by Miriam Toews
Twentynine Palms is the proud host of the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, the world’s largest marine base, said Thebes as we were getting ready to check out.
Fuckin’ A, I said.
We’re meat, said Logan. And it’s pronounced “core,” dufus, not “corpse.”
We had to hurry. Thebes said yeah, now she did want to meet Cherkis, she felt better about it. She’d put on her least filthy outfit, the royal blue terry cloth shorts and top. Her hair was by now impossible to comb. But it didn’t matter.
Hey, do you ever brush your teeth? I asked her. She had her holster on, she’d patted her face a couple of times with a dry washcloth, whatever, she hated water. She leaned against the wall and said she was ready.
So, here we go, said Logan. Cherkis hunting. Let’s do this thing. He was using his knife to scratch inside his cast. His hickeys had faded to green and yellow and had all bled together so it looked like he’d recently been strangled. I felt like I had an ice pick stuck between my eyes, I could barely open them, it was the mother of all headaches, and I couldn’t take a breath without paroxysms of pain shooting from my brain to my chest and back again.
We were going to hit an art gallery on the main drag first to see if anyone there had heard the name Cherkis. While we were loading our crap back into the van, Rajbeer got out and ran around the parking lot, barking and pissing everywhere. A little girl, about three, came up to Logan and pointed at Rajbeer and asked, Can I ride she?
Her, said Logan, and no, I’m sorry, but I don’t really think so. Thebes was trying to round up the dog and this girl wouldn’t stop talking to Logan, about her socks, about her blanket, about her Barbies, about her grandma, about her baby brother, about her nightmares, about how her socks bothered her ankles, about a boy in her daycare named Ed. Thebes had wrangled Rajbeer into the van by now and I wanted to go.
Hey, do you have parents around here or something? I asked the girl. She pointed at the motel. Where? I said. Like, which room? She stared at me. Oh, for Christ’s sake.
I asked her to come with me and I took her hand and we started knocking on doors. One opened and the guy said yeah and I said is this your kid and he said no. She didn’t belong in the next three rooms either. Finally, a woman opened a door and said yeah, oh, sorry, the girl was hers, she did this all the time, thanks a lot.
Twentynine Palms, said Thebes, would be fourteen people with their hands out, going what? What? And one with one hand in his or her pocket.
Do we have anything to eat? asked Logan. Thebes fished around in the cooler and threw him a giant Oh Henry! bar.
I don’t see any soldiers, said Thebes.
They’re in foxholes, I said. I was in such a hurry, I was bumping into curbs and slamming my brakes down at the last second for red lights that jumped out of nowhere.
Shit, I’m burning, I said. I had dropped my cigarette but hadn’t bothered to find out where. Logan reached over and grabbed it and threw it out the window.
Do you want me to—
Yes!
Logan and I switched seats and he drove. His driving was improving but he still had this tendency to sail through stop signs and red lights. I told him to concentrate on seeing other cars and especially pedestrians and then slowly ease into seeing signs as well. And remember to brake going into the turn, gas going out.
Thought the rule was no smoking in the van, he said. Are you still burning?
I’m trying to stay calm, I said.
I appreciate the effort, he said.
Thebes had on her giant diamond necklace and she’d found her angel ring. What foxholes? she said.
You’re looking for somebody by the name of Cherkis? said the woman at the gallery.
Yeah, Doug Cherkis, I said. I was told that he might have been doing his art around here somewhere, or running a gallery, or something like that? I put my elbow on her desk so I could prop my head up and I squinted at her. Ring any bells? I asked. The kids were studying some abstracts on a long, white wall.
I’m so sorry, said the woman. You know, I just can’t…That name is not at all familiar to me.
Really? I said. Would it be all right if I poured myself some of that coffee?
Oh, of course, she said. I’ll get it. Would you like cream or sugar?
No, thanks, black is great.
Doug Cherkis, said the woman. Doug Cherkis. You know, a friend of mine might know if there was a Doug Cherkis around here. The woman gave us directions to her friend’s place, she had a studio in her house and it wasn’t very far from the gallery. Her name was Lilah.
