Free The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews Page A

whispered in my ear that she’d take care of me, that she’d make sure I was okay, that she’d be strong for both of us. I nodded yeah, great, thanks, does that caring come with a complimentary drowning, because didn’t you just try to…but no, I didn’t say that. But I did pull my hand out of hers and stick it in the waistband of my ugly dress so she wouldn’t try holding it again. I never doubted her conviction and her desire to be strong for both of us but I got this idea into my head that Min wanted me dead in order to protect me from some horrible danger in life that only she knew about, a fate worse than death, as they say. That she was, in fact, trying to take care of me. I wanted to ask her about that and have it all verified. But how do you begin a conversation like that? If she had come right out and said it, Hattie, I wish you were dead, I’d have nodded in acknowledgment. I’d have told her calmly that I knew it. And maybe, from that admission, we could have established a new way of being sisters. One that might have had me looking over my shoulder frequently but at least it would have been out in the open.

    Logan and Thebes goofed around in the pool and I used our Frisbee to scoop a dead bird out of the shallow end when they weren’t looking. Logan was floating on his back with an empty plastic wineglass balanced on his stomach and Thebes was trying to fill it up with filthy pool water that she was squirting through her teeth. Then the hand-job girl came cannonballing into the pool from out of nowhere, or the parking lot, and bobbed over to Logan and Thebes.
    Are y’all saved? she asked.
    From what, yo? said Thebes. Logan ignored the girl and kept floating around on his back, balancing the glass.
    The wrath of Christ, said the girl.
    Oh, that, said Thebes. I don’t know if we all are saved. Let me put it to my bro. Logan? Are we all saved from the wrath of Christ?
    I am the wrath of Christ, said Logan.
    Oh, said Thebes. Hold up. I’ll ask my aunt. Hattie! she said. Are we all saved from the—?
    Thebes, I said, shhhhh. Yeah, we are. Tell her we are.
    Word, said Thebes. Yeah, we check out, she told the girl. Wanna play Keep It Up?
    So they played together awhile and I tried not to let the whole thing disturb the hell out of me.
    Later on Logan and Thebes fought about what to watch on TV and who should hold the remote and decided somewhat mutually on Nick at Nite and that nobody would hold the remote. I went to the lobby tomake just a phone call to France. I knew he’d be in India but I just wanted to hear his voice on the answering machine. I was wrong, though.
    Marc said hello.
    Hey! I said.
    Hey, he said. Oh, hi!
    Aren’t you supposed to be in India?
    Oh, yeah…well, yeah. Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Yeeeahhh…
    Oh man.
    Hey…
    No, really, I said. Why am I such a loser?
    You’re not a loser, he said. Where are you?
    I’m not sure.
    Well…where are you?
    I really don’t know, I said. South Dakota.
    Wow.
    How’s your centre?
    What? he asked. What are you talking about?
    Did you find it? I asked.
    Hey…c’mon.
    Hey…go fuck yourself.
    You woke me up in the middle of the night to tell me…
    I hung up and then phoned back. I’m sorry, I said.
    No, no, he said. I had nothing to be sorry about. He was sorry. Really sorry. I started to cry. I listened to him tell me how beautiful and cool I was. Major kiss-off. It was so untrue. It was pathetic.
    I really thought you were going to an ashram, I told him.
    I really was going to, he said. Hey, can I put you on speaker?
    No, don’t, I said, okay? Just…And then what happened?
    Well, he said, now he was kind of seeing someone.
    Yeah, I said. I rested my head against the phone booth. The woman behind the front desk was staring at me.
    Yeah, he said. So…yeah. Yeah. Yeahyeahyeah yeah.
    I couldn’t stop crying. I was trying to.
    Hey, Hat, he said. We had a great