Twisted Family Values

by V. C. Chickering

  “I know. You’re right.” Charlie stood up. “Ahhh, all right, I’ve got to get back to work. Are you going to E.J.’s thing in a few weeks?”

  Biz was taken aback. “What thing?”

  “He’s got some comedy gig in the city, and supposedly there are scouts coming. Mom said we should surprise him and be there to support him and laugh heartily. If you would get a smartphone we could all be on a group text chat together. It’s really useful.”

  “Or you could call me. Because that seemed to have sufficed for a hundred years.”

  “I’ll send a pigeon.”

  “Perfect.”

  Charlie walked Biz to his office door. He leaned in to peck her cheek. She had to stop herself from swooning. “Have you been drinking?”

  “Nah,” she said, and took the stairs.

  * * *

  Biz left Charlie’s in a state. Some things had been resolved, but certainly not all. In trying to tie up loose ends Biz worried she created more fray. She put a Cake CD into the car player and turned up “I Will Survive” mind-blowingly loud so she wouldn’t have to hear herself cry, or sing. Then she examined all the ways in which her life was a mess, and how there was a very real possibility it wasn’t “all going to work out” as Nana Miggs and her Aunt Cat had always promised.

  Rounding the sharp turn on Winding Hill Road, Biz accelerated at the anthem’s chorus and swerved to miss a chipmunk darting across the road. In jerking the car she hit a patch of gravel in just the wrong way. Her car slid off the road and into the ditch along the edge of the woods near a driveway, knocking over a mailbox before coming to a jolting rest at a large oak tree. The whole thing took about four seconds to unfold but felt terrifyingly interminable. She was alive, but banged up; the car, however, was totaled.

  Her instinct was to put her shaking hands up to her face. She noticed blood and glass on her trembling fingertips. Biz tried to make a sound but only emitted a squeak. Glistening shards of glass fell from her hair and rested on her arm, but there was her seat belt, intact. She checked her face in the rearview mirror. A wide red gash cut across the bridge of her nose. She looked over at the passenger seat to where her beautiful, petulant daughter would have been sitting, and an oak tree loomed instead. This was an older-model car, bought before air bags were mandatory. If Ruby had been sitting there … if Ruby had been sitting there … She panicked and began to hyperventilate. Not since the news of Biz’s second pregnancy had she felt this much disequilibrium. A wave of nausea revisited her like an unsympathetic friend, and she unceremoniously threw up in her lap. Unaware of what to do next, she repeated “Um, um, um,” until she remembered Ruby had made her start carrying her cell phone. I just need one friend, she remembered. One friend is all I need. She called Charlie. “I’m so sorry,” she said over and over, repeating it like a scratched record, hiccupping gasps of air. It was the only shred of concrete truth that felt real to her in that moment. The rest felt utterly surreal.

  When Charlie arrived on the scene he threw his car into park and ran to her, leaving his own motor running. Biz was so relieved to see him she burst into fresh tears. “Shh,” he said, “it’s okay. I’ve got you.” Gingerly opening the driver’s side door, he knelt on the dirt and held her cheek gently in his hand. The blood made it look worse than it was, but still, she was in rough shape. He resisted the desire to hold her because there was too much broken glass, so he said sweetly, “Hey, pal, what’s new?” as he picked the shards out of her hair. Biz attempted a fragile grin. “You know,” she answered, “same old, same old.” Charlie nodded, smiling, as Biz’s eyes shone bright. She was so grateful to see her very best friend.

  * * *

  A few weeks later the Thornden clan finally got some table service at a dank comedy club on the Lower East Side.

  “And for you, miss? Let me guess, a cosmo?” the waitress asked.

  “No, thank you,” Biz mumbled, “I’ll have a seltzer with lime.” Her accident had left her with sixty-four hundred dollars in car damage, insurance and medical bills, three cracked ribs, and seven stitches. It also left her deeply humbled and in no position to haggle with Aunt Cat over going to AA meetings. It was time Biz—and everyone around her—finally admitted that she was depressed, spiraling, and powerless over alcohol. It was also time she embraced her longing for Charlie with grace and gratitude. She was tired of trying and getting nowhere. She was ready to accept what was.

