Read All Families Are Psychotic Online

Authors: Douglas Coupland

Tags: #Fiction, #Sagas, #General

All Families Are Psychotic (21 page)

BOOK: All Families Are Psychotic
9.31Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

'I think we should rent a hotel room in Daytona Beach,' Janet said. 'Your father's in no shape to help us.' 'I think you're righ t,' said Wade.

Janet pro wled inside the glove compartment and removed a black-corded item, which she then inserted into the cigarette ligh ter. 'Bryan, pass me your father's cell phone.' Bryan removed it from Ted's fron t

righ t pocket, and Janet plugg ed it in. It bleeped like a cheerful sparro w, and Janet announ ced that they were once again linked to humanity.

'I didn ' t kno w Howie had a charger,' Wade said. 'You have to look for things, Wade.'

The phone began to recharge itself atop the dash. North coastal Florid a rolled by. She smelled

subdivisions burning to the west in Orange Coun ty. Janet's vision went black and white, and she was taken from the present into the past, and she hated the feeling of having traveled back in time. She

looked at the cheap hotels smeared with joyless stucco mayonnaise, ocean-side landscapes scraped clean by the endless Atlantic winds that left behind only palm stumps and stubby sea-grape. She felt she was

looking at the third-best seaside resort in a place like Libya, where the prim ideas of middl e-class leisure had been collectively abandoned ages ago. The world felt vulgar. Inside the hotels they passed she

imagined
real live crack whores!
on trash TV, and she imagined elevators rusted to a stop somewhere on the upper floors. She saw images of doorl ess rooms inhabited by proph ets stripped of their founding

visions, images of teenagers fucking on towels designed by beer companies, wooden floors gone rotten, the strips of wood turned into dried-out slats — a world robbed of values and ideals and direction. And then Janet felt she was now off icially in the future, one so far away from the dreams of her Toron to

youth that she was reminded of Discovery Channel sermons on travel at the speed of ligh t, of young men and women shot out into the universe, returning to Earth only to find everything they'd ever kno wn dead or gone or forgo tten or mocked, and this world was Janet's world. 'Wade, does this place make any sense to you?' 'Huh? Yeah, sure — US 1 goes righ t up the coast.' 'No. That's not what I meant. I mean — what's

the reason behind a place like this?' 'Is it weirding you out?'

'It is. Explain it to me. Explain Daytona Beach to me.' 'Daytona's a fun kind of place — a place where—'

'Stop, Wade. Stop righ t there. You can do better than that. Pretend I'm not your mother. Pretend that I'm drunk and that you're drunk and that you kno w that if you have just one more drink you'll be too stupid to explain anything, but for now you possess the superpo wer of insigh t that comes just before that last

drink .'

Wade took a few breaths. He was obviously taking the question seriously. 'I have this friend, Todd, who

got cleaned out in a divorce, and so now he sells lottery tickets in a mall boo th out in Richmond . He asked me once what day of the lottery cycle is the biggest day for sales. I said,
I dunno, when the jackpot's really big —
but he said, no way, it 's the morning
after
the big jackpo t. People come running to him the

moment the door 's open. They want to have that ticket in their hands for the maximum amoun t of time possible. Unless they have a ticket in their hand, then they don ' t have any hope, and they have to have hope.'

. . .
nail clinic . . . wet T-shir t contest. . . foam beer coolers half price . . . vacancy . . . no vacancy . . . Citgo gas . . .
'So I think Daytona Beach is for all those people who run to the ticket boo th first on the morning after a lottery. They kno w that the really
good
beaches were swiped by rich people at least a century ago.

They kno w this is the only beach they're ever likely to get — but they also think that maybe for once they'll get a deep tropical tan instead of burning all pink, and maybe for once the margaritas'll make them witty instead of shrill and boring , and that maybe they'll meet the lay of a li fetime in the hotel

lobby, hot and ready to go. If it 's not Daytona Beach it 's Lake Havasu, and if it 's not Lake Havasu, it 's, I dunno -somewhere on Long Island.'

. . .
all the shrimp you can eat. . . dead car dealerships . . . helicopter rides . . . Bikers Welcome!

'Rich people — shit, they'll probably never set foot in Daytona Beach even if they reincarnate as a rich person a hundr ed times. They migh t fly over the place. Maybe their drugs'll pass through it. But that's it. So I guess Daytona Beach is also a way of crowd-controlling middl e-class and poor people.'

