All Families Are Psychotic

by Douglas Coupland

  ‘Research is my passion.’

  ‘Then your mother would be proud of you.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Oh yes. I’m sure she’s listening in on this phone call right now and thinking what a good boy you are. And have you discovered anything that might help people with liver cancer now? My ex-husband, Ted, has liver cancer.’

  Ted said, ‘Do we need to dig in for a long, cozy chat?’

  Janet shushed the group of them, and the men settled in to listen to the call as if it were yet another CBC radio documentary about New Brunswick barrel-making.

  Florian continued, ‘You know, Janet, there are a number of ways of treating cancer that the New York Times hasn’t heard about yet, and might well not for a while.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘You see, fixing cancer is one thing, but fixing society is another. Curing a huge disease like cancer would effectively wipe out the insurance industry and consequently the banking system. For each year we increase the average life span, we generate a massive financial crisis. That’s what the twentieth century was about – absorbing, year by year, our increased life spans.’

  ‘Florian, surely—’

  ‘Oh no, Janet, I assure you. I run one of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical firms. Glaxo Wellcome or Bayer – or Citibank, for that matter – will chop out my tongue for what I’ve just told you.’

  ‘Do you ever have a chance to talk about this? Is there someone in your life?’

  A pause: ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, you poor dear! It must be awful for you.’

  ‘Oh, it is.’

  I don’t believe it – Mom is bonding with Florian.

  ‘You must be in knots inside. I have colitis from worrying. What do you get?’

  ‘Shingles.’

  ‘Ooh – shingles is bad.’

  ‘And a rosacea rash. All over my nose and forehead.’

  ‘Have you found anything that works for it? Rashes are so iffy.’

  ‘A few things, but nothing that’s a magic bullet.’

  ‘My friend Bev has rosacea. I found her this cream sold out of Arizona that’s done wonders for her.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You should try some.’

  This is not happening. This is not happening.

  ‘At this point I’ll try anything.’

  Ted cut in, ‘Sorry to bust into your sewing circle here, gang, but, uh – are we going to talk about moolah?’

  ‘Ted, how can you be so vulgar at a time like this? Florian, I’m sorry.’

  ‘You are a dear, Janet.’

  Janet said, ‘Florian, come have dinner with me.’

  Florian sounded taken aback, almost teary. ‘Me? Really?’

  Wade, Ted and Bryan mouthed, What?

  Janet continued: ‘Yes, and it can be just the two of us. I’ll send the others out to Shakey’s for pizza.’

  Florian was touched. ‘I – don’t know what to say, Janet.’

  ‘Say yes. And I’ll give you this ridiculous letter, too. Good riddance. We’re in Daytona Beach. Is it driveable for you? I assume your computers have already located our address. How does six o’clock sound?’

  ‘Perfect.’

  ‘Very well, then. Six o’clock.’

  Janet hung up. ‘The poor boy misses his mother.’

  Shw walked into the room, grimy with automotive oil and carrying a thick stack of snapshot folders. ‘I think we’re finally having fun.’ She dropped the folders on the desk.

  ‘Excellent,’ Janet said. ‘Now, could all of you make sure those two dreadful people are safely locked up, and then could you all get out of my hair? Go meet Nickie and Beth at Kevin’s trailer. I have a date.’

  ‘Ooh, look at her – isn’t she a plump one.’

  A few hours later around dinner time, Shw, Beth and Bryan were sitting in Kevin’s trailer ogling the photo album of womb donor applicants Shw had found under a steel plate beneath Lloyd’s Buick LeSabre. Shw was in a good mood – her brush with captivity had made her uncharacteristically pleasant to be around. Watching from across the room, Wade caught a flash or two in which he could see the attraction she might hold for Bryan. Meanwhile Wade tried to pretend he wasn’t roasting, but failed. The trailer’s interior, while punishing, was nothing compared to outside, where even with the sun below the horizon anything alive was being turned into a festering variant of beef jerky.