  E.J.’s comedy show was Biz’s first outing to an establishment that served booze since first going to meetings after the accident. Initially she tried to beg off with a phony illness at the last minute, but then Ruby told Gigi, who told Charlie, that she was faking. She couldn’t imagine anything more brutally awkward than watching Piper watch E.J. and have to pretend. If ever there was a time to want a drink it was going to be tonight. But her sponsor felt this would be the right event for reentry. With so much family surrounding her and Aunt Cat at her side, she would presumably feel safe, secure, and supported. Unable to think of a viable excuse on the spot, Biz climbed into the back of Charlie’s car with Aunt Cat and Uncle Ned—Piper in the front, of course—and off they went. The sound of Piper’s voice made Biz cringe and she’d forgotten to bring her last Percocet; otherwise, she would have swallowed it without water.

  They met up with the rest of the immediate family at the venue: Nana Miggs and Gordon; Georgia and Foster; Claire; Rah and her roommate, Susan. It was like a mini reunion, a cause for celebration. Biz was on the mend, and E.J. had a real shot at success. The mood was buoyant; things were looking up for the fam. Seated elbow to elbow around the table in the far back corner, they planned to clap heartily, laugh loudly, and show their pain-in-the-ass E.J. that they loved and supported him in spite of himself. Then they’d surprise him after the show.

  His family didn’t know much about E.J.’s style of comedy because he’d always forbidden them from attending. Apparently it was more like storytelling than “set up the joke, punch line, and laugh.” Charlie explained to the family—from conversations with E.J. at holidays—that E.J. didn’t think he deserved to even be there. He continually doubted his decision to give up his law career for a “questionable dalliance with the humor arts,” as was Grandpa Dun’s refrain.

  E.J. was going up in ten minutes, and the lights would be so bright it wouldn’t matter where the scouts were sitting—from the stage E.J. wouldn’t be able to see. Rah warned Nana Miggs and Gordon that it wasn’t too late for them to duck out and have a nice aperitif in a hotel bar somewhere—she was concerned the show would be too blue for their delicate ears. Nana Miggs assured her that she’d heard it all before and told her thoughtful granddaughter to stop fussing. “There’s very little I can’t handle, children. When are you going to figure that out?” “We’re starting to,” said Foster, and winked. Most were cautiously hopeful E.J. would do well and not embarrass the family, except for Biz, who had a sinking feeling, and Piper, who had a pit in her stomach the size of Rhode Island.

  E.J. took the mic and a swill of his beer, then leaned toward the audience with a menacing threat and growled, “I don’t do jokes, I’m telling you right now, but I do tell the truth.”

  “Oh, brother,” Rah stage-whispered to the table, and Georgia rapped her on the shoulder. Susan placed a calming hand on Rah’s arm. E.J. couldn’t hear them and plowed right through as if monologuing at the dinner table, except that onstage, there was no family member to stop him.

  “You know how everyone’s always telling you to ‘write what you know’? Writers hear it, comics hear it. As if we had a choice! Makes me want to kick ’em in the shins. How can you write what you don’t know? It’s cognitively impossible for us to access and retrieve information that simply isn’t in storage. I mean, we can feasibly assess we don’t know something because we’re always going to know enough about it to know we don’t know it. I could try to write what I don’t know—otherwise known as ‘making shit up’—or, for you liberal-arts educated, fiction—but it’s still co
ming from the great wellspring of inane pablum we keep handy for most occasions needing sober thought, for instance: holidays and other forced family functions, blind dates, and dinners with the person-we’re-fucking’s parents. They’re all ripe occasions to unload our made-up bullshit into someone else’s psyche, in order to make more room for new bullshit. It’s a very tidy closed circle, not unlike the water cycle we learned in science class, right, nerds?”

  E.J. had the audience’s attention. They liked that he spoke intelligently and at a brisk clip. And because he was unwilling to talk down to them they felt smart, and E.J. knew audiences liked to feel smart. Foster said to his tablemates, “So far, so good,” to which Claire whispered, “Hush up,” and Nana Miggs let out a small “Mm.” Both Biz and Charlie remained riveted to the stage, while E.J., the apparent comedian, continued.

  “So here’s another one for you, one you don’t hear ad nauseam. I like to call it ‘Fuck what you know.’ Turns out there’s science on why we’re attracted to people who are sickeningly like our mothers or brothers and why we end up fucking them.”

