All Families Are Psychotic (6 page)

to; his inner corrosion was well-hidden, whereas Nickie, at his side, looked anything but relaxed, qui te

drained of blood and oblivious to the going s on with the astronauts and the crowd. And once Nickie had caugh t Janet's eyes, she zeroed in directly on Janet's very core and said hello in a way that was too

genuine to ignor e. Janet was as terse as she could muster, and tried to pay more attention to Sarah, who was still being pestered by Shw. Wade had vanished, and thus had precluded an even more awkward social situation.
Thank you, Wade. I owe you one.

Sarah was looking for a way out of talking to Shw. Janet wondered if she had a secret cue to alert

securi ty to come and fend off people who had become too clingy — the way the queen used her handbag to semaphore messages to her staff. Janet was going to come to her daugh ter's rescue when Sarah

looked up, smiled and said, 'Oh hello, Beth.'

Beth?
Janet turned around , and there was Beth in one of her best Sunday church outf its, seemingl y li fted from a museum diorama depicting Kansas li fe in the year 1907. Shw was not happy at being eclipsed. She said to Beth, 'So,
you're
Wade's wife, huh? What's with the prairie schoolm arm dress, eh? You look like a fridge magnet.'

Beth said, 'And you must be Shw. Hello.' Two cats handcuffed together would radiate more warmth. Sarah said to Shw, 'Shw, Beth is religiou s. Respect each other's bound aries.' Sarah looked up and saw Ted and Nickie. 'Hi, Dad.'

Ted said to Bryan, 'Hey, Bryan, introduce me to your li tt le lady.' Shw heard this. ' " Your li tt le lady?" What planet are
you
from?' 'Excuse me, then,' said Ted. ' Madame has a name?'

'Yeah. It 's
Shw.'

'Huh? Sorry, I didn ' t hear that.' 'Shw, bozo. S-H-W.'

Ted was genuinely perplexed. 'Let me understand this — your name is spelled S-H-W — and that's all?' 'That's righ t.'

'I've never met anybody named Shw before.' 'So now you have. I chose it myself.'

'Hey, Bryan — if you've got a few extra vowels, why don ' t you sell one to the li tt le firecracker here?' Shw's posture went rigid . She locked her eyes at Ted and said, 'You're a total asswipe. I didn ' t believe

Bryan, but now I do. You're a shitty person, Ted Drummond . And you screwed up your family so badly they'll never be fixed. You must be really proud of yourself.'

'Trust Bryan to hook up with a disaster like you.'

'Don' t talk that way abou t Shw,' Bryan said. 'She's pregnant and I don ' t want you stressing her out and hur ting the baby.'

'Oh, Bryan, ferchrissake,' said Shw, 'I'm dumping the thing, OK? So don ' t get all high hat.' 'You are
not
gett ing rid of our baby.'

'Yes, I
am,
and you can' t do anything to stop me. What are you going to do — strap sheet-metal around my vagina?'

The crowd witnessing all of this was riveted. Beth cut through the bickering and asked Sarah, 'Tell me, Sarah — do you believe in extraterrestrial beings?' Beth's smile was ominou sly sweet.

Sarah looked at her sister-in-law. 'I think li fe and living beings are strewn abou t the universe as generously and as commonl y as pollen in a July breeze.'

'So then tell me, do you believe in God?'

'Let me put it this way: If God is dead, or if God never existed in the first place, then anything would be permi tted, wouldn ' t it? But not everything
is
permi tted.' Sarah stopped. That was her full reply.

'I see.'

'Hey—' Shw said to Beth, 'is God a vegetarian? You look like one of those people who kno ws everything.' 'I don ' t understand your question.'

'Look at it this way — say there's a snake out in the desert, and the snake eats a rat. It 's the food chain, and so it 's no big deal. God isn' t involved. And then say you're in Africa and a lion eats a gazelle or

something. Same thing: food chain; God's not there either. But then say that same lion one week later

kill s a human being and then eats that human being. What — suddenly God's involved in it? — like we're the only divine link in the food chain or something?'

Janet began to withdraw from the rather stagy conversation. Sarah could hold her own with anyone. She then felt a gentle tap on her should er. She looked around and saw Nickie.
Huh?

'Janet, can we talk for a minu te?' 'Talk?'

'Yes. I think it 's impor tant.'

