All Families Are Psychotic

by Douglas Coupland

  By eleven A.M. they were at the camp’s gate. ‘You park way down there,’ Wade said, his genius for orchestrating maneuvers already in evidence. ‘I don’t want the RCMP looking for a cab.’

  ‘Right, pardner.’

  Wade walked up to the main house and asked to speak to the person in charge. The only remotely authoritative figure available was a teenage girl shucking counselor duty to fire up a cigarette. He smiled. Inside a minute he heard what he’d needed to hear: ‘The jet propulsion group? That’s the Madame Curie bunkhouse. They’re down by the boat ramp.’ Wade duly went to the boat ramp, where a flock of girls surrounded a launch apparatus, all save for Sarah, off to the side, her knees pulled up to her chest, her stomach cramping, as she hadn’t eaten or slept in forty-eight hours.

  Wade threw a pebble that landed at her feet. Sarah looked up and caught sight of her brother, and Wade was impressed at how she maintained her cool. Sarah waited until the rocket was on the cusp of detonation before she casually walked towards Wade. He asked her, ‘You set to leave?’

  ‘Right now.’

  ‘Follow me. We have to keep quiet.’ Wade led Sarah through a second-growth forest, about a century old, and treacherously bumpy with stumps and logs still barely even decayed after all that time. A few minutes later they emerged from the woods directly by the taxi. ‘Hop in, little sister, and keep your head down. Step on it, Carl.’

  ‘You’re the boss.’

  Minutes later they were on the Trans-Canada highway, and Sarah was holding tightly on to Wade’s arm. ‘It’s OK, baby sister, we’re going home. Home sweet home.’ He patted her on the head. ‘You hungry?’

  Sarah squealed out a ‘yes’.

  ‘Carl, let’s stop at that gas station up ahead.’

  ‘Your wish is my command, boss.’

  The two of them drank Cokes and ate chocolate bars. Years later, Sarah would say they were the most delicious things she could ever remember having eaten. Just over two hours later they were home. Carl accepted only a hundred dollars for the job, saying, ‘It’s probably the last nice thing I’ll ever do.’

  Wade stopped at the bottom of the driveway. He hadn’t given the homecoming much thought. ‘What are we going to tell Dad?’

  Sarah said, ‘I’ll handle him.’

  And she did. It was a Saturday, and Ted was in the kitchen eating an egg salad sandwich. Sarah walked into the kitchen and said, ‘I escaped that prison and I’m not returning, so please don’t try and make me. My decision’s made and I’m not the least bit ashamed of it. I’m ready for any punishment you want to throw my way.’

  Wade, listening in, was chilled to hear rebellious words he himself might have spoken. Both he and Janet, who was standing by the sink, waited for one long, held-in breath expecting Ted’s nuclear detonation, but instead Ted bellowed out, ‘That’s my girl! What spunk to escape from that hellhole. Jan! Make our little jailbreaker an egg salad sandwich!’

  04

  Three years before his arrival in Florida to join his family, Wade had been living in Kansas City having an on-again/off-again (but mostly on-again) relationship with the wife of a major league baseball player. News of his affair with the baseball wife had leaked out and was splashed about the pages of the local daily tabloid. The baseball player and three of his buddies had entered Wade’s favorite bar armed with Louisville Sluggers, fortunately while Wade was in the john, from which he scrambled out a rear door, then into the parking lot, then a further few thousand miles west. In Las Vegas, through a friend, he’d quickly landed a job as a hockey player in a trashy casino. He was paid more to fight with the other players than he was to play hockey, and as the coach handed him his thousand-dollar signing bonus, he’d said to Wade, ‘A good rink is a red rink. Nothing makes guys double up on bets more than blood. Not even tits. If you have a freakish blood type like Rh-negative, I’d advise you to stock up a bit of it beforehand. The people who sell blood in this city – you don’t want to know. And hands off the waitresses. I don’t need you jerk-offs in the Hamburger League spreading broken hearts and the clap. Be back on Monday night. Seven o’clock. No helmet.’

