Perfect Family (21 page)

“Stanley, Idaho,” William said. “Puma Springs, California. All this time I thought I was so eastern. I guess I can't claim Jasper's
Mayflower
ancestry anymore.” He grinned. “I'm the son of a foreman on a farm.”

Neither of them spoke for several moments. Then Minerva said, “Come.”

He followed her to the small Pullman kitchen and stood at the door while she took out a platter of sandwiches and two cans of beer, which they drank from the cans, sitting at the dining room table.

“I understand you're to be Andrew's father,” Minerva said.

“Guardian,” William said.

Minerva smiled at him. “And what do you perceive as the difference between the two?”

“I have to wait until I'm better set up. Tinker has him for now,” he said.

“Don't let that go on too long,” Minerva said. “Promise me.”

After lunch she suggested a walk. “You must keep your body moving in the coming days. But I don't need to tell you that.” They went outside into the bright summer light. They walked slowly up Park Avenue. At each cross street, William took Minerva's elbow for the curb down and then the curb up. They walked along Seventy-seventh Street toward the park. They crossed Fifth Avenue to the cobbled sidewalk and sat on a bench. William was remembering the only fight his parents ever had, one that had started at a picnic when Mr. Pereen and his mother were leaping over the campfire together, holding hands. It had been innocent, just silly fun, but his father had snatched his mother away and they'd gone home, riding in an ominous silence. That night his parents had argued long into the night. Minerva had been visiting at the lake at the time, and he asked if she remembered the incident.

“Jasper never forgave Olivia for having loved anybody else. He was fiercely jealous.”

“But he knew when he met her,” William said. “He knew she'd had a child.
And
he held it against her? What a prick.”

“Love is irrational, William. Don't be too hard on Jasper.”

“I keep thinking I need to tell Pony all this, and then—”

“Take a deep breath, sweetheart,” Minerva told him. “Don't forget to breathe!”

On their way back to the apartment, they walked arm in arm, in step. “Besotted, eh?” William said.

“Drunk on love,” Minerva said.

“You didn't like him, did you?” he asked again.

“I didn't know him. He kept her from us, from Mother and me. I certainly didn't like that.”

“I like knowing they were in love,” William said.

“I have a box for you,” Minerva said when they reached her building. “It's Olivia's clothing, a few personal effects, I suppose. She left it with me when she moved to Connecticut with Jasper. It's been in my storage unit all these years. You're the one to have it. Do whatever you like with it. Save it, throw it away. It's up to you.” She led the way down the back stairs of her building to a long row of fenced in stalls. Minerva's was crowded high, everything thrown in over the years. She disappeared into it and emerged with a yellow Seagram's 7 box, taped shut. She handed it to him. “What will you do now?” she asked, looking up at him.

“Try to find him,” William said.

Minerva nodded. “Just be careful,” she said.

 

On the train back to New Haven, William lifted the box to his lap, sliced through the tape with a key, and lifted the flaps. The smell was musty, the clothes neatly folded. There was a crocheted vest, purple and pink. A short flowery dress, several blouses all printed with flowers, too. He held it to his face, breathed in his mother's scent, and wept quietly.

At the bottom was a baby blanket. The blanket was thick, folded, and tied with a blue ribbon, flattened from all its years at the bottom of the box. There was something hard inside the blanket. He undid the ribbon. Inside was a flat white canister bound by a thick rubber band. He pulled off the rubber band and opened the canister. It contained a reel of film.

William picked Ruth up at her job site in Glastonbury. Mindy was going ahead with the fountain. She announced this, leaning into his side of the car, her skinny cleavage at eye level. “Go for it,” he said. He could scarcely remember having had a point of view about a fountain. That was light-years ago.

He and Ruth drove to the Steele Road house, and he let himself in using the key that Jasper kept on a hook by the back door. Ruth didn't want to go inside, so she pulled a lawn chair from the garage and sat there while he went inside; she didn't like the way he was doing this, going to the house to roust out the projector without asking. Ruth didn't have a sneaky bone in her body.

