Perfect Family (13 page)

“It wasn't you,” he said.

“Mind if I sit on your porch awhile when we get to the house?” Katherine said. “I don't feel like going back just yet.”

At Fond du Lac, William took the stairs two at a time to Pony's room. Her bed was tightly made—an iron bed, like something you'd see in an army barracks. Narrow, with a thin mattress covered in a pink bedspread tucked in tightly all the way around. In the corner of the room, folded away, was a portable crib for Andrew. Instead of her things on the shelves, Andrew's. His small T-shirts and shorts, little rolled pairs of socks.

The picture of their mother had to be there somewhere. It wasn't downstairs. Nobody had taken it. He checked the drawers of Pony's bureau and her desk, even under her mattress. Nothing. He went through the closet, through the pockets of jackets, and then checked the downstairs again, opening every drawer, pulling the cushions off the couches and chairs. The turret. Maybe the picture was in the turret. It was where she'd been when he arrived at the house that day.

He went to the third floor, the steep extra staircase to the turret. They used the room up there for storage—old boxes, racks of clothes, broken furniture. A new box sat near the wall, marked in Tinker's hand,
PONY
. William rummaged through it. The toys that had been out were back in the box. He went to the turret window and looked down at his car, over to the shiny green roof of the Bells' A-frame. In the woods between their two houses, something glinted in the sun and was gone. But there was nothing metal out there. He watched. And then he caught a glimpse of it again, and of something else, of a person.

He swung back downstairs, holding the rails to take the stairs two, three, at a time, and ran out across the lawn to the strip of woods separating the two houses. He figured he'd seen the flash thirty or forty feet into the woods. He stood quietly, listening. He was rewarded by a shifting, something creaking somewhere over
head. He followed the sound. At first he couldn't see anything, but then he made out a plywood platform with crude sides built in a sugar maple maybe ten or twelve feet off the ground. “Hey,” he said. “Hey. I know you're up there.”

Denny Bell's face appeared over the edge of the board. “I'm not doing anything,” Denny said.

“Is that a tree house?” William asked.

“It's a blind,” Denny said.

“Blind,” William repeated. “What are you hunting?” The kid was pathetic. There was less than half an acre between the two houses.

“Deer,” Denny said.

“Give me a break. I want to talk to you,” William said.

“I'm busy.”

“It looks like this thing is on our land.” William stood directly under the blind and looked around. “Sure it is. The boundary isn't even close. Does your dad know about this?” William watched as Denny grabbed on to a limb, pulled himself out of the blind, and shinnied down the tree to the ground. He was barefoot, the ratty hem of his jeans hanging in limp folds at his ankles.

“This is our land,” Denny said.

William laughed. “No, it isn't.” He pointed into the woods, toward the Bells' property. “Your line is that stone wall over there.”

“I can take it down,” Denny said.

“You were watching my little sister go skinny-dipping the day she died, weren't you?”

“No.”

“Sure you were. What normal kid your age wouldn't?” William gave the boy a gentle shove.

The boy reared back. “I'd never go skinny-dipping with
my
sister.”

“So you
did
see.”

Denny hiked his jeans.

“You like it up here?” William asked.

“It sucks,” Denny said.

“Where's home for you guys, anyway?” William knew it was Massachusetts somewhere but wasn't sure where.

“Worcester,” Denny said.

“Holy Cross is in Worcester, right?”

Denny shrugged.

“I used to hate it up here when I was your age,” William said. Instinct told him to take it slow or he'd blow the whole thing. “I was bored out of my skull up here. I wanted to stay home in the summer and do stuff with my friends.”

“You got that right. No place to go boarding. Back home I do rail slides at the Civic Center every night.”

“Yeah?” William said. “You can do that?”

“Sure.” Denny showed William with his hand how he took the stairs on a skateboard, crossed a plaza, hopped the railing down to a lower plaza. “It's easy,” he said with a shrug. “When I get back home, I'll be fucking rusty.”

“It'll come back, trust me,” William said. He let the silence settle over them. He was determined to get information out of Denny but didn't want to scare him off. “You know where the Cushmans live?” he asked after a while.

“Next camp down, right? They got that German shepherd,” Denny said.

William pointed with his thumb to the next house down. “There was a woman living in that house when I was about your age. She used to go in swimming every morning.” He laughed. “My mom thought I was a real Boy Scout because I started getting up early. But what I did was, I got up at five-thirty because the woman over there went in swimming buck naked. Oh, man,” he said, remembering. “She was a little fat, but she looked good to me.”

“Yeah?” Denny said, sitting up. “How close could you get?”

“Closer than that tree house of yours,” William said.

“Like what?”

“From here to the door.”

“No shit,” Denny said.

“She'd parade around before she went in.”

“Like how?”

“She'd stretch, touch her toes bent over.”

“Oh, man.” Denny slapped his forehead. “Did she have big tits?”

“Biggest I ever saw,” William said. “And you know what she did one day?”

“What?” Denny's eyes were huge.

“I used to hide down near the water. There's a boathouse with a dock over there, and I hid behind the boathouse. And she'd come down and go right out on the dock, do her thing, then sit down and slide into the water. And then she'd swim, and then she'd come back, and that was the best part, because she'd come up the ladder and back down the dock. Full-frontal.”

“She have a towel?”

“Nope.”

“Shit,” Denny said. “So what happened? That day you said something happened.”

“This one morning at the end of the summer, she comes out of the water as usual, but this time she doesn't go back toward her house, she comes right up to the boathouse and says, ‘Is that you back there, William Carteret?'”

“No way!” Denny slapped his forehead. “Freakin' no way. What did you do?”

