Perfect Family (4 page)

It hit Tinker hard inside the house. Andrew's toys were everywhere. Pony had been sketching him; there were some drawings of him and bits of charcoal on the couch. There was a sandwich on a plate in the kitchen, covered with a dish towel, as though Pony planned to eat it later. Has she said anything to indicate she was depressed? Randy had asked. Didn't that sandwich say no? Wasn't the sandwich a sign of hope? You wouldn't make yourself a sandwich and then go outside and kill yourself. You wouldn't leave your son on the beach.

“Was Pony taking drugs?” Her father had come into the kitchen behind her, along with Anita and Denny.

“No.” Tinker wasn't about to have that discussion with Anita and Denny present. Not that she knew the answer one way or another, but still.

Anita kept pulling the flaps of her bathrobe tighter across herself.

“We need to get Andrew,” Tinker said. She felt panicked at the thought of him over at the Bells', where he didn't belong. He should be here with them.

Her father shook his head. “Let him sleep.” He appealed to Anita. “If you don't mind.”

“Oh, no,” Anita said. “Anything we can do—”

“But Daddy—”

Her father put his arm around Anita's shoulders. “Do you need one of us to see you back to the house?” Tinker watched her father work the old charm on Anita, the Carteret grace.

Anita shook her head. “I'm sure everything will turn out just fine in the end, Jasper. I'm sure. It's what they say in these missing-persons cases. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it's nothing.”

Anita shut the front door behind her, sealing in the silence. Pony was somewhere out there in that deep lake, Tinker was sure. “I'll make us some tea,” Tinker said, thinking that the clink of cups and saucers, the whistle of the kettle, would be calming, normal. Her father sat on the sofa staring at the floor. He took the tea without looking up. He set it down. He reached for the telephone and began dialing.

He tried William, but there was no answer. Then Mira. In the quiet of the night, Tinker could hear Mira's alarmed voice filling the room. Mira hadn't seen Pony since Memorial Day, when they'd all been together. She hadn't spoken to Pony. Her father said he'd call as soon as they knew anything and then hung up. He kept calling. He went house by house around the lake. He'd dial the number, let it ring, hang up when no one answered, and go on to the next. So few people were there. It was too early; summer didn't begin for real at Lake Aral until the Fourth of July. He awakened a few people, apologized for the late hour, explained that Pony was missing, and asked if they had seen her. Out of a dozen calls, only one person had
seen her—buying a newspaper at the general store that morning, carrying Andrew in one arm. She'd said hello. Nothing more. And no, no one had been with her.

Her father lay down on the couch and closed his eyes. He still had his overcoat on. Tinker stared at him the way you do at a sleeping child. His pale, freckled forehead relaxed in sleep, making him look younger, his face uncreased. Tinker waited until his breathing became slow and regular. She tiptoed to the kitchen. Randy had said not to disturb things, and she supposed that included the sandwich on the counter. She opened the refrigerator. There was some beer, some bottles for Andrew, and a few jars of baby food. Tinker shut the refrigerator and opened the cupboard. Cans of tuna fish. A jar of mayonnaise. She opened another cupboard. A bag of marshmallows and a box of Ritz crackers.

She pulled open the bag of marshmallows, removed one, and pressed it with her tongue to the roof of her mouth. The confectioners' sugar felt cool and lovely. She read the calorie warning on the side. A serving was six marshmallows, 138 calories, or 23 in each one. She put another one in her mouth and then several more, pushing them in, sucking on them, squeezing them flat, turning them to slime, sucking them down. She hadn't eaten since dinner. She checked on her father. He was still asleep on the couch, his breathing a near snore. She opened the box of crackers, careful to keep the paper from rustling, the way you open candy in a movie theater. She ate the crackers in stacks of four, putting them whole into her mouth. Her stomach felt taut and uncomfortable. She was at the point of no return. It didn't matter how many she ate now. When she finished, she stuffed the empty marshmallow bag into the pocket of her sweatpants. She folded down the paper in the box of crackers, closed the box, and put it back in the cupboard. She wiped the white powder and crumbs from the table, then wiped her sleeve across her mouth.

