Good Family

by Terry Gamble

  “Tch tch tch,” said Edward, speaking Chippy’s language, but the screen door slammed above us, and down came Wade, reeking of alcohol. Edward withdrew his hand. Wade stepped over me, wobbling slightly, but managing a straight course as he headed down the path. Then he stopped, turned around, and leveled my cousin with a stare.

  “Nice chipmunk,” Edward said as he pushed off on his bicycle.

  Wade just stood there until Edward was gone, then he tipped his cap and climbed back onto the dray. “Rabid,” he muttered. “Like I said.”

  That night I smelled marijuana from beneath the porch, but there was no one around to tell. Our parents were at a party, and even the neighbors’ house was dark. We’d added a deck onto the porch that year—punched it out into the treetops so we could sit under the open sky, search it for shooting stars, the aurora borealis. Sedgie and Dana were on somebody else’s beach, drinking beer. Adele was with Stephen, her fiancé. Even Derek was gone. Louisa had retreated to her tiny room beneath the kitchen, and I was alone on a chaise longue, staring upward. I wanted somebody to talk to—Derek, preferably, who would look at the night sky with me, discussing time, dimensions, the infinity of space. How can something have no end? Surely there were other stars, other planets that had begotten life. Bacteria, at least. Insects. Maybe even intelligent life, more enlightened than ours. A peaceful civilization with no war, only virtue. They would be up there, looking down, studying us sadly, hoping for the best.

  Reveling in the possibilities, I heard a creak behind me. The faintest scent of pot. I bunched myself up on the chaise, willed myself to be invisible, but a hand laid itself on my head.

  “Pretty stars,” I said, but Edward said nothing.

  But I knew enough to feel nervous when Edward said, “Do you let that chipmunk of yours climb into your sweater every day?”

  I didn’t hesitate. I jumped to my feet and pushed past him, ran upstairs to my room. It was the little room in the farthest corner of the house. Slamming the door, I locked it, breathing hard, waiting for the footfall that never came.

  The next morning was bright and dewy. Louisa was making waffles, setting them on heaping platters on the buffet by the dining-room window. My father and Uncle Jack had joined us for a few weeks’ vacation, and now they sat, steaming cups of coffee in their hands as they read the Wall Street Journal and rarely spoke.

  “That McGovern,” muttered Uncle Jack.

  My father grunted.

  I helped myself to waffles. The teenagers were still in bed. From the bedroom beyond the Love Nest, I heard the faint tones of Derek’s recorder. Outside, the gardener was sweeping the porch, and on the lawn below, I made out Edward swinging a golf club, practicing his stroke.

  “What are you up to today, Bug?” my father asked.

  I shrugged. I knew he didn’t really want to hear about the book I was reading or the fort I’d made in the attic or how Chippy could sit on my head. I downed my waffles, raced through the kitchen, giving Louisa a pinch, and headed down the steps.

  “Tch tch tch,” I said, and waited. “Tch tch tch.”

  But Chippy didn’t come that morning. I waited for hours. The woods were still except for the cry of chickadees and the whoosh of Edward’s swing.

  TEN

  In the summer of 1974, Dana and I picked up an Indian woman who was hitchhiking down from Sturgeon. Dana was driving the Malibu—a wantonly profligate and clandestine act given that (A) gasoline was rationed, and (B) Dana was grounded. Our parents were at a cocktail party, so Dana had sneaked the car out so we could drive up the coast of Lake Michigan and listen to music while she smoked cigarettes. We strained to hear Elton John, but the radio this far north was faint and given to polkas, and sometimes we listened to nothing at all.

  “B-B-B-Bennie and the Jetssss,” I sang.

  “Oh please, dear Lord, can someone buy me an eight-track?” said Dana, jamming the radio buttons. She was nineteen and dating a tennis player at UCLA and was going through a cocky patch that raised eyebrows and voices at dinner. She was always perfectly dressed in an alligator shirt with the collar turned up, khakis and a belt, her hair pulled into a tail of chocolate brown. I was in awe of her nails, not unlike our mother’s—the way they held a cigarette, the imprint of lipstick upon its tip.

  “See that tree?” She nodded as we meandered through a curve. “That’s where Tad Swanson totaled his car.”

