All Families Are Psychotic (31 page)

Janet hadn' t expected Wade to have a happiest moment; he was too young to even
have
moments, let alone good or bad ones, but he caugh t Janet off guard. 'It was with Jenny. Abou t tw o mon ths ago.' 'Jenny?'

'Yeah. We were in the hammock out behind her house. We both knew she was pregnant, and we

though t we could pull the whole thing off. I'd get a job and we'd find an apartment, and we'd raise the kid and be a family. She let me touch her stomach and suddenly I wasn' t me, Wade Drummond , any more

— I was something larger and better and more impor tant than just myself. We felt as if we'd made a planet. We felt like the mood would last always.'

Janet was silent.
This is Wade's way of filling in the blanks for me.

A police car with sirens whistled by on the street below. The sun went behind the clouds. 'Wade, why don ' t you come home?'

'To visit? Sure. Soon. Maybe next week, depending on my delivery shift.'

'No. I mean come back and live at home. I'm sure your father regrets the figh t and the scene at the party.' ' Mom—'

'It could be different this time around .' ' Mom, I've left home.'

'Wade?'

'I can' t come back, Mom. I've gone.'

Yet again Janet felt as though she were falling through time, and now she was back in the lineup in a Texas airpor t, where she was paying for her snack. She ate it while sitt ing on a railing near a vent, and

once finished, she had an hour and fifteen minu tes to kill . Across the way she saw a boo th selling Internet access. A spot had just come vacant, and so she took it. She looked up Donny MacDonald, and learned he was an oph thalmologi st living in New Lyme, Connecticut. She though t of contacting him, but then

realized she'd never dream of doing such a thing.

And then the falling stopped, and Janet and Wade squelched into a warm pudding of mud. She felt no fear. Lloyd and Gayle's car simply floated away down the bridg e, and that was that. Her body bumped into Wade's. The warm swamp water was only technically knee-high, but as they stood up, their legs squelched down into the bott om sludge as though they were dock piling s.

'Oh, Christ,' Wade said. 'Sorry, Mom.'

'Sorry?' The tw o of them were doing an awkward do-si-do trying to achieve stabili ty. 'It 's my fault we're here. I got us into this.'

'Are you hur t?' Wade asked.

'I think I am. My wrist and ankle — from the handcuffs. But pain doesn' t always mean damage. You?' 'Yeah. My arm.' They righ ted themselves, and by then their eyes had adjusted to the moonligh t. The only man-made ligh t was at least a dozen miles away, hotels along the Atlantic, their ligh ts seemingl y waiting to be untethered so as to float heavenward.

Janet said, 'I think I actually cut my arms pretty badly.' ' My arm's broken, Mom.'

'Are you sure? How can you tell?' 'Look—'

His unshackled left forearm dangled in a disturbing manner. Something was pro truding from within. 'Good God, honey, does it hur t?'

'Nope. Not really.'

Janet didn ' t believe him — there was no time to quibbl e. 'We're dripping blood into the water. What abou t alligators?'

'People worry abou t alligators, but they're not the big deal you think they are.' 'You're lying.'

'I was trying to make you worry less.'

Janet looked up at the silvery gray poles that held up the road above. 'Can we climb up to the bridg e? It doesn' t look too high.'

Wade looked at it: 'No.'

'OK then, can we walk out of here?'

'Theoretically, if we weren' t hur t or handcuffed together, I'd piggyback you a few miles in either direction. But like this? No.'

'What abou t att racting other cars?'

'What other cars? This is a semipri vate road — or a government road.'

'Stop being so
negative.
There must be
something
we can do. Wade—?' Janet became aware that Wade was trying not to cry. 'Shoo t. Oh, honey, I'm sorry, I didn ' t mean to snap at you. I didn ' t mean to sound angry.'

'It 's not that. It 's me. Everything I touch turns to ratshit. All the people whose lives I touch turn to ratshit. I've had a nothing li fe. A zero. Wasted.'

'What abou t
my
li fe, honey?'

'Your
li fe? You've had a great li fe. You had three kids. You were the center of the family. You—' 'Stop. You said
" were
the center." '

'Sorry. You
are
the center.'

'Whoop ee-gee. Look what it got me.' 'Your li fe isn' t meaningl ess, Mom.'

'I'd debate you on that poin t.' Wade's face calmed down. Janet could only imagine the pain his arm must be in. 'Are you comfortable? How can I make you more comfortable?'

