Good Family

by Terry Gamble

  “State your name,” says Ian.

  Philip looks at Ian questioningly, but says, “Philip?”

  “Hi, Philip!” Ian and I bark in unison.

  Philip looks nonplussed. He seems to have forgotten what he was going to say.

  Silence descends, only to be broken by Adele, who says, “How about we send some energy to Aunt Ev? Let her know it’s all right to go.”

  Oh please, I think, but everyone else agrees this is acceptable, so, with eyes closed, we hold Mother in our minds and hearts. It’s one of those moments that make me ache with discomfort. I peer through slit eyes, but the whole group—even Ian and Sedgie—has their heads bowed, and I feel a wrenching inadequacy due to my lack of solemnity. I wait for a sign—the squeezing of a hand, a cough, but the only sound I hear are cousins breathing. Then Dana’s stomach rumbles—the great gurgling rumble she used to produce as a child.

  “A sign if there ever was one,” says Sedgie. “Let’s eat.”

  No one else seems inclined to confess anything or speak the truth—mercifully, since I’m still reeling from the news of Dana’s terminated pregnancy twenty-five years before. Letting go of one another’s hands, we pass the tomatoes and mozzarella and move on to other subjects like film and politics and who’s doing the dishes.

  “I have to leave in a couple of days,” Sedgie says. “Ibsen calls.”

  Four or five days at the most, Dr. Mead said.

  “You can’t leave now,” I say.

  “Truly,” says Jessica. “We’ll have to start eating takeout again.”

  “I have to work, you guys.”

  Everyone shifts uncomfortably. No one talks about work in the Aerie. We park our vocations and our everyday lives on the other side of the channel so that we can give our full attention to games and sports and conversation.

  “It’s only acting,” says Dana, poking at her chicken.

  Right, I think. It’s not physics. Or banking. Or law. “But it’s what he does, Dane.”

  “What I was going to say,” says Philip abruptly, “before I was so rudely interrupted”—he looks pointedly at Ian and me—“is that it behooves you all to discuss the fate of this house once Evelyn goes.”

  This pronouncement seems even more intrusive than Sedgie’s mention of work because (A) it presumes Mother’s death, and (B) we will have to talk about money. Dana rolls her eyes; Derek sets down his fork; Beo and Jessica look at each other blankly; Sedgie groans; and Adele says, “Count me out.”

  “Excuse me?” I say.

  “It’s a nonattachment thing.”

  “You’ve run out of money?” says Sedgie morosely.

  We all turn to Adele for confirmation. Her head is high and handsome. “I haven’t ‘run out.’” She makes quotation marks with her fingers. “I’ve dispensed with it.”

  “Oh, that’s rich,” says Sedgie. “Well, two ex-wives, and I’ve done my share of ‘dispensing’ as well.”

  “It was mine to lose.”

  Philip sighs a long, deep sigh, and I realize I’ve never thought of it as “mine to lose.” I was raised to dip into the font, but not drain it lest the next generation ends up railing like Blanche DuBois about the kindness of strangers. We’ve stretched our dollars, hoarded our airline miles, done our best to live within our means, but taxes, alimony, and issue take their toll.

  Seeing our glum faces, Ian looks alarmed. “But this house!”

  “We could turn it into a B&B,” I say, aiming for irony, “like they do in England.”

  “Or a retreat?” says Adele, sounding more upbeat.

  “Sedgie could cook,” says Jessica.

  “In that case, I have dibs on Louisa’s old room,” says Sedgie the way he used to call dibs on the bunk room.

  Obviously, no one realizes I was kidding.

  Dana looks at Philip, then at me. “Well?”

  Suddenly Philip takes on a new significance in our family hierarchy. We turn to him as if to an oracle. “There’s some money in a trust, right?” I say. “To keep it up?”

  “It’s my understanding,” says Philip, “that all the remaining principal gets distributed along with the shares of the house. In other words, it’s up to each of you to commit to ownership or not.”

  “You mean we have the option? Why wasn’t this explained?” I say.

  “I believe your father thought he was going to live forever.”

  “So what does it cost?” asks Beowulf.

