The Flying Troutmans Read online

  Yeah, he said.

  I told him he didn’t have to put on an act for anybody, though, he didn’t have to pretend he was in a great mood. Just that it might be good to talk about stuff sometimes.

  Mmm-hmm, said Logan.

  Hey, you know, I said, when I was fifteen I’d stay in my room for hours and hours at a time playing “A Whiter Shade of Pale” on my guitar and feeling completely misunderstood and unloved and stupid and ugly and fucked up and lonely. So phenomenally lonely. You know? I felt like the Little Prince. Totally, abjectly, alone on the planet. I mean, seriously, other people? Talking to them was like talking to a vapour or something. You know? I mean, there was no connection. There was…like, I was Robinson Freaking Crusoe. The Little Prince was totally alone on some planet, wasn’t he?

  You played what? asked Logan.

  “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” I said.

  I think he had a flower, said Logan.

  We were quiet for a while. Logan turned the taps on and off a few times. I checked out the ugly design on the shower curtain. Together we took big breaths.

  And you know, I said, I’m probably the very last person in the world with the authority to talk about this stuff, but like, with girls and drugs and stuff like that? You’ll be careful, right? Like, you’ll be smart about that stuff, right?

  Logan examined the ceiling tiles.

  I mean, I know, you know, you’re fifteen and it’s sometimes, I don’t mean to sound patronizing, but it’s, at fifteen, a boy is, well girls too, I mean, you know, everyone…but they’re…they are soo…what the hell was I doing?…horny. Right? You don’t have to answer that. And it’s hard, like impossible really, to think before, you know, jumping into something that seems really great at the time…in that particular moment…um.

  Please, dear God, make Thebes have something bizarre and urgent that she’s got to get off her chest right now. Bring her to this bathroom door, make her bang on it. Now, God, now!

  Yeah, said Logan.

  Can I ask you a question? I said.

  Yeah.

  How do you feel about this whole, you know, odyssey?

  Odyssey?

  Like, this trip we’re on. What are you thinking?

  Um, I don’t know, he said. Fine?

  Okay, but are you just saying that because you think that’s what I want to hear?

  Uh, sort of…I guess…I don’t know.

  So you’re sort of feeling fine and sort of feeling something other than fine?

  Maybe.

  And what is the thing other than fine that you’re feeling?

  I don’t know.

  Well, is it scared? Or nervous?

  I don’t know.

  Okay, but like right now if I had a gun to your head and you had to blurt out one thing you were feeling, like in order to save your life, or, say, Min’s life, what would that one thing be, that one word? Okay, super, so now I’m creating an imaginary scenario in which I hypothetically threaten his life and the life of his mother unless he speaks. Real cool. Real Barbara Coloroso.

  Can it be two words? he said.

  Yes! I said. It can be as many words as you want. Let’s talk all night!

  Okay, um, let’s see, he said. Four words.

  And they are…

  Really, really, really angry, he said.

  I tried to get more out of him, but he shook his head and said he was also really, really, really tired. He looked like he was going to cry. I said okay, I understood. I did. It all made sense. It was normal. It was. I started to leave, and then he said, But who would just do that?

  Do what? I said.

  Like, just leave. You know? Like, just disappear.

  You mean Cherkis? I said.

  Logan pulled his hoodie over his face.

  I don’t know, I said. I really…you know…I just don’t know. If we find him you can ask him, right? Maybe he thought it was the best thing…I don’t know. Human beings…

  Logan laughed for a second and sighed, then laughed again, just a gasp of air.

  I know, I said. I’m an idiot. I don’t know why I said “human beings.” Lame. I’m just trying to—

  Yeah, said Logan. No.

  What, no? I said.

  You’re not an idiot, he said.

  Well, actually, yeah, I really am, I said. Certified.

  Whenever the clock says it’s 11:11, said Logan, I automatically, without thinking, wish that Mom is happy.

  Oh yeah. That 11:11 thing, I said, when stars crash into each other.