. . .
Taco Bell . . . discount gol f supplies . . . acupuncture

They found a hotel, a peacock-blue twelve-story blank of a building chosen because it seemed like a place that would ask no questions if the desk staff were, say, to witness tw o men carrying another unconscious man into the elevator from the side lobby door — this assump tion proved correct. They dumped Ted on

the bed. The view outside the windo w was of ocean and sky and nothing else — one blue rectangle on top of another, not even a bird. Janet closed the sheers.

The cell phone, now partially charged, chirped; it was Nickie. With mock poli teness, Nickie asked her, 'Hello, Jan, how are
you?

'How are we, Nickie? We're supercalifragilisticexpialido-cious. And we're all together in a Daytona Beach hotel — it 's a long story — and you wouldn ' t believe the half of it. Where are you?'

'I'm at Kevin's — with Beth.' 'Kevin's? With Beth?'

Janet took down Kevin's phone number and called on the land line while the cell recharged. Wade said, 'What's going on? Mom, what's—?'

The time-share in Kissimmee had been ransacked while Nickie was windo w shopping at Dillard's. Around the same time, Beth had gone to Kennedy Space Center, but had forgo tten her asthma inhaler, and when she went up to the room to fetch it, she saw the room had been ransacked. She'd phoned Nickie in tears. The odd thing was that nothing had been taken from either intrusion. In a panic they decided to hide at Kevin's.

Wade took the receiver, then held the receiver away from his ear: '—that moron Norm and his fucked-up scheme, and now you're into some deal so deep it scares the living shit out of me.'

'Beth, just stay there where you are. I'll come get you.'

'Come
get
us? You'll probably get us killed. Have you never heard of the invention called call display? You called one of Norm 's ice-blood ed thugs on our telephones? What were you
thinking ?

'I wasn' t thinking , Beth — no one's going to be killed,' said Wade, Janet though t, a touch unconvincingly. 'How could you
do
this to us, Wade?'

20

'Where are the boys?'

'They're downstairs, Ted.' Janet was lying beside her ex-husband on the hotel bed. 'D'you send them down?'

'Yes. I wanted quiet.'

'Good.' Ted turned his head to the curtained windo w. 'What time is it?' 'Early afternoon . Ish.'

'I feel awf ul.'

'I can imagine.'

'Why's the curtain closed?'

'Do you really want to kno w, Ted?' 'Yeah.'

Janet paused. 'Because I'm afraid of death. I looked out and there was this big blank sky and this big blank ocean, and it didn ' t even look like a real ocean, just this big pool of distilled water — clean but sterile . . .
dead.
So I closed the curtains.'

The tw o were silent and the room 's cool air felt like baby powder on Janet's arms and face. Ted said, 'I'm scared shitless of death, myself.'

'Yes, well, it always boils down to that in the end, doesn' t it?' 'I'm going to die.'

'Ted, don ' t expect too many tears from me.' 'Huh? No, of course not.'

Janet asked, 'Are you still feeling woozy?'

'As long as I don ' t move my head too quickly, I'm OK. The sun made me sick more than the booze. I barely touched that gin.' He paused. 'Did you tell Nickie? I mean, does she kno w that I kno w?'

'No — why?'

'No reason. You think I'm going to be pissed off at her, don ' t you? That I'm going to abandon her or cast her away.'

'It crossed my mind.'

'I'm not. Pissed off, that is. And I won' t be leaving her.' 'Now I
am
surpri sed.'

'It 's not what you think it is,' Ted said. 'Nothing ever is.'

'I have liver cancer.'

'I see.' Janet rubbed her arms. A phone in the next room began to ring. 'It 's not too warm in here, is it?' 'It 's nice.'

'How far along are you?' 'I'm toast.'

'Can we stick a number on that?' 'Nine mon ths maybe.'

The phone next door stopped ringing . 'You're a man of surpri ses, Ted Drummond .' 'I wish I weren' t.' He closed his eyes. 'Don' t tell Nickie.'

'I can' t guarantee that, Ted. I kno w too many secrets already. Something 's got to give.'

'Whatever. I don ' t care too much. I just wanted to have my bill s paid before I go. This hiv thing, now that I think abou t it, is almost like a relief— it 's like we're a part of a big death club.'

'There's a baby or tw o in the works, I migh t poin t out.' 'Oh yeah. Took the kids long enough .'

Down the hall, a vacuum hissed to li fe. Janet said, 'I feel so calm in here, Ted. Do you?' 'Yeah.'

'I feel like we're at the end of
Our Town,
where the people of Grover's Corner are talking to one another from inside their graves.'

'Huh.'

'That's what I always though t death would be like,' Janet said. ' Me — next to you — together — quietly talking . Maybe for ever.'