  In the trailer’s tiny kitchen, Ted and Nickie were sitting on the floor, backs against the sink cupboard, holding hands and not saying much of anything. Nickie now knew about Ted’s liver cancer; their shared medical sagas bound them more closely together than might have any joyful experience. On the fridge opposite them was a snapshot of Kevin attending what appeared to be a bash for Disney mascots. He was defiantly smoking a Virginia Slim, and the lower part of his torso was clad in the body of Scrooge McDuck, while he bandied about Scrooge’s head as though it were a bracelet given to him by an unwelcome suitor. Beside this photo was a letter from Disney management, giving Kevin notice of his dismissal for mascot protocol violation.

  When Wade had first imagined this week in Florida leading up to the shuttle launch, this trailer was not part of the scenario. He’d envisioned – what? – noble dinners inside jet hangars, food served on aluminum plates, with sixteen-millimeter films of past launches played for him and his fellow diners, after which silver-headed astronauts of yore would emerge from behind a curtain and swap tales of close calls and post-flight dinners along with starlets wearing skimpy dresses with spaghetti strap shoulders. Young sexless children in jumpsuits would take him on tours of complex underground facilities in which he’d be exposed to blinding white lights that made him smarter and stronger and kinder. Afterwards, up on the tarmac, Bruce Springsteen and Pamela Anderson would be waiting inside a Hummer, and they’d go out for a smart French dinner, at which Wade would understand French and his tales would amuse and delight the assembled crowd.

  Ted called from the floor: ‘Is this thing a cockroach? What the fuck is it?’

  ‘It’s a palmetto bug,’ Wade said.

  ‘You can’t even see it from where you are. How can you tell?’

  ‘Everyone asks the same thing when they see them.’

  ‘Aren’t you Mr. Florida-the-Sunshine-State? Nickie, smash the bastard with your pump.’

  ‘Righty-oh, dear.’

  Thunk

  Was this a new low? Was it a new high? Yet again Wade could only wonder at this new place he and his family had entered.

  ‘So, how long do we stay here?’ Shw asked.

  ‘A little while,’ said Wade.

  ‘How much is a little while?’

  ‘Until my mother phones.’

  Wade said he was going out for a walk and took the cell phone with him. On impulse he called Sarah, and, luck of luck, reached her. ‘Baby sister?’

  ‘Wade.’

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hey to you. You feeling any better?’

  ‘A bit. I’m preparing for a sleep cycle. Gordon patted me on the butt a few minutes ago, but then a camera crew came in, and so that was the end of that. Our zero-G biological experiment might still be on, but frankly, I’m sick of myself at this point. Tell me some news that’ll temporarily transport me out of this metal dump. Where are you? What’s going on, huh? I know you, Wade. Something’s stewing. Confess to me now. You are powerless against my will.’

  Why not? ‘Fair enough. I’m standing outside a trailer in Orlando’s shiftiest neighborhood. It belongs to a guy named Kevin whose arm was shot up in the restaurant holdup yesterday. By the way, Mom and Nickie are best friends now. What else …’ Probably best not to tell her that we’re hiding out here from the thugs who kidnapped her husband. Should I go on? Why not. ‘And then a few hours ago, me, Mom, Dad and Bryan rescued Shw from these freaky rich people in Daytona Beach who were going to lock Shw in their basement prison, steal her baby, and then probably kill her – so suddenly Shw’s all nicey-nicey, and Bryan
’s like a pig in clover. Oh, by the way, Shw’s real name is Emily.’

  Silence – and faint mechanical sounds on Sarah’s end of the phone.

  ‘There’s more. Right now Mom’s having dinner with this whacked-out German-Bahamian pharmaceutical billionaire I used to work for. She’s going to sell him this, uh, historically important document I inherited from my pal Norm, who had a heart attack yesterday in Disney World. Splat, right onto the pavement.’

  More faint mechanical sounds on Sarah’s end.

  Why not tell her about Dad? Go for it … No – don’t. ‘Sarah?’

  ‘I’m listening, Wade. I’m digesting, actually.’

  ‘I figured you might be. Where’s Howie?’ Good – no sign of hesitation in the voice.

  ‘I don’t know. If you were Howie, what would you be doing right now?’

  ‘Groveling to you like a truffle pig.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. But he’s being out of character on this one. And I still don’t know what NASA was doing picking him up at the Brunswicks’. Usually I can read his actions like subtitles. This is infuriating.’

  ‘Don’t lose sleep over it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Howie’s not built for mystery. He’ll come to you soon enough.’

