A Perfectly Good Family (5 page)

At Brother’s Pizza I’d been braced to move on to what a marvellous spokesman of the downtrodden my father had been, how fair-minded and self-sacrificing, and what a shame…The usual. Hugh Garrison launched into no such thing.

‘I’ll never forget,’ he began on a second Bud, ‘dinner at your parents’, oh, fifteen years back. I’d litigated a case, see—some arthritic biddy over in Cary with a fair stack of cash in the mattress had been tended by a black maid for years. Since her kids hadn’t been giving her the time of day, the lady’d changed her
will and left lock, stock, and barrel to the maid. Seems they’d become good friends, in a funny way. I’d made the amendments myself, but once the old bird kicked it, the kids started to squawk. Challenged their momma’s competence. In court, the new will was invalidated, and I lost the case. Felt terrible about it. Sent the maid to your dad for the appeal. No question as to that jury’s logic: any dowager of good Southern breeding who left her house to nigger help—pardon my French—was off her rocker. But since the old bat had been hearing the occasional voice, proving racial bias was living hell.

‘Point being, Sturges and I had been working long and late and I was plumb tuckered. So we knock off and your mother cracks open a fresh bottle of apple juice—’

I laughed. ‘The Hard Stuff.’

‘My nose got shoved so far out of joint,’ he admitted, ‘that I
asked
for a beer. Eugenia looked at me as if I’d farted.’
‘My mother thinks beer is low class.’
‘So we sipped our apple juice and then came the nubs of cheddar from the bottom of the drawer—’
‘With the mould scraped off.’
‘Not
all
the mould scraped off. Sturges cranked up the sound-track to 2001, when I had a yen for Ry Cooder. I thought maybe we’d get around to the Series, but over the trombones your Dad started shouting about third-world debt. Then it hit me: Strauss, stale crackers, hard cheese and guilty politics—this was Sturges McCrea’s idea of a
good time
.’
That’s when the idea first entered my head that my parents might be tiresome to other people.

Averil pouted at being left behind, but the will-reading was for immediate family only. I paused at my parents’ Volvo, while Truman lurched to the driver’s seat. I’ll drive if you like, I offered, and he said no that’s all right and I clued that he
always
drove, never mind that this car now was a third mine. I sensed a burgeoning attitude problem.

