A Perfectly Good Family by Lionel Shriver Read Free Book Online

headlong look would have aimed at the NC Supreme Court around the corner; Mordecai leaned towards a different sort of bar.
As he drew a few strides closer, the paternal resemblance fell away. For one thing, he’s shorter; both my brothers battled the metaphorical notion that they had not risen to their father’s stature in any respect. While my father’s umber hair had shocked in a Kennedy-style wave and was cropped close at the neck, Mordecai hadn’t cut his hair since he was twelve; he bound the waist-long locks into three tight pigtails. His colouring was my mother’s: when unbraided, the hair was lush and dark; his brows were rich and low, his lips full. If he weren’t always vulturing his forehead and crinkling his mouth into an anal scowl, his face would look pretty.
The sun out, Mordecai was wincing, the cast of his skin a sallower shade than the wan winter light. While my mother’s tones were olive, all of Mordecai was yellow, down to his thick rimless glasses whose lenses he special-ordered with a urinous tint. The unhealthy jaundice of his complexion was, I knew, distilled from liquor and heavy food and a vampire’s schedule of hibernating all day and working all night. As he cringed down the poppled pavement, I doubted Mordecai’s nocturnal flesh had seen more than a few rays of sunshine for twentyfive years. That may have left him safe from skin cancer, though if so that would be the single disease to which he had failed to issue a personalized invitation.
I raised my hand in salute, but not too high, lest Truman see me as eager.
When my big brother grinned back, his teeth matched his skin. At fifteen he’d declared that for his two live-in girlfriends he wanted to ‘taste like himself’ and refused to brush. The plaque build-up had been sticky and flaxen, and though he now seemed to conform to ordinary standards of hygiene his lopsided smirk remained ochreous.
‘How’s tricks, Corrie Lou?’ Mordecai was the only living person who could employ my childhood’s atrocious double-name without my taking his head off.
‘Yo, Mortify.’
He kissed me on the forehead; his lips were soft. I caught a tinge of alcohol on his breath. He grazed my temple with his right hand, whose first two fingertips were lutescent with tobacco, the nails saffron and curling. Though Mordecai was only thirty-eight, his hands, creased with wood stain and machine oil, crosshatched with scars from the carelessness of hirelings, were those of a much older man.
‘True.’ Mordecai granted his brother a perfunctory nod; Truman grunted.
‘You lucked out with parking,’ I chattered. ‘That army truck must take up at least two metres.’
Hee-hee, went Mordecai—his laughter, too, was prematurely aged, geezery and good-old-boy, from slumming with tar-heel construction workers who dropped out of high school. ‘Nope. Yellow lines all the way. Remember that Justice Department card Father kept on the dashboard of the Volvo? After his funeral, I swiped it.’
‘I wondered what happened to that,’ Truman muttered.
‘I find that hard to credit,’ I said. ‘The cops believing an army surplus troop transporter belongs to the Supreme Court.’
‘Hey, it’s worked so far. Not a ticket for two years. Figured True here wouldn’t use it. That wouldn’t be right . That would be lying .’
The pavement was too narrow for the three of us to proceed abreast. I didn’t feel comfortable coupling clearly with one brother over the other, so trailed a bit behind the elder and a bit before the younger, our trio cutting a diagonal of birth-order down the walk.
‘Man, I hope this Garrison character can shuffle paper fast.’ Mordecai rubbed his hands. ‘I could sure use the cash.’
Truman rolled his eyes.
    Hugh Garrison’s office was pastel and travel-postery, with a round table and straight-backs next to his desk. I was obscurely disappointed; in my imagination, we’d be seated at a long darkwood conference table, with portraits on the walls,