Perfect Family (28 page)

Labor Day Weekend

Tinker sat on the porch, waiting for people to come. The meeting was scheduled for four o'clock. William wouldn't say anything beyond what they'd read in the newspaper clipping. He wanted everyone to hear it at the same time, something she had to smile about. William was always the one who resisted Daddy's meetings and here he was, holding one himself.

Her father had been out of rehab for about ten days. He'd come home knowing how to steam vegetables and broil fish. He spent a morning programming numbers into the telephone. He shopped for his own groceries. He spoke in terms of economy, not of money—amazingly—but of motion. He washed his plate after using it; he stored things in clusters on shelves according to use. When he first came home, she tried to do everything for him, just as before, but he would raise his hand and say, “I can do this myself.” She felt at a loss.

On top of that, while her father was in the hospital and Tinker
was making all those trips back and forth, Mira had taken over the care of Andrew, and Isabel had gotten all caught up in the two of them. Tinker watched them now as she waited for everyone else to arrive for the meeting. Mira and Isabel lay on their backs down on the lawn, with Andrew between them, all looking up at the sky and talking.
About what?
Tinker wondered. What was there to talk of for so long with children?

Time weighed on her. She wanted William to come. She wanted the whole story of what had happened in Idaho and about Patrick Anholt. William was her half brother now. She'd been having so much trouble with that. The term was cutting. Half a brother was like half a person. What did it even mean? It felt as though William was becoming lost to her.

Minerva was on her way by taxi. William had wanted her there. God, how the taxi trips used to irritate Tinker! She had seen them as waste, as showmanship on Minerva's part. And she'd felt that she, Tinker, must correct Minerva's extravagance. Now she felt resigned. Minerva would always be Minerva, would always pull up in a taxi whenever she came to visit. It was her money and her business. If it caused a stir in the town, so what? Minerva's arrival was the least of Tinker's worries, and it was a relief, she realized, not to have to fret over it.

Normally, an empty space like this, waiting for something to happen, would drive Tinker into the kitchen. But now she preferred it here on the porch, watching Mira, Isabel, and Andrew on the lawn. Eating was less interesting. Such an odd thing had happened to her in the last few weeks. Something she wasn't able to tell Mira or even Mark about because it meant admitting to the way she had been.

Just the day before, Mira had fed Isabel and Andrew early, and Tinker had been alone at the table on the porch, exactly where she was now. On her plate were some peas and a slab of lasagna. She ate slowly and quietly, thinking about the night her father had collapsed, the spectacle she'd made of herself. That night had been the subject of her phone calls to Mark every night. Well, not at first. At the be
ginning their calls had been cautious, mostly about Daddy and how he was doing, but as time wore on, Mark had ventured into her behavior that night. It had taken some time—days, actually—for her to tell him (face it, to admit it to herself) that she had seen Mark go into the lake with Pony and William on the night of Daddy's seventieth birthday. She had planned to go in, too, but then had felt unwelcome. He'd rather swim with Pony, she'd thought. For a whole year, she'd barely been able to look at Pony without being so jealous she couldn't stand it. It had festered and finally erupted when she'd basically blamed Pony for her own death. “You could have come with us, Tink,” Mark said. “I wanted you to. I even told them under the raft how you and I used to skinny-dip all the time.”

And after remembering what he'd said, she'd just had enough to eat. She found some Tupperware, and put the lasagna she hadn't eaten into one container and the remainder of the peas in another. She thought,
I'll have them for lunch tomorrow or perhaps for dinner.
Only then did she realize the change in herself. What she'd eaten was enough. When she needed more, there it would be. It was so simple. And she no longer awakened in the morning and set about reviewing the vast amount of food she'd eaten the day before, the accompanying guilt over it. The burden was lifted. She didn't care what was left in the kitchen. She felt as though a vast new landscape had opened up before her now that she was free.