‘Can we agree to ditch Mordecai after the meeting?’ Truman proposed at the wheel.
‘We might have dinner. He’s your only brother, he lives a mile away from you, and you’ve seen him twice in two years. For funerals.’
‘He’s a bore and a know-it-all and he ignores me. He never fails to make some snide crack about my being in school, and then we have to listen for hours about the future of digital recording.’
I would happily describe my brothers’ relationship to each other, except that they don’t have one.
‘A single evening won’t kill you.’ That was that. With Truman, I am sufficiently accustomed to having my way that I don’t even notice when I get it.
We parked on Hillsborough, a leafy and majestic street in summer, T-junctioning into the state capitol, but looking the worse for wear with dogwoods and black walnuts too bare to obscure the failing businesses behind them. Downtown Raleigh was crumbling and dispirited, though like my parents’ kitchen I was glad it had not been done up. Several tower blocks broke the skyline, but for the most part Raleigh’s architecture had stayed lowlying, and Hillsborough was still lined with pipe shops, diners serving grits and black-eyed gravy, and the flagging Charcoal Grill. The rest of this town had multiplied threefold since I’d lived here, its perimeters bleeding to Durham and Chapel Hill, so it was comforting to find a stretch like this one that hadn’t changed much.
There was one more bit of landscape that hadn’t changed much.
I had to smile. Two blocks down, in silhouette he might be mistaken for my father, with that distinctive side-to-side swagger and groundeating galumph. But my father’s purposeful headlong look would have aimed at the NC Supreme Court around the corner; Mordecai leaned towards a different sort of bar.
As he drew a few strides closer, the paternal resemblance fell away. For one thing, he’s shorter; both my brothers battled the metaphorical notion that they had not risen to their father’s stature in any respect. While my father’s umber hair had shocked in a Kennedy-style wave and was cropped close at the neck, Mordecai hadn’t cut his hair since he was twelve; he bound the waist-long locks into three tight pigtails. His colouring was my mother’s: when unbraided, the hair was lush and dark; his brows were rich and low, his lips full. If he weren’t always vulturing his forehead and crinkling his mouth into an anal scowl, his face would look pretty.
The sun out, Mordecai was wincing, the cast of his skin a sallower shade than the wan winter light. While my mother’s tones were olive, all of Mordecai was yellow, down to his thick rimless glasses whose lenses he special-ordered with a urinous tint. The unhealthy jaundice of his complexion was, I knew, distilled from liquor and heavy food and a vampire’s schedule of hibernating all day and working all night. As he cringed down the poppled pavement, I doubted Mordecai’s nocturnal flesh had seen more than a few rays of sunshine for twentyfive years. That may have left him safe from skin cancer, though if so that would be the single disease to which he had failed to issue a personalized invitation.
I raised my hand in salute, but not too high, lest Truman see me as eager.
When my big brother grinned back, his teeth matched his skin. At fifteen he’d declared that for his two live-in girlfriends he wanted to ‘taste like himself’ and refused to brush. The plaque build-up had been sticky and flaxen, and though he now seemed to conform to ordinary standards of hygiene his lopsided smirk remained ochreous.
‘How’s tricks, Corrie Lou?’ Mordecai was the only living person who could employ my childhood’s atrocious double-name without my taking his head off.
‘Yo, Mortify.’
He kissed me on the forehead; his lips were soft. I caught a tinge of alcohol on his breath. He grazed my temple with his right hand, whose first two fingertips were lutescent with tobacco, the nails saffron and curling. Though Mordecai was only thirty-eight, his hands, creased with wood stain and machine oil, crosshatched with scars from the carelessness of hirelings, were those of a much older man.
‘True.’ Mordecai granted his brother a perfunctory nod; Truman grunted.
‘You lucked out with parking,’ I chattered. ‘That army truck must take up at least two metres.’
Hee-hee, went Mordecai—his laughter, too, was prematurely aged, geezery and good-old-boy, from slumming with tar-heel construction workers who dropped out of high school. ‘Nope. Yellow lines all the way. Remember that Justice Department card Father kept on the dashboard of the Volvo? After his funeral, I swiped it.’
‘I wondered what happened to that,’ Truman muttered.
‘I find that hard to credit,’ I said. ‘The cops believing an army surplus troop transporter belongs to the Supreme Court.’
‘Hey, it’s worked so far. Not a ticket for two years. Figured True here wouldn’t use it. That wouldn’t be
right
. That would be
lying
.’
The pavement was too narrow for the three of us to proceed abreast. I didn’t feel comfortable coupling clearly with one brother over the other, so trailed a bit behind the elder and a bit before the younger, our trio cutting a diagonal of birth-order down the walk.
‘Man, I hope this Garrison character can shuffle paper fast.’ Mordecai rubbed his hands. ‘I could sure use the cash.’
Truman rolled his eyes.

Hugh Garrison’s office was pastel and travel-postery, with a round table and straight-backs next to his desk. I was obscurely disappointed; in my imagination, we’d be seated at a long darkwood conference table, with portraits on the walls, emerald bankers’ lamps and heavy crimson drapes. I’d read too many murder mysteries.

Hugh shook hands and offered condolences about my mother. When he invited us to the table, Mordecai and Truman found themselves next to each other; Truman fussed with his pea coat and managed to insert me between them. ‘So what,’ I said, ‘you read the will aloud to us?’

‘Not unless you insist,’ said Hugh, spreading over his chair and hiking his pants so the hairs above his socks showed. He was a rangy, casual man with a no-nonsense air. ‘I think I can give ya’ll the gist without the being-of-sound-mind-and-body nonsense.

‘Now,’ he began, spreading papers before him. ‘I guess your parents told you that their estate would be divided equally between the three kids. So I assume they also apprised you guys of their bequest to the ACLU?’

