The Flying Troutmans

by Miriam Toews

  Oh…yeah? Well, do you—?

  And it’s cool, it’s fine, he said. I mean really.

  Yeah? No, really? But do you—?

  I’ll go to Twentynine Palms with you, he said, but ultimately? I’m going to do what I want to do. I can take care of myself.

  Well, maybe, yeah…, I said. But you shouldn’t have to, right, that’s why—

  Okay, yeah, he said. But the thing is, and don’t, like, don’t think I’m, you know, mad at you or anything, or hurt, or whatever, but the thing is, you don’t…like, you don’t want us, right? He looked at me and smiled. A genuine, beautiful smile that I think was meant to absolve me of any guilt but instead made me want to kill myself.

  No way! I said. That’s not true at all! That’s completely not true. I just think that Cherkis should probably…you know…he’s your dad. He could take care of…It’s not like—

  Yeah, said Logan, maybe. But does he want to? Do you know that? Is he a total dick? Is he a moron? Is he alive? You know? There are a lot of variables…

  Yeah, that’s true, I said, but there are also a—

  And, so, but, said Logan, what I was saying before…you know, like the bottom line or whatever…you don’t want me and Thebes. Why would you? You want to go back to Paris and do your…whatever you do, there.

  No, that’s not the bottom line, Logan, it’s—

  And can I just ask you something? he said.

  Yeah!

  Do you actually think Mom would let us go? Because, honestly? I don’t think so. She’d never—

  He shook his head and his voice cracked.

  Do you want to go back? I asked. Because we—

  Home? he said.

  Yeah, I said.

  No.

  The van was making mysterious noises again and Logan’s CD was skipping.

  Houston, we have a problem, he said.

  So, what I was doing in Paris, I said, was…trying to get away from…like, far away from…basically…my family. Not you guys, not you and Thebes, but—

  Mom, said Logan.

  Kind of, I said. Yeah. All of that. And everything else. But I missed you guys so—

  Yeah, he said. He fiddled around with the CD player and then ran his fingers back and forth over the skeletal arm that Thebes had drawn on his cast and then rested his hand briefly on the dying boy’s head. Then he picked up the map and held it close to his face and whispered the names of his favourite sequence of towns. Monticello, Blanding, Bluff, Mexican Hat, Kayenta, Tuba City, Flagstaff.

  Twentynine Palms, I said.

  Twentynine Palms, yeah, he said.

  How’s the wrist? I asked.

  Meh, he said. I can’t feel it.

  When I left for Paris, Logan was twelve and Thebes was eight. Cherkis had been AWOL for years and Min was drifting. I was at university but had missed so many classes babysitting Logan and Thebes, while Min was in meetings with the voices in her head, that I decided to drop out entirely and go to the airport and fly away.

  I saw Marc for the first time at the Pompidou Centre and I stood next to him while he stared at a black painting and asked him if he had a cigarette. He had a friend who worked there and that friend took us up to the roof of the building and we sat there, smoking, and I looked out at Paris and I looked at Marc and I thought, with surprising accuracy as it turns out, okay, this will be fine for a while. He asked me my name and I told him it was Aurore, and he said ha ha, no it’s not, but if that’s what you want me to call you, I will. It was the thing I liked best about him for a long time.

  Where’re we at, yo? said Thebes.

  I glanced at her in the rear-view mirror and flashed her a peace sign. Her face was covered in chalk and ink and she must have slept on one of her poems because there were small letters inscribed backwards on one of her cheeks. We’re almost in Mexican Hat, I said.

  Cool, cool, she said. Hey, Logan, where’s your art? Did you finish?

  He pointed at the head on the dash. Thebes went quiet, staring. He passed it to her and she had a closer look.

  Dude, she said. She stroked the boy’s matted hair and looked deeply into his swollen eyes. She examined the tiny sun, girl, road, CD player and basketball jersey that Logan had drawn on the boy’s neck. She read the written explanation. She handed the head back to Logan, who returned it to its place on the dash.

  Thebes, I said, are you okay? Why aren’t you talking?

