All Families Are Psychotic (15 page)

The first sigh t of Beth seemed to smash his heart, yet mend it at the same time. He was determined to meet this woman, but decided this migh t be too impor tant to use his thousand-watt breed-with-me face or his standard come-on line ('I kno w what you're thinking , and there's only one way to find out.').

Instead he maneuvered himself into the chair beside her. Like a border collie he sat waiting, hoping , praying that she would drop a pen or paper so that he could pounce on it and retrieve it for her. This woman had reduced him to kindergarten devotion, and yet he knew nothing abou t her.

She dropp ed a pen.
Pounce
! He returned it to her desktop in a blink . She looked at him coolly: 'Thanks.'

She wasn' t playing hard to get; she simply wasn' t playing at all.

The class was asked to share their experiences. Debbie, who ran the workshop, said, 'We have a new member, Wade. Wade — tell the group members here your story — as much as you want to.'

'I don ' t kno w if there's much to tell,' Wade said. 'I mean abou t me and my li fe and how I got this thing.' 'Please,' Debbie said. 'No euphemisms, Wade. It 's hiv.'

'Okay then, hiv. I'm straigh t and I've never done it with a guy, or even a three-way.' Many of the class's twenty or so members sniggered.

'Hey, screw you — why would I go so far as to come to a class like this and then lie? The thing is, I used to be a big sleeper-around er. It was my li fe. Sleeping around always landed me what I wanted. I kno w these rich kids who never had to work a day in their lives because they always got what they wanted. Well,

instead of money with me it was my — shit — how do I say this withou t sounding like a jerk — my way with women.'

More sniggers. Debbie asked the class to be quiet. 'Go on.'

'Anyway, I found out abou t the infection by accident. The world 's flukiest fluke.' Wade told the story of

the shoo ting, and he embellished a bit. The class was silent in the most interested way, rapt at the oddi ty of the tale. 'So there you go. I have this virus in my body. It 's never going to go away. I can' t work at the moment — I was going to play hockey at that B-list casino across the high way, but that's impossible now. The mon ths are ticking by. I just don ' t have . . . any idea what to do.'

Silence.

'What abou t your mother?' asked Beth. 'What's she feeling? Have you tw o talked much?'

'Some. I feel like the biggest sack-of-shit son in the world. She pretends it 's no big deal, but you kno w it is.'

The group continued, and discussed various medical probl ems on the wax and wane. New procedures and medications and regimens were hashed out, and then the group ended, over by the clinic's ki tchen,

where everybody ate oatmeal raisin cookies and drank dishwatery coffee. Wade maneuvered close to Beth and asked her how long she'd been living with hiv. 'Three years. I was a junki e, but I don ' t do that any more.'

'No?'

'No. I found the Lord. That sounds stuck-up, and I don ' t like that. But I did — find Him, I mean. He keeps me sane, a side effect I never would have expected.' Other group members flocked around Wade; Beth vanished.

The follo wing week passed slowly as Wade waited for the group to meet again. Beth arrived the next Tuesday nigh t looking shaken; something was obviously awry.

'Beth,' said Debbie. 'You look stressed. Having a tough day?' 'I'm not sure what to call my day.'

'How so?'

Beth hesitated. 'I've been having these tests done over the past tw o weeks. But the full results didn ' t

arrive until this morning . It turns out— ' She bit her lip. 'I don ' t have aids. I've never even been exposed to hiv. Nobody ever checked up on what turns out was a false positive three years ago. I'm . . . negative.' There was a long silence.

Debbie said, 'Well, congratulations, Beth.'

'No — you don ' t understand,' Beth said. 'This disease is my
li fe.
I got off smack because of it. I stopped

drinking . I found the Lord because of it. And I have all of you people as my friends because of it — and
it

is gone now. And I don ' t kno w what to do. There's nothing else in my li fe. I work as a croupi er at

Harrah's, and that's all there is to my li fe. Suddenly it 's so small and I feel invisible. Last week I was fifty- foot tall brave survivor, and now I'm ... a mosqui to.'

Debbie said, 'Well, we're hardly going to kick you out of the group , and I can' t think of anybody better

suited than you to be a counselor.' The group made suppor tive noises, but Wade saw Beth leaving his li fe, almost as soon as she'd entered. 'For starters,' Debbie continued, 'maybe you can meet with Wade here and give him the drill on what's available to him here in Clark Coun ty.'

