The Flying Troutmans

one

YEAH, SO THINGS HAVE FALLEN APART. A few weeks ago I got a collect call from my niece, Thebes, in the middle of the night, asking me to please come back to help with Min. She told me she’d been trying to take care of things but it wasn’t working any more. Min was stranded in her bed, hooked on blue torpedoes and convinced that a million silver cars were closing in on her (I didn’t know what Thebes meant either), Logan was in trouble at school, something about the disturbing stories he was writing, Thebes was pretending to be Min on the phone with his principal, the house was crumbling around them, the back screen door had blown off in the wind, a family of aggressive mice was living behind the piano, the neighbours were pissed off because of hatchets being thrown into their yard at all hours (again, confusing, something to do with Logan)…basically, things were out of control. And Thebes is only eleven.

I told her I’d be there as soon as I could. I had no choice. There was no question. Our parents are dead. Min didn’t have anybody else. And in just about every meaningful way, neither did I. Admittedly, I would have preferred to keep roaming around Paris pretending to be an artist with my moody, adjective-hating boyfriend, Marc, but he was heading off to an ashram in India anyway and said we could communicate telepathically. I tried it a couple of days before he left. I love you, don’t go, I said silently, without moving my lips. He was standing next to me, trying to photograph a gargoyle. You’re a little in my way, he said. Can you move? No amount of telepathy worked with him, but maybe you have to be thousands of miles away from someone in order for your thoughts to work up the speed and velocity required to hit their target.

At the airport, Thebes came running over to me dressed entirely in royal blue terry cloth, short shorts and cropped top, and covered in some kind of candy necklace powder. The empty elastic was still around her throat. Or maybe she wore that thing all the time. She had fake tattoos all over her arms and her hair was intense purple, matted and wild, and she melted into me when I put my arms around her and tried to lift her off the ground.

Hey, you crazy kid, I said. How are you? She couldn’t talk because she was crying too hard. How are you, Thebie? I asked again. How are things? I didn’t have to ask her. I had a pretty good idea. I let her wrap herself around me and then I carried her over to a plastic airport chair, sat down with her sprawled in my lap, all arms and legs, like a baby giraffe, and let her cry.

How’s the songwriting going? I finally whispered in her ear. I really liked that line…take a verse, Mojo…you know? I said. She was always e-mailing me her lyrics and cc’ing David Geffen on them.

She frowned. She wiped the snot off her face with the back of her hand, then onto her shorts. I’m more into martial arts now, and yo-yoing, she said. I need to get out of my head.

Yeah, I said. Using your kung fu powers for good?

Well, she said, I feel good when I flip people.

Hey, I said, where’s your brother?

She told me he was outside waiting in the van because he didn’t know how to work the parking and also he didn’t actually have his driver’s licence, only his learner’s, he’s fifteen, he’s all jacked up on rebellion and whatever, he just wanted to wait in the van and listen to his music.

We headed for the exit and kind of stumbled around, falling over each other. Thebes kept her arm wrapped around my waist and tried to help me with my bag. All I had was one large backpack. I didn’t know how long I’d be staying but it didn’t really matter anyway. I’d lost my boyfriend and didn’t care about my job and there was no reason to go back to Paris. I didn’t own anything besides books, and Marc could keep those if he wanted to.

It was sunny and warm and the sky was a sharp, cartoony blue compared to the wet clay skies of Paris, and there was Logan sitting in their beat-up van staring straight ahead at something, not us, music blasting from inside, like the van was a giant Marshall amp. Thebes ran up to the van and threw herself against the windshield. Logan snapped out of his rock ’n’ roll reverie for a second and smiled. Then he got out of the van and walked, glided, over to me and gave me a big hug with one arm and asked me how it was going.

All right, I said, how about you?

Mmmm, he said. He shrugged.

Hey, what’s this? I asked him. I grabbed his arm and squeezed his bicep.

Yeah, right, said Thebes.

And, dude, your pants! I said. Did you steal them from Andre the Giant? I snapped the elastic band on his boxers. Logan opened the door to the van and threw my stuff in.

How was Paris? he asked.

What? I said. Oh, Paris?

Yeah, he said. How was it?

