A Perfectly Good Family

by Lionel Shriver

  Truman hated The Basement. He’d only been here twice, while living a mile away. For one thing, Troom had a passion for stocked pantries—lone bottles of Cremora nestled in dead silverfish made him feel desolate. For another, he was fastidious, and Mordecai’s table was sooty with roll-up ash; the Toast-R-Oven doubled as a roach motel. Both visits, Truman had washed his hands within five minutes. And Mordecai’s environs dripped with the neglect that Truman detested. Mordecai lost the cap to his Worcestershire sauce, and never shut the top of his doughnut box. His cups seeped coffee from hairline cracks; his amplifier adjusted with vice-grips. Broken-down flop-house furniture lay strewn about the place at queasy angles in misadventurous groupings like the slaughtered anti-heroes of Reservoir Dogs.

  But Mordecai’s negligence was selective. Over in the workshop, motors were oiled, drill-bits of ascending size coddled in felt, hammers returned to their Magic-Markered shadows on the pegboard.

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  The message was explicit: a genius did not lower himself to buy broccoli.

  Even I had objected that his bog, with a door that didn’t shut, its stacks of Mechanics Weekly by the head and hardened Hilton towels in the shower, never had loo roll. Money down, however, that Mordecai never ran out of electrician’s tape or five-amp resistors. According to Truman, his brother’s domestic disregard was a vanity.

  For me it was a liberation. Granted this was not a household that arranged sliced tomatoes with fresh basil on handsome ceramic, whose host would throw a fit on discovering they were out of balsamic vinegar.

  No basil, no tomatoes, no platter, Dix howabout Karen’s, you game? I loved it. Personally, I’m a natural homemaker—I’d have the bloody vinegar.

  ‘How’s it going at the haunted house?’

  ‘Horror show. Low budget. Had much truck with Averil?’ I had a way of pronouncing her name.

  ‘Sweet. But mousy.’

  ‘Ever lived with a mouse?’

  Dix laughed. ‘Scrabbling in the rafters.’

  ‘And how. Oh, she never complains to me outright. Only through Truman. I get the diplomatic version.’

  ‘What’s the beef?’

  ‘You name it. I add too much detergent to the laundry, too much salt to the pasta, and too much cayenne to the salad dressing—that is, any.

  After a shower, I walk around in a towel: I have no shame.’ I raised my eyebrows. ‘She’s right. I don’t.’

  ‘Mean she’s lucky for the towel?’

  ‘It’s no accident she’s a school teacher.’

  ‘Bet they figured once your mother cashed in her chips they’d have the place to themselves.’

  ‘They should have figured they’d be out on their ear.’ The heat in my voice surprised me. ‘There’s no reason Truman should assume he stays in a house willed to all three of us just because he never had the wherewithal to leave home.—Hi.’ I looked up shyly. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Just won the contract with Meredith College to overhaul their theatre.

  New sound system, lights, the lot. A plumb. Dix, you’re remiss. Any clean glasses?’

  ‘You mean of all the ones you washed?’

  Mordecai slid me an aquavit in a Burger King tumbler glazed 94

  with Daffy Duck—it looked so harmless. If spirits this early in the day were against my policy, I maintained most policies to make exceptions to them. Truman replaced my parents’ regulations with stricter of his own: no pie. Mordecai chucked them wholesale. Me, I teetered. My whole life I had never decided whether to be a good or a bad girl.

  ‘So how’s tricks at the ranch, Core?’ Mordecai dumped his boots on the table; dope seeds rolled to the floor.

  I sighed. ‘We’ve reclaimed the place, little by little. But it’s slow, and pretty depressing.’

  ‘That house is full of the most godawful crap.’

  ‘It’s funny, we can’t bring ourselves to throw anything away.

  Everything’s in boxes.’

  ‘It’s not all yours to chuck, is it?’

  ‘You want the yellow squash casserole?’ I offered.

  He skinned up a Three Castles. ‘You don’t know what I want.’

  ‘Listen,’ I raised cautiously. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you had anything to do with this, except the Britannicas disappeared at the same time.’