  The audience laughed with mirthful discomfort and knowing recognition. Biz’s eyes bugged as Charlie choked on a sliver of ice. Georgia leaned forward to ask if he was okay, but didn’t pat his back.

  “That’s some Sophocles Oedipal shit, right there. We read this pulp in Maxim between yanks, and in Cosmo when we’re getting our nails done, right, ladies? And though adequately forewarned, we still end up attracted to men with hairy backs or women with bad breath, because that’s what we grew up with—that’s our norm. So what’s the problem? Well, it turns out that too much inbreeding isn’t stellar for the gene pool. Thanks to addled monarchies, for instance, Hawaii or Great Britain, we learned that brothers fucking sisters begat weird twips of near-humans, not quite ready for prime time. Missing some of their spines and most of their marbles, these children of the damned weren’t fit for day labor, much less ruling a kingdom, so cousins were summoned.

  “Now we’re talking. Cousins. Close enough but not too far—you in the Ozarks know what I’m talking about, am I right? This is our range of fuckage, people. Our close range, you might say. How many of you have ever been attracted to one of your cousins?”

  E.J. was daring the audience to buckle in and take a ride with him, and the majority of them nodded and raised an embarrassed hand. Charlie jiggled the ice a little too loudly in his glass, then began jiggling his knee before he caught it and stopped. Cat and Claire sat stone-faced, and Biz was bolt upright and frozen, like in a fierce game of high-stakes freeze tag. Piper wanted to be vaporized from space.

  “Yes, uh-huh, I thought so. Turns out a lot of us have. I know, because I’ve asked. And a lot of us have done something about it, haven’t we? I see that shit-eating grin in the second row. Look at her blushing.”

  E.J. pointed his beer bottle at a blonde holding hands with her meathead boyfriend.

  “Cousins are everywhere you go, aren’t they, doll? Only way to avoid them is to not have any. And if you’re Catholic, hyper-Christian, or a super-Jew, forget it—you’re swatting cousins out of the way like gnats. They’re at weddings and funerals, in church pews, and at picnics. Always somewhere when you have to be recently showered and smelling nice. You don’t find them at the laundromat or the DMV. Oh, sure, there are other people’s cousins at the DMV, but they don’t smell as pleasing to you, do they? No, they don’t. That’s Darwin. We’ll get to him later.”

  A few people chuckled, knowing he was getting at the fact that Darwin married his first cousin.

  “Sometimes your cousin is in her bikini at the pool, and you know what that’s like for a fourteen-year-old boy? ‘Hey, see that girl over there with the pert little breasts, round ass, and dewy skin? Yeah, you can’t fuck her.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Because she’s your cousin.’ ‘So?’ ‘So it’s not right.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because the Bible says so.’ ‘No it doesn’t.’ ‘Oh. How do you know?’ ‘My friend looked it up.’ ‘Well, just don’t.’ ‘But why?’ And that’s where I have no answer for you and your raging hormones. Except to say that it’s more puritanical hooey, the kind that no one buys across either ocean where the rest of the world is fucking their cousins because there’s a chemical comfort level there that no one can dismiss or dispute. Visual coloring, smell, timbre of the voice, c’mon, it’s all there. And so convenient. Because basically, we’re lazy pieces of shit, aren’t we?”

  This was the moment Piper grew nervous. Something in E.J.’s posturing told her that he was going to lay it all out, that he was going to sacrifice his family for the almighty “big break.” He wanted the scouts to see him kill, and he would spare nothing and no one to get those sidesplitting laughs and a sterling career. Which was what? Piper wondered. Love from the unwashed massed? Respect from his curmudgeonly peers? Why was there such a gaping hole in his heart, and why, of all people, did she choose him to fuck? Was it laziness? He was eager in bed, but he was so unhappy. Piper had to admit, she was, too.

  E.J.’s diatribe reached a fervid pitch, and the audience was dying—covering their open mouths in mock horror and swatting their friends in recognition. He was outrageous and engaging, and very sexy, Piper thought—maddeningly so.

  E.J. went on.

