Perfect Family (22 page)

 

William got up from the desk and went upstairs. He found the projector and the screen right away in the guest-room closet. It had been years since anyone had used them. He plugged in the projector and turned it on to see if it worked. The bulb lit up, and it began to make that familiar whir. He went to the window and called down to Ruth, “We could see it in five minutes and be out of here.”

She rose from her lawn chair, walked to the house, and stood just
below the window, looking up at him. She said in a barely audible voice, “If you want me to see it with you, we go to your place.”

Well, fine. He shut the window and went back to the projector. He'd left it running, and already it had that familiar smell of heated dust, metal, and age. He could watch the movie in five minutes by himself. And wasn't he numero uno here when it came to need? You betcha. He opened the white plastic canister and removed the reel. A piece of paper was folded tightly and taped to the bottom of the canister. He cut the tape with his thumbnail and unfolded the paper. It was written in his mother's handwriting, both sides of the page, in turquoise ink.
In case anything happens to me—here's what's on the movie we made. As best I can remember. It was 1970. Spring?

He put the projector back into its case and carried it with the screen downstairs to his car, then went back inside the house to shut the windows and pull the blinds.

“A letter?” Ruth asked when they were in the car.

“From my mother.”

Ruth whistled.

William lived in a condo in the Elmwood section of West Hartford, an area of mostly small Cape Cod–style houses in pastel colors, set close together. It suited him better than where he'd grown up. The people in Elmwood were friendlier than in the rest of West Hartford. It was a real neighborhood. The prices were lower, too. His condo was putty-colored, attached on both sides, with a brick patio in the back. He hadn't done much with it. He had a blue leather sectional (Ruth said the color was teal) that he'd bought at a tag sale. He used one of the bedrooms upstairs as an office.

His message light was blinking when he got in and he listened impatiently for the messages to run. The first was from Denny Bell, left that morning. “Please call me,” the kid said, and gave the number. William dialed right away, but no one was home. He'd try again later. Right now he needed to see what was on the tape. Right now that was what mattered.

He set up the projector in the living room and fed the filmstrip onto the spool while the other message played: Tinker's voice. “Are
you okay?” she wanted to know. “Of course I'm okay,” he said, and winked at Ruth. It wasn't as though he'd broken a leg or had a heart attack or been in a car wreck. Hell, he was fine. He just wasn't her whole brother anymore. Everybody wanted to know, Tinker said in that drama-queen voice she could drum up. They were so
worried
. Daddy and Mark and Mira. And Isabel; that slowed him down a second. He really didn't like it that Isabel was worrying about him. Ruth was eying him oddly. Was she worried, too? Didn't
she
get it? What a
gift
all this was? He'd just been released from the one person in this world he could never please, from Jasper Carteret himself, who could never again make him feel worthless.

“Which first?” Ruth asked. “The letter or the film?”

“Film.”

Ruth hit the light, and the film began. The camera panned over bleached-out landscape, stopped, backtracked, and moved forward again. A small house made of concrete appeared. It had a cement walk that led to a faded red door, and a driveway to the left with a carport. The sun beat down hard. The front door opened, and a woman walked toward the camera. She had on jeans and a tight-fitting white shirt. Her hair was long and very blond. She was smiling.

“That's my mother,” William said.

“Oh,” Ruth said. “She's so beautiful.”

He rewound the film. His mother backed into the house in fast motion like a Keystone Kop, shut the door, opened it again slowly, and reemerged. She was very slender. The camera panned up and down her body, zooming in on her breasts. She made a motion to the filmer to stop that right now, to cut it out. The film went black, then bright again. Another day? It panned over a vast rock labyrinth. Then it swung to a sandy knoll with sparse bits of brush. A man in a cowboy hat and aviator sunglasses walked up a rise and faced the camera, his arms open wide. He waved with both arms and grinned. His face was shaded by the hat, his eyes hidden behind the glasses. William tried to sharpen the focus, but the face remained a shadow,
smiling at the camera with white teeth. A small boy ran up the hill to join him. The boy was perhaps two or three, wearing green shorts and a striped T-shirt. The man picked up the child and held him facing the camera. He took the boy's hand and waved it at the camera. The child squinted into the sun.

William could barely breathe. He rewound the film and replayed it over and over, in slow motion, so he could relish every detail. The child floated up, was lifted into his father's arms, put down, and floated back down the hill. William zoomed in on the child's solemn little face, on Larry Anholt's grinning one. The big hand that guided the tiny wrist.

A new scene: Larry Anholt was seated on a large brown horse. He was in a corral of some sort. Larry sat tall in the saddle. He was lean and straight. He kept making the horse do figure eights. The horse balked, sidestepped, threw its head, but Larry persevered. He looked at the camera as if to say,
I don't stop until I make this animal do exactly what I want!

William felt excited, a joy he'd never felt. Here was his own father, young and strong, a cowboy, the polar opposite of old Jasper Carteret with his buttoned-down life, his rules for the way people did everything. His real father was an elemental person, at home with life's basics. He felt a powerful nostalgia.

“Are you okay?” Ruth asked him.

“I've got to find him.” On the screen Larry walked toward the camera, carrying a saddle over one shoulder, relaxed as hell.

“Look. Swimming lessons,” Ruth said.

