All Families Are Psychotic

by Douglas Coupland

  Wade broke the conspiracy of silence. ‘Bryan,’ he said, ‘you’ve tried to off yourself, what – three times? – and never got it right. Are you sure you really do want to off yourself?’

  Janet said, ‘Wade! Don’t go giving him fresh impetus.’

  ‘No, Mom – it’s good to be talking about it like this,’ Bryan said. ‘Everybody pretends I never did anything, but I did.’ He registered the looks his mother and brother gave him. ‘I can see that you’re wondering if I’m going to try it again. And the answer is no. But then these moods hit me. Shit. I don’t know any more.’ He sloshed around what little wine remained in his glass. ‘It’s depressing to think that my moods aren’t even remotely cosmic, that all they are is the result of lazy little seratonin receptors in my brain.’

  ‘Are you taking anything for it – your depression?’

  ‘I’ve taken everything. I don’t think I’ll ever reset my brain back to zero again.’

  Janet said, ‘Bryan is working.’

  ‘Really? Where?’ Wade asked.

  ‘I play bass in bar bands, and the TV commercial work is pretty steady. I get by. A nine-to-five job would really do me in.’

  The doorbell rang. The three of them stared down the hall at the front door as though the next few seconds were beyond their control, like an eclipse. Bryan went to answer it. Whoomp! Ted charged past Bryan, booming, ‘Where is that sleazy little fuck?’ Nickie burst through the door moments after him, her Nissan Pathfinder parked akimbo on the front lawn just outside the door. She was shouting, ‘Ted, don’t be a moron. It’s not as big a deal as you’re making it. Shit.’

  Ted’s face was bruise-colored in fury. Wade had dealt with Ted’s anger more times than he could count. His instinct was to protect his mother. He stood up and placed himself between the two. He said, ‘Dad, calm down!’ but instead Ted raised a .233 and shot Wade through the side of his stomach. The bullet passed through him and lodged inside Janet’s right lung, entering just below the ribcage.

  ‘Jesus, Ted!’ Nickie came toward Wade, who was clutching his side, his blood puddling freely there in the kitchen.

  Wade was incredulous. ‘Ten years in the States and nothing happens. I’m in Canada for eight hours and—’

  He heard a thunk and turned around to see Janet on the floor. ‘You shot Mom, you goddamn freak! Jesus – Bryan, call 911. Dad, you’re gonna bake in prison the rest of your life. I hope it was worth it.’ He bent down to cradle Janet.

  Sirens were audible almost instantly. Ted slumped on a plastic kitchen chair, swaying, white as paper.

  Wade screamed out, ‘OK it was an accident – everyone got that? An accident. He was trying to show us his Clint-fucking-Eastwood gun moves, and he didn’t know the gun was loaded. End of story.’ He looked down at Janet, saying, ‘Sorry, Mom – it’s my fault. I’m sorry.’

  Nickie forced Ted to remain seated. He was stuttering, his head between his knees. Bryan put down the phone and came over to Wade and his mother. He squatted on the floor beside them. ‘God, Wade,’ he said, ‘I’d kill to be murdered.’

  Paramedics banged through the door.

  05

  Howie drove up to the front of Janet’s motel, looking angry and distracted. As far as Janet could remember, this lack of spaniel good cheer was a first. For a quick moment she hoped that the drive to NASA could be interesting. She wouldn’t have to hear about lively meals with the space-crazy Brunswick family, or the weather, or string or pebbles or lint or starlings or regular sugar versus sugar cubes – or just about anything that popped through Howie’s brain.

  ‘Good morning, Janet – another beautiful day in F.L.A.’

  So much for that notion. He’s talking about weather already – in clichés no less – and he’s determined to be perky. ‘Yes, good morning, Howie.’

  ‘Hop in for a ride in the Howmobile. Cape Canaveral ho!’

  ‘Howie …’ Janet stood beside Howie’s open window. ‘I’m not feeling too well today. I don’t think I can manage another NASA dog-and-pony show – all that walking and … smiling.’ Janet waited for Howie to protest.

  ‘You’re sure you don’t want to come?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘OK, I’ll see you soon enough.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Fare thee well.’ And, vroom! Howie was gone.