Minerva's taxi was approaching, scraping along the center hump of their two-track. It was a low-riding old yellow cab. The driver parked, and the taxi idled for a minute or so. Tinker assumed Minerva was busy settling up. What would it cost? She had no idea. Hundreds, anyway. Minerva slid a booted foot out the rear door. She swiveled. Her face blazed into a radiant smile when she saw Tinker. Tinker embraced the old woman, feeling how tiny Minerva was, how fragile, and yet so bright, and smelling of fresh gardenias.

Her father was on the porch. He'd let his hair grow so it curled at the nape of his neck. “Minerva, you old sinner,” he called out. Tinker could hardly believe it; she had always thought them adversaries.
William, Ruth, and Mark arrived so soon after the taxi that Tinker knew they must have passed each other on the narrow driveway.

She felt butterflies seeing Mark, shy as a schoolgirl, grateful that Isabel leaped into Mark's open arms to give Tinker a moment. “Hey,” he said. She felt a hot blush on her face. He pushed her hair back and kissed her ear, letting his tongue slide over the lobe. She hugged him harder. She'd missed him so much and held tightly to his hand, feeling the familiar oozy warmth of desire at her center.

So much happened at once. William strode to the porch to give his father a kiss. It had always been Jasper who came down to the driveway to greet people if he was at home. And Ruth! As usual, she looked sensational, in a halter top the color of her hair. She busied herself getting the luggage from the trunk, then turned and gave Tinker a warm smile, and Tinker forgave Ruth for being all that Tinker was not and would never be.

They were about to hear what William knew.
Right away
, he'd said,
let's not delay
. They brought chairs down to the lawn at the water's edge. The sun was already behind the mountain, and there was a hint of chill in the air. Tinker brought out an armful of coats and blankets in case people needed them. Mark brought down a wicker chair for her father, one with arms. Tinker sat on the ground with her back against the chair where Mark sat, leaning against his legs, Isabel at her side.

William sat cross-legged on the grass, with Ruth beside him. “What I know now explains everything of the past years. Everything is interconnected, and the best way is to tell it as straightforwardly as possible and in chronological order.” William's voice was soothing and low, reminding Tinker of Mira reading a story to Isabel and Andrew. As William talked, Mark massaged her neck.

“You've all read the news report in
The Challis Messenger
, so you know how this thing ends. But the start of it was that two years before I was born, Mom had another son with my biological father, Lawrence Anholt. His name was Patrick Anholt. He's the one who died in the river. He was my full brother.”

Tinker sat up sharply. She shot a glance at her father and then at Minerva. “How can that be?” she said.

“What evidence do you have of this?” her father asked.

William said there was a letter. It was still in a metal box buried in the floor of a cabin out west, and one day maybe he'd go back and get it. His mother, their mother, had written it to his biological father when she left him. It was in her handwriting; there was no question. She left because Larry Anholt had become cruel to her and to William. He was ashamed to have a weak son. Patrick was the stronger child, his father's boy. “My father turned Patrick against me and against Mom,” he said. “From what she said in the letter, she could leave with me and not be found. But I think if she had taken us both, he would've come after her. I think she was afraid, really afraid.”

“Minerva, did you know about this?” her father asked.

“I did not,” Minerva said.

William described the life their mother had had in a small desert town in California. For Tinker, it was as far-fetched as being told her mother was a circus performer. The desert was such an unlikely place. She pictured the Sahara and its shifting sands. She pictured her mother and daddy as young people, with tiny William, traveling across the country, fleeing the wicked father, leaving another child behind.

“Patrick Anholt came east to find us,” William said. “Three times, anyway. He came to each of our houses. He did drive-bys.” Tinker shuddered at the thought. She pictured a man who looked like William but older, driving around in a rental car, slowing before their houses. “Patrick knew Pony,” William added.

Tinker raised her head. William was moving too fast. She could barely digest the next thing he said. Pony and Patrick Anholt had had an affair. Very brief. Maybe only a night. Andrew was very likely conceived. Patrick Anholt was probably Andrew's father.

Mark's hands stopped massaging Tinker's neck. She looked up. Her father had let the blanket slip to his feet. His hands dangled between his thighs.

