All Families Are Psychotic

by Douglas Coupland

  … nail clinic … wet T-shirt contest… foam beer coolers half price … vacancy … no vacancy … Citgo gas …

  ‘So I think Daytona Beach is for all those people who run to the ticket booth first on the morning after a lottery. They know that the really good beaches were swiped by rich people at least a century ago. They know this is the only beach they’re ever likely to get – but they also think that maybe for once they’ll get a deep tropical tan instead of burning all pink, and maybe for once the margaritas’ll make them witty instead of shrill and boring, and that maybe they’ll meet the lay of a lifetime in the hotel lobby, hot and ready to go. If it’s not Daytona Beach it’s Lake Havasu, and if it’s not Lake Havasu, it’s, I dunno – somewhere on Long Island.’

  … all the shrimp you can eat… dead car dealerships … helicopter rides … Bikers Welcome!

  ‘Rich people – shit, they’ll probably never set foot in Daytona Beach even if they reincarnate as a rich person a hundred times. They might fly over the place. Maybe their drugs’ll pass through it. But that’s it. So I guess Daytona Beach is also a way of crowd-controlling middle-class and poor people.’

  … Taco Bell… discount golf supplies … acupuncture

  They found a hotel, a peacock-blue twelve-story blank of a building chosen because it seemed like a place that would ask no questions if the desk staff were, say, to witness two men carrying another unconscious man into the elevator from the side lobby door – this assumption proved correct. They dumped Ted on the bed. The view outside the window was of ocean and sky and nothing else – one blue rectangle on top of another, not even a bird. Janet closed the sheers.

  The cell phone, now partially charged, chirped; it was Nickie. With mock politeness, Nickie asked her, ‘Hello, Jan, how are you?’

  ‘How are we, Nickie? We’re supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. And we’re all together in a Daytona Beach hotel – it’s a long story – and you wouldn’t believe the half of it. Where are you?’

  ‘I’m at Kevin’s – with Beth.’

  ‘Kevin’s? With Beth?’

  Janet took down Kevin’s phone number and called on the land line while the cell recharged.

  Wade said, ‘What’s going on? Mom, what’s—?’

  The time-share in Kissimmee had been ransacked while Nickie was window shopping at Dillard’s. Around the same time, Beth had gone to Kennedy Space Center, but had forgotten her asthma inhaler, and when she went up to the room to fetch it, she saw the room had been ransacked. She’d phoned Nickie in tears. The odd thing was that nothing had been taken from either intrusion. In a panic they decided to hide at Kevin’s.

  Wade took the receiver, then held the receiver away from his ear: ‘—that moron Norm and his fucked-up scheme, and now you’re into some deal so deep it scares the living shit out of me.’

  ‘Beth, just stay there where you are. I’ll come get you.’

  ‘Come get us? You’ll probably get us killed. Have you never heard of the invention called call display? You called one of Norm’s ice-blooded thugs on our telephones? What were you thinking?’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking, Beth – no one’s going to be killed,’ said Wade, Janet thought, a touch unconvincingly.

  ‘How could you do this to us, Wade?’

  20

  ‘Where are the boys?’

  ‘They’re downstairs, Ted.’ Janet was lying beside her ex-husband on the hotel bed.

  ‘D’you send them down?’

  ‘Yes. I wanted quiet.’

  ‘Good.’ Ted turned his head to the curtained window. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Early afternoon. Ish.’

  ‘I feel awful.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘Why’s the curtain closed?’

  ‘Do you really want to know, Ted?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Janet paused. ‘Because I’m afraid of death. I looked out and there was this big blank sky and this big blank ocean, and it didn’t even look like a real ocean, just this big pool of distilled water – clean but sterile … dead. So I closed the curtains.’

  The two were silent and the room’s cool air felt like baby powder on Janet’s arms and face.

  Ted said, ‘I’m scared shitless of death, myself.’

  ‘Yes, well, it always boils down to that in the end, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I’m going to die.’

  ‘Ted, don’t expect too many tears from me.’

  ‘Huh? No, of course not.’

  Janet asked, ‘Are you still feeling woozy?’

