Good Family (8 page)

“Yuck,” she says. “My mother used to do that.”

“You and your mother,” I say. “When are you going to give her a break?”

“When are
you
?”

“Fine, fine, fine.” We stare each other down.

“It’s different now,” says Jessica, the first to shrug. “It’s just that…when I was a kid, I felt like I, you know, belonged. Like all those marks on the dining-room wall had something to do with me. I thought I could trace
my
ancestors back through those names to grandfathers and great-grandfathers and great-greats.”

“Well, you can. Sort of.” I eye her, thinking about the significance of those gouged feet and inches, the Faustian bargains we made when we signed on the dotted line. “Your mark’s up there. You’re stuck with us. Besides”—I give her a meaningful stare—“your parents got to
choose
you. The rest of us were just the luck of the draw.”

Philip, just up from the dock, pokes his head in the kitchen. “Everything under control?” he says in a jovial sailor’s voice before disappearing, presumably to my grandfather’s former office, commandeered by Philip, whose sole client is a very old, very rich woman in Pasadena.

Under her breath, Jessica says, “Dad will of course kill me.”

“That’s the difference between our fathers,” I say. “I always thought everything I did was going to kill
him
.”

Jessica finds this funny, but it occurs to me as if in a revelation that my father is really, truly dead, and that nothing I do now can affect him. I feel both bereft and liberated. No one to assess my progress or flinch at my failures. Drying my hands on a dishtowel, I consider the ramifications.

I
an,” I say, fingering the photograph of my grandfather hanging over the phone table. “What would you say about me having a baby?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

It is six o’clock in New York, same as here. Ian has just woken up from a nap. Tonight, he will go to an art opening and, later, meet up with the musician from Hoboken we befriended while filming him. His evening sounds foreign, illicit even. Here, Dana is organizing a game of charades after dinner.

“I’m not old,” I tell him, my eyes grazing a picture of Dana and me on our mother’s lap.

There is a pause at the end of the line. I picture Ian in his boxers, the ones his friend gave him printed with lipstick kisses, sitting at the edge of his Philippe Starck bed, his face scrunched up the way he does when he’s considering a proper edit. “Who’s the lucky guy?”

Ian isn’t a prude, exactly, but he’s old-fashioned. He believes in the convention of marriage, if not necessarily a heterosexual one. He believes children should call adults Mr. and Mrs. unless invited to do otherwise. He believes, with the fastidiousness of a penitent, in washing your hands each time after peeing and wearing shoes to dinner. “Ian,” I say, “have
you
ever thought of having children?”

His answer comes quickly, almost urgently. “Okay, so you
are
losing your mind. It’s not healthy for you, Maddie, to be there alone. This line of thinking, for instance.”

“I’m not crazy. Don’t tell me I’m crazy.”

“Listen to me. It’s the
place
.” He stops. I can hear the sound of drawers being opened and shut. “Okay,” he says. “Okay. I want you to call the airline tomorrow. I want you to get a ticket.”

“I’m not crazy.”

“Get a
ticket
, Maddie.”

Sedgie is moving through the house, clanging a large triangle we use to call everyone to meals. Behind him, Jessica, looking like Helen of Troy bearing the fruits of war, carries a platter steaming with lamb and potatoes. Everyone gathers in the dining room, oohing and aahing over Sedgie’s fare. Whatever Ian says is drowned out by the din. I cup my mouth to the phone and tell him I have to go.

S
edgie takes a sip of his drink. “So, Derek, when’s Yvonne coming?”

“Yvonne never comes, Sedge. You know that.”

“I thought with the family and all.” Sedgie stabs a potato with his fork and misses, sending the potato across the table. “Whoops,” he says.

The first time I met Yvonne was just before she and Derek were married. She had been his model at Yale, and he followed her to France, bringing her back almost like an offering or as evidence that his life was continuing elsewhere.

“Perhaps she finds us odd,” I say, feeling a budding rekindling of my old allegiance to Derek. “What do
you
think, Philip?”

Philip gives me an appraising look from beneath black brows. “Nothing that the rest of us can’t handle,” he says, although no one points out that he’s the only in-law left among us.