  Tad Swanson’s father had made a fortune in curtain hardware. Where there’s a swag, there’s a Swanson was his motto, but my mother always called him the Drape Man.

  “How fast was he going?”

  Dana drew on her cigarette. I was relieved when she put both hands back on the wheel. “About ninety,” she said, exhaling. “Wrapped it around completely.”

  I whistled. Mr. Swanson’s boat, Swan Song, was a shiny new fifty-footer. Full of amenities and polished chrome, it made our boat look like a tub. The gleaming Swan Song would surge by us almost immediately in races, but my father would coax the best out of the Green Dragon and, when the race was over, console us with Winning is one thing, but losing builds character.

  Dana and her friends had taken off ahead of Tad. They didn’t know that, less than a mile back, Tad and his girlfriend were hurtling at ninety miles an hour toward a nonnegotiable curve, an oak tree sentry-tall and proud. Three weeks later, you could still see the skid marks. Tad’s Firebird was flimsy as silk when the tires left the road. They pried the two kids out of the car, the gory details percolating into the cocktail chatter of Sand Isle. And guilt by association being what it is, Dana was immediately grounded.

  I looked back at the tree as if it was a talisman.

  “She was pregnant,” said Dana. I noticed her hands were shaking. On the pinkie of her right hand, she wore the gold signet ring of our girls’ school, its motto, Virtute et Veritas—Virtue and Truth—engraved at the center. On her neck, she wore a chain with her boyfriend’s fraternity ring. By the end of summer, she would take that necklace off, fling the boyfriend’s ring into the lake.

  The air grew delicious with rumor and secrecy. I was seldom taken into Dana’s confidence. Mostly, she ignored me, but since she was grounded, I was the dregs to which she resorted. Not that I minded. I slurped up details of Tad Swanson and Deb Bailey’s ill-fated lives the way my parents and their friends slung back cocktails.

  “Life is short,” said Dana in a wise, knowing voice.

  “Really short,” I said, though I was not yet fifteen. I decided I’d better seize upon the intimacy of the moment, given that I was usually invisible. “If I die, Dane,” I said solemnly, hoping my voice sounded poetic, even tragic, “I want you to know I’ve had a good life.”

  Her eyes slid sideways as if to say, You poor, dumb fool. I eyed the fraternity ring around her neck, thought of what she’d said about Deb. Pregnant was bad. One girl we knew had been taken out of school the year before, suddenly and without explanation. And then there was the scandal of Libby Strauss, not only pregnant, but by a black guy. That almost did our mother in. She announced one night at dinner, fixing her eyes on each of us, that it would…KILL…your father.

  We had come through the curvy, densely forested part of the shore, out to the pasture stretch before the town of Goodhart. Queen Anne’s lace edged the side of the road, beyond which a field was swathed with thistle.

  “Why didn’t she have an abortion?”

  Dana sighed. “Tad was really confused.”

  “Tad?” I said. “How about Deb?” Now Deb was dead, along with Tad and what I assumed was his baby. Tad was twenty. Deb was seventeen. She had gone to a girls’ boarding school in the East, was headed for Sweet Briar in the fall. Girls like that didn’t have babies they didn’t want. Abortion was legal as tobacco now. No more furtive trips to Mexico or ill-explained forays to Sweden. Girls didn’t have to bleed out or become sterile or be packed off to homes for unwed mothers like some criminal. “Hey, Dane,” I asked, “you’d go on the Pill, right?”

  Again
, that look. “I don’t need the Pill,” she said, her eyes narrowing. I knew better than to ask more questions. I was too intoxicated by having the inside story on Tad and Deb to jeopardize my position now. Besides, we had to get the car back before our parents got home.

  We sped down the road. I thought about asking Dana for a cigarette, but the only time I’d smoked, I coughed till I threw up. Dana had Coke bottles filled with butts on the little porch off her bedroom in the Aerie. I had been demoted back to the nursery, while Dana upgraded to one of the guest rooms next to the Love Nest, which would soon be inhabited by Adele. Adele was going through her first divorce and was arriving in August, along with Edward, who had spent the last three years in Southeast Asia. Derek had been here for a week and was wearing sandals and drawstring pants that resembled pajama bottoms. Night after night at dinner, he and my father tangled.

