All Families Are Psychotic

by Douglas Coupland

  ‘So that’s what you were doing,’ said Ted.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Your mother and I always tried to guess what you were doing after you took off like that. It always boiled down to smuggling.’

  ‘I did other things, too.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Forget it.’

  They drove on without speaking. Wade figured they were three minutes away from Howie and the Brunswick family home. ‘By the way, Howie is having a fling with Alanna Brunswick, so he’s going to be acting all funny around me. Around you, too, I guess. Just so you know what’s up.’

  ‘You’re kidding me.’

  ‘No. Why would I? I caught them being all kissie-poo yesterday morning.’

  ‘That sonofabitch. He’s screwing around on Sarah?’

  ‘Dad, you can’t kill him. At least not until the shuttle lands.’

  The cab pulled up at the Brunswicks’, where a picnic was going full-force on the lawn, a garish space-themed tribute to one of the abundant Brunswick children. Parents were seated in folding chairs around the yard, eating noisily with their spawn. Howie was manning the barbecue, and when he saw Wade and Ted hop out of the cab, his face went blank.

  Ted, in his one shoe, walked up to Howie. ‘Howie, pay the cab driver.’

  ‘Ted – I don’t have my wallet on me – I …’

  Ted poured a pitcher of lemonade on the grill, making a steam mushroom. ‘Pay the cab driver.’

  Howie stood silent for a moment. ‘Will do.’ He went to pay.

  All eyes were then riveted on Ted, who paid no heed, his own eyes squinting meanly on Howie.

  Wade walked over to the grill, as did Alanna, now fully clicked into cheerleader mode. She approached Ted as one would approach a grrring dog. ‘You’re Ted – I’m Alanna.’

  Ted grunted.

  Alanna looked down at the last whispers of steam lapping up from the grill. ‘I see you didn’t like our little barbecue …’

  ‘Don’t push it, lady,’ Ted said under his breath.

  He turned around; Bryan was in the wading pool, with his body covered up with soaking towels to preclude more sunburn. One of the children started to cry. Howie came back from the taxi. ‘Looks like we could use some fresh lemonade, Alanna.’

  Ted said, ‘Give me the keys to your van, Howie.’

  ‘Hey, father-in-law, why don’t you join our party?’ Howie giggled nervously.

  ‘I’d love to join your party, Howie, but if I did I’d probably have a drink, and if I had a drink I’d start talking in a loud, graphic way about how you and the missus here are humping each other like a pair of Dobermans.’

  ‘You wouldn’t do that,’ said Howie.

  ‘I wouldn’t, would I?’

  ‘No. You wouldn’t. Because Sarah would find out, and she’d go up into outer space as if you’d taken a big staple gun and gone at her heart a hundred times. As far as I can see, she’s the only thing in your life that’s sacred. The one solitary single thing. Hey – that’s pretty pathetic, when you think about it.’ He smiled. ‘Turkey burger?’

  Ted obviously hadn’t expected balls from Howie and was temporarily quiet. Alanna looked at Ted, then to Howie. ‘So it seems things are hunk-dory here.’

  ‘I think so,’ said Howie. ‘Ted here is about to help relight the barbecue.’

  ‘I need Tylenol,’ said Wade.

  Howie said, ‘Up in the bathroom. You know where it is.’

  Wade went upstairs and showered. Drying off, as though some prankster in another dimension had flipped a switch, his energy suddenly surged – he felt great, like a teenager headed out to vandalize on a Friday night. God, I love it when this happens. I used to be like this all the time – like a poseable action figure: GI Joe with Kung-Fu Grip – I am going to see my kid grow up!

  Wade’s energy came in surges that could vary in length from hours to weeks, and these surges seemed unrelated to any known form of cause and effect. They simply came.

  He looked at his soaked, dirty, oily clothes and decided he couldn’t be bothered to pick them up – wait a second … I’m too lazy to pick up the laundry – my energy really is back!

  Wade faced yet another messy wardrobe change at the Brunswicks’. He looked out of the bathroom and saw what was probably the guestroom. Locked. A piece of coat-hanger took care of that, and he entered what proved to be the room assigned to his brother-in-law for the weeks leading up to the launch. He rifled through Howie’s personal effects, cozied inside a wicker duck that had once held gift soaps. Hey, hey, my, my – Volkswagen keys! He then sifted through Howie’s cupboard and selected a nondescript shirt and pants – should events ever reach the police ID lineup stage I don’t want to be too memorable-looking.

