A Perfectly Good Family by Lionel Shriver

bid for the house, though in competition with each other or the buying public, either of whom could jack its price out of reach.’
This was getting too complicated for me. ‘Mordecai, come over to the house for dinner tonight,’ I suggested. ‘We’ll sort something out.’
‘My ass we’ll sort something out,’ said Mordecai. ‘Your kid brother just wants to sit on his hands and keep his little upstairs hideaway intact like a fucking treehouse. And meanwhile my company’s scraping along by the seat of its pants—’
‘You’ll get your damned money!’ Truman’s face was violet.
‘There’s one more thing,’ Hugh raised reluctantly, ‘before we break up and I let you three amicably confer on what you want to do about the real estate.’ He didn’t look envious; I got the impression that if I invited the attorney to our dinner Hugh would suddenly recollect a previous engagement. ‘Mordecai…You borrowed some money from your parents?’
‘A pittance,’ my brother replied guardedly. ‘Why?’
‘Say—$14,000?’
Mordecai sniffed. ‘I doubt it was that much.’
‘If you question the amount, we could verify with back records. ‘Cause the loans are to be deducted from your inheritance.’
I did not think it possible for a man of Mordecai’s colouring to pale. True, to my parents $14,000 was a stupendous amount of money. They’d never lost touch with the depression dollar, just as I had never quite debunked the exaggerated value of our twentyfive-cent allowance; a quarter still weighed heavy in my hand. But in terms of 1992, the amount was modest. Forgive your debts ? So my parents were second-rate Christians like most, and that was hard to swallow when they had just piously donated a quarter of their estate to a child who was only an abstraction. They could be charitable as long as the generosity wasn’t towards a real, obstreperous issue who used the f-word. Strictly, the deduction was fair, but I suspected my brother had interpreted the word ‘loan’ loosely.
‘See for yourself.’ Hugh handed a sheet to Mordecai.
‘May 10, 1989,’ he muttered, locating the amendment. He turned to me. ‘What did I do then?’ He handed the paper back the way Truman had held my mother’s stinky sponge.
‘Now listen. Mind if I leave you three with a bit of advice?’ Hugh enquired, perhaps having noticed that we hadn’t asked for any. ‘I’ve probated wills like this before; your situation ain’t unusual. The simplest solution is almost always the best. I know a house has memories, but memories you can keep for free. With this many tenants, I strongly suggest that you sell.’
Trying to keep him from spontaneously combusting in public, I quickly herded Truman to reception.

4
    As we collected back on Hillsborough, Truman loitered a few feet away, a bullish, belligerant aspect disguising the same lost and stricken countenance he displayed when he was four. It would have been like Mordecai to woo us to one of the pricey eateries that had sprung up in Raleigh while I’d been gone, where he could stage the profligate debauch for which he was renowned around town; glaring from a distance, Truman apparently found his brother’s enthusiasm for meeting up later at HeckAndrews suspicious. Truman had grown so fiercely protective of our house that he didn’t invite guests of any description, much less his big brother.
    But I rather liked Mordecai’s effect on my former sidekick; once our trio parted ways and the two of us returned to the Volvo, Truman clapped a hand on my shoulder and said, ‘What a mess!’ in a tone that suggested that at least it was our mess, together, and then asked if I wanted to drive; for the first time since my arrival I felt he was glad I was there. In the car, too, we had a feast of things to talk about, starting with that charitable bequest.
    ‘Don’t that beat all!’ said Truman, quoting our childhood favourite, Andy Griffith, who resembled our father.
    ‘Cutting in the ACLU was