All Families Are Psychotic Read online

  All Families Are Psychotic

  The last time the wildly dysfunctional Drummond family of Vancouver got together, gunplay was on the menu. Only the fact that their one shining star, Sarah the astronaut, is about to be launched into space at Cape Canaveral tempts them to try togetherness again – though the state of Florida may never recover from the Drummond version of fun in the sun. Adultery, hostage-taking, a purloined letter, a heart attack at Disney World, bankruptcy, addiction, AIDS, black market baby negotiations – this is clearly destined to be the most disastrous family reunion in the history of fiction.

  Praise for All Families Are Psychotic

  “A comic novel as rich as an ovenful of fresh-baked brownies and twice as nutty…. Everyone with a strange family – that is everyone with a family – will laugh knowingly at the feuding, conducted with a maestro’s ear for dialogue and a deep understanding of humanity. Coupland, once the wise guy of Generation X, has become a wise man.”

  – People

  “[All Families Are Psychotic] is an over-the-top circus of tragicomic mishaps, fuelled by discount gas and bucketfuls of prescription medications, a nightmarish theme park ride in which everyone is nauseated, sunburned, exhausted and dizzy – and either dying or pregnant. And it’s very funny.”

  – National Post

  “Coupland manages to balance the more weighty strands of the story with an absurdly satirical vision, without compromising either. At the same time, he mines the present with such intensity that it seems like science fiction. This strange, often miraculous fusion has you laughing, thinking and crying all at once, and suggests that Coupland’s writing is becoming more mature than ever.”

  – Evening Standard (London)

  “All Families Are Psychotic might be [Coupland’s] funniest and most accomplished work yet…. [It] manages to be hilarious, suspenseful, and poignant at the same time…. Coupland writes with one hand clenched on the rug beneath you, ready to knock you off your feet at any time.”

  – Times-Colonist (Victoria)

  “There is an almost spiritual aspect to his work that makes it emotionally compelling, and redemption is always at hand to pull his vision back from the brink of apocalypse…. There is the usual cast of zany characters, an outlandish series of events, the signature cynicism and wry humour – and transcendent moments of epiphany.”

  – The Toronto Star

  “I am an extravagant admirer of Douglas Coupland. He is one of the freshest, most exciting voices of the novel today.”

  – Tom Wolfe

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  Fiction:

  Generation X

  Shampoo Planet

  Life After God

  Microserfs

  Girlfriend in a Coma

  Miss Wyoming

  Nonfiction:

  Souvenir of Canada

  Polaroids from the Dead

  City of Glass

  IN A DREAM YOU SAW

  A WAY TO SURVIVE

  AND YOU WERE FULL OF JOY

  – Jenny Holzer

  01

  Janet opened her eyes – Florida’s prehistoric glare dazzled outside the motel window. A dog barked; a car honked; a man was singing a snatch of a Spanish song. She absentmindedly touched the scar from the bullet wound beneath her left rib cage, a scar that had healed over, bumpy and formless and hard, like a piece of gum stuck beneath a tabletop. She hadn’t expected her flesh to have healed so blandly – What was I expecting, a scar shaped like an American flag?

  Janet’s forehead flushed: My children – where are they? She did a rapid-fire tally of the whereabouts of her three children, a ritual she’d enacted daily since the birth of Wade back in 1958. Once she’d mentally placed her offspring in their geographic slots, she remembered to breathe: They’re all going to be here in Orlando today.

  She looked at the motel’s bedside clock: 7:03 A.M. Pill o’clock. She took two capsules from her prescription pill caddie and swallowed them with tap water gone flat overnight, which now tasted like nickels and pennies. It registered on her that motel rooms now came equipped with coffee makers. What a sensible idea, so bloody sensible – why didn’t they do this years ago? Why is all the good stuff happening now?

  A few days back, on the phone, her daughter, Sarah, had said, ‘Mom, at least buy Evian, OK? The tap water in that heap is probably laced with crack. I can’t believe you chose to stay there.’

  ‘But dear, I don’t mind it here.’