  On Howie’s bedside phone he then dialed directory assistance for the Bahamas and asked for the number of Buckingham Pest Control, Florian’s shopfront in Nassau. He soon connected to a profoundly disinterested female Bahamian voice: ‘Buckingham Pest Control.’

  ‘Hi, I’d like to leave a message for Florian.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘It’s Wade Drummond. I used to mow his cricket field.’

  ‘Mmmm.’

  ‘A few years ago.’

  ‘Mmmm.’ The voice at the other end might just as well have been a patient on a respirator.

  ‘Tell him I have a message from his mother. A letter.’

  ‘Mmmm.’

  ‘He’ll be very interested to know about it.’

  ‘Mmmm.’

  ‘Make sure he gets the news.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘I’ll call back in a few hours with instructions.’

  He hung up. Then he brushed his hair and loped down the stairs onto the front lawn, where Howie was all smiles; Ted stood glaring at the guests like a bulldog on a chain. ‘Dad, let’s go.’

  ‘I’m going to kill Howie.’

  ‘Wait until Sarah’s in orbit. Besides—’ He held up a key. ‘I have a key.’ He walked over to Bryan lying in the wading pool, face up. ‘Bryan, get out of there. And bring a big towel to cover yourself.’

  Bryan snatched a Tweety Bird in Space towel, and the three men walked over to Howie’s van. Wade got into the driver’s seat. Howie was frozen with indecision as Wade leaned out. ‘Howie! Thanks for letting us use your van! I told Sarah we’d have it back to you in an hour. She’s right, man – you’re the nicest guy in Florida.’

  The year was 1970-something, and Wade and Janet were in a pet store to buy white mice for Sarah’s pet snake, Omar.

  ‘Mom, was Dad always a prick?’

  ‘Wade!’

  ‘Well, was he?’

  ‘Look for good mice, Wade.’ Sarah was returning that evening from a school field trip to a Portland science Olympics; the mice were a surprise.

  ‘Those ones there,’ Janet said, ‘They look …’

  ‘Juicier?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Mom, I think snakes prefer “crunchy” over “juicy”.’

  ‘They do not.’

  Wade watched his mother smile. He said, ‘Juicy mice take too long to go through the length of the snake. Juiciness is constipating.’

  ‘Wade!’

  ‘You didn’t answer my question about when Dad started being a jerk.’

  ‘He used to be nice, you know. Fun. He was fun.’

  ‘Har-de-har-har.’

  A clerk walked over. ‘Looking for feeder mice?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Wade. ‘A dozen.’

  ‘Those ones there,’ Janet said, pointing to the fat ones. ‘Are they more expensive than the regular ones?’

  ‘Yup. They’re pregnant, so they’re a buck more.’

  Wade and Janet ee-yoo’ed in unison. The clerk said they could upgrade to nonpregnant hamsters for only $1.25.

  ‘Just the mice,’ said Wade. ‘Unpregnant. A dozen.’

  ‘How could anybody feed pregnant mice to a snake?’ asked Janet, more to herself than to elicit any real a
nswer.

  ‘What I can’t figure out is why don’t they just eat hamburger?’

  The clerk spoke up: ‘No good without a kill. The kill releases enzymes to aid in digestion. You can’t kill hamburger.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Janet. ‘I never would have believed buying mice was so hard.’

  As the clerk gathered mice, mother and son walked over to the bird section, shrill and hot, rife with the sharp phosphate zing of guano. Wade looked at the budgies and wondered how such a toy of a creature could ever have existed in the wild. It’s like the poodle of the bird world. Wade tried to imagine small white poodles hunting alongside cavemen. He spoke up: ‘You said Dad used to be fun once. When? Prove it.’

  ‘When he was younger. When I met him in university. He was so unstuffy. He’d say anything, and I’ve always liked that in people, maybe because I’m such a wallflower myself.’

  ‘What’s a wallflower?’

  ‘You know. Those girls who stand along the walls at school dances who never get asked to dance.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Nobody ever told me how to pluck my eyebrows. Until university I looked like a female East German weight-lifter from the 1960s.’

  ‘You did not. I’ve seen pictures.’

  ‘I used to be so passive. I’d never think of asking a man to dance with me.’