Ting
! Debbie could only have been an angel. Afterwards over by the coffee maker, fello w group members

swamped Beth. Wade waited. When at last she came over to him, she said, 'Let's go to a Denny's. I'm starved.'

At the restaurant Wade tried making small talk, but failed. Instead Beth asked him, 'What's the sickest you've ever been yet?'

'How do you mean?'

'You kno w — PCP pneumoni a? Viral meningi tis?'

Wade couldn ' t believe the unrom antic rou te the meal was taking. 'I've been pretty much asymptomatic.' Wade was glad he was able to respond with a medical term.

'Sorry to jump into symptoms like that. It 's rude, but it 's a habit I got into. I migh t as well ask for your T- cell coun t.' She looked at the menu. 'The chicken fingers here are good.'

They ordered, and then the waitress put their chicken fingers on the table. Wade went to reach for one, but Beth snapped, 'Grace.'

She made him hold hands with her. Wade could feel the skeleton inside her flesh; holding hands with her was like holding hands with Casper the Friendly Ghost, smoo th and dry and almost not even there.

She said, 'Dear Lord, who gave us this day and who will give us all our tomorro ws and eterni ty after that, we thank you for giving us our trials so that You may test our will, and we thank You for the days in

which to make our wills manifest. This meal is Your boun ty. We are Your servants, for forever and a day. Amen.'

Wade felt holy. He felt he was at home with a person he would choose to be his family. He ate a bite of chicken finger and burn t his tongue.

Three weeks after the dinner at Denny's, Wade moved in with Beth, whose religio sity had a blank spot when it came to shacking up. After the move, Wade was embarrassed by how few things he had, and by their overall shabbiness. When his possessions merged with Beth's possessions, his were all but erased,

and this suited him fine. Beth's taste ran towards the sligh tly girly, the sligh tly wacky: pink sunflowers and a cow-shaped footstool — it was a pleasure to be absorbed into a kinder, less desperate world.

Beth's apartment complex was a run-down 1960s quickie, its superin tendent a vagrant keno addict. Consequently, Wade was asked by Beth to do a fair number of household repairs. In all his years of smuggling and roguery, he'd never had to deal with such drab tasks as rewiring a lamp.

'Rewire the lamp?' 'Rewire the lamp.'

It crept up on Wade that whenever he picked up a screwdriver or putty kni fe, he automatically tensed his should ers, waiting for his father's voice to call him useless or hopeless or a waste. Once he realized that

the voice wasn' t going to happen, he surpri sed himself with his own handiness. Beth had a long list of repairs, which suited Wade well —
immediate and gratifying results: a freshly painted wall; a door that no longer jammed; a properly wired stereo.

One nigh t, after Wade had spent twelve hours stripping and refinishing a small writing desk Beth had

found at a garage sale, he was energized as though he'd awakened from a long and delicious sleep. His energy was contagious, and in bed Beth became playful and whimsical; normally in bed she was at her most serious, if not downrigh t sad.

'You're my Superman, Wade.' 'Tell me again.'

'You're my handsome, dedicated Superman.' 'What are my superpo wers?'

'You
tell
me.
If you could have only one superpo wer, what would you choose?'

This question made Wade think.
The strength of a thousand men? X-ray vision;' Superimmuni ty that would allow him to crawl through all the raw sewage of Mexico with no ill effects?

'Hey, take your time, why don ' t you, honey.'

'I'm thinking , Beth. This is serious. I want to give the righ t answer,' A minu te passed. 'Wade?'

'OK, I kno w — my superpo wer — I'd be able to shoo t ligh tning bol ts out from my finger tips — great big Knowledge Netw ork documentary bol ts — and when a person was zapped by one of these bol ts, they'd

fall down on their knees and once on their knees, they'd be underwater, in this place I saw once off the east coast of the Bahamas, a place where a billion electric blue fish swam up to me and made me a part of their school — and then they'd be up in the air, up in Manhattan, above the World Trade Center, with a

flock of pigeons, flying amid the skyscrapers, and then — and then what? And then they'd go blind , and then they'd be taken away — they'd feel homesick — more homesick than they'd felt in their entire li fe - so homesick they were thro wing up — and they'd be abandoned, I don ' t kno w ... in the middl e of a harvested corn field in Missouri. And then they'd be able to see again, and from the edges of the field people would appear — everybody they'd kno wn — and they'd be carrying Black Forest cakes and

burning tiki lamps and boom boxes playing the same song, and the sky would turn into a sunset, the way it does in Walt Disney World brochures, and the person I zapped would never be alone or isolated again.'