  ‘Go stay at the Peabody with the rest of the family. I’ve told you a hundred times I’ll pay.’

  ‘That’s not the point, dear. A hotel really ought not cost more than this.’

  ‘Mom, NASA cuts deals with the hotels, and …’ Sarah made a puff of air, acknowledging defeat. ‘Forget it. But I think you’re too well off to be pulling your Third World routine.’

  Sarah – so cavalier with money! – as were the two others. None had known poverty, and they’d never known war, but the advantage hadn’t made them golden, and Janet had never gotten over this fact. A life of abundance had turned her two boys into an element other than gold – lead? – silicon? – bismuth? But then Sarah – Sarah was an element finer than gold – carbon crystallized as diamond – a bolt of lightning frozen in midflash, sliced into strips, and stored in a vault.

  Janet’s phone rang and she answered it: Wade, calling from an Orange County lock-up facility. Janet imagined Wade in a drab concrete hallway, unshaven and disheveled, yet still radiating ‘the glint’ – the spark in the eye he’d inherited from his father. Bryan didn’t have it and Sarah didn’t need it, but Wade had glinted his way through life, and maybe it hadn’t been the best attribute to inherit after all.

  Wade: Janet remembered being back home, and driving along Marine Drive in the morning, watching a certain type of man waiting for a bus to take him downtown. He’d be slightly seedy and one or two notches short of respectability; it was always patently clear he’d lost his driver’s license after a DWI, but this only made him more interesting, and whenever Janet smiled at one of these men from her car, they fired a smile right back. And that was Wade and, in some unflossed cranny of her memory, her ex-husband, Ted.

  ‘Dear, aren’t you too old to be calling me from – jail? Even saying the word “jail” feels silly.’

  ‘Mom, I don’t do bad stuff any more. This was a fluke.’

  ‘Okay then, what happened – did you accidentally drive a busload of Girl Guides into the Everglades?’

  ‘It was a bar brawl, Mom.’

  Janet repeated this: ‘A bar brawl.’

  ‘I know, I know – you think I don’t know how idiotic that sounds? I’m phoning because I need a ride away from this dump. My rental car’s back at the bar.’

  ‘Where’s Beth? Why doesn’t she drive you?’

  ‘She gets in early this afternoon.’

  ‘OK. Well, let’s go back a step, dear. How exactly does one get into a bar brawl?’

  ‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.’

  ‘You’d be amazed what I’m believing these days. Try me.’

  There was a pause on the other end. ‘I got in a fight because this guy – this jerk – was making fun of God.’

  ‘God.’ He can’t be serious.

  ‘Yeah, well, he was.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘He was being so nasty about it, saying, “God’s an asshole,” and “God doesn’t care about squat,” and he kept on going on and on, and I had to put a stop to it. I think he got fired that day.’

  ‘You were defending God’s honor?’

  ‘Yeah. I was.’

  Tread carefully here, Janet. ‘Wade, I know Beth is very religious. Are you becoming religious, too?’<
br />
  ‘Me? Maybe. Nah. Yes. No. It depends on how you define religious. It keeps Beth calm, and maybe …’ Wade paused. ‘Maybe it can calm me, too.’

  ‘So you spent the night in jail, then?’

  ‘Safely in the arms of a four-hundred-pound convenience store thief named Bubba.’

  ‘Wade, I can’t pick you up. I think it’s going to be one of those no-energy days. And besides, the car I rented smells like a carpet in a frat house – and the roads down here, they’re white, and the glare makes me sleepy.’

  ‘Mom, come on …’

  ‘Don’t be such a baby. You’re forty-two. Act it. You couldn’t even get to the hotel in time yesterday.’

  ‘I was making a quick detour to visit a friend in Tampa. I stopped for a drink. Hey – don’t treat me like I’m Bryan. It wasn’t like I started the fight or …’

  ‘Stop! Stop right there. Call a cab.’

  ‘I’m short on cash.’

  ‘Simple cab fare? Then how are you paying for the hotel?’

  Wade was silent.

  ‘Wade?’