  And then I always worry that I’m wasting another wish, he said.

  Well, but, I said, it isn’t like—

  Sometimes I comfort myself, he said.

  Really? You do?

  Yeah, he said.

  How? I said.

  Sometimes I comfort myself by saying that every day, for as long as I live, will be either a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday.

  I smiled. Whatever gets you through the night, I said.

  He smiled back.

  See? I said. Isn’t this nice? This talking thing?

  Yeah, he said. My tremendous people skills…Hey, why didn’t you tell me I have two huge zits on my right cheek? He stared at his reflection.

  What do you mean? I asked. You do have people skills…

  Yeah, whatever, he said, and then started making faces in the mirror and riffing about his skills. If it weren’t for these skills, he said, I don’t know where I’d be. Sometimes my skills are so good they just intimidate people into not talking to me. And then I get nervous about using my terrific skills in front of people, so I mainly just act like I’m from a different culture.

  Hey, I said, you know, sorry, but those two zits are only half the story.

  What? he said. He got up really close to the mirror and peered at his face. Fuck, man! he said. Can you give me a minute alone in here?

  No, you should leave them alone, I said. Scars.

  He sat down on the toilet and crossed his legs and his arms and looked at me. Like if there was something about scars I could tell him that he didn’t already know I could just go ahead and give it my best shot.

  I didn’t know what else to say. I had wanted Logan to understand that Cherkis hadn’t decided one morning on a whim to leave his family, to blithely take off for something better and more exciting and leave his kids confused and angry and sad, but that in fact Min had forced him to leave. But I also didn’t want Logan to be angry with Min for making Cherkis go away. Cherkis had tried hard to ride the tsunami waves of Min’s moods and he’d managed for quite a long time, way longer than my parents and I had ever hoped for. Min resented his care, in the same way that she hated mine and anybody else’s. But what were the people who loved her supposed to do? Tell her to go right ahead and starve herself, no big whoop, whatever, we don’t care if you disintegrate right before our eyes. Yeah, polish off that giant bottle of sleeping pills all at once, do it, we can use the container for something else. How do you love someone who wants to be left alone to die? How do you stay? How do you walk away? My old Paris apartment is filled with psychology textbooks but I still haven’t found the answer. There were two things I wanted and they were entirely incompatible. I wanted Min never to lose her children, to always have them nearby. And also, I wanted to tell Logan to set himself free, to live his life, not to worry about Min, he couldn’t fix her, and he shouldn’t feel guilty. But I didn’t say any of that.

  Hey, I said.

  Yeah? said Logan.

  You know Cherkis tried so hard to stay.

  Yeah? said Logan.

  I tried hard to stay too, I said.

  He didn’t say anything.

  You might not understand, I said. Or, do you?

  I don’t know, said Logan.

  I gave Logan an awkward hug and nearly knocked him into the sink. He told me I was stronger than I looked. He said he was going to have a shower.

  I went into the other room and saw Thebes running
like crazy, breathing hard, purple hair bobbing up and down as she tried to keep up with Lola. She saw me and bounded over and put her hands on my hips and locked her laser eyes on mine.

  How did it go? she whispered.

  Good, good, shhh, I said. You can stop running now.

  No, she said. She was going to go all the way with Lola and save that guy’s life.

  eight

  WE GOT UP EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, ate some fruit from the cooler and loaded up the van. I stared at the pool of something that was seeping out from underneath it. Logan had started playing Frisbee with Thebes in the parking lot. He threw the Frisbee hard every time against the pavement so it would deflect and fly up straight into Thebes’s hands. Or face. She didn’t like it. She kept yelling, Throw it normally, throw it normally! I looked around to make sure nobody was watching and then I got down on my hands and knees and stuck my finger in the mystery liquid and tasted it. I’d seen my father do this once or twice. Except I didn’t really know what I was supposed to be tasting or how to differentiate it from any other automotive flavour. I decided it was water and not oil. It was water from the air conditioner, probably. I thought hey, excellent, we’ll have to stop using the AC and open all the windows and the wind and the racket will drown out Thebes and muffle Logan’s music. I didn’t mind listening to Thebes’s chatter or Logan’s music most of the time, but I was trying to solve problems and formulate solutions in my mind and I needed to concentrate for a while. We were headed for Denver, and then we’d blast our way like amyl nitrate west through the Rocky Mountains.