'Why don ' t we both just sit on our knees in the mud. I think it 's more stable that way.'

'Ow! My wrist. . .' Janet was stabbed with pain on her wrist. Wade looked at it and could see what Janet saw, how badly she had been hur t in the fall, strips of skin sheared away.

' Mom, I'm so sorry.'

'Wade, it 's six hours until sunrise, and even then . . . What are we going to do?' 'Let's just sit and stay calm. Let's just breathe.'

So they sat in silence; the moon shone down; insects flickered abou t; and Janet though t she saw egrets asleep in the dense thickets of swamp grass. She tried not to feel any pain, but the pretending was hard. From high above, she heard a jet, which soon passed, and they were returned to the rich pro tean silence. Janet felt like a bacterium. She felt like a reptile. She felt like meat. She didn ' t feel human.

A cell phone rang.

Huh?

It sat in Janet's righ t pocket. 'Wade. Oh
dear
— I assumed. . .' She slipped her hands into moist, muddy pocket folds. '. . . it 'd be dead from the water.'

Wade looked on, alarmed. 'They're waterproo f these days.'

Frantically, awkwardly, Janet opened the device's flap. 'Hello? Help!' ' Mom?' Sarah was on the line.

'Sarah, call an ambulance. Wade and I have been hur t. We're in a swamp.' 'A swamp? Where?'

'I don ' t kno w — inland, south of Daytona Beach.' 'How are you hur t?'

'Wade's arm's broken like it was kindling wood. And we're handcuffed together — my skin is in ribbon s.' The phone's low battery noise kicked in with piercing beeps. ' Mom,' said Sarah. 'Listen to me: hang up.

Now.'

Eeep eeep eeep
'The battery—'

'Hang up. Then wait a minu te. I'll phone back.'

. . .
click

Janet's line went blank. 'What do we
tell
her, Wade? Where
are
we?' For the ump teenth time that week, Janet felt as if she were back in time; in no way did she feel as if she were in the United States.

' Mom, I hope that battery lasts us a few more seconds. Christ, to be at the mercy of a
battery.'

'I'm scared, Wade.'

'Don' t be scared, Mom. We'll work this out. We will. Please don ' t be afraid.'

They sat in silence. Palmett o beetles hummed, whippoor wills trill ed and crickets chirped. The phone rang. 'Hello, Sarah?'

A cool, detached and technical male voice was on the other end. 'This is NASA triangulation. Do you read me?'

Janet said, 'Yes!' but the question was meant for another technician. 'I read you, NASA. Signal source

confirmed. Location is—'

Eeep eeep eeep

The phone was dead.

'Wade, what did they mean? Triangulation? They didn ' t find our location.' ' Mom, you don ' t kno w that.'

'What if they didn ' t?'

'You don ' t kno w that they did or didn ' t. Sit tigh t. At the very worst we'll have to wait until morning .' 'Wade, your arm's broken like a cracked broom stick. The morning conies, and then what?'

'It gets ligh t out.' 'Don' t be silly.'

'You're the one being silly, Mom.' 'No,
you're
the one being silly.' 'You're silly.'

'No,
you're
silly.' 'Silly.'

'How's your arm, Wade?' 'It feels perfectly silly.'

'We'll stick this out until morning .' 'We will.'

They sat for a while and heard more li tt le noises — creatures jumping in and out of the water; buzzing sounds; a hoo t from the dark distance.

'So you gave Florian the letter in the end.' 'I did no such thing.'

'But he said . . .'

'He said it
wrong.
I had the real letter with me in the restaurant but I told him it was a fake. The genuine letter is actually here in my pocket still — in its li tt le Baggie.' She pulled it out, grimacing with pain. 'Here

— you take it.' She slipped the document into Wade's shir t pocket. ' Mom, what did you tell Dad and Nickie back at the house?'

'What do you mean?'

'You said something to them — and they
changed.
They became . . . younger. Dad even looked relaxed. What did you tell them? You kno w something.'

'Yes. I do.'

'What do you kno w? Tell me.'

Janet wondered how to explain it to Wade. The news had been so easy with Ted and Nickie. She'd felt like a Mafia
capo
dispensing li fe-transforming benedictions with one breath, asking for a carafe of red with the next. But with Wade the telling of the news was somehow more complex, and she hadn' t

anticipated this. 'Wade, say you didn ' t have aids. Say you weren' t sick, that you learned you had a false positive the way Beth did.'

