Perfect Family (9 page)

Katherine Nicely stood. “Pony e-mailed me last week. She was so happy with Andrew. She was such a good mom.” She choked up and sat down. The room was quiet for a time before Lulu Garner stood and whispered about how she would miss Pony. A few other people spoke, including a woman who had worked with Pony at the art store and a man with a deep voice who had bought one of her paintings.

Mira swiveled around to see. “Good-looking guy,” she whispered to William.

William couldn't believe her sometimes. Was she for real?

After the service, William looked everywhere for Denny Bell, but people kept stopping him, tugging at him, telling him how sorry they were. He was thwarted, as in one of those dreams where you can't make any progress. His legs felt like lead.

The limos were lined up on Farmington Avenue. Ralph Becker himself was holding the door open. “Immediate family only in this
one,” Tinker said, emerging from somewhere and taking William's arm. In that dress she looked like a bat, operatic, hems fluttering. “Just you, me, Daddy, Mira, and Isabel in the limo. Ralph said.”

“What about Ruth?” William said.

“If Mark can't, Ruth can't.”

He wanted to smack her one sometimes, the way she had everything organized. Even now she couldn't let it go. A big red SUV with Massachusetts plates backed out of a space nearby. The Bells. “Hey,” William shouted. “Wait!” They were leaving. They couldn't leave. He ran down the block, calling to them to stop, but the SUV pulled into the street and hung a right. Through its tinted windows, William saw the sullen moon of Denny Bell's face watching him from the backseat. When William turned back, Tinker had shown Ruth to another car. Ruth gave him a little what-can-you-do wave.

In the limo, his father asked, scowling, what all the yelling was about.

William didn't answer. He looked out the window, holding his tongue. Holding his temper. The procession went down Trout Brook to Fern Street. Past the Morley school they'd all gone to as kids. Left on Steele Road, past their house, toward the cemetery.

William braced his feet to keep from sliding off the small seat when the limo took the turn onto Asylum. Everything rushed past backward. He had to focus to keep from becoming carsick. His father slouched against the side of the limo, his eyes shut. Isabel laid her head in Mira's lap. Mira stroked the child's hair.

“What were you arguing with Minerva about at the wake, Dad?” William asked his father.

“There was no argument,” his father said, still with his eyes shut.

“This is Pony's
funeral
, William. Give it a rest,” Tinker said.

“I hadn't noticed,” William said.

“Stop it, both of you,” Mira said.

Now the limo turned sharply, entering the cemetery through narrow iron gates, then to the Carteret family plot at the crest of the hill.
A hole had been dug. The earth looked dark and rich along the sides. People arrived and walked slowly up the hill.

The minister spoke again. William's attention was fixed on the coffin, which lay suspended on heavy gray straps over the grave. He didn't want to see it lowered. He didn't want to hear the sound of earth being thrown on top of it. He didn't want to be here for the end, so he turned away and walked down the expanse of green, among the monuments, to the point where the hill curved steeply down and gave onto a view in the distance of Hartford and the Connecticut River glistening in the sun. It was a perfectly clear day, and he thought how many Carteret funerals must have been held in that very spot. How many of his ancestors, being unable to watch the earth swallow up someone they loved, had come and stood exactly where William stood.

He became aware of a voice very much like his mother's singing a familiar hymn. He walked partway back up the hill toward the gathering to hear it better. Mira stood there, her arms at her sides, her face lifted, the blue tips of her hair catching the sun. She had a huge voice for such a small person.

People tried to join in on the chorus, but she wouldn't slow for them. This was her moment.
Damn
, he thought, and came closer. Mira winked at him. She was headed into the last verse, the one they never sang in church, Pony's favorite. The wicked verse, she used to call it. “You know what it means?” Pony had told him. “It means you can get away with anything as long as you're decent about it. You can go do your thing in life, and when you die, pfft! It's all forgiven. Isn't that cool? I mean, if you believe in that stuff. But even if you don't.”

William joined in. He stepped up and joined Mira in singing it, startling people with his baritone.

