The Flying Troutmans

two

WHEN WE GOT BACK TO THE HOUSE Logan grabbed his basketball, threw it really hard against the hallway wall, knocked the framed family photo to the floor — it didn’t break, he didn’t pick it up — and then left with a couple of his friends. Thebes picked up the photo, hung it back on the wall, sighed heavily like she’d travelled to every corner of the world, on her knees, with a knife in her back and a boa constrictor wrapped around her chest, and then made us a couple of blueberry smoothies.

The phone rang.

Don’t answer it, said Thebes. We’re screening. It was the principal of Logan’s school again, wanting to know what was up, when he could get together with Logan’s mom for a chat. Thebes and I stood next to the phone and listened to him talk. He asked if they had moved, if this was still their number. He didn’t want to be pushy, he said, but it was really important that he and Logan’s mother have a conversation.

Should I pick it up? I asked Thebes.

No! she said. She told me I had to go and be Min.

Yeah, but doesn’t he know what she looks like? I asked her.

No, he’s clueless, she said.

Yeah, but can’t I just go and be myself and explain the situation, that Min’s in the hospital?

No, said Thebes. No, she said again. She shook her head slowly, gravely. She didn’t want to go to a foster home.

You won’t go to a foster home! I said. I’m here to take care of you.

Yeah, she said, but for how long?

I tried to reassure her. I tried to convince her that she wasn’t going to a foster home, but I knew my tone was tentative and that she was having a hard time believing me.

Cross your heart and hope to die? she said. I wondered how often, on average, a parent makes a preposterous promise to a kid and then begins to panic.

Well, yeah, I said. Definitely.

Thebes and I sat at the kitchen table and drank our blueberry shakes. She told me about some of the stories Logan had been writing in English class. The principal is worried about him, she said. She told me that Logan had almost gotten suspended for telling the principal he was lame, or his jokes were, or something like that. And that the principal had told him to smarten up and then Logan had said he hated that expression, smarten up, because it makes the person saying it sound like an imbecile.

It’s kind of true, though, I said.

Do you miss your boyfriend? asked Thebes.

Yeah, kind of, I said.

Are you sad? she asked.

I am, yeah, I said. But I’m okay. I told her she looked a little tired.

No, she wasn’t tired, but we could lie down on the living room floor if I was tired.

Thebes and I lay on the living room floor and talked. Well, she talked. She talked about her friends. We’re all mostly white nerds, she said, with minor physical and emotional flaws that do not require medication but do brand us as losers in the bigger picture.

Who’s Mojo? I asked her. She had mentioned him, or her, in some of her e-mails.

My imaginary band mate, she said. Bass player.

She talked about the purple bulges under Min’s eyes, how they were getting bigger and bigger. How Min had tried, in the beginning, to cover them up with some makeup but it was too light and she looked like she had a goggles tan. Sometimes at night, said Thebes, before she stopped getting out of bed completely, I could hear her pacing downstairs, humming to herself, making cup after cup of camomile tea. Or playing darts by herself in the basement. Thebes described the way it sounded. Three small thunks, she said, the darts hitting the target, and then approximately eleven or twelve seconds of silence while Min walked to the dartboard, removed the darts and returned to the throwing line. Then three more thunks, and another eleven or twelve seconds of silence. Over and over, like someone knocking softly, patiently, but persistently on the front door.

She told me about a city in India where monkeys are a holy manifestation of some god and are allowed to run wild wherever they want to go. One of them stole a tourist’s glasses and there was nothing the cops could do, she said. What I would have done, she said, is look for the monkey wearing glasses and then try to exchange them for something else. What was your boyfriend’s name? she asked me.

Marc, I said.

Did you want to get married?

No.

Why not?

I’m…I don’t know.

Did he?

No.

Was he good-looking?

No, not particularly. Not conventionally.

Was he good at sports?

I don’t know.

Did you know I had an operation on my brain and part of the scalpel broke off and is still in there?

Yeah, I had known, Min had told me.

Logan tried to stick magnets to my head, said Thebes. Thebes had become a talking machine. Maybe she was attempting to use up all the words that Min had left behind, taking whatever popped into her head, any thought, idea or fact, and transforming it into sound, noise, life. She was talking for two, in double time.

When we were kids, Min would go for months without saying a word. Her muteness was her voice, her retreat was her attack. It was all upside down and disconcerting and it had made me nuts. I used to do the same thing that Thebes was doing now, blather away non-stop about anything that came to mind, and really it was only when I got to Paris and Marc told me that silence was golden, especially mine, that I realized how much I talked.

Do you want to watch TV? I asked her. There was a thick layer of dust on the screen. Someone had written Deborah Solomon, be my girlfriend in the dust. Or, hey, maybe you should have a nice, hot bath.

