A Perfectly Good Family (19 page)

The very next day the doorbell rang. It was 19 December. A functionary pumped my hand. Bobbing in an ocean of navy polysester, he flapped his papers and grinned as if I had just won the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes. That’s North Carolina for you—even a Wake County Sheriff comes on like your long lost buddy.
‘Troo-man!’ I sang up the stairwell, capturing the infuriating gaity with which my mother had roused her sullen children for Sunday school. ‘We have a visitor!’
Truman was not by nature well disposed towards strangers of any kind. I had suggested to him that everyone starts out a stranger; if you don’t get past that hurdle you don’t make friends ever, but then that was Truman, he didn’t make friends, ever. He could be so warm and garrulous, I didn’t understand how he’d gotten through all of high school, a ten-year job whose only conceivable redemption was chatting up clients, and five semesters of university without once bringing anyone home. I think he was scared other people wouldn’t like him and so beat them to it by disliking them first. This particular yuletide popby was unlikely to break him of the habit.
‘What’s the problem?’
‘This is Mr Benson, Troom. He’s a—?’
‘Process-server. Just need you two to John Hancock these here papers, and then I’ll run them back to the courthouse. Won’t take but a jiff.’
‘Would you like to come in?’
Truman gloomed.
I drew Benson into the parlour. ‘Does this have to do with the probate?’
‘No, ma’am. A Mr, ah—’ he checked his folder—‘Mordecai D. McCrea is filing suit for partition. These forms here are just a formality. Say you’ve been served and know to appear at the hearing and all. Nothing to get het up about.’
‘What if we don’t sign?’ Truman jutted his chin.
Benson looked embarrassed. ‘That’d just put me to the trouble of writing out an affidavit swearing you’ve been served. Somebody must have connections, though. Court’s backed up to kingdom come, but ya’ll’s hearing’s next week. Twenty-fourth.’
‘We have a hearing on
Christmas Eve
?’ asked Truman.
‘Just another day, where I work. Get Christmas off, New Year’s, that’s it.’
‘Maybe you could show us where—?’ I asked.
The sheriff spread his documents on the coffee table.
‘You don’t have to be so damned cooperative,’ Truman growled.
‘Well it’s not his fault, is it?’ I whispered back.
‘Say, ya’ll aren’t related to Sturges McCrea, are you?’
‘A.k.a. Dad.’ I smiled; Truman rolled his eyes.
‘Heckuva guy. That explains how this moved up on the docket. Terrible shame about that accident. Can’t say I agreed with him on that bussing folderol—caused more trouble than it was worth and now it’s the
African Americans
putting up a stink about riding across town. But Sturges start in a direction, he keep going, yessir.’
‘That’s for sure,’ I said, thinking Benson could as well be describing my older brother. I added to Truman, ‘Wouldn’t even stop at a Texaco.’
‘Texaco invest in South Africa or something?’ Benson gaped at the cornice and chandelier. ‘Never would have pictured Sturges McCrea in a place like this.’
‘Sturges McCrea didn’t picture himself in a place like this either. Mammy’s out back making Scarlett a dress out of drapes, but we try to keep the tenant farmers’ jump-down-turn-around-pick-a-baleof-cotton sotto voce so the neighbours don’t complain.’
‘Old-fashioned and the dickens to heat, I bet. But this house is a prize, it is.’
That’s exactly what HeckAndrews was, a prize. But I had not yet discerned whether the reward was for the best behaviour or the worst, nor if it had any real value or was merely an oversized trophy.
‘Sign here, and here, too…You sure don’t have much of a tar-heel accent, do you, miss?’
Having established my paternity, I couldn’t pull off English origins this time. ‘I never did, much,’ I said.
‘Sure you didn’t, Corlis,’ said Truman. His signature was a jagged scribble; his capital C tore the page.
‘You two have a merry Christmas now—’
‘How likely is
that
?’ said Mr Friendly.
Benson had decided to leave, and I think he made the right decision. The veins in Truman’s temples were beginning to pulse. ‘Take care now. Gotta scoot.’
‘This is ridiculous!’ Truman shouted when the man was gone. ‘Why is this going to court?’
For once I didn’t quiet him with collusive disparagement of Mordecai’s character by concurring that our brother was a bully and simply wanted to watch us cower and scramble to keep our ancestral home. I had some dawning appreciation for why Mordecai would bring the ownership of this house to a head, for when I considered telling Truman right then,
Troom, I know you and I have talked about buying this house together, but I’m not sure that would be the best thing for you and
…(I’d have sounded so unpersuasive already, like such a shyster, and he would stop me and say what do you mean Corlis, and I would stutter…)
Truman, I’ve talked to Mordecai about maybe buying the house with him instead, and you and Averil could
—Gentle as he seemed, I had a feeling that Truman was wholly capable of socking me in the jaw.
So I let Truman fume and said nothing of the sort. And Mordecai was right, I’d have put off opening my mouth to this effect for months, for years, forever. Often as I might have railed that I was born in the middle and it wasn’t fair, much as I might
have resented both my brothers for forcing me before I was old enough to understand the choice to pick one of them over the other, the middle was where I was stuck, again. I could not have both pie and ice cream, but instinctively I would take my pie and sneak the ice cream. I had always been like that. I was still like that.