“I wish I'd known you were going to do that,” Tinker said in the limo going back to the house. “I would have had the words for people. Right, Daddy?”

“We all know the words,” William said.

“Other people didn't.”

“I didn't know I was going to,” Mira said. “I just decided to do it. For Pony.”

William shut his eyes and thought of Fond du Lac, and it occurred to him that the house would still be warm from Pony. It would still hold the last of her presence. He'd go up there. He'd ask Ruth. Before the family started their regular summer visits there, before they contaminated everything and the remaining threads of his sister were lost forever.

The letter was addressed to Ms. Miranda Carteret. Give the man credit for getting that right. Mira was short for Miranda and not a name unto itself, as some believed, because of the actress Mira Sorvino. Mira had told guys in bars that it was short for Miracle. Or she'd say Mirage, if she was about to leave them cold. Or hot, as the case may be.

He also got the address right. 14 Maplewood Avenue, West Hartford, CT 06119. Even the apartment number: #2. He'd done his homework.

He'd spoken at Pony's service, and she'd liked that, and then he was at the house after, which she found ballsy, given his thin connection to the family. She'd caught glimpses of him now and then. At one point she was in the dining room, off by herself, watching Mark pouring wine for Pony's friends, the cute ones from the lake—Katherine and those other two she always got mixed up. They were laughing at something, and Tinker must have heard the laughter, because she came out of the kitchen and made a beeline for them. She
slid an arm around Mark's waist, as if saying,
Hands off
. She leaned over to kiss each of the girls, who were as thin as birds and with lustrous, swinging hair, the polar opposite of poor old Tinker. But what Tinker didn't know was that she had a puss full of powdered sugar from eating something sweet in the kitchen by herself. Mark wiped it away with his thumb in full view of the three goddesses. Tinker just fled for the hall and up the stairs. Poor Tinker. But anyway, that was when Mira spotted the man from the funeral, the one who'd spoken, the writer of the letter she was holding. He was observing William at a distance, as if he wanted to introduce himself. Then the doorbell rang, and she was the only one near enough to answer it.

Aunt Minerva walked in, looking anorectic, like one of those skinny girls who wear tons of clothes to cover up their thinness. A taxi was waiting on the street with its interior lights on. Oh, that taxi was going to vex Tinker. A taxi from Manhattan to Hartford and back. Tinker would tally it. She would know exactly how much money Minerva was wasting.

Mira hadn't spoken to Minerva yet. There'd been an argument or something between Minerva and her father, so Mira had steered clear. Anyway, William was so obviously her favorite. Minerva and William had been talking at Pony's funeral, their heads bowed together, whispering. Minerva made William laugh. She would reach out and touch his cheek or his arm in an affectionate way. Mira didn't mind at all that William was the favorite, but Tinker! Mira had heard more than once how when Tinker was five and William was eleven, Minerva had invited William to stay with her in New York for a week. They'd gone to the theater, to restaurants. They'd stayed up all night playing monopoly and then went outside and roamed around the New York streets at three in the morning. Tinker had assumed she would take her turn when she was William's age, and then Mira and Pony would have their turns after her. Everything fair and square. But the invitation never came. Only William was ever asked. That year and others. It absolutely frosted Tinker.

“Mira, sweetheart.” Minerva glanced about. “So many people!”

Mira took her aunt's coat.

“Are you terribly overwhelmed?” Minerva asked her.

“Yes,” Mira said. “As a matter of fact.” It came as a relief to be asked this question. She loved it when she didn't have to explain herself.

“You must duck out,” Minerva said. “You're not a person to take solace in crowds.”

So she had. She'd gone out into the backyard, away from that numbing sound, away from all those people. She'd pulled a lawn chair out beyond the patio to the dark at the far end of the yard.