  ‘As long as I don’t move my head too quickly, I’m OK. The sun made me sick more than the booze. I barely touched that gin.’ He paused. ‘Did you tell Nickie? I mean, does she know that I know?’

  ‘No – why?’

  ‘No reason. You think I’m going to be pissed off at her, don’t you? That I’m going to abandon her or cast her away.’

  ‘It crossed my mind.’

  ‘I’m not. Pissed off, that is. And I won’t be leaving her.’

  ‘Now I am surprised.’

  ‘It’s not what you think it is,’ Ted said.

  ‘Nothing ever is.’

  ‘I have liver cancer.’

  ‘I see.’ Janet rubbed her arms. A phone in the next room began to ring. ‘It’s not too warm in here, is it?’

  ‘It’s nice.’

  ‘How far along are you?’

  ‘I’m toast.’

  ‘Can we stick a number on that?’

  ‘Nine months maybe.’

  The phone next door stopped ringing. ‘You’re a man of surprises, Ted Drummond.’

  ‘I wish I weren’t.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Don’t tell Nickie.’

  ‘I can’t guarantee that, Ted. I know too many secrets already. Something’s got to give.’

  ‘Whatever. I don’t care too much. I just wanted to have my bills paid before I go. This HIV thing, now that I think about it, is almost like a relief – it’s like we’re a part of a big death club.’

  ‘There’s a baby or two in the works, I might point out.’

  ‘Oh yeah. Took the kids long enough.’

  Down the hall, a vacuum hissed to life. Janet said, ‘I feel so calm in here, Ted. Do you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I feel like we’re at the end of Our Town, where the people of Grover’s Corner are talking to one another from inside their graves.’

  ‘Huh.’

  ‘That’s what I always thought death would be like,’ Janet said. ‘Me – next to you – together – quietly talking. Maybe for ever.’

  ‘That play always scared me crapless.’

  ‘Oh, I know. Me, too. The play should come with a warning label. But the one thing it did do for me was to clarify in my mind what death would be like. And at the same time it made me not want to think about death.’

  Ted said, ‘I try not to think about death too much. But I can’t stop. And I can’t bring myself to tell Nickie about my liver.’

  ‘Why on earth not?’

  ‘She was supposed to be my proof that I was alive and invincible and young still. Once she thinks I’m checking out, then in my own head I really will be checking out.’

  Janet giggled. Ted asked her, ‘What’s so funny.’

  ‘Irony. Like an O. Henry short story. She thinks you’ll drop her.’

  ‘Oh, geez.’ Ted smiled: big American teeth. He put out his hand and Janet accepted it, and they looked heavenward together. People walked past the door of their room; somewhere a door slammed. ‘Wade and Bryan should have tied me up years ago, but you’re a bad girl for not stopping them.’

  ‘I am, aren’t I?’

  ‘Nah. Not really. I’m the shit around here.’

  ‘I won’t contradict you.’

  ‘When did I turn bad, Jan? Tell me, because I wasn’t always such a bad guy. I was an OK kind of guy when you and I started out. Jan? You listening?’

  ‘Yes. No. I’m in shock. That’s one question I never thought I’d hea
r from your mouth.’

  ‘Pretend we’re dead. We can say anything we want. We can ask each other anything we want. Wouldn’t that be the best thing of all? If life were like that?’

  Janet thought about this: ‘The two of us – dead – I like that.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  A flock of Harleys gunned down the main strip twelve storeys below them, Janet said, ‘I think you started going bad when you started cheating on me. My guess is that it was a few years after Sarah was born – shortly after we moved West – with Violet – that receptionist of yours who was always too nice to me.’

  ‘You’re good,’ Ted said. ‘One, two, three, bang!’

  ‘Didn’t have to be a genius to figure out that one. Was she the first?’

  ‘Yeah. But it didn’t go on long. I cooled on her, she started blackmailing me, so I told her I’d mail her father nudie snapshots I’d taken of her with an Instamatic. Never heard from her again.’

  ‘Instamatic?’

  ‘Yeah – talk about ancient history – but that was how I turned on to porn. You never knew that about me, did you? At my office – wow – a huge locked credenza full of the weirdest shit going.’