  ‘Sarah’s covering it for us until we can pay it back.’ An awkward silence followed.

  ‘Mom, you could pick me up if you really wanted to. I know you could.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I could. But I think you should phone your father down in … what’s that place called?’

  ‘Kissimmee – and I already did call him.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He’s gone marlin fishing with Nickie.’

  ‘Marlin fishing? People still do that?’

  ‘I don’t know. I guess. I thought they were extinct. They probably have a guy in a wet suit who attaches a big plastic marlin onto their line.’

  ‘Marlins are so ugly. They remind me of basement rec rooms that people built in 1958 and never used again.’

  ‘I know. It’s hard to imagine they ever existed in the first place.’

  ‘So he’s out marlin fishing with Nickie then?’

  ‘Yeah. With Nickie.’

  ‘That cheesy slut.’

  ‘Mom?’

  ‘Wade, I’m not a saint. I’ve been holding stuff inside me for decades – girls my age were trained to do that, and it’s why we all have colitis. Besides, a dash of spicy language is refreshing every so often. Just yesterday I was hunting for information on vitamin D derivatives on the Internet, and suddenly, doink! I land in the Anal Love website. I’m looking at a cheerleader in a leather harness on the—’

  ‘Mom, how can you visit sites like that?’

  ‘Wade, may I remind you that you are standing in a human Dumpster somewhere in Orlando, yet hearing a sixty-five-year-old woman discuss the Internet over a pay phone shocks you? You wouldn’t believe the sites I’ve visited. And the chat rooms, too. I’m not always Janet Drummond, you know.’

  ‘Mom, why are you telling me this?’

  ‘Oh, forget it. And your stepmother, Nickie, is still a cheesy slut. Phone Howie – maybe he can come fetch you.’

  ‘Howie’s so boring he makes me almost pass out. I can’t believe Sarah married such a blank.’

  ‘I’m the one who gave birth to her, and I’m the one who has to drive with him to Cape Canaveral today.’

  ‘Ooh – bummer. Another NASA do?’

  ‘Yes. And you’re welcome to come along.’

  ‘Wait a second, Mom – why aren’t you at the Peabody with everybody else? What are you staying in a motel for? By the way, it took thirty rings for the clerk – who, I might add, sounded like a kidney thief – to answer the phone.’

  ‘Wade, you’re changing the subject. Phone Howie. Oh wait – I think I hear somebody at the door.’ Janet held the phone at arm’s length from her head, and said, ‘Knock knock knock knock.’

  ‘Very funny, Mom.’

  ‘I have to answer the door, Wade.’

  ‘That’s really funny. I—’

  Click

  The motel room made her feel slightly too transient, but it was a bargain, and that turned the minuses into pluses. Nonetheless, Janet missed her morning waking-up rituals in her own bedroom. She touched her body gently and methodically, as though she were at the bank counting a stack of twenties. She gently rubbed a set of ulcers on her lips’ insides, still there, same as the day before, not just a dream. Her hands probed further downward – no lumps in her breasts, not today – but then what had Sarah told her? We’ve all had cancer thousands of times, Mom, but in all those thousands of times your body removed it. It’s lazy bookkeeping to only count the cancers that stick. You and I could have cancer right now, but tomorrow it might be gone.

  The motel room smelled like a lifetime of cigarettes. She looked at Sarah’s photo in the Miami Herald beside the phone, a standard NASA PR crew photo: an upper body shot against a navy ice-cream swirl background and complexion-flattering lighting that made one suspect a noble, scientific disdain for cosmetics. Sarah clutched a helmet underneath her right arm. Her left arm, handless, rested by her side: Space knows no limitations.

  Janet sighed. She twiddled her toes. Ten minutes later her phone rang again: Sarah calling from the Cape.

  ‘Hi, Mom. I just spoke to Howie. He’ll go pick up Wade.’

  ‘Good morning, Sarah. How’s your day?’

  ‘This morning we had a zero-G evacuation test, but what I really wanted to do was sit in a nice quiet bathroom and test out a new brand of pore-cleansing strips. The humidity in these suits is giving me killer blackheads. They never talked about that in those old Life magazine photo essays. Have you eaten yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Come eat at the Cape with me. We can have dehydrated astronaut’s ice cream out of a shiny Mylar bag.’

