Fight Night by Miriam Toews

Fight Night by Miriam Toews

Author:Miriam Toews [Toews, Miriam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sort4
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2021-08-24T00:00:00+00:00


* * *

Everything else is a blur in my mind. I tried to distinguish between the voice of the ego and the actual situation. That’s one step in the process of detachment. Mom used to have all the steps written down on a piece of paper taped to her bedroom wall before she tore it down. Somehow Grandma and I got out of the washroom and the men who saw us didn’t care except for one old guy who said, My sisters, my sisters when we walked past him. Grandma told me he said that because for him it wasn’t right to be in a washroom with strange women and so he had to call us his sisters, and that way, in his mind, we would be family to him. Then at security it took eighty hours to get through with Grandma and all that rigamarole which she pronounced like it was Italian pasta with rolling r’s. The security woman discovered farmer sausage in Grandma’s suitcase and told her she’d have to check it. It was for Lou and Ken. It was their favourite food. They had eaten it non-stop when they were kids in the old town of escaped Russians but they couldn’t find it anywhere in Fresno. They’d looked everywhere. The woman told Grandma that sausage couldn’t fly internationally. Grandma didn’t want to go all the way back to check her bag so she handed over the sausage. The woman said, Oh, nice, when she saw Grandma’s nail polish. What is it again, Swiv? asked Grandma. Lady Balls, I said. That’s right, said Grandma. I could tell Grandma was super tired already because she handed over the farmer sausage without a fight and said well, there’s your lunch to the security woman. The woman said she was a vegetarian ever since she’d seen a terrifying documentary about the meat industry but she’d see if her colleague at the other conveyor belt would want it because he ate everything in sight. Grandma said it’s good sausage! She’d had to get her friend Wilda to pick it up for her in Kitchener at a black market, so tell him to enjoy it! Oh, he will! said the woman. He’s such a carnivore! Grandma said a man after my own heart! The woman told Grandma and me to have an awesome time in the raisin capital and to bring home the sunshine. She waved her scanner at us and Grandma saluted her.

I parked Grandma in the wheelchair section of the gate and went to get her a small black coffee and a bran muffin. I felt around in my backpack to make sure all her pills and killers and nitro spray and our passports were still there. I had Mom’s assignment in there too, to mark on the plane. Grandma took her Dead Heat out of her purse to read while I was getting the stuff. When I came back she was sleeping. I sat beside her and took deep breaths.



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