  That night Wade won 30,000 frequent flyer points in a poker game. The next day, feeling powerful, nostalgic and flush, he flew home to Vancouver. A storm pushed the plane to the west, and he watched the cities along Interstate 5 sweep below him. Drinking a beer and looking at the ground, he tried remembering the last time he’d seen a family member – it was Sarah, briefly, at a Holiday Inn by the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Everybody else he’d dealt with through infrequent phone calls, often made from airport waiting lounges or on cell phones on the freeway where an easy way out was built into the call. Wade had read about Sarah’s impending Kansas visit by accident in the newspaper while searching for the weekend sports scores. She was to be a keynote speaker at a symposium on gene splicing and Wade had arranged to meet her in the lounge of her hotel before her speech.

  ‘Wade.’

  ‘Little sister.’

  They kissed and then talked about the family. Wade hadn’t known any of the recent family news Sarah brought with her, and could only drink more and more quickly as he learned the details of their parents’ divorce, Bryan’s third suicide attempt, and Sarah’s wall of degrees, Ph.Ds.

  ‘What about you and Howie?’

  ‘Howie? He’s fine.’

  A silence followed this, which Wade took as the signal to stop probing. Instead he asked what she’d been up to job-wise recently.

  ‘Well, last week I logged in my two hundredth hour of reduced gravity flight aboard parabolic aircraft. And I’ve been deep sea diving, too, in a customized suit to prepare me for a spacewalk.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Part of the job description.’ Sarah sipped a ginger ale.

  ‘Mom said a few months ago that you’d become a captain in military jet flight.’

  ‘She did?’

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘Yeah, but it sounds so grandiose when you say it that way. To me it feels like I’m valet parking NASA’s cars.’

  Wade was overwhelmed by her accomplishments and rubbed his forehead. Sarah said, ‘You know, big brother, doing all this stuff isn’t the big deal it seems like.’

  ‘It isn’t, is it?’

  ‘You know, Wade. In a weird way I think doing things is easier than not doing things.’

  ‘Right.’

  They hit a lull where it was easier to jiggle their ice cubes with swizzle sticks than speak. Sarah then asked Wade what he was doing in a voice Wade could tell was working hard not to sound patronizing, Wade lied and said he was working as a computer programmer. He thought it sounded smart. Sarah asked a simple question about LINUX coding and he knew he’d been caught, but she didn’t push it.

  ‘OK, so here’s the truth. I’ve got myself a bit of a … sugar momma.’

  ‘Well, at least that’s more in character, Wade. Why are you so hard on yourself? Nobody else is. Or ever was, for that matter. I’ve never understood that about you. You’re your own worst enemy.’

  ‘My life’s a joke, Sarah. I disappoint people. And I don’t even care when people stop caring about me. And I leave, and I leave no traces behind me.’

  ‘You’re life is not a joke, Wade.’

  ‘Then what is it?’

  Just as Sarah was about to answer, a university don in a cap and gown came to retrieve her for her speech. In a moment she was gone, and in her absence Wade needed to make his brain go quiet immediately. He ordered three double vodka rocks and began a weeklong blackout-drinking binge. That was the last time he’d seen another family member.

  The flight attendant took his empty beer can away for landing. Within an hour, around two o’clock in the afternoon, as the rain drizzled out in the parking lot, he was in his old drinking haunt, the Avalon.

  Down the bar, Wade noticed a cute blond with a whiff of a mean streak about her pantomiming a 1950s starlet sneaking peeks at John Wayne in her powder compact. He laug
hed in spite of himself, and mimed a Who me? response. She wagged a naughty-naughty finger at him through her mirror. Wade moved over to the stool beside her, whereupon she said, ‘Oh my, the wolves in this city.’

  ‘Geez, you movie stars.’

  ‘You have a thing against us hard-working girls of stage and screen?’

  ‘Excuse me for interrupting your beauty cocktail.’

  She snapped her compact shut and turned to him, saying, ‘I’ll have you know, I had two lines in a motion picture just this morning.’

  ‘Oh, excuse me again. What motion picture might this have been?’

  She placed her hands on his knees, looked him in the face and said, ‘A godawful hunka shit for some junky American cable network. Mind if I sip your scotch?’

  ‘Go right ahead.’

  She downed it. ‘You live here?’

  ‘Used to. Not any more.’

  ‘Where now then?’

  ‘Las Vegas.’