She said she was too nervous to stop talking. She wanted to talk. She had to talk. She got up and walked around while she talked. Hopped onto the couch and off again. She told me about Logan’s X-rated stories, the ones he had been getting in trouble for. The last one had been about a boy who was disturbed from having to listen to his mom having “mind-blowing sex” with her new boyfriend, and from then walking in on his dad, who’d just hung himself. She said Min had been upset by it. She imitated Min being upset. Logan, she said, we talked about this stuff. Can’t you just…You’re making me…These stories are not…, said Thebes. It was an uncannily accurate impersonation. It was obvious that Thebes had been spending a lot of time observing her mother, trying to understand, trying to find a way in. It was the same thing I’d been doing all my life.

Thebes yanked at her purple hair and groaned. We were quiet, thinking of Min.

You know, she used to write kind of racy stories herself, I told Thebes. But she could get away with anything at school because all the teachers were afraid of her.

Why were they afraid of her? said Thebes.

Well, not afraid of her, I said. They were wary of her. She had this ability to make every outrageous thing she did seem prescient, as though it would be the thing that all enlightened people would soon be doing and wondering why they hadn’t thought of it first. Which was great, I said, but also lonely. For her. It reads well in a biography but it doesn’t make real life easy. You know how most parents encourage their kids to be themselves, to speak their minds and not follow the crowd? Well, our parents did the opposite with Min. They begged her to succumb to peer pressure. To follow the pack and be content with it. Let other people get ideas first, they’d say. Wait around for normal people to map things out. They’d say it jokingly, with their arms around her.

Thebes stood still for at least seven seconds. I had said the wrong thing again. I had implied that radical thinkers automatically go crazy, which wasn’t true, and definitely wouldn’t be any consolation to a kid like Thebes. I wanted to say something else, to take it back and start again, but then she told me about another story Logan had written.

It revolved around a man who worked in a paper factory and became so bored he decided to set a goal. He’d become the fattest man in the world. It went on about the inner workings of this guy’s brain, how some parts were overdeveloped and some not at all and the guy wondered why, if it was something that occurred in his childhood, or because there were only women in his life.

Hmm, I said. I didn’t know either. At least he had a goal.

I was so tired. I’d been dumped for Buddha. I had jet lag. I’d just put my sister into a psych ward. I was suddenly responsible for two kids, one who hardly talked and one who couldn’t stop, with no clue how to take care of either of them.

Hey, said Thebes, what did Min whisper in your ear at the hospital?

Nothing, I said.

Yeah, she did, said Thebes. I saw her whisper something in your ear. What?

I can’t remember, I said.

Yeah, you can, said Thebes. C’mon. Think. She stood over me, a scrawny leg on either side. She still had streaks of candy necklace powder all over her face and neck. She pointed her finger at me like a gun. Tell me! she said in one of her character voices, or I’ll go right ahead and bust a cap in your ass.

She said we should find your father, I said.

That wasn’t true. I had made it up on the spot. Please help me die, is what she’d actually whispered in my ear. And I had said, No, never. Was that the right thing to say? I don’t know. I remember standing outside Min’s bedroom door, I was probably around twelve years old, and hearing my mother telling her that if she really, seriously, genuinely wanted to die, there was absolutely nothing that my mother could do to stop her and she would be devastated but she would give Min her blessing and she would love her forever. It bothered me. No, I thought, that’s not the thing to tell Min. Tell her she can’t die. Absolutely not. No fucking way. We had every way of stopping her and we’d never let her go. But now I’m not so sure. There is not one single thing that I am certain of, except that I have to make sure Thebes and Logan are taken care of. But not necessarily by me.

Did she really say that? asked Thebes. She sat down beside me on the floor.

Yeah, she did, I told her.

Really?

Really. Yeah.

Why?

Because, Thebes, she understands now just how sick she is and that she needs Cherkis to help her out.

With me and Logan? said Thebes.

Yeah, I said.

But I don’t want to live with Cherkis, said Thebes. I want to live with Min.

I know that, I said. Don’t worry. If we found Cherkis we would just ask him if he wanted to come back here to take care of you for a while.

But Min doesn’t want to see him, said Thebes.

I know, I said, that’s true, but I think she’s realizing that she needs some help.

Yeah, said Thebes, but you’re here.

Yeah, I said. I know…that’s true too.

I wished my mother was alive. She could tell me what to do. Or she could do it herself. She knew how to talk to Min and bring her down to earth, at least most of the time. She absorbed Min’s despair but recycled it into dark comedy, or something. She’d joke around with Min about death and hopelessness, and Min would respond. In a way it was like Min’s own theory that everything is bullshit, except that my mother took it one healthy step further: yup, everything is bullshit but it’s also funny. She died two years ago from a ruptured aorta, her heart exploded, but neither Min nor I found it all that hysterical.

