All Families Are Psychotic (13 page)

Ted looked a bit stunned. 'Gee, Dad,' said Wade. 'You could maybe help us out here. Bryan's being eaten alive.' He turned to Bryan, 'Bryan, take off your shir t. The ants are crawling in under the fabric, and your odor is frigh tening them and they're only going to bite more.'

Bryan went even crazier. Wade ripped Bryan's shir t off and commanded him to doff his jeans. Bryan had been bitten over his entire body; a few dead ants dangled from his pale pectoral skin like blood -colored earring s. Wade swatted them away. 'They're gone now, Bry.'

Bryan ran over to a rock and squatted on top of it, whimpering. He covered his head with his hands and began to rock.

Ted shou ted, 'Stop acting like a girl , Bryan, and come over and help us li ft the car out of the mud.' 'Like we're going to drive it up the li tt le blu ff there and onto the freeway?'

Wade and his father were entering combat mode.

'Enough from
you,
Typhoid Mary. If it hadn' t been for you and your infantile game, we'd be on the road still.'

'You're the worst driver in the fucking coun try. You rolled us off a road to avoid being touched by me.' 'Don' t be such a soap opera.'

'This isn' t a soap opera, it 's real li fe, and you'd rather kill us all than be touched by me.'

Ted said nothing. Wade began to walk toward him. Ted tried playing it cool, but he began to edge away. Just then Bryan shou ted, 'The letter!' He poin ted towards the swamp. The wind had blo wn Prince

Willi am's letter, sealed inside its plastic Ziploc sack, out into the swamp and was ferrying it away faster

and faster. Ted stood frozen and Wade grabbed him. He summon ed his flagging strength and shun ted his

father into the swamp. 'Get the letter
now,
you asshole. It 's the only chance you have to haul your ass out of bankrup tcy.'

'I'm covered in mud ! ' 'Get the letter!'

'There could be alligators in there.'

Wade walked to the side of the swamp and coughed up a ball of phlegm and spat it at his father, just missing him. ' Me or the letter. Take your pick.'

Ted turned and went after the letter, plunging chest-deep into the bro wn water on his third step. He paddled out several yards, grabbed the letter, gulped in air, and headed toward the shore, but Wade stood there coughing up more spit, shoo ting it at the ground and saying, 'Now —
apologi ze
to me.' 'For what?' Ted was holding the letter now.

Wade hocked a loogi e that splatted on Ted's forehead like an egg on a windscreen. Ted screamed and went under water, thrashing with his other hand to wipe the loogi e away. 'For everything.'

Ted bobbed to the surface. 'I'm sorry. Shit — I'm sorry.'

Wade coughed up another loogi e and shot it at his father. 'You don ' t
mean
it.'

Ted screamed again and plung ed, missing the saliva bomb. 'What kind of proo f do you want? I'm gonna dro wn in this swamp.'

'Not unless the leeches suck your blood out first.
Ooh -
leeches — I hadn' t though t of that. Plump juicy leeches, sucking your blood , leaving nice big open holes in which my infected spit will fester and

mul tiply.'

'Bryan! You bro ther's turned into a sick-fuck monster. Keep him away from me.' Bryan was still on his rock. 'No
way
am I going near that anthill. You're on your own.' 'Fuck. You win,' said Ted.

'How do I win?' Wade asked.

'If you'll stop spitt ing at me, I promi se that when I leave this hellhol e of a swamp you can touch a leech hole or scrape or cut or whatever the fuck it is that's cut me down below.'

'How do I kno w you're not lying?' 'I'm not lying.'

'Promise to me that your mother will go to hell if you're lying.' 'You're so fucking sick.'

'Say it! ' Wade knew that Ted's only kryptoni te was the memory of his mother, dead some fifteen years. Ted shou ted, 'Shut the fuck up.'

Wade coughed up another loogi e — they were coming fast and easily today, not a good health indicator

— and prepared to shoo t it at his father. He instead spat it at the ground . 'Yes, Dad, your very own mother, Grandma Drummond , dri ft ing around with angels, eating chiff on pies and playing contract bridg e with all her friends until she's lassoed down to hell for eterni ty, burning and rott ing for ever because
you'll
have broken your promi se to me.'

Ted treaded water.

Wade knew his clause had worked. 'I'm waiting.'

Ted broke: 'You win.' He swam to shore. Wade gave him a hand to li ft him out of the mud, which farted as Ted stepped from it, losing a shoe in the process. Ted moved onto dry land. 'Thank God.' He slapped

the letter down onto the car's hood.

