A Perfectly Good Family

by Lionel Shriver

  ‘Four dollars and ten cents,’ came from the back.

  The gavel fell, like Judge Harville’s at our hearing. ‘Sold!’

  A muscular black man roughed me off the stage for my new life. I woke rerunning the end of the dream, trying to recapture the face of my next master in case it might be a sign. No use—I could only dredge up a hand in the crowd. Wanting to burrow, I had tunnelled under too many duvets for this southern winter; I woke clammy and parched, and rubbed my wrists.

  I had three days.

  That morning at work a young woman came in with a print of David Inshaw’s ‘The Badminton Game’, asking for my advice on a frame. I made a few inattentive suggestions, transfixed by the painting itself.

  Two long-skirted girls with flowing hair extended their rackets towards a mid-air birdie, on either side of a jauntily sagging badminton net.

  Unlike the dim chill overcast outside this unsightly mall, the light within Inshaw’s margins was lush, its shadows lean and summery.

  Behind the girls, bulwarked, blunted evergreens cut phallic silhouettes against an untroubled cerulean sky. Beside these trees rose a solid three-storey house, covered with ivy and crowned with a tower deck. The toasty brick mansion looked immovable and safe, where inside I envisaged steaming, milky tea and cleverly iced petits fours waiting on a doilied tray, for the girls when they had tired of their game. I was sure the

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  young women were sisters, and that they got along famously. It was a painting about balance and joy and affection and suspended time, though I could not identify with either sibling—only with the shuttle-cock.

  That afternoon I framed the print, envious of its contentment and even more of its infinite arrest, the birdie floating over the net; ever in-complete, this match would never see one sister triumph over the other.

  I’m afraid my mind was skipping tracks like a scratched record, my blade unsteady at the matt. When the woman came to collect the job before we closed, she was irate that I’d used the wrong frame. I volunteered to do it over, but wouldn’t get the chance.

  ‘Look at those corners,’ my employer chided when the woman had harrumphed from the shop. He pointed to where the exacto had over-shot its pencil mark and crossed into the card. ‘Slipshod, and costly.

  That Inshaw frame will get deducted from your pay cheque. Your last pay cheque.’

  ‘Sorry?’ I must have looked bewildered.

  ‘Three sick days in three weeks, sloppily noted orders, and the matt you just mangled is $5.50 a sheet. Your mind is not on your work, Ms McCrea. Art History degree or no, our arrangement is at a close.’

  I told myself it was a rubbish job anyway and good riddance, but my cheeks stung and I hung up my smock with no comment. I didn’t have my older brother’s imperiousness—he’d shrug off dismissal with a sneer—and had more than a petal of Truman’s tender-flower frailty. I didn’t cry in public, though, and kept my dignity out the door.

  When I returned home, I didn’t tell either brother I’d been made re-dundant (a grim UK expression, so much more discouraging than being

  ‘fired’—as if there were two of you, and the clone functioned as well or better). Nosing about the kitchen for a snack between their two turned backs, I was disinclined to confide in either if with each I had to leave something out. That wasn’t real intimacy, was it: I’ll-tell-you-anything-except? As well, I wasn’t convinced that either brother would give a toss about my petty misfortune—or, for that matter, about any misfortune that befell me. Despite being fought over, I felt isolated and lonely and increasingly unpersuaded that either brother cared for me in the slightest. As with so many prizes when the contest is all, 229

  not only was Heck-Andrews itself irrelevant to the partition suit, but perhaps I, too, was irrelevant to my brothers’ dispute over me. That was the first time I considered that maybe Truman and Mordecai had a relationship after all.

  ‘You’re pretty aloof.’ At least Truman noticed.

  ‘That’s right. I’m aloof.’

  ‘Did I do something wrong?’

  Where to start? We had all done something wrong. Three days to zero-hour, when I would have to make an absolute choice between two men who were equally my brothers, however much Truman might assert that Mordecai had acted less than his part. If I didn’t know what to do or which to choose, I was at least firm in my view that this shouldn’t be happening.

  ‘After supper,’ said Truman, ‘I want to call a meeting.’

  ‘You mean with me?’

  ‘With Mordecai, too.’ This was a first. ‘Would you ask him? To the kitchen table, about ten?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask him?’ I said crossly.