The house was steamy from having the windows shut tight for several days in brutal humidity. He remembered the smell and the feel of it from his childhood, his parents' low voices always in another room. And it was dark. The shades on all the windows were drawn, shades so old and brittle that over the years people's fingers
had punctured them, and they were now dotted with points of light. William opened some windows to let in the air.

He had a vague idea where the projector was—in one of the closets upstairs, possibly the attic. But once he was inside, he liked having the house to himself. He walked soundlessly through, pausing in doorways, listening for sounds. He felt comfortable, being alone like this. What was it about the smells of a house that brought back so much? His sisters' birthday parties. All the little girls squealing in the corridors, running up and down the stairs. All the games of hide and-go-seek.

He sat at the desk in Jasper's den, a desk that had been handed down through generations of Carteret men. It was a massive piece of furniture, with deep drawers and a leather top. As a boy, William used to sit at it and wonder about the men in his family who had used it before Jasper, and the day when it would become his, when he'd be a man, when Jasper Carteret would be dead. Now it was only a desk, and an ugly one at that, overly ornate, too heavy and too big. Now he didn't come from these people but from farm laborers. He felt a well of pride at that. He opened the top drawer, which was divided into wooden compartments. Jasper's pens sat side by side in one. Pencils in another, paper clips in a third. Jasper had two silver letter openers, a pair of scissors, several rolls of tape. The desk was as neat as the man himself, nothing out of place.

William thumbed through the bills, copies of legal documents, insurance policies. The files were all labeled, and each contained what it said. No surprises. All his life, William had seen his parents' lives as an open book. He thought he could look through any drawer, any closet, and not come upon anything incriminating. Until yesterday, theirs was the life without secrets, whereas his boyhood had seemed to be nothing but secrets—his stash of
Playboy
magazines hidden under his mattress, the occasional joint tucked into a shoe in his closet, the intercepted report card burned in his trash can.

When the girls were born, one right after the other, the house had smelled of baby food and baby powder and spit-up and diapers. One
of them was always crying. That was when his secret life began. He did what he wanted. He and his friends went to Elizabeth Park and played tennis and sometimes hoops if the basketball court was free. They ran through backyards. A few times they skipped school. And fairly often, he and his friends had sneaked out of their houses late at night and climbed up the fire escapes of the buildings on South Main Street, where you could see the whole of West Hartford on one side and on the other, beyond, the Hartford skyline glittering in the distance.

But maybe, he thought now—and why was it that the truth took so long to announce itself?—maybe his life hadn't been so much secret as neglected. Maybe nobody had been paying attention to where he was or what he was doing. Maybe nobody had cared unless it involved one of the girls. Like that time with Tinker.

He was thirteen and Tinker was about seven, already an over-weight, officious, bossy little girl in her baggy sweatshirts and her hair in two fat, frizzy braids. It was a Sunday afternoon, and William had been in his room listening to Metallica when his father knocked. He didn't wait for an answer before he barged right in and stood looking at William, at his disaster of a room, listening to the music, and without a word was able to pass judgment on all of it, on everything William was, everything William liked, and then he said, shaking his head as though William was some kind of a freak, “It's too nice a day to be inside.” The least that William could do, Jasper said, was go with Tinker to the Walgreens at the corner of Farmington Avenue and Prospect Street, so she could spend her allowance. Just to make sure she got there and back okay.

And so William led the way, riding his bike as fast as he could down Steele, waiting at the corner until she almost caught up and then taking a left up Fern Street, a quick right to cut through an alley, going fast on purpose to lose her, pausing at the corner of Farmington until the second he saw her and then taking off again.

“Wait up, William,” she was screaming at him furiously, pumping the pedals as fast as she could, her squat little figure almost comical
behind him. Near Walgreens, he again turned back and watched her approach. At the cross street, she stopped, got off her bike like the little dweeb she was, and checked both ways before walking her bike across. He didn't know why he had to go with her if she was going to be this careful. Tinker was an old lady.