When their mother had died, well, she could admit that to herself. She was good at identifying feelings. Her mother's death had come as a shock. But she'd also felt a certain excitement. It had been out of the blue, and of course it was awful. But there had been an almost delicious edge to it, too, because it was the fulfillment of a promise once made and now kept. Mira had occasionally imagined the day her mother would die; her father, too. She supposed everyone did that. How old would Mira be? How would it happen? Where? How would she get the news? She had both dreaded and anticipated it. And then all of a sudden there it was. Her mother was dead. She'd felt intensely the removal of a protection. While her parents were alive, they were the barrier between her and her own death. Now one was gone.

But this? Pony?

The back door to the house opened behind her, and she'd turned to see the man from the funeral. “Nice out here.” He dragged a chair across the grass toward her. “You're one of the sisters, right?” He extended a hand. “Keith Brink.”

She knew who he was. She didn't take the hand right away. She wanted to see what he'd do.

“Maybe you want to be alone out here.”

“You can stay.” She took his hand. She liked to know how a guy's hands felt, the way dogs saw with their noses. She'd know about a
guy once she'd touched his hand. Keith's was large and warm, a little rough. Comforting.

He sat down and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. It felt private, being with him. “This must be pretty hard for you.”

She took him in. The dark stranger. “Who are you, anyway?”

“Nobody,” he said with a grin. He leaned back in the chair. “What I mean is, I'm not from around here. I'm from Iowa, here on a job. Your sister was such a nice girl, and I wanted to pay my respects.”

She studied his face for longer than was usually comfortable. “Nice girl,” she repeated.

“You can talk to me if you want,” he said.

“I'm a year older. I rode a bike before her. I learned to read before her. Got my driver's license first. Everything. Then she goes and bloody dies before me. It's like impossible to take it in.”

He studied her. “You feel cheated, is that it?”

That was exactly it. She watched his face for disapproval and found none. “She got there first. I keep thinking,
How could she do that to me?
”

“Sounds like you think she did it on purpose.”

“How well did you know her?” Mira asked.

“Hardly at all, really. I saw her paintings at a bank in East Hartford. I liked them. The bank had her number. I called, went over to her place, and bought one of the ones she had there.”

“What did it cost you?”

“A hundred and fifty.”

She whistled. She put her head back and shut her eyes.

“Too much?” He waited for her to answer, but she didn't. After a few moments more, he gave up and left. She watched him through half-open eyes. Just at the back door, he turned, as she'd known he would. She smiled privately to herself. He'd be back. He'd lift her spirits. The things she'd told him might have shocked other people. After he left, she felt more relaxed.

He was nothing like Peter Cassidy. He was a lot older than Peter
was back then. Darker, too, but he brought Peter to mind in spades. Certain guys always did. Peter was her best friend Judy's older brother, and one afternoon when Mira was thirteen, she had gone to their house on Foxcroft Road, a few blocks away. Judy wasn't there. Neither were Mr. and Mrs. Cassidy. But Peter had been there. They hadn't spoken a word to each other. He'd taken her down to the basement, where they had a pool table with a bare bulb hanging over it so the light was bright in the center of the room, dark all around the sides. They shot some pool, still without speaking. Mira had been wearing a skirt, and Peter had fooled with the hem of her skirt when she leaned over to take a shot. She'd liked the way that felt. She'd let him slip his finger into her. All with only the sound of their breathing and the slap of billiard balls to break the silence.

Mira had gone back to the Cassidys' a lot of times, and it was always the same. Always in the basement, always without speaking, always with Mira pretending to play pool.

Mira opened her knees slightly to the great black yard behind, pretended Peter Cassidy was out there, slipped her hand to her groin, and circled gently, insistently, waiting for the charge to shoot through her, waiting to feel good, to feel more, to feel anything at all. Finally, the sensation caught and built and then, unexpectedly, as if she'd been ripped wide open, the tears came and wouldn't stop. When it was over, she dried her cheeks with the sleeve of her shirt. It was then she heard the sound nearby of stones under the soles of some one's shoes. Somebody was out there. “Who's there?” she whispered into the darkness, but there was no answer.

