All Families Are Psychotic (3 page)

Den. Wait — over there — an indisputably adult bedroom.
He walked into the room, brigh t with fluttery morning sun passing through the surrounding oaks. He turned a corner to where he supposed the

cupboard migh t be, to find Howie and Alanna barnacled together in an embrace. They didn ' t see him at first. 'Shit.
Sorry.'
Wade retreated to the bathroom .

'Wade—'

'The clothes are too small, Howie. I need stretchy stuff -sweats maybe. And a big T-shir t. And flip-flops for my feet.'

'I can explain.'

'Just find me clothes, Howie.' Wade slammed the bathroom door. Outside there was a freigh ted silence, follo wed by the sound of shuff ling feet. Wade wasn' t qui te sure what to think. His breathing was

underwater-like, his thinking fogged.

There was a rap on the door: 'Clothes for you, pardner.' Wade grabbed them and slammed the door.

'We can talk on the way to pick up your car,' said Howie through the door.

Wade got dressed. He looked like a gym teacher on his day off. He opened the door and barreled down to the car. He had no interest in seeing Alanna. Howie trailed behind him.

'Wade—'

Wade looked out the windo w.

'If you'd just let me explain, Wade. Alanna and I understand each other — the pressure of being married to—'

Wade turned to look at him: 'There's always an explanation, Howie, and I wrote most of them — which in turn makes me understand all too well that there's never an explanation. So shut the fuck up and drive.' Surpri singly soon they were at the bar.

'That's my car over there.' 'Nice car.'

'Shut the fuck up, Howie.' 'I only meant to say—'

Wade unleashed the cloud of hornets inside his head: 'If you think for one second that I'm going to even breathe a word of this to my baby sister, you're off your fucking rocker. Ditt o Commander Brunswick.

Nothing on this planet is going to fuck up their mission in even the sligh test way. This is between you and me, Howie, and I have no idea where it 's going to go. In the meantime we have to sit together at this

frigging banquet tonigh t. You piss me off in any way, and I'll make your li fe a goddamn living hell for as long as I breathe.'

'No need to be nasty.'

Wade stepped out of the van, exhaling his disgust. 'You just don ' t understand, do you, you shitty li tt le space martyr?' He slammed the door.

In 1970, Sarah attended a summer science camp a hundr ed miles east of Vancouver, in a gently

moun tainous spot called Cultus Lake, a very lake-y looking lake, then in the high season of mosqui toes, stinging nett le and drunk s manning noisy recreational crafts. Sarah had been looking forward to the camp, and Janet, who'd found it for her, was very pleased indeed, even though Ted shanghaied the event. He'd organized the preparation of suppli es, the packing, bough t numerous books on the wilds of British Columbi a, and then drove Sarah out to the camp himself, rather than allo wing her to take the

minibu s that picked up her fello w campers.

What the Drummond family, Sarah included, hadn' t expected was that Sarah would become pro foundl y and violently homesick at the camp, paralyzed with fear, vomi ting out in the reeds and the irises beside the bunkhou se, immobili zed and unable to eat or sleep. The family migh t not have found out abou t the homesickness had Sarah not pried her way into the owner's private area and made a tearful, pleading

long-distance call home around dinnertime, a call Ted answered and which Wade eavesdropp ed on from the den extension.

'Please, Daddy, I'm so homesick here I think I'm going to die. I can' t eat or sleep or concentrate or anything. I want to come home so badly.'

'Hey, Sunshine, camp is good for you. You'll meet smart new kids — breathe fresh air — use that big brain of yours.'

'Daddy, I don ' t want any of that. I just want to be there in the ki tchen with all of you. I feel so far away. I feel so ...
sick.'

Wade could hear his mother standing beside his father, wondering aloud what was happening. 'Ted? What's wrong? Tell me.'

'Nothing 's wrong, Jan. Sarah's just becoming used to camp li fe.'

'I'm
not
gett ing used to camp li fe, Daddy. I want to die. I don ' t want to be here. I want to come
home.'

More tears.

'Ted,' said Janet, 'let me speak to her.'

'Jan, calm down. She's fine. Why should she hate camp? I loved camp when I was a kid.' T'm
not
fine, Daddy.'

'You're going to love camp, sweetheart, I wouldn ' t say that if I didn ' t believe it. Camp was the best experience of my li fe.'