She covered her father with a blanket, switched off the living room light, and went outside to the porch, aware of the crackers
still in the cupboard and the inevitability that sometime tonight she would slip back into the kitchen and eat them. Eat them all. It was her comfort, this hiatus, this period before she finished the food.

When she and Mark were first married and living in a small apartment in the south end of Hartford, Mark sometimes had to attend dinners at downtown hotels. The dinners always ran late and involved martinis. Tinker used to sit at the window, waiting for him and making frequent trips to the kitchen. Eating stilled her thoughts. It kept her from thinking of his car smashed into a streetlight.
He'll be the fourteenth car
, she'd tell herself so she could count off the time slowly and not worry for thirteen cars. When the fourteenth car went by, she'd start all over again.

Now she watched the water.
In half an hour Pony will come along in a canoe
, she told herself.
At two-forty-five she'll come swimming back across the lake
. The time ticked away. She went back to the kitchen for the crackers. She kept thinking about Pony's muscular thinness. Pony never could float. She was densely built, like a guy. She'd had to cheat in swimming tests to keep herself afloat, finning secretly so the instructor couldn't see.

If Pony were at the bottom of the lake, it could be days before she was found. Aral was the deepest lake in Vermont, so far down it hadn't even been measured. At three o'clock, Tinker took two Tylenol PMs and went up to her room. Her father was no longer on the couch. He must have gone to bed.

She woke up, groggy, to the sounds of voices. It was early. Six o'clock. She got up and went to the window. She felt thickheaded and bloated. Two Hillsboro police cars were in the drive next to Pony's car, as well as a gray sedan. There was a plain black van parked on the grass.

She knocked on her father's door, cracked it, and saw that he was lying on the bed, still in his trench coat, wide awake. “They're back,” she said.

Four men were on the beach in black scuba gear, with tanks on
their backs and hoods over their heads. She felt sick to her stomach. She went back inside to the upstairs bathroom before anyone noticed her, and sat on the edge of the tub. She looked at herself in the full-length mirror, hating what she saw—her heavy body, her hair frizzed from the night's humidity and bushing out to either side. A deep crease ran vertically between her fair eyebrows. She pressed at the crease out of habit, as if she could make it go away. She had circles beneath her eyes.

She splashed cold water on her face. Her mouth was open. She closed it, but it fell slack again. This must be what shock looked like. She wanted to stay where she was and not go out there again. But she had to. Daddy would need her.

Her father was standing next to Randy. Tinker joined them. “Tinker,” Randy said.

She tried to get Randy to look her in the eye, but he was concentrating on the divers. All four of them waded into the water to their knees, crouched, and disappeared. A few big bubbles erupted at the surface where they entered, and then here and there, so she knew their locations. Randy said they were using the spiral pattern, starting with small loops and going to larger ones so they could cover the area thoroughly. “The longer they stay in the water, the better,” he said. “Let's hope for the best.”

How long did she watch? A long time? No time at all? There wasn't a ripple on the whole lake except for the circling disturbance of the divers. Tinker knew the lake bottom very well. They all did. “Fond du Lac” meant exactly that. Bottom of the lake. There were whole towns in the Midwest called Fond du Lac, but in those cases it meant the southernmost point of a lake.

Lake Aral was sandy right off the shore, but about fifteen feet out, the bottom fell away precipitously. You could swim underwater, your belly skimming the sandy bottom in the shallow part, and then follow the contour deeper and deeper, where the plant life began. Maybe a hundred feet beyond that was the raft, anchored in deep water by a chain that connected to a large concrete slab with an iron
hook countersunk into it. She had always thought of the space between the shore and the anchor as a deepening triangle, theirs to use, their play area, well delineated. Safe.

One of the divers surfaced and signaled. Randy walked down to the water's edge to talk to the diver. Then the diver returned to the water. “I'm afraid he's found something,” Randy said to Tinker and her father.

