Miriam Toews - The Flying Troutmans

Okay, that’s it, we’re stopping somewhere to eat, I said. This is what parents do when they’re stumped, I thought. They feed their children.

Like what, said Logan, are we gonna graze in a field? I don’t see any restaurants.

Sandwiches in the cooler, I said. Ham and cheese. There’s fruit.

Awesome, he said. Budget.

We’re not gonna eat in restaurants the whole time, I said. I had a wad of cash in my backpack that I hoped would get us through. I pulled into a rest stop next to a shitting chihuahua and two old RVers reading a newspaper at a picnic table.

We got out and walked around awhile, stretching our bodies, enjoying less proximity to each other, and I smoked a cigarette behind the women’s can until Thebes caught me and told me I was going to get AIDS. There was only one picnic table, so the three of us squeezed in next to the old couple and ate our sandwiches.

Where are you headed? the man asked.

Um, Murdo? I said.

Never heard of it, he said.

I told him I hadn’t either until yesterday.

Honey, said the woman, ask your mom for a napkin. She was talking to Thebes, who had mayonnaise and mustard running down her face.

Logan ignored us all. He had his giant air traffic controller headphones on and his hoodie up and was staring intensely at the chihuahua like he was wondering what the most painful way of killing it might be.

Is that your natural colour of hair? the man asked Thebes.

Yo! Dude! It’s purple! What do you think?

I gave her a nudge under the table and passed her a paper bag to wipe the stuff off her face. She put it over her head and drew a face on it, blind. Big cartoon eyes and a mouth where the nose should be. I told her to go get the Frisbee, and without removing the bag she stumbled and weaved and crashed her way to the van. She finally took the bag off her head and she and I threw the Frisbee around for a while before Logan joined in. He tried to make each of his throws deflect off the van’s windshield and then he decided that we should play Frisbee through the van, with both side doors open and Thebes sitting on the seat in the van. She was entirely down with that and Logan had a blast whipping the Frisbee inches from her face, until he accidentally hit her and her nose bled, she cried, he apologized, said she was stand-up for playing the game, apologized again, and again, she forgave him with a karate kick to the ’nads, which he handled with an off-hand grace, said he deserved it, the old people shook their heads like bobblehead dolls and we all hit the road once again.

We kept driving south down the I-29, past the tiny hamlets of Wahpeton and Harkinson and Sisseton. Thebes said we should drive in directions that spelled something, like a giant word carved by us into the American landscape.

What word did you want to spell? I asked her.

Min, she said.

I traced the letters of my sister’s name in my mind and realized there were no curves, so it might even have been possible to write her name in giant, hundred-mile-long letters if the roads had matched up with the lines, but they didn’t. There were rivers and mountain ranges and deserts and gullies that separated M-I-N from posterity on the map.

By the time the sun had almost set, the kids had dozed off again. Thebes was curled up in a ball in the front now and Logan had stretched out in the back. I could hear the faint bass coming from his headphones and ice cubes sloshing around in the cooler. Giant, endless semis blasted past us and I waved to the drivers every time but they couldn’t see me in the dark. I was looking for a cheap motel with a pool and free breakfast.

Thebes woke up and asked me what was going on. Help me find a motel, I said.

Will you give me a dollar?

Yeah.

What kind of motel?

Like in Psycho —have you seen it?

Yeah, she said.

Yeah? I said. Really? Aren’t you kind of young?

Everybody knows Psycho, she said.

Yeah, but it’s an old movie, I said.

Logan owns the original, said Thebes. She started doing the music from the shower scene. She told me that one time she’d pulled a Norman Bates on Min and it had gone badly. She was in the shower so I decided to attack her, she said. It wasn’t a good idea. It was a bad choice, like they say in Guidance, she told me, which I never go to any more, by the way, since Mrs. Zefferelli told us that ultimately we’re all alone in the world. Oh, said Thebes, going into one of her voices. Like, thanks, man! You’re the Guidance teacher and you’re basically, like, okay, kids, get lost, every man to himself, you’re a rock, I’m an island, we’re alone, we have no one, we die and then we rot. Scene.

What happened with the Norman Bates thing? I asked her.

Min screamed, she said. Okay, that worked. But then she stopped screaming and she sat down in the corner of the shower and started crying. I just stood there on the other side of the curtain and whispered that I was sorry and all that. I didn’t know what to do. And then I decided to stick my hand around the curtain and try to hold Min’s hand.

Did you find it? I asked.

Yeah, said Thebes, she took my hand and so we were just holding hands like that, with the curtain between us. And she was sitting down all naked and crying. My sleeve was getting soaked but I didn’t mind.

That’s nice, though, I said. I mean…holding her hand like that. Like walking in the rain.

And then I told her again that I was sorry for scaring her, said Thebes. I told her I was being Norman Bates, and she was all, like, she knew that, she just hadn’t been expecting it, that’s all.

Mmm, yeah, well…, I said.

And then, said Thebes, I realized my Norman Bates would never work if she expected to expect it every time. I mean the whole point—

Yeah, I said. Yeah.

Thebes spotted a motel, low-slung with lots of neon, a tiny outdoor pool and a basketball net. There was a permanent vacancy sign flickering on and off in the window next to the front desk and a sign that said No Repares Aloud in Lot. Logan shot hoops outside in the dark while Thebes and I checked in.

He’s gonna have to stop that at eleven, said the woman behind the desk.

When we got to the room we stood next to the bed and stared at it. Thebes still had half-moons of dried blood around the edges of her nostrils from being hit in the face with the Frisbee. Do you ever wash? I asked her. Am I supposed to tell you to?

She decided that instead we’d all go swimming. She told me to go over to the window and look outside while she changed into her bathing suit.

There were two people sitting in a car in the parking lot, an older guy in a suit and a girl with a ponytail and an orange ball cap. The girl was giving the guy a hand job. Her arm was flying back and forth fast, like a school kid rubbing out mistakes with an eraser. It looked painful. The guy’s eyes were squeezed shut.

Tada! said Thebes.

Hey, cute suit, I said. Let’s go! I tried to hustle her away from the window.

You don’t even have your bathing suit on, she said. I’ll look away and you can change.

No, I don’t feel like swimming, I said. I’ll watch you, though. I could throw things into the water that you could dive for. Hey, I said, did you know that right after you were born Min and Cherkis put you in a little pool and you swam, naturally, like a champ.

Really? said Thebes. Were they trying to drown me?

No, I said, of course not, it was just something that they’d heard infants knew how to do.

Years ago I’d asked my mother the same question about Min. Had she been trying to drown me in Acapulco? She said well, no, she didn’t think so, Min had been scared and frantic and hadn’t known that she was pushing me under, that was all. After a while, I let the story stand. I hadn’t wanted to believe my version of it anyway.