Miriam Toews - The Flying Troutmans

It took us three minutes to get to Lilah’s place. Thebes and Logan argued about how much the window should be left open for Rajbeer not to suffocate to death from the heat. Logan said he’d wait in the van this time. Okay, I said, but I made him promise he wouldn’t take off.

Thebes and I went into the house/studio, a groovy space, the walls painted orange and purple and covered in goofy art. A girl, maybe a little younger than Thebes, said, Hey, what’s up? Buenos días! She’d been sitting cross-legged on the hardwood floor, spinning herself around in circles.

Bonjourno! said Thebes. They stared at each other and grinned.

Yo, Mom! yelled the girl. We are not alone!

A blonde woman came out of a room in the back and said hello and welcome. She looked at Thebes. I looked at the other girl. We were all staring at each other and grinning.

You totally know Doug Cherkis, don’t you? I said to the woman.

So, yeah, turned out the kids had a half-sister, almost an exact replica of Thebes but about two years younger. A sophisticated nine, she said. Her name was Antonia. She took Thebes outside to show her some stuff and then Logan shot hoops with them behind their garage, laughing his head off as these two little look-alike girls, his sisters, tried to block and tackle him.

But Cherkis wasn’t there. And when he had been there he’d gone by the name Charles instead. Doug Charles.

Do you think that’s because he didn’t want to be found? I asked Lilah.

No, she said, he just thought Cherkis sounded dumb, I think.

She told me that about five or six months ago he’d gone to a place called Calexico, a border town, which was near a Mexican town called Mexicali. They weren’t really talking much any more. Doug is a bit of a loner, she said. I asked her if he’d ever mentioned Min and the kids and Lilah said yeah, he had a couple of times, but he hadn’t gone into much detail.

He kept a lot of pictures of her, though, said Lilah. He didn’t show them to me, but I found them in one of his boxes. They looked really happy together. Then Lilah told me that she thought the reason she and Cherkis had never really connected in a big way was that he was still in love with Min.

Do you really think so? I asked her.

Well, she said, he was always distracted. He was sweet, and he was great with Antonia, but he would often stare out the window like he was expecting someone to show up any minute. You know, he’d stare at planes whenever they flew over, he’d disappear for periods of time. Once he told me he was planning on going on a road trip to Canada but I guess he changed his mind.

Lilah told me that Cherkis had gone to the border to join a group of anarchists or something who were committed to keeping track of and documenting the actions and injustices of the U.S. Border Patrol.

How far is it from here? I said.

Maybe a hundred and fifty miles? she said. You’d go straight south through Joshua Tree National Park.

Does he have a phone number that you know of? I said.

No, not that I know of, she said. They have two-way radios. They’re living in tents in a kind of no-man’s land. Sometimes he’ll call from a phone booth if he goes into town, to talk to Antonia.

But do any kids live there? I said.

In the town? she said.

No, like with the people in the tents, I said. Is it possible?

She didn’t know. Maybe. Why not? But there wouldn’t be much for them to do.

When the girls came back into the house they were talking non-stop. Thebes was telling Antonia a story about dancing.

Logan and I went to our community centre sports banquet, she said, and he got a bunch of awards and I won a deflated basketball for participation and wore my little black dress from my neighbour and some of her old high heels and a black choker and danced with a boy named Dang. There’s a tall Dang and a short Dang, she said. I danced with the short Dang but Logan said I should have danced with the tall Dang. Logan sat at a different table with his friends and then danced weirdly, like a robot, and then left in a green car full of girls.

Then Antonia told Thebes about her grandma’s birthday party.

We had a nice birthday party for Grandma, she said, even though we forgot to get her the one thing she had asked for, which was a splatter lid for her frying pan. Then we took her to a play. Romeo and Juliet. It was really good except it was interactive so we had to keep hauling Grandma out of her little foldy chair so we could move around to the various scenes. I really liked it. The guy who played Juliet’s dad had the palest blue eyes that I’ve ever seen. When I told Mom that Benvolio and Paris sure looked a lot alike, she said yeah, I guess that’s because they’re the same guy.

This cracked them both up and they had the same throaty laugh. I guess they must have inherited it from Cherkis but it had been a long time since I’d heard him laugh. I could remember him crying, though, at their dining room table. He cried a lot in the last few months he was with Min. She’d barricade herself in the bathroom or in the basement and he and I would maintain a type of vigil, I guess, sharing a bottle of bourbon and waiting for Min to come out of hiding.

Thebes and Antonia kept talking. They were unstoppable. Thebes told Antonia that her grandma, when she was alive, played Scrabble on ships for money and Antonia told Thebes that her grandma was shrivelled up and had just won three hundred bucks at Bingo.

She has these tiny photos of people in frames, said Antonia, like of her husband and her grandchildren and stuff and she puts them in a half-circle around her Bingo cards and dabbers.

Cool, said Thebes. Like, for luck?

Yeah, said Antonia, and she calls me Nevada.

Hey, Thebie, I said, we should really think about hitting the road, eh?

Hey, said Antonia, do you wanna play Trouble?

Yeah! said Thebes. But first do you want to hear my Satan voice?

She did. Then Antonia told Thebes that the riot police, the ones with shields, had just stormed a house on their street and kicked in the back door but the person they were looking for wasn’t there and they had to apologize.

Hey, said Thebes, have you ever been to a meat fair? Do you know what mad cow disease is? All our cows in Canada went crazy and a bunch of farmers had a meat fair at the ballpark and sold hamburger for like a dollar a pound.

Make it a fast game, okay? I said.

Lilah and I talked more about Cherkis. She said she had never really got him. She had tried to get inside him but she felt she’d never succeeded. She said talking to him sometimes made her feel like a grave robber.

While we talked and the girls played Trouble, Logan used a sledgehammer to smash up the sidewalk in the front yard. Lilah had asked him if he wanted to because she was planning to put in a new one. She opened the window and a hot breeze blew in and she called to him that he was doing a great job.

This’ll be my legacy, he said.

Smashing the obvious and well-worn paths that lead us from one place to another, I thought. Go Logan.

I’d come up with a plan. Min was in the universe. She was a dim and falling star, but she was alive. She hadn’t loved watching the sun’s eclipse as much as she’d loved watching it reappear. If she had really, truly wanted to die she’d have succeeded a long time ago. She loved the brink, going to it and returning from it. Or maybe she didn’t love it. Maybe she hated it. But it didn’t matter. Maybe going to the brink made her feel like she’d accomplished something extraordinary, like there was a purpose to her life, if only to prolong it in spite of herself. She was the captain of both teams, waging war against herself but always pulling back from any decisive victory because that would also mean a decisive loss.