Perfect Family (5 page)

Then they were all gone. It was just Tinker and her father standing side by side on the grass looking out at the water, the enemy, sparkling brilliantly in the early-morning sun. The day was very still. It would be a hot one.

She could think of nothing to say. She glanced at her father. Tears glazed his eyes. “Oh God. Andrew. I'll go to the Bells',” she said.

They entered the Bells' house by the back door. Andrew was in a high chair in the crowded kitchen. The counter space was covered with small appliances, a tangle of cords behind them. Sayings adorned the walls in heart-shaped frames. Anita, grim-faced, was feeding Andrew; she got to her feet. She hugged Tinker's father and
then Tinker. “I'm so sorry, Jasper.” She had put on makeup that morning—eye shadow and very red lipstick, but her uncombed hair stuck out in stiff peaks.

The minute Andrew saw Tinker and her father, he recognized them and banged his fists on the metal tray of the high chair. Tinker raised the tray and picked him up. The weight of that baby was everything just then. Solid, stable, warm. She wanted to hold him longer, but he was restless, so she put him back and took the jar of baby food from Anita. Her hand shook as she raised the spoon to his mouth, but he opened wide.

They all watched Andrew eat. Everybody had to be thinking the same thing: This was what they had of Pony. He opened his mouth for spoon after spoon, enjoying their fixed attention, and then he caught on. He looked in alarm at Anita, at Tinker, at her father, then wildly around. “Mama,” he wailed, looking about. His face drained when he couldn't find her.

Just then Denny slouched in and leaned against the doorjamb, half in and half out of the kitchen. All Tinker knew about the Bell kids was that there were several, mostly girls. She didn't know names or ages, just that every summer, there they were in some new incarnation of themselves, a year older, a year louder. She thought this one, Denny, might be the youngest. He was a sullen, caved-in-looking kid with an expression that was both frightened and belligerent. All the attention shifted to him. He shot a look at his mother. “They find out who did it?” he said.

“Oh my,” Anita said. “Oh, Denny. Nobody did anything. I mean, they don't know anything yet. Right, Jasper?” She was all apologetic and flustered.

Tinker's father approached the boy. “What makes you think someone did this? Why did you ask us that question?”

Denny's face bleached of color. “No.” He whined the word like a much younger child. He shook his head. “I just thought—Shit.”

“Dennis!” Anita said. “Your mouth.”

“Oh, man,” Denny said.

Tinker's father put a hand on the boy's shoulder. “If you know something, son, tell us.”

“No, man. I'm sorry. Honest.” Denny squirmed away. Anita scowled, and Tinker had the feeling his mother was going to read him the riot act once they left. “He's been watching too much TV,” Anita said. “I am very sorry.”

 

Andrew continued to cry after they brought him back to Fond du Lac. He cried himself to exhaustion and finally fell asleep on the living room floor. Tinker didn't dare move him in case he woke again. It killed her not to be able to tidy up. At least to fold Pony's clothing. Anything. But Randy had said not to move things.

Her father was sitting at the telephone table, his clothes still damp. He called Mira. Tinker heard him say, “It's Pony. Sweetie, I have very bad news.” Tinker pictured Mira in her sparse apartment in that three-decker, still in bed, still half asleep. There would be books stacked on the bed, a cluttered night table, and dead plants on the windowsill. Mira would be naked. She never wore a nightgown, even in winter. She said it was unhealthy, that it was warmer to sleep skin to the sheets. “There's been an accident here at Fond du Lac. Pony was found this morning. She drowned.” Her father squeezed his eyes, listening to Mira. He was weeping. He explained about the night before, the call from Anita. It was the story he and Tinker would have to tell over and over again. After he hung up, he tried William. “Are you there? William. For God's sake, if you're listening to this, pick up the telephone now. It's about your sister. It's about Pony. I'm up at the lake house.”

Tinker waited until her father was finished, and then she used the phone to call Mark at work. His secretary answered. “Donna,” she said. “I need to talk to Mark. It's Tinker calling.”

“Mrs. Bradshaw,” Donna said. “I'm afraid he's in a meeting.”

“Get him out.” Tinker had a history with Donna.