  For the first time since Janet had met him, years ago, she was mildly curious about what might be going on inside his mind.

  Her rental car wouldn’t start. She walked into the motel office and asked the kidney thief to order a taxi, and soon an ancient Chrysler, seemingly bound together by rubber bands and masking tape, thumped up to the curb. Janet got in and asked to be taken to an Internet café she’d seen listed in a tourist flyer.

  The science fiction planet of Florida passed by the cab window: pastel-toned and smooth, one image dissolving into the next. The palmetto scrub landscape would, for no apparent reason, burst into a cluster of wealthy superhomes here, then a burst of lower-middle class discount stores there – followed by a business park, followed by a tourist attraction. All of these money-driven bursts.

  When she arrived at the Internet café, godless children in black outfits up near the front casually sipped elaborate coffees that in the Toronto of her youth would surely have been banned as threats to society. The shop’s background music was a popular song apparently called ‘Boompboompboompboompboompboomp’. Janet walked to the back of the café to find an empty seat in front of a computer screen.

  Thank God I can finally read my e-mail. Thank God I can be in a place with a few people who aren’t scared by technology and who don’t fear the future.

  Janet had thirteen e-mails, most of them from members of her medical list groups. She replied to Ursula, an ex-prostitute in Dortmund, and entered an online discussion about a potential Mexican source of thalidomide to relieve the ulcers in her mouth. Janet and Ursula’s old source had moved into the more lucrative field of banned diet medications, and there was gossip that a British firm, Buckminster, was going to have legal supplies available shortly.

  Janet’s pocket buzzer vibrated; she downed her medication plus a Pepto-Bismol as unthinkingly as movie popcorn. The world outside – cars and signage and electrical wires – was almost too smothered in light to read properly, like objects in the movies being sucked into a glowing UFO.

  She stood up for a stretch. Around her, she saw a few Bryanish loser types furtively glued to their screens, doubtlessly ferreting out porn. Some of them bothered to hide their screens as she neared them; others couldn’t care less. Janet saw images that to her were more gynecological than pornographic; she could only wonder how it was that men craved these identical, repetitive snapshots, as though one day these men were going to hit upon the ultimate shot that would render all the others unnecessary. Some years back, when she’d first begun tromping about the Internet, she’d been flustered at how even the most innocent of words placed into a search engine triggered an immediate cascade of filth. Apparently there existed no unsexed word in the language.

  She sat down again … ahhhhh … Janet’s computer made her feel connected in a manner TV never did. TV made her feel she was a member of society, but it also made her feel like just another ant in an anthill. She massaged her fingers and noticed the girl behind the counter giving her the stare. Janet decided that she really ought to buy some more coffee or a snack; she’d been hogging a terminal for hours, not that there was a huge demand for them. The counter girl was wearing what appeared to be a blue nightie, and her eyes were smeared with mascara. Janet had given up on youth fashions with the Sex Pistols in 1976. Young people could wear green plastic trash bags for all she cared, and apparently some of them did.

  Janet requested a café Americano, which the counter girl made at a snail’s crawl and slopped across the counter. When Janet asked for ice cubes to cool down the coffee, she received the same look she might have got had she been in a chain gang holding a dented tin cup.
Janet looked at the girl sweetly, paid her money, and as if she were cresting the top of a roller coaster, added, ‘Screw you, too, dear,’ with bright, sugary eyes. Until recently she would never have had the nerve to act on such a thought, but she was a new Janet now. She went to sit back down at her terminal. The hard drive purred. Time vanished. She looked up and wondered, Where am I again? … Florida. Orlando, Florida. Cape Canaveral is an hour away. My daughter is going into space on Friday.

  Suddenly it was the afternoon. Where did the morning go? She paid her bill with the chippy clerk, then phoned a cab and went outside to wait. Goggle-like sunglasses protected her eyes, now photosensitive from her medications. She stood in a thicket of dry, unmowed grass in which lizards frolicked about. The grass gave her shins tiny paper burns. She heard a honk and looked up, expecting a taxi, but instead it was … Bryan? It was, in his hockey hair and signature worn-out black leather jacket, simmering silently like a disgruntled pre-rampage employee, his face as stressed and lined as a trussed-up pork roast.