  I don’t know, she said. I think I might be depressed.

  Logan and I both whipped our heads around to look at her and the van veered towards the dotted line. Nobody gets away with using the D word in our family without a team of trauma experts, a squad of navy SEALs, Green Berets and a HazMat crew appearing instantaneously in the midst.

  Just kidding, said Thebes. Dope art, Lo. There’s nothing more I can teach you.

  Thanks, T., said Logan. I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me.

  El Corazón, said Thebes, and tapped her chest twice with her fist.

  We were driving through the Valley of the Gods, getting close to the Arizona border. Cliffs, canyons, mesas and buttes. It was hot, and the light and the shadows were spectacular and shifting and everything looked like it was on fire, red and orange and eroded and ancient and dry. Navajo territory.

  Mexican Hat itself was tiny, maybe fifty people, named after a rock formation that looked like an upside-down sombrero. We stopped at a roadside stand and bought some burritos and fruit from a silent family with seventeen kids who kept popping up out of nowhere like spam, and sat on a rock overlooking the valley.

  Where are the gods? asked Thebes. Salsa dribbled down her chin and onto her eggshell suit.

  I can’t watch you eat, said Logan.

  Nobody asked you to, said Thebes.

  I was hoping we’d make it to Flagstaff, at least, before the van broke down. We had about two hundred miles to go. Troutmans, let’s move, I said. I hadn’t seen a garage or a gas station for a long time. Thebes dibsed the front seat, Logan sighed heavily, a sigh for the ages, and we all piled back into the mother ship.

  And now, said Thebes, for poetry!

  Noooooo, said Logan. I’m not playing.

  Thebes squinted her eyes and pointed her pistol at Logan. Shit list, she said. It was the first time I’d heard her swear.

  Logan put on his headphones. He’d taken off his hoodie in the heat but he pulled his T-shirt up over his face and lay down in the back seat.

  Thebes put her feet up on the dash, next to the boy’s head, and turned my music down. What do you want to talk about? she asked me.

  My first choice was nothing and my second choice was nothing too, there was so much that I needed to think about, but I told her we could talk about whatever she wanted to talk about.

  Have you ever had one of those out-of-body experiences? she asked. Like, where you see yourself…like getting into a car or on a swing set or something like that? Like, for that split second you really believe that the person you’re seeing is actually you?

  Yes, I said. I was listening hard, but to the van, trying to determine if it was still making that sound.

  That’s wild, eh? she said.

  Yeah, I said. It was making that sound.

  When Logan and I were little, she said, we only knew one number: 911.

  Well, if you’re going to know only one, I guess…, I said.

  Then she told me a story. One day we were bored, so we called it eight times in a row, she said.

  They had hung up every time the operators answered. But eventually the 911 people sent six cruisers to their house with lights flashing and sirens wailing. Min looked out the window and said oh, bite me hard in the ass. She asked the kids what was going on. They told her what they had done. They’ll charge us with mischief, said Min. Or neglect. Or some damn thing. (Another thing about our family, apparently, was that we were never able to define, precisely, or understand the charges being brought against us. Patterns of incomprehension.) Min ran to the kitchen,
grabbed the cast-iron frying pan from the top of the microwave, plunked it on the floor and messed up her hair. The cops banged on the door and she opened it and told them, in a thick Eastern European accent, that everything was okay now, she was so sorry, she had wanted to heat up some perogies, her frying pan had fallen on her head, she had been knocked out for a minute or two, her husband was at work, her children had panicked but were self-conscious about their English and afraid to speak to the 911 operator. No, she had not been assaulted. No, they had not been broken into. She told them she loved Canada. She told them she loved horses. Thebes didn’t know why she’d said that. The cops asked the kids if they were okay. They said yeah. The cops told the kids that next time there was an emergency at home they should attempt to speak with the 911 operators, even though their English wasn’t good. They said okay. The cops left and Logan and Thebes watched them laugh all the way back to their cars.

  Hmm, I said. I smiled at Thebes. Your old lady rules. So I guess you’ve stopped calling 911?