  ‘Mmm. Charming. So tell me …’

  ‘Wade.’

  ‘So tell me, Wade, what are you addicted to?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘You live in Las Vegas, your eyes are bloodshot and I saw you diddling around with coins on the counter like John Q. Barfly. You don’t shave regularly, because if you did, your skin would be tougher and you wouldn’t have the’ – one, two, three, four, she counted them – ‘nicks on your neck. You’re also in a pub in the middle of a weekday and you’re jittery, but your drinks aren’t really quenching the jitters. So I’d hazard a guess you’re into a thing or two.’

  ‘Pussy-pussy, don’t be so negative. Let’s focus on the good stuff, like the six million twelve-step meetings I’ve seen in my time.’

  ‘You mean, let’s find the joy in your situation.’

  ‘Yes. The joy.’

  ‘Are you staying at the hotel here?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Without another word they went up to Wade’s room. Two hours later the blond was gone, her cell phone number penned onto the base of Wade’s right thumb. She was a decorator. Stoked by sex, Wade felt strong enough to call his family. He dialed his mother and got her machine: Hi, this is Janet. I’m not in right now, so please leave a message and I’ll get back to you in a jiffy. It was her polite voice, the one she used when speaking with checkout clerks and the insurance man, never with the family.

  Beep

  ‘Mom, Wade here. Yes, your firstborn male child. Guess what – I’m in town. Yes, that’s correct, the stranger returns. I’ll call you later tonight or maybe I could just stop by and say hello. And, uh, Mom – it’s not too good an idea to leave your name on a machine like that. The world’s full of creeps. See you soon. Love ya.’

  He hung up: I’m a bad son, a bad, bad son. He looked up his father’s number, Drummond, Edward B., apparently living a few miles away from Janet in Eagleridge, doubtless in one of that neighborhood’s gee-whiz cliffside houses. ‘Dad?’

  ‘Wade? Hello!’

  ‘Hey, Dad.’

  ‘Wade, where are you – wait, you’re not in trouble, are you?’

  ‘No. No trouble. I just got into town and thought I’d come visit. I’m not always on the lam.’

  ‘Come on over. Where are you staying?’

  ‘In North Van. With friends.’ Best keep an excuse within arm’s reach.

  ‘Come visit. I’m over in Eagleridge these days. Meet the wife. Highway exit number two. It’s a no-brainer. You got the address from the phone book. Come on over.’

  ‘Now? Sure. I guess.’

  ‘We’re having Chinese tonight.’

  ‘I’ll be there in twenty minutes.’

  ‘Wade—’

  ‘Yeah, Dad?’

  ‘Nice to hear your voice again.’

  ‘You, too, Dad.’

  Wade left for his father’s house in a rental car. His driving was lazy and he had a mild hangover from earlier on. Sheets of rain kept dumping, intense at times, never stopping.

  Dad – oh, man. Still the hypocritical prick acting out some corny 1960s idea of manhood. Wade knew that his father had dropped his mother quite cruelly and was now living the life of Mr. Salt-and-Pepper Chest Hair, with his shirts wide open, his golf clubs leaned just inside the front door, and a trophy wife somewhere in the near distance plopping a Gipsy Kings CD into a slot.

  Wade felt that at a certain point in their lives, most people passionlessly assess what they have and what they lack – and then go about making the best of it – like an actor who goes from playing leads to playing character roles; like a party girl who goes from being a zany kook to being a cautionary tale for the younger girls. Wade believed that the adult world is a world of Ted Drummonds, and Wade hoped his father would be proud that his son understood this.

  He arrived at the house, which was an event in itself – glass and steel and concrete blocks inset into a cliff overlooking the Pacific. Wade half expected to find his father in an eye-patch overlooking a backlit map of the world, stroking a white Persian cat and planning ICBM attacks on New York. Instead Ted opened the door, shouted ‘Wade,’ and hugged his son so hard Wade thought blood would squeeze out of his pores like juice. ‘Come on in. Have a look around. Quite a place, eh? I got sick of that suburbia crap.’

  Ted poured generous drinks for them. He’d obviously been to a gym and somebody hip was shopping for his wardrobe. And then Wade saw a flash in his father’s eyes. The flash said, It’s all shit, Wade, just don’t say the words out loud, because then even the shit goes away and we’re left with nothing.

