Perfect Family (14 page)

“In the water, by the raft.” Denny met William's eyes.

William had to keep reminding himself that the only way to the truth was to keep a lid on it. “She waved at him. So it sounds like she knew him, then.”

“Oh yeah,” Denny said. “Maybe. She used to wave at me sometimes.” He grinned at Katherine.

“You're doing fine, Denny,” Katherine said. “Pony gave the man a wave. Good.”

Denny, squinting, twisted his mouth to the side, trying to remember. “He left the car radio going. And it was windy, like, there was all this noise and shit in the trees. I thought she was, like, laughing. He starts doing this stupid bullfighter thing with her towel.” Denny held his hands to the side, tucked his feet together, and raised his chin in imitation of the way a matador would wave a cape. The boy had grace.

“What time was this?” William asked.

“Sheesh.” Danny seemed to deflate again and opened his arms wide. “How should I know?”

“Approximately,” William said.

Katherine patted Denny as if to say,
Don't worry about him, he's just being dense
.

“I don't have to talk to you,” Denny said

“You're right, Denny,” Katherine said. “You don't, but it helps us so much to hear all this. Pony Carteret was my best friend. I knew her all my life. I'm so grateful that you saw anything at all and that you're willing to tell us. Every little bit of information is like a gift.”

“Tell
him
that,” Denny said.

“She was his sister. He's upset. Not at you, though.” Katherine gave William a look Denny couldn't see that said,
Behave yourself.
She smiled at Denny. “You were telling us—Well, let me make sure I understand. The way I understand it is that Pony was in the water, swimming in the nude, and this man was onshore and seemed to be teasing her with the towel. Is that right? That's what it sounds like, like he was being funny.”

Denny nodded but seemed uncertain. “Yeah. But maybe she was, like, telling him to cut the shit or whatever. She was in close to shore like she was doing with the kid, you know, on her elbows. I couldn't hear what she was saying, but hey. He was being a jerk. I would never have done that.”

William felt the wrenching pull of grief, a stone on his heart. He could see it all too clearly. The matador. Pony scared. Or angry. It took a lot to scare Pony.

“Did he hurt her?” William asked. He couldn't stand not to know.

Katherine took William's hand, held it tight.
Courage
, she seemed to be saying.

Denny shook his head. “No. He never touched her. But he touched the kid. He picks up the kid.” Denny held his arms straight out. “Like the kid's got a stinky diaper. And he says, ‘Ha ha,' like that, not laughing but saying the words. And then she just does this weird thing, like that was what made me think it was okay again.
Like that woman you saw, that Mrs. Cushman, you know? She stands up in the water, and she's, you know, she's—”

“Yes?” Katherine said. “Naked.”

“She's doing that thing with her hands, like
Come on in
.” Denny imitated the way Pony must have beckoned the guy into the water with both hands to get him away from Andrew. “And the guy puts the kid down, strips down to his jockeys, and goes in the lake.” Denny demonstrated someone on tiptoes, arms up, in cold water. “But he goes in like this. Like some girl who doesn't want to get her pussy wet.”

“Hey,” William said.

Denny looked at Katherine. “Sorry,” he said.

“It's okay. Then what?”

“They get out to the raft. Or
he
gets out to the raft. I couldn't see her after that. The trees were in the way. They're blowing all over, and his radio in the car is still going. I don't know.”

“Randy Martine needs to know all this,” Katherine said to William.

“Aw, man,” Denny said. “You promised.”

“I didn't promise,” William said. “How close were you? Where were you when this was going on?”

“In my—” Denny swung his head to one side. “You know.”

“Tree house.”

“What are you so worried about, Denny?” Katherine asked. “You're only telling what you saw.”

“He's out on the raft, and where is she?” William said.

“I don't know. I told you. Maybe she was under it. He was talking to her, so she was somewhere.”

“And then what?”

“Then nothing. The next thing I see is he's swimming back in. He's getting dressed.”

“Does he mess with the baby?”

“No.” Denny buried his head in his hands.

“What, Denny?” Katherine asked.

“Nothing.”

“Did it occur to you Pony was in trouble out there?”

The kid shook his head.

“And you didn't tell the police any of this because…?”

“It was an accident, man. I would have, but the cops said it was an accident. And I figure the cops know.”

“And because you were frightened,” Katherine said.

 

William used the phone in the kitchen to call Randy Martine at home. Randy arrived at the house in a squad car with the lights rolling, just ahead of Anita and Dennis Senior, who came in looking bewildered and then immediately assumed Denny had done something to cause the police to be there. Dennis
père
was a guy whose back was too long, as if his spine had grown too fast for the front of him, folding him forward over his large stomach. A guy with hair in his ears and a loud voice that soon had the rest of them talking too loud. “What the hell?” he said when he walked in. Katherine jumped to her feet, introduced herself, and told the Bells about the man Denny had seen at the Carterets' house the day Pony died.

