Miriam Toews - The Flying Troutmans

I talked for a while. I told Min about Paris, about my boyfriend, my job, about a bunch of stuff, and then I asked her if there was a bed ready for her at the hospital. She looked at Thebes again.

Yeah, said Thebes, I think so.

So, we should go, I said. Thebes had packed up some things for Min in her old Little Mermaid backpack. She likes oceans, said Thebes. She wants to bob along the surface of things.

That’s sweet, Thebes, I said. I didn’t mention that mermaids generally hang out at the bottom of the sea. She knew it herself, anyway. I imagined my father’s body being buffeted along the sandy bottom of the Pacific Ocean, bumping up against reefs and fish and shipwrecks, always on the move. As if he was still alive but in another world, like Min. She was a strange, unsettled planet that had once sustained life. She was a language that I had thought I almost understood even though I couldn’t speak it. She hadn’t always been this way. She used to wear high knee socks and short shorts and tube tops, and travel everywhere on roller skates. If our parents took us horseback riding, she’d pick the wildest horse and have it tamed in five seconds, flying joyously across fields and through rivers and leaping over fences. She taught me how to bumper-shine and cannonball and roll a joint and make a homemade bong. She went barefoot from May to October and once, on a dare, swam across Falcon Lake in the middle of the night.

At that resort in Acapulco, before our father drowned, Min owned the place. She wore a string bikini made out of purple glass beads, army boots and a black Labatt toque over her long, blonde hair. She lounged around all day on the beach reading Quotations from Chairman Mao, The Anarchist Cookbook and Paradise Lost. She smoked beedies that she shoplifted from a store called Orientique. Sometimes she’d bury me in the sand. Sometimes we’d race in the water. Can you hold this for me? she’d say to anyone who was around. She’d stick her book and her beedies into her toque and hand it to them and then sashay like a supermodel across the sand and into the water to cool off. I would stand on the beach squinting into the sun and watch her and count the number of seconds she stayed under water. One thousand. Two thousand. Three thousand…I knew that any number over thirty spelled disaster, and I’d sidle closer and closer to the water so I could be the one to rescue her.

I’d show you our plecostamus, said Thebes, but we haven’t seen him in four months. She was talking about their fish, a bottom-feeder. Logan feeds him every night, she said, but he has to turn the light off first so nobody sees him when he grabs his pellet of food. That’s the only way he’ll eat it. Thebes told me she sometimes tried to stay up all night to catch him swimming but it never worked.

Our only pet ever, she said, and we never see him. I wondered if their poor plecostamus was dead. How much faith does it require to feed a fish you haven’t seen in four months? Other people’s plecostamuses grow to be this big, said Thebes, holding her hands about eight inches apart. But our little guy doesn’t do a thing. She and I stared at the murky water in the aquarium.

Should it be cleaned? I asked her.

I’m afraid to, she said.

Min was weak and starving and could barely walk. Logan carried her to the van, no sweat, lighter than his backpack, almost, he said, and sat squished in a corner of the back seat with Min stretched out and her head in his lap on the way to the hospital.

Don’t worry about a thing, he told her. She looked up at him. You’ll be back, he said. You’ll get better. He stared out the window and smiled and drummed his fingers against the glass and cleared his throat several times. He stroked Min’s hair, awkwardly, beautifully, and then stopped but didn’t seem to know where to put his hand. I drove and Thebes rode shotgun, and she told me that I was an excellent driver, very prudent, very defensive, everyone should drive as well as I do, and then looked over her shoulder at Logan, who didn’t notice because he was busy trying to hide his tears.

At the hospital a big guy whose name tag said “Bernie” checked Min in and told her she’d be safe there.

She was safe at home, said Thebes.

Bernie ignored her. What’s your mood like, Min? he said.

She looked at Thebes.

Her mood? said Thebes.

How’s she feeling right now? he said. Min stared at him. Okay, good stuff, said Bernie. A parade of patients shuffled past us for their hourly smoke and Min slowly got up out of her chair and started to walk towards the elevators.

Oops, nope, said Bernie. This way, sweetie. Then he asked us if Min had any sharps or fire or belts or shoelaces on her, and Thebes told Bernie to ask Min herself. Good stuff, said Bernie again.

Min tried wandering over to the elevators again, but this time I took her hand and kept her close to me.

Logan had disappeared inside his hoodie and giant pants. His headphones were around his neck but I could hear the music faintly. He cracked his knuckles a few times and stared out the window. Then he smiled at Min and shrugged and smiled again. We heard someone moaning and a nurse saying, That’s enough, in a loud, too loud, voice. Like she was so sure of the limits, but the limits to what?

Fucking nightmare on Elm Street, eh, Mom? said Logan. Min closed her eyes and opened them.

Why aren’t you at the beach, said Logan and Thebes in unison, which I found out later was some kind of in-joke because the last time they had to bring Min to the hospital it was a really hot day and everyone in the waiting room was hiding behind newspapers that said in giant black letters, Why Aren’t You at the Beach?

Min was checked in. We walked with her to her room and stood around her bed for a few minutes. Hey, I said, this will be great, Min, this is…look, here’s a button you push for help. She closed her eyes. Thebes unpacked her Little Mermaid backpack and put a photograph of her and Logan and Min, smiling, laughing, even Logan, on the bedside table. She pulled out one of Min’s pillboxes and opened it up and showed it to me. She’d replaced the pills with tiny cinnamon hearts, one for every day of the week.

They’ll give her new ones here, she said. Right, Min? Min didn’t say anything. Right, Thebes, said Thebes. She wrote a note on a piece of paper and stuck it into the cardboard frame. We love you, Mom, and we always will. You’re the best mom in the world. We love you!!! Min opened her eyes again, smiled and patted the bed for Thebes to sit down beside her, but gently, very gently.

Min looked at me and crooked her finger. She wanted to talk to me. I put my head next to hers and she whispered in my ear.

Logan leaned against the wall and fiddled around with his headphones.

A bald head popped around the curtain and said, Hello, my name is Jeanette. We all said hello and she told us she was Min’s roommate. She was a really heavy breather. She was wearing dark shades and a Superman T-shirt and no pants. Min raised her hand and then let it fall back onto the bed. Jeanette told us she’d been there for thirteen weeks. She’d had lots of different roommates. She said she stayed in shape by walking the halls, incessantly. She’d been a military supplier. She’d look out for Min. She said it was nice that Min had this little family to visit her. Jeanette’s family weren’t allowed to visit her, she said, because they made her too agitated.

Okay, thank you, it’s nice meeting you, too. I turned back to my sister. Min, I said. Hey, Min. There was something I wanted to tell her, too. But she was out, fast asleep, or zonked on whatever Bernie had given her when she arrived. I leaned over and whispered into her ear. No, never, I said.