Every Happy Family (5 page)

“Here?” He points to the table.

She smiles, waiting.

“Yeah.”

“You live at home, then?”

“With my folks. I have my own entrance though.” He just shouldn't speak.

She's still looking at him. Should he ask where she's from? In the gap, she looks away. Quinn takes a long drink.

Todd's voice next to his ear is a heated whisper: “Van loves to fuck.”

His brain momentarily frozen, Quinn looks at Todd who shrugs, palms raised in innocence. Thrown off-centre in another way now, his brain races around the possible reasons Todd just confided or fabricated such a thing and glances at Vanessa to make sure she hasn't overheard.

“Quinn, know this game?” calls Ritchie.

“Excuse me?”

“Ring of Fire.”

“Don't believe so.”

“Everyone takes turns flipping over a card,” Mandy says.

“Whoever loses the game indicated by the card,” explains Rebecca, “has to take a drink and give one to the cup.” She points to the empty cup in the middle of the table. “The game ends when someone turns over the fourth king, and then that person has to chug the mix of booze in the cup.”

As Ritchie explains the rules for each card, Quinn only half follows. The cards are then spread face down in a ring around the cup.

“I'll go first,” says Mandy and flips over a six. “Rhyme time. Okay, booze,” she begins.

“Cruise.”

“Lose.”

“Fuse.”

“Jews,” says Todd and points to Jehoy-something who waves good-naturedly.

It's Quinn's turn. “News.”

“MEWS and MUSE,” spells Vanessa, then hikes up her legs to sit cross-legged on the couch. Her knee now pushes against Quinn's thigh. Accident or signal?

“Clues.”

If he glances over at her or at her knee, he'll be making something of it when she might not be. Some girls are just naturally touchy. His sister, Pema, drapes herself over complete strangers.

“Glues.”

If he doesn't glance over, she could construe it two ways: casual cool or indifferent.

“Use.”

“Ooze.”

Now the moment's past, so either he blew it or it didn't matter in the first place.

“Shmooze,” says Todd.

Quinn can't think.

“Ten seconds,” calls Ritchie and starts tapping a spoon against his glass.

“Screws,” he blurts and people laugh out loud, Todd the loudest. Blushing, he forces himself to laugh along.

“BOOS,” spells Vanessa.

“MOOS,” spells the next person.

“Choose.”

“Shoes.”

“Dues.”

“Poos,” says Todd.

“Ruse,” Quinn says, relieved.

“Hues.”

“Fooz, as in fooz ball.”

“That's not a word,” says Mandy, but everyone ignores her.

“Vuse, as in pirating music.”

“Coos.”

“Blues.”

It was back to him. “I'm out of rhymes,” he says.

“Could have done crews or chews,” says Vanessa, her head tipping right then left.

“Oh, yeah.” He hits his head with an open palm, takes a drink and gives one to the cup. He also could have said accuse or stews. He wanted a drink.

Jehoy-something turns over a ten and makes index-fingers horns on his head. Quinn remembers, too late, that horns stand for Viking and therefore is the last person to pretend to row the imaginary Viking ship. He drinks and adds the rest of his glass to the cup.

“You'll get the hang of it,” says Vanessa with another pat to his knee.

Quinn's the only person with a full glass when Todd turns over a five – a “make-up-a-rule” card. He takes one look at Quinn and proclaims, “Chug time,” and everybody downs the remainder of their glass. Quinn knows Todd's watching him and knocks his drink back in one go.

His self-consciousness deliciously fades to white noise, so when Ritchie calls a time out to use the bathroom, Quinn has enough careless confidence to ask Vanessa about her holiday plans.

“Home to Calgary for the dysfunctional Christmas,” she says with a meagre smile. “My parents are divorced and can't be in the same room together. One brother's a geological engineer who works for an oil company and one's a radical environmentalist, so they can't be in the same room either. My sister's a paranoid schizophrenic. Though she claims that's just my projection.”

“God, I'm sorry. That sounds seriously tough,” he says and means it.

She shrugs. “Gotta love family. Yours?”

“Parental unit still together, brother and sister like this.” He holds up crossed fingers. “I do have a depressive aunt but we only see her when she's manically happy.”

He mixes himself another rum and Coke. “Me, I'm the Lone Ranger in the family.”

She laughs while giving him a quizzical look. Ranger contains anger, he thinks, pleased with himself.

Ritchie's back and it's Quinn's turn. He flips over a jack for jackass, which means whenever someone loses a round and has to take a drink, he has to drink too.

“Shit,” says Quinn and people laugh. He says it three more times, having fun playing the new guy who doesn't understand the rules.

Ritchie's volume has gone up, Jehoy-something is flirting with Mandy and Todd's meanness is more direct.

