The Flying Troutmans (5 page)

But this was the first time she'd refused to see her kids.

Logan came back into the living room and sat down on the couch. What don't you know? I asked him again. He said he didn't know. You don't know what you don't know? I said.

Well, he said, I'd kind of like not to be interrogated. I know that.

Do you mean you don't know if we should be leaving Min? I asked him.

I don't know, he said.

We're obviously coming back, though, I said. I mean, you know, obviously.

I know, yeah, he said. Obviously.

But you just don't know, I said.

Yeah.

Yeah…but I kind of know, I said.

No, you don't, he said. But it doesn't matter. He smiled sympathetically, then picked up a magazine and started to read.

 

four

I WANTED US TO PACK EVERYTHING UP,
load the van, lock up the house, get maps, all that stuff, and then pick up Thebes at school on our way out of town. But Logan said no, Thebes would want to pack her own stuff, she had weird habits and needed weird things with her at all times. So we did everything we could without packing her stuff and then Logan moved some of the furniture
and tried to teach me how to do a pick-and-roll and some other basketball manoeuvres for a few hours (Like this? No, no. Like this? No, no. Like this? No, no.) while we waited for her to get home.

Bonjourno! she said when she finally arrived, her trademark greeting, apparently. She dropped her backpack on the kitchen floor and bolted for the remote before Logan could get it.

Theodora! I said. Welcome home, pack your stuff, we're leaving.

How do you spell
peyote
? asked Logan. He was making a list of supplies we'd have to pick up before we left.

N-O,
I said.

Okay, I have to phone Abbey and cancel rehearsals, said Thebes.

 

If, along the way, something is gained, then something will also be lost.
Those words had been emblazoned on Min's bedroom wall, burned into the wallpaper with a charred wine-bottle cork. Our parents dismissed them as pseudo-profound, angsty-adolescent babble, but they haunted me. Why should that be? I wondered. How did she know that? Did she really believe it, or did she just like the way those words looked in burnt cork?

I heard the universe answering back in the form of the wind and the sun and the earth's orbit and the ocean's tide and the world's wild rivers and the nomadic peoples of Outer Mongolia…Things move, Hattie. Perpetual motion. Dig it or die…You've got a crumb on your lip.

Actually, that was Marc I was hearing on our last day in Paris as he explained to me exactly why he really needed to morph from a tangible boyfriend into a painful memory.

But couldn't I move with you? I also enjoy the sensations of motion, I told him. I flapped my arms around and did a little dance in my petite wrought-iron chair.
Do not ever return to this café,
I told myself.

Marc said it was important for us to detach, to stand alone, to experience ourselves, to answer to our inner something, to recognize the divinity that resides within each of us.

But what if our in-house divinities are telling us exactly the same thing? I asked him. Like, how many ideas are out there, anyway? Ours may match.

Hattie, said Marc, be well. Find your centre. Be happy. Stand alone for a while and see what it's like.

I asked him if I could get away with
lying down
alone for a while instead, like maybe on a desolate stretch of railroad. He smiled and hugged me. Love is the answer, he said.

To what? I asked him.

Everything! he said.

Cool, cool, I said.

He asked me if I could maybe get the cheque because he'd already changed all his euros into rupees.

 

You have to phone my school, said Logan. He was sitting on the floor surrounded by a mountain range of CDs that he was organizing for the trip.

Why? I asked him. You're expelled. What's to say?

They want to know that you know, said Logan.

Let me! said Thebes. I'm good at being Min. Logan slid the phone across the floor.

Yes, she said, my name is Min Troutman and I'm—Min Troutman. Yeah.
T-R-O-U-T-M-A-N.
And I'm—Min. Yeah, Min.
M-I-N.

I'm his mother.

Yeah, totally! Full-time job, eh?

That's not how Min talks, I whispered to Logan.

He shrugged.

Thebes, I said, give me the phone. She turned her back to me and kept on talking.