  Janet sat up on her bed and pulled her legs over the side. She felt her skin – her meat – hanging from her bones as though it were so much water-logged clothing. She needed to pee. She began to meter her words as she eyed the bathroom door. ‘I don’t think so, dear. The only time they ever allow me to have with you are three seconds for a photo op.’

  Sarah asked, ‘Is Beth arriving today?’

  Beth was Wade’s wife. ‘Later this afternoon. I think I’m going to dinner with the two of them.’

  ‘How far along is she?’

  ‘I think this is her fourth month. It may even be a Christmas baby.’

  ‘Huh. I see.’

  ‘Something wrong, Sarah?’

  ‘It’s just that—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mom, how could Wade marry … her. She’s so priggish and born-again. I always thought Wade would marry Miss Roller Derby. Beth is so frigging sanctimonious.’

  ‘She keeps him alive.’

  ‘I guess she does. When does Bryan arrive?’

  ‘He and his girlfriend are already here. He called from the Peabody.’

  ‘Girlfriend? Bryan? What’s her name?’

  ‘If I tell you, you won’t believe me.’

  ‘It can’t be that bad. Is it one of those made-up names like DawnElle or Kerrissa or CindaJo?’

  ‘Worse.’

  ‘What could be worse?’

  ‘Shw.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Shw. That’s her name: Shw.’

  ‘Spell that for me.’

  ‘S. H. W.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘There’s no vowel, if that’s what you’re waiting for.’

  ‘What – her name is Shw? Am I pronouncing that properly?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘That is the most … impractical name I’ve ever heard. Is she from Sri Lanka or Finland or something?’

  Janet’s eye lingered on the bathroom door and the toilet beyond. ‘As far as I know she’s from Alberta. Bryan worships her, and she’s also knocked up like a prom queen.’

  ‘Bryan’s pregnant? How come I don’t know any of this?’

  ‘I just met her last week myself, dear. She seems to rather like me, though she treats everybody else like dirt. So I don’t mind her
at all, really.’

  ‘Bryan is such a freak. I’m not going to be able to keep a straight face, you know – when she tells me her name, that is.’

  Janet said, ‘Shw!’

  Sarah giggled.

  ‘Shw! Shw! Shw!’

  Sarah laughed. ‘Is she pretty?’

  ‘Sort of. She’s also about eighteen and an angry little hornet. In the fifties we would have called her a pixie. Nowadays we’d call her hyperthyroid. She’s bug-eyed.’

  ‘Where’d they meet?’

  ‘Seattle. She helped Bryan set fire – I believe – to a stack of pastel-colored waffle-knit T-shirts in a Gap – back during the World Trade Organization riots. They were separated, then a few months ago they met again destroying a test facility growing genetically modified runner beans.’

  Janet could sense Sarah changing gears; she was finished discussing the family. Next would come business-like matters: ‘Well, good for Bryan. You’re OK for today’s NASA gig?’

  ‘Still.’

  ‘Howie will pick you up at 9:30, after he picks up my darling brother. By the way, Dad’s broke.’

  ‘That doesn’t surprise me. I’d heard he’d lost his job.’

  ‘I tried to loan him some money, but he, of course, said no. Not that there’s much to loan. Howie lost the bulk of our savings in some website that sells products for pets. I could strangle him.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ It’s so easy to fall into the mother mode.

  ‘Tell me about it. Hey, when was the last time you even saw Dad?’

  ‘Half a year ago. By accident at Super-Valu.’

  ‘Tense?’

  ‘I can handle him.’

  ‘Good. See you there.’

  ‘Yes, dear.’

  Click

  On the walkway outside her room, Janet heard children mewling as they set off to Walt Disney World with their families. She walked to the bathroom across a floor made lunar from eons of cigarette burns and various stains better left uninvestigated. She thought of serial murderers using acids to dissolve the teeth and jawbones of their victims.