  This burning-your-draft-card business—, my father would begin as he carved the roast. It doesn’t sit well with me. I was scared. Sure, I was scared. But we knew what mattered then. We knew where the line was drawn. As if to illustrate his point, my father drew the blade of the knife with one sure stroke between the ribs of the meat. Juice poured out. Your father, my father said, invoking Uncle Halsey, who had received a Purple Heart, was a hero. He jabbed the knife at Derek. How could you not serve your country?

  At this, Derek seemed to flinch. He had finished graduate school the year before, just as the war ended, and had set up a studio in one of the spare maid’s rooms. In response to my father’s question, he tugged on his longish hair. What is your definition of service? Derek asked as Louisa delivered our plates, a look on her face like she’d heard this all before. What is your definition of servitude?

  When I was your age, I was laying lines across the Rhine River.

  The virtuous war, Derek shot back. I couldn’t tell if my cousin was being respectful or sarcastic. They could sound the same in our family. Vietnam was different.

  You think there’s no virtue in stopping the spread of communism?

  But we were invaded in 1941, Derek said.

  At which point, Uncle Jack jumped in. That’s true. If it weren’t for the Japs, Roosevelt would never have gotten us tangled up in that mess.

  If it weren’t for Roosevelt’s decision, our father replied brusquely, Western Europe would be speaking German.

  If it weren’t for the Japs, persisted Uncle Jack, who had stayed home from the war because of his bad back.

  Derek ignored him. Vietnam was a racist war. Look who fought in it.

  Dana, who had been avoiding the conversation by reading a book and chewing absentmindedly, sighed. Sedgie took a knife and wedged it into the seam of the table leaves. Louisa circled slowly.

  Were there any blacks in your regiment? said Derek.

  I had started prowling around Derek’s studio whenever he let me. Sometimes I would go in when it was empty. The smell of turpentine and linseed oil was an elixir.

  There were blacks in the army, said my father. There was a whole mix of men. Jews, Mexicans—

  Jews, Mexicans in your regiment, Derek interrupted. But no blacks.

  Edward’s not black, I said, but no one seemed to hear me.

  We were all Americans, said my father. He was trying to control his voice. Louisa set down a plateful of potatoes. The china made a little clink as it hit the table, but there was an unnatural, heavy silence, as if the room had frozen.

  My mother, who was usually a little tight by the end of the meal, lit a cigarette and shook her head. This Patty Hearst, she said, as if she had been holding her own private conversation all this time, calling her parents pigs. She looked at each of us around the table as if to say, You wouldn’t do that, would you?

  Finally Derek spoke. She was locked in a closet and raped, Aunt Ev. She thought she was going to die.

  But the disgusted expression on my mother’s face said, Regardless of the circumstances, you don’t call your parents pigs.

  I had felt an allegiance to Derek that night—a tingling excitement as if he heralded some yet-to-be-articulated change. With my fifteenth birthday weeks away, I was feeling both abandoned and imprisoned by my family. Derek, with his clear conscience and his artist’s eye, prophesied escape.

  Now it was a few days later, and Dana and I were doing some escaping of our own in the stolen Malibu, gliding along the bluff, discussing Tad and Deb. “Will you look at that?” I said as we passed a figure wrapped in a blanket, arm extended, thumb jerking for a ride. I couldn’t make out the woman’s age, but her face was clearly Indian. My own experience with Indians was limited. Many of the names of towns and roads in the area were Indian, and we knew all the legends—the Sleeping Bears, the Manitous. But actual Indians were few and far between. They stuck to themselves. Some of them lived in the woods we called Indianville behind Harbor Town. When we were kids, we would walk by their houses, stare one another down, the Indians silent and suspicious upon lopsided porches. Woo woo woo, we sometimes said, smacking our palms against our lips. Woo woo woo. We never knew what they said about us.

  I touched Dana’s arm. “Let’s pick her up.”

  But Dana didn’t let up on the gas pedal. She glanced in the rearview mirror, exhaled. For a moment, it occurred to me that her smoking of cigarettes, her stealing of cars were puny and insignificant acts of rebellion compared to Derek’s pronouncements about war and injustice. Having watched Derek for the last week stand up to my father, hearing the passion in his voice, I wanted to be so much more than a privileged white girl.