  I had this dream last night, said Logan. About a poet who finds out that his new book has no words, only thick blue ceramic-tile pages.

  Was the poet Cherkis? I asked.

  It wasn’t clear, he said.

  Logan complained about the birds waking him up. He said it wasn’t even real singing, just crawk, crawk, crawk. I told him that male birds have to send warnings to other birds to stay off their turf and away from their mates, and Logan said he wasn’t interested in their mates, all he wanted was to sleep. He yawned and wiped away a tear.

  And this is fucked up, he said, but I also dreamt that I’d had a baby.

  So did I! I said. The other night.

  Logan rubbed his face and moaned and stared out the window. He didn’t want to be having the same dreams and dark desires as his flabby-armed aunt.

  How did you feel being pregnant? I asked him.

  I don’t know, he said. Distorted and inhabited.

  Oh, okay, so you do know, I said.

  I’d prefer to be the father in that type of scenario, he said.

  All it means, I think, I said, is that we’re expecting something.

  Whatever, he said.

  Min had told me a story about when Logan was a newborn baby. The guy in the apartment right next to hers, a Lithuanian philosophy professor, electrocuted himself in his bathtub and his body wasn’t found for days and on the day that they discovered it Min had come in from a walk with Logan and she had cried and cried, thinking of the poor guy next door, and also how it was a terrible thing to come home with a newborn baby to an old guy having killed himself right next door. This old guy’s mom had Alzheimer’s and lived just down the hall in a different apartment and when he was alive she’d go banging on Min’s door calling out for her son and thinking Min’s apartment was his and then he or Min would patiently take her back to her own apartment. Somebody came and moved her away shortly after her son killed himself, but for a while there she’d still come banging on Min’s door looking for him, calling out his name.

  Soon after that there was a massive blizzard, the storm of the century they called it, when Cherkis was trapped in a restaurant and Min was alone with Logan and he was twelve days old and all the apartment windows were completely iced up so that it seemed like they were living inside a crystal, or a Christmas ornament, and there was nothing for Min to do but nurse Logan and hold him and take pictures of him and stare at him and listen to True Stories by the Talking Heads and teach herself how to juggle with the tiny Pampers diapers she’d roll up real tightly into balls after Logan had peed in them.

  I thought about telling all that to Logan. Maybe Min already had. Or maybe you don’t want to hear that right after being born you came home to a dead guy next door. I didn’t know if that was the sort of thing Logan would think was mildly interesting, colourful, or just a really bad omen. Conversing with children is a fine art, I realized. An art form that demands large amounts of both honesty and misdirection. Or maybe discretion is a better word. Or a gradual release of information like time-controlled vitamins. Either way, my own befuddled attempts were pathetic and I really wanted to have more than odd, cryptic conversations with Logan and Thebes.

  My mother and I were at Min and Cherkis’s apartment before they brought Logan home from the hospital. Min and Cherkis were young, barely twenty years old, and their apartment was a mess. My mom made Swedish meatballs and washed all of their dishes and cleaned the bathroom. I set up the baby mobile above Logan’s crib and ran up and down four flights of stairs to do their laundry. When they got in, we all crowded around Logan and stared at him and whispered our compliments and beautiful wishes for their fantastic future together. Cherkis held Logan close to his chest—he’d taken his shirt off so Logan could feel his beating heart—and carried him from room to room telling Logan this is the living room, and this is the kitchen, and, buddy, this is the bedroom where you’ll sleep. He took down a photograph he’d taken of a bleeding, screaming punk band because he thought it would disturb Logan and mess up his chi.