Janet became wary. 'I don ' t think there's anything you and I could—'

'Two things have happened,' Nickie said. 'You need to kno w abou t them.' Curiosity won out. 'What the hell. Sure.'

'Come into the loung e. It 's a zoo out here.'

Janet was happy to be able to go inside. The heat had been wiping her out, and walking into the

Peabody was like walking into a brisk autumn day. The tw o women made their way to a small loung e — a tasteful rattan and sea foam dream, like something from an upmarket outdoor wear catalog. The

moment they sat down, the waiter took their orders — tw o club sodas. 'So then what's up,' Janet said.

'I have aids, too.'

Janet though t abou t this. 'OK, I'm sorry you had to join the club, but what do you want me to do abou t it?'

Nickie was abou t to say something, though t the better of it, and stopped herself. Janet asked, 'From Wade?'

Nickie nodded. 'Pretty sure.' 'Does Ted kno w?'

'No. I've only kno wn for three days. I told him I was having a woman's probl em, and that shut him up pretty good.'

'With Ted it would.'

Their sodas arrived. Janet briefly considered a toast, and then realized it would seem like a sick joke, so she sipped quietly. 'You said there were tw o things. What was the other?'

'It 's abou t Helena.'

'Helena?' Janet put down her glass. Helena was her oldest friend with whom there had been a terribl e falling out. 'What
about
Helena?'

Nickie said, 'I don ' t kno w the whole story of what happened between the tw o of you, but for what it 's worth, just before the end she said she was sorry for everything she did to you. She said it was her

craziness that did it, and not her. She said there was some other person who took over her body and that her explosion with you — her word:
explosion —
was her one regret in li fe.'

Janet didn ' t move. 'How could you possibly kno w any of this?'

'Her sister is my dad's second wife. She took me out to the mental facili ty or whatever it is they call those things these days. We got to see her on the day they were trying a new medication on her. It gave her

this small windo w of clarity where she said all these things. And then the medication stopped working , and then a day later she killed herself. I guess the medication went wrong. I'm sorry. But she did

apologi ze. She really did miss you. She really did care abou t you.'

Helena . . .
'Janet?'

Across the lobby, extremely sick childr en hooked to machines and tubes were being wheeled out into the sunligh t.

Janet had one memory of Helena that shone brigh ter than all others. It was from September 1956 — Janet and Helena, young coeds, were walking in downtown Toron to, en rou te to lunch with Janet's father at Eaton's. The air was tinged with the sugar of yello wing leaves and the sun was palpably lower on the

horizon. Helena was teasing Janet abou t her blossoming romance with Ted: 'It 's those big American teeth, isn' t it?
That's
what you like. Those big American teeth, and that thing he does with his eyes.' 'What thing?'

'Don' t go
what-thing?
ing me. You kno w
exactly
what I mean.'

'So what if his eyes are nice.' Janet fished around in her dutiful brain to find something bad to cancel out the good: 'But that wreck of a car of his farts blue smoke like crazy.'

'You are so repressed, Janet Truro. And Ted is
such
a Yankee.'

'Helena, you should see the packages his mother sends him — they make me dizzy.
Heaps
of sweaters and shir ts — mono-grammed, and inside a bundl e of shir ts there was, get this, a bott le of rye! From his

mother!
I can' t imagine what his father sends him.' 'A box of hookers.'

'Oh, Helena, stop!' Janet's nose exploded. ' My gee-dee nostrils are flapping .' ' Maybe a box of
dead
hookers. You kno w those Americans.'

Janet gasped for breath.

'So, Troo, does he want you to be a goody-goody or his slut?' Troo was Janet's nickname, an abbreviation of Truro.

'Helena!'

'Answer my question, which is it?' 'Why — I can' t
tell
you.'

'Yes, you can.'

Janet knew qui te well what Helena meant, but Helena's question scared her, in both its obvious and indir ect impli cations. 'He wants me to be a nice girl .'

' My, what a satisfying answer
that
was.' A concrete mixer rumbl ed past. 'So if Ted is Mister American Hotshot, why's he going to school up in Canada? Why aren' t the folks from Yale coming with buggy whips to chase him home?'

'Americans think Canada is sort of glamorou s. Mysterious.' A snor t: 'Kee-
riste
. You
must
be joking .'

Janet couldn ' t qui te believe it herself — a city of porridg e, bricks and sensible rain garments — but she had to defend her suitor. 'Well, we
do
worship the queen, you kno w. And to Americans, royalty's as weird and foreign as communi sm. Communi sm with jewels and missing chins.'