'That play always scared me crapless.'

'Oh, I kno w. Me, too. The play should come with a warning label. But the one thing it
did
do for me was to clarify in my mind what death would be like. And at the same time it made me not want to think

abou t death.'

Ted said, 'I try not to think abou t death too much. But I can' t stop. And I can' t bring myself to tell Nickie abou t my liver.'

'Why on earth not?'

'She was supposed to be my proo f that I was alive and invincible and young still. Once she thinks I'm checking out, then in my own head I really
will
be checking out.'

Janet giggl ed. Ted asked her, 'What's so funny.'

'Irony. Like an O. Henry shor t story. She thinks you'll drop
her.'

'Oh,
geez.'
Ted smiled:
big American teeth.
He put out his hand and Janet accepted it, and they looked heavenward together. People walked past the door of their room; somewhere a door slammed. 'Wade and Bryan should have tied me up years ago, but you're a bad girl for not stopping them.'

'I am, aren' t I?'

'Nah. Not really. I'm the shit around here.' 'I won' t contradict you.'

'When did I turn bad, Jan? Tell me, because I wasn' t always such a bad guy. I was an OK kind of guy when you and I started out. Jan? You listening?'

'Yes. No. I'm in shock. That's one question I never though t I'd hear from
your
mou th.'

'Pretend we're dead. We can say anything we want. We can ask each other anything we want. Wouldn ' t that be the best thing of all? If li fe were like that?'

Janet though t abou t this: 'The tw o of us — dead — I like that.' 'Yeah.'

A flock of Harleys gunned down the main strip twelve storeys below them. Janet said, 'I think you started going bad when you started cheating on me. My guess is that it was a few years after Sarah was born — shor tly after we moved West — with Violet -that receptionist of yours who was always too nice to me.' 'You're
good,'
Ted said. 'One, tw o, three,
bang?

'Didn ' t have to be a genius to figure out that one. Was she the first?'

'Yeah. But it didn ' t go on long. I cooled on her, she started blackmailing me, so I told her I'd mail her father nudie snapshots I'd taken of her with an Instamatic. Never heard from her again.'

'Instamatic?'

'Yeah — talk abou t ancient history — but that was how I turned on to porn. You never knew that abou t me, did you? At my off ice —
wow —
a huge locked credenza full of the weirdest shit going .'

'You should check the Internet, Ted.'

'Yeah. Well, I burned out on the stuff and chucked it out in, maybe, 1975
.
I remember staying late at the off ice and carefully shun ting boxloads of it down into the alley Dumpster, back when the off ice was on Dunsmuir Street. But then once it was gone I felt dir tier and more burn t out than I ever did when I had it

locked up in my off ice. I guess that's when I knew there was no going back. When I started gett ing mean.' '1975. That's abou t righ t. I didn ' t realize how sexual your li fe was. I though t it was your work stressing you out — I mean, you left aerospace to go into oil pipelines. I though maybe you felt as if your wings had been clipped. Like you'd lost your reason for being.'

'Did you ever cheat on me?'

'No. But I would have. With Bob Laine, your old tax guy, the nigh t of the party and your brouh aha with Wade on the lawn. I was that close.'

'What a disaster
that
nigh t was.'

'I cried the whole next day — on the tennis cour t bench.' 'Geez, I'm sorry. You should have gone for it.'

'You
can' t
be serious.'

'I am. A fling would have been fun for you.' 'You're righ t, it
would
have been.'

'Hey — did you kno w abou t my drug probl em?' 'Your drug probl em?'

'In the early eigh ties, coke. By the shovel.'

Janet sighed. 'I'm such a dumb bunny at figuring out that kind of thing, Ted. That's probably why you got away with so much.'

'Pretty much.'

Janet added tw o and tw o:
'That's
where our stock money went — it wasn' t the 1987 market crash at all.' 'Bingo. Sorry.'

Janet sighed. 'Ancient history.'

'The reason I'm not so much of a shit righ t now is because I'm not doing drugs. For one thing, I couldn ' t aff ord it, and second, I want to die clean. How's that for sappy?'

Pieces were falling into place for Janet. 'You're bankrup t because you blew all your money on drugs — didn ' t you?'

BOOK: All Families Are Psychotic
9.31Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Prairie Tale by Melissa Gilbert
Lucky in Love by Jill Shalvis
The Night by Heaton, Felicity
Nothing by Barry Crowther
Grand Cru Heist by Jean-Pierre Alaux, Jean-Pierre, Balen, Noël
BULLETPROOF BRIDE by Diana Duncan