Thebes turned down the volume on the music. Then she told me I should drive instead of Logan. She said she’d been planning her funeral on the way there.

I got dumped, I said.

No way! said Logan.

Well, yeah, I said.

You can’t get dumped in Paris, said Logan. Isn’t it supposed to be all—

By a guy or a girl? asked Thebes.

A guy, I said.

Logan stared hard at Thebes for a few seconds. He said you were gay, she said.

No I didn’t, said Logan.

You totally did! said Thebes.

Okay, Thebes, listen, said Logan. I didn’t—

Hey, I said. It’s okay. It really doesn’t matter. Really. But it was a guy.

But you’re not that old, said Thebes, right? You can still find someone if you look hard. How old are you?

Twenty-eight, I said.

Okay, twenty-eight, she said. She thought for a second. You have like two years, she said. Maybe you should dress up more, though.

Logan ended up driving back to their house because I didn’t know how to tell him not to and because he hadn’t seemed interested in relinquishing control of the wheel anyway. Logan and Thebes yelled at each other all the way back, the music cranked the whole time.

Thebes: Stay in your lane, moron!

Logan: Don’t lose your fucking shit, man!

Thebes: I don’t want to die, loser! Use two hands!

Logan: Do NOT grab the steering wheel!

Then Thebes went into this strange kind of commentary thing she does, quoting the imaginary people in her head. This time it was a funeral director, I think. She said: With an impact this severe there is not a hope of reconstructing this kid’s face. She banged the back window with her fist.

What was that? I asked her.

The lid of my coffin slamming down, she said. Closed casket. I’ll be unrecognizable anyway.

It was great to see the kids again. They’d changed a bit, especially Logan. He was a young man now, not a child. More on his mind, maybe, but with less compulsion to share it. Thebes was more manic than the last time I’d seen her. I knew what that was about. It’s hard not to get a little hysterical when you’re trying desperately to keep somebody you love alive, especially when the person you’re trying to save is ambivalent about being saved. Thebes reminded me of myself when I was her age, rushing home from school ahead of Min so I could create the right vibe, a mood of happiness and fun that would sustain her for another day, or so I thought. I’d mentally rehearse what I thought were amusing anecdotes to entertain her, make her laugh. I didn’t know then that all my ridiculous efforts only brought her further down. Sometimes she would laugh or applaud half-heartedly, but it was always with an expression that said, yeah, whatever, Hattie, nice try, but everything is bullshit.

My birth triggered a seismic shift in my sister’s life. The day I was born she put her dress on backwards and ran away towards a brighter future, or possibly towards a brighter past. Our parents found her in a tree next door. Had she been planning to jump? She’s been doing that ever since, travelling in two opposite directions at once, towards infancy and death. I don’t know exactly what it was about me. By all accounts before I existed Min was a normal little girl, normal enough. She could pick a direction and stick with it. Our family photo albums are filled, halfway, with shots of Min laughing and smiling and enjoying life. And then, suddenly, I’m in the picture and Min’s joy evaporates. I’ve spent hours staring at those photos trying to understand my sister. Even in the ones in which I don’t appear it’s easy to see by Min’s expression that I am just beyond the lens, somewhere nearby.

Min’s had good days, some inexplicable breaks from the madness, periods of time where she functions beautifully and life is as smooth as glass, almost. The thing I remember most clearly about Cherkis, Thebes’s and Logan’s dad, is how nuts he was about Min and how excited he’d get when Min was on the up-and-up, taking care of business and acting normal. I liked that about him, but it also broke my heart because he had no idea of the amount of shit that was about to fly. Eventually, though, he did come to understand, and he did what I did, and what so many others in her life have done.

He left.

Min had a vague notion of where he’d gone. At first it was Tokyo, about as far away as you can get from here without being on your way back. He moved around the Pacific Rim, and then Europe for a while, South America, and then South Dakota. He’d call sometimes to see how the kids were doing, how Min was doing, if she wanted him to come back. No, she didn’t, she said, every time. And if he tried to take the kids she’d kill herself for real. We didn’t know whether this was a bluff or not, but nobody wanted to challenge it. They were all she had, she told him. Cherkis wasn’t the type of guy to hire a lawyer and fight for custody. He told Min he’d wait until the kids were old enough to decide for themselves and take things from there. He didn’t want to rock Min’s boat. He didn’t want anybody getting hurt.

