Miriam Toews - A Complicated Kindness

I poached him an egg. We sat at the table, him in his new suit and me with my knees up and my T-shirt stretched over them and he said: You don’t want to spend the rest of your life here do you?

And I said: You mean here? Or here — and I swooped my arms around a little to indicate a much larger space, kind of sphere-like.

Hmmmm, my dad said.

I put my bald head on my knees and closed my eyes, saw nothing, and said Dad, I’m so damn tired. And in spite of his not liking the word damn he did reach out and trace my fish-hook scar really gently with his finger and he said he remembered that day.

The four of us had been out in a boat on Falcon Lake. It was my mom’s idea to go there and rent a little nine-horsepower boat and take some food with us and go to an island off at one end of the lake and have a picnic. My mom wore a matching shorts and shirt set that had large blue-and-yellow paisleys all over it with her bathing suit underneath it and her white Keds and my dad wore his bathing-suit trunks and a dress shirt buttoned up but with no tie and brown socks and shoes.

Tash and I were so excited and my dad kept giving us turns steering the boat but every time we did that we all had to move around and we came close to tipping a hundred times which we all thought was hilarious, especially my mom.

When we got to the island she put all the food on a blanket and while she was doing that my dad and Tash and I went fishing off a big rock that jutted out near where we were planning to eat. My dad was trying to show Tash how to snap the rod so the line went backwards and then forwards into the water and he said to me oh Nomi go and get the bait from the cooler, and so while I was walking away from Tash and my dad to get the bait she snapped her rod and the line went backwards and the hook on the end of it landed in my head.

There was a lot of screaming and bleeding and Tash felt awful and my mom and dad calmed us all down and removed the hook and washed out my giant gash with lake water and wrapped a tea towel around my head so I looked like an Egyptian goddess.

Then we all ate the food but while we were doing that we noticed storm clouds moving across the sky and the lake starting to get really choppy and my dad decided to check on the boat and then five minutes later he came back and told us it wasn’t there any more. My mom started laughing and Tash said we were the Swiss Family Robinson now too.

I was happy to be stranded on an island with my family and a towel around my head and my only worry was that the boat was a rental and we’d have to pay for it because we’d lost it. I worried about things like that along with the constant threat of hell.

Do we have flares, my dad asked, which made my mom almost die laughing.

Oops, she said, I forgot to pack the flares.

It was warm and we had food and bug spray and even some blankets and we were together. My dad kept saying stupid things on purpose to make my mom laugh and Tash and I wandered around the edge of the island picking up rocks and things and talking about how we’d survive on the island for the rest of our lives and then have a movie made about us.

And then it started raining and we all went running and screeching into the trees and held the picnic blanket over our heads and when it stopped for a while my dad went out and tried to build a fire for us to roast marshmallows, which didn’t work very well so we decided to go swimming because we were all wet anyway and we played tag in the warm water right beside the island and Tash and I saw my mom wrap her legs around my dad’s waist and kiss him and he looked shy and confused and hilarious without his glasses on.

After that my dad was able to make a fire with bits of a newspaper we had brought along for kindling and we roasted the marshmallows and watched the sun go down. And then out of the blue our boat bobbed back into view, right before our very eyes, about a hundred yards from the shore, and we were all quiet and disappointed. Finally my mom said well honey, I guess you should swim out to it and bring it back. And so he did. And my mom and my sister and I sat on the beach together near the fire watching him swimming out into the lake and rescuing our boat.

Hey, Ray, I said. Would you like another egg?

He said no thanks and smiled.

You didn’t tell me Mom was in a musical, I said.

True, said Ray. I should have. She was probably as old as you are now.

Did you see her? I asked. He said yes. He said she was amazing.

Hans took her in for the audition, he said. Out of the blue and she got the part.

Hans? I asked. The Mouth!

It was different then, said Ray. More…less…He lifted his hands and let them drop again.

Hey, how’d your class do in the festival?

The kids were wonderful, he said. Flawless. He stood up and said he was going to bed.

So what mark did Mrs. McGillivray give you? I asked.

Forty-nine percent, he said.

What? What the hell? I reached out and tugged on the back of his suit jacket. Why would she do that? You made her tea! You kept the wasp away from her!

Ray put his hand on the wall phone, just let it rest there against the black receiver. I don’t know, he said. I really don’t…I can’t figure it out. The kids were on top of their game, giving 110 percent, like I said…flawless, just flawless.

Ray removed his hand from the phone and left the kitchen. I got up and followed him down the dark hallway. The kids, I said. They must be…

Devastated, he said. And closed his bedroom door.

In the morning I pulled one of my dad’s abandoned notes to himself from out of the kitchen-sink garbage bag. Inquire re: lung capacity.

The phone rang. I said hello and my dad was at the other end. Don’t worry, he said, we’re not being bombed.

It’s okay, Dad, I said. I understand what thunder is.

Ah…he said. Do you? I mean in scientific terms?

I know it can’t kill me, I said.

Not directly, he said.

I read page three of the front section of the newspaper and learned that the once-pristine peaks of various mountain ranges around the world are now littered with trash, I told him.

Yes, he said.

You cut it out and left it lying on the counter beside the toaster, I said.

I’m sorry, he said. That’s unlike me.

Should I ask where the kitchen table and four ugly matching chairs are? I said.

He said no. Then he said yes, he meant of course I could. I wondered for how many seconds he could hold his breath while being awake.

I don’t really care, I said. I heard him exhale. Please don’t say thank you, I thought.

Lightning on the other hand, he said.

Yes, I know, I said.

We hung up. And then he phoned back.

Oh hi, Nomi? he asked, as though there were an entirely real possibility that I’d left the house in two seconds and been replaced by a complete stranger who didn’t live in our house but who sounded like me.

Dad, is that you? I asked.

Uh, yes, he said. Had he been momentarily unsure?

You forgot your driver’s test, he said. I moaned and he waited.

They phoned and I told them you were unwell.

We use the word sick now, Dad, I said.

I rescheduled your appointment for this afternoon at 4:30, he said. I’ll meet you there with the car. That should provide enough time to get from school to the arena.

Generally though, Dad, I said, I stay late at school working on extra projects, theorems, vivisections.

Yes, he said, I know. I’ve heard all about it. In fact, I meant that it would give me enough time to get from school to the arena.

When I was ten Tash took me swimming in the pits and we had this little dinghy with a rope around it and we were diving off it and after this one dive I got my foot stuck in the rope and I couldn’t get it out and I thought I was going to drown and Tash hadn’t noticed until the last possible second when all my air was gone and then I felt her hand on my foot and the rope being moved and I burst to the surface and then into tears. Later that day I realized that I could have died and I decided it was time to create some type of legacy so I asked my dad what people would sooner remember, the things I said or the things I didn’t say. His response was: Forgive me, but what people?