' Mom, you've seen how far gone I am. Sitt ing in this swamp with our open wounds is probably going to be the death of us both.'

'Answer my question, Wade. Pretend.' 'What would I do?'

'Yes.'

Wade considered this at same length. 'I wouldn ' t have any excuses, would I?' Janet kept silent.

'I'd—' Wade paused again.

Janet herself though t abou t this question. She'd had no time to herself since Cissy had transformed her li fe at the restaurant. What would be the difference between death at sixty-five and death at seventy- five? — those ten extra years . . . what could they possibly mean? Or eigh ty-five — twenty extra years.

She'd wanted those years so badly, had mourn ed for their loss, yet now she had them again, and she

couldn ' t decode their impli cation.
Well, for that matter, what was the purpose of my first sixty-five years?

Maybe the act of wanting to live and being given li fe is the only thing that matters. Forget the moun tain of haikus I can write now. Forget learning to play the cello or slaving away for charity. But then what?

She though t abou t her li fe and how lost she'd felt for most of it. She though t abou t the way that all the truths she'd been taugh t to consider valuable invariably conflicted with the world as it was actually lived. How could a person be so utterly lost, yet remain living? Her time with the disease had, to her surpri se, made her feel less lost. That was one thing she knew was true. Sickness had forced her to look for

kno wledge and solace in places she migh t otherwise not have dreamed of. Sickness had forced her to meet and connect with citizens who otherwise would have remained shadows inside cars that idled beside her at red ligh ts. But maybe now she'd continue looking for ideas she'd never dreamed of in places once

forbidd en — not because she had to but because she chose to — because that had proven to be the only true path out of her bri tt le, unlivable li fe-before-death. Now she could seek out the souls inside

everybody she met — at the Super-Valu, at the dog walking path, at the library -all of these souls, brigh t ligh ts, blinding her perhaps . . .

'I suppose—' Wade said. 'Yes?'

'Well, look at my situation this way. Righ t now I'm technically dead. Don' t say I'm not because I'm a goner for sure. All those pro tease inhibi tors and reverse transcrip tase inhibi tors ever did was give me an extra year with Beth — and they gave me the time to come down here to be with the family for the launch.' He turned his head to his mother. 'It 's been a hoo t, hasn' t it?'

'The hoo tiest.'

'There you go.' He turned and looked at the yello w hotel ligh ts far away. 'But if I learned I wasn' t going to die, I don ' t think I could go on being Wade any more.'

'How so?'

'I'd have to start from scratch. I'd be like a scientist in a comic book who gets horribl y maimed in an accident, but who gets a superpo wer in exchange.'

Janet asked Wade, 'What superpo wer would you get?' 'You go first. Tell me yours.'

'OK, I will. You kno w what it would be?' 'No.'

Janet said, 'Remember back around 1970 when we added the tw o new bedroom s and the new bathroom to the house? There was this period during the construction — a week maybe — when the framing of the walls was in, but not the walls. I'd go out there at nigh t, by myself, and walk from room to room, through the walls, like a ghost. It made me feel so superhuman — so powerful — and I don ' t kno w why it affected me so much. So I'd like to be able to walk through walls.
That
would be my superpo wer.'

'Good one.' 'And you?'

'Huh. Funny. Beth and I discussed this once. I told her I wanted to shoo t lasers from my eyes — no, from my fingertips -and when the beams hit somebody, they'd make that person see God. I'd be Holy Man —

that'd be my name. But I don ' t kno w. A super power like
that
is almost too much power for mere human beings. But then maybe I could try and see God myself, and maybe once I did, I'd be firing lasers in all

directions all the time, a nonstop twenty-four-hour God transformer.' 'So if you were cured, you'd really try and do that?'

'I would.'

'Is that a solemn promi se?'

Wade said, 'I don ' t make solemn promi ses too often. Just once before. To Beth. But I'd make a solemn promi se for that.'

'Give me your arm.' 'Huh?'

'Your broken arm.' 'Why?'

'Wade,
do it.'
Janet grabbed her shackled wrist and placed it on to Wade's open wound.

' Mom! You shouldn ' t be doing that.'

'Wade, shut up.' Janet held her wrist closely to Wade's wound:

'One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi '

' Mom?'

'Shut up, Wade —
four Mississippi, five Mississippi, six Mississippi '