Perfect Family (16 page)

“It shouldn't just sit there,” he'd said angrily, and she'd thought he meant the sandwich at first, but then it became clear he was talking about Pony's apartment, saying it was still untended, and she had that awful sudden guilt that only he could cause, the feeling that, my God, she should have known, what was the matter with her anyway, not to have acted? It was like those dreams in which you were supposed to have been going to class for a whole semester but you forgot, and now there was a final exam. It was the same panicked horror. Her father said he knew of a service. Apparently, there was an agency that went in and boxed things up and delivered them to Goodwill and the soup kitchen and whatever and then cleaned the apartment, but Tinker, hot with guilt, had said absolutely not, she would take care of it, of course she would. She was desperate for his forgiveness.

And she would enlist Mira. She wasn't going to let Mira get away with not helping out this time. No, Mira needed to participate. She needed to get her hands dirty for once in her life. You couldn't just float along without ever really doing the tough stuff, and the sooner Mira understood that, the better.

“Can we keep things?” Mira asked.

“Like what?” Tinker said.

“Oh, wait. Answered my own question. Of course we can,” Mira said. “You're keeping the food. So I can keep things, too.” She left the kitchen.

Tinker stood up. She went into the living room, where Mira was picking things up, putting them down, looking for something. “It was right here,” Mira said.

“What was?”

“A pillow I wanted.” Mira made a small shape with her hands. “Yay big. Says ‘Fuck housework.'”

“You've
been
here before?” Tinker asked.

“Sure,” Mira said. “Lots of times.”

It was like hearing about a party Tinker hadn't been invited to. Her first time in Pony's apartment had been with their father the day Pony's body was found in the lake. She'd just assumed that, like her and Mark, the family lived independently of one another except for their times together at Steele Road or at Fond du Lac. “Maybe you could start bagging the newspapers.” Tinker handed Mira the stack of brown bags.

“Look, Tinker, you do it the way you want, and I'll do it the way I want,” Mira said. “Right now I'm looking for that pillow.”

“We just need to keep at it,” Tinker said. “If we keep stopping all the time, we'll never get it done.”

Mira wasn't listening. She was still going around the room, picking up things and looking under them. “I'm
looking
for that little pillow.”

“Let's just set aside things of value, and then later, we can—”

“The pillow has no value,” Mira said. “Jesus, Tinker. You've got an answer for everything. And that wasn't even a question.”

There was a knock at the door and a man's voice. “Hello?”

Mira's face lit up. “Keith!” she said. “Hey!”

He was dressed in black, as usual—black jeans and a black shirt and a belt with a very large silver buckle in the shape of a steer's head. He gave Mira a kiss, crossed the room to Tinker, and held out
his hand to her. “We haven't officially met,” he said. “Keith Brink. What can I do to help?”

Tinker had dismissed this guy as just another one of Mira's boyfriends, so it came as a shock when she felt immediately drawn to him. He had a large, rough hand, a firm handshake, and she found it difficult to take her eyes from his. He had a strong face and eyes of a lively beautiful blue, darkly rimmed.

“You're the organizer, I hear,” he said, not letting go of her hand or breaking eye contact. “The mover and shaker. Every family needs one.”

“Who told you
that
?” She felt confused and glanced quickly at Mira, who shook her head. Those were not Mira's words. Mira never would have described her in such a benign way. “Bitch” was more like it.

Keith walked around the room as if he belonged, so easy. So sure of himself. “Pony.” He smiled at her question as if it was charming.

“She talked to you about me?” Tinker felt both wary and pleased.

“She talked about all of you. I was telling Mira about it.” Keith looked at Mira. “You didn't tell her?”

Mira shook her head.

“What else did she say?” Tinker said.

“That it was hard raising a baby on her own.”

“She brought it on herself,” Tinker said.

“She said coming from a family like yours made it hard to be a single mother.” He pointed at Tinker. “You, she was afraid she'd disappointed,” he said. “I got the impression she was sorry about that.”

“No way.” Tinker pushed her hair back and tried to tuck it behind her ears.
Show your face
, her mother always said.
Don't hide those beautiful eyes.

“She said you did everything by the book, that everywhere you went, you were followed by a little trail of order.” He grinned, and she was taken in again by the blueness of his eyes, the steadiness of his gaze. She loved hearing this. She gathered her hair at the base of her neck, twisted it into a rope, and pulled it forward over one shoulder.

“You girls are busy,” he said. “I shouldn't interrupt.”

“We can take a break. What else did she say?” Tinker asked.