“It's people like you,” says Todd, stabbing a finger at Quinn's shoulder, “always on time, always prepared, wearing your fucking little vest, that make the rest of us look bad. Why do you want to make the rest of us look bad?”

Nothing sticks to Quinn now because he
is
the Lone Ranger, dodging bullets or coolly shooting back. “From now on, I'm a new man. Promise. I mean I'll even dress shitty like you. Little golf shirt. Like where do you shop? Sears fucking Walmart?”

Vanessa spits with laughter.

“Whoa,” says Mandy.

Todd stares at him, expressionless, and a soft bull-like snort escapes his beak of a nose.

Jehoy-something has flipped over a card and is once again making finger horns on his head. Quinn makes horns a second before Todd. He raises hero eyebrows at Vanessa as Todd drinks and adds to the cup.

When someone stops the game to take a phone call, Quinn confesses to Vanessa he's recently been dumped. She's all coos and comfort, knowing, so she says, just how he feels.

“No way. You,” he says, pointing, “are toooo smart to have ever been dumped.” He's proud of himself for not saying hot.

Vanessa looks past Quinn at Todd, who's checking his cellphone.

“What,” says Todd.

Quinn looks at one and then the other. “Oh my god, you two were an item?”

“Item?” says Todd. “You sound like my grandmother.”

“Suspension bridge and subway system?” Quinn laughs. “I mean, guess it makes sense.”

“Whaddaya you talking about now?” says Todd.

“Yeah.” Vanessa leans in closer and he inhales the flowery scent of her shampoo.

Quinn explains his anthropomorphic game and the whole room is suddenly listening and asking his opinion on their “building type.”

“Ritchie here's a sprawling monster home in a gated community. With monster fuckin' pool, hot tub, SUVs in the double garage. You,” he says pointing to Jehoy-something. “Serious ultramodern movie theatre or library. Lotsa glaaaass. And Rebecca here, sorry, Rebecca, is your third-world modular housing unit.” He has people laughing, exclaiming agreement, arguing for themselves.

Quinn hums inside. He feels profoundly connected to these people, his fellow architectural students. In fact, he fuckin' loves every person here and feels their love in return. He feels the love of the architects of this basement suite, of the people who made these clothes on his back, of the brewers of this rum and everyone behind the Coke feel-good empire.
Making things is love
he wants to tell this long-legged tragedy beside him. His parents made him. God, he loves them. He loves his macho brother, his frivolous sister. He loves his demented grandmother and his munchkin-sized aunt. He loves Lauren and knows she loves him back. She loves him.

“What about the Quinn man here,” says Ritchie, “What's he?”

“Japanese hotels,” says Jehoy-something. “The beehive kind with those little sleeping holes.” He starts buzzing.

“I'd have said energy-efficient townhouses,” says Vanessa. “But hell, after tonight, I realize I don't know you at all.”

Quinn leans over and tucks a tendril of hair behind her ear, thinking it's very small for an ear. “If you'd like to get to know me, I'm all yours.”

Her laugh is a trilling songbird. Whether that laughter is directed
at
him or
with
him, he suddenly understands, is completely up to him.

“You're so pretty,” he says.

“You're pretty drunk.”

“You're fucked-up drunk,” comes Todd's voice behind him.

Quinn laughs. “My grandpa used to sneak me sips of his whiskey. Been drinking since I was five.”

Someone lights up a joint. Quinn rarely smokes dope, and never socially, but after Vanessa takes a hit, so does he, holding it in like a pro.

His last memory of the party is of Todd pushing a card into his hand, the fourth king?, of people cheering, squealing, him stepping up onto the coffee table and in a grand gesture hoisting over his head the Ring of Fire cup.

•••

After his breakfast of boiled egg, dry toast, two slices of orange and a dehydrating coffee – still no water – he's cuffed before being taken outside the cellblock to make his one phone call. Then, so he can actually use the phone, one hand is released and, as if he's some dangerous criminal, the other cuffed to a ring on the wall beside the phone.

His sister, Pema, answers, rap music in the background.

“Hi Pema, can you put Mom on, please?” His headache has settled into an even throb, his stomach a nervous swirl of caffeine.

“She's in bed.”

“She's sleeping?” he asks, though can't imagine it. She's always up early.

“Don't think so. Where are you?”

“Just put Mom on, please.”

“Only if you tell me where you are.”

“Pema.” He grinds his teeth, knows she won't back down.

“Tell me where you are or I'll hang up.”

“I'm in jail for sexual assault.”

Her laughter is so spontaneous, he laughs too. Yeah, it's so impossible it's funny. The music grows fainter as she walks the phone to another room and he scrambles to remember what the hell he did last night. He doesn't want to lie to his mother.