  ‘He’ll be too busy, if I ask him. You do it. It’s important. I have something to discuss with the family.’ It was impossible to use that word now without being sardonic.

  My stomach went gluey. Since when, so formal? Had he overheard something? Would Mordecai and I be carpeted for our alternative mortgage? Had I left a letter out, post from Wachovia that Truman would assume was for us? This was bad life, I thought. I used to enjoy chicanery, but that was when I was hiding my diaphragm from my mother, smug that I knew how to use it; I didn’t like concealing anything from Truman. If I had tipped my hand, left an inculpatory scrap on the counter, I decided I must have done so on purpose.

  When I informed Mordecai in the carriage house of his appointment at ten, he asked, ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘Haven’t the foggiest.’

  ‘Since when does little True not tell you everything?’

  ‘Since,’ I said, ‘I stopped telling him everything.’

  When I was heading for the door, Mordecai put his arm across the exit. ‘Made up your mind yet?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘You know damned well about what.’

  ‘Oh, that,’ I faltered. ‘I could use a little more time.’

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  ‘You don’t have more time.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ I pleaded meekly.

  ‘Do me a favour. At least tell me yea or nay the day before the auction?

  I don’t want to have to get up at the uncivilized hour of eight in the morning only to be told I can go back to bed.’

  ‘Sure. In two days, then. I promise.’

  The hour after dinner and before our ‘meeting’ was absurd.

  From the carriage house: ‘CORRIE LOU!’ What-you-were-known-as-before-that-dipshit-existed. Summons of the first-born, yank of the past.

  From the dovecot: ‘Cor-lis!’ I’ll-call-you-what-you-like; I-know-you’ve-always-hated- Corrie Lou.

  Carriage house: ‘Core! Come here a sec. will ya? CORE!’ In shorthand, familiarity; in naming, possession.

  Dovecot: ‘Gir-el!’ A monicker from when Truman was twelve or so—pre-Averil, when I was all-women. Apt, of late; tugged between them, I was ‘girl,’ me-Jane.

  I would be paged on the thinnest of pretexts: could you find Big Dave a—? Did you get Mordecai to agree to—? Wanna hold this while I—?

  Would you like the last cup of—? In the fetching was the game: how eagerly would I shout, ‘Coming!’, how quickly would I vault the stairs, how long would I linger in the enemy’s lair.

  By ten, I was tired.

  Truman, Averil and I assembled in the kitchen in silence. Truman assumed the head of the table, once my father’s place; now, of course, Mordecai’s chair. Troom looked downcast, deflated, even morbid. I thought, he’s found out. The solemnity of the occasion recalled our convocation for my parents’ Living Will, and just like that evening Mordecai was predictably late. I was sent to retrieve him, and he was occupied; on arrival, impatient, clumping his boots on the table with a black glance at Truman, who had appropriated the seat of the eldest male. In our rustles and subdued coughing I heard the restless shuffling of a congregation before church.

  Truman put his hands flat on the table. ‘We thought you all should be the first to know,’ he croaked, his throat dry. ‘There are goin
g to be some changes around here.’

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  I said nervously, ‘Naturally, after the auction—’

  ‘This isn’t about the auction,’ Truman interrupted.

  I was faint with relief.

  ‘Go on,’ coaxed my sister-in-law. She was sitting on the other side of Truman, picking at grains of rice hardened on the walnut. She seemed unable to look her husband in the eye.

  ‘Averil and I have been talking about this on and off for a while.

  We’ve put it off for ages because we wanted to be sure about the decision, not do anything rash we might regret. It’s easy to just go through a phase or something, but the proposition kept coming back up, and by now I don’t think we’re in a phase.’ The going-through-a-phase fear was a gift of self-doubt from my father. ‘So we made up our minds, and we’re sure it’s the right thing…’ He sounded, as so often, exhausted, his chords minor, the end of sentences dropping that half-step of resignation.

  My God. Sending hot ripples from my hairline down my neck, the nature of his announcement washed over me. Hurriedly I rearranged all he had told me the night before to assemble a situation of considerably more gravity. Sleeping on the couch…does nothing but complain…the one thing that could end our marriage is if she got fat. Not just talk, whingeing behind-back. The estrangement upstairs had widened more irreconcilably than I’d imagined. They were getting a divorce.

