Perfect Family (11 page)

Ruth was out the door and to the car before William pulled to a stop. She'd been watching for him, just as Pony had been that day. She threw her duffel into the backseat, climbed in, and gave him a kiss. “How are you?”

“Fine,” he said. The day was steamy, and the car was without air-conditioning, so they had to leave the windows down. Hot air rushed through as they drove, unrefreshing and loud.

After they got out of Hartford, Ruth poked him in the arm lightly. “‘Fine' never means ‘fine,'” she said. “What's up?”

He loved that in her, the way she didn't let him get away with things. “I want to ask around some more,” he said. “I just have this feeling, you know?”

Ruth lifted her bare feet to the dashboard. “Like what?”

“Okay, Denny Bell asked my dad and Tinker if they found who did it. Why would he assume somebody did it?”

“Because he's a kid. Because he's addicted to
Law and Order
.”

“Think about it. Your neighbor drowns in his backyard pool, and
the first thing you ask is if they found who did it? There's a disconnect there, and I'm going to find out what it is.”

“What else?”

“Katherine Nicely wants to tell me something. She wouldn't say what.”

“I like her,” Ruth said. “I talked to her a little bit.”

“And there was that fight between my aunt and my dad that nobody will talk about. I'm supposed to go see Minerva, but I want to do this stuff first. So it's nothing and it's everything.”

“See? You're not fine,” she said.

“I'm not fine.”

When he pulled to a stop in the driveway, Ruth bolted and cut across the grass down to the water, raising both arms overhead in a hard stretch. She wasn't a girl to sit still for long.
Like Pony
, he thought.

The intervening weeks had made a difference in Lake Aral—between abandoned preseason and flying high. Today distant shouts traveled over the water's surface. Boats dotted the lake. Bits of conversation could be heard. At the Bells' house, the dooryard was crammed with cars. Three girls sunned themselves in bright plastic floats on the water.
Don't think twice
, he told himself. He stripped down and went in. The water was cold, but he didn't hesitate. He swam to the raft and hung on to the ladder for a moment. The bite of cold water kept him in the moment. He slid from the raft into the water, dropped down, feeling his way around a barrel and coming up under the raft in that familiar cloacal chamber. He held on to the struts overhead. He'd shown all his sisters how to navigate the underbelly of the raft, because it mattered. If they ever wanted to explore the world under there, and they would, it was better to know how than to risk it solo.

He'd been a taskmaster. First Tinker, who'd been terrified to go under the raft. He'd had to bribe her with M&M's. Then Mira, thin, quiet, somber. She had done everything William said as if it was her duty, and then never did it again, as far as he knew. Pony had been the best, with her sloppy, twisted little dive and splayed feet. When
Pony was about twelve, she'd convinced their father one Memorial Day to give her the job of setting anchor. William had gone down there with her, swimming alongside, both of them in goggles and caps, the family watching from the shore. She'd done it every year since.

William felt his way back under the barrels. He located the chain, which was hooked to a ring bolted to one corner of the raft. He grasped the cold metal, took a deep breath, and pulled himself down headfirst, hand over hand into the pitch black. He felt the smooth links, each one as big as his palm and still easy to hold. By summer's end, the chain would be ribboned with algae.

He came to the knot of links. They'd had to reinforce the chain—the coronary bypass, Pony had called it. William felt for the jagged end where they'd hooked a two-foot length of chain above and below a rusted link, so that if the link gave, the new chain would take up the slack.

His lungs ached for air, but he hadn't finished. He felt for the loop of chain. He needed to understand by feel if there had been a problem, a reason for her to be there. Instead, his hand rested on something soft. He snatched his hand away, then reached again, this time letting his fingers slide through the mass. Pony's hair. A thick bloom of it was wrapped around the tangle of chain. He shot to the surface and gulped air. He hung on the ladder, panting.

