Miriam Toews - The Flying Troutmans

Hmm, I said. I smiled at Thebes. Your old lady rules. So I guess you’ve stopped calling 911?

It was one of those stories that could have gone in so many different directions. Had Thebes been embarrassed when she saw the cops laughing? Stricken with the realization that the cops knew her mom was nuts, hadn’t believed a word she’d said, and thought it was hilarious? Or had she been proud of Min’s wacky resourcefulness, sure that the cops had bought it, or, even if they hadn’t bought it, had been impressed with the effort, and had gone away feeling happy. Another trippy day of serving and protecting. Was Thebes trying to tell me that Min could handle tricky situations if she needed to, that all was not lost, that she could live life on life’s terms, or was she trying to tell me that Min had seemed crazy to her for a long time?

I think we’re in Arizona, said Thebes. I liked the way she sat up in her seat then and looked around with fresh eyes, like things might be radically different now that we had crossed an invisible state line.

I WAS AT MIN’S PLACE when Cherkis left. I played with Logan in the backyard while Min, with baby Thebes on her hip, chased Cherkis down the front sidewalk, screaming obscenities and at the same time begging him not to go. A few of the neighbours had come out to watch.

Logan was wearing a red plastic fireman’s hat and was pretending to put out a fire with the garden hose. I was a burn victim and wasn’t allowed to move. Every time I heard Min shriek I’d turn my head and try to get up, but Logan would race over to me, put his hands on my cheeks and his face close to mine and attempt to redirect my focus. You’ll be okay, he said. Don’t worry. You’re gonna make it. You won’t die. And then he’d race back to the fire.

Later on, after Cherkis had successfully managed to escape, Min lay sobbing on the living room floor and Logan sat beside her watching TV. I tried to get him to come for a walk with me and Thebes but he said no, he wanted to watch the Ninja Turtles with Min. When we got back I told Min that I was going to leave for a few hours but that I’d be back that evening to make dinner and help her get the kids to bed and after that I’d hang out with her and sleep over if she wanted me to. I tried to talk to her about Cherkis, about everything, but there was nothing she wanted to say or hear.

It took me forever to leave because Logan had hidden my shoes and wouldn’t tell me where.

Thebes convinced Logan to play Deborah Solomon’s Q and A.

Okay, she said, I’m Deborah Solomon and you are you. Logan Troutman, she said. You’ve experienced a lot of failure in the past. What makes you think this venture will be a success?

Logan: What do you mean failure ? Fuck off.

Thebes, interjecting as herself, told Logan that he wouldn’t really say that to Deborah Solomon. Remember, it’s The New York Times, she said. Let me start again.

Logan Troutman, she said. You’ve experienced a lot of failure in the past. What makes you think this venture will be a success?

Logan: What venture?

Okay, cut, said Thebes. Logan, please work with me here.

It’s not TV, he said, it’s print. It’s a column. You don’t say “cut.” God.

Okay, said Thebes. The venture I’m talking about is this trip to find Cherkis. Okay?

Deborah Solomon doesn’t get all personal in her columns, said Logan.

Well, this time she is, okay? said Thebes. I’m going to start again.

Logan Troutman, she said. You’ve experienced a lot of failure in the past. What makes you think this venture will be a success?

Logan: I have a very positive mental attitude. Plus, it helps that I really don’t care.

Solomon: Well, which one is it? A positive mental attitude or you just don’t care?

Logan: I just don’t care.

He said he was done with the game and was going to lie down.

Any of those secrets you’d like to cash in on? Thebes said to me.

What are you talking about? I said.

Your certificate, she said.

Oh yeah! I said. Okay. Yes. You are the coolest, most beautiful kid on the planet. You’re my inspiration and my rock and the wind beneath my sails. You are the shit, T.T.

That’s not a secret, she said. And don’t be sarcastic. Tell me something about yourself that you haven’t told anybody.

I thought for a long time.

Okay, I said. I had sex with my swimming coach when I was sixteen and he was thirty-seven and then I blackmailed him and told him I was pregnant and needed five hundred dollars for an abortion or I’d tell his wife that he was a pervert and he gave me the money and I spent it all on acid and mushrooms and quit the swim team.

Thebes silently reached around to the back seat, dug out her hole puncher, took my certificate out of the glove compartment and ceremoniously punched a hole in the first box.

You can’t tell anybody, I said.

Ew, she said. As if. Besides, this seals it. She waved the certificate around.

I worried that I had chosen the wrong secret to share with an eleven-year-old. I apologized to her for being indiscreet.

Well, Hattie, she said, I’m on shaky ground here. It’s not my department. Just remember that not all your secrets have to be disgusting, all right? Like, were you a slut when you were young?

No! I said. I wanted to mention that I’d been lonely, vulnerable, pathetically enamoured with this guy’s twisted attention, probably conducting a misguided search for a father figure, periodically terrified of my sister, whom I loved and revered but never understood, definitely insecure about my body and my brain, wanting to be adored by somebody adorable, lousy at swimming, on the verge of an eating disorder and dangerously impulsive…but that would have dragged this thing out even further.

She let it go. She asked me if I remembered how Grandma used to brag about her ability to memorize fifty three-letter words a day.

I saw a gas station down the road and decided to stop and fill up. Thebes could buy a Tiger Beat or something and focus on teenage mishaps other than mine and we could drive in silence for a while, maybe. Logan was sprawled out in the back seat, asleep and oblivious to the bass that was still pumping out of his headphones loud enough that the guy filling the van with gas started nodding his head in time with the beat and said he loved that band.

I told Thebes to go check out the magazines and then darted around to the side of the gas station to use the pay phone. There was no answer at the hospital. Had it been evacuated? Firebombed? Were the inmates rioting, throwing mattresses out the windows and cutting off the phone lines? When doesn’t a hospital answer its phone?

I went back to the van and talked to the gas jockey.

That’s a kick-ass mohawk, I said. Can I…?

Sure, he said, and leaned over so I could graze it with my fingertips. You know you’re leaking oil, he said. Big time.

I know, I said, what do I do about it?

Well, you fix it, he said. It took him half an hour to get those four words out. I smiled.

Dude, how do I fix it? I said. He told me if it was a wonky seal or a busted gasket it would cost a lot, maybe five hundred bucks, and would take probably an entire day to fix. An oil leak is not good, he concluded, half a century later.

Do you think I can make it to Flagstaff? I said.

Yabsolutely, he said. He asked if he could come along. He had a girlfriend there whose head he wanted to break. I told him I wasn’t going to give him a ride if what he had in mind was domestic violence and he said no, no, he was only kidding. He just wanted to talk to her about her bad habits.

What about your job? I asked him.