I appreciate that our Canadian cities were named after things like mud and trees and water, especially when they are now given such monikers by overachievers as the Financial Hub or the Technology Centre or the Publishing Capital or the Most Cosmopolitan City in the World.) But in the meantime, this evening, I was going to share a bottle of wine with Julie, on the front porch of her rickety house in Wolseley, an inner-city neighbourhood where massive elm trees create a cathedral ceiling of speckled shade, while her kids watched a video inside.
Julie and I grew up together in East Village. We’re second cousins and our mothers are also best friends. (For that matter, Elf and I are also cousins, and sisters, but to understand this you have to know that only eighteen or so initiative-taking Mennonites came to Canada from Russia to get away from the Anarchist army, so … you know.) Julie and I bathed together as children, invented a game called Hide the Soap and experimented touching tongues with each other when it slowly became horrifyingly clear to us that it would be a thing we’d have to do a lot of in the future if we were to have normal lives with boys and men.
Julie’s a letter carrier, a hard-core postie who walks fifteen miles a day with two twenty-pound bags of mail on each of her shoulders. When it rains she opens one of those green mailboxes you see on corners with a key from a giant metal ring and sits inside it, smoking and listening to BBC News podcasts on her headphones. She’s been reprimanded several times by her supervisor for that and countless other acts ofinsubordination, like rolling up the waistband of her Canada Post–issued “skort” to make it sexier. Sometimes she gets a one-day or a two-day or a three-day suspension, depending on the severity of her crime, and that’s fine with her because then she can hang out with her kids before they go to school rather than having to wake them in the dark
Similar Books