Keith sank down, his arms stretched out over the sofa back, his knees apart. “She said you girls had all the earmarks. You know, the oldest is the most responsible, and the youngest gets away with murder.” He glanced at Mira with a smirk. “And the middle one is the most unhappy.”

“I'm not unhappy.” Mira batted him. “Anyway, Tinker and I are both middle children. William's the oldest.”

“I know that now.” Keith shook his head. “But from what Pony said, I thought Tinker would be the oldest.”

“Pony must have meant Tinker is the oldest sister,” Mira said.

“No.” Keith shook his head again, thoughtfully. “I'm only reporting what she said. She talked about you two, and she hardly mentioned William, so I'm in the dark about him. I thought he'd be here. Helping out. This is heavy work.”

“Well, he's not,” Tinker said, letting the impression stand that William was shirking his duty when in fact she'd never asked him. Mira was the one she'd wanted here. The one she could boss around. “He hasn't really helped much at all through this whole thing. And when you consider that he was Pony's favorite—”

“Not what I heard,” Keith said.

“What's
that
supposed to mean?” Tinker said, sitting up quickly.

“I don't want to cause trouble,” Keith said. “Forget it.”

“You can't just blurt that out and then not explain.” Mira slapped him lightly.

“Okay. I got the impression she was afraid of him,” Keith said.

“Afraid how?” Tinker couldn't contain her amazement. “How could Pony be afraid of William?”

Keith raised his shoulders, like
Don't look at me
. “You asked what she said. I'm just telling you. She said William had a short fuse sometimes. He was maybe a little quirky. She was a little wary of him, I thought. It was something that had happened recently. I thought you girls might know.”

“He was up there that day.” Tinker felt positively titillated by this new information.

“But he left,” Mira said.

“Says who?” Tinker asked. “Says William. Daddy even asked him, remember?”

“Asked him what?” Keith asked.

“If he had anything to do with it.”

“Whoa,” Keith said.

“He didn't mean that, though,” Mira said. “He wasn't accusing William, just finding out what happened. Anyway, Denny Bell saw that guy who was there after William.”

“What guy?” Keith asked.

“I still think it's possible Denny saw William and was mixed up about the time.” Tinker liked the discussion and wanted it to keep on going.

“Denny knows who William is,” Mira said.

Tinker said, “Not that well. I mean, none of us really knows them. If you saw Denny Bell on the street—I mean, before all this—would you know him?”

“You never told me about this,” Keith said to Mira.

“I just found out,” she said. “Anyway, I don't want to keep laying this stuff on you.”

“William wouldn't hurt Pony.” Tinker looked doubtfully at Mira. “Would he?”

“Look, as long as you girls are going there,” Keith said, “Pony said something about William. How can I put this—he was interested in her. Not like a brother should be.”

“No way!” Mira said. “That's impossible. No fuckin' way.”

“I don't know,” Tinker said. “I don't know anything anymore. We better tell Daddy.”

“Let's not rock the boat,” Keith said. “I could be mistaken. Anyway, it was ruled an accident, right? By the cops. Let sleeping dogs lie.”

“Daddy's going to hold a meeting,” Tinker said.

“Maybe you should be there,” Mira said to Keith.

Keith cleared his throat and stood. “I had no business getting you all dusted up. I'm sorry. Just forget what I said. You girls need some help. You can put me to work.” Without waiting for direction, he picked up one of the boxes and started putting it together. When he was done, he took it into the bedroom and began filling it with Pony's clothing. Mira went in after him and sat on the bed, talking as he worked.

Tinker couldn't get over what Keith had said. Afraid? Pony was afraid of William? She went back to the kitchen, glad to be alone. Something nagged at her. She was remembering the night of her father's seventieth birthday the summer before. After the dishes were done, she'd gone outside to the porch, pulling one of the rattan chairs into the corner to the left of the living room window and sitting in the darkness, so tired. She'd put together the whole event again, as usual. Assigned food responsibilities and then done most of it herself. William brought chips, for God's sake. And some bags of Oreos. She'd cooked. She'd been on the phone for a couple of weeks, inviting the neighbors from around the lake. And the party took off. After dinner, the kitchen filled with dishes.
What can I do to help?
people always asked, but they never really meant it. You could tell by the desultory way they walked around, picking things up and putting them down.
I can manage
, she always said, because to think up the jobs and then supervise them on top of it was just a lot more work. It was easier to do it herself.

While she sat on the porch that night, a pale form ran across the lawn and down to the water from the side door. It was Pony, her bare skin a greenish gray in the moonlight. She looked so carefree, so lovely, Tinker thought. So pretty to watch as she dabbled her toe into the lake, swirled it in a circle, her arms out to the sides for balance. She made a smooth, splashless entry,
slick as a whistle
, their father like to say of an entry like that, something Tinker had achieved only a few times. Pony swam underwater to the float. Tinker had half a mind to go this time. For once.