  Drinks in hand they took a tour of the main floor, high ceilinged and enclosed in glass, on which the rain continued to drum. The fact that Ted had yet to mention any other family member was leaving Wade feeling a touch disoriented. Who is this old guy? What am I doing in his James Bond living room?

  Wade asked, ‘Where’s, uh, your wife?’

  If Ted was awkward about Wade meeting her, he didn’t let on.

  ‘Nickie? She’ll be downstairs in a second. She’s just in from work.’

  ‘She works, huh?’

  ‘You know these modern young ponies. Keep them in the corral and they get testy. They’ve just gotta have their jobs.’

  ‘Huh. You don’t say.’

  An awkward silence draped them. Ted asked when Wade’s flight had arrived.

  ‘Around noon. I’d have called sooner, but I got waylaid with a piece of action from the bar down at the Av.’ This seemed to arouse his father’s conversational energy, and Wade found himself needing to please his father, so he gave him a soft-core version of the events. Ted hit him on the shoulder with a that’s-my-boy slap.

  From the kitchen there came a tinkling sound.

  ‘Nickie!’ said Ted. ‘Come on in and meet your son.’

  Nickie came in, carrying a tray of martinis, an ironic smile on her face parodying the demure wifeliness of the 1950s that Janet had once believed in. Wade quickly saw that Nickie was the afternoon’s blond; the insight was reciprocal. Their faces blanched; the martini tray lurched sideways, glasses toppling onto the polished slate floor. Ted and Wade stepped forward and awkwardly helped Nickie pick up glass shards, whereupon Ted saw Nickie’s cell number penned onto Wade’s hand.

  Wade walked straight to the front door, got into his car and drove off, heading for home – Janet’s house. Janet was in the driveway removing groceries from her car in the rain. Mom – ditched by her ingrate family, mateless and brave. Wade’s brain rifled through a billion images, selecting those that spoke of his mother – Janet using canned mushrooms to enliven a pot of spaghetti sauce and enculturate her brutes, only to see her family pick them out and mock them; Janet sneaking a twenty-dollar bill into Wade’s electric guitar fund; Janet feeding the backyard sparrows crumbled-up melba toast when she thought nobody was looking – Mom!

  Janet saw Wade, shouted his name and cried. Wade held her close to him.


  ‘Mom, just so you know, Dad’s going to be pretty pissed off with me, and he might well come looking for me.’

  ‘Did you steal from him – or do you owe him money?’

  ‘Neither.’

  ‘Then why should he – oh, who cares? He deserves whatever you throw him. Have you eaten yet? Come in! Have you had dinner? Oh there’s so much I want to ask you about, and there’s so much for you to catch up on.’

  She made a delicious pasta primavera – God, I miss home cooking – and Wade fell quite effortlessly into his version of Wade Ten Years Ago. But throughout the jokes and fun and memories, he had the sensation that within the past few hours his life had morphed into a horror movie, and that this was the sequence where the axe murderer is outside the house, scoping out the patsies, while the audience squirms and shouts, ‘Leave, you idiots!’

  The doorbell rang and Wade nearly jumped out of his skin. It was Bryan, his depressed brother, in drenched thrift store clothing – still, at his age – in need of a shave, his eyes bloodshot, all crowned with a finely maintained mullet hairdo.

  ‘Bryan, you ring the doorbell at Mom’s house?’

  ‘It was locked.’

  ‘OK. Hi.’

  ‘Hi.’

  An awkward silence followed as Bryan removed his soaked pea coat and threw it onto a chair. ‘So much for formalities,’ said Wade. ‘Are you hungry? There’s tons of food.’

  ‘Nah. Wine would be nice, though.’

  Bryan seemed to be in good enough spirits and had a glass of white wine with Janet and Wade. Wade had the impression that none of the three was being particularly truthful, and the lack of truth was making the conversation wooden. They stuck to neighborhood gossip and Sarah’s career, yet Wade was aware of the deeper, unasked questions: Is Mom imploding with loneliness? Is Bryan on the verge of another meltdown? And you’d think Dad never existed. And why don’t they ask me about my life? Not that I’d tell them but geez –