  ‘Mom – geez, what are you doing out in the middle of nowhere?’

  Janet got into the rear passenger seat. ‘I was in the Internet café, Bryan. When did you arrive in Orlando? Have you checked into the Peabody? And why are you wearing a leather jacket on the hottest day in the history of weather?’

  ‘Well, what are you doing in the backseat? I’m not a limo service.’

  ‘I feel like being treated like a queen today. Did you check into the hotel?’

  Bryan growled.

  ‘I’ll take that as a yes. What’s put you into such a pissy mood, buster?’

  ‘Had a huge fight with Shw. Knock down, drag out.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ Janet decided to remain noncommittal.

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask me what about?’

  ‘A few years ago, yes. These days? No.’

  ‘She’s a witch.’

  ‘Can you turn up the A/C?’

  Bryan cranked the air-conditioning. ‘She’s going to abort our baby.’

  ‘Really now.’ Under no circumstances become involved in this. Hey – wait – me, a grandmother at last!

  ‘She didn’t even bother to ask me what I thought.’

  ‘And what do you think?’ Janet, this is not your business.

  ‘The baby is the first good thing that’s ever happened to me. My life’s always been about nothing, and now I finally have something, and she’s going to go and kill it.’

  There was a silence. ‘My motel’s the third right after this light, Bryan.’

  ‘You’re not staying at the Peabody?’

  ‘Too expensive.’

  ‘I should have guessed. Why do you always have to pull your “I’m destitute” routine?’

  ‘Bryan, how do you even know Shw’s planning to do this?’

  ‘She kept on being weird whenever I’d talk about cribs and Lamaze classes. Then I caught her in a lie with the phone’s messaging system. A clinic appointment.’

  ‘You’re certain, then.’

  ‘Yeah.’ A stoplight turned green. ‘Forget it. How are you feeling, Mom?’

  ‘Fair enough. Nothing too astounding. But you’re trying to change the subject.’

  ‘I am. It’s just – hard for me.’

  Janet and her son sat quietly in their respective emotional worlds. As they neared the motel, she asked him where he was headed next.

  ‘Nowhere. Just driving.’

  ‘Why don’t we just drive around for a while then?’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Why not?’

  Bryan’s face lit up, as though Janet had allowed him to lick chocolate cake batter from a pair of electric beaters. He relaxed. ‘Do you want to know a funny thing about Shw?’

  ‘Amuse me.’

  ‘She was never toilet-trained.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Just what I said. Her parents never trained her. They considered toilet training “patriarchal and bourgeois” – a way of “suppressing personal freedom in the name of sanitation.” They say sanitation is very middle-class and very to-be-loathed.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘Nah. They’re these leftover sixties lefties. You wouldn’t believe the junk they have in their heads.’

  ‘Does Shw use a toilet these days?’

  ‘Yeah. She said that when she was five she looked around and saw that nobody else was wearing diapers and she just kind of figured it out on her own.’

  Janet said, ‘Something like that could seriously mess up a child.’ Now was as good a time as any to ask the following question: ‘Bryan, what exactly is the history behind Shw’s, er, name?’

  ‘Oh, that. When she turned sixteen, her parents told her she should choose her own name, and that the name she was given at birth was limiting and perhaps socially crippling.’

  ‘What, then, is Shw?’

  ‘It stands for Sogetsu Hernando Watanabe – a martyred hero of the Peruvian Shining Path terrorist faction.’

  ‘She couldn’t just choose Lisa or Kelly?’

  ‘Not Shw.’

  Janet mulled this over. ‘What’s her real name?’

  ‘She won’t tell me.’

  ‘Bryan, if you could have chosen a name at fourteen, what name would you have chosen?’

  ‘Me? I’d have chosen Wade. I was always jealous of his name.’

  ‘Maybe we ought to go to the hotel,’ Janet said. ‘And maybe meet Wade for lunch. He’s there now.’

  ‘He was supposed to get in last night, but he didn’t.’

  ‘That’s another story altogether.’ And Janet told Bryan about the bar brawl.

  The Peabody was a deluxe high rise of the sort Janet associated with post-World War II movies in which virtuous women lunched with friends and resisted overtures to go upstairs with dark, mysterious men. Beneath the entranceway’s front canopy was a small crowd, at the head of which Janet saw Sarah and another astronaut – Commander Brunswick?