He must have looked up to find a wave of shock registering across all three faces.
‘It’s thanks to the ACLU,’ Truman grumbled, ‘that we never had a clean sponge.’
‘Rubbish,’ I said, recovering. ‘We’d have had a putrid sponge if they hadn’t donated a dime. A smelly sponge is a point of view.’
‘All I know is that to Father,’ said Truman, ‘the primary charity of non-profits was to take money off his hands. With the small fortune Father shovelled that ACLU outfit over the years we could have bought enough A&P eight-packs to wipe up the Atlantic Ocean.’
Hugh looked edgy. ‘Mean your folks never informed ya’ll that the American Civil Liberties Union was willed a quarter of their estate?’
‘
What
?’ said Truman and Mordecai at once, which may have been the only time in their lives they did something together.
I shot Hugh a droll smile. ‘The fourth child.’
‘You said “estate”—’ The words were strangling in Truman’s throat. ‘Does that include HeckAndrews, or not?’
Hugh rubbed his temples. “Fraid so. Last year your momma expressed second thoughts about keeping her house in this bequest, but she never put word-one in writing. Nobody figured her heart condition was so serious, and as usual—that’s the way people are with wills—there seemed all the time in the world to change her mind.’
‘Could you testify in court—’ Mordecai leaned forward ‘—that she intended to revise the will?’
‘No, and besides, she’d been wavering. She wanted to do—’
‘
What Sturges would have wanted
,’ Truman recited.
‘Bingo.’
‘Let’s talk turkey,’ Mordecai demanded, clicking the silver knobs of his bolo tie on the table top. ‘In round numbers, what’s the lowdown? Cut to the chase, bottom line.’
Hugh’s head tilted with a trace of dismay towards my older brother. I myself had never been sure whether to find Mordecai refreshingly down to earth or, as Averil would say, crass.
“Sides the house? I’ve taken a gander at this portfolio, but couldn’t give you an exact figure. There’ll be penalties for liquidating long-term investments prematurely, and state taxes—’
‘How
much
?’ insisted Mordecai.
‘Before deductions, ballpark? Round about $300,000. To be divided between the—four of you.’ He smiled.
Mordecai fell back. ‘That’s
all
?’
‘I know what it’s worth to me,’ said Truman, ‘but on the market, what do you figure HeckAndrews is worth?’
‘Ya’ll’ll have to get it assessed. Off the cuff? House that size in Oakwood right now might list for three-eighty, maybe more. Fact, right downtown—Blount Street’s commercial zoning—you might get that much for the property alone. Course, they’d level the structure, maybe put up a—’
‘NO!’
Truman would have been heard several offices down. Hugh looked mystified.
‘Over my dead body,’ Troom added. ‘But you’re telling me that the ACLU owns a quarter of my house. What am I supposed to do, run a bed and breakfast for bleeding-heart lawyers?’ His eyebrows neared his hairline; his jaw clenched, its muscles dimpling in and out. In the pugnacious jutting of that chin, I recognized my father in court. ‘And what about the furniture? All those doo-dahs? Is the ACLU going to want my blender?’
“Less your mom was collecting antiques—’
‘Only the cheese,’ I intruded.
‘No art works?’ he asked me.
‘If that organization wants my fifth-grade clay elephant, they can have it.’
‘Most household contents don’t assess at more than a few thousand bucks,’ Hugh assured us. ‘On this point I bet we could convince the ACLU to ease up. It is, after all, a darned gracious bequest. And I bet a lot of your folks’ what-all has sentimental value.’
‘Oh, absolutely,’ said Mordecai.
‘But they won’t forget the house?’ Truman pleaded.
‘Not a snowball’s chance. Too much do-re-mi. Oh, they’ll be nice about it—at first. But those fundraising boys are hungry. That it’s for a good cause only makes them more aggressive. They’re not ashamed of themselves. Not that shame usually holds anybody back anyways…’
‘Is there no way to contest this?’ Truman’s nostrils were flaring.
‘Contest it!’ Mordecai cried. ‘Come on, it’s got Mother and Father written all over it! Sanctimonious holier-than-thou liberal bullshit!’
‘Father wanted to get to heaven,’ I mumbled.
‘Yeah, well,’ said Mordecai, pursing his lips. ‘I’m surprised he didn’t give his place up there to a black handicapped dyke instead.’
Hugh was leaning back watching the show, and looked weary. Back when we had that beer it had been awkward at first, and I blurted that being an estate lawyer must be awfully dull. I guess that wasn’t a nice thing to say about someone’s profession, but I’d been thinking about my father’s calling, crusading against racism, in comparison. Hugh had said no you’d be surprised. Estate law’s sometimes more interesting than you’d like. You see a lot of—He’d cut himself short and said, well, it’s hard not to get cynical about people.
