Family Reunion (11 page)

And here I had thought I wasn't going to cry. I cried. Tears trailed down my face, and I had to tilt my head back to keep my contacts in place. The wind lifted my hair off my neck and threw grit on my tear tracks. “How old are you, anyway?”

“Sixteen. That's another thing. When your father started supporting us, he already had one little kid of his own, and then you were born and he had two little kids of his own, and still he was supporting us. You and your sister. What's her name?”

Nobody refers to Joanna as “what's her name.” “Joanna,” I said. “I think Daddy's always had extra money, though.”

“Listen. People can have ten million extra dollars and still not share one dime with their ex-wife.”

Toby bought us entrance tickets. Fifty cents. It really was a dinky little fair. It had only six rides. I opted for a small children's ride. Toby paid a quarter for each of us, and we climbed on merry-go-round horses. An aqua horse with a white mane for me, and red with a black mane for Toby. We were the only people riding. The music wound itself up, and slowly the horses began to circle. When Toby was up, I was down. We waved at each other, and our knees bumped.

“Where is your father that he can't make it to the party?” asked Toby.

“Oh, he's working for this big company that just got a new chairman of the board and a new CFO, and of all things, this weekend they're having a bonding retreat in the wilderness and he can't miss it.” How odd that my father needed to go anywhere to bond with anybody. Charlie was the bond-master. Nobody bonded as well as Charlie. He must be teaching the seminar.

We rode the merry-go-round seven times, walking among the horses as it circled and making sure that we rode on every horse. Then we even rode the two ducks that didn't go up and down and were meant for moms with babies in their laps.

All along, I had never minded the Perfects or anybody else being Perfect as long as we had some Perfection too. I had a better father than anybody. A father who was always
there, and funny, and strong, and who gave us bear hugs and took us to the lake or the movies and loved doing it.

Okay, I thought, so he has divorces and he skips out on surprise parties. He's still Perfect. He never stopped being Perfect.

The booths held green teddy bears you could win by throwing darts or shooting air guns or tossing beanbags. They sold fried dough and cotton candy, foot-long hot dogs, corn dogs and soft ice cream. They sold T-shirts with monster faces, and tacky jewelry with misspelled names.

We did every booth. “I hope we don't win anything,” I told Toby. “I don't know what I would do with a mirror that has a beer ad printed on it.”

When I looked at my watch, it was five o'clock in the afternoon. “Oh, no! Toby! I'm going to miss the party too! Everybody but me is already there!”

I bet Aunt Maggie doesn't know about Daddy supporting Toby, I thought suddenly. How could she say the things she says about him if she knew this? She'd want Brett to be exactly like Daddy if she knew.

Why did Daddy keep it such a secret?

We left the little fairground and walked back. There were sidewalks all the way. Toby did not take my hand. He talked about all kinds of stuff, and I hardly heard any of it because I was involved in an inner debate about whether I should take his hand.

The views in Barrington were longer than in Vermont. Trees in Vermont stalk the hillsides and meadows like vandals, filling every space. Beyond the edges of Barrington, the horizon swooped under blue armloads of sky, stretching to unknown farms and fields, and even to distant states and prairies. Hay had been cut. It was bleaching in the sun. It smelled wonderful and safe.

“Do you think Brett will come home?” I interrupted.

Toby didn't mind the interruption. “Sure. Eventually. Brett is kind of ordinary, you know. It's tough being ordinary when your parents want you to be incredibly special.”

We were the only people using the sidewalk. City people walk everywhere. Country people use cars. “I'm ordinary,” I pointed out.

“You?” Toby stared at me.

We crossed the final street. A block away you could tell that Aunt Maggie and Uncle Todd were having a huge party. Cars lined the road and were parked on lawns and doubled up in driveways. Balloon bouquets were tethered to the mailbox and fence and lamppost. The rich scent of meat cooking on hot coals permeated the neighborhood. The sound of the band throbbed generously.

“I've always sort of thought of you guys as relatives,” said Toby shyly, “even though you aren't. Do you mind?”

I had not been thinking of Toby as a cousin. “As long as you promise not to be my brother,” I said, “you can be any relative you want.”

Toby's grin was nothing like my father's. Nothing like Angus's or DeWitt's or Uncle Todd's; it was his, and I quivered and I wanted that grin to be mine. I wanted to make that grin surface just for me, and I wanted it to vanish when I needed Toby to be serious.

