Family Reunion

by Caroline B. Cooney

  I tried to imagine them, hundreds of miles of phone line between them, separate apartments and lives, but I couldn't do it this time; the images didn't appear. I could see Daddy only as the man I knew, a bear who laughed at everything and charged right on.

  “I guess they were really just kids,” said Toby dubiously.

  I crossed Daddy and Angus in my mind. If I made Angus taller and older, locked into marriage, which was surely a lot scarier than a backyard bomb shelter, I could half see Daddy. I knew he'd put himself through NYU going nights. I knew that by the time I was born, he was already a success. But I had not known he saved money for a phone call to the high school sweetheart who wore his ring but lived in another state. If e-mail had existed back then, they could have talked for free. Maybe they would have settled their differences, communicating all day and all night.

  “But then they each fell in love again,” said Toby. “Your father fell in love with your mother, and my mother fell in love with my father. By then they'd been apart for years. Their divorce made them sad. I think they felt that instead of marrying other people, they should have remarried each other and tried again. But they didn't.”

  “Just as well. We wouldn't exist.”

  Toby finished his sundae and looked longingly at the bottom of the dish, as if hoping it would spontaneously regenerate a second helping. “Anyway, when I was very little, my father got killed in a car accident, just after he had sunk every cent into a new business. There was nothing left. Not a dollar. And instead of turning to relatives in Barrington, who would know all, tell all and remember all for generations, my mother asked your father for money. She thought he would lend her a little to keep her and me going until she could figure out what to do next.”

  I was starting to cry again. “And did he?”

  “I can't believe you don't know any of this.”

  “Believe it. And tell me everything.”

  “He supported us the whole time my mother was in law school. Three years. Mom says if it hadn't been for Charlie, she would have been in some office pool, entering data or processing checks or something. We'd be on food stamps instead of skiing in Europe.”

  I knew that all my life I would remember this table in this drugstore. The way Toby folded his napkin into a dinosaur. The way his hands looked—large, nervous hands, playing with paper and spoons to keep occupied. The way my hands looked—rigid, because I was afraid that instead of playing with spoons I would grab Toby's hands and hold them permanently.

  “You going to finish your ice cream or not?” Toby said. Boys can always concentrate on the important things, like food.

  “Not.”

  “How come?”

  “I'm too nervous to swallow.”

  Toby thought about this. Nothing, including the final bomb and the end of humanity, would stop a boy from eating.

  “You eat it,” I said.

  “You sure?”

  “I'm sure. Just keep talking.”

  He was obedient. Aunt Maggie would not have approved of his table manners. He drank, spooned and talked at the same time. It was a very chocolatey recital. “Your father, Shelley, sent money for no reason except that they had loved each other once. He wrote that if they'd had a kid, he would have loved that kid, and he would love any child of hers, and he was glad to help. Mom still has the letter.”

  Toby, the child my father had loved, sat across from me, having my ice cream. I said, “Toby, I can't help it. I'm going to cry. A whole lot.”

  Toby looked alarmed. “In here? Noisily? Attracting attention?”

  “Or we could go outside.”

  “You can't stop yourself?”

  “I don't have a Delete Emotion button.”

  “Sure you do. Everybody does. Come on. There's a dinky little traveling fair around the corner. I'll take you on the roller coaster.”

  “I hate roller coasters. If you think it's bad when I'm trying not to cry, meet me when I'm trying not to throw up.”

  “Nah, this is really dinky, for three-year-olds and their five-year-old big brothers.” Toby put money on the table to pay for both of us and stood up and took my hand. It was where my hand had wanted to be for a while now.