  I darted my eyes towards the entrance, where the twenty black encyclopedias had been dumped not a foot past the door. An uppermost volume was squarely under a leaky pipe; a drop splatted as I looked over. The book’s black surface had already bubbled and blanched, its cover warped.

  ‘You didn’t, uh, borrow any tools, did you?’

  He licked the Bambu. ‘A few. One of my hand drills was on the fritz.

  We had a deadline. What’s the problem? You guys get a half million dollar house, and I grab a bag of two-penny wood screws.’

  I rolled a dope seed between thumb and forefinger. ‘See, the drill and…little circular saw,’ which wasn’t little and was frigging expensive and about which I had already heard altogether too much, ‘they’re Truman’s. So you might, um, drop them by. And maybe next time…make sure first?’

  ‘I gotta ask Mommy?’

  ‘You can help yourself to all the yellow squash you like. But if you run off with anything of Troom’s I get the aggro. From now on it’s between you and Truman.’

  There was nothing between my brothers but me. If the matter were left to direct communication, Truman wouldn’t see his saw 95

  for fifty years. Ask my parents what happened when Mordecai ‘borrowed’ things.

  I looked up suddenly. ‘You have a key!’

  ‘Sure. I left with one at fourteen.’

  ‘In case you came back?’

  ‘Maybe I still will.’

  Dix got up for a beer, and slammed the fridge. ‘Mort!’

  ‘Dix, roll a joint, will ya? Anyway, Core, I did come back. When no one was home. When I couldn’t stomach another heat-lamp casualty burger from the Red Barn dumpster. I’d fix a cheese sandwich.’

  ‘With lots of chilli sauce.’

  ‘And sometimes pocket a twenty from Father’s dresser.’

  I slammed Daffy Duck. ‘That was you! I got scuppered for that! Twice I was grounded for a week, no dessert! They still think I did it!’

  Mordecai hee-hee-ed. ‘Naturally they wouldn’t suspect little True, would they?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘He was always Mister Perfect.’

  ‘I rehabbed your rep, then. Added a dash of the unpredictable.’

  But what came back to me were even earlier scenes, when Mordecai still lived at home. A crime would have been committed, petty—Father’s scissors swiped from his desk drawer. ‘I din do it,’ I’d say, wringing my skirt—even telling the truth I looked guilty as sin. Truman swooned up at them with those big hazel eyes, mute with terror. Mordecai folded his arms and scowled. My father would arraign us at the kitchen table for mock juvenile court. We were not allowed to leave until someone came clean.

  The culprit was always the same. But we would sit for hours at that table, Mordecai implacable, staring at the ceiling. Once I’d shaken my head to satisfy Truman that he needn’t take the rap on my account, the toddler would rifle cereal boxes for snap-together prizes and draw pictures in poured salt. But I couldn’t stand it. I wanted to go play. I eyed Mordecai with defeated admiration. He’d have sat at that table into the night with no dinner rather than cave in to my father. Every time, I took the blame.

  While I was spanked, Truman would throw his arms around my father’s ankles, imploring, ‘Hit me instead!’ I’d figure I deserved the beating, as punishment for weak resolve. And I have 96

  since found taking the fall enlightening, of the Birmingham Six or the Guildford Four: it is less humiliating to confess to something you didn’t do.

  ‘What bamboozles me,’ Dix was saying, ‘is how you could only take twenty bucks.’ She turned to me. ‘Kid out on the street, fourteen, fifteen, and they didn’t give him jack? And h
is daddy a hotshot lawyer?’

  ‘As I recall,’ I said cautiously, ‘he didn’t want their money.’

  ‘Besides, Dix, it would just have been subtracted from my inheritance.’

  ‘Your parents were remembering sons of bitches.’

  ‘I’m surprised I didn’t get deductions for the diapers.’

  ‘Speaking of which,’ I mentioned. ‘The ACLU wants their dosh. Of course they asked nicely. This chap thought Father was Gandhi or something.’

  ‘I could tell him a thing or three,’ Mordecai grumbled.

  ‘So we had the house appraised, and it’s worth more than Hugh thought: $410,000. That means you’d be due about $100,000

  clear…There’s no reason to take this to court, is there? Between the cash and a mortgage, Troom and I could buy out the ACLU and you as well…’ The proposition had seemed so straightforward, yet I couldn’t look Mordecai in the eye.