  ‘I can’t give the matter too much thought, Wade. Anyway, I have to have a full sleep cycle if I’m going to use lasers tomorrow. Say hi to the gang for me.’

  She was ringing off a bit too quickly. Wade asked, ‘Hey – whoa! Are you pissed off at us? Are you pissed of because we’re not there on the sidelines 24/7 holding balloons and sheets of twenty-four-by-thirty-six cardboards with Bible quotes? Is that what the other families are doing?’

  ‘Good God, no. It’s the pressure here. People can’t even pee in this place without Tom Hanks coming in and making a documentary, or IMAX capturing the moment. This phone probably isn’t secure – we’re probably going out on live webcast. The only thing I don’t like about this whole astronaut thing is the lack of privacy. But then I was chosen for my compatibility with groups as well as for my low body mass and varied skill sets.’

  ‘Romantic’

  ‘I’m practical, Wade. Always have been.’

  ‘Are you going to be up at four A.M. again?’

  ‘I will. Let me call you.’

  Wade gave her Ted’s cell number and they hung up.

  A few minutes later back inside, Shw looked behind a panel and said, ‘Have you seen the A/C in this rig? It’s like a hamster on a running wheel. Couldn’t we at least go to a restaurant and kill time that way?’

  ‘No,’ said Wade. ‘We’re all broke, and besides, this way Mom knows where we are.’

  The others were too listless to comment.

  Ted said, ‘Was it really safe to leave your mother with that carnivore Hun?’

  ‘He’s Swiss, Dad. And since when did you start caring about Mom?’

  Ted ignored Wade’s baiting. ‘German-Swiss. These days it’s the same thing. We might just as well have tossed her into a wood chipper. And God only knows what he’s done to Howie. Made into ravioli filling, probably. Bryan probably ate him.’

  ‘And so now you care about Howie? Hypocrite.’

  ‘Wade, use the brains God gave you. You know damn well Howie has to be in the bleachers for lift-off, even though he is a grating little shit.’

  How can I tell Dad that the lives of Sarah, Howie, Alanna and Gordon Brunswick had devolved into a low-budget 1970s sex comedy with an aerospace theme.

  Beth said, ‘Mr. Drummond—’

  ‘Ted. Call me Ted.’

  ‘Ted – have you always told Wade he was useless?’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why?’ He paused. ‘Because the little shit kept on landing in trouble – BB guns and rifles – neighbors showing up with half of their cats in each hand …’

  ‘That was an accident, Dad.’

  ‘Wade, let me finish here: cops arriving in the driveway every other day; setting fire to the neighbor’s house—’

  ‘Accident!’

  ‘I could go on. A discipline nightmare. Wait until your centrifugal zygote turns into a teenager. You’ll be coming to my grave and asking for advice from the Beyond.’

  Nickie threw down her hand. ‘Ted, stop talking like that. Liver’s the one cancer they have under control.’

  Ted hummed the funeral dirge; Nickie stormed out of the trailer.

  Beth said, ‘You spread love and sunshine wherever you go, don’t you?’

  ‘Skip the Sunbeam routine. Nickie’s a survivor.’

  Beth asked, ‘Did you tell Bryan he was useless, too?’

  ‘I didn’t have to. With him, it was always self-evident.’

  ‘And Janet?’

  ‘Well, yeah. I suppose.’

  ‘And Sarah?’

  Ted clenched his body. ‘I see what you’re doing. You’re trying to pin the results of their lives on me. Don’t bother.’ Ted shuffled a deck of cards, with rather too much noise and flourish.

  Beth said, ‘I barely know your entire family, but they strike me as textbook evidence of prophecy fulfilled.’

  ‘Is this religious?’

  ‘No. It’s reality.’

  Ted turned to Wade. ‘Wadey-poo, if I’d hugged you back when you were eight, or pretended to give a damn about your scale model of the Pyramids at Giza, do you think you’d have been any different as a person now?’

  ‘Let me think.’ Wade sipped his drink. ‘In essence, yes, but in circumstance, no. I think my life would be much more traditional-looking. I’d have a house and a wife and two kids and a dog. Maybe a—’

  Beth shot a glass of lemonade in his face.

  ‘What was that for?’

  ‘Because I’m not a wife and two kids, Wade. Screw you.’ She flew out, on the tail of Nickie.

