All Families Are Psychotic (5 page)

So
much for that notion. He's talking about weather already — in cliches no less — and he's determined to be perky.
'Yes, good morning , Howie.'

'Hop in for a ride in the Howmobil e. Cape Canaveral ho!'

'Howie . . .' Janet stood beside Howie's open windo w. 'I'm not feeling too well today. I don ' t think I can manage another NASA dog-and-pony show — all that walking and . . .
smiling .''
Janet waited for Howie to pro test.

'You're
sure
you don ' t want to come?' he asked. 'I'm sure.'

'OK, I'll see you soon enough .'

'OK.'

'Fare thee well.' And,
vroom !
Howie was gone.

For the first time since Janet had met him, years ago, she was mildl y curiou s abou t what migh t be going on inside his mind.

Her rental car wouldn ' t start. She walked into the motel off ice and asked the kidney thief to order a taxi, and soon an ancient Chrysler, seemingl y bound together by rubber bands and masking tape, thumped up to the curb. Janet got in and asked to be taken to an Internet café she'd seen listed in a tourist flyer.

The science fiction planet of Florid a passed by the cab windo w: pastel-toned and smoo th, one image

dissolving into the next. The palmett o scrub landscape would, for no apparent reason, burst into a cluster of wealthy superhomes here, then a burst of lower-middl e class discoun t stores there — follo wed by a

business park, follo wed by a tourist att raction. All of these money-driven
bursts.

When she arrived at the Internet café, godless childr en in black outf its up near the fron t casually sipped elaborate coffees that in the Toron to of her youth would surely have been banned as threats to society. The shop 's background music was a popul ar song apparently called 'Boompboompboompboomp -

boompboomp '. Janet walked to the back of the café to find an empty seat in fron t of a compu ter screen.
Thank God I can finally read my e-mail. Thank God I can be in a place with a few people who aren' t scared by technolog y and who don' t fear the future.

Janet had thir teen e-mails, most of them from members of her medical list group s. She replied to Ursula, an ex-prostitute in Dortmund, and entered an onlin e discussion abou t a potential Mexican source of

thalidomid e to relieve the ulcers in her mou th. Janet and Ursula's old source had moved into the more lucrative field of banned diet medications, and there was gossip that a British firm, Buckminster, was going to have legal suppli es available shor tly.

Janet's pocket buzzer vibrated; she downed her medication plus a Pepto-Bismol as unthinkingl y as movie popcorn. The world outside — cars and signage and electrical wires — was almost too smothered in ligh t to read properly, like objects in the movies being sucked into a glo wing UFO.

She stood up for a stretch. Around her, she saw a few Bryan-ish loser types furtively glued to their screens, doub tlessly ferreting out porn. Some of them bothered to hide their screens as she neared them; others couldn ' t care less. Janet saw images that to her were more gynecologi cal than pornogr aphic; she could

only wonder how it was that men craved these identical, repetitive snapshots, as though one day these men were going to hit upon the ultimate shot that would render all the others unnecessary. Some years back, when she'd first begun tromping abou t the Internet, she'd been flustered at how even the most

innocent of words placed into a search engine triggered an immediate cascade of fil th. Apparently there existed no unsexed word in the language.

She sat down again . . .
ahhhhh . . .
Janet's compu ter made her feel connected in a manner TV never did. TV made her feel she was a member of society, but it also made her feel like just another ant in an anthill. She massaged her fingers and noticed the girl behind the coun ter giving her the stare. Janet decided that she really ough t to buy some more coffee or a snack; she'd been hogging a terminal for hours, not that

there was a huge demand for them. The coun ter girl was wearing what appeared to be a blue nigh tie, and her eyes were smeared with mascara. Janet had given up on youth fashions with the Sex Pistols in 1976. Young people could wear green plastic trash bags for all she cared, and apparently some of them did.

Janet requested a café Americano, which the coun ter girl made at a snail's crawl and slopped across the coun ter. When Janet asked for ice cubes to cool down the coffee, she received the same look she migh t have got had she been in a chain gang holding a dented tin cup. Janet looked at the girl sweetly, paid her money, and as if she were cresting the top of a roller coaster, added, 'Screw you,
too,
dear,' with brigh t, sugary eyes. Until recently she would never have had the nerve to act on such a though t, but she was a
new
Janet now. She went to sit back down at her terminal. The hard drive purred. Time vanished. She

looked up and wondered,
Where am I again? . . . Florid a. Orlando, Florid a. Cape Canaveral is an hour away. My daughter is going into space on Friday.