I thanked her and she wished us luck.
Hey, kids, I said. Van. March, I said. I looked at the woman. Did I just say “march”? I asked her. She smiled and shrugged. She lived in a town filled with soldiers.
Oh, your cup, I said.
Take it, she said. She told me I could keep it as a souvenir.
I thanked her and we left.
On the way over to Lilah’s I whipped into a Discount Everything to buy a few groceries and some more pain-killers. The kids played Frisbee in the parking lot while I shopped. It was subarctic in there, air-conditioned down to zero. I had to keep moving or I’d freeze to death. I raced up and down the aisles throwing discounted everything into my cart, trying to maintain my circulation and stay alive. It’s fun to be challenged, I guess, to have even the well-documented evidence that human beings need a certain body temperature to sustain life discounted. On the way back to the van I saw a piece of paper lying on the ground with the word Faith written on it in big letters, so I picked it up. I turned the paper over and realized that it was an Account Close Authorization for a Miss Faith Mae Hopkins. I put it in my pocket anyway.
It took us three minutes to get to Lilah’s place. Thebes and Logan argued about how much the window should be left open for Rajbeer not to suffocate to death from the heat. Logan said he’d wait in the van this time. Okay, I said, but I made him promise he wouldn’t take off.
Thebes and I went into the house/studio, a groovy space, the walls painted orange and purple and covered in goofy art. A girl, maybe a little younger than Thebes, said, Hey, what’s up? Buenos días! She’d been sitting cross-legged on the hardwood floor, spinning herself around in circles.
Bonjourno! said Thebes. They stared at each other and grinned.
Yo, Mom! yelled the girl. We are not alone!
A blonde woman came out of a room in the back and said hello and welcome. She looked at Thebes. I looked at the other girl. We were all staring at each other and grinning.
You totally know Doug Cherkis, don’t you? I said to the woman.
So, yeah, turned out the kids had a half-sister, almost an exact replica of Thebes but about two years younger. A sophisticated nine, she said. Her name was Antonia. She took Thebes outside to show her some stuff and then Logan shot hoops with them behind their garage, laughing his head off as these two little look-alike girls, his sisters, tried to block and tackle him.
But Cherkis wasn’t there. And when he had been there he’d gone by the name Charles instead. Doug Charles.
Do you think that’s because he didn’t want to be found? I asked Lilah.
No, she said, he just thought Cherkis sounded dumb, I think.
She told me that about five or six months ago he’d gone to a place called Calexico, a border town, which was near a Mexican town called Mexicali. They weren’t really talking much any more. Doug is a bit of a loner, she said. I asked her if he’d ever mentioned Min and the kids and Lilah said yeah, he had a couple of times, but he hadn’t gone into much detail.
He kept a lot of pictures of her, though, said Lilah. He didn’t show them to me, but I found them in one of his boxes. They looked really happy together. Then Lilah told me that she thought the reason she and Cherkis had never really connected in a big way was that he was still in love with Min.
Do you really think so? I asked her.
Well, she said, he was always distracted. He was sweet, and h
e was great with Antonia, but he would often stare out the window like he was expecting someone to show up any minute. You know, he’d stare at planes whenever they flew over, he’d disappear for periods of time. Once he told me he was planning on going on a road trip to Canada but I guess he changed his mind.
Lilah told me that Cherkis had gone to the border to join a group of anarchists or something who were committed to keeping track of and documenting the actions and injustices of the U.S. Border Patrol.
How far is it from here? I said.
Maybe a hundred and fifty miles? she said. You’d go straight south through Joshua Tree National Park.
Does he have a phone number that you know of? I said.
No, not that I know of, she said. They have two-way radios. They’re living in tents in a kind of no-man’s land. Sometimes he’ll call from a phone booth if he goes into town, to talk to Antonia.
But do any kids live there? I said.
In the town? she said.