They all crowded around the small kitchen with its depressing red, yellow, and green Tiffany light fixture casting a weak stained light over everything. William and Katherine sat on the countertops and the Bells at the kitchen table with Randy, who walked Denny through the whole thing again.

“What time?” Randy asked.

“Six?” Denny asked back.

“Did you see the car? The license?”

“Nope,” Denny said.

“That's okay, Denny,” Randy said. “Can you describe the man? Anything at all.”

Denny looked at William, then at his father. “Average size, I guess.”

“And what's that?”

“Like him.” Denny swung his head in his father's direction.

“So,” Randy said. “About six feet tall?”

“I'm six-one, son,” said Dennis
père
. William had a thing about that, fathers addressing their sons as “son.” It got under his skin, and he didn't know why.

“Age?” Randy asked Denny.

Again Denny looked at the men. “Like you, I guess. Like him.” He indicated William.

“So in his thirties, you think.”

“I guess.”

“Were you able to see his face?”

Denny shrugged. “A little.”

“You did?” William said. “You never told us.”

“Can you identify him?” Randy asked.

“He had on a baseball cap. I'm not sure.”

“Any mark on that cap?”

“I couldn't tell.” Denny rolled his eyes.

“What was he wearing?”

“Jeans. Blue shirt.”

“Anything else you can add?”

“He saw me,” Denny said.

“Oh, dear God,” Anita said.

“When?” Randy asked. William liked the way Randy was doing this, firing questions at the kid, getting more out of him.

“I was up in the, you know, blind and all. He must have gone in the house. I can't be sure. He was near where the baby was, and he saw me. He looked right at me.”

“Did he say anything?”

“He didn't need to.”

“What do you mean?” Anita shrieked.

Denny imitated the man. He stood with his feet planted, one hand on his hip, jabbing the air with a finger. Menacing as hell.

“Would you recognize him?” Randy asked.

“Maybe.”

“Did he ever touch Pony?” Randy asked Denny. “That you saw.”

Denny shook his head. “I wish I'd gone over there,” he said, and looked at William and Katherine, appealing to them.

“Damn good thing you didn't, son,” Dennis Senior said, and William could only stare at the man. Did he know what he was saying?

Mira dyed the tips of her hair from electric blue to black.

She bought black lipstick.

She canceled Tucson.

She was looking at the brochure for the workshop in Tucson she would not attend. The brochure showed a desert garden, a small swimming pool, and an adobe house in the background. She was to get free room and board in return for a few workshops for the other five or six “guests,” who would, Mira guessed, be middle-aged women, artsy suburban types, and perhaps one or two men. Mira's credentials were only a shade better than the students'—publication in a small-circulation literary magazine, a year as adjunct faculty at the University of Hartford, and one semester substituting as a creative writing teacher for someone who'd quit at the last minute.

How could she go to something like that? She couldn't concentrate anymore. She couldn't write. She couldn't even read. She'd get through half a page in a book and have no memory of what she'd read. She needed to keep moving, find ways to kill time.

She was leaning on the balcony rail of her apartment watching Sheila, the woman who lived on the first floor. Sheila had three mixed-breed dogs. She walked home from work twice a day to escort them the fifteen feet across the driveway to the backyard, where they peed burns in the grass in a pattern of large pale dots. Mira hadn't paid such close attention to Sheila until lately, until she herself was at home. She marveled at the way Sheila held to a routine. How did people get to that? Mira had a hard time doing anything twice. Right now, seeing the top of Sheila's square gray head, Mira wanted to drop something on her. An egg, perhaps. Get her to react. Change her trajectory.

Mira went back inside and checked the clock. She put on makeup. She'd taken to lining her eyes in black, a thick smudge of it all around. And whitening her already white skin with powder. Like Isak Dinesen. Like Joyce Carol Oates. Those women knew the power of the image. She looked into her blank face, round, like a clock with dark eyes at two and ten, red mouth at six. She parted her cropped hair. Black as spades but with auburn roots, like a woolly bear's. Nobody else had that. She would become just like Minerva one day. Eccentric as hell. She was sure of it.

The telephone rang, and she let the machine take it in case it was Tinker again, and it was. She'd been calling every few days for the past couple of weeks. Tinker sounded bone-weary. “Do you know where William is, Mira? Have you heard anything? We should all reach out to one another. But how can we? William isn't picking up. Where is he? We need to do something for Daddy's birthday. This year more than any other. We need to show solidarity. Isabel will be crushed if we don't.” Tinker paused and drew in a long breath. “Mira, I know you're there. Pick up, dammit.” Big sigh. “Okay, whatever. Look, I need your help. Daddy wants us to empty out Pony's apartment, and I'm not doing it alone.”