  ‘Yeah, right.’ He knocked back another aquavit.

  ‘Why don’t ya’ll put that albatross up for sale?’ Dix exclaimed. ‘You know how many rich faggots would leap at that pile of kindling in Oakwood now? Are ya’ll out of your tree?’

  I hugged my elbows; Mordecai flipped a catalogue.

  ‘Heck-Andrews is irreplaceable,’ I said feebly.

  ‘Who would want to replace it?’ She was furious; I wasn’t sure why.

  Though she reminded me of my mother in her resort to slamming dishes, instead of rattling silverware she threw it away.

  ‘What’s with that brother of yours, anyway?’ asked Mordecai. ‘What’s his game?’

  ‘I’m not sure Truman has a game.’

  ‘Well, that’s pathetic.’ Mordecai eyed his wife puffing away on her reefer and not offering him any, and reached for the baggie to roll his own. ‘What are you up to?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Why would you keep your share in the house? You said yourself your sister-in-law is driving you bats. Why not take the money 97

  and run? Buy a flat in England or something? Or are you planning to stay?’

  ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do. I had a bit of a mishap in London.

  All my work was—ruined.’

  ‘That sounds careless.’

  ‘I was living with two chaps and, ah, fucking them both at the same time. They found out.’

  Mordecai guffawed and said, ‘Nice going!’ I know how to impress my older brother.

  ‘—So I’m back in Raleigh for now. Thought I’d stay in Heck-Andrews for a while, pick up some work after the new year. Besides, without my help Troom would have to get out. They barely have an income.’

  Mordecai snorted. ‘That’s just what he needs, Corrie Lou. If you really cared about the guy, you’d pitch him in the drink. Sink or swim.’

  ‘Uh-huh. What if it’s sink?’

  ‘And you know he’d have taken care of Mother until she was a hundred and five.’

  ‘That’s so bad?’

  ‘Criminal.’

  I took a breath and launched. ‘He lives in a small world. OK, he goes to school, but to classes, full stop. He does his homework. He hasn’t any friends. He has his—wife,’ I said with effort, ‘like some—little sister,’

  I said with more effort, ‘who I’m sure tells him everything since there’s nothing to tell. He volunteers for Preservation/NC twice a week, but that’s all about the house. He wants most of all to get Heck-Andrews listed on the National Registry so no one can tear it down. That’s his world, see: Truman lives in a house. You want responsibility for taking that away?’

  ‘I’d leap at the chance.’

  I laughed, and poured another aquavit.

  ‘What’s that kid gonna do with a degree in philosophy?’

  ‘Prove to Father he’s got moral gravity. Now Father’s dead. Leaves Troom in a bit of a corner.’

  ‘The guy’s head is in a fucking bucket. And the wife—!’

  ‘Don’t get me started.’

  ‘What a dishrag! How do you explain it?’

  ‘Good lay?’

  ‘Even your hand moves.’

  98

  ‘Any lay?’

  ‘Now you’re talking.’

  ‘So you think that out of affection,’ I proposed whimsically, ‘you and I should buy Troom out instead.’

  Mordecai looked around to find Dix out of earshot, and then leaned forward. ‘That’s right.’

  I stopped laughing. ‘Come on.’

  ‘He’d be testy at first.’ Mordecai leaned back coolly. ‘Later, he’d never stop thanking you.’

  I choked.

  ‘What’s funny?’

  ‘I’m trying to imagine Truman, shaking my hand. “I just wanted to express my infinite gratitude for your robbing me of the most important thing in my life.”’

  ‘It’s not his house.’

  ‘He thinks it is. With a vengeance.’

  ‘Let me ask you this. What effect do you think living in that museum has on your little brother? Honestly.’

  ‘It stunts him,’ I conceded. ‘He talks about Mother all the time. He feels guilty there. He’s always scrubbing and hoovering, like a murderer washing his hands.’

  ‘Don’t you think that some people have to be pushed from the nest because otherwise they’ll peep away their whole lives too scared to jump?’

  ‘That’s Mommy Bird’s job,’ I said warily.