Anyway, I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t know how to talk to the kids. I loved them, but I didn’t want to live with my sister. Even in her weakest, most defeated and delusional moments Min was in control. If she was again at that point where she wanted to die, where she was begging me to help her die, then there was no point in keeping Cherkis at bay. What difference did it make? I had no idea whether Cherkis would be interested in seeing his kids again, let alone moving back and taking care of them, but he was a decent human being, a caring guy. He was their father. He had loved them once and could again, or maybe he still did but from a distance. A safe distance. If there is such a thing.

So, said Thebes, is that what we’re going to do? Find

Cherkis?

I think we’ll try, I said. How does that sound to you?

Thebes said she didn’t know. Good, she guessed, probably, it was strange, kind of exciting, a little weird, she’d probably get a stomach ache, no, it was good, just a small stomach ache, yeah, it would be fine. Probably. If that was what Min really wanted.

Well, yeah, I said. It is. And I’m so sorry for lying to you.

Later that evening I lay down in Min’s empty bed upstairs and pulled her white sheet up over my head. I felt for my kneecaps and hip bones. I lay perfectly still, arms down, palms up. I closed my eyes and pretended I was floating in space, then at sea, then not floating at all. I hummed an old Beach Boys tune. In my room… Min had taught me how to play it on her guitar when we were kids. I opened my eyes and stared at her pill bottles and squinted until they all blurred together. I stopped squinting and lined up the bottles, smallest to biggest, in rows, like a class photo. All her life Min had been surrounded by pills and sometimes she took them and sometimes she didn’t and sometimes she took way too many of them. She’d always keep one small, blue pill under her pillow, like a tooth. Or a cyanide capsule right there at the ready.

I remembered the time she had agreed to go rabbit hunting with our uncle and was so horrified by the idea of killing something that she consumed an entire jar of my aunt’s diet pills so that her aim would be way off and the rabbits would escape. But Min, my mother had said, you could have said no, or intentionally misfired. You almost killed yourself in order not to kill a rabbit? That just doesn’t make any sense.

I turned on Min’s radio, heard someone laughing and turned it off again. There was still paint on it from when she and I, as teenagers, spent a summer painting a giant dairy barn. We painted in our bathing suits, and made scaffolding for ourselves from giant tractor tires and two by-fours. We played the radio all day and knew the words to every song. Min fell hard for one of the farmhands and ended up getting pregnant after seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark. She lost the farmhand’s tiny embryo a month or so later in the washroom of a bar called Club Soda, and cried for days and days, and then stopped talking. Sometimes, before I went to bed, I would tap the wall between our bedrooms, and sometimes she’d tap back, very softly, but mostly she didn’t, and eventually I stopped tapping too.

I lay in Min’s bed and tried really hard not to think about Marc, about his soft kisses and how his arm felt around my shoulders and the way he breathed when we made love and the way he hopped around when he was happy and the stuff he said about my eyes and my hips and the small of my back, and what the hell can an ashram offer that I can’t? I mean besides silence and solitude and spiritual revitalization. I tried to float again. I could hear Thebes and her friend rehearsing When I Go Mad, a horror play about an insane mother that they were planning to put on for the neighbour kids. They used British accents. Thebes was the insane mother. Here’s a snippet.

Thebes: Good night, dahling, I’m off to the bar. Friend: New, new, Mutha, please sing to me first. Thebes: Oooookay, I shall siiiiing to you, yeeees, of course, but while I sing you must close your eyes.

Then there’s the murder attempt and the screaming part, which they were having a really hard time getting through without laughing. They were already on take thirty-five or something.

I got up and knocked on Thebes’s door. There were Groovy Girls stickers all over the door and goofy photos of her and her friends.

Bonjourno! Thebes said. C’mon in. Take five, Abbey, she said to her friend. Thebes was wearing this glittery silver sash that she had ripped off a fake Christmas present when they were in Mexico one year, and her friend was wearing one of Thebes’s old Winnie-the-Pooh nightgowns over her jeans. They were flushed and out of breath from all that psychotic killing and bar-hopping.

When does Logan usually get home? I asked her.

Eleven is his curfew during the week, but he ignores it, she said. She was reapplying her lipstick, using a CD as a mirror. Abbey was curled up in the fetal position on the bed. Archie comics were everywhere, walls of them, and a big hardcover called A Criminal History of Mankind propped the window open.

When he gets home, we’re gonna talk about this whole deal, I said.

Thebes was warming to the idea of looking for Cherkis. She thought he was a poet but she didn’t know exactly. She remembered seeing him when she was three or four, after her operation when the piece of scalpel broke off in her brain.

I went into Logan’s room for a look around. There were books and CDs all over the floor and band posters covering the walls. I stared back at the naked guy in the Pixies poster giving the thumbs-down to the world. On the wall by his bed Logan had written a poem or a mission statement or a prayer or something in very tiny letters that slanted down, down, and farther down, until one line obliterated the next.

Be nicer to people

Be nicer to people

Be nicer to people

Be nicer to people

Be nicer to people

Be nicer to people

Be nicer to people

You’re not stylish or cool

Be nicer to people

Be nicer to people

Be nicer to people