Miriam Toews - A Complicated Kindness

What do you think of this fabric? he asked.

I squinted at him. Why would he ask a lunatic for her opinion?

It’s worsted in such a way that it breathes, I said. You’ll enjoy its versatility.

I went back to my medical information. I learned that my body would think it was pregnant.

There would now be yet another part of myself that would not know what was really going on.

I overheard my dad and Mr. Schlitzking talking. Mr. Schlitzking was stroking my dad’s shoulders from behind and saying eh? Who’s calling the shots now? My dad blinked at himself in the mirror. Let’s take a walk over to the sock table, said Mr. Schlitzking, and my dad followed him to the back of the store where I was sitting. He looked at me like this was all my fault.

Well, he said, I have socks at home.

He does, I said.

No, said Mr. Schlitzking, I mean socks for this particular suit.

Well, said my dad…and then Mr. Schlitzking said: You think they’re not looking at your socks? He rested his chin on his collarbone for dramatic effect and then said: They’re looking at your socks.

My geography teacher came out of the change room wearing a mint-green leisure suit with chocolate-brown outer stitching.

Oh hello, he said to my dad. My dad said hello. Looking forward to the summer holidays? asked my geography teacher.

No, said my dad.

Any vacation plans? asked my geography teacher.

None, said my dad.

The beach? asked my geography teacher.

Never, said my dad.

I tried to imagine my dad at the beach. I saw a man in a yellow lawn chair wearing a black suit and tie and reading Notes from the Underground. He smiled and looked at me. Shall we? he asked.

We went home with a suit and socks he’d never take out of the package. On the way we stopped for an ice-cream cone at the Sunset and sat down at a picnic table next to the takeout window. We were quiet, just licking our cones and staring off at the sky, listening to the crickets.

Nomi, said my dad.

Yeah? I said. He had a grim expression on his face. His brow was furrowed. Yeah? I said again.

You think they’re not looking at your socks? he asked. I nodded gravely. They’re looking at your socks, we said in unison.

On the way home my dad asked me if I minded the way he was. He was mournful like he’d been drinking too much wine which he never did because what would Jesus do without his blood? Sobriety was enough to make my dad’s world spin. I punched him in the shoulder. I sang the whole theme song to The Partridge Family and poked him in the stomach. C’mon get happy. Oh, cut it out, he said. Then we walked in silence. Finally my dad said: Really, I’m not much of a father. No, you are, I said. No, he said. He shook his head. You are too, I said. I dabble in parenthood, he said. No you don’t, I said. Deusant, he whispered. It was his favourite curse. His only curse, actually, but it covered a lot of territory because it meant thousand.

When we got home I gave him the dipping bird and he cleared the spare change off his dresser and put it there, next to a picture of my mother. Well, he said. This is quite a surprise. Thank you very much. Thank you very, very much.

We sat on the end of his bed watching the bird dip its head in and out of the glass of water.

How do you like that? he said. He patted me on the knee. Then he went downstairs to watch Hymn Sing, his favourite show, where a group of men and women in black suits and long dresses stand in even lines on risers singing hymns for half an hour. You can watch it with me if you like, he’d said from halfway down the hall. Hmm, I thought. And leave the bird? In Hymn Sing the words bounce along on the bottom of the screen in case you want to sing along, but my dad never does. He just watches. But why would you want to sing along to “He Was Nailed to the Cross for Me”?

I went into my room. I threw a T-shirt over my lamp, lit some of Tash’s incense and put on a Bob Marley album. I played “Redemption Song” about twenty times.

Iturned thirteen three days before Tash left town with Ian. The drama focused on her and Trudie, really. My dad and I hovered in the wings like stagehands, not entirely sure of what was going on but looking forward to it being over. They spent a lot of time speaking in code, it seemed.

I was sure my sister was a pusher. We’d seen a film in church called Hey Preach, You’re Comin’ Through! and it was all about a girl like Tash who’d gone bad and veered off the road less travelled onto a thoroughfare of sin.

Once, during this perceived pusher period, my dad and I went for a walk and I suggested to him that he hold my hand. He told me he hoped I could thrive from benign neglect, like an African violet.

Well, then I will, I said. And he told me I’d need more than his faint hopes to thrive like a plant. But he did take my hand, and that made me think things might work out, although I still didn’t know exactly what was wrong.

One night Ian dropped Tash off in the middle of the night. I heard his low voice and her soft laughter and the door open and close really, really quietly. I heard my mom open her bedroom door and head down the hall towards the kitchen. After that I couldn’t hear anything and I went back to sleep.

When I woke up a few hours later I went into the kitchen and read a note that was lying on the table: My mom had gone to do some shelving at the library, in the middle of the night, and my dad had gone for what he liked to call a toot, which to him meant a drive. Which made Tash almost wet her pants one day because in her circle toot meant toke. Tash, herself, was asleep on the couch.

I thought she must be in very big trouble this time and I wondered what would happen to her. Nothing bad had ever happened to us before so I didn’t even know what the consequences could be. I went into her room and pulled out her high school yearbook and stared at the black-and-white photographs of her classmates. I lay in her bed and imagined that Ian was lying on top of me, wiping the hair out of my eyes, cupping my face in his strong hands, and telling me how he shouldn’t be doing this but he just couldn’t help himself and we must never tell Tash. Never.

I went into the living room and played an Irish Rovers record loudly until she woke up screaming what the fuck is that? Oh my god! I was sitting in the big green chair, trying to be both sinister and casual. I slowly lowered the newspaper that I’d been pretending to read, and looked at her. So, I said, you’re awake. Perhaps now you’d be willing to answer a few questions? Oh my god, she said, and stumbled out of the room cursing. I had thought a little sketch comedy would soften her. You’ll burn in hell! I screamed. Forever! I thought I heard her laughing in her room, but I couldn’t be sure. I ran to my room and fell into my bed sobbing.

That morning Trudie came home to find both of her daughters crying in their bedrooms, only for entirely different reasons. I was convinced that Tash would fry like butter for her sins and she was…well.

I didn’t know why she was crying, until I heard my mom say honey, what is it? What’s wrong? And Tash said: I think I’ll go crazy. I can’t stand it. It’s all a fucking lie. It’s not right and it’s killing me. It’s killing me! Mom, it really is! And then something happened that took me completely by surprise. I heard my mom say, I know honey, I know it is. And then she began to cry also, not with the same intensity but with a pacing that made it seem like she knew what she was doing and I remember thinking to myself: Are they equally as sad? Why is my mom not angry? What is killing Tash? Drugs? Sinning? Books like The Prophet and Siddhartha and Tropic of Cancer ? And when my mom said I know it is, did she mean she knew it, whatever it was, was killing Tash, or did she mean she knew it was all a lie. And I’m pretty sure that’s when my nightly face aches began. Like my head had suddenly been filled with ideas and suggestions that it couldn’t contain. Or maybe I was just choking. I was wrong about everything. I thought that what Tash meant when she said it wasn’t right and it was killing her was the pusher’s lifestyle that I’d imagined she’d been living. Selling drugs in the city, whoring around with a bad boy, cleaving to ideas of communism, telling Dad to go to hell. It was obvious to me. And after a while I started feeling good again because I realized that Tash was about to get back on track, that she had figured out she needed saving, and that God and Mom and Dad and The Mouth and everyone else who mattered would forgive her. And we could go back to being a normal family again, even with small amounts of desperate laughter.