“Oooooh!” whispered Joanna suddenly. “I just thought of something, Shelley. You know who else you might meet at a big reunion where they're inviting old high school friends? I bet you will finally meet Wife Number One.”
Celeste.
We knew her name, but not her face; we knew the fact of her, but not the details. I have always been grateful to Celeste for preferring her career in Chicago over Daddy, because if she hadn't, we would not have been born. I think my father is perfect, and I cannot understand how Celeste, who knew him when he was so young and handsome, could have thought anything different. But it's good she did. I like myself and Joanna and even Angus with the exact gene assortment we have.
“I always used to think,” said Joanna, her voice dreamily crossing two thousand miles of choppy blue ocean, “that Daddy and Celeste had a son they never told us about. A boy who must be a few years older than I am. Somehow I would meet him, all unaware, and we would fall in love, and I would end up marrying my half brother.”
“Eeeeeuuuhhhh!” I shrieked. “How disgusting. How can you even think of things like that, Joanna? You know they didn't have any children.”
“We know they didn't tell us if they had any,” Joanna corrected me.
This was thrilling and repelling. A hidden, secret brother or sister.
“I have to go,” said Joanna, and this time it was her voice with the quiver. “I love you, Shell.”
“Wait! You haven't promised to come!” “Loving you and coming to Barrington are separate issues. You think I want to hang around wringing the sweat out of my T-shirt on some deadly hot August afternoon while everybody tells Daddy how unstable we are? Forget it, Shell. You're on your own.”
Part of Daddy's stability program is fresh air, so Saturday morning, he took us on a hike at a state park, and we had our picnic at a famous revolutionary war battle site. Then we picked our own sweet corn at a farm where you can also pick your own zucchini, but even Daddy was against that.
Just when I thought we had had enough fresh air, we rented bicycles and pedaled uphill and down. Sunday we toured famous historical houses and noticed how small the beds were, and had the usual Early American House discussion on whether people were short back then or just slept all curled up.
Everybody was relieved when Daddy went back to New York City before dawn Monday morning. His heart, he claimed, could not take the combination of Angus and all this rural green serenity. Our hearts were rather tired also, so we watched television all day Monday as an antidote to so much fresh air.
Annette didn't know what to do. This is frequently the case with Annette, which is kind of nice in a stepmother, because you can push her around so easily. How could she face people in this town? Her very first conversation would have to be about bomb shares.
“I wish you'd stop calling it a bomb share,” said Angus. “I didn't sell a single person a share in a bomb. I sold them shares in a bomb shelter”
Annette said she thought I looked like the kind of person who would be good at returning shares to strangers who would probably get mad.
I have never been able to decide what I look like. I think I have potential. But I'm not there yet. When I look in the mirror, I see an unfinished product. Joanna says there is no such thing as a “finished” fourteen-year-old anyhow.
It's funny. I cannot do anything if I have to do it alone. But with a companion at my side, even a nutcase brother like Angus, I can take on the world. Or at least Vermont.
One way or another, you meet a lot of people through Angus. Everybody and their parents to whom shares had been sold wanted to stop and chat, see if Angus did this sort of thing routinely. Angus would lean on his leg, which he uses as a walking stick when he's in the mood, and fish ten dollars out of the hollow that runs from the mannequin's thigh to its toe, and solemnly hand it over.
You had your stock reactions: People fled or people started laughing.
There was one house where the grandfather, the father and the son were all named DeWitt, which appeared to be a first name. I narrowed my eyes at the DeWitt who was about my own age and wondered what it was like to be saddled with three generations of that ghastly name. Angus was returning ten dollars to DeWitt's little sister, Veronica. DeWitt said they'd take the ten dollars back only if they got a bomb-shelter tour. After I convinced Angus that no, he could not charge for the tour, DeWitt and Veronica fell in line behind us.
Eventually we collected quite a parade, everybody patiently waiting in front yards while Angus and I went up the steps to return ten dollars to the next victim. Some victims were edgy about opening the door under the circumstances, so Angus hollered loudly enough to do two houses at a time, and everybody in his parade clapped.
By the end of the week I felt as if we had lived in Vermont for years, and I am sure Vermont felt the same.
Annette steered clear of the village and all adults who might find out that she was responsible for the behavior of the kid with the leg and the bomb shelter. She did things like make grape jam, which we had known you could do, but had not known you could do yourself. We really got into it, stirring and sugaring and filling the cute little jelly jars, with their flat lids and separate screw tops.
But when it was time to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, Angus opted for brand names. He knew what was in those, he explained. He trusted them.
DeWitt and Veronica came in their rowboat and took us to their house around the far side of the lake so we could watch the movies they had rented. Each generation of DeWitt had a different taste in movies, so the selection was wide and interesting. Angus felt they should have an outboard motor on their boat, since oars were too tedious. DeWitt said shhh, because his grandfather DeWitt was at that very moment trying to Stop Noise Pollution On the Lake, perpetrated by people with outboard motors.