  ‘Mother’s dead.’

  I drummed my fingers. ‘Mordecai, what are you getting at?’

  ‘I told you: why don’t you and me buy out your brother?’

  ‘You’re serious!’

  ‘Damn tootin’.’

  In truth, I had never been so flattered. I stalled for time. ‘Truman wouldn’t agree to sell to us for all the tea in China.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have to. You said it yourself: without your share, he can’t swing it, can he? Together, we own half the house already; we’ve got the cash coming in from the will, and you and I could take out a mortgage. Sink that equity into Decibelle, it’ll multiply; sitting there on Blount Street, it rots.’

  ‘Truman would die,’ I mumbled.

  ‘He wouldn’t die. He could take the money and pick up a condo where Mother didn’t boo! around every corner and maybe, 99

  perish the thought, get a job. He’d squeal, you betcha. But getting booted out of there would be the best damned thing ever happened to the guy.’

  ‘I don’t understand. What would you want with Heck-Andrews?’

  ‘That place is massive and right now it’s wasted on flower vases and empty beds. My office is cramped, and we just broke our last coffee cup. Plenty of work space—why not? And you and I get on all right—don’t we?’

  I wanted to say I wasn’t so sure; that he paralysed me with a deference as if I were always making up for something, though I had never located for exactly what. But that very deference guaranteed I would answer,

  ‘Sure.’

  I could hear his wife in the background, shouting instructions to his workmen. Though she once hired out at union wages, she now worked for Mordecai as his Vice President. Mordecai didn’t pay nearly so well.

  ‘But how does Dix feel about this?’ I whispered.

  ‘I thought she made it pretty obvious how she feels. Decibelle’s in the red—though only for now, we’ve got this new contract—and a quick hundred thou with no strings would come in handy. But she’ll come round. I have a feeling once the pigeons were cleared from the rafters she might like it there. So whatta you say?’

  I opened my mouth and this is what I expected to come out: however hobbled he might seem to you, Truman is my beloved younger brother who might recover from moving house but would never recover from a sister’s perfidy. Thanks, but no thanks. If you force the house on the market, Truman and I will make our bid, because that’s the way it’s always been—Truman and I are a team.

  ‘Maybe,’ I heard instead, to my own stupefaction. ‘It’s an idea. Can I think about it?’


  ‘Not for long. That’s why I’m going ahead with the partition suit, Core. The court will give you a deadline, and you need one. You don’t like to make choices, Corrie Lou, but you’re making them all the time whether you admit it to yourself or not. It’s down to the wire: your neurotic, retarded kid brother, or me.’

  Dix returned to the kitchen for a refill of aquavit, and looked from her husband to me. ‘You asked her.’

  100

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mordecai, spewing smoke.

  ‘And what’d she say?’

  ‘Think we may have a deal here.’

  That’s not what I said, but Mordecai was not The Bulldozer for nothing.

  One of their last plates hit the concrete floor. ‘Ya’ll are out to lunch!

  What’s that dump gonna do for you two but suck $100 bills like a leaf machine? I don’t know diddly about real estate, and even I can see the place is falling to bits! Maybe you save a snapshot to remind you of your Mom and Dad, but you don’t save a $400,000 hole in your pocket!’

  ‘That house may not be my kid brother’s, but it ain’t yours either so stuff the attitude and butt out.’ Mordecai’s boots hit the floor.

  ‘When my Daddy died, all I wanted was my Daddy’s desk, which you gave me shit over—’

  ‘OK, driving the truck all the way to Chattanooga for one lousy desk was a pain in the ass—’

  ‘I didn’t ask you to cart back the whole fucking house, did I? To remind me of my goddamned wonderful childhood?’

  Mordecai stood up and advanced with a clump. Dix took a step back.

  ‘I don’t seem to recall you had such a goddamned wonderful childhood.’

  ‘That’s what I mean, you bastard, have you forgotten? All you were to them was a drunken chain-smoking cunt-fingering degenerate, and you’re getting maudlin? When we’re up to our eyes in debt—’

  ‘It’s my inheritance, which I’ll take in the form I please, and you can keep your fucking desk—’