  It was one of those stories that could have gone in so many different directions. Had Thebes been embarrassed when she saw the cops laughing? Stricken with the realization that the cops knew her mom was nuts, hadn’t believed a word she’d said, and thought it was hilarious? Or had she been proud of Min’s wacky resourcefulness, sure that the cops had bought it, or, even if they hadn’t bought it, had been impressed with the effort, and had gone away feeling happy. Another trippy day of serving and protecting. Was Thebes trying to tell me that Min could handle tricky situations if she needed to, that all was not lost, that she could live life on life’s terms, or was she trying to tell me that Min had seemed crazy to her for a long time?

  I think we’re in Arizona, said Thebes. I liked the way she sat up in her seat then and looked around with fresh eyes, like things might be radically different now that we had crossed an invisible state line.

  twelve

  I WAS AT MIN’S PLACE when Cherkis left. I played with Logan in the backyard while Min, with baby Thebes on her hip, chased Cherkis down the front sidewalk, screaming obscenities and at the same time begging him not to go. A few of the neighbours had come out to watch.

  Logan was wearing a red plastic fireman’s hat and was pretending to put out a fire with the garden hose. I was a burn victim and wasn’t allowed to move. Every time I heard Min shriek I’d turn my head and try to get up, but Logan would race over to me, put his hands on my cheeks and his face close to mine and attempt to redirect my focus. You’ll be okay, he said. Don’t worry. You’re gonna make it. You won’t die. And then he’d race back to the fire.

  Later on, after Cherkis had successfully managed to escape, Min lay sobbing on the living room floor and Logan sat beside her watching TV. I tried to get him to come for a walk with me and Thebes but he said no, he wanted to watch the Ninja Turtles with Min. When we got back I told Min that I was going to leave for a few hours but that I’d be back that evening to make dinner and help her get the kids to bed and after that I’d hang out with her and sleep over if she wanted me to. I tried to talk to her about Cherkis, about everything, but there was nothing she wanted to say or hear.

  It took me forever to leave because Logan had hidden my shoes and wouldn’t tell me where.

  Thebes convinced Logan to play Deborah Solomon’s Q and A.

  Okay, she said, I’m Deborah Solomon and you are you. Logan Troutman, she said. You’ve experienced a lot of failure in the past. What makes you think this venture will be a success?

  Logan: What do you mean failure? Fuck off.

  Thebes, interjecting as herself, told Logan that he wouldn’t really say that to Deborah Solomon. Remember, it’s The New York Times, she said. Let me start again.

  Logan Troutman, she said. You’ve experienced a lot of failure in the past. What makes you think this venture will be a success?

  Logan: What venture?

  Okay, cut, said Thebes. Logan, please work with me here.

  It’s not TV, he said, it’s print. It’s a column. You don’t say “cut.” God.

  Okay, said Thebes. The venture I’m talking about is this trip to find Cherkis. Okay?

  Deborah Solomon doesn’t get all personal in her columns, said Logan.

  Well, this time she is, okay? said Thebes. I’m going to start again.

  Logan Troutman, she said. You’ve experienced a lot of failure in the past. What makes you think this venture will be a success?

  Logan: I have a very positive mental attitude. Plus, it helps that I really don’t care.

  Solomon: Well, which one is it? A positive mental attitude or you just don’t care?

  Logan: I just don’t care.

  He said he was done with the game and was going to lie down.

  Any of those secrets you’d like to cash in on? Thebes said to me.

  What are you talking about? I said.

  Your certificate, she said.

  Oh yeah! I said. Okay. Yes. You are the coolest, most beautiful kid on the planet. You’re my inspiration and my rock and the wind beneath my sails. You are the shit, T.T.

  That’s not a secret, she said. And don’t be sarcastic. Tell me something about yourself that you haven’t told anybody.

  I thought for a long time.

  Okay, I said. I had sex with my swimming coach when I was sixteen and he was thirty-seven and then I blackmailed him and told him I was pregnant and needed five hundred dollars for an abortion or I’d tell his wife that he was a pervert and he gave me the money and I spent it all on acid and mushrooms and quit the swim team.