On Friday Daddy came up from the city with a huge bag of goodies from Zabar's, which is my favorite delicatessen in the world. I am sure that shopping at Zabar's on a regular basis makes you just as stable as all the backyards in Barrington. We had wonderful slabs of heavy country bread and four kinds of bagels and two flavors of cheesecake and several varieties of chocolate treats. When Daddy was very relaxed and having an Everything bagel slathered with Vermont butter and Annette's grape jam, not a combination beloved by many, Angus explained that some people didn't want their ten dollars back.
Daddy was suspicious. You get that way when you live with Angus.
“It's true,” Annette said. “We had six who would rather keep their lifetime use of the bomb shelter.”
We? I thought. I looked hard at Annette, but she did not own up to staying safely indoors during the entire bomb-shelter-return time span.
“Probably going to rent their shares out to some passing skier in February,” muttered my father. “I can see the newspaper ad now: Unique accommodations. Cozy underground space. Free soup.”
Angus thought this was possibly the most brilliant idea our father had ever had. “And here I thought you were some dull businessman in New York,” said Angus wonderingly, offering to shake Daddy's hand. “We'd better put the ad in the paper now, Dad. People will be wanting to make their winter plans.”
My father stared out the window into the dark. In Vermont, after the sun vanishes, the grass goes black and the trees and the lake turn indigo, like blue-stained shadows, but the sky is translucent. You can see through its holes to the stars, as if the night is an old skirt with a silver slip. “Maybe when we visit Barrington, somebody there will offer to keep Angus,” Daddy said.
Annette said that from what we had told her of Barrington, they did not grow people like Angus there.
“New blood,” said my father hopefully. “They need an infusion of—”
“I'm old blood, Dad,” said Angus. “I'm practically a native of that town.”
“You've been there maybe five times,” said our father. “Six, tops.” He threatened Angus with bodily mutilation if Angus brought up the ski rental idea again. He said
Angus would resemble that leg he carried around, severed at important junctions of his body. Annette said nervously that this was just the sort of talk we must be sure to avoid around the Perfects.
I have always wanted to be part of a big family. I used to think that if we had just moved to Barrington, or if we were Wife Number One's children and Daddy never reached Two and Three, then we would never have left Barrington, and my cousin Carolyn and I would hang out together.
I wondered what Brett and Carolyn did all day long in Barrington. It's a pretty town. Huge oaks and maples divide the wide, flat front yards, and there are bushes as big as bunk beds for when you're playing hide-and-seek. Although we were all too old for those games now. Barrington River is too swift for swimming, but there are town pools and a terrific mall, a pretty little downtown and a brick elementary school, like the ones in picture books.
Carolyn and Brett have rope swings and a hammock, a tire swing and an ancient sandbox, mainly used by cats. I remember those things from our last visit, when I was eleven and Mommy and Daddy had separated, and everybody was saying how terrible it was, and it was terrible. I sat in Grandma's lap and cried, and she had a big white wicker rocking chair and we rocked and rocked.
My grandparents used to live in a house just like DeWitt's, with brown shingles and big porches. The porch ceiling was painted light blue, like morning sky, and the floor was painted gray, and everything was peeling. Once on a rainy day we roller-skated for hours, wearing dents in the porch floor. Grandma just smiled and made more lemonade.
I always think of Barrington like that. It's always summer, and we're always drinking lemonade, and Grandma is always giving me a hug.
But Grandpa died, and Grandma moved to Arizona to escape the harsh winters. Somebody bought their house and put yellow siding over the shingles and took off one porch and added skylights. I saw it in a photograph, but I don't want to see it in real life, because I'm afraid of losing the memory of the brown house where Grandpa lived and Grandma hugged and Mommy and Daddy were still married.
We sat quietly while Daddy had his iced tea and Angus and I had ripe red cherries from the bowl Annette had put on the table among the pastel Queen Anne's lace. Angus and I collected the cherry pits in a cup he had made by sawing off the bottom of a plastic soda bottle. He was going to plant the pits in the gutter to see if they would root in the rotting leaves Daddy had not yet cleaned out. This was a project that would involve the danger of falling and would have to be done when Daddy was in New York and Annette was shopping.
I imagined the August reunion.
The Perfects would be all lined up, clean and calm and camera-ready. Their clothes would match and might even be ironed. Everybody would have had a haircut the day before.
We would be a shambles. Angus would wave his leg, and Annette would be dull. Daddy would look like an illustration from “The Three Bears,” and I would be herding my family into place, like a little sheepdog.
“Did you sign up for the library summer reading program?” asked our father. He probably figured any children's activity at a Vermont library had to be safe.
“Yes!” cried Angus, with whom nothing is safe. “They're doing unusual pets. Mine will win all the prizes.”
It is always Angus's intention to win all the prizes. He gets one now and then, usually from a science teacher who is just praying he will go away.
The library here has only two rooms: children's and grown-ups', divided by the circulation desk. The children's room is old and soft, with dark wood walls and old wood tables. I love it there. But I was not in the summer reading program. The librarian said I was too old. He waved me away from the safe little shelf of choices for summer readers and shooed me into adult books. I don't like real adult books. My reading tastes had frozen at the third-grade level, and I read exclusively those books where everybody lives happily ever after and not much goes wrong in the middle either.