Inside, the party had settled down to serious quieter drinking. Her father's friends were old men and women, all still elegant in a way Tinker never would be. The women wore their silver hair coiffed. They had the accent of the rich. Tinker rose and went quickly down the front steps, feeling the thrill of fear. She hadn't done this in forever. She kept to the left, where the bushes separated their property from the Cushmans.' She slipped off her shoes and unbuttoned her blouse, loving the sweet cool air on her bare skin. She'd just unfastened her bra when she heard the sound of footsteps on the gravel. William dashed across the grass to the lake, and she stood still. He was looking for Pony. And then right behind him came Mark. The two of them spoke. William slapped Mark on the shoulder in what she'd thought at the time was a friendly way.

William swam out to the raft quickly, almost as though trying to outswim Mark. Mark went in more slowly, and finally, he was out there, too. For a very long time Tinker didn't see any of them. They must have gone under the raft or beyond the raft, out in the lake where she couldn't see. Once in a while she heard a whisper, and then Pony's raised voice. Then there came a noisy disturbance in the water, and the next thing Tinker saw was Pony swimming like hell for shore, kicking for all she was worth. Then Mark right behind her.

Something had happened out there, she realized now. She hadn't thought much about it at the time, at least not that part, but thinking back and tying in what Keith had said, she remembered it had taken William forever to come in. Had William scared Pony? She could ask Mark, but that would mean admitting she'd been spying on him. She tried to remember more from that night, but the thing that had struck her most was seeing Pony. There had been a moon. Pony had gathered up her clothes and walked quickly, still naked, up the lawn to the house. Pony was more beautiful that night than Tinker would ever be in her life.

The house in Glastonbury where Ruth was working was easy to spot; it was the biggest on the street, the one with Tyvek sheeting all over the sides. William pulled to a stop and got out. There were wheels of sod lined up on the driveway and ready to roll. Maybe a dozen trees, each with its root ball in burlap, stacks of flowers in flats. Instant yard.

Ruth didn't see him. She was out back with a tall, black-haired woman dressed all in white. The owner. The woman stabbed the air with a rolled magazine, pointing at something. Ruth followed, frowning, cocking her head. William watched. He mulled over, for the hundredth time, what Denny Bell had said and what Randy Martine had told him. William had been on the phone with Randy half a dozen times since they'd talked to Denny. Now Denny was changing his story a little bit. He didn't think he could identify the guy after all. Maybe the guy was older, shorter, maybe it wasn't a baseball cap but something else. What was going on? The kid was scared. Randy was checking all around the lake again to see who'd seen what. So
far, nothing. Checking Pony's address book, but with Denny's description getting so slippery, it wasn't easy. William had the feeling they were missing something big. Something really obvious.

He knew from a message Tinker had left on his machine that his father was calling another meeting for the coming weekend up at the lake to talk about it. “Denny Bell
claims
he saw somebody—a guy, of course—up at the lake with Pony that day, around six. He
claims
the guy went in after her. I don't know what to think anymore. It's a whole new can of worms, if you ask me. Anyway, Daddy's holding a meeting on Saturday. We all need to be on the same page about it.” From the message, it was clear that Tinker thought William knew nothing about what Denny Bell had said he saw, which was galling enough, but the business about being on the same page was depressing, as if the information would shrink instead of expand.

William was leery about going. Maybe it was better to talk to Randy and leave the others out of it. When he told Ruth, she'd said that if it was up to her, he'd go to that meeting, no question, and if he didn't, he should at least let them know he wasn't. She had a point, but it was only Wednesday, the meeting wasn't until Saturday, which meant there was time to decide. Right now what he wanted to do was make good on his promise to Ruth to go back to the Catskills and finish what they'd started. They'd do some peaks, fuck, be out in the mountain air.

Ruth and the owner of the house were looking in his direction now. The owner came mincing over in gold sandals. Ruth gave her the finger behind her back, and William smiled. He got out of the car. The woman extended a small tanned hand. “Mindy Mills,” she said. “And you are…?”

“William.” Sometimes he said Carteret, but more often not. A lot of people who'd lived in the area a long time knew the name. “I came to pick up Ruth.”

“I need to keep her a tad longer.”

William checked his watch. It was almost five. “We've got a long drive ahead of us.”