The screen had switched from Larry Anholt on horseback to a small swimming pool, glistening turquoise in the desert sun. Larry stood up to his chest in the water, grinning at the camera, his black hair slicked back. His face was sharply in focus this time. William paused the projector, the better to see the rectangular shape and jutting jaw. And an underbite. More pronounced than William's, but that was where it came from. No question. A naked baby lay prone on the water beside him, supported from underneath by Larry An-
holt's large hand. The baby seemed very small. Almost a newborn. William hit forward, and the film continued.

Larry grinned and let go of the baby. The baby sank.

“Yikes!” Ruth said.

The picture went black and then came on again to the same scene, but this time, as Larry let go of the baby, he kept his other hand palm out to the camera angrily, obviously telling Olivia to stay where she was.

“She doesn't want him to drop you again,” Ruth said.

The camera was unsteady but continued to roll. The baby descended a few inches into the blue water of the pool. While he was under, Larry alternately looked at the camera and into the water, speaking constantly. The baby bobbed to the surface, and Larry held him aloft like a trophy. The baby was screaming.

“I'll read the letter,” Ruth said.

William rewound the film and zoomed in on the face of the baby in the water. “If that's me,” he said—he rewound the film and found the dark-haired child—“then who's that?” He and Ruth stared at the screen. The child was unsmiling, somber. William turned off the projector and flicked on the light. He swung around and dialed the number for Fond du Lac. Tinker picked up. “Oh God, I'm so glad you called,” she said, and started in on something, but he cut her off. “Put him on,” he said. “It's important.”

“Don't talk to me like that.”

“I need to talk to Dad. To Jasper.”

“Not if you're going to upset him with that tone,” she said.

“Put him on, Tinker,” he said.

“He's supposed to stay quiet.”

He wanted to kill her. “Ask him if Mom had another kid besides me.”

“Of course she didn't.”

“Ask him!”

“I'm not going to dignify—”

He slammed down the receiver and called Minerva. She would know for sure.

“It's William,” he said. “There was a reel of film in the box you gave me. I need to know something. Was there another child besides me?”

“Oh, no,” she said.

“And you'd know, right?”

“Certainly,” she said. “She had only you.”

William set up his laptop on the kitchen counter. He Googled Larry Anholt. Not a single hit. He went to the Social Security Administration website and found
Anholt, Lawrence b September 1, 1935 d July 27, 1995 Stanley Idaho.

William took a beer from the refrigerator, popped the top, and took a long drink. “He's dead,” he said. “The motherfucker should have told me. Now I'll never know.”

“And which motherfucker would that be?” Ruth asked quietly from the sliding door.

“Jasper,” he said. “Who else?” He drank more of the beer and then flung the can. It spun over the lawn, pinwheeling beer.

“Seems a lot of motherfuckers knew, William. To use your terminology. Larry Anholt knew. Minerva knew. Your mother, of course. Your mother knew everything. Mira. Why is it all Jasper's fault?”

Pony would have understood. And the thought of Pony was a stone on his heart. He swung at the wall with his fist. The pain seared all the way up to his elbow. He sat down at the laptop again. For $14.95 on his credit card, he got access to a database of out-of-date telephone directories. And there it was in Stanley, Idaho. Anholt, Lawrence.

“All right!” William shouted, slapping the counter. The number was there, but no address. He wrote the number down on a piece of paper. “Ruth!” he shouted, but she was still outside on the patio. “Ruthie, I've got the telephone number.” He was so psyched. “A number in Stanley fucking Idaho.”

She came inside. He waved the piece of paper at her. He dialed the number from the kitchen telephone, grinning. A woman picked up. She had a throaty voice. A smoker. “I'm looking for Larry Anholt,” he said. “Please.”

“Oh, honey,” she said with a mocking laugh. “Larry's dead. Who is this?”

William's heart sped. He was one up on her. He knew the guy was dead. He was ready for this. “Oh, ma'am, I'm sorry. I wonder, though. I'd like to ask you about him.”
Tell me everything.

“Who is this?”

“Are you his—”

“Maybe,” she said. “You tell me who you are, and I'll tell you who I am.”

“Did he have kids?”

“It's not the way I do things.”

“You won't even tell me if he had any kids?” There was a pause of several seconds, and then the woman hung up on him.

He popped another beer and dialed the number again. She picked up the phone and put it down without a word.

“She hung up on me again,” he told Ruth.

“Maybe you should take a minute and think this through,” she said.

“Forget that.” He sat back down at the laptop and went to the Stanley Chamber of Commerce Web page. “Come here and look at this.” The town looked almost medieval, wooden buildings huddled together at the center of a grand valley, wide and green, flanked by snowy mountains. It was something out of a kid's picture book. William clicked to the next screen and the next. There were vivid blue lakes, meadows alive with wildflowers, raging rivers. But most of all, there were mountains. William skipped to the shots that took in the range of the Sawtooth Mountains. He thought he'd never seen anything so beautiful as those peaks, so jagged they resembled black shards. A sight that made his blood thicken. This was the place his father was from. His roots. He felt alive. He picked up the phone and hit the speed dial. The urge to tell Pony was automatic. The phone rang twice and then an automated message, saying, “The number you have called is no longer in service, please check—”

“You little shit,” he said, and slammed the receiver down. Ruth was staring at him. “What?” he said.

“Oh, nothing.”

“I'm going out there,” he said. “I might have brothers and sisters I don't even know about. Man. It could be a whole other family out there, and I'm as much a part of them as I am of the Carterets. But I need to get to that woman fast. Before she—”

“Before she what, William?”

“I want to surprise her.”