“Perhaps it's time for all of us to get some rest,” said Aunt Maggie. “You three have had a hard day. All that travel. Of course I'm sure I won't sleep a wink, what with thinking about my ruined party.”
Recliners popped back. Electronics were shut down and snacks collected.
I cannot bear to admit that I am ignorant. I don't care what it is—science class, new computer program, using a different subway—I can't stand to be the dumb one. It's as if I think I should have been born knowing everything. So if I said, “What are you guys talking about? Who is Toby?” I would feel as if the whole world were pointing and jeering. Uncle Todd thought my dad was terrific. All I had to say to my nice uncle was “So tell me about Toby Because it's a secret from me, too.”
But how could a hidden half brother be a good secret? How could it be anything but bad? And yet there didn't seem to be anything hidden about Toby. He was here, and they knew him, and Carolyn was friends with him, and Toby knew who I was, and had been invited to the party. If he's really my half brother, I thought, wouldn't I feel toward him what I feel toward Angus? Half yuck and half affection? Love that's just an affectionate state of being annoyed?
Ask, I told myself.
But I didn't.
Aunt Maggie showed Annette how to flatten one of the recliners completely and make it up for a bed. Annette did not look eager to sleep there.
We all drifted up to bed, except Angus, who wanted to stay up all night playing with electronic components. Annette would have said yes, since it was vacation and who cared anyway, and he could have had the recliner bed, and she would have slept in Brett's room on a mattress. But Aunt Maggie was the sort who believed that firm bedtimes created stable character, so Annette said, “Angus! Certainly not! It's bedtime!”
Angus looked as if he had not encountered this concept before, which all summer in Vermont he hadn't.
“And you have to get clean first,” I said, because the shock of having to use soap would keep Angus from saying, “What do you mean—bedtime?”
“Oh, good!” said Angus, leaping up. “I get the bathroom first!”
Annette and I stared at him.
“The bathroom has a whirlpool,” explained Angus. “You don't even need a washcloth in one of those. It just flicks the dirt off you, like a dishwasher.”
Aunt Maggie followed Angus toward the bathroom.
“I don't need help!” he shrieked, horrified.
“I'm just going to show you how to turn everything on, and especially how to turn everything off,” said Aunt Maggie. “Floods are so boring.”
“Not to me,” said Angus. But he was grinning at her, and she was half reassured that he wasn't intentionally going to flood the place just to get a little action going.
I picked up my necklace in its lovely case. “What present did Grandma give you, Carolyn?” I asked, and then was scared that maybe Grandma hadn't given Carolyn anything, and now I would have to offer to split the necklace or something.
Carolyn beamed. “Train tickets for the next time I visit her in Arizona. I don't want to fly. I want to take the train and look out the window at America.”
We had never visited Grandma in Arizona. My mother was the one who had arranged family trips, and from the day she moved out to be with Jean-Paul, we hadn't had such a trip. Daddy couldn't put it together. It was Annette who put Vermont together.
Carolyn said, “How come Grandma didn't give you anything, Annette?”
“I'm too old for midsummer presents,” said Annette. “Anyway, she's not my grandmother.”
“True,” said Carolyn. “And I suppose she's had so many daughters-in-law with Charlie that she can't be giving presents to every new bride every summer.”
“Thank you for sharing that,” said Annette.
We use them for our family joke, I thought. We say, “The Perfects wouldn't have a food fight now, would they?” They use us for their family joke. “How many wives is he up to now? Anybody kept count?”
It was fine for us to laugh at them, but it was not fine at all for them to laugh at us.
Aunt Maggie returned, wearing a satin bathrobe, lacy and fragile, like something in an old-fashioned trousseau. She held high on a padded velvet hanger a summery dress with tiny tucks and a flared skirt and tiny pottery planets on embroidered orbits facing a silver crescent moon.
“Oh, that's stunning!” cried Annette. “You will be the belle of tomorrow's ball.”
“Somebody has to be something,” said Aunt Maggie, “since the guest of honor isn't going to show up. What's your dress like?”