“I'll see if I can,” Donna said. “He's in with Mr. Hendrix.”

“I don't care who he's in with, Donna.” She had to wait a long time before Mark came on the line.

“What happened?” he said.

“Pony drowned,” Tinker said, her voice brimming with justification before she realized it. “They found her this morning. Her hair got tangled under the raft.”

“Jesus, Tinker.”

“We don't know how it happened.” Tinker burst out crying. Hearing herself say this made it true. “There's going to be an autopsy. It looks like she drowned, but just in case it was something else.”

“But she's the best swimmer. What do you mean, ‘something else'?”

“If she hit her head or something. She left Andrew on the lawn, and the police think that was odd. They'll do a tox screen.”

“Drugs?”

“Daddy's a wreck. Nobody knows where William is.”

“When will you be back?”

“It's up to Daddy,” she said.

“And up to you,” he said.

“This is much worse for him, Mark. A parent should never lose a child.”

“You've lost your sister, Tink.”

 

Her father drove her car, and she followed in Pony's because it had the baby seat. She felt like a criminal, stealing the car, kidnapping the baby, as though at any minute there would be sirens behind her. They stopped in White River Junction so she could change Andrew's diaper and they could get something to eat. It was the first ordinary situation they'd been in, surrounded by people going along in their lives. It seemed unreal to Tinker that people in the restaurant could look at her and her father and not know what had happened. The waitress made a big cheerful deal of how cute Andrew was, as though everything were normal.

Instead of heading straight to West Hartford, her father took the I-291 bypass to Manchester, and Tinker followed. He was taking them to Pony's apartment, which was just up from the main street. It wasn't much, one of those brick complexes, two stories high, low rent. Pony's one-bedroom was on the ground floor.

Tinker parked behind her father on the street. He walked to the front door and motioned to her to come, too. He was impatient, waiting for the key that would be with Pony's car keys. She wanted him to slow down, to let her get her bearings before she went into Pony's apartment, but he didn't hesitate. He opened the door and entered.

It smelled of Pony. Nothing Tinker could put her finger on, but if she was blindfolded, she'd know exactly where she was. Andrew fought to get out of her arms. She set him down on the floor, where he twisted every which way looking for his mother. When he couldn't find her, he started rocking on his hands and knees and then dropped his face against the carpet in despair.

Her father was riffling through the top of Pony's desk, keeping up a running commentary. “Nothing here. No. Maybe in one of the drawers.” He scanned papers and put them aside, sometimes stopping to read further. “Bank statements,” he said. “Letters. Bill from the electric company. I wonder if you'd take over this end of things, Tinker. Get these things paid? Reimburse you, of course.” He paused over something, then kept on going. “If she hasn't named a guardian,” he said, “we'll need to act quickly.” He turned in his chair and faced her. “Tinker, just who is Andrew's father?”

“She never said.”

“You don't
know
?”

“No.”

“You're her sister,” he said, as though it were more her job than his to know these things.

“William might know,” she said.

“The main thing is to find some sort of documentation,” he said.

She took Andrew with her to the bedroom. Again, he looked
everywhere for his mother, his soft hair brushing against her neck, his hope back in full force. When he didn't find her, she felt his whole body lose its will again. She put him down. He buried his face in a pile of Pony's clothing.

Pony's bed was in the middle of the room, unmade. Andrew's crib was against the wall, and there was a small bureau. Tinker sorted through the items on the bed table—bits of charcoal, small scraps of paper with line drawings, mostly of Andrew, who was still sobbing. Tinker's grief felt different. Not suffering, like Andrew, but a kind of vertigo that cut her thoughts in half. Pony was dead.

“Tinker,” her father called. She went to the door. Her father was at the desk holding a tiny red packet, one of those little envelopes a bank provides for safe-deposit-box keys. He opened it and took out the key and a slip of paper that he read from: “‘SD key. Will. Mother's pearls. William Carteret is co-signer.'” He reached for the telephone, punched in William's number, then slammed down the receiver when he got the answering machine.

“I'll get him,” Tinker said. “Don't worry.”

“You do that,” he said.