  Thebes silently reached around to the back seat, dug out her hole puncher, took my certificate out of the glove compartment and ceremoniously punched a hole in the first box.

  You can’t tell anybody, I said.

  Ew, she said. As if. Besides, this seals it. She waved the certificate around.

  I worried that I had chosen the wrong secret to share with an eleven-year-old. I apologized to her for being indiscreet.

  Well, Hattie, she said, I’m on shaky ground here. It’s not my department. Just remember that not all your secrets have to be disgusting, all right? Like, were you a slut when you were young?

  No! I said. I wanted to mention that I’d been lonely, vulnerable, pathetically enamoured with this guy’s twisted attention, probably conducting a misguided search for a father figure, periodically terrified of my sister, whom I loved and revered but never understood, definitely insecure about my body and my brain, wanting to be adored by somebody adorable, lousy at swimming, on the verge of an eating disorder and dangerously impulsive…but that would have dragged this thing out even further.

  She let it go. She asked me if I remembered how Grandma used to brag about her ability to memorize fifty three-letter words a day.

  I saw a gas station down the road and decided to stop and fill up. Thebes could buy a Tiger Beat or something and focus on teenage mishaps other than mine and we could drive in silence for a while, maybe. Logan was sprawled out in the back seat, asleep and oblivious to the bass that was still pumping out of his headphones loud enough that the guy filling the van with gas started nodding his head in time with the beat and said he loved that band.

  I told Thebes to go check out the magazines and then darted around to the side of the gas station to use the pay phone. There was no answer at the hospital. Had it been evacuated? Firebombed? Were the inmates rioting, throwing mattresses out the windows and cutting off the phone lines? When doesn’t a hospital answer its phone?

  I went back to the van and talked to the gas jockey.

  That’s a kick-ass mohawk, I said. Can I…?

  Sure, he said, and leaned over so I could graze it with my fingertips. You know you’re leaking oil, he said. Big time.

  I know, I said, what do I do about it?

  Well, you fix it, he said. It took him half an hour to get those four words out. I smiled.

  Dude, how do I fix it? I said. He told me if it was a wonky seal or a busted gasket it would c
ost a lot, maybe five hundred bucks, and would take probably an entire day to fix. An oil leak is not good, he concluded, half a century later.

  Do you think I can make it to Flagstaff? I said.

  Yabsolutely, he said. He asked if he could come along. He had a girlfriend there whose head he wanted to break. I told him I wasn’t going to give him a ride if what he had in mind was domestic violence and he said no, no, he was only kidding. He just wanted to talk to her about her bad habits.

  What about your job? I asked him.

  I’m quitting right now, this second, he said.

  Thebes came hopping over on one foot with an Archie comic and a new knife for Logan. She laid it across his throat for him to find if he ever woke up.

  We got into the van and I started it up while he and Thebes were chatting. Logan slept through all of this. The guy’s name was Colt.

  Colt, said Thebes. Like a baby, male horse?

  I guess, said the guy, or a gun.

  Well, which do you prefer? she said.

  What do you mean? he asked.

  Like, how do you prefer to think of yourself? As a baby, male horse?

  No, he said, he didn’t really like to think of himself that way.

  Well, then, as a gun? she said.

  No, not really, he said. He preferred basically not to think of himself at all.

  Isn’t that impossible? she said. How can you not think of yourself at all?

  Well, he said, he just thought about other things.

  Such as? said Thebes.

  About his girlfriend, mostly, he said.

  Yeah, she said, but not in relation to yourself? He didn’t think so. Anything else? said Thebes.

  Well, I do think about life on other planets, he said.

  Really? she said.

  He said yeah, he thought a lot about this planet called Moralia.

  C’mon, she said, there is no planet called Moralia.

  This was good. I’d picked up a violent nutcase named after a gun who believed in a planet that didn’t exist.

  Do you mind if I smoke? he asked.

  Not at all…may I have one of those? I said.