I moved to Paris, fled Min’s dark planet for the City of Lights. I didn’t want to leave her and the kids but the truth is she scared me and I thought she might be better off without me, too. Especially if I was the embodiment of her particular anguish. It had been hard to know whether to stay or go.

It’s impossible to move through the stages of grief when a person is both dead and alive, the way Min is. It’s like she’s living permanently in an airport terminal, moving from one departure lounge to another but never getting on a plane. Sometimes I tell myself that I’d do anything for Min. That I’d do whatever was necessary for her to be happy. Except that I’m not entirely sure what that would be.

So the next best thing to being dead was being far away, at least as far as Paris. I had a boyfriend, Marc, and a job in a bookstore, and occasionally I’d go home, back to Manitoba, to Min and Thebes and Logan, for Christmas or the odd birthday, or to help with Min if she was in a really bad patch, but of course that was complicated because I never knew whether I should be there or not.

I wanted to be an artist, in Paris, or a psychiatrist. Sometimes I’d haul a giant pad of sketch paper and some charcoal pencils to the square in front of the Louvre or wherever the tourists were and I’d offer to sketch them for free. I didn’t feel right about charging anybody, because I wasn’t really doing a good job. In every sketch, it didn’t matter if I was drawing the face of a man or a woman or a kid, I’d include a detail from Min’s face, from what I could remember at that precise moment. Sometimes it was the shape of her eyebrows, or her wide lips, or a constellation of tiny freckles, or even just a shadow beneath the cheekbone. The people I sketched were always slightly confused and disappointed when I showed them my work, I could tell, but most of them were kind, especially because I didn’t expect any payment.

Our father died in a drowning accident in Acapulco when Min and I were kids. He drowned trying to save us. We’d been racing and had swum out farther than we should have and Min had started panicking, screaming for help. The current was strong and we couldn’t get back to the shore no matter how hard we pushed against the water. I remember yelling at Min to move sideways and to let go of me. After that, my memory of events is blurry. I have a feeling that Min was pushing me down, under water. I think that I remember her hand on my head, or on my shoulder, but maybe I’m wrong. Our mother told us that Dad had heard our screams and had swum out to get us, but that he too had got caught in the undertow and disappeared. They said it was a riptide. Other people on the beach eventually grabbed a boat from somewhere and rescued us, but by then Dad was gone. Min was fifteen and I was nine. They left us lying in the sun on the beach, crying and vomiting up salt water, while they searched for him.

You ready? asked Thebes.

Yup, I said, and we went into the house and up to Min’s bedroom. Logan stayed downstairs in the living room and put on some music.

Min was lying in her bed under a white sheet. She looked like a kid, she’d lost so much weight. I could see the bumps of her kneecaps and hip bones poking up beneath the sheet. Nothing else. Her eyes were big and wild and blue. Her face was pale and waxy and her hands lay palms-up at her sides. There was a powerfully stale smell in the room. She smiled, barely.

Min, I said. Min. I’m here now. I smiled back and kissed her very gently and held her hand, and then her head, and then I kissed her again.

Please don’t touch me, she whispered. It hurts too much.

Can I try? I said. If I try to be more gentle? I sat down on the bed and Min grimaced. I apologized and stood up. She smiled and glanced briefly at her hand. Thebes told me I could hold my hand over hers without touching it. A gesture. Your fingernails are so long, I said. I smiled. You could be a hand model. Do you want me to trim them? She blinked, no.

Everything hurts her, said Thebes. Eating hurts her. Walking hurts her. Even drops of water.

I go to Aviva and buy her six vanilla shakes. I can fit them all into my carrier. She only eats soft food. Thebes said she had to hold the shake for Min and Min would sip slowly from the straw and Thebes would sing.

Would you like the window open a tiny bit? I asked Min. She stared at me and then looked at Thebes.

No, she doesn’t, said Thebes. She’s worried about getting a chill.

The music stopped downstairs and the TV came on, briefly. I heard Dr. Phil screaming at a woman for not loving herself more. Then the TV was off too, and the music was back on.