Hugh sighed. ‘With the ACLU, you got two choices,’ he announced when we’d finished bickering. ‘You can all chip in and buy out the organization’s share as a family—’ He scanned us sceptically, as if regarding our trio as a cohesive collective unit were risible—‘or you can sell.’
‘We’re not selling,’ Truman declared.
‘That may be something you have to decide with your brother and sister.’
‘I live there!’
‘For the time being, kid.’ Mordecai played with an alligator clip that fixed his braid and worked the jaws up and down.
‘Should you retain the property with the non-profit paid off, then you three could decide how or whether to dispense with the real estate at your leisure.’
‘The last thing some of us need,’ said Mordecai, cutting his eyes towards Truman, ‘is more leisure.’
‘What if two of us have some feeling for the house we grew up in,’ Truman hypothesized, ‘but all the other guy cares about is his filthy lucre?’
‘If you can raise the funds, two of you buying out the third is one option—’
‘Hold on here,’ Mordecai railroaded. ‘You’re saying with the bastions of social justice out of the picture our jolly threesome can blather for months if not years about what happens to Mommy and Daddy’s $380,000 ramshackle mansion—?’
‘It’s not ramshackle!’ said Truman.
‘And meanwhile little True here makes up his bed in my house every morning and waters the petunias and grows old. Isn’t there any way to push this programme?’
‘You’re any of you within your rights,’ said Hugh, ‘to file suit for partition.’
‘So that what,’ I said hopefully, ‘the house is divided up and we each get a floor?’
‘Physical partition is recommended once in a blue moon, but unlikely in your case. I dare say the court would regard awarding one floor each to grown siblings as a re-enactment of the Civil War. No, ordinarily the court demands the property be put up for auction. Any of you current part-owners would be free to bid for the house, though in competition with each other or the buying public, either of whom could jack its price out of reach.’
This was getting too complicated for me. ‘Mordecai, come over to the house for dinner tonight,’ I suggested. ‘We’ll sort something out.’
‘My ass we’ll sort something out,’ said Mordecai. ‘Your kid brother just wants to sit on his hands and keep his little upstairs hideaway intact like a fucking treehouse. And meanwhile my company’s scraping along by the seat of its pants—’
‘You’ll get your damned money!’ Truman’s face was violet.
‘There’s one more thing,’ Hugh raised reluctantly, ‘before we break up and I let you three
amicably confer
on what you want to do about the real estate.’ He didn’t look envious; I got the impression that if I invited the attorney to our dinner Hugh would suddenly recollect a previous engagement. ‘Mordecai…You borrowed some money from your parents?’
‘A pittance,’ my brother replied guardedly. ‘Why?’
‘Say—$14,000?’
Mordecai sniffed. ‘I doubt it was that much.’
‘If you question the amount, we could verify with back records. ‘Cause the loans are to be deducted from your inheritance.’
I did not think it possible for a man of Mordecai’s colouring to pale. True, to my parents $14,000 was a stupendous amount of money. They’d never lost touch with the depression dollar, just as I had never quite debunked the exaggerated value of our twentyfive-cent allowance; a quarter still weighed heavy in my hand. But in terms of 1992, the amount was modest.
Forgive your debts
? So my parents were second-rate Christians like most, and that was hard to swallow when they had just piously donated a quarter of their estate to a child who was only an abstraction. They could be charitable as long as the generosity wasn’t towards a real, obstreperous issue who used the f-word. Strictly, the deduction was fair, but I suspected my brother had interpreted the word ‘loan’ loosely.
‘See for yourself.’ Hugh handed a sheet to Mordecai.
‘May 10, 1989,’ he muttered, locating the amendment. He turned to me. ‘What did I do then?’ He handed the paper back the way Truman had held my mother’s stinky sponge.
‘Now listen. Mind if I leave you three with a bit of advice?’ Hugh enquired, perhaps having noticed that we hadn’t asked for any. ‘I’ve probated wills like this before; your situation ain’t unusual. The simplest solution is almost always the best. I know a house has memories, but memories you can keep for free. With this many tenants, I strongly suggest that you sell.’
Trying to keep him from spontaneously combusting in public, I quickly herded Truman to reception.