Dana, I notice, seems edgy. When she again suggests charades after dinner, everyone protests, but Sedgie comes to her aid by insisting it’s a
wonderful
idea. Looking gratefully at Sedgie, Dana takes a sip of wine, turns to Beowulf, and asks him about school.

“School,” says Beowulf, “is a temporal sop to the sublime.”

Dana has told me that Beo is going to join a rock band if his composing doesn’t work out. I notice he is eating with his fingers. Jessica’s eyes are fixed on him. The various colored clips in the form of butterflies dotting her hair give the effect of a tangled, albino bush upon which insects have landed.

Beowulf turns to me. His ponytail has come loose. Beneath his lower lip is a little patch of facial hair I have an urge to wipe off. He says, “I saw that piece you did about Bene Sadah. It was really fine.”

The ten-minute clip on the musician in Hoboken. “You’re kidding,” I say. It never occurs to me that my family would actually see any of the films or segments Ian and I produce.

“Who’s Bene Sadah?” says Philip.

In a patient voice, Beowulf says, “An
awesome
syntho-fuguist.”

“That sounds obscene,” says Dana.

“Bene Sadah, Bene Sadah,” says Sedgie dreamily, tapping his pointer fingers together in anticipation of charades. “Two words. Second word…sounds like…We could act out
sodomy. That
would be fun.”

“I want Sedgie on
my
team for charades,” says Jessica, her eyes dancing, the butterflies threatening flight.

H
aving Sedgie on our team turns out to be less of a boon than expected. By the time the dishes are done, he is tanked. He stretches out on the floor, proceeds to fall asleep. Stepping over him, I curl up in a corner of the couch. Beowulf has drifted to the piano and has begun to play, while Jessica is busy shredding paper and tossing the pieces into two bowls, one for each team—Dana, Jessica, Sedgie the unconscious, and me on one, Beowulf, Philip, and Derek on the other.

Hand over hand, Beowulf strikes an eerie progression of notes. The day that started out so vividly blue has shifted suddenly as an evening storm blows in. Michigan weather is like that.
If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes
is the tired old joke. Already we can hear the sound of distant
thunder as Beowulf ’s hands come down hard on the first few chords of the
Appassionata.

It’s in our genetic code, this playing of charades. We know all the gestures describing movies or quotations or plays or songs or books. We could do it in our sleep, as Sedgie will demonstrate. We write on our slips of paper, huddled conspiratorially, gloating with shared sadism as we plot to stump and baffle.

“How about
Titanic?
” says Dana.

“Too easy,” I say.

“Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch?”
says Jessica.
“In Watermelon Sugar the Deeds Are Done and Done Again as My Life Is Done in Watermelon Sugar?”

“
Oranges
,” I say. “Everyone knows the Brautigan.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” Dana says.

Sedgie gives a loud snore.

We go first. Jessica bravely crosses the living room and plucks a piece of paper from the basket Philip thrusts at her. Her brows knit together, then I see a tiny smile form upon her lips. Clock starts. Jessica cups her left hand around her eye, makes circular motions with the right.

Film!

Soon she is on all fours, prancing around like a dog, lifting her leg on a chair. She
is
a dog.
Reservoir Dogs! Straw Dogs!

No!
Dog
is the first word of…
three
words. Second word, little word.
A…the…at…to…in…IN!

Dogs in…

Dogs in…heaven?

“
Dogs in Space!
” I shout out, jumping up, and Jessica shrieks and hugs me. We are brilliant; we are staggeringly awesome.

“Dogs in…space?” repeats Dana, mystified.

I glance at Beowulf, who looks gratified. “That is
so
obscure,” he says.

“Australian punk band,” I explain to Dana, while Jessica hoots, saying, “Oh, man, I never thought they’d get that!” Except for Sedgie, our team high-fives all around.

Now it is their turn. Philip steps forward and draws a slip. We all peer at it while he mulls his strategy for
The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory.

“No problem,” he says under his breath.