  “Then, to make things worse, your cousins grow up and marry attractive people, and we’re told that they’re our relatives now, and we can’t fuck them, too. But they’re not related to us! They’re random strangers who married our relatives, because they reminded them of their relatives. They’re just fucking—or not fucking once they’ve been married—the people we were told we can’t fuck. So now no one’s fucking who they should, but everyone wants to fuck who they’re told they can’t.”

  Piper thanked God Charlie couldn’t see her face; she was certain she’d appear ashen if the house lights suddenly went on. Cat and Claire glanced at each other and knew they were thinking exactly the same thing. Too close to home. How do we get Nana Miggs out of here? Nana Miggs listened intently with curiosity.

  “And they’re around us all the time now: birthday parties and bat mitzvahs, Jesus, we can’t escape them. Reaching across our chests for sweet potatoes at family dinners, rubbing shoulders with us on TV-room couches watching Sunday football. Now I know we’re not supposed to fuck them, but if one of us married them they must smell like us and get our jokes, so why not keep it in the family? And that’s where things get complicated.”

  Claire brought her fists down on the table, and Cat snapped at her with a severe “No.” Georgia let out a “Ha!” and Foster asked the waitress for a fast check. Ned gathered up Cat’s things, sensing they might need to make a hasty exit. And E.J. was on fire; the audience was eating it up.

  “Men used to head off to war all the time and never come back, so the widow married his brother. Why not? Or the wife dies in childbirth in a covered wagon crossing Nebraska. Husband says, ‘She got a sister? She does? Is she a size six? Seven-and-a-half shoe? Perfect. Her husband ate a bad carrot and now he’s dead? Helluva shame. Which tent is hers? That’s okay, I’ll find it myself.’ Then there are stepsiblings, perfect strangers moving into the bedroom across the hall because Mummy and Daddy couldn’t keep it in their pants. Now you’ve got blended families. That’s some Brady Bunch hide-the-sausage shit right there.”

  Georgia let out a whoop, then covered her mouth right away. She was finding the whole thing darkly funny. The crowd hooted and hollered, clapping at the most audacious parts, and E.J.’s eyes were lit up. He’d hit a nerve—a taboo one, the very best kind. Through Piper’s haze of vitriol, a thought wedged its way into her anxious mind—one she’d never had before: E.J. looks radiant, glowing, happy. Followed by: I can’t believe I’ve been sleeping with that asshole for so long.

  “How many of you wanted Greg and Marcia to get it on? Uh-huh, that’s right. They were super-groovy dressers for big fuckin’ teases. I mean, they weren’t real brothers and sisters, so why the hell not? You wanted that episode to happen, you know
you did, because deep down you want to fuck your brother or your cousin or your step-whatever. You’re compelled to get that person into your bed, because your Darwinist cravings are firing on all cylinders, because these are the people that know us the most deeply and thoroughly. And we confuse knowing with love, don’t we? It’s either these people or cheap stand-ins for our family members masquerading as ‘other people,’ so why not go for the original model. Man, you should see my family. Everybody’s fucking everyone, but no one’s supposed to know. It’s total Bacchanalian debauchery…”

  That was when Piper gasped an inhale of breath so loud and so sharp that not only did everyone hear her—including Charlie—but people at the tables around them turned. Hers was an unusual reaction for a comedy club, which made it stand out in the extreme. It was unfortunate. And that was the moment that Charlie finally knew. When Piper exhaled, the secret of her affair left her body and reentered Charlie’s as the truth. In a jolt he saw clearly that his wife was fucking his cousin, and probably had been for some time. He looked at Biz, who was already staring at him with painstaking empathy, then he stood up and stormed out of the room.

  Outside Charlie tried to catch a cab. He thought briefly about going to Brighton Beach, chugging vodka with Soviet prostitutes, then walking into the ocean—fully clothed—fistfuls of rocks in his pockets. Biz caught up and put a hand on his shoulder. He jerked it off. “Did you know?!”

  “I didn’t think it should be me who—”

  “I thought you were my best friend!”

  “No, Piper is your best friend. And I was the last person who should have told—”

  They were interrupted by Foster, Georgia, and Rah, who asked if Charlie wanted to ride home with them. He said, “No, I don’t fucking want a ride.” Then Piper came out of the club, followed by Cat, Ned, and Claire, and he started walking away, but then turned back and made a brisk beeline for his wife.