“Nothing compared to that,” said Annette, touching the little solar system. Annette was a New Yorker. Even in summer, she was happiest wearing black. She had a crisp summer suit, with knee-length cuffed shorts and a soft white blouse with tuxedo pleats and a tiny black jacket with a black-and-white kerchief tucked in the tiny pocket and black-and-white beads to match black-and-white earrings. But since Annette could only choose clothing well, and not wear it well, she would look disheveled and hot.
She and Aunt Maggie would face the next day's party in outfits carefully chosen, leaving trails of perfume behind them, hoping nobody would know that they were cut to pieces inside. My father did indeed seem able to leave everybody in the lurch.
We slouched off to our rooms. I was tired from flight and family, but I wasn't sure I could ever fall asleep. “What's that over your bed?” I asked Carolyn. “Have you framed a baton?”
“It is a baton,” she said, “and Brett framed it for me for a birthday present. When I was learning baton-twirling and hoping to make the team, Mom took a video. Of course, she takes hundreds of videos. I saw myself all worked up about my ability to catch a stick, and I realized that that's what I would be remembered for at my high school reunions. My ability to catch a stick. Brett thought it was hysterical and just right for my abilities as a human being. He began introducing me as his sister the dog. We'd be cleaning up the yard after a storm, and every twig and branch he'd pick up, he'd throw across the grass and yell, 'Fetch!' ” Carolyn grinned at me. “So I quit twirling.”
I have cried myself to sleep a few times in the past several years. It was much nicer to laugh myself to sleep.
In the morning Aunt Maggie strong-armed us onto chairs around the breakfast table. For a woman who does not believe in violence, she is very forceful. We had bacon, grapefruit halves, hot biscuits slathered with butter and honey, pan-fried potatoes, blueberry pancakes and tall glasses of orange juice. I don't usually have that much breakfast in a month.
Grandma told about how my father used to hold lawn-mowing races with his friends, and once, he got so excited, he mowed off the entire garden of the next-door neighbors. Aunt Maggie said that that very garden owner was coming to the surprise party that night with a little plaque commemorating the event, only of course Charlie, being Charlie, would not be there to receive it. Grandma told about how Daddy ran away from home three times when he was in junior high. “Didn't usually go very far,” she said. “We found him once sleeping in the garage.”
“Reminds me,” said Uncle Todd. “Come on, Angus. You and I have chores to do in the garage.” “I hate chores.”
“Me too. That's why I'm going to make you do all of them. Last one in the garage is a rotten egg,” said Uncle Todd, taking a scoop of scrambled eggs in his bare hand. Angus was thrilled at the prospect of a food fight and let himself be chased into the garage.
“You know what I forgot to tell everybody?” I said. “Oh, gosh, I knew there was something important. I'm so sorry. I forgot to tell you Joanna's coming. She's flying in tomorrow. Isn't that fun? She'll be here too.”
“That's wonderful!” cried Grandma. “I'm so happy. All five of my wonderful grandchildren will be together.”
Aunt Maggie burst into tears.
“Now, Mom,” said Carolyn, with the quick desperation I knew so well, the daughter thinking, I can smooth this over; I can make it all right; I can solve this. But she can't. ?
??Brett has to come home eventually,” said Carolyn. “Just because he wouldn't even talk to us at the baseball game doesn't mean he'll never live at home again. Johnny's parents will get sick of feeding Brett, and Brett's grown another inch and needs new clothes, and Johnny's parents surely won't buy somebody else's kid new jeans and sneakers. So Brett will have to come home.”
“He won't have to!” said Aunt Maggie savagely. “He'll be just like his uncle Charlie and wander around town making friends with the scum of the earth and wearing sneakers he slices open to let his toes air out.”
Angus had come back for another handful of scrambled egg. “Slicing out the toes of his sneakers?” he said eagerly.
“Get lost,” I said to him, and he did, presumably because he had sneakers to deface.
The night before, after the Little League game, when Brett stood all dusty among his losing players, and his parents walked uncertainly toward him, I had seen in his face what Annette must have seen in mine and in Joanna's and in Angus's for a year and a half: a sneer and rejection.
