A Perfectly Good Family Read Online Free PDF Page B

me on whether I wanted to have children.
Although I’d never have expected appreciation, from Peter in particular, they both adored my sculpture. I fashioned and fired my pieces at a ceramics cooperative in Clapham, but bubble-wrapped them back to the flat, where I unveiled them to my fans in our spare room, to gratifying oohs and ahs.
Good news seems always paired with bad. A fortnight after the three of us had polished off four bottles of champagne to celebrate my coup with the Curlew Gallery, the phone rang again. It wasn’t the middle of the night, which might have prepared me. Truman was admirably factual. He had found my mother in our parlour at ten in the morning, surrounded by old photos of my father. Undoubtedly, her heart.
Both boys were terribly sweet. Andrew got right on the phone to BA, and I hadn’t known there were special rates for emergency bereavements—I got on a flight at half price the next day. He fixed me tea while Peter, predictably, ran for vodka. They both saw me off at Heathrow, while I assured them I’d be back in a few days; I had to put up my show at the Curlew when I returned.
Take care of my darlings in the spare room, I said, and kissed each of them, daringly, on the mouth.
They may not have been gossipy girls, but if you put two people of any sex in a room by themselves for long enough they will tell all.
    ‘I’d been flirting,’ I told Truman, ‘with both of them. I guess while I was gone they had a few beers with each other, and…well, they must have been mad.’
    ‘So they kicked you out.’
‘That’s not all they kicked. Or one of them. When I flew back, no one met my plane. I took the tube, and came home to the flat empty. I was restless, and headed for the back room thinking I could start swathing my pieces in bubble-wrap for transport to the Curlew…’ I sighed.
‘The hand,’ twigged Averil.
‘Oh, nobody had taken a pickaxe to them. I might have preferred that. No, all the hands were lopped off. Every one.’
‘Couldn’t you glue them back?’
‘Not for a toney London gallery, and the breaks weren’t clean. No, the sculptures were ruined all right. Three, four years’ work at least. I’m back to Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars.’
‘I find it hard to believe,’ said Truman, ‘that those guys would destroy all that work for flirting .’
It’s true that I sanitize my stories for Truman, but like his mother he’s so gruellingly good.
‘You said it was only one of them,’ said Averil. ‘Which?’
‘I was surprised. Peter was given to drunken rampages. Andrew was the sensitive, cerebral one. Then, I don’t think Peter would have cared so much. He was savvy, he was wild and casual and had other women. Andrew…’
‘Was in love,’ said Averil.
‘Maybe,’ I conceded. ‘I hadn’t noticed. I probably didn’t want to.’
That night, my spindly lover had returned, having given me just enough time to discover his get-out-of-my-life present. Behind the glare of his horn-rims, his eyes were anthracite. For once, he did look knowing.
‘Why the hands?’ pressed Averil.
‘Because my hands,’ I said, ‘had lied. But they hadn’t really. I liked each of those men. I liked each of them, in a different way, a great deal.’
Whenever my father was asked if he wanted pie or ice cream he would smirk and say he wanted pie with ice cream, so I was raised with the idea I could have both.

3
    In my bedroom, I could make out snippets of conversation overhead. ‘How long is she—’ Averil pierced.
Truman’s voice was more muffled. ‘Until…she’s depressed.’ ‘Corlis takes over!’ My lullaby, and I slept.
I woke early, on UK time, and stumbled down for coffee. Our long, woody kitchen was added to the house around 1900, built on top of what was once a deep back porch. We’d eaten most of our meals at the rectangular table in the middle, the formal dining room reserved for interminable potroast dinners after church. I loved this kitchen. It had never