  My reaction to Truman’s news was complex. I felt sorry for Averil, as she peeled flakes of flagging pink polish from her nails. This was cheap pity, however; how effortless to have sympathy for an adversary when she is vanquished. With compulsive calculation, my mind flew forward three days and tried to decipher, with no success, just what effect this new turn of events would have on Truman’s desire to buy the house. Yet trickling underneath all my astonishment, poor-Ave and poor-True, was an insidious, horrible little delight.

  Which I instantly had to cover. I reached over and grazed Truman’s little finger, not presuming to stroke his hand and rub his wife’s nose in her lame-duck status.

  ‘Maybe it was inevitable,’ I comforted him. ‘But you’ll be all right.’

  ‘Of course I’ll be all right,’ said Truman tersely, pulling his hand out of my reach. ‘And, yeah, it was inevitable. You know what I’m like.’

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  ‘Sure I do.’ I tried to keep my voice level, a little sad, but it came out unctuous instead. ‘Remember, you’ve most of your life ahead. It’s going to take a different course than you thought. But the future may surprise you. Though it probably doesn’t seem that way now, this may be, in the end, a good thing.’

  He looked at me askance. ‘Of course it’s a good thing. I just meant, you know, I like to take care of people.’

  ‘I realize that.’ I nodded vigorously. ‘Your sense of responsibility is what makes this so hard.’

  ‘It’s not really that hard!’ His callousness quite shocked me. ‘We’ve been married ten years. We think it’s about time.’

  ‘Would someone clue me in here on what the fuck you’re talking about?’ Mordecai growled.

  Truman shifted his gaze to his brother and said, ‘We found out this afternoon. Averil’s pregnant.’

  I had been about to touch Truman’s shoulder, ever so gently, but recovered my hand mid-air to fasten another button on my shirt, securing the demure neckline more in keeping with an aunt.

  ‘If it’s a girl,’ said Averil softly, ‘we could call her Corlis.’

  ‘Anything,’ I muttered, ‘but Corrie Lou.’

  ‘Congrats, kid,’ said Mordecai gruffly. ‘And when’s the little bundle of joy due?’

  ‘August ninth,’ said Truman, for the first time in this funereal proceeding puffing with a bit of pride. ‘Mother and Father’s anniversary.’

  ‘Well, isn’t that touching,’ said Mordecai, without quite as much sarcasm as I suspect he would have liked. ‘Break a leg,’ he said, ‘or whatever. I gotta get back to work.’

  Averil confessed to having already started sewing booties or something in the dovecot and excused herself, but not before Truman put a hand on each of her cheeks and kissed her forehead. How sweet, I thought before I could stop myself. He patted her bum as she left the kitchen, a gesture I recognized as my father’s playfully condescending cheerio to my mother.

  I carted coffee cups to the sink, grateful for stray dishes, and rummaged for our new bottle of Wild Turkey. It was slipped under the turned-over lip of the bin liner in the rubbish pail—Mordecai hadn’t found it yet, since he never took out the trash. I poured a hefty double.

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  ‘You don’t seem too thrilled,’ Truman said as I rinsed cups, ‘about our announcement.’

  ‘I’m happy for you!’ I chirped, not turning around. ‘Could you hand me that sponge? You know, it really does improve quality of life when they don’t stink.’ I had swallowed a belt of bourbon too quickly, and my voice rasped.

  ‘Did you suspect? Before?’

  ‘Oh, sure.’ Having run out of dishes I started gouging a knife into the cracks around the rim of the sink, scraping up grey gunk. ‘A woman knows these things.’ (I actually said that.) ‘As I told you, I’d noticed she’d put on weight,’ I pattered on, with the Pollyanna lilt I’d learned from my mother, ‘but since you’d never let her eat too much, oh no, I put two and two together before you did.’

  ‘Averil is pretty disciplined, about cookies.’

  I was amassing a mound of dead paste on the edge of the counter, carving into every crevice I could find. ‘Then, only one thing didn’t match up. I thought you were sleeping on the couch.’

  ‘I didn’t say—’ He took a swig of my bourbon. ‘All the time.’

  ‘Apparently not.’