What? said Thebes. Oh. Logan. Troutman…
T-R-O U-T-M-A-N
…What?…Yo! Logan! He goes to that school! Don't you know his name? Logan!…
L-O-G-A-N!

Thebes, I said. Give me the phone right now.

It's a big school? said Thebes. Well, then, you'll be happy to be rid of one, eh?

Logan and I were trying not to laugh. I held out my hand for the phone.

I know it's serious, right! said Thebes. This kid is driving me crazy, trust me. We're taking him to a, like a, like an al-Qaeda training camp, but not really. It's one of those boot camps for—

I grabbed the phone out of her hand and said hello. There was silence on the other end. Whoever Thebes had been talking to had hung up. Should I call back? I asked Logan.

No, don't bother, he said, it won't make any difference. They'll figure it out.

I called Thebes's school and told the secretary that we were going on a road trip so Thebes wouldn't be there for a week or so. The woman said Thebes was a great student and it wouldn't make any difference.

Is this Min? asked the woman.

No, I said. This is Min's sister.

Oh, said the woman, is everything okay at home?

Mostly, I said. More or less. The woman said she hoped we had a great time. Well, thank you! I said.

Yeah, um…, she said.

Is there a problem? I asked her.

No, no, no, she said, there's not a problem. It's just that Thebes, you know…well, she regrets being born.

What? I said. What do you mean?

She said it again, today, said the woman.

Today? I thought. After her hyper, jazzed-up start in the morning?

She doesn't want anybody to know, said the woman. Particularly her mother. She doesn't want to worry her.

Yeah, I said.

The woman asked me if I knew that Thebes had written something on the girls' bathroom wall in indelible ink.

No, I said, I didn't know that. I looked at Thebes. She was stuffing coloured construction paper into a backpack. What did she write? I whispered.

The woman said Thebes had written,
Wanna do a walk-around in dreamtime, gonna seek my old bush soul.

That's what she wrote on the bathroom wall?

Mmmm, yeah, said the woman. She had to paint over it because the custodian couldn't get it off with soap.

Okay, I said, well, thanks for letting me know. Thebes had finished filling her backpack with paper and was drawing something on her foot. I hung up and told Thebes that everything was cool at her school. They'll miss you, though, I said.

Oh, they don't care, Thebes said. We don't do anything in June anyway except clean up and have talking circles and go on lame field trips to the mint and I always have to be partners with Rajbeer because he's new and shy and my teacher pretends that he needs me instead of admitting the truth, which is that nobody else wants to be my partner. I don't even think Rajbeer wants to be my partner but he's forced to be. He doesn't even think I'm a person.

Logan put his arm around Thebes. It's not easy being a girl, he said. Like you, he added.

True dat, my brotha, said Thebes. She stopped drawing on her foot and wrapped her arms around his skinny waist.

But, Thebie, he said, just remember you're a little white kid. He rubbed her matted purple head. She snapped the elastic waistband of his boxers, which were foaming out around the top of his XXX pants. You don't always have to talk like Chuck D, or whatever. In fact, I really wish you wouldn't, especially on the road, like, in America. 'Cause that'll be really embarrassing.

Dawg, said Thebes, I gotta—

Seriously, Thebie. You have to stop doing that.

Oh, fine, said Thebes. She looked tired, a little deflated.

I sat at the dining room table and drew a map of the universe as I knew it at that precise moment. The planet of Min, the planet of Cherkis, the stars of Thebes and Logan, vast and perilous milky distances in between. Enemy space stations in the form of foster homes and me as a UFO. Min didn't want to see her kids. Min didn't want to see me. Her kids wanted nothing more than to be with her. I wanted my sister back. Cherkis had wanted to be with his kids but Min had sent him packing. Min says she'll kill herself if Cherkis takes the kids but now she seems to want to die anyway.

 

The phone rang. Thebie answered it. Bonjourno! she said. Oh yeah, hang on. It's for you, loser, she said. She slid the phone along the floor to Logan.

