Miriam Toews - The Flying Troutmans

Well, that’s true, she wasn’t, so we were all quite encouraged by the fact that she had decided to get up for some fresh air. Well, a cigarette.

And then she just walked away or…? I said.

Apparently, yes, she started walking towards the highway. The police picked her up and brought her back. But she is out of danger, like I said, added the woman.

Oh, Min, I thought. C’mon…c’mon!

If I was there, I said, at the hospital, would I be able to see her right now?

Honestly? said the woman.

Yeah! Yes, please!

The doctor has her on a range of meds, said the woman. We’re working…we’re trying to establish what it is she needs and what her body can tolerate. At this point if she were to have guests she’d probably not…She’s not coherent, she’s fairly agitated, she’s refusing to eat…she’s having difficulty remembering aspects of her life, her address, for instance, the names of her kids…I recall telling you earlier that at one point she insisted that she hadn’t had kids.

Oh, you know, I said, I don’t…Really? I actually can’t believe that. I looked at the kids way over on the other side of the restaurant. Thebes had taken all her filthy, sweaty hair and sculpted it upwards like a Smurf’s and stuck a Sharpie through it Pebbles Flintstone — style and even from that distance I could hear her say, Bro, what’s a Lynyrd Skynyrd? Logan’s head was on the table.

I know, said the woman, it’s difficult. It’s a stressful time for the family, but we have every reason to believe that Min will recover and very likely be back at home soon. Provided there’s someone there to help out, or perhaps home care…

Every reason to believe, I said. I wondered what those reasons were, if there was a master copy I could get my hands on, the holy grail, if I could get all those reasons to believe tattooed onto my body and anchored to my brain. Every reason to believe. Maybe there was one single reason to believe, if that, but every reason ? I’d seen Min in and out of enough hospitals to know they were bluffing, the medical staff. They had to sound hopeful, for everybody’s sake, and I appreciated it, but I knew it wasn’t true.

I thanked the woman for the information. I asked her to pass hugs and kisses on to Min from Logan and Thebes. Logan and Thebes, I repeated. Those are her kids. I didn’t want to get off the phone with this woman because it meant going back to the table and being face to face with the forgotten ones. But the woman was angling for an exit and people were beginning to stare at Thebes and her Theban ways and I didn’t want someone calling her a retard again.

We drove around the town for a while. Thebes and I dropped Logan off at a basketball court and went to find a store where we could buy her some new clothes.

I want them to be all white, she said.

Noooooo, I said. That is not a good choice for you.

But she really wanted them so I caved and said she could buy whatever clothes she liked.

And when we see Cherkis, she said, he can tie-dye them if he wants.

So, hey, Thebie, I said, how do you feel, are you looking forward to meeting him? We were having this conversation in the store. She was trying on clothes and I was sitting on the floor outside the change room door.

She was and she wasn’t, she said, but wouldn’t or couldn’t elaborate other than to say she was trying to figure out the first thing that she would tell him.

I asked her if she wanted to rehearse it with me. She said no, she wanted it to sound fresh and spontaneous. Then she told me she had always harboured a secret desire to be an actress.

But, she said, I’m sort of depressed about it because I still don’t have an agent.

I didn’t know if she was serious or pretending to be a wannabe in L.A. commiserating with her friends at some audition. I didn’t know if I should laugh or not.

Maybe Cherkis has connections in California, she said.

Maybe, I said. You never know. She burst out of the change room, all in white, all Hi ho, Silver, away! God, you scared me, I said.

What do you think? she asked. She spun around and did a few jumping jacks. She teetered around like Chaplin, twirling an imaginary cane.

You just…I don’t know…You’re beautiful, though. Definitely. Wow!

Does it totally work? she asked.

Yeah! I said. What do you call that colour? Vanilla?

Eggshell, she said.

So we left the store with Thebes wearing a little white double-breasted suit jacket and trousers, shirt, vest and tie.

You look like Hervé Villechaize, or I don’t know…Tom Wolfe, I told her.

Who’s that? she said.

Writer guy, I said.

Brother to Virginia?

No.

Have you read her diaries? she asked.

No.

Min has, she said.

That didn’t surprise me. Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Anna Karenina …Min’s girl guide to the universe of pain. Her library of loss. She was well read.

Thebes also bought some eggshell tank tops and eggshell terry cloth shorts and eggshell knee socks and eggshell Converse Chucks.

Then we went to find Logan at the basketball court. We got lost on the way, drove around in circles, and then finally remembered the name of the street it was on. When we got there Logan was talking to some cops. Not the same cops, according to Thebes, that had told us we couldn’t sleep in the parking lot.

I jumped out of the van and went over there and asked them what was up. Logan was obviously in pain and the cops pointed at his wrist.

It’s broken, they said. He won’t tell us how it happened. His wrist dangled grotesquely from his arm and the cops said he’d have to get it plastered.

God, Logan, I said, are you okay?

Yeah, yeah, said Logan. His eyes were watering. Turned out that Logan had been hustling some of the kids at the court with his standard ten-for-eleven scam, pretending to suck at first to lure them in and make them put their money on the table.

How’d you break your wrist? I asked him. He shrugged. Whoever broke his wrist must have threatened him with something worse if he told anyone. Or, he broke it himself on another guy’s face and wouldn’t admit it. There was nobody else around.

The cops said if we left town immediately after he got a cast put on that thing, they wouldn’t press any charges.

But what charges would you press? I asked. I mean, they’re just kids, right? Playing?

Mischief, said one of the cops.

Yeah, but, what do you mean, mischief? I mean—

We don’t want any trouble, said one of them.

Yeah, well, I understand that, I hate trouble too, but I mean—

We’re actually trying to give you a break, here, said one of the cops. Are you always this mouthy?

I don’t think I’m being mouthy, I said. I’m just trying to figure this out. I want some information. Like, what he’d actually be charged with…I’m just not clear on the nature of these so-called charges. You know?

The cops were very calm and actually quite reasonable. It was making me nuts. I wanted a fight too. I wanted to break my wrist on a stranger’s head and scam some Moabites and get run out of town for being better at something than the other kids.

Okay, listen, said one of the cops. We’re talking Fraud. We’re talking Extortion. We’re talking Illegal Gambling.

No, c’mon, gimme a break, you are not talking about those things, dude, I said. He’s fifteen freaking years old! It’s a stupid basketball game! What do you mean, extortion? That is so ridiculous. Do you make this shit up or what? What do you do, just drive around town busting kids for being kids? Thebes was tugging on my shirt and Logan was staring at me with a familiar combination of pain and pity, those cobalt eyes going off like alarms way deep in his hoodie. I reminded myself of my mother shorting out on everyone after my father drowned saving our lives.