Mira called Keith Brink. It had been three weeks since that first time at the Readers' Feast. He'd taken to calling her every few days, and they'd talk. He'd say, “Let's get together,” and sometimes she'd
say okay and come up with a plan. One time she'd suggested they take a tour of the Harriet Beecher Stowe house, which he'd claimed to enjoy although he'd never read
Uncle Tom's Cabin
, and how could anybody enjoy the house without that? Another time she'd invited him for a walk around the West Hartford reservoir. She liked being seen with him. She liked how they looked together, how people noticed his swagger and his cowboy hat. She still couldn't read him, though. That was the intriguing thing, the challenge. On that walk around the reservoir, he'd told her a joke. It was about two guys in the woods when a grizzly bear attacks. “I don't have to outrun the bear,” one of them says in the punch line. “I'd only have to outrun you.”

It was the kind of joke that made you laugh and then slap a hand over your mouth because it was so mean. “You have a sardonic sense of humor,” she'd said, and he'd colored visibly, darkening as if she'd insulted or criticized him. It was possible he didn't know what the word meant, but then neither did she, not really; she wouldn't have been able to define it exactly, for example. The word had just slipped out the way words sometimes did, and she was pretty sure “sardonic” was close. Later she'd looked it up, and sure enough, it meant mocking, derisive, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

And sometimes she had this sneaking suspicion he felt sorry for her.
Poor little Mira
, he'd said more than once at something she'd told him. That always gave her pause, as if he saw something pitiable in her beyond just her suffering over Pony's death. She didn't like it, but she didn't correct it either. Let him go ahead and feel sorry for her if that was what he needed to do.

She thought it was time to ratchet things up a notch.

He didn't pick up at first. Well, of course not; it was a workday. But then he did. “Why are you at home today?” she asked without introducing herself. But she said it softly, not in a harsh way.

“Job site's not ready. They lost electricity.”

“I'm coming over,” she said.

He hesitated, probably because she hadn't taken the lead before. This was new. “My place isn't much,” he said.

“I want to see it.” It had occurred to her that he might be married or have a girlfriend. That was always a possibility with any guy who acted eager but also held himself a little at bay the way Keith did.

“Suit yourself,” he said.

As she drove over, she thought again how she wasn't his type at all. He was midwestern, a Republican, probably a Rush Limbaugh listener to boot. His type was those women you saw in bars doing the Texas two-step or whatever it was called, women with teased hair and tight jeans. Women who were tougher-looking than Mira. And yet he dug her act; there was no question about that at all.

His motel was a large U-shaped structure with navy blue canopies over the windows. He'd been watching for her, and he opened the door before she was even out of the car. He stood there grinning, with his arms open as she approached. She poked him in the stomach lightly, instead of accepting the hug. He was a little soft there, the start of a gut. She slipped past him into the room, which was well lit and large. “This is nice,” she said. “What do you mean, ‘not much'?”

“It's not what you're used to,” he said.

“And what would that be?” She wanted him to say it out loud.

“Just making conversation,” he said.

She looked around the room. “So where's Pony's painting?”

“Out,” he said.

Mira laughed. “Like out for a stroll? What do you mean it's out?”

“Being framed.” He had an off-kilter smile, and there was something she'd been wanting to find out about his face. “Stand in the light,” she said. He allowed himself to be taken by the hand and drawn to the window. “Okay, now.” She covered half his face with her hand and looked at the half that was still exposed. Keith's left side had not one thread of emotion. It was blank. She switched to cover the other side and reared back. “Wow,” she said. His right side was full to overflowing. A whole storm of a face. Should she tell him? He might be vain about his looks. He could be anything. “Pony taught me that,” she said. “She did a series in art school where she
would paint faces. Two left sides making up one portrait. Two rights the other. Some people have such different halves and you wouldn't even know they were the same person. People with two different faces are more interesting, Pony said. Like you.” She ran her fingers down his cheek. She hadn't intended to do that, but she loved the feel of sharp stubble where a guy's sideburns end.

He took her hand and pressed it to his chest. With his other hand, he touched her eyelid. “Tit for tat,” he said, peering into her eye.

“It's called a coloboma.” She was used to explaining the condition that gave her pupil the shape of a keyhole.

“Coloboma,” he repeated, and kissed her eyelid. In his voice, the word felt heavy and sensual.

