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I went to the door and opened it and told him, It's yours for twenty million dollars.
He said, Listen, can I speak with your mother. You said the last time—
Twenty-five million dollars, I said.
Sorry, said Jay Gatsby, I'd like to speak with—
Thirty million dollars, capitalist, do you understand
English? I slammed the door shut. Grandma said that was a bit overkill. He's afraid of death, said Grandma. She said it like an insult. He's lost his way! Jay Gatsby wants to tear down our house and build an underground doomsday-proof luxury vault. Jay Gatsby bought a house on a tropical island once and then forced every other person living on the island to sell their house to him so that he had the whole island to himself to do ecstasy and yoga with ex-models. He forced all the models to take pills that made their shit gold and sparkly. Mom said he's had fake muscles put into his calves. She knows this because one day she saw him on the sidewalk outside the bookstore and his calves were super skinny and three days later they were bulging and had seams on them. Mom said he went to a place in Cleveland, Ohio to get it done where you can also have your vag tightened up if you feel like it. Then you can just sit around with your
S.O. vaping all day with your giant fake calves and stitched-up wazoo and be spied on by your modern thermostat which is a weapon of the state they just call "green" because of sales and Alexa and shit and practicing mindfulness hahahaha and just be really, really, really happy that you don't have half a fucking brain between the two of you.
That's how Mom talks. It's probably not true. She lies. She hates words like modern and creative and sexuality and she hates acronyms. She hates almost everything. Grandma told me she doesn't know how Mom was able to stop ranting long enough to get pregnant with Gord. She compared impregnating Mom to creeping up to the edge of an active volcano that you accidentally thought was inactive. She says Mom does the emotional work for the whole family, feeling everything ten times harder than is necessary so the rest of us can act normal. Grandma doesn't believe in privacy and thinks everything private is hilarious because she was the youngest kid to be born into a family of fifteen people. Na oba! she'll say when you're in the bathroom. Look at you sitting all by yourself in this little room with your pants around your ankles, that's priceless! Grandma's dad forgot what all his kids were called and accidentally gave Grandma the same name as one of the older kids. Grandma's mom used her as a form of birth control by putting Grandma next to her in bed for seven years. After seven years Grandma's mom entered menopause so she was safe, and Grandma could go sleep for the rest of her childhood in the hallway.
Remember that woman, that friend of mine, who donated her head? Grandma said yesterday. Well, she's dead. Almost every day Grandma gets a call about some- one she knows being dead. This morning Grandma was watching the Blue Jays highlights and she said Vladimir Guerrero reminded her of a good friend of hers in junior high, Tina Koop. She'd just stand casually at home plate, not in a batting stance or anything, and hit a homer every time. I said Wow, what is she doing now? She's dead, said Grandma. That's how Grandma talks about her friends. She doesn't scream about it. She doesn't even cry. The only thing she and her friends talk about on the phone is dying. Grandma's friend Leona called her yesterday and said, You'll never believe this but Henry Wiebe has agreed to be cremated. What! said Grandma. That's priceless! You know why? said Leona. No, why? said Grandma. Because it's cheaper! They laughed their heads off. And more stylish! They laughed even more. Leona said Henry Wiebe was always secretly wanting to be stylish and then he found out that everyone he knew was getting cremated. When Grandma got off the phone she told me it was funny because Henry Wiebe preached to everyone for more than fifty years that cremation was a sin, but then he came into direct contact with his mortality and notorious cheapness and need to be stylish and realized that he could save money and be stylish by having himself cremated. But he'll be dead, I said, so how can he be stylish and save money? Grandma said, You just gotta know Henry.
Excerpted from Fight Night by Miriam Toews. Copyright © 2021 by Miriam Toews. Excerpted by permission of Bloomsbury USA. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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