  ‘Well, don’t act as if my sleeping with my own wife is some kind of crime.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ I poked at my puddle of scum with a bare finger. It was sticky, sucking; it clung to me, and emitted a putrid road-kill smell like mice caught long ago in traps you forgot you set. Grey matter: what it looked like inside my head. ‘And where do you plan to put this baby?’

  ‘Corlis, we’ve got a huge house. We can finally put one of those spare bedrooms to better use than for Mordecai’s filthy hirelings.’

  ‘Don’t you think the pregnancy is a bit premature?’

  ‘Averil’s twenty-eight!’

  ‘There’s a trend lately, women having them late.’

  ‘Corlis, this is nuts. Averil’s six weeks pregnant. That’s not up for debate.’

  ‘I meant premature in relation to the house. Remember the beloved house? That’s your very self, as I remember?’

  Truman pulled a selection of fag butts and paperclips from his pockets and collected them on the counter by my goo; he was scrupulous about sparing the hoover scraps that might clog the hose. ‘All right, so that equation was a little extreme. But for once 234

  something has happened in this excruciatingly long month that doesn’t have anything to do with the damn house!’

  ‘It does; all roads lead to Heck-Andrews now. You don’t know who’s going to own this place, and you’re already prepared to introduce a new resident.’

  ‘There is no confusion over whose house this will be. It will be ours.

  Ours, right?’

  My fingers were now covered in unspeakable ooze up to the second knuckle. Sliming the sink-rim paste between the pads of my fingertips was like wallowing in a distillation of all that was vile in me, yet also intrinsic to who I was, as Heck-Andrews was to Truman. ‘It’s a clever gambit, I’ll grant that,’ I said, allowing myself. If I had to live with this filth every day I might as well spread it around, the way Mordecai as an infant had decorated his crib with his poo. ‘It’s even sly. But you know, any of us could have kids.’

  ‘Well, you haven’t—’

  ‘There’s nothing in Mother and Father’s will about grandchildren!

  There’s nothing in the will that gives you more rights to this
house just because you have a child!’

  ‘Nobody said anything about the will, blast it, and I thought you and I had an understanding. I never once suggested that when Averil has the baby we’ll kick you out.’

  ‘You can’t. You can’t kick me out, I live here and this is my house, too!’

  ‘You’re getting overwrought, Corrie—Corlis.’

  ‘What am I supposed to think?’ I blubbered. ‘How do I know you and Mordecai aren’t plotting behind my back to throw me out on my ear? Look what you’re planning to do to him, send him packing as soon as you’ve got the title in your hot little fist! When you can’t trust your own brother, who can you—’

  Truman grabbed my wrist and wrested my hand from the gunk, wheeling me to face him. ‘Listen. I’m going to be a father. Even Mordecai congratulated me. Why can’t you?’

  I touched him on the shoulder, as I would have before it turned out he didn’t need my consolation but good wishes; I had always been a dab hand at consolation. ‘Congratulations, Truman,’ I recited, getting glop on his forest green workshirt the way Mother had smeared it with weepy mucus.

  ‘Thanks a lot.’ He released my wrist, and sponged at his sleeve 235

  with disgust. ‘Surprised it didn’t take a gun to your head.’

  He marched out and up the stairs to his darling wife, leaving me behind to feel ashamed of myself. I refused.

  Of course, I recognized that the previous half-hour had featured the least gracious moments of my domestic career. But I had always been suspicious of being ‘happy for’ other people; I wasn’t sure there was any substitute for being happy on your own account.

  I did find the prospect of being ‘happy for’ others is charming; I would have liked it to be possible. So more particularly, neither of my brothers had ever been ‘happy for’ me and I had never been ‘happy for’ them. Truman may have been dead comforting when my sculptures were destroyed, but I doubted he’d have marshalled convincing exuber-ance had I instead flung open the door with the announcement that I had just made thousands of pounds and I was suddenly a famous artist in London. Deep, deep inside I was afraid that we wished each other, if not ill, at least less, and I prayed that this was what all siblings were like and not solely what McCreas were like. Oh, we could commend one another on trifles. I’d been elaborately encouraging when Truman got into Duke at the ripe age of twenty-eight, but maybe what I was really ‘happy for’ was the modest scale of his achievement. And yes, we presented brilliant shoulders to cry on when the chips were down; for secretly, we rather liked it when the competition was gaming with fewer chips.