You have so little power. You can't hold together your mother and father's marriage. You can't prevent them from remarrying strangers. You can't keep them from dividing up the furniture and the children and the calendar. But you can curl your lip, and make them wilt, and hurt them bad, and it's good. You're glad.
I hurt for Carolyn, though, the peacemaker. I hurt a little bit for Aunt Maggie, but not much, because she was doing exactly what Joanna had predicted she would do: saying bad things about our father.
“You must bring out the family photograph albums,” said Annette. “I'd love to see Charlie like that.”
“In all his teenage splendor,” said Aunt Maggie grimly. It didn't sound as if she meant splendor; it sounded as if she meant dung-streaked horse blankets. “Brett thinks Charlie is somebody to admire!” Aunt Maggie burst out. “He thinks Charlie is somebody special! After all the hard work bringing my children up right, my own son turned out like Charlie!”
I opened my mouth to say a thing or two, but Annette shook her head very gently, and I let it go.
“I have to give this stupid party!” Aunt Maggie said, tossing dishes into the dishwasher like a woman who wants all-new china. Or a woman who would like to break her plates over her brother's head. “I had such fun planning this, and thinking about it, and getting every detail just right, and every single guest is going to know that my own son doesn't want to live with me and my own brother can't be bothered to show up.” She slammed the door of the dishwasher and stormed out of the room.
There was silence.
Grandma stared into her coffee cup. Carolyn clung to her orange juice glass. Annette played with her sunglasses, horrid misshapen yellow things that are supposed to be fashionably retro but only make her look like a serial killer. I said, “We'll have to start calling Aunt Maggie Big Joanna. Absolutely identical temper tantrums.”
Annette nodded. She could see the truth in that.
Carolyn wanted details, and my stepmother and I took turns telling about Joanna's temper, and then Grandma said, “Perhaps, darling, you should telephone Joanna and get the details of her plane flight. If indeed she hasn't left already.
Think of the temper tantrum she might have if she is sitting in the airport waiting to be picked up while we are sleeping in from the rigors of an unsuccessful surprise party.”
It was ten A.M. in Barrington. It would be five P.M. in Paris.
My stepmother handed me her cell phone, and she and Carolyn and Grandma watched. I'd have to call Joanna right there, in front of everybody, and what if Mother or Jean-Paul answered? “I forget the number,” I said.
“Your mother's phone number?” said Carolyn incredulously.
“Because she doesn't ever dial it, of course,” said Annette, rescuing me. “It's in her phone's address memory,” she lied, “but this is my phone. It's listed in my phone address book, Shelley.”
Carolyn leaned forward eagerly to be part of the conversation.
“You'll want privacy, Shelley,” Annette added. “Phone from Carolyn's bedroom.”
Stepmother. It's not such a bad word after all, I thought. A mother, except a step below. I didn't want Annette to go back to work. I wanted her to stay with Angus and me, and be in Vermont, and forget Granger Elliott, and take us bagel-hunting in major cities.
I poked at Annette's phone. I could not believe that once in her entire acquaintance with Daddy she had ever even thought about calling my mother. I felt sure she would bungee jump without the cord before she would telephone my mother. But here was the number, neatly stored. For emergencies, I thought. Because in the end, Annette is not going to let me down. My real mother will let me down and go live across an ocean, and my real father will let me down, bailing out on important events, setting terrible examples and failing to support or acknowledge sons from previous marriages—but my stepmother will do the right thing.
This was so depressing I didn't care if I had to speak to Mother or Jean-Paul after all, and when it was Joanna who answered the phone, I wasn't even relieved. I was just irked that I had to deal with any of this. “Oh, hi, Jo,” I said grumpily.
“Shelley!” cried my sister. “I was postponing calling you because I'm so upset. I'm so glad to hear your voice. I feel as if I've been here for a century. But I won't be coming after all, Shell. I'm staying here.”
“Staying?” I whispered. “For good? You're never coming home?”