No, like with the people in the tents, I said. Is it possible?
She didn’t know. Maybe. Why not? But there wouldn’t be much for them to do.
When the girls came back into the house they were talking non-stop. Thebes was telling Antonia a story about dancing.
Logan and I went to our community centre sports banquet, she said, and he got a bunch of awards and I won a deflated basketball for participation and wore my little black dress from my neighbour and some of her old high heels and a black choker and danced with a boy named Dang. There’s a tall Dang and a short Dang, she said. I danced with the short Dang but Logan said I should have danced with the tall Dang. Logan sat at a different table with his friends and then danced weirdly, like a robot, and then left in a green car full of girls.
Then Antonia told Thebes about her grandma’s birthday party.
We had a nice birthday party for Grandma, she said, even though we forgot to get her the one thing she had asked for, which was a splatter lid for her frying pan. Then we took her to a play. Romeo and Juliet. It was really good except it was interactive so we had to keep hauling Grandma out of her little foldy chair so we could move around to the various scenes. I really liked it. The guy who played Juliet’s dad had the palest blue eyes that I’ve ever seen. When I told Mom that Benvolio and Paris sure looked a lot alike, she said yeah, I guess that’s because they’re the same guy.
This cracked them both up and they had the same throaty laugh. I guess they must have inherited it from Cherkis but it had been a long time since I’d heard him laugh. I could remember him crying, though, at their dining room table. He cried a lot in the last few months he was with Min. She’d barricade herself in the bathroom or in the basement and he and I would maintain a type of vigil, I guess, sharing a bottle of bourbon and waiting for Min to come out of hiding.
Thebes and Antonia kept talking. They were unstoppable. Thebes told Antonia that her grandma, when she was alive, played Scrabble on ships for money and Antonia told Thebes that her grandma was shrivelled up and had just won three hundred bucks at Bingo.
She has these tiny photos of people in frames, said Antonia, like of her husband and her grandchildren and stuff and she puts them in a half-circle around her Bingo cards and dabbers.
Cool, said Thebes. Like, for luck?
Yeah, said Antonia, and she calls me Nevada.
Hey, Thebie, I said, we should really think about hitting the road, eh?
Hey, said Antonia, do you wanna play Trouble?
Yeah! said Thebes. But first do you want to hear my Satan voice?
She did. Then Antonia told Thebes that the riot police, the ones with shields, had just stormed a house on their street and kicked in the back door but the person they were looking for wasn’t there and they had to apologize.
Hey, said Thebes, have you ever been to a meat fair? Do you know what mad cow disease is? All our cows in Canada went crazy and a bunch of farmers had a meat fair at the ballpark and sold hamburger for like a dollar a pound.
Make it a fast game, okay? I said.
Lilah and I talked more about Cherkis. She said she had never really got him. She had tried to get inside him but she felt she’d never succeeded. She said talking to him sometimes made her feel like a grave robber.
While we talked and the girls played Trouble, Logan used a sledgehammer to smash up the sidewalk in the front yard. Lilah had asked him if he wanted to because she was planning to put in a new one. She opened the window and a hot breeze blew in and she called to him that he was doing a great job.
This’ll be my legacy, he said.
Smashing the obvious and well-worn paths that lead us from one place to another, I thought. Go Logan.
I’d come up with a plan. Min was in the universe. She was a dim and falling star, but she was alive. She hadn’t loved watching the sun’s eclipse as much as she’d loved watching it reappear. If she had really, truly wanted to die she’d have succeeded a long time ago. She loved the brink, going to it and returning from it. Or maybe she didn’t love it. Maybe she hated it. But it didn’t matter. Maybe going to the brink made her feel like she’d accomplished something extraordinary, like there was a purpose to her life, if only to prolong it in spite of herself. She was the captain of both teams, waging war against herself but always pulling back from any decisive victory because that would also mean a decisive loss.