“I said, ‘Yes, ma'am, it is.' And she says, ‘Well, come on out of there and show yourself.' And so I did. And she's just standing there in front of me, dripping wet and starkers. Nothing but a smile. She was maybe as far from me as I am from you right now. So we're right up close. She just smiles, you know? She puts out her hands like she wants me to come closer. She beckons.”

“Oh, man,” Denny said.

“She hugged me.”

“No way!” Denny said.

“Way,” William said.

Denny slapped his forehead again and stamped his feet. “What did you do?”

“Let's just say I was speechless,” William said. “She got her towel. She went back to her house.”

“That's
all
?” Denny said. “She just hugs you?”

“It was plenty,” William said.

“You should have
fucked
her!” Denny said. “She was asking for it.”

“Oh?” William said. “You know that?”

“Sure,” Denny said. “That's what I would have done.”

William paused for a few beats. “The reason I'm telling you this is because it's normal to watch women. You don't have to be afraid to tell me. I swear. You were watching my sister that day, weren't you?”

“Yeah,” Denny blurted out. He made a sour face, looked away. “I mean no.”

“All I want to know is what Pony did after I left.”

Denny looked away. “I wouldn't know.”

“Why are you so scared?”

“I'm not scared of anything,” Denny said.

William pointed in the direction of the tree house. “My father isn't going to like it that you guys built a tree house in one of our trees.”

“‘Guys'? It was just me. My dad doesn't even know.”

“You had it a long time?”

“My dad thinks I should be up at the club playing tennis with all those faggoty kids. He comes up here on weekends, and it's always, ‘So, Dennis, how's the social scene going?' I could hurl.”

“I know where you're coming from,” William said.

“It was an accident,” Denny said. “Isn't that what they're saying about her? That's what the paper said. It was an accidental drowning.”

“That's right, but accidents don't happen in a vacuum. Something happens to cause an accident. You know, like somebody steps off a curb and a car comes tearing by. Circumstance, accident, sure, but there are events leading up to it. I just want to know what those were. Maybe she fell and hit her head. Or maybe she went down to
the anchor a couple of times before her hair snagged. I don't know. I want to know what happened in the last five minutes of my sister's life. Did she go in and out of the water a couple of times? Did she play with the baby? Did she sing to him? Is that so much to ask?”

Denny pushed the hair off his face for the hundredth time. “Sorry, man,” he said.

“I think you're scared.”

“I'm scared of nothing.”

Denny turned to watch as Katherine approached along the path through the woods.

“Hi Denny,” she said when she reached them.

“You know my friend Katherine here? Lives across the lake? Katherine was my sister's best friend. I saw you outside that day,” William said. “I know you were out here the day Pony died. I saw you.”

Denny thrust his hands into his pockets.

“We'll be on our way as soon as you tell me what my sister did on the day she died. It's not so much to ask. It's nothing to ask. And I think you're being a little prick to hold out on us this way.”

The kid was so thin his ribs were perfectly visible. You could practically see his heart beating hundreds of times a minute.

“William,” Katherine said. “He's just a kid.”

“A kid who's holding out on us.”

“It was an accident. The cops said.” Denny hugged his skinny chest and gripped his elbows.

“I only want to know what she did, what you saw,” William said.

“Nothing happened, okay?”

“You've got ‘liar' written all over you.”

“I think my parents are home. I heard a car.”

“Good,” William said. “I can talk to them about the tree house.”

“He never even
touched
her.”

William wasn't sure he'd heard right. “What did you say? Who never touched her?” He approached.

“Guy was an asshole,” Denny said with a quick glance at Katherine.

“
What
guy?” William came close to grabbing the kid by the throat. “What are you telling us? There was a guy? Why didn't you tell anybody this before? What is the matter with you?”

Denny backed away. Katherine was right behind William. She elbowed him hard in the side. “Denny,” she said. She shot William a warning glance and spoke to Denny: “Look at me.” The kid turned his face toward her, and she took his chin in her hand. “This is really important. And it's okay. You didn't do anything wrong. But we need to know everything that happened.”

“I wasn't watching her because she was naked,” Denny said sullenly to William. “I was just watching her. I had nothing better to do. That's all. Anyway, I couldn't see anything. She was in the water most of the time.”

William tried to control his voice. “Okay. And a guy was there.”

“No, that was later. She did laps or something.” Denny's head was lowered, his face obscured by his hair. He was picking at his thumb. He looked up at William, waved a finger back and forth. “You know, out to the float, back to the shore. Boy, could she swim. Every time she'd come to shore, she'd, like walk on her elbows in the shallow part and talk to the baby from the water, and then she'd go back out and swim to the raft.”

William could picture it. His little sister, her hair streaming behind, her smile. The sweetness of it.

“It was nice,” Denny said.

“It must have been, Denny,” Katherine said. “I'm glad you told us that. And Andrew was okay during this?”

Denny shrugged and sat back. “I guess,” he said. “I mean, yeah, actually. Every time she came close, he'd kind of shake the playpen.” He shook his fists as Andrew must have. “I stopped watching.” He gave William a quick look and then concentrated again on picking at his thumb, which was red and raw-looking. “Well, I did. I don't care if you believe me or not. I came inside, and it was later I hear a car
door slam over here and a radio going. I figured it was you, but there's this guy on the grass.”

William's heart beat faster. “Who?”

“How am I supposed to know?”

“What did he look like?” William had to struggle to keep his voice level.

“He had on a blue shirt, I remember. Jeans, maybe. Baseball cap. I was pretty far away.”

“Did she know him?”

“I don't know!” Denny heaved a big sigh. “How am I supposed to know all this?”

By the way she acted, idiot,
William thought. “No way you could.” He kept his voice calm. “So, the guy is on the grass and—”

“She waves at him.” Denny waved a hand, the sort of wave a child gives going bye-bye. “Yup. She waved at him.”

“Where was she?”