Wade made a command: 'Roll up your pants.' 'Oh, shut
up."

Wade tackled Ted. Grass crackled on the dir t where they fell. Wade grabbed Ted's squirming leg. He

placed his entire weigh t on Ted's rib cage, pinning him down, and took the leg and rolled up the cuff to find any number of small, bleeding cuts.

'You win. Touch my cuts.
Jesus,
you're a monster. Infect me.'

'Infect you, I will. Here I go, one, tw o, three.' Wade touched a dry fingertip to a bleeding cut, called his father an ignor ant bastard, then fell onto the grass and shut his eyes.

An hour later the three men hobbl ed along the high way — Ted minus a shoe, Bryan shir tless, swollen and

walking with legs apart to prevent chafing, and Wade feeling ever sicker. Wade then registered an off- kil ter perception: The sun was in the wrong place, on the left instead of on the righ t — meaning that Bryan had been navigating them in the wrong direction and that the many miles they'd walked since

they'd rolled the car had been poin tless. Ted swatted Bryan on the head and called him a cretin, but Wade got in between them and said, 'Dad, don ' t hit us any more.'

Ted looked peeved. 'He's still Bryan, and he's still a fuckup.'

Wade made a disgusted
pffft
and said, 'Like
you're
not a fuckup?' 'At least I don ' t—'

'Oh, be quiet. We've stopped listening to you.'

The occasional vehicle, usually a trailer rig, roared past, ignoring them utterly; the usual swarms of

high way cops and sundry law enforcement agencies had chosen that day to ignor e this lone stretch of high way.

'We should walk to the tollboo th,' Wade said. Bryan said, 'That's ten miles the other way now.'

'At least we'd be going in the righ t direction,' said Ted.

A wave of sickness came over Wade, and he knew he couldn ' t walk further. 'I have to stop here,' he said. Ted and Bryan exchanged looks.

'Yes, I'm sick. Happy? Now go on withou t me. You have the numbers and addresses and stuff. Just go. A cop'll come and find me soon enough .'

Just then, a white four-door sedan passed by them. It shrieked to a stop a hundr ed paces away.

'A good Samaritan,' said Bryan, 'Thank God.' A smallish woman got out of the car. It was Shw. Bryan said, 'Oh, shit.'

'What in hell's name are you three losers doing out here on the freeway?
Christ,
Bryan, you look like Porky Pig. What happened to you? Wait, don ' t tell me — I probably don ' t want to kno w.'

'Just give us a ride to the tollboo th.'

'No. I'm leaving you and your freak-show family. I'm retarded for even stopping to ask you three losers what you're doing here. What
are
you three doing here?'

'Dad flipped the car a few miles back. We're on our way to—' Shw raised her hand and said, 'Stop righ t there.'

'Hey — where'd you get a car?' Bryan's tone changed considerably. 'I rented it, dipshit.'

'With what money?' 'With my money.'

'You don ' t have any money.'

'Christ, you are so stupid, Bryan.'

'Do they actually pay people to have their babies killed these days?' 'I'm outta here.' She opened the door.

'Wait! ' called Wade. 'I'm sick as a dog. Just take us to a gas station and forget abou t us.' 'I don ' t want you three in my car.'

'We'll sit in the trunk.'

This actually seemed to make a kind of sense to Shw. 'Why should I do it?'

Ted spoke up for the first time. ' Maybe just to prove to us you aren' t a total see-you-enn-tee.' 'Your honeyed speech moves my soul.'

Shw got into the car and slammed the door.

Bryan said, 'Thanks, Dad — there goes our ride,' but to the surpri se of all three, Shw ground the car into reverse and zoomed towards them, making them jump. She popped a butt on and the trunk lid came

open. Through a crack in the windo w she said, 'You have ten seconds to get in. 10. 9. 8. 7. 6 . . .'

The three climbed in; for whatever reason the trunk smelled of fish and harsh chemicals. As they pulled onto the road, they were squished like puppi es in a basket. Wade, on the righ t side, pulled his head up and vomi ted over the tail ligh t, making Ted, on the left side, try to squeeze himself as far away as

possible. Bryan began to speak to Shw through the wooden panel behind the rear seats. 'I love you, Shw.

I don ' t care what you do with the kid. I love
you.
I love
you.'
Shw replied by cranking up a Gloria Estefan dance song to full volume. Minu tes later they pulled into a Citgo gas station where Shw screamed at

them to get out. Ted and Wade compli ed, but Bryan refused. 'Bryan, it 's over, OK? Now get out of my car.'