  ‘You should check the Internet, Ted.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, I burned out on the stuff and chucked it out in, maybe, 1975. I remember staying late at the office and carefully shunting boxloads of it down into the alley Dumpster, back when the office was on Dunsmuir Street. But then once it was gone I felt dirtier and more burnt out than I ever did when I had it locked up in my office. I guess that’s when I knew there was no going back. When I started getting mean.’

  ‘1975. That’s about right. I didn’t realize how sexual your life was. I thought it was your work stressing you out – I mean, you left aerospace to go into oil pipelines. I though maybe you felt as if your wings had been clipped. Like you’d lost your reason for being.’

  ‘Did you ever cheat on me?’

  ‘No. But I would have. With Bob Laine, your old tax guy, the night of the party and your brouhaha with Wade on the lawn. I was that close.’

  ‘What a disaster that night was.’

  ‘I cried the whole next day – on the tennis court bench.’

  ‘Geez, I’m sorry. You should have gone for it.’

  ‘You can’t be serious.’

  ‘I am. A fling would have been fun for you.’

  ‘You’re right, it would have been.’

  ‘Hey – did you know about my drug problem?’

  ‘Your drug problem?’

  ‘In the early eighties, coke. By the shovel.’

  Janet sighed. ‘I’m such a dumb bunny at figuring out that kind of thing, Ted. That’s probably why you got away with so much.’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  Janet added two and two: ‘That’s where our stock money went – it wasn’t the 1987 market crash at all.’

  ‘Bingo. Sorry.’

  Janet sighed. ‘Ancient history.’

  ‘The reason I’m not so much of a shit right now is because I’m not doing drugs. For one thing, I couldn’t afford it, and second, I want to die clean. How’s that for sappy?’

  Pieces were falling into place for Janet. ‘You’re bankrupt because you blew all your money on drugs – didn’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, well, thar she blows.’

  ‘Huh.’

  In the hallway the housekeeping staff were having a squabble over who did or did not forget towels that were, or were not, of the right type.

  ‘Let me hold you,’ said Ted.

  ‘Really now?’ said Janet.

  ‘Yeah, really now.’

  Janet weighed the ups and downs of the offer. ‘I used to love you dearly, Ted Drummond.’

  ‘I used to love you dearly, too, my dear.’

  ‘You want to hold me?’

  ‘Yes. I want to hold you.’

  ‘Our little girl’s going into space, Ted.’

  ‘Our little girl.’

  Shortly, like twins in utero, arm in arm, they fell asleep.

  21

  At a pay phone down on Daytona Beach’s main drag, Wade dialed Sarah at her private number. Bryan was browsing in a nearby shop that sold NASCAR baubles.

  ‘Sarah?’

  ‘Oh. It’s you.’

  ‘Huh? What do you mean “Oh, it’s you”?’

  ‘Just what I said.’

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes. I’m OK.’

  Something’s going wrong. ‘What’s up, little sister?’

  ‘Wade, you’re really pushing things by phoning me like this.’

  ‘What – is it your training time right now? Should I have called at four A.M.?’

  ‘That’s not what I mean.’

  ‘Sarah, what’s happening?’

  Sarah mimicked him: ‘Sarah, what’s happening …’

  Wade felt dizzy, as if he’d just gotten off a Tilt-a-Whirl. ‘Sarah, come on – this isn’t fair. I have no idea what’s happening.’

  ‘I found out once and for all about Howie and Alanna.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yeah, oh.’

  ‘How? Who told you?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Yes, it matters.’

  Sarah went quiet on the other end. She sniffled once and was on the cusp of tears.

  Wade said, ‘Oh, geez, Sarah. I’m sorry. I’m so goddamn sorry I feel sick, and I really do feel sick. Oh, geez. Oh, geez.’ Sarah sniffled again. There were loudspeaker sounds in the background. Wade asked, ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Gordon.’

  ‘Gordon Brunswick?’

  ‘Yes – Commander Gordon Brunswick, husband of Alanna.’

  Don’t be defensive. ‘Why? How?’ Wade sensed Sarah collecting her wits.

  ‘Alanna blabbed. Because you caught her – them. Because she felt guilty. Because she’s a meddlesome cow.’