My inclination with law was to duck it, though this evasion did not consistently translate into a life of crime. I preferred bicycles and scooters over cars, since the cops overlooked lesser transport, whereas an auto, with its attendant registration, insurance and driver’s licence, entangled its owner in jurisprudence. Yet once on a bicycle, I stopped for lights and gave way at zebra crossings. Being an ex-pat had appealed because, while technically subject to British laws, they were not my laws; especially with no National Insurance number I felt out of their reach, a sensation on which I placed high value even with no plans to break them. For several years I paid the IRS more than I needed, having instructed my accountant that at any cost he must fictionalize a filing that wouldn’t be scrutinized. My sole ambition with law was to slip out from under it. Hence I would never, myself, have filed a partition suit, thereby flying into the very web I went out of my way to avoid.

However, on 24 December Mordecai’s nonchalant slump in the courtroom displayed the plumped lying-in-wait, not of the fly, but of the spider. He had arrived before us with uncharacteristic punctuality. Lolling on his bench with arms extended on either side, ignoring the armed bailiff when the man tapped his head to warn my brother to remove his hard-hat, Mordecai clearly saw the law as a weapon to wield or to defy, either of which he would do with zeal and in plain view. Mordecai regarded a courtroom as part of his inheritance and therefore as one more thing he might help himself to, like a celadon vase. Or this is the only way I could explain how a hippie anachronism in pigtails who was probably packing at least an ounce of dope at the time could slouch amidst all those uniforms in so relaxed and proprietary a fashion.

When I trailed into the court after Truman and Averil, Mordecai waved me over to the seat beside him. Refusing toso much as nod, Truman selected a pew two rows behind Mordecai, so I assumed the empty one between them. That my inability to sit in public incontrovertibly by either left me sitting by myself I might have taken as cautionary.

The case was before a single judge. Our verdict’s dependence on the caprices of one man was all too evocative of my family, and it discouraged me when the larger world was as arbitrary as the small—there was no resort. Judge Harville had an immobile, deadpan face with stiff grey hair that moved like a solid object when he looked down at his files. His languid, congenitally bored manner conveyed that after thousands of picayune disputes paraded before his bench nothing fazed him any more. He kept his voice a level plainsong, except at the end of sentences where they pitched, like Truman’s, in a minor key. Yet while my brother’s voice fell a half step, keening a tune of tragedy and defeat, Harville’s rose a half, lifting with a satiric little jest. From a distance at least, I got the impression Harville saw his job preponderantly as farce.

‘Docket number 92-P648,’ announced the clerk. ‘McCrea vs. McCrea.’ Truman and I made way in the aisle for the blue-maned, blue-faced biddy who had failed to prove her hairdresser’s negligence in placing a standing ashtray in the path between the dryers and the ladies’ loo; when Truman tripped on her outstretched crutch she was elaborately huffy. We sat up at the left side of the court, where we were joined by a striking young man whose dark, drastic features suggested Sephardic parentage, though his surname, murmured hurriedly as he sat beside us, was Anglo enough: Grover. Truman sniffed, and worked his chair another few inches from the larcenous do-gooder. When I whispered that David Grover was pretty sexy, Truman’s face curdled as if I had just confessed to a crush on Radovan Karadzic.

Mordecai swung behind the table on the right. My older brother was in his usual caked black jeans and lace-up boots, with bits of plaster clotting his eyebrows. He was joined by a lawyer whose attire was proper only in the most technical sense. The attorney’s tie was wrenched aside; his suit jacket arms were shoved up his wrists, while his white shirt showed a tad of tail. Since they couldn’t make a rule against it, he seemed to have bad skin on purpose. The lawyer lounged in his chair, savvy and familiar. As he chuckled with Mordecai, I wondered if he’d taken the case on contingency or just for laughs.

It was Truman’s idea that we needn’t hire counsel, though we had rung Hugh, who said he was too closely connected to the case and begged off. Truman figured that since we were in the right we might as well speak for ourselves. I suspected our error, but kept my misgivings to myself. In retrospect, I’d advise prospective defendants that sanctimony makes for weak representation at best.