  “Dana,” I said, “stop!”

  She slammed on the brakes, her face set straight ahead. She was more than irritated; she was seething.

  “Back up,” I insisted, feeling the same tingle of excitement as I did when Derek took on our father. “Come on!”

  It was the first time I’d exerted my will on her. I began to see a chink in her armor. Reluctantly, Dana reversed the car. As we pulled up alongside the figure, I could see it was a woman’s face, old and weathered. I rolled down the window. A wise face, I decided, without much dental care. She hesitated, looked back up the highway as if another car might be coming—a better car with more to offer than two teenage girls, one of them smoking. “Get in,” I said, adding, “It’s okay.”

  Dana said nothing, but my heart was pounding with the audaciousness of the act. If our mother knew. The woman smelled like root vegetables and grass. Dana was gripping the steering wheel, but I was twisted around, trying to get a look at our passenger. When the blanket dropped away, I searched her wide, flat face for the poetry of the indigenous, her mane of hair for the shrill song of chants. She held a paper bag in one arm, and with her free hand, she pawed in the direction toward town.

  “That’s where you live?” I asked.

  Lake Michigan spread endlessly to our right, the shadows of islands off to the west. They used to come in canoes—all these tribes, gathering for the hunt. You could see signs of them on the roadside—little stands selling beadwork and leather, billboards painted with feathered braves. Next stop, Michillamackinac! You could take a ferry, buy a box of fudge, join the horde of tourists wandering the paths where Indians once tracked deer. Woo woo woo, we’d say.

  “Where are you going?” I said as we headed down the highway.

  I had no idea what was in the bag, didn’t want to ask. The Indians we saw in Harbor Town came out of the bar, started up the bluff, lay down on the bench halfway up, and fell asleep.

  “Ask her if she has an open container,” Dana said. I noticed Dana was creeping along at about twenty miles an hour, taking no chances.

  “What’d you buy?” I asked in a nonchalant voice.

  “Cookies. You girls want a cookie?”

  I was disappointed. I wanted her to have bought tobacco to summon the spirits, herbs for a remedy. “What kind?” She peered into her bag, pulled them out. They were shaped like little windmills. “Van de Kamp,” I said.

  She smiled. Her teeth weren’t great
, but the ones she had looked solid and rooted, like they could take on any kind of tooth decay and stay put. Suddenly she yanked her head around, pointed at a road we’d driven past. “That’s my turn!”

  Dana was trying hard to maintain her composure. “Like I’d know.”

  “Turn around,” I said.

  Dana turned, but not without giving me a look first that promised a slow and painful death. The station wagon dropped off the highway onto a road that was barely a road, leading through the woods. It began to dip and twist down the side of the bluff until we came to a collection of shacks that made Indianville look like the Riviera. The tar paper nailed to the sides seemed to be the only thing holding them up. I started to open my mouth to say, Are you sure you want us to leave you here? but Dana had slammed on the brakes and was waiting for the woman to get out.

  “Well, then,” I said.

  The woman sat there for a while, looking pleased to have arrived home in a car. Perhaps she had been gone for weeks. Perhaps she had set out like a fur trapper, hunting for pelts to warm them in the winter, returning instead with cookies.

  I took one from the box she offered.

  “No thanks,” said Dana, staring anywhere but at our passenger.

  The woman heaved herself out of the car, pulled her blanket close, clutched her bag, peered back in at us. “You know them astronauts?” We stared at her blankly. “The ones that went to the moon?” Dumbly, we nodded. “You can see how the weather’s gone all wrong.” This was a statement.

  Dana and I looked at each other. Nothing strange about the weather as far as we could tell. The summer had been a little dry and windless, but Michigan weather was always changing.

  The woman lifted her right hand, spread her fingers wide, palm up, and gestured at the sky. For a minute, I thought she was going to say, So long, Kemosabe. Instead, she said, “So it’s them astronauts.” We looked up, then back, but she was heading down the road into the forest.

  We sat there for a minute, the motor idling. Dana said, “Shit, Maddie. Shit, shit, shit. We could have been killed. She could have knifed us and hidden the bodies and made off with the Malibu.”