  Philip clears his throat painfully. There is something sage and grave about his expression. “The taxes alone will be exorbitant.”

  “You take my house when you doth take the prop that sustains it,’” says Sedgie, quoting The Merchant of Venice, more or less.

  Philip folds his hands together and begins to hold forth about taxes, assessments, maintenance, and upkeep. I can see why his client employs him. His air is as authoritative as Ralph Feingold’s about the transient-dimensional plasticity of space. We are transfixed and confused. Even divided by a factor of six—no, four without Adele and, presumably, Edward—the reality of the transience and plasticity of our net worth smears like numbers on a chalkboard.

  “This is horrible,” says Jessica. “Grannie Ev is dying, and you’re talking about money.”

  “Oh, lofty one,” says Sedgie, “do you suggest a bake sale?”

  “It seems disrespectful.”

  Philip looks at his daughter with the same gratified expression that used to cross my father’s face whenever one of us demonstrated some semblance of virtue. Clearing the table. Speaking politely to our elders. Manners were so much the social currency on Sand Isle that I had since dismissed them as anachronistic, but nine years in New York have made me long for their company as for that of an old and familiar friend.

  “You’re right,” I say to Jessica, while wondering if Philip has ever considered electrolysis for that hair on his shoulders. “It seems crass. But it’s important. If we never talk about money, we won’t have any left.”

  “So what are we going to do with the house?”

  We all look at one another. The question, as disputable as the origins of the universe and the meaning of life, hangs in the air.

  Wake up.”

  I rustle, groan, turn over as if I was dreaming, but Ian gives me a sharp shake and tells me to get up.

  “We’re heading out,” he says.

  In the dark, Ian is invisible, but a floating glob of pale hair implies that Jessica is with him. “C’mon,” she says.

  Yawning, I say, “What do you want?” which comes out wa-wee-won.

  “We’re on a mission,” says Ian.

  “A little art project,” says Jessica.

  Minutes later, we are heading down the bayside, Ian in some kind of Chinese lounge outfit, Jessica in boxers and a T-shirt, me in my white flannel nightie. I glow like a ghost. In the lamplight, our shadows grow long on the sidewalk. Fractured moonlight splits the lake, but most of the houses are dark. Jessica is carrying an old can of white paint and a brush. She skips along, so suspiciously comfortable with the task at hand, I wonder if she has actual graffiti experience.

  “Where are you going?” she sings. “Where are you going?” The paint slops cheerfully in the bucket.

  “Some things, Maddie,” Ian says, “are unacceptable.”

  In a daze, I follow. The whole thing is as unreal as a dream. In fact, it occurs to me that I am dreaming, and that Ian hasn’t come to Sand Isle at all. Ian on Sand Isle seems incongruous; my half-Vietnamese niece with a can of white paint seems downright subversive. As if in a dream, I glide above the sidewalk, my feet not touching the pavement. Any minute now, we could spread our arms and fly—Ian, Jessica, and me—like the children from Peter Pan, a book I find disconcerting given its subject matter of lost children, Never Never Land, and parents who entrust their offspring to a dog.

  “I’m flying!” I say, my nightgown swooping around behind me.

  “Why aren’t you wearing shoes?” says Ian.

&nb
sp; “Shhh,” I say. “We’re on a mission.” But I have no idea for what, and Jessica has stopped singing.

  We arrive at the Swansons’ house. It is pillared in an antebellum style, although all of the houses on Sand Isle are decidedly postbellum, having been built by fortunes made during the Civil War. Nevertheless, the Swansons’ tries to evoke nostalgia for mint juleps on the plantation porch, ladies in wicker swings, darkies in the field.

  No light comes from the Swansons’ house. It is about three in the morning, and the only stirring comes from waves and a few malingering crickets. Surely, the Swansons are asleep and have no idea marauders are standing on their lawn. I look around nervously for Mac or one of the security guards who might be patrolling.

  “We’ve got to act fast,” says Ian. He jerks his head toward the lawn jockey and says to Jessica, “Get its face and hands.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” I say. “This is vandalism.”

  “It’s racist,” says Jessica. “We’re painting.”