Oh hey, he said, all tender. He tried to lower his voice. How's it going? Oh yeah, sorry about that, I was gonna but uh…what? I know. Yeah, he said into the phone, I'm really sorry. I was going to, but…what? Thebie threw an empty Coke can at Logan. Yeah, he said. Did you get that colour you wanted? Logan threw the can back at Thebie and missed. Yeah? I bet it looks good. Yeah? That's nice.

It's a girl, Thebie told me. She pretended she was kissing someone and then she started hugging herself and moving around like she was dancing. Logan turned his back on her.

How many washes before it comes out? he asked. Yeah? Oh, nice. Yeah, I will. I promise. Okay. Take it easy. He hung up.

Thebes, you're a fucking retard, he said.

Who was that? I asked. Deborah Solomon?

Yeah, he said.

It was this girl who wears a Batman sheet as a dress and rides an old-lady bike, said Thebes. Min says she's
besotted
with Logan. Sounds like a bedwetter. She's emo.

Shut up, said Logan.

You didn't tell her you were going to be gone for a while? I said.

Nah, it was too hard to explain, he said. Plus, we're supposed to be in a cooling-off period.

 

We loaded all our stuff into the van and left. On the way out of town we dropped the invisible plecostomas off at one of Thebes's friends. I had no idea what Thebes had packed but her suitcase was bulging and she had various backpacks filled with other stuff and a big cardboard box of art supplies.

Should we stop at the hospital and say goodbye to Min? asked Thebes.

No, I said. She'll be okay. She's getting better. We'll call her from the road. I couldn't guarantee that Min would answer the call, probably not, considering she'd just said she didn't want to see or talk to us. Thebes seemed satisfied.

Word, she said. Logan looked at her. What? she said.

Logan would have the front seat for the first hour and then it would be Thebes's turn. We'd take turns playing our CDs and Logan would keep track of whose turn it
was. He was not allowed to drive. We were heading south towards the border, and then we'd stop and figure things out from there.

On the way out of town we saw this guy standing by the side of the highway holding up a sign that said There are Three Eternal Destinies. And beneath it was a web address. Logan wondered if the guy was real. Let's see if he moves, he said. He pretended to grab the steering wheel and I yelled at him not to do that and he apologized and then I apologized for yelling and he said it was okay, Min never yelled any more and it kind of made him feel more normal to be yelled at every once in a while.

Let's remember that website, said Thebes. I want to find out which of those three eternal destinies is mine. She crawled into the back seat to get some of her art supplies. She was back there for a while. I thought maybe she'd fallen asleep. But then she popped her head up and passed me a piece of paper with some writing on it. It said:

 

In Scrabble you've got a certain amount of time to make sense of your randomly picked letters, to make words, not necessarily to know what they mean, but to score points, to bluff, to bingo, to win.

 

What is this? I asked her.

Grandma's last words, she said. I write them down at least once a week so I don't forget them.

I wasn't sure that those were, in fact, my mother's last words. I'd been with her when she died, and just before she slipped into unconsciousness she held my
hand and told me that whatever happened, I was not responsible for saving Min. But did she mean it or was dying similar to Scrabble in that you had a finite amount of time to bluff. My mother was an eternal optimist when it came to Min. Every few months she'd come up with some new diagnosis, one she'd make on her own with help from library books, and new hope for Min's recovery. Our own family doctor had given up on Min. He said there was nothing wrong with her that a little maturity wouldn't straighten out. She needed to grow up, basically, was his theory.

We talked for a while about Grandma, how she'd once been rescued at sea and dragged onto some Jamaican beach by a group of fishermen. She had taken Thebes to Jamaica for a short holiday after her brain surgery and they'd gone banana boating. My mother fell off and was laughing so hard she couldn't climb back onto the boat.

She was also really fat, said Thebes.

So a bunch of guys saw her laughing and bobbing way out in the sea and swam out to rescue her.

One guy on each extremity, said Thebes. Grandma looked like a starfish, a laughing starfish. Even though salt water was splashing into her mouth, she couldn't stop laughing, said Thebes.

Yeah, I said, remember when she was almost trampled to death by that herd of elephants?