All Families Are Psychotic Read Free

smoke or drink during pregnancy. They kno w that the outer world can enter their babies and cause damage. But in my mother's generation, they didn ' t kno w
    this. They smoked and drank and took any number of medications withou t thinking tw ice. Now we kno w better, and as a species we're smarter as a result — we're aware of teratogens.
Teratogens?
Yes. It means 'monster forming '. A horribl e word, but then the world can be a horribl e place. They're the chemicals that cross the placenta and affect a child 's gro wt h in utero.
    The host turned to the camera: 'Time for a quick break. I've been speaking with Sarah Drummond -
    Fourni er, a one-handed woman, and one heck of a figh ter, who'll be on Friday's shutt le fligh t. We'll be righ t back.'
    How on earth did I give bir th to such a child? I understand nothing about her li fe. Nothing. And yet she's the spitt ing image of me, and she's gallivanting up into space. Janet remembered how much she'd
    wanted to help the young Sarah with her homework, and Sarah's poli te-but-resigned invitations to come do so when Janet popped her head into Sarah's door way. Invariably Janet would look down at the papers that migh t as well have been in Chinese. Janet would ask a few concerned questions abou t Sarah's teachers, and then plead ki tchen duty, beating a hasty retreat.
    She turned off the TV.
    She once cared abou t everything, and if she couldn ' t muster genuine concern, she could easily fake it: too much rain stunting the petunias; her childr en's scrapes; stick figure Africans; the pligh t of marine
    mammals. She considered herself one of the surviving members of a lost generation, the last generation raised to care abou t appearances or doing the righ t thing -to care abou t caring. She had been born in 1934 in Toron to, a city then much like Chicago or Rochester or Detroi t — bland, methodical, thri fty and
    rules-playing. Her father, Willi am Truro, managed the furni ture and household appliance department of the downtown Eaton's department store. Willi am's wife, Kaye, was, well . . . Willi am's wife.
    The tw o raised Janet and her older bro ther, Gerald, on $29.50 a week until 1938, when a salary decrease lowered Willi am's pay to $27 a week, and jam vanished from the Truro breakfast table, the absence of which became Janet's first memory. After the jam, the rest of Janet's li fe seemed to have been an
    ongoing reduction — things that had once been essential vanishing withou t discussion, or even worse, with too much discussion.
    Seasons changed. Sweaters became ragged, were patched up and became ragged again, and were grudgingl y thro wn out. A few flowers were gro wn in the thin band of dir t in fron t of the brick row
    house, species scavenged by Kaye for their value as dried flowers, which scrimped an extra few mon ths' worth of utili ty from them. Life seemed to be entirely abou t scrimping . In fall of 1938, Gerald died of
    polio . In 1939 the war began and Canada was in it from the start, and scrimping kicked into overdrive: bacon fat, tin cans, rubber — all material objects -were scrimp-worthy. Janet's most enjoyable childhood memories were of sorting neighborhood trash in the alleys, in search of crown jewels, metal fragments and love notes from dying princes. During the war, houses in her neighborhood grew dingy — paint became a luxury. When she was six, Janet walked into the ki tchen and found her father kissing her
    mother passionately. They saw Janet standing there, a small, chubby, fuddled Campbell's Soup kid, and they broke apart, blushed, and the incident was never spoken of again. The glimp se was her only
    evidence of passion until womanhood .
    An hour passed and Janet looked at the bedside clock: almost 9:30, and Howie would have already picked up Wade by now. Janet walked down to the hotel's covered breezeway to wait for her son-in-law. A day of boredom loomed.
    Then, pow! she was angry all of a sudden. She was angry because she was unable to