Her father's face had a hard set to it, and he was biting his lip for courage. Randy went to the van and talked to a man Tinker hadn't noticed earlier. She heard the crackling of a police radio. She could hear voices but not what they were saying. She felt so scared, she thought her legs might collapse. The rest of it happened in slow motion. All four divers came to the surface. Her father fell to the ground. Randy helped him to his feet and waved smelling salts under his nose. Her father refused the chair they brought over. Tinker sat in it. She had no strength in her legs.

The divers had something with them, were swimming it slowly toward shore. It was Pony. She lay facedown, her back and shoulders breaking the surface. Her skin was gray. Her hair looked almost black, and for a moment Tinker hoped it was somebody else. Somebody with black hair. From somewhere a stretcher had come. They moved it out onto the water. They lifted Pony onto it. The air felt painful on Tinker's skin. Her perceptions felt fractured. The water too black, the sky too bright.

The men moved in the slow motion of a dream. Pony was naked. Her head was bent.
Fix it,
Tinker wanted to say.
Fix her head.
Her father was up to his waist in the water now, in his clothes. He must have gone in. Then the men were lifting him up, as if in a baptism. He had collapsed again and gone under. One of the men had him by the elbow. Her father's coat was plastered to his body. Tinker still couldn't move. She was in the dream where you want to run but can't. They carried the stretcher to the beach and laid it on the grass. Her father said, “Yes.” Tinker stood up. And the next thing she knew, she was there, looking down at Pony. They'd put a blanket
over Pony's body but left her face exposed. Tinker dropped to her knees on the sand. Pony was so wet. She blotted Pony's face with the sleeve of her shirt. Water was pooled in Pony's mouth. The side of her head was raw red.

“What happened?” Tinker looked up at Randy, at the divers, and then down again. Pony's eyes were open. A milky color, not their usual brownish green. Her hair was sheared off on the left side where the skin was red.

Randy said something to one of the divers, who stepped up. “I'm sorry, ma'am. Sir.” He looked down at his feet. “She was pretty deep,” he said. “Her hair was caught on the chain for the anchor, pretty deep. We had to cut her hair to free her.”

“But she wasn't allowed,” Tinker shouted.
The rule, the rule, the rule
, she kept thinking.
Mother's rule
. They had to wear swim caps if they were doing anything with the raft. Their mother insisted. Long hair can become wrapped around things.
Why can't you ever listen, Pony?
Tinker thought.
Why don't you ever bloody listen?

Randy helped her to her feet and across the lawn. There seemed to be men everywhere. Two more cars had arrived. People were in the house. Others were going through the sand on the beach. Somebody was talking to her father. They waved her over. The man was a cop.

“There will be an autopsy,” her father said to her. “In Burlington. This is Officer Rivers.”

Officer Rivers said that the medical examiner would determine the cause of death. He had some questions. He knew this was very difficult, but would they mind?

“No,” Tinker said. “I mean, no, I don't mind.”

“Was she in the habit of leaving the child while she went for a swim?” Officer Rivers asked. He had a round, pink face, fair eyebrows like hers.

“He's not even a year old.” Tinker shrugged. “There were no habits.”

“Was she a careful mother?”

“Yes,” her father said.

“I'm sorry. Of course.” Officer Rivers had a Vermont accent. “Do you know why she might have been”—he lifted his shoulders, opened his pudgy hands—“exploring the anchor?”

“Pony always attaches it on Memorial Day. But nobody ever goes down there other than that. It's dark, slimy,” Tinker said.

“Something wrong with it, perhaps? Something she might have been checking?”

“I don't know why she'd have thought she needed to check it,” her father said. “We just checked it a few weeks ago—” He broke down, regained his composure. “It had a repair, but the repair was fine.”

“Did she have any trouble with anyone that you know of?”

“Oh God, you think somebody
did
this?” The thought took Tinker's breath away.

Officer Rivers pushed his glasses up so they rested on his forehead. “We have to consider the possibility.”

“Pony had no enemies,” her father said.

“Was anybody here with her?” the officer asked.

Tinker shook her head.

Officer Rivers put away his notebook and pen. He thanked them. He said there'd be a preliminary report in a day or two and a full report later on.