A Perfectly Good Family Read Free

valuable.’
‘The stereo is valuable,’ I said. ‘So’s that vase.’ So’s the house . It was marvellous, what people in my family left out.
Truman tapped the black spines. ‘Every time Mordecai deigned to come back home—to ask for another “loan”—he’d drool over these books and talk about how he could hardly wait to inherit the set. To their faces. While they were alive and not very old and in good health! That call you got from me two weeks ago, you knew you’d get it some day, but I’m sure you were dreading it. Mordecai had been drumming his fingers by the phone. When I called him the day she died, I was sure the first thing that went through his mind was, goodie , now I get the Britannicas. For that matter, remember the Living Will?’
‘Who could forget?’ I groaned.
‘Not Mother, that’s for sure. Mother remembered it, all right. Often.’
    This is not the kindest introduction to my older brother. Seven years earlier, in 1985, we had gathered in this parlour at my parents’ request. I’d flown down from New York City where I was living at the time, though summoning Mordecai from only a mile away was the greater achievement. He’d only agreed to come when he heard their family conference had something to do with money.
    My parents had arranged themselves on the couch, not wanting to begin without Mordecai, who had learned from my father that important people keep others waiting. Once my older brother galumphed in the door an hour late, with a curious glance around the mansion as if he’d never been here before, we three children faced the couch and fidgeted; all that was on offer was black coffee.
    My mother took photocopies out of a file folder and passed them around like a handout in school. She presided. In bold on the top of my copy read: A LIVING WILL . My mother proceeded to explain that as medical advances these days often make it possible for comatose or vegetative patients to live for years on life support, it was increasingly common for adults of sound mind to record in writing what their wishes might be in circumstances where they were no longer competent.
    ‘Father and I—’ she never called him Sturges to us, only Father. ‘—wanted you children to know that we’ve signed these pledges, verifying that we don’t want any heroic measures—’
    ‘You mean, expensive measures,’ Mordecai had interrupted.
    ‘Yes,’ Mother agreed evenly, ‘hospital costs for PVS patients can be quite high—’
‘A thousand bucks a day,’ Mordecai provided. ‘And that’s before the twenty-dollar aspirins.’
Mother may have coloured slightly, but she kept her composure.
‘These forms are not binding contracts in court,’ chimed in my father, the lawyer. ‘But they are admissible evidence, and doctors have increasingly used them consultatively when a family needs to make a decision. Euthanasia per se is not legal in the United States, but there have been precedents—’
The photocopy was sticking to my fingers. My mother crafted an emotion in front of herself, much the way I worked up a sculpture—patting here, smoothing the rough edges, and only presenting it when fashioned to her satisfaction. My experience of real feelings, however, is that they do not take shape on a turntable in view, but loom from behind, brutal and square and heavily dangerous like a bag of unwedged clay hurtled at the back of your neck. Feelings for me are less like sculpture and more like being mugged. Consequently, with no warning, I burst into tears.
‘Corrie Lou, whatever’s the matter?’
I snuffled, ‘I don’t want to think about your dying,’ not sounding anywhere near twentyeight years old.
My father was probably embarrassed, maybe even touched, but his expression was one of irritation.
Mother came over and stroked my hair, as she had when, roughhousing with my brothers, I’d skinned my knee—tender and purring, she was not really worried. She surprised me. Histrionic of the family, my mother