I looked away from him. A couple was getting out of their car, the husband carrying a platter of brownies, and the wife balancing a lemon meringue pie. I love how in Barrington, even if you have your party catered, people will always contribute food, and it will be reliable food that you've seen before and you know well.

“I really wish Daddy could be here after all,” I babbled. “Look at all the food. And all the friends. Are you staying long enough in Barrington to meet Daddy when he comes late? Annette thinks he'll be here on Wednesday. I don't think we have the actual flight time or anything, but as soon as we hear from him, I can tell him you're waiting.”

A woman with a glass bowl of fresh strawberries and a can of Reddi-Wip crossed the grass and disappeared into the backyard, where the party was. Out of the back of their car, the next couple maneuvered a huge sheet cake and a sign that read

!!!!!!!!WELCOME HOME CHARLIE!!!!!!!!

Angus would love that cake. He's crazy about icing. He always scrapes away the best flowers and ribbons on the icing and leaves the insides for me.

“See you around,” said Toby.

“Aren't you coming?”

“Nah.”

“But I thought—I mean, you were invited. Please come.”

Toby shook his head. I could not read his smile. It seemed uncertain, as if all the fears that he had taken away from me, he had been forced to keep for himself.

He turned his head aside. In profile he was bony and thin. When he turned back, the thinness went away, and he was handsome and nervous. It was like looking at two different people. I wanted to get to know him. To find out whether his profile or his full face represented the real Toby, or whether, as with so many people, his features had nothing at all to do with his personality.

I did not want to join the party. I stood looking at him, and he at me, and whether he was thinking of fathers, I do not know, but I was drowning in a hundred thoughts that had nothing to do with parents. Thoughts that prickled through my skin and flushed my cheeks.

Toby said, “Maybe tomorrow, Shelley? We could talk more. I could borrow my grandmother's car. We could go somewhere.”

I nodded. “I'd like that.”

Toby gave me a light kiss on the forehead and walked away.

“Where have you been?” demanded Carolyn. “My mother is furious. Your family does disappearing jobs like nobody on earth.” She bundled me up to her bedroom to get properly dressed. I was dusty and tear-streaked, so I hopped in the shower while she shouted through the crack in the bathroom door. “What are you going to wear, Shelley? This little white dress? With the pretty little embroidered roses?”

“I don't want to wear that after all. It's stupid. I'll be embarrassed.”

“I have a nice pair of paisley shorts you could borrow.”

“I hate paisley. It looks like pregnant worms.” I came out of the shower. Carolyn combed my wet hair and said it wasn't fair for some people to have great hair like mine
when people like her had to put up with crummy old ordinary hair.

I had always thought my hair was crummy old ordinary hair.

Carolyn snorted. Then she pulled another outfit from her closet. “How about my yellow two-piece dress? With the bare midriff.”

I looked down at my bare midriff.

“I have little yellow sandals to go with it,” coaxed Carolyn.

“Earrings?”

She handed me earrings. Little dangly yellow airplanes, which I would never have bought or put on my earlobes. But I gathered my courage and wore all of it, and I especially loved the part of my body where I had no clothing: my bare midriff.

Carolyn was wearing a bright red shirt, bright blue shorts, a bright purple belt and a bright green scarf. She looked like a crayon box. I wasn't sure I approved of that much color all at the same time.

Carolyn braided three very narrow cornrows to keep my hair away from the right side of my face and let the earring show, and then she used a hot curler to make a banana curl on the other side for contrast. “I bet you and Joanna fix each other's hair all the time, huh?” she said longingly.

“No, mostly we just fix Joanna's hair.”

“That rots,” said Carolyn. “What good is a sister if you're just her servant?”

We talked about sisters and brothers and whether we had any use for them. “Guess what,” she confided. “Brett's coming home.”

“That's wonderful. How did it happen?”

“Mom and Dad went over to the house where he's staying and confronted the parents. Mr. and Mrs. Cameron agreed that by giving Brett a free room and free food, they were aiding and abetting his running away. Like accessories to the crime. So they gave Brett an ultimatum. He can't stay at their house another night.” Carolyn was both delighted and angry. “He'll get his welcome-home party,” she said. “He'll slip into the backyard after dark tonight and help himself to somebody's apple pie, and Grandma will give him ten hundred hugs, and we'll all pretend nothing happened.”

How different from my family. Of course, we can't pretend. Mommy did cross the ocean to live with Jean-Paul. Daddy is married to Annette.