  We all had some champagne, except for Min, who didn’t want Logan getting drunk on her breast milk, and then Min and Cherkis lay down with Logan between them and my mom put out the incense they’d left burning in the living room and I bent over and kissed them all good night and then my mom came back into the bedroom and also kissed them all good night and then we left.

  Did you know, said Thebes, that there’s a shrine in Tokyo, in this park, Yoyogi Park, where you can buy a charm against all evil. All evil!

  No, I didn’t, I said.

  And did you know that there’s this really tiny building somewhere in Colombia, or maybe Ecuador, that is the official world headquarters of the Department of Unanswered Letters. To work there it’s mandatory that you have a history of killer depression, but I don’t think—

  Is that supposed to be a joke or what? said Logan.

  Why, do you think depression is funny? said Thebes.

  No, but I’m just saying…the way you delivered it sounded like a joke.

  Depression’s not a joke, yo, said Thebes.

  I know it’s not a joke, said Logan. I said the way you told that anecdote sounded like you were…like it was supposed to be a joke. Forget it.

  Hey, said Thebes. How did you know that was air conditioner fluid?

  I tasted it, I said.

  Logan looked at me and frowned. That might have seemed like a really good idea at the time, he said, but maybe you should have taken a minute or even possibly two minutes to think about what you were doing.

  I told you I wasn’t qualified to be talking about that stuff, I said. Logan smiled and it was like…I don’t know what it was like. A hurricane. Childbirth. Heroin. It rocked my world for a few seconds.

  Hey, said Thebes, I read something about miners drinking their own urine in order to—

  I read that too, said Logan.

  Well, then, said Thebes, you know to mix it with tree bark, right? So the uric acid is killed? If you get stuck in an underground mine that’s what you have to do.

  There aren’t any trees down there, genius, said Logan.

  Well, Stephen Hawking, said Thebes, experienced miners bring their own bark just in case.

  And then an animal jumped in front of our van and we hit its rear end and went skittering off the road, spun around and landed backwards in the ditch, but right side up.

  What the fuck just happene
d? said Logan.

  We hit a deer, said Thebes. I think it was a deer. Hattie, you killed it!

  Are you serious? said Logan.

  Oh my god, said Thebes. I can’t believe we hit a deer. Why didn’t you stop?

  I didn’t see it at all, I said. It was just there.

  Oh my god, said Thebes.

  Holy fuck, said Logan.

  Are you guys okay? I said.

  They said yeah and then we got out of the van and wandered down the highway a ways to see if the deer was still alive but it was lying in the middle of the road and there was blood everywhere and it looked dead. Its eyes were open. I picked up a small stone from the shoulder and slid it gently across the pavement. It hit the deer but the deer didn’t blink or move. Thebes started to cry, she said she was now impeccably sad, and Logan put his arm around her shoulder.

  We have to get him out of the middle of the road, I said.

  Thebes said she couldn’t touch him. Why did he do that? she said. I mean, like, why?

  They just do, I told her. They don’t get traffic.

  Logan and I walked over to the deer and grabbed its hind legs and dragged it to the side of the road. Thebes didn’t want to leave the deer, but I told her I’d call someone from the next gas station, some wildlife officer, and they’d take the deer away. There was blood and clumps of fur on the front bumper of the van and a big dent. Logan tried to get the blood off by throwing water on it from the cooler but it didn’t really work, it just turned streaky. Then when I tried to start the van the ignition fell right out of the steering column and I had to use a screwdriver to get it going. Logan picked up the ignition for a closer look and I noticed that his hands were shaking slightly.

  Are you okay? I asked him.

  Yeah, totally, he said. You?

  Well, I’m a little freaked out, I said. We just hit a deer.

  Thebes couldn’t stop crying.

  Hey, T., said Logan, do you wanna play Hangman? You can start.

  They played for a long time and Logan played by all of Thebes’s goofy rules and she finally stopped crying and cheered up and Logan climbed back over into the front seat.