  ‘Thanks, Dad.’

  The phone rang; Kevin’s machine answered: Kevin’s gone out to play, but he’ll be back soon.

  Beep

  ‘Kevin, it’s Mickey. I mended your slacks for you. Slacks – what a scream of a word. ’Bye, dear.’

  Click

  Almost as soon as that call ended, the phone rang again, Janet this time. ‘Wade? Ted? Anybody there?’

  Wade grabbed the phone. ‘Mom. Hey.’

  ‘Hello, dear.’

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Fit as a fiddle.’

  To judge from the background noise, she was on the road. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Flor, dear, where are we?’

  She’s calling him ‘Flor, dear’?

  Florian replied, ‘We’re in Kansas, dear.’

  ‘Flor, don’t be such a silly Billy. Where are we really?’

  ‘Interstate 95 headed up to Daytona Beach.’

  ‘We’re headed up to Daytona Beach, dear.’

  ‘Is Howie there?’

  ‘Yes, Howie is here.’

  ‘Did they do anything to him?’

  ‘Howie is fine, dear. Come meet us.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Chez Lloyd and Gayle.’

  ‘All of us?’

  ‘No. Just you, Ted and Nickie. No need for the others. Please. I mean it. Please confirm to me that you heard me say that.’

  ‘I heard you. Did you sell the letter?’

  ‘We’ll see you shortly, dear.’

  24

  Janet had always maintained her primness in the face of the modern world’s countless assaults against it – but her primness had gently snapped just a month before Florida. She’d been in a downtown Vancouver Internet café (must get out of the house; must get out of the house; must get out of the …) having a pleasant enough time of it tracking down old university friends and reigniting contacts dormant for forty-five years:

  Dear Dorothy,

  It’s me, Janet – Janet (Truro) Drummond. Can you believe it (!!!). Forty-five years later, living in Vancouver, three kids grown up [Sarah’s in the news a lot, you prob
ably see her every so often] and no more Ted. Yes, the Big ‘D’, he’s off with some young thing. A surprise, but …

  Too intimate too quickly. How about:

  Dear Dorothy,

  Janet Truro (Drummond) here. Surprise! This Internet is changing things so much. How are you? I don’t think we’ve seen each other since – when? I bumped into you at the Loblaws’ in Toronto in 1963 – has it really been that long?

  No. Too boring. Janet then remembered Dorothy peeking into Sarah’s stroller, seeing her handless arm, and beating a hasty retreat. Forget Dorothy. Who needs her?

  It was at this point the man beside her, whom Janet had noticed only in passing as a business type, gave an exasperated sigh. To judge from his puckered forehead, scrunched up lips and clumsy mousing, he was a neophyte. A dark burly man, he seemed friendly, and was of Janet’s own vintage. He was also evidently deep inside a search but having no luck; Janet couldn’t resist taking a peek at his screen. She was fully expecting an English-language Cambodian site along the lines of ‘Me So Horny,’ but instead saw a site for a propane firm in Missouri. The man’s monitor made feeble blink blink blink noises, indicating mistake after mistake, and he was losing patience.

  ‘Maybe I can help you,’ said Janet.

  The man looked as if he’d been caught thinking out loud. ‘I just can’t make this thing work. All I find is irrelevant crap.’

  Janet gently asked, ‘You were searching for specific information?’

  ‘Yeah. My kids bought me this new CD player and I can’t find any CDs I like in stores – so I thought I’d go onto the Internet.’

  ‘What CDs are you looking for?’

  ‘The Kingston Trio. Four Lads.’

  ‘Oh! I don’t believe it, those were my favorites.’ Janet’s enthusiasm was like a spaniel tugging at its leash.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Oh, the fun I used to have with them in the background. They were so cute, and I was at university. Sweaters and ponytails. I was Little Betty Coed.’

  ‘Where’d you go?’

  ‘U of T.’

  ‘My brother went there. I went to McGill. I’m Ernie.’

  ‘Janet.’

  Janet decided that she wanted Kingston Trio CDs, too. The hunt was on. Along the way the two bantered like old pals. Janet couldn’t remember the last time she’d clicked so well with a man right off the bat, and soon they’d located dozens of CDs, five of which Ernie bought as a gift for Janet.