  Toby said, “Barrington somehow found out that your father was sending Celeste child support. They figured it meant I'm his kid, which I am not. You are. Angus is. What's her name is. But my father was named Richard Donnelly, and I look like him and everything.” Toby grinned, throwing in a little visual proof. Then he tightened his grip on my hand, partly because we were crossing the street and he seemed unsure that I possessed this skill, and partly because it was punctuation for his sentences. “My mother says there isn't much in Barrington but corn, relatives and rumors. So of course for the big reunion party, all of Barrington is talking, because I'm visiting my grandparents, who were once your father's in-laws, and I'm invited to the party, and they're not. But that's because my mother, Celeste, felt that it was asking an awful lot of Charlie to face every single person he knew in high school, and all his relatives, and her son, and the ex-in-laws. Plus she figured your stepmother, who she says is a lucky woman to be married to Charlie, deserved some kind of break.”

  Outside, summer was as strong as a hurricane. In New York summer means gasping for breath and hoping there will be no blackout to knock out the air-conditioning. In Vermont summer means the lake, and the deep green forest, and quiet. But in Barrington summer is a living thing, the burnished brilliance of sun and sky, a heat so great it lives on you and in you, ruling your body and your thoughts. I wanted to embrace summer if I could not embrace Toby The heat was enough to bake away care, and broil off worry.

  “I've always wanted to meet Charlie,” said Toby. “When my mother talks about him, it's not the way anybody else talks about an ex-husband. She still loves him. Not getting-married type love. Not in-love type love. But…well… love.”

  And here I had thought I wasn't going to cry. I cried. Tears trailed down my face, and I had to tilt my head back to keep my contacts in place. The wind lifted my hair off my neck and threw grit on my tear tracks. “How old are you, anyway?”

  “Sixteen. That's another thing. When your father started supporting us, he already had one little kid of his own, and then you were born and he had two little kids of his own, and still he was supporting us. You and your sister. What's her name?”

  Nobody refers to Joanna as “what's her name.” “Joanna,” I said. “I think Daddy's always had extra money, though.”

  “Listen. People can have ten million extra dollars and still not share one dime with their ex-wife.”

  Toby bought us entrance tickets. Fifty cents. It really was a dinky little fair. It had only six rides. I opted for a small children's ride. Toby paid a quarter for each of us, and we climbed on merry-go-round horses. An aqua horse with a white mane for me, and red with a black mane for Toby. We were the only people riding. The music wound itself up, and slowly the horses began to circle. When Toby was up, I was down. We waved at each other, and our knees bumped.

  “Where is your father that he can't make it to the party?” asked Toby.

  “Oh, he's working for this big company that just got a new chairman of the board and a new CFO, and of all things, this weekend they're having a bonding retreat in the wilderness and he can't miss it.” How odd that my father needed to go anywhere to bond with anybody. Charlie was the bond-master. Nobody bonded as well as Charlie. He must be teaching the seminar.

  We rode the merry-go-round seven times, walking among the horses as it circled and making sure that we rode on every horse. Then we even rode the two ducks that didn't go up and down and were meant for moms with babies in their laps.

  All along, I had never minded the Perfects or anybody else being Perfect as long as we had some Perfection too. I had a better father than anybody. A father who was always there, and funny, and strong, and who gave us bear hugs and took us to the lake or the movies and loved doing it.

  Okay, I thought, so he
has divorces and he skips out on surprise parties. He's still Perfect. He never stopped being Perfect.

  The booths held green teddy bears you could win by throwing darts or shooting air guns or tossing beanbags. They sold fried dough and cotton candy, foot-long hot dogs, corn dogs and soft ice cream. They sold T-shirts with monster faces, and tacky jewelry with misspelled names.

  We did every booth. “I hope we don't win anything,” I told Toby. “I don't know what I would do with a mirror that has a beer ad printed on it.”

  When I looked at my watch, it was five o'clock in the afternoon. “Oh, no! Toby! I'm going to miss the party too! Everybody but me is already there!”

  I bet Aunt Maggie doesn't know about Daddy supporting Toby, I thought suddenly. How could she say the things she says about him if she knew this? She'd want Brett to be exactly like Daddy if she knew.

  Why did Daddy keep it such a secret?

  We left the little fairground and walked back. There were sidewalks all the way. Toby did not take my hand. He talked about all kinds of stuff, and I hardly heard any of it because I was involved in an inner debate about whether I should take his hand.