“My ophthalmologist said it has no effect on my vision.”

“How would he know?”

She'd wondered that herself, wondered if in fact she did see the world differently. She let Keith look closely. He tipped her head back for better light. His touch was light on her chin. He gently raised the eyelid to see it better. The gesture felt incredibly intimate.

“It's Greek for ‘mutilated,'” she said.

“Aw,” he said, and she felt his pity rain down again. This time she didn't let it go. She was sensitive about her eye.

“I want to drive up to the lake,” she said.

He seemed to stop breathing, to freeze in place.

“What's the matter?” she asked.

“You're here five minutes and you want to leave. Are you fucking with me?”

“Say
what
?” She stepped away. “Where did
that
come from?”

“I can't just take off like you can. I have to work.”

She didn't think that was it at all. He didn't like to be taken by surprise and he liked being the one in charge. Fine. “Who said anything about overnight? It's a little over an hour each way. I'd like to go up there.”

He colored visibly and forced a smile. “Can't a guy make a joke around you?”

She studied him a moment and poked him gently in the stomach again. “Ha-ha,” she said.

 

Keith drove fast, way over the speed limit. He really opened it up after Springfield, on 91. He wasn't a car-talker. Not many guys were. So she watched the countryside go by outside her window. This was something to do. Anything was better than sitting in her apartment and watching the neighbors.

It was past twilight when they arrived. All around the lake, lights glittered like an uneven string of tiny jewels. Mira was glad not to have to face the place in broad daylight. It was easier this way. She hadn't been there since Pony died. She walked down to the water. Keith was behind her.

“So that's it?” he asked.

“That's it,” she said. It was still light enough to see the raft on the water.

“Lots of houses out there,” he said. “I had the impression this was more secluded.”

“It is and it isn't. The houses are all on the lake. Outside of that, nothing.”

He walked up and down the beach, looking around. “What about the people over there? In that house?” He was pointing to the Bells' house.

“The Bells,” she said.

“She's the one who heard the baby, right?”

“Right.”

“Why did your brother leave that day?”

“I don't know.”

“Why did he come up here in the first place?”

“Stop it,” she said. “You're asking things I don't know the answers to. I hate that.”

“But this is where it happened,” he said. “Anybody would be curious.”

“I need to see the raft,” she said. “You want to come?”

He shook his head. “Rather not, actually.”

She undressed on the beach and went into the water in her underwear. She swam quickly to the raft and went up the ladder. Underneath, the barrels clanged. She was trying to imagine what it had been like for Pony that day. The water now was warm, like the air. But that hadn't been the case the day Pony died. It had been June still, and the water would have been cold. Mira shivered at the thought, but no matter how hard she thought about Pony, no matter how she tried to feel it, Pony's death still hung separately. She felt as though she were wrapped in gauze and Pony's death was just outside it, waiting for her. Even here, just where she died. Keith was watching her from the shore, pacing. He checked his watch.
Bored
, she thought.
Not a guy to come in swimming.
She swam back and used the key under the shutter to let them into the house.

Once inside, Keith went from room to room, looking at everything. He put on his glasses to see the photographs on the walls better. She was touched again by his interest. He got close, squinting and running his fingers over them. He must have been looking for her in them the way her other boyfriends did, she thought. Trying to pick her out in all those scenes down at the beach, the picnics, wondering what she'd looked like as a kid. Was she fat or thin, happy or sad. He took one from the wall and brought it closer to the light. “Oh, man.” He held it close and studied it. He ran his index finger over it. It was a shot of the whole family sitting on the steps to the porch at Fond du Lac. “Is this your mother?” he asked.

She looked over his shoulder. “Yes.” In the picture, her mother sat in the front middle of the group, an arm around Pony on one side and Mira on the other. Her hair was pulled back, and she was smiling.

“Where was she born?”

“My mom? Why do you want to know?”

“She looks Scandinavian or something. She's so blond.”

“California,” she said.

“It's a big state.”

Mira shrugged. “Some small town up north is all I know.”

“What's with you people?” he asked with a laugh.

“Excuse me?” she said. That one had come out of left field.

He twisted around to see her and squeezed her hand. “Most people know where their mothers were born.”

“Where was yours born?”

“Chicago,” he said.

“It's a big city. What street?”

He smiled. “Touché.”

She brought out an album. Some of the photos were in their slots, but most were loose. Her mother used to keep them organized. She handed him the album and sat down in the chair across from him. She didn't want to see the photos, especially the recent ones of Pony when Pony had no idea she had only eight months to live, or three weeks, whatever. It freaked her out too much. He looked quickly through the loose pictures and then went page by page through the older ones. He held up the album. “That's you, right?”