Mindy grinned, wrinkled her nose. “Just a minute or two. Actually, you can mediate something.” She had a tinkly little laugh. She was younger than William, a few years out of college, he thought. Where did people that age get the money for a spread like this? She unrolled the magazine and flicked a polished nail against a photograph of a large abundant garden surrounded by acres of green lawn. At the center of the garden was a fountain spraying high from a bronze statue of the Three Graces. “This gorgeous fountain,” she said, and pointed to her own yard. “Over there. What do you think?”

William didn't answer.

“Yes or no,” Mindy said.

It would look pretentious as hell. “No,” he said.

“Well, I still want it,” she said, and became all business, pushing her sunglasses up onto her forehead. She turned to Ruth. “I know it means we have to undo things, but it's my nickel. I don't know what the problem is. It's more work for you, and that's a good thing, yes? More hours?”

“The point is, Mindy, that fountain won't look right.”

Mindy winked at William. “She's stuck in a time warp.”

“Look,” Ruth said in a very calm voice. Mindy obviously had no idea how angry Ruth was. “You're paying for my ideas. You said that yourself on my first day. And I'm telling you the fountain is a mistake. Your yard isn't big enough.”

“Nonsense. We're on almost an acre here. Anyway, I
love
your ideas,” Mindy said with another irritating wink. “Don't be ridiculous.”

Ruth indicated the magazine in Mindy's hand. “You love
Town and Country
's ideas.”

“Well,” Mindy said. “They're a maga
zine
, after all.”

“Hey, Mindy,” William said.

“I beg your pardon?” Mindy said.

“That's insulting,” William said. “Just because you have money to throw around doesn't mean you have good ideas. Listen to Ruth on this one, okay?”

“I'd like you out of here,” Mindy said.

“Thanks,” Ruth said later in the car, kicking off her shoes and putting her bare feet on the dash. “It just gets worse and worse.” As they drove through Hartford, she told him that Mindy wasn't her only problem. Her landlord had come into her attic apartment the day before, some ruse about needing to check the storm windows, but then he'd sat himself down in her living room chair and said, “So tell me about Ruth Czapinski.” Ruth grinned at William. “Oh, brother,” she said. “What an idiot. I told him Ruth Czapinski knew the law well enough to know that the landlord wasn't allowed to make himself at home in the tenant's quarters. He reminded me there was no record of my being a tenant because I pay in cash and I'm there at his will. My days in the attic are numbered.”

“So move in with me,” he said.

“You feel sorry for me?” She smiled at him.

“Not at all. Yes,” he said. Once, before Pony died, back when life was normal, back when he worked for days and nights on end and then took off for a week of hiking and hiked for fun. Back when his biggest problem was taking on too much work and wondering if he could get it done on time. Back then, once, Ruth had stayed over at his house. It was a Saturday night, and on Sunday morning he'd driven to the CVS on New Britain Avenue for a
New York Times
. When he drove back, the way he always did, up Trout Brook and over on Phelps, no big deal, nothing special, he pulled into his driveway and looked at his condo, and it just looked better because Ruth was in it. He knew then. He knew for sure. “Think about it, though, okay?” he said.

 

Their lodge in the Catskills was owned by an art dealer who specialized in portraits of women. There were portraits everywhere of prim, dour women sitting with hands clasped tightly in their laps, a few lush nudes thrown in. The art dealer's wife ran the inn with a man named Marcus whom, Ruth was sure, was the lover, although of husband or wife, neither she nor William was sure.

They climbed every day. They did Twin, Slide, Peekamoose, and Table. William thought only about the peaks. He dreamed only about the peaks. The climbs took all his concentration. He studied the maps, he planned their routes. They set out before daybreak. They came back to the lodge for dinner, they made love, they slept. William was given over completely to the needs of his body, to keeping it safe on the trail, then satisfied and rested at night. A person couldn't climb and be preoccupied by any other thought. Physical exertion obliterated everything, even grief.

They checked out after breakfast on their third morning. They planned to climb Sugarloaf and then drive back to Connecticut. Theirs was the only car in the parking lot that morning. They paused at the kiosk with its usual warnings about Lyme disease and timber rattlers and requests to pack it in, pack it out. Sugarloaf began with a fairly level path over traprock chinks that made a distinctive tinny sound underfoot. They passed through large soupy swamps and pine groves where the ground was spongy with needles. And then they came to the Wizard's Chair. William had read about this in the hike description but was unprepared for the reality of it.

The woods opened to a wide clearing, and he stopped to take it in. Before him lay a kaleidoscope of rock spread across a wide expanse, as though a giant hand had swept away the forest and spread these mean shards. Like an optical illusion, an Escher print, the Wizard's Chair came into focus. It had to be eight feet tall and seemed to William like a towering, angular gray man with his arms outstretched, his knees open. Ruth clambered across the rock to see it. “Look!” she shouted. “There are side chairs! Tables!”