Suddenly it was the afternoon . Where did the morning go? She paid her bill with the chippy clerk, then phoned a cab and went outside to wait. Goggle-like sunglasses pro tected her eyes, now pho tosensitive

from her medications. She stood in a thicket of dry, unmo wed grass in which lizards frolicked abou t. The grass gave her shins tiny paper burns. She heard a honk and looked up, expecting a taxi, but instead it was . . .
Bryan?
It was, in his hockey hair and signature worn-out black leather jacket, simmering silently like a disgrun tled pre-rampage employee, his face as stressed and lined as a trussed-up pork roast.

' Mom — geez, what are you doing out in the middl e of nowhere?'

Janet got into the rear passenger seat. 'I was in the Internet café, Bryan. When did you arrive in Orlando? Have you checked into the Peabody? And why are you wearing a leather jacket on the hottest day in the history of weather?'

'Well, what are
you
doing in the backseat? I'm not a limo service.'

'I feel like being treated like a queen today. Did you check into the hotel?' Bryan gro wled.

'I'll take that as a yes. What's put you into such a pissy mood, buster?' 'Had a huge figh t with Shw. Knock down, drag out.'

'Hmmm.' Janet decided to remain noncommi ttal. 'Aren' t you going to ask me what abou t?'

'A few years ago, yes. These days? No.' 'She's a witch.'

'Can you turn up the A/C?'

Bryan cranked the air-condi tioning . 'She's going to abor t our baby.'

'Really now.'
Under no circumstances become involved in this. Hey — wait — me, a grandmo ther at last!

'She didn ' t even bother to ask me what I though t.'

'And what
do
you think?'
Janet, this is not your business.

'The baby is the first good thing that's ever happened to me. My li fe's always been abou t nothing, and now I finally have something, and she's going to go and
kill
it.'

There was a silence. ' My motel's the third righ t after this ligh t, Bryan.' 'You're not staying at the Peabody?'

'Too expensive.'

'I should have guessed. Why do you always have to pull your " I'm destitute" rou tine?' 'Bryan, how do you even kno w Shw's planning to do this?'

'She kept on being weird whenever I'd talk abou t cribs and Lamaze classes. Then I caugh t her in a lie with the phone's messaging system. A clinic appoin tment.'

'You're certain, then.'

'Yeah.' A stopligh t turned green. 'Forget it. How are
you
feeling, Mom?'

'Fair enough . Nothing too astounding . But you're trying to change the subject.' 'I am. It 's just —
hard
for me.'

Janet and her son sat quietly in their respective emotional worlds. As they neared the motel, she asked him where he was headed next.

'Nowhere. Just driving.'

'Why don ' t we just drive around for a while then?' 'Really?'

'Why not?'

Bryan's face li t up, as though Janet had allo wed him to lick chocolate cake batter from a pair of electric beaters. He relaxed. 'Do you want to kno w a funny thing abou t Shw?'

'Amuse me.'

'She was never toilet-trained.' 'I beg your pardon?'

'Just what I said. Her parents never trained her. They considered toilet training " patriarchal and

bourg eois" — a way of " suppressing personal freedom in the name of sanitation." They say sanitation is very middl e-class and very to-be-loathed.'

'You're joking .'

'Nah. They're these left over sixties left ies. You wouldn ' t believe the junk they have in their heads.'

'Does Shw use a toilet these days?'

'Yeah. She said that when she was five she looked around and saw that nobod y else was wearing diapers and she just kind of figured it out on her own.'

Janet said, 'Something like that could seriously mess up a child.' Now was as good a time as any to ask the follo wing question: 'Bryan, what exactly is the history behind Shw's, er,
name?

'Oh,
that.
When she turned sixteen, her parents told her she should choose her own name, and that the name she was given at bir th was limi ting and perhaps socially crippling .'

'What, then, is Shw?'

'It stands for Sogetsu Hernando Watanabe — a martyred hero of the Peruvian Shining Path terrori st faction.'

'She couldn ' t just choose Lisa or Kelly?' 'Not Shw.'

Janet mulled this over. 'What's her real name?' 'She won' t tell me.'

'Bryan, if you could have chosen a name at four teen, what name would you have chosen?' ' Me? I'd have chosen Wade. I was always jealous of his name.'