  A cage of budgies erupted into a bout of squabbling over what appeared to be territorial rights to the perch beside the tiny mirror. Janet said, ‘Your father was sort of like Helena. She’s so outrageous. Helena drove my parents batty. So did Ted, but not as much as Helena did.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ Wade found Helena disturbing; he’d caught her sizing him up in the kitchen a few weeks before. She was, even to his as-of-then presexual eye, dangerous. She’d looked at Wade, narrowed her eyes and said, ‘You’re just like your father. You try to pretend you’re not, but you are. You little faker.’

  Wade returned to the moment. ‘But we were talking about Dad – do you have, like, any proof that he isn’t a jerk?’

  ‘I just don’t understand why the two of you can’t get along. You’re both so much alike, you know.’

  Wade froze. ‘No. No way are we alike.’ Uh-oh.

  ‘Struck a nerve, did I?’

  Had she? ‘He drinks too much.’

  ‘Drinks too much?’ Janet looked puzzled. ‘He drinks as much as any other man his age.’

  ‘What does that prove?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re implying, Wade. Everybody drinks.’

  The mice were ready at the counter. Janet paid. In the car driving home, Wade looked in on the mice, scampering about the bottom of a picnic cooler. ‘Uh-oh—’

  ‘What?’ asked Janet.

  ‘We’ve got a deadie.’ He lifted a dead mouse up by the tail.

  ‘Wade, get that thing out of the car immediately.’

  Wade placed the dead mouse in the vest pocket of his down coat. ‘I’m not going to just throw it out. It’s not an apple core or litter. It was a living creature.’

  ‘Stick it in the compost out back when we get home.’

  Back at the house, Wade went to Sarah’s bedroom. ‘Hey, Omar, time for your delicious mousy treat.’

  From behind him, Janet said, ‘No. Let him build up his appetite so when Sarah feeds him, he jumps on it.’

  ‘Mom, you have a twisted side.’

  ‘Wade, any mother will give you the same answer. Why do you think we always eat so late in this house? I want the food I serve you to be eaten.’

  An hour or so later, Ted came home from work just as Sarah was dropped off by her science teacher. Ted carried Sarah up to the house on his shoulders. She was beaming: ‘Oh, Daddy!’

  ‘You won, honey, you’re my little winner. Look, Jan – three trophies!’

  A small buzz of activity ensued as Sarah relayed tales of bridges built of macaroni holding fifteen-pound payloads; a lens that burned paper from across a room; frogs that were flash-frozen in baths of liquid nitrogen and then sprung back to life. Wade brought in the cooler containing the mice.

  ‘Wade! You’re my hero – Omar’s going to love these mice. Have you been feeding him properly?’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’

  Ted opened the liquor cabinet door and removed his favorite brand of rye, which he then poured into a tumbler. He made puzzled sounding noises. ‘What the—?’ He slammed the bottle down on the counter. ‘Come here, you little creep.’

  ‘What’s wrong, Ted?’

  ‘There’s a dead fucking mouse in the rye bottle.’

  Wade looked at Sarah with conspiring eyes, and Sarah said, ‘Dad, the alcohol in the rye will have sterilized the mouse. It’s perfectly drinkable.’

  Ted ignored this and grabbed Wade by the collar, busting his puka shell necklace and sending the small beads around the kitchen.

  ‘Put me down, you alcoholic goon.’

  Ted tossed him out the kitchen doorway into the hall.

  ‘Oh,’ said Wade, ‘I guess that’s supposed to prove you’re not an alcoholic? Well, you are – you’re a goddamn drunk and it’s the worst-kept secret in Vancouver.’

  Sarah stood up and barricaded the door with her arms. Nothing in the world would make Ted lay a finger on Sarah. ‘Dad, the mouse is Wade’s idea of a joke. Laugh, OK?’

  ‘That little—’

  ‘Stop.’ Sarah turned around to Wade. ‘Wade, the mouse is dead, so Omar’s not going to eat it. You owe me a mouse.’

  ‘But it died on the way home from the store,’ said Janet.

  ‘Oh,’ said Sarah. ‘Then we’re even steven. C’mon. Let’s go feed Omar.’