William adjusted his eyes again and this time took in the rest. The Wizard's Chair was flanked by smaller chairs, two to each side, and tables and platforms, a great semicircle like King Arthur's court, he thought. He sat in one of the small ones.

“Huh,” Ruth said before she made a beeline for the Wizard's Chair. She sat in the grand chair, looking tiny, her legs outstretched, the edge of the seat hitting her at the calf.

William settled back and looked across and up at the mountains into the sun, and as he did, he felt something give inside him, a sweet shift that caused him to become aware of the cool smooth stone beneath his legs, the clean air filling his lungs, the great beauty of what he was seeing. He could stay for a long time, breathing in the air, breathing it out, feeling connected to all the outdoors.

But they had a lot ahead of them. They left the Wizard's Chair and continued up to Pecoy Notch and then on to the Devil's Path, where the climb became serious. Ruth went first, finding the toeholds and handholds in the tree roots that made a kind of ladder against the sheer rock faces—not technical but steep. William inched up, flattened against the rock face, occasionally looking up at Ruth's little ass in shorts, her boots in their precarious toeholds.

She was getting too far ahead of him. Why wasn't he keeping up? He felt leaden. He tried to hurry, slipped, and had to steady himself. He looked up. Ruth was way ahead, nearing the top. He looked down. He was maybe twenty feet up, not that far, but below were rocks. He felt his bowels loosen. The hot sweat of panic broke out on his forehead. “Ruth,” he said.

She must not have heard. He knew from the sound that she was continuing to climb. “Ruthie?” he said louder.

“What is it?” she said from above.

He didn't dare speak again, didn't dare risk the vibration that could loosen his hold on the rock. The slightest movement would send him plunging down. His hands felt weak; his fingers slipped.

“Did you say something?” Ruth asked him.

He couldn't answer.

“William?”

Urine trickled down his leg. He fought to hold it.

“William, what is it?”

He didn't dare look up. He heard her feet just above him, her boots inching back down. “Are you okay?” she said.

He shook his head.

“Okay,” she said. “I'm coming.”

He felt rather than saw Ruth come back down. He pressed his whole body, including the side of his face, against the stone, as if the more surface he could touch, the safer he would be. He knew this was wrong, even less secure, but he was obeying instinct, not reason. When he dared to open his eyes, she was there, to his right, talking. The sound alone was something to hold on to. He felt her hand on his. “I'm going to get you down.”

“Can't,” he rasped.

“Yes, you can,” she said. “You have to. You're going to be fine. Just listen to what I say.”

He didn't dare move.

“Baby,” Ruth said. “You know what we have to do.”

“I can't.”

She tapped his hand. “It's a few inches to the right. You're going to move this hand.”

He would do as she said. He released some of the tension in his hold, then held again. It felt as though his whole body was about to slip. “Oh, no.”

“You're not going to fall,” she said.

He let his hand relax, and she must have felt that. She slid it across the rock to the large bolus of a root. William grasped it and felt hope. The root was large and sturdy. It fit perfectly into his palm.

“Good,” she said. “Now we're going to move your left foot. There's a shelf about six inches to the right. It'll hold you. Shift your weight to the right foot and move your left toe over. You'll have more support. I swear it will be better.”

For a terrifying moment he had only three points of contact. His foot fumbled at the rock. He felt her hand guide his foot firmly to the spot. Yes. He felt the divot in the rock where it would go. He planted the toe of his boot, dared to shift a small amount of weight.

“Great,” she said.

“I might shit,” he said.

Ruth laughed. “Just rest there a minute. Get your breath. The worst is over. I'll keep moving down. I'll help you get where I am
now. There's really lots of handholds over here. We probably should have come up this way.”

It took half an hour to move the fifteen feet down. She had to talk him through every single handhold and toehold. “I feel like a jerk,” he said. “I don't know what happened.”

When they reached level ground, she had him lie down. She helped him off with his pack, opened it, took out his space blanket, and spread it over him. The warmth told him how cold he had been in spite of the heat of the day. Ruth rolled his spare jacket and made a pillow for his neck.

“I am so messed up,” he said.

She kissed his forehead lightly. “What did you expect? You think you can get off scot-free after Pony's death? Life isn't like that.”

After a time she let him sit up. She helped him to a sitting position and propped both packs behind him for support. She mixed some Jell-O crystals with water and had him drink the sweet fluid. She broke off pieces of a sandwich, and he ate them. After about half an hour, she helped him to his feet. “Now let's get you out of here,” she said.