I had a new career. I had a mission. I’d become a cartographer of the uncharted world of Min and I’d raise her from the dead, like a baby, sort of. We’d do it from scratch. We’d start all over. When she was well enough to take control, she could throw me out, plot her own course, and I wouldn’t stand in her way. And I wouldn’t help her to die.
I had faith in my plan. I had faith in Min. And I loved her. She was the baby in my dreams and maybe in Logan’s too. If Logan had faith that he’d make his shot every time, even when the misses were piling up, I could have faith that my next attempt at saving Min would be the one that worked.
And then, according to the tao of Logan, if it didn’t, so what, I’d try again and believe one hundred per cent that the next one would.
seventeen
I DROVE THROUGH THE PARK as fast as I could, which was excruciatingly slowly because the road was narrow and curvy and park rangers were all over the place. It was all desert and sky and scrubby bushes and some oddly shaped trees.
The Joshua tree is named after a biblical story in which Joshua reaches his hands up to the sky to stop the sun by God’s command, said Thebes. Why would God want the sun stopped?
Have you noticed how freaking hot it is out here? said Logan.
We talked about the strangeness of a day in which you find a sister you never knew you had and meet your father, who was once an artist and is now some sort of vigilante.
Before parting, Thebes and Antonia had promised to write and e-mail and do amazing things together someday. Antonia told Thebes they could go to Burning Man when they were older, or Disneyland or the Leaning Tower of Pisa or whatever, and she gave Logan a guitar that she’d found in the garbage but that still worked. He asked her to sign his cast. Thebes made Antonia a kite with stuff she had in the back of the van. She’d drawn a picture of herself on it, waving and smiling. Lilah took a few Polaroids of all of us and gave them to us to keep.
When we were in the van, Thebes put her arms around Logan’s neck from behind and said, Don’t you love having two little sisters?
I braced myself for the inevitable yeah, like I love being hung upside down by my nuts and Chinese water torture, or whatever, but instead Logan turned around and smiled at her and mussed her hair and said yeah, he did, but she, Thebes, would always be his favourite.
She kept her arms around Logan’s neck for a long time and he didn’t tell her to stop.
Hey, Thebes, I said.
Yo.
Can you make me a kite like the one you made for Antonia? I too wanted to see Thebes waving at me from the sky, top star in the firmament, goofy on the earth and up
above it.
Can do, daddio, she said, and flung herself backwards into her pool of art supplies.
Logan, I whispered.
What? he said. He was whispering too.
I love you, I said.
Fuck off, he said, smiling.
I put my hand on his knee because I didn’t know what else to do and he touched it briefly with his own, unbroken one.
We were out of the park, flying down the 86 South towards the U.S.–Mexico border, past the Salton Sea, which was really a lake, man-made, I think, and crawling with pelicans. I remembered Min trying to befriend a pelican on this beach that was next to the campground we stayed in one summer. She pretended she was a pelican, she had the walk and the sound they made down pat. She tried for a long, long time to get that pelican to hang out with her but he was shy and reluctant and then finally she asked me to lie on the beach like a dead fish that she could pretend to be eating and maybe that would tempt the pelican to come on over. I tried to act like a dead fish but I was laughing too hard to be convincing. Min was pretending to peck at me and it tickled like crazy and even though she was whispering at me out of the side of her beak to be quiet and act dead I couldn’t stop laughing. Finally she said okay, forget it, this isn’t working, let’s tan.
We lay together in the sun and I fell asleep and when I woke up I was feeling cold and she’d taken her towel and put it around my shoulders and then rubbed my back and arms to warm me up. She smiled at me and told me that she was really happy that I was her sister. You were a great pelican, I told her. Yeah, no, she said, but thanks. I was a terrible fish, I said. No, she said, you were an excellent fish, A-plus, just not a good dead one. She told me she was proud of me.
I didn’t know if she meant because I had agreed to pretend to be a dead fish so that she could befriend a pelican, but I didn’t care.
We were just a few miles out of Calexico, in a place called El Centro. I’m gonna make one more super-quick stop for gas, I said. You guys just wait in the van.