  The three men headed down to Kissimmee in the orange van. Traffic was a mess and they lost nearly half an hour at the tollbooth scraping together $1.25 in change. Bryan’s skin was flaring up in an ominous uniform bubble-gum pink color, and Ted stubbed his unshod toe on the van’s running board just as they found their final nickel. When they arrived in Kissimmee, the shadows of the local cypress trees, cycads, grapefruit trees and Washingtonia palms were lengthening; the men were cranky and bored, and without a plan as to how to locate Shw. Wade looked at Ted’s opulent borrowed lodgings and hooted, ‘Viva Las Vegas!’

  ‘Shut up. It’s free.’

  Inside the front hallway was a fountain. A shiny curlicued celebration of the brassmonger’s craft. A peeing cupid supplied sound effects.

  Bryan asked, ‘When’s Nickie back?’

  ‘Hell if I know. She’s out. Not spending money. I hope.’

  Bryan went right upstairs to soak in a cool bath. Ted went to change into fresh clothes. Wade checked out the fridge: a family-pack of forty-eight hot dog wieners and a four-gallon tub of salsa. I didn’t even know salsa came in sizes that big. In an instant he was ravenous. He stuck six hot dogs in the microwave and over by the sink dug into the salsa tub with an opened bag of tortilla chips. The microwave pinged and Wade grabbed the hot dogs, sending them into his stomach only partially chewed. He missed being hungry and he loved the ability to slake the hunger so easily and pleasurably, like sex.

  Wade heard water running upstairs and the taps rattling. Full, he sat on a kitchen chair. Ted walked into the kitchen. ‘I need a rye. You want one?’ He pulled a bottle out from a cupboard. ‘I still inspect my bottles for dead mice, you asshole.’

  ‘We have to go to the hotel. I need my pills.’

  ‘Relax. We’ll be there soon enough. I hope that mental case Shwoo or whatever her name is has left us a clue at the hotel. Or she doesn’t dump the car in the Everglades.’

  ‘Dad – if I don’t take my pills, then my insides get twice as bad as they were before.’

  Ted stared at Wade; Wade sensed that this was the first time Ted was acknowledging his disease on an adult level. ‘OK. I’ll get Bryan, we can stop by the hotel so you can load up on pills. And then we should go to the hospital and find him something to numb his skin. He’s like a pig on a spit.’ Ted was about to leave the room, but turned around. ‘Shouldn
’t you call that kraut Florian guy again?’

  Wade checked his watch. ‘Good idea. He ought to be pretty hungry by now.’ Wade dialed and once again got the bored woman, but the line died a few seconds into the call, and when he tried again, he couldn’t reconnect. ‘It’s no big deal,’ he said to Ted. ‘The Bahamas are connected to the U.S. by a fishing line and a lot of wishful thinking.’

  Bryan came downstairs, so pink that Wade wondered how white people ever got called white. They drove to the Peabody hotel and once up in the room Ted caught the scent of Nickie’s perfume. ‘What the hell?’

  Bryan was prowling through Wade’s shaving kit for Tylenol; Wade again dialed the Bahamas, but got the same useless connection that died after five seconds. The men then drove to the local hospital, where staff saw Bryan, recognized his condition immediately and plopped him onto a gurney, only to spend a half hour examining his insurance history before electing to treat him as a patient. In the end he received various injections, plus a prescription for painkillers and some ointment, which was paid for with the last hundred dollars remaining on Bryan’s MasterCard.

  Bryan was lying on the gurney, blissed out on painkillers, when Wade and Ted looked across the hotel’s emergency room and saw Janet and Nickie.

  What the hell? ‘Mom?’

  ‘Wade? Ted? What are you doing here?’ She saw Bryan. ‘Dear God!’ She ran over to Bryan.

  Ted said, ‘Cool your jets. It’s just a sunburn. He’s in LaLa Land at the moment. More to the point, what are you two doing here? And was that your perfume I smelled up in the hotel room, Nix?’

  ‘Yes, Ted, it was. Janet and I are having a lesbian romance. You can’t deny us our forbidden love.’

  ‘Very funny.’

  Janet said, ‘We were involved in a restaurant holdup this morning. We came here to see the waiter who was shot. We just arrived.’

  ‘Holdup?’ said Wade.

  ‘We’re fine. Shw was there, too.’

  The men’s ears perked up at the sound of Shw’s name. ‘Really now?’

  ‘I honestly wonder if that woman is evil,’ Janet said. ‘She’s selling the baby to some auto parts magnate in Daytona Beach. Selling the baby! Ted, we’re going to have to put our differences aside and hire some lawyers on this one.’