Free A Perfectly Good Family by Lionel Shriver

the insipid slop still tastes like baby pap. He lights on the cone from my coffee that morning, and spoons in about half a cup of grounds. Only with this addition does Mordecai look pleased. His last stroke, a torrent of hot pepper flakes, leaves me praying we are out of cayenne.
    When at last we sat down, Truman and Averil each took as small a spoonful of the sauce on their pasta as etiquette allowed. Even with Mordecai, Truman was polite. He did mutter, ‘If this recipe is a secret, I think we should keep it,’ but under his breath. The spices were chewy, and coffee grounds wedged in my teeth, though all I could taste was red pepper. I commended Averil on her garlic bread, which did a decent job of damping the fire in my mouth.
    Mordecai himself made a show of gusto, his serving mountainous, an extra snow of chilli flakes over the top. He kept the schnapps at his elbow by some triple-strength black coffee and alternated slugs of each. At thirty-eight, he still wouldn’t eat his vegetables.
    ‘So kid,’ said Mordecai, spaghetti worming down his chin, ‘how’s the philosophy degree?’
I intervened, ‘He’s got a 3.8 grade point average. Don’t you?’
Truman looked at me darkly, as if what I had blurted was shameful, which in Mordecai’s terms I suppose it was.
Truman’s affairs addressed, we moved to mine. ‘How about your sculpture, Core?’
Now, Mordecai himself was one of those entrepreneurs whose big break was always around the corner. I couldn’t count the times that he had arrived at HeckAndrews, to stretch back and toss six digits around in the poignantly misguided assumption that money would impress my father. Yet the big round figures floated in on a puff of his chest, and floated out with a shrug of his
shoulders; the New York recording studio contract would simply never come up again, and no one would ask. Only because the next time my brother would be back for a ‘loan’ to see him through a ‘cash-flow crisis’ would we understand tacitly that one more big break had not come through. In this regard I was truly sorry for my brother: that he was unable to share with his family a single grievous disappointment, of which he must have suffered so many.
However, those who don’t share their tragedies don’t invite yours. ‘I got a gallery interested,’ I said, and didn’t attempt even an abbreviated version of my disaster.
The rest of our meal was consumed with yet another contract that Mordecai was sure he’d win for Decibelle, Inc. whose syllables he caressed with more sensuousness than he ever used naming his wife. I could only find it ironic that Mordecai was a self-taught audio engineer when the last thing he ever did was listen. We were treated to all the costly components he planned to install in a local nightclub; his rhythmic recitation of brand names and model numbers—the Stanley-PowersEbberstein-and-Whosits M2XY 50001-BH —gave his monologue a liturgical lilt, and my head began to list from Sunday morning narcolepsy. I felt an irrational urge to play Hangman on a church bulletin. As with any sermon, you didn’t interrupt, you didn’t participate, and you didn’t take any of it on board bar the fact that it was over.
Averil began to clear up, and stared down woefully at the pot where two gallons of Mordecai’s ‘secret sauce’ remained.
‘Freeze it,’ I advised, and Truman laughed. Mordecai didn’t get it.
‘Man…’ He extended while the table cleared itself, and lit another roll-up. ‘This may sound uncool, but Mother dropping out of the game is something of a relief.’
‘A relief?’ The tendons in Truman’s forearms rippled as he carried off a tower of plates.
‘Yeah.’ When Mordecai tipped the chair back on two legs and slapped his stomach for emphasis, I puzzled how he’d managed to pick up so many of his father’s mannerisms, having left home in ninth grade. ‘She wasn’t ever happy after Father died, right?’
‘Sometimes,’ Truman objected tightly,