  The views in Barrington were longer than in Vermont. Trees in Vermont stalk the hillsides and meadows like vandals, filling every space. Beyond the edges of Barrington, the horizon swooped under blue armloads of sky, stretching to unknown farms and fields, and even to distant states and prairies. Hay had been cut. It was bleaching in the sun. It smelled wonderful and safe.

  “Do you think Brett will come home?” I interrupted.

  Toby didn't mind the interruption. “Sure. Eventually. Brett is kind of ordinary, you know. It's tough being ordinary when your parents want you to be incredibly special.”

  We were the only people using the sidewalk. City people walk everywhere. Country people use cars. “I'm ordinary,” I pointed out.

  “You?” Toby stared at me.

  We crossed the final street. A block away you could tell that Aunt Maggie and Uncle Todd were having a huge party. Cars lined the road and were parked on lawns and doubled up in driveways. Balloon bouquets were tethered to the mailbox and fence and lamppost. The rich scent of meat cooking on hot coals permeated the neighborhood. The sound of the band throbbed generously.

  “I've always sort of thought of you guys as relatives,” said Toby shyly, “even though you aren't. Do you mind?”

  I had not been thinking of Toby as a cousin. “As long as you promise not to be my brother,” I said, “you can be any relative you want.”

  Toby's grin was nothing like my father's. Nothing like Angus's or DeWitt's or Uncle Todd's; it was his, and I quivered and I wanted that grin to be mine. I wanted to make that grin surface just for me, and I wanted it to vanish when I needed Toby to be serious.

  I looked away from him. A couple was getting out of their car, the husband carrying a platter of brownies, and the wife balancing a lemon meringue pie. I love how in Barrington, even if you have your party catered, people will always contribute food, and it will be reliable food that you've seen before and you know well.

  “I really wish Daddy could be here after all,” I babbled. “Look at all the food. And all the friends. Are you staying long enough in Barrington to meet Daddy when he comes late? Annette thinks he'll be here on Wednesday. I don't think we have the actual flight time or anything, but as soon as we hear from him, I can tell him you're waiting.”

  A woman with a glass bowl of fresh strawberries and a can of Reddi-Wip crossed the grass and disappeared into the backyard, where the party was. Out of the back of their car, the next couple maneuvered a huge sheet cake and a sign that read

  !!!!!!!!WELCOME HOME CHARLIE!!!!!!!!

  Angus would love that cake. He's crazy about icing. He always scrapes away the best flowers and ribbons on the icing and leaves the insides for me.

  “See you around,” said Toby.

  “Aren't you coming?”

  “Nah.”

  “But I thought—I mean, you were invited. Please come.”

  Toby shook his head. I could not read his smile. It seemed uncertain, as if all the fears that he had taken away from me, he had been forced to keep for himself.

  He turned his head aside. In profile he was bony and thin. When he turned back, the thinness went away, and he was handsome and nervous. It was like looking at two different people. I wanted to get to know him. To find out whether his profile or his full face represented the real Toby, or whether, as with so many people, his features had nothing at all to do with his personality.

  I did not want to join the party. I stood looking at him, and he at me, and whether he was thinking of fathers, I do not know, but I was drowning in a hundred thoughts that had nothing to do with parents. Thoughts that prickled through my skin and flushed my cheeks.

  Toby said, “Maybe tomorrow, Shelley? We could talk more. I could borrow my grandmother's car. We could go somewhere.”

  I nodded. “I'd like that.”

  Toby gave me a light kiss on the forehead and walked away.

  “Where have you been?” demanded Carolyn. “My mother is furious. Your family does disappearing jobs like nobody on earth.” She bundled me up to her bedroom to get properly dressed. I was dusty and tear-streaked, so I hopped in the shower while she shouted through the crack in the bathroom door. “What are you going to wear, Shelley? This little white dress? With the pretty little embroidered roses?”

  “I don't want to wear that after all. It's stupid. I'll be embarrassed.”

  “I have a nice pair of paisley shorts you could borrow.”