Mommy, I thought. I'm calling her Mommy again.

Something in me had softened. Joanna had been right. I was the one who was maddest of all. And I never even knew it.

I said, “But how do you know Brett will come home? What if he just finds another friend to live with? Or hitchhikes away?”

Carolyn gasped. It had not occurred to her that there could be anything other than a happy ending. An easy ending.

“I'm mad at Brett,” she said, “but I want things to be the same. I want him to come home. Now.”

I was about to tell her that things are never the same, and coming home doesn't change things back to where they were. Instead, I said, “Toby took me to the kiddie fair.”

“Toby?” Carolyn did not let me down. “Oh, Shelley! Toby is so cute. Isn't he the cutest person in this state? I've wanted Toby to take me someplace ever since I can remember. Now, tell the truth. Did he take you to discuss family secrets or to take you?”

“I don't know the truth about that,” I said. “You have to tell me when you do know, or I'll make your life miserable,” said Carolyn.

“Tell me that story again,” I said. “The progidal one.”

“Prodigal,” she corrected.

“What's that mean? Do you have a dictionary?”

“It means wasteful,” said Carolyn, who explained that she had done more than her fair share of Sunday school, she had probably done my share as well, and frankly she wanted me to take up the slack now.

“Wasteful?” I repeated, remembering the story. “Of what?”

“His inheritance. His family's love and patience. Because he ran off and was bad and did drugs and slept around and gambled and all that.”

“Did they do drugs in biblical days?”

“No, but you're supposed to update everything. Like instead of leprosy, now you say AIDS. Listen,” said Carolyn, “I don't want to be a Sunday school teacher. Let's go party.”

So who was prodigal? I asked myself. Was I the one being wasteful of my family's love and patience? Was I ready now to come home to Mommy? Or was Mommy the one being wasteful of my love and patience, and now I was letting her come home to me?

We went downstairs. I loved my yellow dress. I felt older and prettier and barer. Especially my hair felt great. Carolyn was excellent with hair.

“It doesn't seem to be set up like a surprise party,” I said, waving at the cars parked for blocks and the people dancing in the backyard and the side yard, on the driveway and over the grass.

“Once everybody found out that the Major Character was skipping,” explained Carolyn, “they said they were coming when they felt like it instead of hiding out until the signal was given. So they're all here hours early, and my mother is a wreck.”

“She should rejoice because her party is going to be such a success even without Daddy.”

“Not my mother. She likes things to follow her master plan.”

I was only fourteen, and nobody had followed my master plan yet.

The back steps led down to a deck, where groups of people stood among long tables of food the caterer had brought, while way out beyond the pool, Uncle Todd supervised a huge grill, where he was cooking hamburgers and hot dogs and barbecued ribs. I threaded my way among huge open coolers filled with ice and drinks in cans.

Carolyn darted off into the grass to greet somebody who immediately shouted about how tall she had gotten. The most boring thing about reunions is that everybody has to comment on how tall you have gotten.

I found a little step at the utility room door where I could stand high and survey the territory.

Angus was circulating. He had a notebook with him and was attacking each guest with pencil poised. I didn't cringe. I didn't want to abandon the party, and I didn't want to break his pencil or his head in half. It was Angus's project, not mine. For the very first time in my life as older sister, I didn't panic that people would point to me and say, “She's related to him. She's probably weird too.”

I had been living through Angus for months. Maybe since Mommy left. I had been letting Angus do everything that took daring. I had been laughing at Angus's antics instead of coming up with my own. I had thought about Angus so I wouldn't have to think about me. Angus was my movie rental; I played him over and over instead of making my own film.

Time to make my film, I thought. Angus can direct his movie; I'll direct mine.

I would be beautiful and always wear my hair dramatically, like this, with each side different, and wild earrings that accentuated my long neck. Toby would be in the film, of course, and I'd have fast cars and dancing. Angus would not have a part. He was just a little boy. I was going to be a young woman wearing my grandmother's engagement necklace to formal events.

I walked off the deck and into the yard and approached a pair of total strangers and introduced myself. Lifetime first.

They were delighted to meet me. They were great fans of Charlie. “Is that your brother over there?” said the man, laughing. “He's the kid with the toilet paper at the ball game, huh? I laughed so hard. He's been collecting autographs all over town today. Is he Charlie Wollcott's kid or what? Walks up to complete strangers: 'Can I have your autograph?' and they say, 'But I'm nobody,' and the kid says, 'It's for my father. You aren't nobody to him. He'll want everybody's autograph since he can't be here himself.' Bet the kid's got a couple hundred autographs in that notebook so far to give to Charlie.”