“Hello?” His mother's voice is at once a balm and a censure. He wants to stop there with her open expectation, her not knowing who and what is on the other end.

“Hi Mom. It's me, Quinn.”

“Quinn,” she says.

“Mom, sorry about this morning. I know I promised to help you move your office and I still will, but there's been some weird mix-up and I'm actually, if you can believe it” – he huffs a laugh – “calling from jail.”

A silence at the end of the line and he imagines her frowning. “Are you all right?” she says, and the concern in her voice makes his eyes prick.

“I, I don't know.” It's his first honest thought all day and he feels the relief of it.

“I called your cellphone.”

“Yeah, I think I left it in my coat and I –”

“Lauren's roommate answered,” she says quietly.

Lauren? Lauren. He starts to sit down though there is no seat, and the hand that's hooked to the wall tugs him back up.

He has the driver drop him at Lauren's. His girlfriend's place, he tells Todd.

Oh god.

“I told her that my son wasn't capable of attacking anyone.” She chokes on a sob and Quinn, his stomach threatening to heave, hangs up the phone as the last piece of the puzzle floats up through the darkness.

Rum slicks back his hair, vampire style. She answers the door, bleary-eyed, in the pink fuzzy robe he gave her for her birthday. Its lapels are soft in his fists and he kisses her forcefully, taking initiative. She starts to fend him off. Just like she wanted.

Siblings

In the kitchen, Beau shakes salt over the bowl of popcorn.

“What are you going to get me for Christmas?” Pema calls from the couch in the family room.

“That leather backpack you saw online.”

“Really?”

“No. It was like two hundred dollars.”

“You and Quinn could go in together.”

“Yeah, right.”

“What then?”

“I don't know. A gift certificate to the mall.”

“That'd be good.”

His sister, who doesn't do surprises, needs to be told what her gifts are ahead of time or she goes ballistic.

“Did you put yeast on it?” asks Pema.

“Yes.”

“Turn off the lights.”

He turns off the kitchen light then comes and knocks back beside her on the couch. The DVD is paused on a fishy close-up of an eye.

She runs a curious finger over a scab on the side of his knee, a gift from yesterday's club game.

“Metal cleat,” he says.

“I want to pick it off.”

“Leave it.” He jerks his knee away.

“Get under,” she orders and throws the comforter over him. “This part coming up freaks me out.”

“Then why are we watching it?”

“I knew you'd like it. You like it, right?”

“It's pretty twisted.” He loves it.

“DiCaprio's nuts. I don't mean really nuts, you have to see for yourself who's nuts. I'm saying too much. Forget everything I just said.” She takes a handful of popcorn and restarts the movie where it left off. “Lotsa butter,” she says happily.

He takes a drink of the milk he mixed with vanilla protein powder. His goal is to gain ten between now and spring season, and he needs a minimum number of grams of protein each day to build muscle mass.

Pema makes a face. “Milk doesn't go with popcorn.”

“Shut up already.”

She smacks his shoulder with the butt of her palm. He's long since learned that she needs the last word and lets it go.

In the dark, the flickering light of the TV paints them a frozen blue and their hands knock together in the popcorn bowl perched between them.

“Oh gawd, this part coming up.” Pema falls sideways against Beau and tugs up the front of his rugby jersey to hide behind.

Her breast presses against his chest and some reptilian part of his brain stirs awake. He'd missed Pema so much when she was away last summer it hurt. But when she finally came home, he barely recognized her. Her face looked different. She was taller and she'd filled out in new places. Since then she'd filled out even more.

Pema peeks at the screen and in the underwater light he sees someone other than his sister and a primitive thrill takes him by surprise.

“Get off,” he says in his confusion and gently pushes her away.

“Is it over?” she asks still clinging, still peeking, still pressing.

He wrenches his shirt free. “Move over.”

“Did you see that?” says Pema, scooting over, eyes glued to the TV. “Freak me out.”

“Yeah,” Beau lies.

She stops the movie and jumps up on her knees. “Should we watch that part again?” She stares at him breathless and eager, and because he's just got a glimpse down the gaping v-neck of her nightshirt, he keeps his eyes stiffly on her face. His neck burns with shame. He throws off the cover and is about to get up when Pema jumps on him, straddles his lap and straight-arms him back against the couch.

“Where do you think you're going?”

“Bed. I'm tired.”

“No. You can't go to bed,” she says in that despairing way she uses to make him do something. “I can't watch this alone.”

“Watch
Glee
.” He feels an erection starting and shoves her off him more forcefully than he meant to.

“Beauuuu.”

He's up and moving towards the stairs.