Logan has total electronic domination in this house, said Thebes, like it was an Animal Kingdom fact. She scurried around the room humming and lining up pill bottles and gathering up used tissues and milkshake containers and making sure she didn’t accidentally bump Min’s bed. I stood next to Min and she and I stared at each other.

I painted her room for her, said Thebes. I was trying to jazz it up and make it cheerful. She’d used some kind of sponge technique and there were blotches of red all over the yellow walls. Logan says it looks like somebody blew their brains out in here but I think it’s pretty, she said. And, Mom, you do too, right? Min smiled again and closed her eyes. She does, said Thebes.

I talked for a while. I told Min about Paris, about my boyfriend, my job, about a bunch of stuff, and then I asked her if there was a bed ready for her at the hospital. She looked at Thebes again.

Yeah, said Thebes, I think so.

So, we should go, I said. Thebes had packed up some things for Min in her old Little Mermaid backpack. She likes oceans, said Thebes. She wants to bob along the surface of things.

That’s sweet, Thebes, I said. I didn’t mention that mermaids generally hang out at the bottom of the sea. She knew it herself, anyway. I imagined my father’s body being buffeted along the sandy bottom of the Pacific Ocean, bumping up against reefs and fish and shipwrecks, always on the move. As if he was still alive but in another world, like Min. She was a strange, unsettled planet that had once sustained life. She was a language that I had thought I almost understood even though I couldn’t speak it. She hadn’t always been this way. She used to wear high knee socks and short shorts and tube tops, and travel everywhere on roller skates. If our parents took us horseback riding, she’d pick the wildest horse and have it tamed in five seconds, flying joyously across fields and through rivers and leaping over fences. She taught me how to bumper-shine and cannonball and roll a joint and make a homemade bong. She went barefoot from May to October and once, on a dare, swam across Falcon Lake in the middle of the night.

At that resort in Acapulco, before our father drowned, Min owned the place. She wore a string bikini made out of purple glass beads, army boots and a black Labatt toque over her long, blonde hair. She lounged around all day on the beach reading Quotations from Chairman Mao, The Anarchist Cookbook and Paradise Lost. She smoked beedies that she shoplifted from a store called Orientique. Sometimes she’d bury me in the sand. Sometimes we’d race in the water. Can you hold this for me? she’d say to anyone who was around. She’d stick her book and her beedies into her toque and hand it to them and then sashay like a supermodel across the sand and into the water to cool off. I would stand on the beach squinting into the sun and watch her and count the number of seconds she stayed under water. One thousand. Two thousand. Three thousand…I knew that any number over thirty spelled disaster, and I’d sidle closer and closer to the water so I could be the one to rescue her.

I’d show you our plecostamus, said Thebes, but we haven’t seen him in four months. She was talking about their fish, a bottom-feeder. Logan feeds him every night, she said, but he has to turn the light off first so nobody sees him when he grabs his pellet of food. That’s the only way he’ll eat it. Thebes told me she sometimes tried to stay up all night to catch him swimming but it never worked.

Our only pet ever, she said, and we never see him. I wondered if their poor plecostamus was dead. How much faith does it require to feed a fish you haven’t seen in four months? Other people’s plecostamuses grow to be this big, said Thebes, holding her hands about eight inches apart. But our little guy doesn’t do a thing. She and I stared at the murky water in the aquarium.

Should it be cleaned? I asked her.

I’m afraid to, she said.

Min was weak and starving and could barely walk. Logan carried her to the van, no sweat, lighter than his backpack, almost, he said, and sat squished in a corner of the back seat with Min stretched out and her head in his lap on the way to the hospital.

Don’t worry about a thing, he told her. She looked up at him. You’ll be back, he said. You’ll get better. He stared out the window and smiled and drummed his fingers against the glass and cleared his throat several times. He stroked Min’s hair, awkwardly, beautifully, and then stopped but didn’t seem to know where to put his hand. I drove and Thebes rode shotgun, and she told me that I was an excellent driver, very prudent, very defensive, everyone should drive as well as I do, and then looked over her shoulder at Logan, who didn’t notice because he was busy trying to hide his tears.