' Maybe we ough t to go to the hotel,' Janet said. 'And maybe meet Wade for lunch. He's there now.' 'He was supposed to get in last nigh t, but he didn ' t.'

'That's another story altogether.' And Janet told Bryan abou t the bar brawl.

The Peabody was a deluxe high rise of the sort Janet associated with post-World War II movies in which vir tuous women lunched with friends and resisted overtures to go upstairs with dark, mysterious men. Beneath the entranceway's fron t canopy was a small crowd, at the head of which Janet saw Sarah and another astronaut —
Commander Brunswick?

Sarah saw the tw o of them and waved them over. Bryan gave the car to a valet, and then he and Janet navigated across a tangle of feed cables and then through a throng of broiling , rubbernecking tourists. Oblivious to the crowds and noise and heat, Sarah said, 'Hi, Mom. Hi, Bryan. This is Commander

Brunswick. I don ' t think you've met yet.'

Janet stuck out her hand to what seemed to her to be a tiny, perfect Great Dane, a man as small as Sarah.

Wait — that would mean he's not a Great Dane at all, but a Weimaraner — and yet he
—

Commander Brunswick said, 'Hi there,' but didn ' t stick out his hand. He said, 'Sorry — we can' t touch people this close to takeoff. Colds and flus and all that stuff.'

'I understand.'

'Sarah, what's going on here? This wasn' t in the schedule,' said Bryan.

'It 's a quickie press conference — a fundraiser for the March of Dimes. We're waiting for some kids to get here for a pho to op -we were going to do it at the Cape, but some of the kids got too sick. We'll be

heading back to the tin in abou t ' — she looked at her watch — 'seven minu tes.' 'The tin?'

'The shutt le.'

A radio person asked Commander Brunswick a question, which grabbed all of his attention. Wade emerged from the throng of heads and bodies. Sarah grabbed him by the should er and said to Janet, ' Mom, I hear Wade visited the Brunswicks' place this morning . What did you think of
them —
the

Brunswick clan?'

Wade said, 'It was like going to a Trekkie convention — all these kids on the fron t lawn.'

'I kno w. Aren' t they a trip?' Sarah looked to Janet and giggl ed. 'They're appalled by our family, you

kno w. They really are. I was there last week, and it reminded me of all those science fairs I used to go to when I was young. I though t Alanna Brunswick was going to bring around a tray of Ritz crackers

garnished with fetal pigs.'

Janet asked Wade where Beth was.

'She'll be here in a sec. She wanted to change and look nice for Sarah.'

Janet took a swig from an Evian bott le filled with motel tapwater. Carrying a bott le around with her made her feel faintly chic. She then saw Shw cut through the crowd, as itty-bitty as an astronaut, dressed

in Lycra and aging black motorcycle leathers. She looked as if she'd groom ed herself entirely with moistened fingertips.

Bryan, qui te pleased to be able to introduce a girl friend — any girl friend — said, 'Wade — this is ...' But he never got a chance to finish. Shw scootched past, giving Janet a quick greeting, and then jockeyed

righ t up to Sarah and began barraging her with personal questions. 'So, how much can you bench press? Do you kno w your IQ? Aside from your hand, do you have any other medical condi tions that migh t, er, affect your being an astronaut? Do you think you'll ever have kids? Is there any reason you migh t not be able to?'

'Jesus,' said Bryan, 'leave my sister alone.'

Shw turned around , fuming : 'No, you leave
me
alone. This is a free coun try, and your sister and me are talking . Got it?'

Janet and Wade made eyes at each other, which Bryan noticed, and which caused him to flush.

Meanwhile, the crowd continued gro wing, and electrical testing noises sounded like large angry bugs. Ted and Nickie appeared, and Janet hadn' t been prepared for the moment. Her body tw itched as though she'd suddenly been asked to come onstage to sing a karaoke song. She knew her face would be

reddening just like Bryan's.

'Oh, hello, Jan,' said Ted. 'Rather a funny place to meet again.' 'Hello, Ted.'

Ted's signature eye tw inkle had mutated since she'd seen him last, having now become the bland

poli tician's smile -the smile of someone who kno ws that the bodies in the car trunk are indeed dead. But he was tanned and wearing garments that were flattering in a younger way than Janet migh t have selected.
That would be the influence of Nickie.
Janet though t Ted looked better than he had any righ t