He was coming to Walgreens, a huge drugstore, part of a chain, set back from the street, a parking lot in front. He turned again to check on Tinker, who was just about to cross South Highland. He rode toward the parking lot, no hands, his arms folded across his chest. It was spring, the lousiest time of the year. The trees were still without leaves, the air was damp and cool, and there were puddles on the ground and, here and there, small lumps of snow. As William entered the parking lot, he noticed three kids who were a year ahead of him in school.

Chuck Gallo, Andy Mahan, and a Russian kid, new this year, whom people called Mafia. There were Russians everywhere in West Hartford. Even the Walgreens had a sign out front that said
APTEKA
.

The three kids had on black T-shirts airbrushed with graffiti, and their bare arms were blotchy from the cold. They wore bandanas low over their eyes. They noticed him at the same moment he noticed them, and William knew by some sort of innate triangulation that he would reach the door to Walgreens and the three of them at the same moment that Tinker, who was gaining on him from behind, would reach him. There was nothing he could do to change that. There would be trouble.

“I'm telling Daddy,” Tinker wheezed out as she slammed on her brakes, squeaking to a halt.

“She's gonna tell Daddy,” Andy Mahan said, and Tinker, who hadn't even noticed the three kids, got this stricken look. Sometimes you really did have to feel sorry for her, but she was also about to make everything five thousand times worse.

“You have fat sister,” the Russian kid said.

“Go ahead in, Tink,” William said to her. “Go in the store.”

“You
know
them?” she said, her eyes wide.

“Just go ahead and get what you came for,” William said.

Tinker pushed down the kickstand on her bike.

“I'll wait out here,” William said. No way he was going to leave their two bikes out in front with those three particular kids.

“Tink,” Chuck said. “What kind of freaking name is that?”

“You wanted to get something,” William said to Tinker. “So go inside and get it.”

Tinker, head down, disappeared through the automatic doors.

“You not go, too?” Mafia said. “You worry about bike?”

“Yeah,” William said. “I worry about bike.”

“We watch bike,” Mafia said.

Andy Mahan kicked up the stand on Tinker's bike and pushed it in a circle.

“Hey,” William said. “Come on, Mahan.”

“Come on what?” Mahan said. He slung a leg over the bike and rode it, wobbling, his long scissors legs rising over the handlebars. He bumped over the curb and into the street.

“You go get,” Mafia said, a big smile on his face.

All of William's options were clear and none of them was any good. Go after Mahan on foot and leave his bike to Mafia and Chuck? Ride after Mahan? And then what? Tinker comes out and has to deal with those two. And just then Tinker did come back outside, her cheeks bulging with the huge gumballs she'd spent her allowance on, the empty package in her fist. “That's my bike!” she yelled. “Make him give me back my bike, William.” She actually drooled, her mouth was so full of that junk. And then a man, a total stranger, must have figured out what was going on and went after Mahan: “Hey you, kid, give the little girl her bike.” He was a big, formidable-looking guy. Mahan dropped Tinker's bike and took off, the other two behind him, down Farmington Avenue.

Tinker went running to the street. Her shorts were all hitched up and caught in her crotch. William couldn't even look at her. He muttered “Thanks” to the man and took off, this time heading a dif
ferent way. Not the way Mahan and Chuck and Mafia had gone.

“We're not allowed to go that way,” Tinker called out when she saw the direction he was taking.

“Screw allowed,” he said to himself. He rode down Prospect and took a left onto Fern, which was one of the busier streets. He stayed in the street and not on the sidewalk, like he was supposed to. He let the cars slow behind him and then shoot past in annoyance when there was no oncoming traffic. He didn't care. He didn't even look back to see where she was. He knew. She'd be off her bike, pushing it along the sidewalk, because they were on about a one-degree hill.