  ‘I see.’ More background noises – a drill of some sort: a PA system. Wade tried imagining what he’d feel like if Beth cheated on him. He said, ‘Christ, I’m sorry, Sarah.’

  ‘You don’t understand, do you?’

  ‘Understand? Understand what?’

  ‘It’s not Howie I care about.’

  ‘You’re losing me, Sarah. You don’t care about Howie?’

  Sarah sighed; whatever tears there’d been were gone. ‘Wade, you think I’m perfect, don’t you?’

  ‘Well – yes. I always have.’

  ‘I can’t take it any more.’

  ‘Well, I mean nobody’s per—’

  ‘Shut up, Wade.’

  ‘Sarah?’

  ‘Gordon and I were having an affair. It’s been the most liberating thing that’s ever happened to me.’

  Kaboom. What was blurred becomes focused. ‘Like I’m someone to judge anything, Sarah.’

  ‘We were going to make love up in zero-G.’

  ‘Oh, man …’

  ‘Now Gordon’s called things off and shut himself off to me. He might as well be my tenth-grade chem teacher.’

  ‘Oh, Sarah.’

  ‘I was in love with him, Wade. Shit, I still am. What I have with Gordon is totally different than anything I remember feeling for Howie. Howie was OK, but I don’t worship him. Never have. Do you worship Beth?’

  ‘I haven’t thought of it that way. I suppose I do.’

  ‘I don’t care about this mission any more. I don’t.’

  ‘Sarah – don’t say stuff like that. You have to care.’

  ‘Do I?’

  This is all my fault. This is all my fault. I had to go wear clean clothes to the hotel. ‘Sarah, you’ve been working towards this your whole life.’

  ‘Correction: Everyone else has been pushing me towards this my whole life. Dad especially.’

  ‘You can’t just drop out. It’s not like NASA has understudies. This isn’t a high school production of Bye, Bye Birdie.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll go up there into orbit. And OK, I’ll do my job. And that’s all I’ll do. I mig
ht as well be running a diagnostic test on an Audi. It’s just a job.’

  ‘Sarah, let me come see you. Can they give you an hour off at this point? Can we just talk?’

  Sarah sighed. ‘Wade – this is all kind of new to me. I don’t know.’

  ‘Is this why you were so pissy with Mom last night? Pardon my French.’

  ‘Yeah. I shouldn’t have yelled at her. It’s the last thing she needs.’

  Good. She still cares about other people’s feelings.

  In the background a bell went off. ‘I have to go, Wade.’

  ‘When can I call you next?’

  ‘I’ll call you. I promise. Doesn’t anyone there have a cell phone?’

  Wade gave her Ted’s number. ‘Recharging the damn things is like sorting out Mideast politics. I’ll call tonight.’ Wade then remembered Howie. ‘What about Howie – didn’t two NASA guys take him away yesterday?’

  ‘Yeah. I guess so. Whatever. He’s probably planning a surprise clambake or organizing a happy-wappy balloon-o-gram or something dorky.’

  ‘I love you, little sister.’

  ‘Thanks, Wade. G’bye.’

  Click

  Geez.

  Bryan had emerged from the shop and stood beside Wade at the phone booth. ‘Let’s get Mom and Dad and go find Shw.’ Bryan was slathered in zinc cream; a T-shirt was draped over his head, clamped in place by a Miami Dolphins baseball cap. The rest of his tender pink body was draped in discounted après beachwear, purchased with money donated by Janet. He looked like a bin of Salvation Army remnants.

  ‘Not so fast,’ said Wade. His mind was reeling.

  ‘How’s Sarah?’ Bryan asked.

  ‘Good. Good. Fine.’

  ‘You OK, Wade?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Call that German guy.’

  Diversion! ‘Right. I’ll call Florian.’ Cars roared past, mostly down the main drag of Daytona’s tourist district. It’s like Reno – no – it’s like Laughlin – Laughlin by the sea. Wade clanked a mound of quarters on top of the pay phone and dialed the number of Buckingham Pest Control in the Bahamas. The deeply bored Bahamian woman’s voice answered once more: ‘Buckingham Pest Control.’