  “Actually,” I say, holding out my hand before she wields her brush, “I don’t think it is rascist. Weren’t these things used in the Underground Railroad or something to signal escaping slaves?”

  “You’re thinking of quilts,” says Ian. “This”—he jerks his head at the jockey—“demeans black people and trivializes the horrors of slavery.”

  “Remember that fat mammy cookie jar that was in the Aerie kitchen?” says Jessica.

  “Now that was definitely slave art,” I say. “Louisa told me.”

  “Those are very collectible,” says Ian, his acquisitive inclinations momentarily trumping his urge toward social justice.

  “So what are we going to do with the paint?”

  “Hmm.” Ian strokes his chin. “Is it racist or not?”

  “Totally,” says Jessica.

  “Shall we ask the Swansons?” I say. “We could knock on their door and say, ‘Excuse me, but do you intend your lawn ornament to be a symbol of white supremacy and the oppression of blacks? Or is it merely an artifact, reminiscent of our once-divided nation, the wounds of which have never healed, but without its manifest tensions, our struggles would be meaningless? Even futile?’”

  “We could ask them that,” Ian says slowly while Jessica dabs away at the lawn jockey until it bears a creepy resemblance to a mime. I start to freak out. I am nearly forty, dressed in a nightgown, engaging in an act of defacement, the significance of which is debatable. My bravado evaporates. I know security is on its way. “They’re calling the cops,” I say. “Let’s go.”

  “Just a minute.”

  I swear to God, I can see his flashlight! “Give me that,” I say, grabbing the brush.

  “Done!” says Jessica as I slap one last dab on the jockey’s cheek.

  We fly down the sidewalk, leaving the defaced jockey to stand guard in front of a house owned by a person my mother used to call the Drape Man.

  “Lose the paint,” says Ian. “It’ll lead them back to our house.”

  Sure enough—like Hansel and Gretel’s crumbs, dribbles of paint trail after us. Jessica shoves the can into a cedar hedge, and we continue on through the night, giddy with anarchy and a sense of possibility that recalls a twenty-five-year-old memory of picking up an Indian woman hitchhiking home.

  We bound up the stairs, shushing one another and stifling laughter. When we reach the landing, I see the light is on in the tower room. Mother’s room. It’s barely 4 A.M. It occurs to me she must have had a restless night for her light to be on, but no sooner have we pushed through the front door and come into the dining room than I hear Miriam’s voice at the top of the stairs saying, “Is that you, Maddie? You’d better come.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Her breaths are so far apart—each one seems like the last. Everyone’s awake now. Sleepy, tousled, they’ve filed into the room. It will be dark for another hour or so; then, the sound of a broom will start. Mother is under her pink blanket cover, her hair combed back from her face. She is pretty like this—here, on the cusp of dying. Sadie, too, was in pink.

  I want to tell her we painted the Drape Man’s lawn jockey white. Mother would laugh. She could see the fun in iconoclasm—especially when my father wasn’t looking.

  But I don’t think she can hear me now. Ever since yesterday, she’s been hovering somewhere else. No one speaks. Adele touches her, and I realize it’s okay, that it will not hurt her. Is it easier to leave this world with people holding you? Or to be left alone?

  There—a breath. Dana’s eyes trace foggily over mine, and I nod. I hear everyone breathing, hear the shift in their weight, feel their focus pressing in. For once, the solemnity in our family isn’t forced.

  I left Angus during the Christmas of 1987, less than a year and a half after we were married. I didn’t return his or my mother’s calls. There would be no service, no memorial. Later, Angus stood outside my new apartment and hollered. By May, Sadie would have been walking.

  Let’s talk about how you related to your family after Sadie died, Dr. Anke said. Why did you remove yourself?

  I was expected to be a brick, and alcohol was the surest way. It was either that or go crazy.

  Dr. Anke flinched at the word. But you couldn’t prevent it, could you?

  Which? The death of my child? Or going crazy?

  Mother breathes in a sudden, raspy breath. Her mouth opens as if she’s gulping air.

  “What’s that?” I say to Miriam.

  “Soon,” Miriam says.