“No, no, no. I mean the reunion. Barrington. Mother started crying when I said I want to be with you guys. She hasn't stopped crying either. I hate it when parents have feelings. They should be like carvings. Solid. No emotions. And here's Mother sobbing all over the place because one month with her is plenty and I want my real family.”
“Did you say that to her?” I asked. “Out loud? Real family?”
“Yes. I did it to hurt her, but I didn't think it would be so successful. Shelley, Mom needs me. I kicked her in the teeth and now—”
“You have to build her smile back,” I said.
“If you would just talk to her once on the phone without sounding as if she's worse than anthrax, that would build up her smile.”
“Me?”
“You're maddest of all of us.”
“I am not.”
“You are so. Tell me. When we finish talking, are you going to ask to speak to Mother?”
I said nothing.
“No, you're not. Because you're mad.”
I said nothing.
“Mother says her three children have gone and grown up without her and she doesn't know us anymore and we'd all rather live somewhere else and we're still mad.”
“What did she think would happen when she crossed the ocean?”
Joanna sighed. “Give everybody hugs for me. Have a great time for me.” Her voice broke.
I couldn't even find my voice. “Bye,” I whispered.
The party rental truck had arrived. Uncle Todd sent Angus into the kitchen to get volunteers to help distribute chairs and tables all over the yard and drape them with cushions and linens. There were no volunteers. Everybody was too busy listening to Aunt Maggie talk about loss and holes in families and pain between mothers and sons and the failure of brothers to have any value whatsoever on the face of the entire earth.
I was so mad.
I had just told Joanna that I didn't get mad, but now I was mad at Aunt Maggie and her dumb party and the entire town of Barrington and especially my father. You should be here! I yelled at him in my heart. You're making Annette and me defend you. You're ruining the party. You're not telling me who Toby is. And I have to listen to your sister whine about Brett, whose only problem is his father won't let him use the car.
I had a sudden memory of my mother, years ago, making pound cake. She had beaten the butter and sugar together with a wooden spoon instead of using her Cuisinart. “Does it taste better that way, Mommy?” I had asked, licking the bowl.
“No, but it feels better,?
?? said my mother. “Pounding a cake is usually more acceptable than pounding a person you're really mad at.”
Oh, Mommy!
Who were you mad at? And how come I can't be little again, sitting on a stool so high that my feet swing in the air, wearing your old red-and-white-striped apron with the bib and licking the spoon from the cake you were baking?
Aunt Maggie noticed me. “When is Joanna's flight?” she said, in the voice of one asking when Joanna's kidney transplant was scheduled.
“She's not coming after all,” I said. “I got overexcited. I misunderstood. She's staying in Paris.”
Carolyn and Annette looked at me thoughtfully. Grandma said, “Oh, I'm so sorry she isn't coming. I miss her already.”
Uncle Todd came in. “Come on, people. Help out here.”
“Joanna isn't coming,” said Aunt Maggie. “Brett isn't coming. Charlie isn't coming. Nobody's coming.”
“We're coming,” said Carolyn irritably. “Ninety-seven hungry people with packages to put on the gift table are coming. Shelley, let's do something interesting.” We walked out the door into the backyard, where the only interesting possibility was unloading stacked plastic lawn chairs, so we walked around the other side of the house and into the front yard and stood beneath that blazing, stupefying Midwestern sun.
“How come they can't talk about me?” demanded Carolyn. “I'm here. I'm doing things right. But am I worth a conversation? Of course not.”
“I know just how you feel,” I said. “Let's go for a walk.”
Carolyn stared at me. “I suppose we could,” she said doubtfully, as if she had walked once a few years ago and maybe the skill would come back to her. City people walk so much more than town people, even in towns like Barrington, where everything is so close and there are lots of sidewalks.
“We'll be back later, Mom,” shouted Carolyn toward the house, but of course nobody could hear; the windows were all closed to keep the air-conditioning in. We wandered down the block. Carolyn looked into yards and across intersections as if she were a tourist. “I haven't done this in ages,” she confided.