At the hospital a big guy whose name tag said “Bernie” checked Min in and told her she’d be safe there.

She was safe at home, said Thebes.

Bernie ignored her. What’s your mood like, Min? he said.

She looked at Thebes.

Her mood? said Thebes.

How’s she feeling right now? he said. Min stared at him. Okay, good stuff, said Bernie. A parade of patients shuffled past us for their hourly smoke and Min slowly got up out of her chair and started to walk towards the elevators.

Oops, nope, said Bernie. This way, sweetie. Then he asked us if Min had any sharps or fire or belts or shoelaces on her, and Thebes told Bernie to ask Min herself. Good stuff, said Bernie again.

Min tried wandering over to the elevators again, but this time I took her hand and kept her close to me.

Logan had disappeared inside his hoodie and giant pants. His headphones were around his neck but I could hear the music faintly. He cracked his knuckles a few times and stared out the window. Then he smiled at Min and shrugged and smiled again. We heard someone moaning and a nurse saying, That’s enough, in a loud, too loud, voice. Like she was so sure of the limits, but the limits to what?

Fucking nightmare on Elm Street, eh, Mom? said Logan. Min closed her eyes and opened them.

Why aren’t you at the beach, said Logan and Thebes in unison, which I found out later was some kind of in-joke because the last time they had to bring Min to the hospital it was a really hot day and everyone in the waiting room was hiding behind newspapers that said in giant black letters, Why Aren’t You at the Beach?

Min was checked in. We walked with her to her room and stood around her bed for a few minutes. Hey, I said, this will be great, Min, this is…look, here’s a button you push for help. She closed her eyes. Thebes unpacked her Little Mermaid backpack and put a photograph of her and Logan and Min, smiling, laughing, even Logan, on the bedside table. She pulled out one of Min’s pillboxes and opened it up and showed it to me. She’d replaced the pills with tiny cinnamon hearts, one for every day of the week.

They’ll give her new ones here, she said. Right, Min? Min didn’t say anything. Right, Thebes, said Thebes. She wrote a note on a piece of paper and stuck it into the cardboard frame. We love you, Mom, and we always will. You’re the best mom in the world. We love you!!! Min opened her eyes again, smiled and patted the bed for Thebes to sit down beside her, but gently, very gently.

Min looked at me and crooked her finger. She wanted to talk to me. I put my head next to hers and she whispered in my ear.

Logan leaned against the wall and fiddled around with his headphones.

A bald head popped around the curtain and said, Hello, my name is Jeanette. We all said hello and she told us she was Min’s roommate. She was a really heavy breather. She was wearing dark shades and a Superman T-shirt and no pants. Min raised her hand and then let it fall back onto the bed. Jeanette told us she’d been there for thirteen weeks. She’d had lots of different roommates. She said she stayed in shape by walking the halls, incessantly. She’d been a military supplier. She’d look out for Min. She said it was nice that Min had this little family to visit her. Jeanette’s family weren’t allowed to visit her, she said, because they made her too agitated.

Okay, thank you, it’s nice meeting you, too. I turned back to my sister. Min, I said. Hey, Min. There was something I wanted to tell her, too. But she was out, fast asleep, or zonked on whatever Bernie had given her when she arrived. I leaned over and whispered into her ear. No, never, I said.

Logan and Thebes stood there staring at her and then Logan pulled the blanket up so it covered her shoulders and Thebes moved the family photo a fraction of an inch on the bedside table, lining it up with Min’s eyes so it would be the first thing she’d see when the drugs wore off.

A woman asked to speak to me in the hall. She was a social worker. She asked me if I knew of any arrangements that had been made for the children, and I told her yes, I had come from Europe to look after them for as long as they needed me to. The words sounded as though they belonged to somebody else, or like I was reading from a teleprompter or a karaoke screen.

The social worker said that was good but they might have to conduct a home assessment and perhaps a background check on me to make sure I was competent and didn’t have any outstanding arrest warrants or my name on any abuse registries. That’s fine, I said, but Logan and Thebes can’t go to a foster home.

Well, said the woman, very likely not, but that would have to be determined by others. I thanked her for her concern. She thanked me for my understanding of the situation. We shook hands.