“I hate you,” she whines.

“Good,” he says and takes the stairs two at a time, horrified she might see. The phone rings and, praying it's not for him, he hurries into his room and locks the door.

Quinn is in his room, putting the final touches to the figurine he made for Lauren, and can't help answering the phone imagining it's her. “Hello?”

“Is that Quinn?”

“Hi Auntie Annie, how are you?”

“Oh god, you don't want to know, it's been a day, a week, totally wasted making a dress with a see-through waist out of six-pack rings, you know, the plastic circles? Was thinking sixties retro, bad idea, the edges curl and then pinch, but you don't need me to dump on you. Heard about last weekend. A drunk and disorderly, huh? You? Did someone slip you a roofie or something? When I was your age, Jesus help us, we drank, popped Quaaludes, Orange Sunshine, mescaline...”

His mom had talked Lauren and her parents into dropping the assault charge, convinced them that knocking her to the ground and dislocating her shoulder was a drunken stumble. An accident. He'd made a formal apology to Lauren's roommate and parents – Lauren wouldn't see him.

“...ecstasy, coke, Windowpane. That was back when you could trust what was in those things, more or less. Before the gangs got in on it. So how are you?”

“I'm fine.”

His aunt's laugh is so loud it sounds more like an angry shout. He has no idea what's so funny.

“Heard you aced your exams.”

“Yeah.”

“Burning the candle at both ends. Excellent.”

Auntie Annie never fails to make him feel better about himself.

“I'm looking for your dad. I tried his cell but no one answered. He's at the new job?”

“Yeah, he's at work.”

“Can't pick up the phone with a new boss looking over his shoulder. I think he just needs to be his own boss. I don't blame him quitting that last place. I mean, at his age, having to take orders from a snotty thirty-year-old?”

“Hey, Mom's here. You want to talk to her?”

“Oh, is Jill there? I'd love to talk to her but she's probably busy and I'd hate to bother her... Is she there?”

“Hold on, I'll go get her.” Unable to stomach the hurt on his mother's face whenever she lays eyes on him, Quinn calls out for her to pick up the phone.

“Thanks sweet boy,” says his aunt. “A drunk and disorderly, eh?”

“Yeah. Bye Auntie Annie.”

“Bye Quinner.”

“Hello?” says Jill and Quinn hangs up.

“Jill, I'm so glad you're there.” Annie hates interrupting Jill, knows how busy she is, but is busting to tell someone.

“Hi Annie. What's up?”

As if it was a command, Annie's up out of her swivel chair and then walking clockwise around the large cutting table in her loft, too excited to remain seated. “I was trying to reach Les but Quinn said he's at his new job. Always trying to move up in the pecking order, eh? It's a tough business, that chef business.”

“He won't be home until after midnight.”

“I've never seen a restaurant where you can order takeout online. That should keep the place in business. And I might have ordered from there tonight if my Internet wasn't still down with some virus. Smallpox, I think. Andy said he'd fix it but the shithead never did” –
don't curse, Jill doesn't like it
– “so I'm having to call all my clients, which is costing me, and my studio looks like a bomb's hit it because I couldn't find my fucking pins this morning then I couldn't find red bobbin thread –”

“What's wrong, Annie?”

“I have some great purple leather pockets for Pema, for her jeans? They're heart-shaped, will look great with her jacket.”

“Slow down,” Jill says in such a calm, measured voice that Annie stops pacing. “Tell me exactly what's going on.”

She sighs. “I'm an idiot, sorry.”

“No, you're not. Is it Andy?”

“Andy? I gather that was obvious to everyone but me. Me and my Raggedy Annie and Andy crap.”

“You can do so much better.”

Criticism totally throws her and she's unable to think, much less respond.

“Annie, what I meant is, is that you deserve better.”

Now she feels badly for thinking Jill was being critical.

“Come over,” Jill says, clearly worried. “Have you eaten? We have lots of leftover lasagna. Pema would love to see those pockets.”

Jill's sweetness and concern chokes her right up. How did she get so lucky to have such a family?

“Annie, don't hang up.”

“I'm fine, Jill,” she says, finding her voice again. “And it's not about Andy.” She'd never told Jill or Les that the asshole turned out to be married with a kid on the way. “They found our mother, Jill,” she says, the tears rising. “I need to tell Les.”

“Annie, now wait. Are they absolutely sure?”

“In New York City. Her name's Faye. Isn't that the most beautiful name? And the coolest?”

“It's very pretty but –”

“I can hardly believe it myself and couldn't wait to tell someone.” Her tears erupt in a gagging cough, and “They finally found her,” comes out in a blubber.

“Annie,” Jill says gently, “so you're absolutely sure this time?”