Even I have to admit Philip is good. In a whirlwind of acting out
book, thirteen words, elephant
(forming a trunk),
universe
(like sky, but big, bigger, biggest), I think of Mother upstairs, our hilarity percolating up, intruding upon her peace. She, who sat staring out of windows for years before her stroke, can no longer avoid the fact of our family.

Now Philip is acting crazy, going after the word
demented
for dimensions, but no one gets it, so he moves on to the gesture for
sounds like
, then fondles his chest to rhyme with
quest
.

But Philip’s team stares at him blankly, and finally he throws up his hands in disgust as Jessica calls time.

“The Elephant’s Universal Lunatic?” Derek ventures, but when Philip tells them, they all cry foul.

“Bestseller,” I say.

“Okay, okay, okay,” says Philip, fixing on me. “Now it’s your turn.”

I get up, stretch, and sashay over. Covering my eyes, I reach in, choose a scrap of paper, unfurl it. Folding the paper back up, I wonder whose suggestion it was. Everyone on the opposing team looks smug. I wheel around and face my team. Jessica’s almond eyes, Dana’s softly out of focus, Sedgie’s shut. I make quotation marks with my fingers and indicate fourteen words. I point at all of us, make a gesture as if gathering us together.

All of us…family.

I nod. I think of my mother upstairs. I act out the second word and start to smile inanely.

Crazy?
says Dana.

I shake my head.

Happy?

Yes!

I act out the seventh and tenth words by mimicking crying, then ponder
how to convey the fifth, when Sedgie suddenly stirs, raises his head like a turtle, gapes fuzzily at me, and, holding up a finger, recites, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,’” before slumping back into oblivion.

I yelp while everyone else gawks at the sodden Sedgie. I turn to see Philip’s bemused expression. Evidently, it was
his
idea to use the Tolstoy. I give a little bow, and wonder why he chose it.

T
he evening waltzes on.
Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Middlemarch.
We act out
lizard
and
sisters
for
Lysistrata.
The rain has started falling in big, splatty drops, and Dana says we should cover the porch cushions and close the windows. Already, doors are slamming around the house. Bam,
bam!
I wonder if Mother is sleeping through this Wagnerian shift in the weather. Everyone dashes to his room to batten down the hatches, when, suddenly, the lights go out.

Of course, none of the flashlights work. Like blind men, we paw through drawers, groping for batteries. The best we come up with is matches, and soon the house is glowing in a golden combination of votive, beeswax, and birthday candles, while the thunder comes louder and faster. Miriam has shown up in her hairnet and bathrobe, saying that the storm was agitating Mother, but now she is drugged and sleeping.

“What kind of drugs?” says Beowulf.

Sedgie stirs like Lazarus from the dead. “A séance!” he announces in a surprisingly sober voice. “Given the Gothic circumstances.” Miriam gives him a long, incriminating look as if he has suggested something illegal. “Come on, Miriam, you’re not afraid of a couple of ghosts?”

This from Sedgie, of all people.

“Some things are best left alone,” says Miriam. Her face by candlelight looks sharply planed as she tells us she’s had her share of the spirit world while taking care of the dying. “Why go conjuring?”

Miriam sweeps out of the room in a penumbra of candlelight, but
Sedgie is not to be dissuaded. He insists we all gather in a circle around a cluster of candles on the living-room floor. Philip excuses himself to go down to the beach and check the boats. We all take a deep breath. Except for the sound of the rain and the wind, the house is quiet. Candlelight has honey-coated the room with its cedar walls and shelves crammed with knickknacks and books. In the glow, I can barely make out their spines—
The Indian Drum
and
War and Peace
, some obscure novels from the forties, a couple of Agatha Christies, and a dog-eared Harold Robbins. We still have the record player and the cherished albums, though they haven’t been played in years. The bongo drums are new—maybe Derek or Beowulf’s. I close my eyes.

Someone starts to giggle. Sedgie makes a groaning sound—something borrowed from
Macbeth
, but Jessica says,
Sssh, listen!

I don’t know if I am expecting the room to fill with light, but there is an unmistakable sense of a new presence.

“This isn’t funny,” says Jessica.

“Shhh!”

A creaking board. The tread of footsteps. A thump. The front door flies open. We scream in unison.