  Sarah saw the two of them and waved them over. Bryan gave the car to a valet, and then he and Janet navigated across a tangle of feed cables and then through a throng of broiling, rubbernecking tourists. Oblivious to the crowds and noise and heat, Sarah said, ‘Hi, Mom. Hi, Bryan. This is Commander Brunswick. I don’t think you’ve met yet.’

  Janet stuck out her hand to what seemed to her to be a tiny, perfect Great Dane, a man as small as Sarah. Wait – that would mean he’s not a Great Dane at all, but a Weimaraner – and yet he –

  Commander Brunswick said, ‘Hi there,’ but didn’t stick out his hand. He said, ‘Sorry – we can’t touch people this close to takeoff. Colds and flus and all that stuff.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Sarah, what’s going on here? This wasn’t in the schedule,’ said Bryan.

  ‘It’s a quickie press conference – a fundraiser for the March of Dimes. We’re waiting for some kids to get here for a photo op – we were going to do it at the Cape, but some of the kids got too sick. We’ll be heading back to the tin in about’ – she looked at her watch – ‘seven minutes.’

  ‘The tin?’

  ‘The shuttle.’

  A radio person asked Commander Brunswick a question, which grabbed all of his attention. Wade emerged from the throng of heads and bodies. Sarah grabbed him by the shoulder and said to Janet, ‘Mom, I hear Wade visited the Brunswicks’ place this morning. What did you think of them – the Brunswick clan?’

  Wade said, ‘It was like going to a Trekkie convention – all these kids on the front lawn.’

  ‘I know. Aren’t they a trip?’ Sarah looked to Janet and giggled. ‘They’re appalled by our family, you know. They really are. I was there last week, and it reminded me of all those science fairs I used to go to when I was young. I thought Alanna Brunswick was going to bring around a tray of Ritz crackers garnished with fetal pigs.’

  Janet asked Wade where Beth was.

  ‘She’ll be here in a sec. She wanted to change and look nice for Sarah.’


  Janet took a swig from an Evian bottle filled with motel tapwater. Carrying a bottle around with her made her feel faintly chic. She then saw Shw cut through the crowd, as itty-bitty as an astronaut, dressed in Lycra and aging black motorcycle leathers. She looked as if she’d groomed herself entirely with moistened fingertips.

  Bryan, quite pleased to be able to introduce a girlfriend – any girlfriend – said, ‘Wade – this is …’ But he never got a chance to finish. Shw scootched past, giving Janet a quick greeting, and then jockeyed right up to Sarah and began barraging her with personal questions. ‘So, how much can you bench press? Do you know your IQ? Aside from your hand, do you have any other medical conditions that might, er, affect your being an astronaut? Do you think you’ll ever have kids? Is there any reason you might not be able to?’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Bryan, ‘leave my sister alone.’

  Shw turned around, fuming: ‘No, you leave me alone. This is a free country, and your sister and me are talking. Got it?’

  Janet and Wade made eyes at each other, which Bryan noticed, and which caused him to flush. Meanwhile, the crowd continued growing, and electrical testing noises sounded like large angry bugs.

  Ted and Nickie appeared, and Janet hadn’t been prepared for the moment. Her body twitched as though she’d suddenly been asked to come onstage to sing a karaoke song. She knew her face would be reddening just like Bryan’s.

  ‘Oh, hello, Jan,’ said Ted. ‘Rather a funny place to meet again.’

  ‘Hello, Ted.’

  Ted’s signature eye twinkle had mutated since she’d seen him last, having now become the bland politician’s smile – the smile of someone who knows that the bodies in the car trunk are indeed dead. But he was tanned and wearing garments that were flattering in a younger way than Janet might have selected. That would be the influence of Nickie. Janet thought Ted looked better than he had any right to; his inner corrosion was well-hidden, whereas Nickie, at his side, looked anything but relaxed, quite drained of blood and oblivious to the goings on with the astronauts and the crowd. And once Nickie had caught Janet’s eyes, she zeroed in directly on Janet’s very core and said hello in a way that was too genuine to ignore. 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.