But he still wasn't done. He went back down the chain, this time to find out what he needed to know. He felt around, concentrating on the chain itself, letting his fingers slide through the hair. The chain was fine. The old chain was still holding, the bypass solidly attached. If there wasn't a problem, what the hell had she been doing down there? And without a cap, which meant she hadn't planned to go down. If she'd planned it, she'd have protected herself. He knew she would have. It was the one rule she followed.

 

William hauled their luggage into the house. The living room was steaming hot and smelled of age and ash from the fireplace.

“Musty in here.” Ruth was right behind him. “Mind?” And before he could answer, she was opening the windows, one after the other. She raised each sash and propped it with a stick kept on the sills for that purpose, since the roping was long since broken.

It was all going too fast. “I mind!” he said.

She stopped short and turned to look at him with a puzzled expression. “You're kidding, right?”

“Ask me before you go taking over.”

“Taking over?” She cocked her head. “Taking
over
? This place has been shut up for weeks.”

He should apologize. He knew that. But the house contained the last of Pony. It felt like Ruth was letting her out. When he didn't say anything, she went out onto the front porch, letting the screen door slam behind her. He followed. She was standing at the rail, looking out over the water.

“Okay, I'm sorry,” he said. Barbecue smells came across the water from the Bells'. Smoke and charred beef. They were having a party over there; it would get bigger and louder tonight.

“You need to be here with Pony,” she said. “Your memory of Pony, anyway. I don't see how I can help. Honest.” Before he could say another thing, she pushed by him and went inside, letting the door slam again, and maybe he wasn't completely sorry. He could run after her, but he wasn't going to do that. He watched the lake in front of the Bells'. They had a blow-up toy the size of a garage out on the water, stairs on one side of it and a slide on the other. It was plastic, blue, yellow, and red. Some girls were pulling themselves up the chubby stairs and laughing. When Ruth came out again, she had changed clothes and carried her suitcase. “There's a bus for Hartford in an hour and a half. I want to be on that bus,” she said.

“Oh, come on, Ruth,” he said.

“Give me some credit here, William,” she said. “You need to do this alone. You may not know it, but I do.”

They drove to Springfield. He went inside with her and bought
the ticket and waited the half hour, shoulder to shoulder with her on the wooden bench.

“Are you mad at me?” he asked her.

“No. It's just I should have known better,” she said. Before she boarded the bus, she kissed him. “Take your time with all this. Just let it all come.”

 

In the morning, he made his way through the wood toward the Bells'. The driveway was full of cars. The house had that silent hung-over feel. He'd have to get to Denny later, he thought. He decided to start with Katherine, who lived directly across the lake.

In the Carteret family—in any Aral family—you didn't swim across the lake without a boat. You could get a cramp out there and sink like a stone. You could have a heart attack, a seizure. You could get too tired to keep going, and then what? There you'd be, the theory went, a spent piece of flesh and bone treading water a mile from the bottom. But the next morning, when William got up, there was no one around to ask.

He changed into his trunks and entered the water from the northernmost point of the property so he could cut the float a wide berth. He swam the six-beat crawl he'd learned at Trinity, the one skill he'd taken with him from that institute of higher learning that had paid off. He could swim for hours at that pace, a nice easy arm stroke, a slightly faster kick.

Swimming. He should have done this sooner. He could get lost in swimming. The world shrank to the small dark space he inhabited, to the evenness of breathing. The effort of moving, which at first came with difficulty, eventually smoothed out so he was only a machine pushing through the water, speeding up, slowing down, checking every so often to make sure he was on course, heading across to the other side. As he swam, he thought about a picture he'd noticed wedged into the frame of a mirror in the living room, a Polaroid from the summer before at Jasper's seventieth. They always gathered for Jasper's birthday. August 1, high summer, was the hottest time of
the year up there, just as the leaves became that blackish-green before they colored in the fall. The picture showed a semicircle of chairs on the sand—Jasper holding Andrew, who was only a few weeks old, hefty Mark on Jasper's right, and William on the left, all of them squinting into the sun. “The men of Fond du Lac,” Tinker had said before taking the shot. “Let's get one of just the men.”