‘Mr McCrea,’ Judge Harville began, addressing Mordecai. ‘Remove your hat, please.’
‘Sure thing,
your honour
,’ he underscored, with the same knife-twist he’d used when deploying the address with my father. Mordecai’s release of the chinstrap was leisurely.
‘And there is no smoking in this courtroom.’
‘Righty ho,’ said Mordecai, tucking his Bambus back in his leather vest pocket and adding convivially, ‘hard times for us retrogrades.’
‘This is a courtroom, not a pool hall. Mr Shipley?’ Harville sounded so fatigued I thought he might collapse. ‘Exit the chewing gum.’
Mordecai’s lawyer snapped a tiny bubble before picking the wad from between his teeth and jamming it under the table.
‘Mr McCrea, can you explain to me why you have brought this matter to our court? Could you not resolve what to do with 309 Blount Street between you and your siblings?’
Mordecai lunged to the podium in front of his table, flipping a pigtail as he rose. He gripped the lectern and weighed on his elbows, tipping the podium on to its forward edge. ‘My brother refuses to put the house up for sale, which ties up over $100,000 of my money. I run my own company, and am currently under financial duress. Meanwhile he claims he lives there, and won’t move out.’
‘Can your brother not compensate you for your share in the equity, then?’
‘He doesn’t have the cash,’ said Mordecai bluntly.
‘We do
too
,’ Truman whispered fiercely beside me.
‘You are Mr Truman McCrea, sir?’
‘Uh, yes, yes I am—your honour.’
‘Step up to the podium please?’
Truman stumbled to the lectern. While on the opposite side Mordecai had assumed the planted, squinty-eyed try-and-make-me stance from which he had refused to turn down the volume of Three Dog Night, Truman shoved his hands in his suit pockets and drew his shoulders together just as he would have hunched
in our kitchen doorway delaying the inevitable relinquishment of his duplicate key.
‘Do you have the financial resources to retain this property by yourself?’
‘No, but—’ Truman looked back at me. ‘With my sister—’
‘Do the two of you have those resources?’
‘No,’ I intervened from the table. ‘I’m afraid we don’t.’
‘This is cut and dried then—’
‘Your honour!’ Truman pleaded. ‘We were going to take out a mortgage. Sir.’
‘You have arranged a mortgage?’
‘How could we? He filed this suit the day the will was out of probate! The fact is, we made him an offer, and he turned it down!’
‘If it may please the court,’ intruded Shipley wryly, though neither he nor his client had gone out of their way so far to please anyone, ‘The offer so made was spurious, sir, the money was not at hand. For the record, the junior Mr McCrea is an undergraduate at Duke University, with no income aside from a recent inheritance too slight to purchase my client’s share of the property. His wife is a part-time substitute teacher in the Raleigh public school system, with an income, if my research serves me, of $10,000 a year. I would submit that no banker in his right mind would give such an individual a mortgage of fifty cents.’
‘They would, too, with a half-million dollar house as security—!’ Truman’s voice was cracking.
‘Which raises another of our contentions,’ Shipley proceeded. ‘The property’s assessor has shared with my client that he substantially undervalued the real estate, by perhaps as much as $100,000. We have that in writing, sir.’ He passed a paper to the judge, who refused it with a laboured wave of the hand.
‘This court cannot weigh the credit-worthiness of prospective mortgage applicants. We are not a savings and loan. To bar partition, I need written proof that the respondent can buy out the petitioner. Mr—Grover…’ Harville shuffled paper with weary confusion. ‘You are representing—the American Civil Liberties Union? I fail to see whose first amendment rights have been trampled here.’
‘
Mine
,’ grumbled Truman.
‘If I may explain, your honour,’ said Grover easily. ‘The property was willed in equal parts to the three heirs and the ACLU; my organization is tenant in common of 309 Blount Street.’
‘Who would write a will like that?’ Harville supposed.
‘Justice Sturges McCrea, sir.’
‘Typical,’ grunted the judge, and added without looking up, ‘Seems to me you nosy parkers stir up enough trouble without being encouraged.’
‘I beg your honour’s pardon, what was that?’ enquired Grover. ‘For the record?’
‘Never you mind, Mr Grover.’ Harville whinnied, resuming his dreary professionalism. ‘And how is the ACLU disposed in this dispute?’
‘It is naturally in our interests that the property be liquidated. The ACLU has no resistance to this suit; in fact, we are eager to disentangle a charitable bequest from domestic politics that are none of our affair.’
Looking stranded at the podium—no one had told him to sit down—Truman smote David Grover with an evil eye. ‘Why don’t you sit over there?’ he muttered, nodding towards Mordecai. Grover had no choice but to sit on our side of the court, but having him in our dugout was like hunkering down with a teammate whose uniform was the wrong colour.
‘Ms McCrea.’ Harville turned to me. ‘What are your wishes in this matter?’
My heartbeat doubled. ‘I’m neutral, your honour.’
‘Would you not prefer to reap the proceeds of a sale?’
‘I guess I’d like to see the house stay in the family, sir.’
‘So you’re not neutral.’
‘I guess not, sir.’
‘But you do not have the funds to purchase the house, even with your brother?’
I was grateful he didn’t say with which brother. ‘Not quite, sir.’
Harville shook his head in disgust, obviously ready to knock off for Christmas Eve with his own dysfunctional family.
‘309 Blount Street,’ he intoned, ‘is to be publicly advertised for auction, proceeds to be divided equally among the four parties. Bids to be due February 5, 1993—that gives you six weeks. Should any one party or combination of parties raise the funds in that time, you are within your rights to participate in the auction yourselves. I might add, Mr Shipley, that a materially identical course
of action was available without judicial assistance, and there was no excuse for wasting the state of North Carolina’s time with this case.’ The gavel fell. We were excused.