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‘Q-’

‘I’m not going to talk about it.’

‘Q.’

‘No and don’t insult my intelligence, I’m not going to talk about why I don’t want to talk about it. If this is going to be a Moment article, Hallie’s going to read it, and then he’ll read it to Booboo, and I’m not talking about The Stork’s death or the Moms’s stability in a thing where they’ll read about it and have to read some authoritative report on my take on it instead of coming to their own terms about it. With it, rather. Terms with, terms about. No, terms with it.’

‘…’

‘They both might have to wait until they get away from there before they can even realize what’s going on, that the Moms is unredeemably fucking bats. All these terms that became cliches — denial, schizogenic, pathogenic family like systems and so on and so forth. A former acquaintance said The Mad Stork always used to say cliches earned their status as cliches because they were so obviously true.’

‘…’

‘I never once saw the two of them fight, not once in eighteen domestic and Academy years, is all I’ll say.’ ‘Q.’

‘The late Stork was the victim of the most monstrous practical joke ever played, in my opinion, is all I’ll say.’

‘All right, I’ll relate one antidote^b that might be more revealing of the Moms’s emotional weather than any adjective. Jesus, see, I start explicitly referring to parts of speech just thinking about the whole thing. The thing about people who are truly and malignantly crazy: their real genius is for making the people around them think they themselves are crazy. In military science this is called Psy-Ops, for your info.’

‘Q.’

‘I’m sorry? Right then, one illustrative thing. Which thing to pick. Embarrassment of riches. I’ll pick one at random. I think I was maybe twelve. I was in 12’s, I know, on that summer’s tour. Though I was playing 12’s when I was still ten. It was ten to thirteen that I was regarded as gifted, with a tennis future. I began to decline around what should have been puberty. Call me let’s say twelve. People were talking about NAFTA and something called the quote Information Turnpike and there was still broadcast TV, though we had a satellite dish. The Academy wasn’t even a twinkle in anybody’s eye. The Stork would disappear periodically when money came in. I think he kept going back up to Lyle in Ontario. Call me age ten. We still lived in Weston, known also as Volvoland. The Moms gardened like a fiend out there. This was something else she had to do. Had a thing about. Hadn’t gone to indoor plants yet. Called the garden’s crops her Green Babies. Wouldn’t let us eat the zucchini. Never picked it, it got monstrous and dry and fell off and rotted. Big fun. But her real thing was preparing the garden every spring. She started making lists and pricing supplies and drafting outlines in January. Did I mention her own father had been a potato farmer, at one time a millionaire potato-baron-type farmer, in Quebec?