 

The note said:

He'd printed it carefully—black ink in block letters on plain notebook paper. His signature had a very large
K
and a very large
B.
Would she go? Would she not? She remembered the feeling of his hand, which she had liked, and she was sure he had been the one she'd heard, the one who'd watched her that night. It was such a nervy thing for a stranger to do in her father's house. It felt intimate. She couldn't decide. She got to the Readers' Feast at one-fifteen and spotted him near the window at a small table. He had already spotted her.

He pulled out the chair, something people never did anymore. She sat down and there was a moment of silence. She might not have recognized him on the street. He looked different. He was still good-looking, but in a tumbled-around, nicked-by-life way. He had on jeans and a plaid western shirt. He probably noticed her eye. She had an abnormality, a keyhole-shaped iris. People either stared at it or avoided looking. Keith did neither. The table was too small. Her knees touched his. The effect on him was immediate. She never tired of the way men responded so predictably to her touch, like puppies. He smiled. “I'm glad you decided to come.”

“Tell me who you are,” she said.

“Keith Brink.”

“Married?”

He shook his head.

“Girlfriend?”

“Not yet. What about you.”

She shook her head.

“You look like her.” He scanned her face. “You have her mouth. Her skin.”

Mira looked into his very blue eyes.
Keithie blue eyes.
He unnerved her a little. His hair was smooth as a seal's. He had that pull
she liked in a guy. Something she never wanted to analyze. Maybe a little dangerous, but nothing she couldn't handle. It was either there or it wasn't. And wide shoulders. “So you buy a painting from a total stranger, and then you go to her funeral.”

His smiling blue eyes seemed to drill into her. “What can I say?”

“It wasn't a question.”

“I bet you're one of those women who never know how beautiful they are.”

“Oh, give me a break.” She glanced around. She felt conspicuous.

He laughed. “You're like her, too. She didn't let people get away with much.”

“Meaning she didn't let you get away with much. So as I was saying, you buy a painting from her, and what does that take? Twenty minutes?”

“I was there longer than that. A couple of hours. We hit it off, I guess. I don't remember all we talked about. I've tried to remember. Her boy, I guess. The family. She wanted to know about the Midwest.”

“When was this, anyway?”

He ran a hand over his face. “A month ago. Maybe six weeks.”

“And you never saw her again after that?”

He shook his head.

“How did you know she died?”

He didn't even break stride. “Teller at the bank.”

“What do you do for a living?” she asked.

“Plumbing and heating systems. I move around the country, job to job.”

“Let me see your hands.” She liked blue-collar guys. He held them out. She felt the palms and the undersides of his fingertips, which were callused. She tapped one very lightly. “Can you feel that?”

He shook his head.

“A construction worker who's into bank art. A real Renaissance man.” She sat back and crossed her legs. She'd worn a long skirt, almost to the floor, and a gauzy blue shirt. She knew she looked at
home in the Readers' Feast, which was a little café attached to a bookstore. He didn't. He would look at home in a Taco Bell.

“I had bare walls,” he said.

“Why did you ask me here?” The jury was out on him. He had very white teeth.

“Do I need a reason?”

She scanned his face, held his gaze for so long that she saw the threads of various blues in his eyes. “Yes.”

“I think you're interesting.”

“People like you don't find people like me interesting,” she said.

“Then I'm the exception.” He had been tipping back in his chair. He leaned forward with a dull thump. “I've had loss, too. I know what it's like, and I know what makes it—well, not better—nothing does that. Bearable, maybe. After my mother died, people I didn't know came up and told me things about her I never knew. It was nice.”

“Like what?”

“What she was like when she was younger. Little things. I just saw her…differently.”

“That sucks, though, doesn't it? In a metaphysical kind of way.”

He had a great lopsided smile. “Pony said you were the thinker in the family.”

“She did? No way. What else did she say?”

“That of all you kids, you were the one who was going to make it.”

“Get out of here,” Mira said.

“You asked me to tell you what she said. She liked you best.”

“No. William was her favorite. They were like this.” She held up her index and middle finger, twisted.

“She said William was an enigma.”