There was a clicking on the other end of the line; a woman's voice came on: 'Hello? Hello? Young lady, who have you been calling ?' On the line was the camp's director, a Mrs. Wallace.

Ted said, T'm sorry Sarah interrup ted your dinner, Mrs. Wallace. This isn' t her typical behavior.' In the background , Sarah was wailing .

'Some campers get homesick, Mr. Drummond . This is natural. Your Sarah will be fine.'

Sarah's crying in the background intensified. Ted signed off, yet again apologi zing for his daugh ter's out- of-character behavior. Wade innocently sashayed into the ki tchen, where Janet said, 'You have to go fetch her, Ted. She can barely even function, let alone learn abou t science. It 's cruel.'

'It 's not. You're overreacting. All kids love camp. She just needs to get used to it. She'll
love
it there. Mrs.

Wallace told me that tomorro w they're studying jet propul sion and having Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner.'

'I don ' t feel good abou t this, Ted.'

'Stop mollycoddling her. She's a trouper.'

The next morning , Wade woke up early and sneaked out of the house. Such an absence was in no way

unusual and att racted no attention. He took the bus to his bank and withdrew his savings, abou t $340.00, and hired a taxi, his first, by the stand near the bus loop 's Mexican fast-food place. The cab driver was a

Crisco-complexioned fortysomething who Wade could tell, even at his early age, was well along li fe's downward slope. When Wade told him he wanted to go to Cultus Lake and back, the driver made him pony up the money; Wade's only worry was that the driver would be talkative, which proved not to be

the case. After the driver blur ted out, 'I could use a drive in the coun try,' he was silent the rest of the way.

By eleven a.m. they were at the camp's gate. 'You park way down there,' Wade said, his genius for orchestrating maneuvers already in evidence. 'I don ' t want the RCMP looking for a cab.'

'Righ t, pardner.'

Wade walked up to the main house and asked to speak to the person in charge. The only remotely

authori tative figure available was a teenage girl shucking counselor duty to fire up a cigarette. He smiled. Inside a minu te he heard what he'd needed to hear: 'The jet propul sion group ? That's the Madame Curie bunkhou se. They're down by the boat ramp.' Wade duly went to the boat ramp, where a flock of girls

surround ed a launch apparatus, all save for Sarah, off to the side, her knees pulled up to her chest, her stomach cramping , as she hadn' t eaten or slept in forty-eigh t hours.

Wade threw a pebble that landed at her feet. Sarah looked up and caugh t sigh t of her bro ther, and Wade was impressed at how she maintained her cool. Sarah waited until the rocket was on the cusp of detonation before she casually walked towards Wade. He asked her, 'You set to leave?'

'Righ t now.'

'Follo w me. We have to keep quiet.' Wade led Sarah through a second-gro wt h forest, abou t a century old, and treacherously bumpy with stumps and logs still barely even decayed after all that time. A few

minu tes later they emerged from the woods directly by the taxi. 'Hop in, li tt le sister, and keep your head down. Step on it, Carl.'

'You're the boss.'

Minu tes later they were on the Trans-Canada high way, and Sarah was holding tigh tly on to Wade's arm. 'It 's OK, baby sister, we're going home. Home sweet home.' He patted her on the head. 'You hungr y?' Sarah squealed out a 'yes'.

'Carl, let's stop at that gas station up ahead.' 'Your wish is my command, boss.'

The tw o of them drank Cokes and ate chocolate bars. Years later, Sarah would say they were the most delicious things she could ever remember having eaten. Just over tw o hours later they were home. Carl accepted only a hundr ed dollars for the job, saying, 'It 's probably the last nice thing I'll ever do.'

Wade stopped at the bott om of the driveway. He hadn' t given the homecoming much though t. 'What are we going to tell Dad?'

Sarah said, 'I'll handle him.'

And she did. It was a Saturday, and Ted was in the ki tchen eating an egg salad sandwich. Sarah walked into the ki tchen and said, 'I escaped that prison and I'm not returning , so please don ' t try and make me.

My decision 's made and I'm not the least bit ashamed of it. I'm ready for any punishment you want to thro w my way.'

Wade, listening in, was chilled to hear rebelliou s words he himself migh t have spoken. Both he and Janet, who was standing by the sink, waited for one long, held-in breath expecting Ted's nuclear detonation,

but instead Ted bello wed out, 'That's my girl ! What spunk to escape from that hellhol e. Jan! Make our li tt le jailbreaker an egg salad sandwich!'