When he reached the crest, right before Fern plunged steeply down, he looked back. Man, she was out of shape. Even at that distance, he could see she was talking to herself. Marsha Motormouth. Probably practicing what she'd tell their father when they got home. About him. Jeez. When she was almost caught up, maybe fifty feet away, he took off before she had a chance to say anything. He leaned into the wind, pedaling hard. A car came up behind him, and he raced it. The guy pulled ahead, gave him the finger.

The pothole came out of nowhere, huge and deep, rushing him. He crunched on the hand brakes, swerved left, skidded a full 180, and stopped. Shit. Cool. He looked up to see where Tinker was. Jeez, she was still up on top, still looking behind herself, letting one car pass her and then another.

She finally got up the nerve. Her bike was an old Schwinn with foot brakes. She stood on the pedals for more brake heft and came slowly down, still chewing that wad of gum, scared out of her fat little wits. Pony wouldn't have done that. Pony would have raced him down the hill, and she was two years younger than Tinker.

William watched her on the hill in a kind of fascination. She was picking up speed in spite of herself. Her mouth was wide open. In exactly the way he'd realized that he would get to Walgreens at exactly the same moment Tinker did, he knew she was dead-on for that pothole. He should have called out to warn her, but he didn't.

It happened in slow motion. The bike tipped forward, and Tinker was lifted into the air like an acrobat. Her body arced gracefully.
She should put out her arms,
William thought.
She should let go of the bike.

But she held on. She and the bike skidded across the strip of grass that divided the sidewalk from the street. She lay still for a few seconds, and he thought she was dead. Then she opened her mouth and screamed bloody murder.

He rushed to where she lay. The right side of her face went from a nasty pink to red as tiny droplets of blood surged through where the skin was scraped away. She wiped at her face, which made it worse. A car pulled over, and somebody got out to help, and then there was a cop car, and William thought,
Somebody saw what I did.

But no one had actually seen it happen. The cops brought Tinker home. William followed along with both their bikes, riding his, guiding her mangled one. He went right to his room, back to his Metallica tapes, where he had wanted to be all along. He waited for the boom to fall.

Soon William heard his father's footsteps on the stairs. Jasper swung open the door to his room so it banged against the wall and bounced almost closed again. His father stood framed in the doorway, his arms folded on his chest. His face was flushed. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

William said nothing.

“Well?” Jasper said.

William had never seen his father so angry. If William said anything about Mahan, Gallo, and Mafia, his father would say that was no excuse.

“She could have been killed,” his father said.

“But she wasn't,” William said in close to a whisper.

“What was that?” his father demanded.

“Tinker's fine,” William said.

“She is not fine!” His father's voice exploded into the room. He took a step forward. “There are very good goddamn good reasons
for all the rules in this household, William. Your mother and I do not make these things up out of thin air.” His father was shaking with rage, but all William could think was
They're not Mom's rules
. “How many times must you be told?” his father raged at him. “She could have been killed.”

“But she wasn't,” William repeated.

The blow came so suddenly that William didn't have the time to raise his hands for protection. It sent him against the wall. He fell to the floor and was holding his face in one hand when Jasper said to him with a hatred more shocking than the blow, “You're no son of mine.”

William was grounded two days for taking Tinker down that hill, plus a day for general insolence. He was required to tell Jasper, Tinker, and his mother that he was sorry. What they didn't know? He'd seen the pothole. He'd known it was there and didn't call out to warn Tinker. So his punishment was not only for the wrong reason but for a far lesser sin. He felt that lousy mix of relief and guilt. But the thing he'd never be able to explain—or if he did, they'd never believe him—was that he had not wanted Tinker to get hurt. He had not watched her head for that pothole, hoping she'd go ass over elbows. He'd wanted Tinker to sail down Fern Street the way Pony would have. He'd wanted her to see the pothole in time, jack her bike at the last minute, do a full 360, and come to a tearing, screeching halt. He'd wanted to see her sit there for a couple of seconds while she figured out she was still alive and that she'd done it herself. He'd wanted to see the look on her face.