A Perfectly Good Family: A Novel (P.S.) by Lionel Shriver

Author:Lionel Shriver [Shriver, Lionel]
Language: zho
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: #genre
ISBN: 9780061239496
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 2009-03-04T16:00:00+00:00

Mordecai flicked his head in Truman’s direction. ‘Later.’ God forbid with the three of us together that anyone would confide

anything to anyone. It may have been a luxury of a sort to be the centre of information, for each brother told me his side of things so long as the other was out of range, but as a consequence

they left me full of secrets and turned me into a liar with both. Maybe that was the idea.

Mordecai having left home so early, I’d had little experience with the two of them in the same room. Since I assumed a radically different persona with each brother, they cancelled me out. Not only did I not know what to say, but how to say it. With Truman, my speech was distinctly British—I said ‘con

troversy’ and used a ‘spanner’; with Mordecai, I fell in with his yahoo singsong, and said ‘fuck’ a lot. In Truman’s company, I was careful not to drink to excess, never admitted I sometimes smoked a cigarette, wouldn’t be caught dead nibbling biscuits between meals, and curtailed stories of sexual antics in the interest of portraying myself as a passionate woman with high standards just looking for love. Slumming with Mordecai, I tried manfully to keep up my end of a bottle, name-dropped multiple boyfriends, and snickered knowingly at any reference to pharmaceuticals, never letting on that I’d only taken acid once. Therefore when Mordecai thumped his muddy boots on the table, rolled a joint and passed it to me I froze. With Truman, I claimed I didn’t smoke dope; with Mordecai, I had never refused a few hits. I compromised with a single drag and handed it back. Truman raised his eyebrows. I fled for ham.

Mordecai and his three grungy employees reached across one another for slabs of Smithfield, ignoring the holly napkins to wipe mustard on their sleeves. Bandying brands of audio manufacturers, they glugged great tumblers of Rosemont cabernet until in short order they’d decimated a third of our case.

We were never formally introduced, but I sorted out the names of our gate-crashers. MK was the smarmy blonde, whose ponytail hung stiff with a lacquerous sheen. His weight was cadaverously low, his face dappled with the purple undertone of volcanic acne in his youth. MK’s drawl overplayed the dumb hick:

gosh-dang ain’t that sump’m. I figured him for one of those lowlifes who was always trading on a southerner’s reputed buffoonery—sweet corn to divert attention from the switch-blade taped to his ankle.

When he followed me once to the sink—to get a glass of water he failed to drink—he may have been locating our case of wine. He said, ‘Is it true, Corrie Lou, that Mort took a test at NC State that proved he was a

genius?’

‘So I’ve been told,’ I said coldly. I noted MK had mail-ordered my brother’s exact same style of leather boots, as he also rolled his own cigarettes and extolled that sickening caraway schnapps. Imitation made me edgy; it was a kind of theft.

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