Good Family

by Gamble, Terry

• ISBN13: 9780060737955
• ISBN10: 0060737956
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

A retreat on Lake Michigan for old-money WASPs, Sand Isle has long been the summer residence of the Addison family. The youngest member of the clan, Maddie Addison, survived an awkward but sheltered adolescence only to be plagued in adulthood by alcoholism, a failed marriage, and an unendurable loss that sent her fleeing the burden of family expectations. Now, after an eleven-year hiatus, Maddie has been summoned back to Sand Isle, where her widowed mother languishes near death. What awaits Maddie is a collision of distinct, eccentric personalities -- by turns hilarious and poignant -- as well as an archive of memories that evoke pleasure, passion, and pain. Beneath the silent gaze of her ailing mother, Maddie and her family must confront their past and face the future to once again find a home in a house steeped in untold stories of its own.

Excerpts

Good Family
A Novel

Chapter One

In the years before our grandmother died, when my sister and I wore matching dresses, and the grown-ups, unburdened by conscience, drank gin and smoked; those years before planes made a mockery of distance, and physics a mockery of time; in the years before I knew what it was like to be regarded with hard, needy want, when my family still had its goodness, and I my innocence; in those years before Negroes were blacks, and soldiers went AWOL, and women were given their constrained, abridged liberties, we traveled to Michigan by train.

Summers began with our little group clustered, my father presiding onthe platform, the tinny train-coming smell that electrified the air. Weeksbefore school let out, the steamer trunks had been brought up, followed bythe ritual of packing. In June, we boarded the Super Chief, pulling out ofPasadena, my mother and father, my sister and I, Louisa our nurse, mygrandmother and her parakeet, her chauffeur, her cook, and two maids whohad parakeets of their own. My grandmother, Bada, who was my father'smother, visited with us in the club car and viewed the dresses our motherhad bought -- appliquéd beanstalks meandering up one side, Jack at thehem, the Giant at our shoulders. Bada smiled and patted our heads and gave us sour candies. Then Louisa pulled us away to the dome car, wherewe watched the rocks and sand and cactuses of Arizona glide by.

Like Louisa, the porters were Negroes. They called my father "sir," and he called them "sir" back, but I knew it wasn't the same. My father was a tallman with a proud nose and a bearing bred from Choate and Princeton andWorld War II. He seemed to stand taller than anyone in the Chicago trainstation. I shook off Louisa's hand, my Mary Janes clacking upon the tiles as Iran through a vast cavern rife with cigars and diesel until I found my father'shand and grasped it. Can't you keep hold of her? my mother hissed at Louisawhen they caught up to us. My father laid his long fingers on my shoulder asif he was going to embrace me. Instead, he prodded me toward my mother.

From that time on, I was put on a leash. They strapped me into a sort ofvest I could not undo, and Louisa grasped that leather rope as if her life dependedon it. After I grew up, my mother told me it was only one summerI traveled to Michigan at the end of a leash, but if my memory serves me,I traveled like that for years.

Now it is blackness below -- acres of woodland, lake, and river. The insideof the plane is barely lit, and even though the seats are full, no onetalks above the engines. It is late, and everyone just wants to get there. Exceptfor me. I want the plane to turn around. I press my forehead to theglass until I vibrate, becoming one with the engines, scanning the landscapefor that one place where gravity takes me as if nothing else exists. Finally,I make out a band of lights on a smudge of land, the dots of mooredboats in a harbor. Below on that island huddle forty or so summerhouses.Some of them are silent with sleep. Others have people sitting on porches,drinking their nightcaps. In more than one, someone is playing bridge orcharades. Someone is dancing. Someone is making love.

But not in our house. In our house, my brother-in-law has nodded offbeneath his book, and my sister, if she's awake, is knitting. Upstairs, in thefront room -- the good room facing the lake -- my mother, too, is sleeping,as she has slept for months, her eyes not quite closed, unable to move, hersnore penetrating the board-thin walls.

I am not returning because of my mother. It is my sister who calls meback. We are descending now, the runway traced by a pale, blue glow. Theplane lurches, stops. The passengers rise, their heads ducked beneath the lowceiling. I grab my bag, waiting my turn to push out the door into the humidsweetness of the Michigan air.

Except for the bars, Harbor Town is dark. It is late, and even theice-cream store has been mopped up, the chairs stacked on tables.It's been eleven years, but I know that in the daylight, colored awnings willflank the streets, shading boxes of petunias and impatiens -- red, white, andviolet. From every lamppost, American flags imply that the Fourth of July,already one month gone, is just around the corner. The airport van hasdropped me off. Standing beside my luggage on the pier, I fix my eyes onthe humpbacked island less than a half mile offshore. It looks the same. Italways looks the same. For a moment, dread gives way to the anticipationthat I felt as a child after a four-day train ride when we first saw the lake,the ferry, heard the gulls, smelled the rotted essence of fish.

I ring the old brass bell that has hung for over a century. From across theharbor, the rhythm of a chugging propeller grows louder until I make outthe gleaming teak lake boat of my childhood. The driver is young. Hewears a guard's uniform and a change maker on his belt, but he doesn'tcharge for the ride. After he docks and loads my bags, I sit in the cockpit,crossing the channel that, like the river Styx, divides one world from another.The faint strands of U2 coming from the driver's radio seem jarring,and I don't know the driver's name, but I give him mine, whisper it like apassword, a name that passes unnoticed in New York . . .

Good Family
A Novel. Copyright © by Terry Gamble. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from Good Family by Terry Gamble
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.