Miriam Toews - The Flying Troutmans

Logan and Thebes stood there staring at her and then Logan pulled the blanket up so it covered her shoulders and Thebes moved the family photo a fraction of an inch on the bedside table, lining it up with Min’s eyes so it would be the first thing she’d see when the drugs wore off.

A woman asked to speak to me in the hall. She was a social worker. She asked me if I knew of any arrangements that had been made for the children, and I told her yes, I had come from Europe to look after them for as long as they needed me to. The words sounded as though they belonged to somebody else, or like I was reading from a teleprompter or a karaoke screen.

The social worker said that was good but they might have to conduct a home assessment and perhaps a background check on me to make sure I was competent and didn’t have any outstanding arrest warrants or my name on any abuse registries. That’s fine, I said, but Logan and Thebes can’t go to a foster home.

Well, said the woman, very likely not, but that would have to be determined by others. I thanked her for her concern. She thanked me for my understanding of the situation. We shook hands.

WHEN WE GOT BACK TO THE HOUSE Logan grabbed his basketball, threw it really hard against the hallway wall, knocked the framed family photo to the floor — it didn’t break, he didn’t pick it up — and then left with a couple of his friends. Thebes picked up the photo, hung it back on the wall, sighed heavily like she’d travelled to every corner of the world, on her knees, with a knife in her back and a boa constrictor wrapped around her chest, and then made us a couple of blueberry smoothies.

The phone rang.

Don’t answer it, said Thebes. We’re screening. It was the principal of Logan’s school again, wanting to know what was up, when he could get together with Logan’s mom for a chat. Thebes and I stood next to the phone and listened to him talk. He asked if they had moved, if this was still their number. He didn’t want to be pushy, he said, but it was really important that he and Logan’s mother have a conversation.

Should I pick it up? I asked Thebes.

No! she said. She told me I had to go and be Min.

Yeah, but doesn’t he know what she looks like? I asked her.

No, he’s clueless, she said.

Yeah, but can’t I just go and be myself and explain the situation, that Min’s in the hospital?

No, said Thebes. No, she said again. She shook her head slowly, gravely. She didn’t want to go to a foster home.

You won’t go to a foster home! I said. I’m here to take care of you.

Yeah, she said, but for how long?

I tried to reassure her. I tried to convince her that she wasn’t going to a foster home, but I knew my tone was tentative and that she was having a hard time believing me.

Cross your heart and hope to die? she said. I wondered how often, on average, a parent makes a preposterous promise to a kid and then begins to panic.

Well, yeah, I said. Definitely.

Thebes and I sat at the kitchen table and drank our blueberry shakes. She told me about some of the stories Logan had been writing in English class. The principal is worried about him, she said. She told me that Logan had almost gotten suspended for telling the principal he was lame, or his jokes were, or something like that. And that the principal had told him to smarten up and then Logan had said he hated that expression, smarten up, because it makes the person saying it sound like an imbecile.

It’s kind of true, though, I said.

Do you miss your boyfriend? asked Thebes.

Yeah, kind of, I said.

Are you sad? she asked.

I am, yeah, I said. But I’m okay. I told her she looked a little tired.

No, she wasn’t tired, but we could lie down on the living room floor if I was tired.

Thebes and I lay on the living room floor and talked. Well, she talked. She talked about her friends. We’re all mostly white nerds, she said, with minor physical and emotional flaws that do not require medication but do brand us as losers in the bigger picture.

Who’s Mojo? I asked her. She had mentioned him, or her, in some of her e-mails.

My imaginary band mate, she said. Bass player.

She talked about the purple bulges under Min’s eyes, how they were getting bigger and bigger. How Min had tried, in the beginning, to cover them up with some makeup but it was too light and she looked like she had a goggles tan. Sometimes at night, said Thebes, before she stopped getting out of bed completely, I could hear her pacing downstairs, humming to herself, making cup after cup of camomile tea. Or playing darts by herself in the basement. Thebes described the way it sounded. Three small thunks, she said, the darts hitting the target, and then approximately eleven or twelve seconds of silence while Min walked to the dartboard, removed the darts and returned to the throwing line. Then three more thunks, and another eleven or twelve seconds of silence. Over and over, like someone knocking softly, patiently, but persistently on the front door.

She told me about a city in India where monkeys are a holy manifestation of some god and are allowed to run wild wherever they want to go. One of them stole a tourist’s glasses and there was nothing the cops could do, she said. What I would have done, she said, is look for the monkey wearing glasses and then try to exchange them for something else. What was your boyfriend’s name? she asked me.

Marc, I said.

Did you want to get married?

No.

Why not?

I’m…I don’t know.

Did he?

No.

Was he good-looking?

No, not particularly. Not conventionally.

Was he good at sports?

I don’t know.

Did you know I had an operation on my brain and part of the scalpel broke off and is still in there?

Yeah, I had known, Min had told me.

Logan tried to stick magnets to my head, said Thebes. Thebes had become a talking machine. Maybe she was attempting to use up all the words that Min had left behind, taking whatever popped into her head, any thought, idea or fact, and transforming it into sound, noise, life. She was talking for two, in double time.

When we were kids, Min would go for months without saying a word. Her muteness was her voice, her retreat was her attack. It was all upside down and disconcerting and it had made me nuts. I used to do the same thing that Thebes was doing now, blather away non-stop about anything that came to mind, and really it was only when I got to Paris and Marc told me that silence was golden, especially mine, that I realized how much I talked.

Do you want to watch TV? I asked her. There was a thick layer of dust on the screen. Someone had written Deborah Solomon, be my girlfriend in the dust. Or, hey, maybe you should have a nice, hot bath.

She said she was too nervous to stop talking. She wanted to talk. She had to talk. She got up and walked around while she talked. Hopped onto the couch and off again. She told me about Logan’s X-rated stories, the ones he had been getting in trouble for. The last one had been about a boy who was disturbed from having to listen to his mom having “mind-blowing sex” with her new boyfriend, and from then walking in on his dad, who’d just hung himself. She said Min had been upset by it. She imitated Min being upset. Logan, she said, we talked about this stuff. Can’t you just…You’re making me…These stories are not…, said Thebes. It was an uncannily accurate impersonation. It was obvious that Thebes had been spending a lot of time observing her mother, trying to understand, trying to find a way in. It was the same thing I’d been doing all my life.