  “I hate paisley. It looks like pregnant worms.” I came out of the shower. Carolyn combed my wet hair and said it wasn't fair for some people to have great hair like mine when people like her had to put up with crummy old ordinary hair.

  I had always thought my hair was crummy old ordinary hair.

  Carolyn snorted. Then she pulled another outfit from her closet. “How about my yellow two-piece dress? With the bare midriff.”

  I looked down at my bare midriff.

  “I have little yellow sandals to go with it,” coaxed Carolyn.

  “Earrings?”

  She handed me earrings. Little dangly yellow airplanes, which I would never have bought or put on my earlobes. But I gathered my courage and wore all of it, and I especially loved the part of my body where I had no clothing: my bare midriff.

  Carolyn was wearing a bright red shirt, bright blue shorts, a bright purple belt and a bright green scarf. She looked like a crayon box. I wasn't sure I approved of that much color all at the same time.

  Carolyn braided three very narrow cornrows to keep my hair away from the right side of my face and let the earring show, and then she used a hot curler to make a banana curl on the other side for contrast. “I bet you and Joanna fix each other's hair all the time, huh?” she said longingly.

  “No, mostly we just fix Joanna's hair.”

  “That rots,” said Carolyn. “What good is a sister if you're just her servant?”

  We talked about sisters and brothers and whether we had any use for them. “Guess what,” she confided. “Brett's coming home.”

  “That's wonderful. How did it happen?”

  “Mom and Dad went over to the house where he's staying and confronted the parents. Mr. and Mrs. Cameron agreed that by giving Brett a free room and free food, they were aiding and abetting his running away. Like accessories to the crime. So they gave Brett an ultimatum. He can't stay at their house another night.” Carolyn was both delighted and angry. “He'll get his welcome-home party,” she said. “He'll slip into the backyard after dark tonight and help himself to somebody's apple pie, and Grandma will give him ten hundred hugs, and we'll all pretend nothing happened.”

  How different from my family. Of course, we can't pretend. Mommy did cross the ocean to live with Jean-Paul. Daddy is married to Annette.

  Mommy, I thought. I'm calling her Mommy again.

  Something in me had softened. J
oanna had been right. I was the one who was maddest of all. And I never even knew it.

  I said, “But how do you know Brett will come home? What if he just finds another friend to live with? Or hitchhikes away?”

  Carolyn gasped. It had not occurred to her that there could be anything other than a happy ending. An easy ending.

  “I'm mad at Brett,” she said, “but I want things to be the same. I want him to come home. Now.”

  I was about to tell her that things are never the same, and coming home doesn't change things back to where they were. Instead, I said, “Toby took me to the kiddie fair.”

  “Toby?” Carolyn did not let me down. “Oh, Shelley! Toby is so cute. Isn't he the cutest person in this state? I've wanted Toby to take me someplace ever since I can remember. Now, tell the truth. Did he take you to discuss family secrets or to take you?”

  “I don't know the truth about that,” I said. “You have to tell me when you do know, or I'll make your life miserable,” said Carolyn.

  “Tell me that story again,” I said. “The progidal one.”

  “Prodigal,” she corrected.

  “What's that mean? Do you have a dictionary?”

  “It means wasteful,” said Carolyn, who explained that she had done more than her fair share of Sunday school, she had probably done my share as well, and frankly she wanted me to take up the slack now.

  “Wasteful?” I repeated, remembering the story. “Of what?”

  “His inheritance. His family's love and patience. Because he ran off and was bad and did drugs and slept around and gambled and all that.”

  “Did they do drugs in biblical days?”

  “No, but you're supposed to update everything. Like instead of leprosy, now you say AIDS. Listen,” said Carolyn, “I don't want to be a Sunday school teacher. Let's go party.”

  So who was prodigal? I asked myself. Was I the one being wasteful of my family's love and patience? Was I ready now to come home to Mommy? Or was Mommy the one being wasteful of my love and patience, and now I was letting her come home to me?

  We went downstairs. I loved my yellow dress. I felt older and prettier and barer. Especially my hair felt great. Carolyn was excellent with hair.