The usual houseful had been there, everyone present and accounted for. For the actual party, some neighbors came by. There was something feral about his sisters at those things. Their voices never stopped. They were always one-upping one another, fighting for attention, fighting to be the funny one, even Tinker. Mira had taken center stage, though, in her snake-patterned tights and black halter top. She'd woven among the guests, dancing to the music. William thought she must have been smoking pot to do that. He didn't remember seeing her after that, which wasn't unusual. Mira often did something memorable and then vanished.

Later that evening, when the coffee cups were gathered and the Scotch made its way out for the second time, Pony got William's attention and cocked her head toward the lake, which meant a late-night swim. They'd made their way down to the lakefront. The moon was almost full, a heavy golden globe hanging low. A harvest moon. Pony stripped down, dove in, and swam hard for the float. It took William longer. He stood in the water up to his knees, mesmerized by the wide swath of moonlight on the sultry lake. And then Mark was beside him. Big Mark, his skin fish-white in the moonlight. “Couldn't resist,” he said. “What the hell, I've always wanted to do this.”

It was a first, Mark coming with them. “Great,” William said, pleased. He dove in, turned, and waited for Mark, who lowered himself with a shiver and a small yelp before he swam. The feeling of cold water on William's bare skin, his balls, always came as a surprise, that splayed, loose feeling he never had in trunks. He swam quietly, finning his hands, allowing his legs to dangle, to float behind him, the luxurious feeling of his sex free in cold water.

Ahead, he could see the pale round of Pony's face in the darkness. She was waiting at the ladder. He and Mark swam closer, and she disappeared. A moment later, she called, “Under here, guys,” her voice echoing from the chamber between the barrels under the float. William dove down, his eyes open, feeling above for the opening between the barrels. He came up beside Pony. The barrels rolled and clanked. It smelled of decay and wet wood, the same secret smell from every summer of his life.

“Was that Mark on the beach with you?” Pony asked.

“Yeah,” William said, and then called to Mark, “We're under here, man,” and seconds later, he felt Mark at his legs. He reached to guide Mark up and into the small hollow. Their bodies brushed, their knees knocked, feet tangled.

“Bad boy, Marcus,” Pony whispered to him. “Tinker's going to have your ass.”

They might as well have been blind, it was so dark. But William felt their bodies against his, Mark frantically treading water beside him. “Hold on to the struts,” William said to Mark. “Like this.” He found Mark's shoulder, ran his hand the length of Mark's arm, and guided the hand overhead to one of the struts holding in the barrels.

Immediately, Mark's legs relaxed. William, Mark, and Pony held absolutely still. “You guys always do this,” Mark breathed. “You always cut out before the Scotch comes out again.”

“We do,” Pony said. “Daddy's parties are like—well, you know. Enough is enough.”

Mark laughed. “I guess,” he said. “I wish Tinker would come. She used to love this.”

“You're kidding,” Pony said.

“No, she did,” Mark said. “We used to skinny-dip up here all the time, but early in the morning. Five, six o'clock.”

“It's nice then,” Pony said.

“We get the early sun here on the Carteret side of the lake,” William imitated his father's gravelly baritone, and they laughed.

Their breath was warm and regular on one another's faces. “I love
you guys.” Pony's face touched William's, and he felt her lips brush his cheek, then the swirl of water as she groped for Mark's face and kissed him, too. There was a silence of several seconds.

“Christ,” Mark said.

Pony's ripple of a laugh echoed in the small space. “
Hasta la vista
, kids.” She took a quick breath and dropped into deeper water.

William felt the clumsy, hurried brush of Mark's feet and legs against his own as he angled down and under the raft to surface on the other side. In a minute or so, he heard their whispered voices and Pony's laugh again.

 

Now, at midlake, William stopped. He looked out in all directions. His arms appeared murky and green sculling under the water, reminding him of Denny Bell's face in the darkly tinted window of the family SUV as it pulled away after Pony's funeral. Denny Bell knew something. That skeevy, pathetic kid had information. William would talk to him this afternoon, no matter how many people were around.