“I can keep Andrew with me until we know.” It needed to be said out loud. “Mark can set up the crib, but I need baby things.” Her father nodded. She found a canvas bag under the kitchen table and went about Pony's apartment, filling it with Andrew's things. His sippy cup, some toys and clothes, boxes of Pampers, and in the bathroom his rash cream, shampoo. There was so much a baby needed.

They locked up Pony's apartment. Tinker followed her father to his house and parked Pony's car in the garage. Andrew had fallen asleep from the motion of the car, and she was able to release the buckles of his car seat before he realized again she wasn't his mother and he began screaming. She entered the house through the back door, which opened to the kitchen. Her father was sitting in the dark.

“Oh, Daddy,” she said. She turned on the light, and a hard fluorescence flooded the kitchen. She turned up the heat, but her father
said to turn it back down. They never put up the thermostat after the first of May, no matter how cold it was. Tinker fixed her father a sandwich of avocado and cheese and poured a glass of orange juice. His answering machine light was blinking nonstop. The news must have spread, and people were already calling.

It had been under twenty-four hours since she'd picked her father up in front of the house, but it was forever. Her father was broken, as though parts of him had collapsed inside and he could no longer hold himself straight. She looked into the refrigerator again to see what else was there for his supper, but he told her not to bother. “This is no time for food,” he said, and she felt the burn of his criticism. She warmed a bottle of milk for Andrew and gave it to him. He lay on the kitchen floor on his back, guzzling the milk, causing bubbles to swish up the sides of the bottle.

“If you find out who the father is, don't call him under any circumstances,” her father said before she left. “Get the name and number and let me know, but don't call him.”

“What about Andrew?”

“That's exactly the point,” he said. “Our objective needs to be keeping Andrew in the family.”

 

Tinker was home with a half hour to spare before Isabel's bus. Her house looked dirty in the afternoon light. Untended. She would have to clean just to get even, she realized. Tidy up. Clean the house before she could think what to do about Andrew. She carried him in one arm and the portable crib in the other. She set up the crib and put him down. He woke slightly but went back to sleep. Tinker opened the cupboard under the kitchen sink, where she kept the Baker's semisweet chocolate. She sat on the living room couch and unwrapped a square. She should take a shower. She hadn't had one since the day before yesterday. She should change her clothes. She should prepare for Isabel. Instead, she broke off a piece and put it into her mouth. As the chocolate warmed, she sucked it down her throat. When it was soft, she chewed it. She broke off another piece.
She imagined her father, rattling around in that big cold house all by himself, with his grief. The thought was unbearable. She checked her watch. Ten minutes before Isabel got home. Too late to shower now. She'd wait for the sound of the school bus down at the corner. She would have to watch for her from the house. She didn't dare leave Andrew alone, not even for the time it took to walk the hundred yards to the bus stop.

She was thinking about the last time she'd seen Pony, alive. Memorial Day weekend. She felt a stab under her solar plexus.

It was Memorial Day weekend just what, two, three weeks ago? The whole family had been there. It was tradition to go up and open camp on Memorial Day and close it on Labor Day. They'd turned on the water to the house. They'd swept the house clean of mouse droppings and cobwebs. They'd removed the bedsheets that protected the furniture from dust over the winter. Mark and William had mowed the grass, cleaned up the driftwood on the beach, and raked the sand. Tinker, Mira, and Pony had painted the barrels and the wooden part of the raft in a fresh coat of gunmetal gray. Pony had been outrageous, in Tinker's opinion, dancing around in short shorts. Too short. Why did she have to be that way? She was a mother now. Those days were over. Pony acted as though Andrew were a toy, a plaything, something to amuse her. She wasn't taking her responsibility seriously enough. Pony had brought him into the water even though it was very cold. She'd let him paint the raft, not that he could. He held the brush while Pony guided his hand, sloshing the brush in the bucket and spewing it over the grass and over himself. Tinker had made a point of checking the label for lead. No one said anything, as usual. It was always up to Tinker to be the bad cop. When they were upstairs, Tinker went into Pony's room. Pony was in her bikini, bent over at the waist, twisting her long hair into a thick rope. She stood when Tinker came in and shut the door and finished securing her hair. “What up?” she said.