  Keep the Corbu furniture, I told Angus when I opened the door. He slapped me and called me an ungrateful bitch. It was a good excuse to keep drinking.

  “Is she suffocating?” asks Dana.

  “She’s shutting down,” says Miriam.

  I was pulled over for driving under the influence. I was booked, fingerprinted, spent the night in jail with a woman who had knifed her boyfriend. We spent hours consoling each other. Her body was bone-thin and smelled of fried fish, but she leaned into me, and I held her as if she were my child. In the morning, they released me. I didn’t have enough money for a cab, so I rode the bus from Laguna to Santa Monica. All those months of driving aimlessly had paid off. I knew my way around.

  “She’s releasing,” says Adele.

  Jessica says, “Shouldn’t we say something to her? Sing?”

  Eventually, I was drinking because I had to—not because of my marriage or my child, or that Jamie broke my heart, or because it made the oil slicks look pretty. I drank because every cell in my body demanded it. Adele would say another spirit had moved in. She may be right. There is no redemption in losing a child.

  “We should light candles,” Adele says. “And incense. It will calm her spirit.”

  I touch my mother’s skin, placing my hand across her clavicle, where she used to trace Joy perfume. A dead branch. A twig. Even her blood runs like the sap of a diseased tree. I want to ask her if she’s sorry. I want to explain to her that alcoholism is an illness and that you don’t have to die from it.

  Adele and Jessica bring candles from all parts of the house. The hiss of a match, the air fills with pyrite, and the walls take on a golden glow. Slow deaths allow opportunity for ritual. It’s the sudden ones that rob you of the ability to prepare.

  I’m sorry I hurt you and Dad.

  I’d returned to Sand Isle alone the summer after Sadie died. If there are ghosts in this house, I was one of them. It was a summer of murky, edgeless days. I threw empty bottles down the laundry chute. I hid them under my sweaters. I was an animal. It was an embarrassment for my parents—to have a grown child go to pieces like that. It is one thing to get tipsy at parties—another to pass out.

  Unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable.

  I don’t remember if they said I had to go, or if those were my words. But I left. Eleven years is a long time to bleed.

  I feel as if I’m doing my mother’s breathing for her. She was always afraid of water, and now her lungs are drowning. I suddenly gasp for ai
r. It’s lavender I’m craving, the evidence of ghosts. But I can only smell the fresh Michigan morning, the faintest scent of fish. She is so still. Not a single breath. Like Sadie, her eyelids aren’t completely closed. The slightest lightening, and the sweeping starts. The ghosts are gone.

  I an finds me in the nursery. It is almost lunchtime, but no one has made any plans. Philip has called the undertaker, who will be coming later to take my mother’s body across the channel. The arrangements seem suddenly overwhelming—where to have the service, what prayers to say, what hymns to sing, who to give the eulogy. We’re none of us religious—except for Dana and Adele—and Adele’s suggestion of the Buddhist practice of chopping up the body and feeding it to the birds, while exotic, is met with skepticism.

  Everyone has retreated into whatever gives him or her solace. Derek has returned to the beach to work on his structure. Downstairs, piano music starts and breaks off. I hear Dana in her bedroom talking to Philip, arguing even. It came sooner than we thought it would. I don’t know how I imagined Mother’s actual death, but it was correlated with the packing of trunks. Not that there are trunks anymore—they’ve been long put out to pasture—but the ritual of packing up and closing down provides the coda of the summer. We would have dragged up the boats, stripped the beds, pulled in the wicker, closed the curtains, emptied the refrigerator, covered the furniture. Before the crew from the Sand Isle Association arrived to drain the pipes, we would have said to Mother, There, you can die now.

  But she’s jumped the gun.

  “So what are you doing?” Ian asks.

  “Sitting.”

  He curls up beside me on the bed. The springs, like all of the box springs in this house, squeak. How can you have privacy in a place where you can hear snoring through the walls? Perhaps there is a tacit agreement to ignore certain realities: bodily functions and parents fighting, screaming babies, or a young man touching his cousin who has braces on her teeth.

  “When I was little, I played with chipmunks,” I say.

  Ian says, “Most of my friends were imaginary.”

  “At least you had friends.”