Miriam Toews - Summer of My Amazing Luck

Jesus.

No.

Did you say silver spoon? How do you like them apples.

How the fuck do you like them apples.

Yeah.

Yes.

What? Yeah, it’s still running. Kay.

Bye.

I don’t know why Teresa had to ask if the van was still running. It was rather inappropriate timing. I guess she just didn’t feel the drama of the moment. At least she didn’t ask if we’d got her cheap American smokes yet. Or maybe she had. How would I know? While Lish was talking I had the feeling I was drifting away, lifting off and floating up into the sky, away from Lish and Dill and the girls and out of this crazy lie I had concocted. Then the Badlands came to life and I came back to earth and the dusty quiet town of Cactus Flats, South Dakota, woke up briefly as Lish hollered at the top of her lungs, “GODDAMN FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING ASSHOLE!!!” The girls stared and I stared. Nobody mentioned the swear jar and Dill, in that marvellous way babies have, began to chuckle.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” That was about all I kept saying to Lish on the drive back to Winnipeg. She kept saying, “It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.” She had these crying jags and I told her she looked great afterwards. She laughed. When she cried I drove so we wouldn’t go off the road. She told the girls point blank that the friend they were looking for had been killed in a terrible stupid accident and we were going home. Alba said we could still have a holiday and Hope glared at her and Alba stuck out her tongue. In the washroom of a gas station, Lish told me she would have to figure out how to tell the twins their mysterious father was now dead. It was anti-climactic. This was the big finish I was hoping for. Better a dead father than an absent one and all that. No more waiting, hoping, wondering. On with life! The twins could create the new Gotcha in their minds, in their hearts, in their stories at school, and in their conversations in the playground, and he would never let them down. Never. And they would believe he had died trying to find them.

But I didn’t feel jubilant. After all, the twins had never really worried about their father. Lish had explained to them who he was, and that they’d likely never see him. They were content with that. They had been told the truth. And maybe when they were older they’d borrow somebody’s van and hit the road looking for him themselves. Or maybe they wouldn’t and he would become something they’d think about a couple of times a year, maybe the month of their conception, which would have been July, or whenever they saw a dark-haired handsome man performing magic on an outdoor stage. Who can tell? Why did I think that just because I could re-create my mother after her stupid death, they could or would want to re-create their dad’s after his? After his fake one, that is.

And Lish. Obviously she had managed to survive all those years before I moved into Half-a-Life. I found her crying one day, assumed it was over lost love, and then concocted some stupid plan to return that love to her to make her happy, to keep her happy, so I could be happy. To think I could be a mother and so fucked up at the same time. If I wanted to fix somebody’s life so badly, why didn’t I start with my own?

Anyway, I kept apologizing to Lish, saying it was my fault, it was my fault, I shouldn’t have encouraged her to take this trip. It was doomed from the beginning, etc. etc. I came as close as I could to telling her I had rigged the whole thing — until she finally told me to shut up and stop blaming myself. She said women always blame themselves when it rains at a picnic. She drove with one hairy leg heaved up onto the seat and her elbow resting on the window sill holding up her head. She had on the same t-shirt as on the day before. As we headed north toward Winnipeg a miracle began, slowly, to unfold: the sun came out. The prairie sun was finally doing what it was famous for. It was shining, hot and shining. “Well,” said Lish, “there is a God. That big red swollen orb up there has finally found its groove and it’s about darn tootin’ time I’d say, wouldn’t you, girls? Dill?”

Groove? I thought to myself. Groove?

We decided to bypass the fleabag motel in Grand Forks and camp instead. I was glad about that. The boy with the hickeys and the brown arms confused me. And I think any more confusion at that point would have made me certifiably insane. And anyway, Lish could afford to look awful from a night of camping. And we could tell Terrapin that yes, we had camped, because she was sure to ask. Lish tried to start a fire using the bourbon as lighter fluid, but it didn’t work. She said, “Fuck it, who needs a fire,” and started chugging the bourbon straight from the bottle. After a lot of swearing and sweating and second thoughts we got the tent up and then all seven of us went skinny dipping in the lake until a park ranger or warden came to tell us it was unlawful to swim naked in the lake. Lish rose from the water slowly and walked over to this guy on the beach, starkers. Her wet black hair hung around her body like a pelt. The girls shrieked with delight.

“Did you say ‘unlawful’?” she said.

“Yeah,” he said, smiling. “It means you’re not supposed to do it.”

“To swim naked?” she said.

“Yeah,” he said again. The ranger and Lish were smiling at each other and he began to rub his hands on his thighs and clear his throat. Then he played with a little button on his two-way radio. He didn’t look much older than me. I was trying desperately to keep my breasts under the water and still hold Dill without drowning him. I must have looked like some kind of deformed stroke victim. Lish, however, stood on that beach like Joan of Arc, big, naked, looking the ranger in the eye, grinning, shaking drops of water out of her hair, squinting at the setting sun like a self-contained fugitive. I wanted this scene to end promptly. Lish wanted it to go on forever.

They stood smiling at each other. Lish moved her hair around a bit and a few drops of water fell on the ranger’s pant leg. She made a big deal of wiping him off and he laughed and looked up at the sky as if to say Thank you God for this naked woman standing in front of me and rubbing my thigh. He took out two cigarettes and offered one to Lish. She shook her head and shifted her weight to one leg. The ranger was having a problem lighting his cigarette and Lish moved around slightly to block the wind from blowing out his match. They were talking and laughing. He was a cute ranger. It occurred to me to look at his pants to see if he was getting an erection, but I couldn’t really tell. I quickly looked away.

I tried to engage Dill and the girls in some kind of feeble splashing game but Dill started fussing about the water in his eyes and the girls began chucking wet sand at each other. I looked at the happy couple on the beach and wondered whether Lish would drag this guy off to the bushes any second and screw him while she was at it, but they seemed satisfied enough standing around and talking to each other.

What the hell was I supposed to do? There was no way I was getting out of the water naked, and I was starting to feel like a real idiot, hunched over like a clam and moving around trying to stay warm in the water and keep Dill from crying. I couldn’t exactly nurse him underwater — he’d drown if he took a breath. I guess I should have known it wasn’t my breasts anybody was interested in, except Dill, and it wouldn’t make any difference if I exposed myself or not. It could have been Normandy Beach on D-Day and Lish and the ranger wouldn’t have noticed.

Lish walked over a few feet and pulled her bottle of bourbon out from a log, and handed it to him. He had a drink and passed it back to Lish. Well fine, I thought, if that’s the only fluid they pass back and forth. I swatted a horsefly off Dill’s head.