'No.'

'Have it your way.' She did a spectacular reverse donu t, and then thrust the sedan at considerable speed into a concrete billbo ard piling out behind the station, one touting a Universal Studios tour. Bryan catapul ted out like a jack-in-the-box. Shw squealed away, and within a few moments she was gone.

Wade was hosing himself off as Bryan hobbl ed towards him and Ted. 'Your taste in women is flawless, Bryan,' said Ted.

In response Wade spri tzed his father with the hose, and Ted said, 'Christ, are you tw o ever testy.' At that poin t Bryan's face screwed up.

'Don' t tell me—' said Wade. 'I don ' t believe it,' said Ted.

Bryan had left the letter inside the trunk. 'I'm just a fuckup.'

Janet and Nickie giggl ed like cartoon mice as they entered a biker bar in pursuit of their post-holdup cocktails. After the morning 's disaster, a biker bar was a no-brainer. A half hour later, they'd downed three drink s with a new round on the way, at which poin t they'd calmed sligh tly. They watched the

billi ards table, where men who most likely owned junkyard dogs cracked a rack of balls. Nickie said, 'I

wonder if Shw could domin ate these lou ts.' She made a disgusted noise, 'Forget abou t Shw.' She turned to Janet and said, 'Janet, tell me more abou t Helena. To be honest I really don ' t kno w what happened.' 'Helena, God—' Janet sighed. 'Where to start? She was my best friend. We went to university together in the 1950s. In Toron to. I was the uptigh t one and she was the bohemian. We were a good match. When I had kids she fell away a bit — she was into 1960s feminism and then New Age and crafts and shawls and sand candles and all that spacey stuff. But when Helena was around I felt like there were so many other

things to do in li fe besides be a housewife. She convinced me that my own narro w li tt le road wasn' t some sort of dead-end trap.'

Two screwdrivers arrived. Janet raised her glass: 'To unlik ely friends.' The women each took a sip and Janet went on: 'I moved to Vancouver with Ted and the kids, and she moved West around the same time, too — Vancouver was so hippsy-dippsy then — and the kids loved it when Helena came to the house because she was so different from what they were used to. She really turned me on to cooking . Oh —

that was one of her big gifts — she could cook like a fiend.' 'What happened?' Nickie asked.

'It was so weird,' Janet said. 'So goddamn weird.' 'Go on.'

Janet told her, even though she was still trying to make sense of it. On a very dull Wednesday afternoon some years earlier she'd looked out the den windo w and had seen Helena's car pulling up.
Helena's here

— what fun!
There had been a recent estrangement -Helena had taken an oddly vinegary disliking to Janet's poli tics, which, by Janet's own confession, were milqu etoast. When she saw the car, Janet figured a truce was in the off ing, and her spiri ts rose. She opened the fron t to find Helena hopping out of her Chevette wearing blue jeans, Frye boo ts and . . . nothing else. 'Boobies just flapping in the breeze. It was a chilly day, too.'

'Oh, geez.'

'You better believe it. Clem and Judy Payne next door just abou t had a seizure. I mean, you just can' t

imagine
how odd it is to see a woman — let alone a very full-breasted sixty-year-old woman — walking

around in half a bir thday suit.' 'I'm trying but—'

'Exactly. The most preposterous thing I ever saw. Maybe in five hundr ed years all the gals will be going bareback, but in West Vancouver in 1996? Shocking. Shocking. Just
shocking.'

Janet had opened the fron t door as if there were nothing untoward abou t the situation. 'Hi, Jan.'

'Helena —
what in God's name? Come
in —
come into the house.' 'Not just yet, Jan. The day's so nice. I want to take in the sun.'

'Helena, it is
not
sunny, it 's overcast and freezing outside and you are
naked.
Come in the house.' 'You're so uptigh t, Jan.'

'I am
not
uptigh t.' 'Listen to yourself.'

Nickie was glued to the story, which Janet had never told anyone.

'Of course
ten
seconds later a police cruiser pulls up the driveway behind Helena's car. It 's a recurring theme in my li fe -police cruisers pulling up the driveway — it 's how periods in my li fe begin and end.' 'What happened?'

Janet ran the movie in her head: the police off icers — a man and a woman — approached the fron t door in a bland, off icial manner. Janet was miming a
What-can-I-do?
gesture as she watched the police

approach Helena. They asked if everybody could step inside, but Helena didn ' t see why that migh t be necessary.