He and Beth made love that nigh t, separated by latex membranes in all the righ t places, minimi zing

saliva, but with an intimacy new to their relationship. Afterwards, Wade couldn ' t sleep, because he kept thinking abou t the people who'd show up on the edge of his own Missouri wheat field, and he though t of his family — abou t how messed-up they were -mentally and physically and emotionally. And Wade

though t abou t all the other families he'd kno wn and how they'd been messed-up as well: autism, lupus, schizophrenia, arthri tis, alcoholi sm, too many secrets, words unspoken, bad choices, money probl ems . . . the list was infini te. Nobody escaped.

With that though t, he realized that his fortieth bir thday had passed, that he was no longer young, and that he didn ' t mind.

Wade stared at the cracks in the gas station 's tarmac, soft and chewy, like a bro wnie, ants crawling in and out like in a crazy art film.
I'm not alert enough; I'm not paying close enough attention. Dammit, I spend my whole li fe looking and looking and looking at the world, but I guarantee it, the moment I move my head away from this patch of tar will be the exact moment the earth cracks open — and if I'd been

watching, for just that one second, I'd have seen the core of the planet, molten and white
—

Ted boo ted Wade in the rump. 'Hey, Lord Byron, go be a poet some other time. We've gotta haul ourselves out of here.'

Wade vomi ted. Again.
Not much left to come up. What did I eat today? Yogur t, a banana, trail mix
— 'Aw, Jesus, Wade—' Ted hosed him off.

Wade turned over and looked at his father's brigh t red face; Bryan was rubbing his should ers, sunburn t and chewed-up by fire ants, and just recently scraped by Shw's having bounced him against the concrete. Bryan asked, 'Wade, are you OK?'

Wade sucked air in. 'No. I'm not OK. I'm actually busy sitt ing here dying.' 'Don' t be such a melodramatic pussy,' said Ted.

'I'm not being melodramatic, Dad. As it turns out, yes, I'm dying — a slow, painful, ugly and frankly qui te boring kind of death.'

'Bullcrap. Stand up. Bryan's nutcase girl friend just drove away with my chance at money.'

Wade rolled up his pants, revealing lesioned skin that resembled a tablecloth covered in spilled red wine. Ted saw this and his face puckered up. 'OK already. Roll your pants legs down. Jesus. People will see.' Wade was too tired to batt le further. 'Bryan, where would Shw be driving — any ideas?'

Bryan asked, 'Where are we righ t now?'

'Don' t sweat it,' Ted replied. 'Women always leave a clue. Wait — " clue" is the wrong word. What's one notch more obvious than a clue?'

Bryan suggested, 'A
hin t?'

Ted sprayed him with the hose. 'A hin t is
less
obvious than a clue, stupid.' 'Call a taxi,' said Wade.

'To go where?' asked Ted.

'I kno w where we can find a car,' Wade said.

A cab was phoned while Wade went to the men's room to wash up. He was shivering, white and pink- eyed. The cab arrived and the driver asked where to go. Ted was in the fron t, Wade and Bryan in the back. Wade gave him the Brunswicks' address.

'Why there?' Bryan asked, 'That's where Howie's staying,' said Wade. 'Over at the Space Family

Robinson's.'

Ted became bri tt le. 'I want
Howie
in my li fe righ t now like I want a hole in the head. The li tt le suckhole.' Bryan added, 'He always acts like he's so perfect. In high school he'd have been one of those guys who always smiles at you because he can' t imagine somebody not liking him, except people
did
hate him.' Ted said, 'Bryan, Jesus, stop festering over high school. You left the gee-dee place almost tw o decades ago.'

Bryan proved fierce: 'You always sided with the principal whenever I got caugh t doing stuff. Just leave me alone, OK? My body feels like I've been barbecued and I though t for once we could just be nice to one

another and be like a real family.'

Ted bit his lip and made eyes with Wade, who said, 'I don ' t think it works that way, Bryan.' 'Why can' t it?'

Ted snapped, 'Because your knocked-up girl friend has my future inside a Ziploc bag in her trunk is why.' 'Bryan, I don ' t think she's going to abor t.'

Bryan turned on Wade. 'How would
you
kno w?'