They stopped and were looking at Mexican sombreros and a papier maché cactus inside a travel agency's windo w display. Behind these, a scale model airlin er aimed toward the future. Janet ran down the street. 'Try and catch me, Helena.'

'Troo, slow
down.'
Helena was sligh tly overweigh t. 'You'd think this was the gee-dee Kentucky Derby.' She puffed her way to the corner where a Don' t Walk signal had stopped Janet in her tracks. 'Come on, Troo — let's cross.'

'But it says don ' t walk.'

'You are such a chickenshit, Troo. Live dangerously and jaywalk. C'mon ! ' Helena was across the street now. 'Yoo hoo ! ' she taunted. 'I'm on the other side of the street, and it 's
lovely
over here.'

Janet decided to cross the street just as a constable walked around a corner, blew his whistle, called her over to him and gave her a jaywalking ticket. Helena was in stitches. Janet was mor tified — another 1950s word.
My permanent record . . . a blemish!

Mr. Truro missed lunch in the Eaton's cafeteria — shepherd's pie, carro ts, rice pudding and Cokes — but instead offered to drive Janet and Helena home. Willi am had become stout with middl e age, and with it

came a sort of handsomeness. Helena was in the fron t seat saying outrageous things to bait him: 'Women are
much
better than men at hammering out details. I bet you anything women take over the legal

pro fession by 1975.'

'Janet, where'd you hook up with this suff ragette? Soon she'll have you taking over my job at Eaton's.' 'And what would be wrong with that?' Helena demanded.

' My li tt le Janet in a job-job? She'd be ... swamped.' Helena rose to the bait. 'Swamped? Why
swamped?'
'The world 's a hard place, Helena,' Willi am said.

'So what?'

'So
what?
You're
young.
That's what.' 'Oh, bro ther!'

Janet said, 'You guys are talking abou t me like I'm not even here.' Her father had ears only for Helena.

'You don ' t kno w,' said Willi am. 'Life is boring . People are vengeful. Good things always end. We do so many things and we don ' t kno w why, and if we do find out why, it 's decades later and kno wing why doesn' t matter any more.'

'You want to keep your li tt le Janet in an ivory tower?'

'Yes, I
do.'
The Impala was at a red ligh t; the quieted engine made this last word of Willi am's sound as if an ogre had belched it out. The moment was charged and needed defusing. 'Helena, turn on the radio,' Janet piped up. 'I feel like hearing Dean Martin.'

Willi am said, 'That wop?' 'Daddy, he's
not a wop.'

Willi am accelerated through the newly green ligh t. Invisible hands pulled Janet into the rear seat's foam. Helena asked to be dropp ed off at home, near the corner of Bloor and St. George, so Willi am had to make a detour. Once there, Helena poin ted out the house in which she was renting an upper floor. 'What a dump, eh, Mr. Troo?'

'You're the arty type, Helena. It suits you.'

'Ciao then,' and off she sauntered.
Ciao? What on earth does that mean?
Janet felt like the one bird left behind after the rest of the flock had migrated. She couldn ' t shake the feeling, and when Ted propo sed in a Hungarian restaurant on the next Friday nigh t, she accepted. For the mon ths prior to the wedding ,

not a day passed withou t moments of remorse, as though she'd spent all of her carefully saved money on a dress she had no place to wear.
But Ted's so handsome and mysterious! But what have I done? I barely know the man. What if he snores? What if we don' t get along? What if
—

The next what-if was hard to even think of, let alone put into words, the what-if of the flesh.
Our bodies

— his body — I've never even seen
... all
of him. Oh dear. Oh dear. What am I going to do?

It was at this poin t where magazine articles, Doris Day films and her mother went silent.
There's something wrong going on here, but what?

A hand shook Janet's should er. 'Janet? Janet? Are you OK?' It was Nickie, and Janet was back in the Peabody hotel.

'I'm fine. Please. Fine.' 'Are you sure?'

Janet looked at Nickie. Any hostili ty she'd been harboring against the woman had left. 'Sure.'

Both women then heard footsteps coming close to them -cowboy boo ts on marble: Wade walked around the corner, righ t into Janet and Nickie's table, obviously expecting neither of them. 'Oh — hi — I . . .'

'Hello, Wade.'

'Nickie. Hey. I—'

Janet said, 'Relax. Sit down with us.' 'Why? What's up?'