Miriam Toews - Summer of My Amazing Luck

“Well yes, of course—”

“My kids are people, right, at least for the most part?” She smiled at me. I didn’t smile back. I was getting embarrassed.

“Yes, but I—”

“Right. If they’re people, then they’re part of the public. This isn’t an adults’ restaurant. This is a public restaurant. Like a public washroom or a public library?”

“All I’m saying—”

All you’re saying is that your establishment discriminates against the young. You’d rather put them on a spit and sprinkle them with curry, wouldn’t you?”

Oh god, I thought and put my hand over my eyes

“No I really wouldn’t—”

“It’s a joke, Chuckles.” She crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue. Now everyone was staring at us. Alba and Letitia were still getting drunk and Dill had wandered away and was sitting on some woman’s lap. Maya sighed and kept reading and Letitia made faces at the manager. Lish was getting worked up.

“Lish,” I whispered, “don’t worry about it. He’s right, you know, the kids should sit down.”

But Lish just kept on going. “You know, you people remind me of those other people who put up signs in their store windows that say ‘No Strollers.’ Basically they’re saying No women and children. Especially no poor women who have to cart their kids and everything else around in strollers. I’d like to see a sign in a window that said ‘No Suits’ or ‘No Toupees’ or ‘No Body Odour’ for a change, you know? Eh, Luce?” she said, “wouldn’t you?”

I smiled at the manager, and shrugged my shoulders. “Don’t worry,” I said to him, “she’s not violent.” And then I muttered into my glass, “I think she’s having an allergic reaction to the wine, or something, I don’t know …”

The manager nodded. “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to leave,” he said.

“You know what really makes me mad, Luce?” Lish said.

“C’mon Lish, let’s go,” I said and smiled at the manager, who was staring at Lish incredulously.

“It’s okay,” I whispered to him, “we’re going.”

“The people that make curbs at a ninety-degree angle so you have to break your back to lift the stroller over them or wreck your stroller or wake up your kid getting up them. There are no smooth curbs anywhere in this WHOLE GADDAMN CITY.”

Lish was standing up now. Her black hair was all over the place, a strand of it was caught in her mouth, and her hat was crooked. The spider was almost covering her right eye. She was gathering up the leftover food in napkins and ramming it into her plastic Safeway bag. I got Dill away from the couple. He screamed. He was having a good time. The twins came over to where we were and said, “We’re so drunk. Ooh oooh, let’s drink more beer.” Maya and Hope were giggling with each other now. A middle-aged man next to us was smiling at Lish with what looked like admiration. His wife glared at him and when he noticed her scowling at him he went back to his goat dish. I tried to get Dill into his pink rain jacket, but I gave up and stuffed it into my Safeway bag and tried to hold him the way he was.

“Call us a cab, we are leaving!” Lish barked at nobody in particular. Part of her was just play-acting, having a tantrum. Like I said, Lish could have been an actress. It’s too bad she had to create her own scenes. Had the cops shown up and the manager broken into song or something, she would have been thrilled. As it was, everyone just thought she was crazy. The manager muttered something logical about wanting to be paid for the food. Lish heard him and said, “Oh sure, you want to get paid for ruining our evening. Well, fine.” She took out a little bread bag from her Safeway bag. She had a big grin on her face. Her hat was back in place. She dumped all the quarters, forty-eight dollars and seventy-five cents’ worth, onto the red carpet. The next morning, when she was sober, she told me it had been an accident, but I didn’t believe her. It was actually quite a beautiful thing to see. All that silver mixed with the red. Dill convulsed with excitement and I almost dropped him. A bunch of the quarters rolled under the table of the old couple with the goat dishes.

“Shall we, ladies … and gentleman?”

With that, Lish polished off the rest of the wine from her glass and mine. She grabbed the wine bottle, and, holding it over her head like a beacon of hope, led us out of the restaurant and into the dark street. I guess nobody had called us a cab, but it was probably a good thing. Lish threw up twice on the way home. She dumped the leftover curry in a puddle and accidentally dropped the wine bottle, too. It smashed on the sidewalk and an old guy looked out of his window and shook his fist. Lish tried to moon him, but it was too much work. She wasn’t much of a drinker.

We walked the whole way in the rain singing dumb songs like “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” and “Show Me the Way to Go Home.” I taught Lish a couple of the songs my mom sang to me as lullabies when I was a little kid. “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right out of My Hair” was one. She used to sing that song with quite a lot of conviction. “Take Me out to the Ball Game” was another one. When she came to the line I don’t care if I never come back my mom’s voice would get loud and brazen and her top lip would roll up to her nose. Before she got to the one two three strikes you’re out part, she’d shift me around on her lap so she could do her umpire routine. At “You’re out” she’d say it like a real umpire, You’re really fast and high and out low and dragged out. Then, if I was in the right position on her lap, she’d slice her arm across and out in front of her with her index finger pointing to the closet door. There was just enough space between the bed and the closet for her to do this, but still, every time she did her umpire act, I worried that she’d thwack her hand on the closet door. Afterwards, she’d lie down with me and close her eyes, her chest heaving from all that singing. I’d watch my skinny arm going up and down on her chest until I fell asleep.

Walking home from the curry place Dill fell asleep in my arms and the twins walked backwards all the way to Half-a-Life. When we got there Sing Dylan was at the wall, scrubbing the graffiti in the dark. He stopped and looked closely at all of us. He said, “Good evening. How are you?” I was about to say fine when Lish lurched over to him and said, “The answer to that, my good friend Sing Dylan, is blowin’ in the wind.” And then, of course, she started to sing. Sing Dylan shook his head and went back to his scrubbing. I could see how the busker would have missed Lish.

The next morning the sun was shining. At about 6:30 Lish pounded on my door, yelling at me to get up and come outside, the sun was shining, the sun was shining. The twins had their pails and shovels, and the older kids had their beat-up old bicycles. Lish had planned a walk to the park on the corner of Broadway and Young. She said, “Even the mosquitoes are too stunned by the sunshine to bite.” She was wearing a hot pink dress. Her black hair shone. She stood right in the middle of a sunray that had pierced through the window into my kitchen. Little bits of dust flew up around her. She was eating a bagel with cream cheese. She told me I had a crusty line of red wine on my lower lip. By the time I had thrown on a pair of cut-offs and a t-shirt and changed Dill’s diaper and gotten him dressed and given him some cereal, the sun was starting to disappear.

We hurried outside and caught the tail end of the sunshine. It had shone for twenty-four minutes. The rest of the time we played in the rain. A couple of guys at the park were sleeping in the grass next to the sandbox. They were covered with a big orange shag carpet. They woke up when the kids started hollering and they said, “Good morning.” We played in the thunder and the lightning. Maya told me that the chances of us getting hit by lightning were slimmer than the chances of us being killed by terrorists. Lish and I lay on the wet ground. We tried to ignore the mosquitoes. Once you start slapping, that’s it, you’ll never quit, and you have to admit defeat and go inside. So we lay there quietly and agreed with each other that life was grand and we were made for just this sort of activity: lying on the grass, talking, looking after the kids. For Lish it was especially grand. She was the one who got the letter. We had to admit, however, that it would have been grander still without the rain and the mosquitoes. Eventually we had to leave the park because Maya and Hope had to go to school.