“What pets?” said Annette, puzzled.
“Wait here,” Angus ordered her, and he raced down to the basement and came up a few minutes later with a box he had constructed by soldering together cookie sheets and an old metal-framed window. It was rickety, with a sideways list. He had attempted to correct this with duct tape and a piece of kindling. “Look,” he whispered.
Through the glass wall of his box, you could see two little dark things racing around.
“Cockroaches!” screamed Annette.
Angus beamed at her. “Good for you,” he complimented her. “They're very smart, you know. When the world ends, they won't. They've been here since dinosaurs. The librarian said that was very clever of me, bringing my own cockroaches from home.” Angus stared admiringly into his shaky box.
Annette yelled that we didn't have any cockroaches in either of our homes. She wanted to know how she could even enter the library now to borrow a simple mystery novel when the librarian thought our house was full of cockroaches and the other patrons thought we routinely sold shares in bombs.
Angus waved away her distress. He said the librarian was a great guy who really believed Angus would be able to train his cockroaches to run along the sidewalks Angus had constructed from shoe-box rims inside the cookie-sheet container.
Daddy said he felt tired, and if the cockroaches were secured for the night, he would just go lie down. Annette said she didn't care how secure the cockroaches were: Either the roaches were leaving the house this instant or she was.
Of course any stepchild worth his red blood likes this kind of threat from a stepmother.
Angus and I really got into the idea of Annette leaving and the roaches staying, which led Daddy to take Annette out for a late dinner while Angus and I stayed home to make ourselves grilled cheese. This was not enough supper, so we had cold cereal with bananas, and that wasn't enough, so we defrosted a Pepperidge Farm cake and split that. Then we had had enough.
Monday Daddy went back to New York again.
Angus agreed to keep the roaches at the library, and the librarian told Annette that in spite of everything, she could go on borrowing books because it is a free country.
Annette said she would prefer to be welcomed for some reason other than constitutional requirements, but at least she would have enough to read now.
Joanna's next e-mail read:
Dear Shell—I have rules for you. Promise you'll keep them at this reunion. First, stick up for Mother. Don't let them say anything bad about her. Real mothers don't give up custody, and Aunt Maggie is bound to harp on that. Harp right back. Don't let them say anything bad about Daddy either. That will be tricky because they'll certainly want to say something bad about somebody. Get them started on Annette. That should keep everybody busy for the week you're there. I'm so glad I'll be on another continent. I'll be spared all that talk about what hard lives we've led and how remarkable that we've come through so well. Barrington will be a zoo. Enjoy. What kind of presents do you want me to buy you while I'm shopping in interesting places and you're in Barrington? Love, Joanna
DeWitt and Veronica began showing up rather frequently. All I had to do was sit on the edge of our dock with my toes in the water, and DeWitt and his little sister would appear in one of their boats. It was rather magical, as if mixing nail polish with Vermont lake water brought boys into your life.
“Hi,” said DeWitt. “Your brother up to anything?”
“Why? Is your summer going slowly?”
“It's always slow here,” said DeWitt. “This is our forty-eighth summer at the lake.”
“You don't look middle-aged.”
“My grandparents own the house. They bought it when they were young. All summer long is one big family reunion. The kids stay while the parents rotate in and out on weekends or during their vacations.” DeWitt waved across the lake to his huge brown-shingled place, with all its screened porches to combat Vermont flies and gnats and mosquitoes. A safe house, where families had reunions but never split up.
“It's an off month, though,” said DeWitt gloom
ily. “Not one of my seventeen cousins is here. It's just me and the creep.” He pointed to Veronica, who seemed proud to have any label at all, including creep.
An off month. What if we had an off reunion? What if they didn't make their own lemonade anymore, pressing lemon halves down on the old glass squeezer in the pantry, but just bought their lemonade in a carton?
“So it's just me and my sister,” said DeWitt. “I'm bored.” 28
I nodded. In real life, as opposed to summer-on-the-lake life, a fifteen-year-old boy does not play with his seven-year-old sister or notice his fourteen-year-old neighbor. But we were acceptable as summer filler.
DeWitt was from New York too, so we exchanged neighborhood and school information, and DeWitt said he wouldn't be coming next summer because he'd have a terrific job instead. I have never wanted a job. I don't mind it when other people work, but I don't want to participate.
I think life should be set up so you can choose where to pause. I am the only person I know who loved middle school, and I would have been willing to stay there indefinitely, being an eighth grader. Eighth is such a relaxing year. You study only what you've studied before. I like that. When I said so to DeWitt, he narrowed his eyes, and shortly after receiving this information, he paddled away with his sister. DeWitt was the kind of person who would always be panting for the next stage, like Joanna, while Angus is the kind of person who is so busy in the moment, he forgets past and future. And I am the kind of person who wants to sit and think, watch and wonder, without really participating all that much.
Down on the dock where I lay watching DeWitt row, there was not the slightest breeze, but in the blue sky a strong wind rushed clouds along, as if they had an urgent commitment in another world.