“So Andrew is the child of—” Tinker began. She couldn't say it out loud, that Andrew's father was William's full brother. Andrew was amusing himself at the center of the circle. The child glanced up at the sound of his name. Everyone was looking at him. He grinned with pleasure.

William continued before anyone had the chance to speak. “It was back when Pony was drinking, and we all know about that. Pony had no idea who he really was, but Patrick knew who she was. It's the kind of guy Patrick was, so don't anybody feel sorry he's dead. He got what he deserved.” William cleared his throat and said he was getting ahead of himself, that what he had to say next was hardest of all, and he asked them to bear with him and let him get it all out before they spoke.

“How could this get worse?” Tinker asked.

“What I got from Patrick,” William said. “I'm trying to be clear here about who he was, his motivation. He felt cheated. He wanted to be accepted into our family. He saw all of us as one big happy family with nothing to worry about. He was resentful about the life he had and unstable as hell.” William drew in a breath. “Okay, now, look. He didn't know that Pony had become pregnant. He didn't find out about that part until just after Memorial Day this year. It all snowballed. It got out of his control. Pony had the true facts about everything for about two weeks before she died. And here's the part you have to remember. The pith of it all. Pony asked him up to Fond du Lac to tell him she was going to tell us everything. There were already too many secrets. She planned to talk to him first and then tell me next, since it affected me the most. You all know I left. We all know that if I'd stayed, Pony would still be alive. I'm having a very hard time with that one, but that's my cross. I'm here to tell you the rest of it. Pony thought the honorable thing was to tell this to Patrick before she brought it to anyone else.

“But Patrick panicked. If it got out—his reasoning was that a family like ours would crush him. Legally. Deny custody, sue him, bring charges. I don't know. Hire a hit man. In his mind, we were
powerful people. A tribe. So when she told him she was planning to make it an open book, he lost it. He panicked. She almost got the best of him. She did her best lifesaving maneuvers, and she would have bested him, but her hair became caught.”

Tinker hung tight to Mark's hand. William leaned over and pulled the blanket up over Jasper's legs, tucking it in at his sides to keep it from falling. He read aloud from some e-mails Pony had sent Katherine Nicely about incest. They said the incest taboo was mostly cultural.

“But what about all the problems?” Mira asked. “Incest kids have hemophilia, they're retarded. All sorts of awful things.”

William said not necessarily. He read another e-mail. Apparently, if problems with Andrew were going to show up, they'd have done so by now.

All eyes were on Andrew. The child must have felt the attention again. He got to his feet and toddled to Jasper. “He wants to sit in your lap,” Tinker said. Her father raised the child with some effort.

“Here's the hard part,” William said. “Patrick
was
part of the family. He used a pseudonym. He came to Pony's funeral, and he entered our family as Keith Brink.”

The name seemed to float on a distant memory. There'd been that man Keith, the one with Mira. If ever Tinker had known his last name, she'd forgotten it. He'd taken over Pony's apartment. He'd told her and Mira that Pony had told him William was angry. She'd wanted to believe him. “Mira's Keith?”

“Mira's Keith,” William said. “Tell them, Ruth.”

“Denny Bell tried to reach William. He left a message, but William was already in Idaho, so I called Denny back. When Mira and Keith were here that one time, Denny thought it was the same guy he'd seen when Pony died. He tried to get close so he could make sure, but Keith caught him and threatened him. Denny was terrified. He finally got up his nerve to call William.”

Tinker was remembering something familiar and unpleasant, something she'd tried not to think about, but there it was. There had
been a man parked in front of her house the day Pony's body was found. She clapped a hand over her mouth at the realization that it had been Keith that day, watching her and talking to Isabel.

“How did Keith die?” Mira asked. “I would very much like to picture it.”

“Isabel,” Minerva said. “Let's you and I go into the house and see what we can find for an old lady to drink. Shall we?”

Once Isabel was gone, William described what had happened out in Idaho. “He thought he'd be able to come back here, claim paternity, and be welcome in the family as Andrew's father.”