“That's adorable,” said the wife.

“Charlie probably pays the kid to be different,” said the husband.

I circulated.

I even considered modeling myself after Aunt Maggie, who was definitely the queen of circulating at parties. She laughed and kissed and laughed and waved and laughed and chattered.

If you're a late bloomer like me, you think a lot about age and whether people match their own ages. Aunt Maggie was a middle-aged body with a high school girl inside. You would not be surprised if she started talking about classes and boys and whether she really did eat nutritious stuff from the cafeteria or just had potato chips. Is that why she's on the school board? I wondered. To stay a teenager?

The menu was basically everything. If the catering people had brought it, it was beautifully presented. But most people hung out where Uncle Todd was: at the grill.

The dessert table was removed from the rest of the food. It was about ten feet long with a double row of cakes and pastries and tarts—anything you ever needed with butter, eggs and cream.

“Do I have to eat any real food,” asked Angus, “or can I go straight to desserts?”

Angus was being passed from guest to guest like an appetizer so they could all exclaim, “Oh, this has to be Charlie's son!”

They knew I was Charlie's daughter and Annette was Charlie's wife, but the two of us together weren't half as exciting as Charlie's son.

I couldn't decide what to eat. There were too many choices. I stood in the corner of the yard where the edge of the yellow awning was brushed by the lowest branch of the great maple tree. In the lowering sun I was just another gold-edged shadow.

A teasing voice said, “Now, how many wives is it so far? What number is Charlie up to? Five? Six?”

Aunt Maggie giggled, sounding like Joanna. “Shhh,” said my aunt. “The children are very defensive. Don't let them hear you.”

Somebody came up behind me. Toby, I thought. He changed his mind.

But it was Annette and Angus. “Has anybody on earth really had five or six wives?” muttered Angus.

“Henry the Eighth of England,” said Annette. “He was always getting married again. Sometimes he divorced the old one, but mostly he just cut off her head.”

Angus was awestruck. “Why would anybody marry him after that? I bet the girls were nervous about marrying a guy that cut off three or four heads in a row.”

Annette said that was one of the mysteries of history.

Angus thought he would bail on the party, take his dessert selections inside and go look up Henry the Eighth on the Internet. Then he changed his mind. He would start a new autograph collection. He would ask every man at this party exactly how many wives he had had and see whether or not our father came in with the highest score.

Annette said perhaps Angus would like her to cut off his head.

I cheered, but of course that was the only sentence Aunt Maggie heard, and she was shocked to find Annette threatening death by axe blade.

“And I want you to meet Charlie's new wife, Annette,” she said, in the tone you would use if your brother had married a potential murderer, “and his son, Angus, and his daughter Shelley. My other niece, Joanna, I'm sorry to say, is in France, staying with the children's mother. It's one of these…”Aunt Maggie paused.

Broken family situations, I thought.

Annette flushed, and Angus flipped to a new page in his notebook.

I wanted to talk back to Aunt Maggie. Daddy didn't trust you with the truth about Toby, I thought. Or else he forgot about you and just didn't bother.

“And these are Joel and Beth Schmidt,” Aunt Maggie finished the introduction. “Beth dated your father in high school.”

“Pre-Celeste?” said Angus, interested.

Everybody laughed. “Very pre-Celeste,” agreed Beth.

I looked at her with fascination. She wore many rings on each hand, around which the flesh bulged with fat. Her hair was partly gray and held down with bobby pins, and she was still pretending to be a size twelve and wearing the dress
she had bought when she was a size twelve, and she looked awful. I bet Daddy wouldn't recognize her. I bet they would have to introduce him to Beth, and he would certainly rejoice in his decision to stop dating her.

Beth leaned back against Joel's equally large stomach. “We were such good friends with your real mother, Shelley. And of course I hope we'll be such good friends with your stepmother, too.” She smiled brightly.

For a minute I wanted to kick her in her fat shins. But only for a minute.

No doubt about it: When a man marries three times, it's awkward for the old friends and the family. So I forgave the woman, because at least she was saying she liked my mother. But then Aunt Maggie said to Beth, “They have a hard time dealing with being a broken family. You have to be understanding.”

Annette grabbed Angus's wrist, which was a good move, because sharp pencils can be as bad as axes.