Three years before his arrival in Florid a to join his family, Wade had been living in Kansas City having an on-again/off-again (but mostly on-again) relationship with the wife of a major league baseball player.

News of his affair with the baseball wife had leaked out and was splashed abou t the pages of the local daily tabloid . The baseball player and three of his buddi es had entered Wade's favori te bar armed with Louisville Sluggers, fortunately while Wade was in the John, from which he scrambled out a rear door,

then into the parking lot, then a further few thousand miles west. In Las Vegas, through a friend, he'd quickly landed a job as a hockey player in a trashy casino. He was paid more to figh t with the other

players than he was to play hockey, and as the coach handed him his thousand-dollar signing bonus, he'd said to Wade, 'A good rink is a red rink. Nothing makes guys doubl e up on bets more than blood . Not even tits. If you have a freakish blood type like Rh-negative, I'd advise you to stock up a bit of it

beforehand. The people who sell blood in this city — you don ' t want to kno w. And hands off the

waitresses. I don ' t need you jerk-offs in the Hamburg er League spreading broken hearts and the clap. Be back on Monday nigh t. Seven o'clock. No helmet.'

That nigh t Wade won 30,000 frequent flyer poin ts in a poker game. The next day, feeling powerful,

nostalgic and flush, he flew home to Vancouver. A storm pushed the plane to the west, and he watched the cities along Interstate 5 sweep below him. Drinking a beer and looking at the ground , he tried remembering the last time he'd seen a family member — it was Sarah, briefly, at a Holiday Inn by the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Everybody else he'd dealt with through infrequent phone calls, often made from airpor t waiting loung es or on cell phones on the freeway where an easy way out was buil t

into the call. Wade had read abou t Sarah's impending Kansas visit by accident in the newspaper while searching for the weekend spor ts scores. She was to be a keynote speaker at a symposium on gene

splicing and Wade had arranged to meet her in the loung e of her hotel before her speech. 'Wade.'

'Litt le sister.'

They kissed and then talked abou t the family. Wade hadn' t kno wn any of the recent family news Sarah brough t with her, and could only drink more and more quickly as he learned the details of their parents' divorce, Bryan's third suicide attempt, and Sarah's wall of degrees, Ph.Ds.

'What abou t you and Howie?' 'Howie? He's fine.'

A silence follo wed this, which Wade took as the signal to stop probing . Instead he asked what she'd been up to job-wise recently.

'Well, last week I logged in my tw o hundr edth hour of reduced gravity fligh t aboard parabolic aircraft. And I've been deep sea diving, too, in a customized suit to prepare me for a spacewalk.'

'Really?'

'Part of the job descrip tion.' Sarah sipped a ginger ale.

' Mom said a few mon ths ago that you'd become a captain in mili tary jet fligh t.' 'She did?'

'Is it true?'

'Yeah, but it sounds so grandiose when you say it that way. To me it feels like I'm valet parking NASA's cars.'

Wade was overwhelmed by her accompli shments and rubbed his forehead. Sarah said, 'You kno w, big bro ther, doing all this stuff isn' t the big deal it seems like.'

'It isn' t, is it?'

'You kno w, Wade. In a weird way I think doing things is easier than
not
doing things.' 'Righ t.'

They hit a lull where it was easier to jiggl e their ice cubes with swizzle sticks than speak. Sarah then asked Wade what he was doing in a voice Wade could tell was working hard not to sound patronizing, Wade

lied and said he was working as a compu ter progr ammer. He though t it sounded smart. Sarah asked a simple question abou t LINUX coding and he knew he'd been caugh t, but she didn ' t push it.

'OK, so here's the truth. I've got myself a bit of a ... sugar momma.'

'Well, at least that's more in character, Wade. Why are you so hard on yourself? Nobody else is. Or ever

was,
for that matter. I've never understood that abou t you. You're your own worst enemy.'

' My li fe's a joke, Sarah. I disappoin t people. And I don ' t even care when people stop caring abou t me. And I leave, and I leave no traces behind me.'

'You're li fe is
not
a joke, Wade.' 'Then what is it?'

Just as Sarah was abou t to answer, a university don in a cap and gown came to retrieve her for her speech. In a moment she was gone, and in her absence Wade needed to make his brain go quiet

immediately. He ordered three doubl e vodka rocks and began a weeklong blackou t-drinking binge.
That