Family Reunion

The Janie Books
The Face on the Milk Carton
Whatever Happened to Janie?
The Voice on the Radio
What Janie Found

The Time Travel Quartet
Both Sides of Time
Out of Time
Prisoner of Time
For All Time

Other Books
Hit the Road
Code Orange
The Girl Who Invented Romance
Family Reunion
Goddess of Yesterday
The Ransom of Mercy Carter
Tune In Anytime
Burning Up
What Child Is This?
Driver's Ed
Twenty Pageants Later
Among Friends

It began when we found out that our new summer house had an old bomb shelter in the backyard, and my brother, Angus, decided to sell time-shares in it. Angus is twelve and a terrific salesman. He used to sell my Girl Scout cookies for me, and not once did a customer ask why a boy with a crew cut was in the Girl Scouts. He has red hair and freckles, and I think there is something about red hair and freckles that makes strangers relax their defenses and buy, buy, buy.

Soon after we examined our bomb shelter, Angus divided the year into fifty-two weeks and went off to sell ten shares per week of year-round, lifetime, come-as-you-are survival shelter use.

It was that “come-as-you-are” line that people liked. You could tell it soothed them to know that when the bomb fell, they wouldn't have to dress up to take advantage of their time-share.

“But Angus,” I said. “What if the bomb falls in July and somebody bought a lifetime first-week-in-March use?”

Angus drew a long, slow, sad finger across his throat. “Poor planning,” he told me. “People have to think ahead. Know their global politics.” He turned to his latest potential buyer, an innocent Vermont child with an untouched allowance. “Or better yet,” Angus said joyfully, “buy a share in each week of the year! That way you'll never have to worry.”

Before Daddy found out and stopped him, Angus had sold seventy-two shares. He had even worked out the division of each shareholder's right to the cans of Campbell's soup still in the bomb shelter. I personally would be worried about chicken noodle soup from 1958.

Daddy went berserk. “We bought this summer house because you were going to enjoy fresh air! Swim in the lake! Fish for trout! Climb every mountain! People said that children need a backyard for a normal, stable upbringing, and so I said, Okay, June through August they'll have a backyard. I'll make these kids stable if it kills me. So what happens? You come up here from New York City, demoralize all these nice Vermont kids, rip off their allowances, and sell them…”

Daddy paused.

He was praying that Angus would admit he hadn't really sold time-shares to a bomb shelter; he had really gotten all that money from a paper route.

“Dad, it's a new idea,” said Angus proudly. “A fresh concept. I bet nobody else in Vermont is doing it.”

Daddy got a grip on himself and asked what Angus had been charging.

“Ten dollars a share, Dad. It's a bargain. Everybody saw that right off.”

My father is a large man, well over six feet, with shoulders like a yardstick. Whenever he has to deal with Angus, he takes very deep breaths, so his chest rises, and his jacket lifts and his shirt buttons reach a state of high tension. I think of him as a rocket about to launch. I worry about the explosion.

“Angus,” said my father, “we have hardly arrived in this town. So far I know the guy who installed the extra phone line, the mailman and the waitress at the coffee shop.”

“Gee, Dad, that's a shame. I've met everybody. I've been going door-to-door for days.”

Daddy's chest sank back to resting position. He looked up at the ceiling, which in our summer house is quite close to his head. He frequently communes with its cracks. Then he stared at his sweet-faced son and said he had just remembered pressing business back in New York City. He'd be
gone for weeks. Possibly all summer. It was up to Angus and me and Annette (our stepmother) to go door-to-door, return all the money and apologize for anybody in our wholesome little family even thinking of selling bomb shares.

Angus had, however, earned seven hundred and twenty dollars. The thought of giving it back was not a happy one. He put on the expression of a puppy at the pound, entreating us to give him love and affection. Earnestly he explained that this sort of thing looked really great on a college application.

Daddy said this kind of thing would make any reasonable college admissions office bar the door.

Angus said he thought he would write Grandma about it, because Grandma was always proud of him, even if nobody else was.

Daddy said if Angus went and told Grandma, Daddy would kill him. Daddy's chest began expanding alarmingly. Angus backed up a bit.

I backed up completely and said I would go check the mail.

Mail is the best thing about having a summer house in Vermont. The big black box pokes up out of tall white daisies and high grass on the other side of a narrow country road, and when the little red flag is down, you know your mail has come.

Vermont is entirely treed. You'd think they had a genuine fear of open spaces and views. Trees curve in over roads and houses and towns, wave upon wave, as if local zoning laws require you to live in a green aquarium. Only the lake, being filled with water, is barren of trees.

I walked through the filtered sun and pulled down the little curved door of the black mailbox. I wasn't actually expecting any mail, because everybody we know uses e-mail or the phone. But there was a letter from Aunt Maggie.

Aunt Maggie is Daddy's older sister. She lives out in the Midwest, where she and her family lead A Perfect Life. We call them the Perfects, because it's rather like their real last name, which is Preffyn. In the old days, when we were sort of perfect ourselves, we used to visit them, but we don't anymore. Daddy says he doesn't have the energy.

Aunt Maggie married Uncle Todd, and she is lovely, and he is handsome, and she is chairman of the school board, and he is a pharmacist. They have a backyard, of course, have always had a backyard, and therefore their children, Brett and Carolyn, are also Perfect. Brett is sixteen and Carolyn is fourteen, and they never were awkward or fat, never had braces, never had pimples, never got anything below a B+. In gym they are always team captains. In photographs, they are always smiling and attractive. That is just the kind of family they are.

When they used to visit us in New York City, we would
walk down the sidewalk and point to perfectly innocent people waiting for the bus and whisper, “Careful. Drug deal.” Carolyn and Brett always fell for that and told their mother, and Aunt Maggie would say that if we just had a backyard to play in, we would be stable, like her kids.

Stable is a big word in Aunt Maggie's life. She has stability, Carolyn and Brett have tremendous stability, but we have none. We are unstable, unbalanced and at risk.

Aunt Maggie loves that one. At risk. As if my brother and sister and I are poised at the edge of a cliff, teetering dangerously, nobody within reach to pull us away from a smushed-to-slush death.

When we were younger, you see, our mother fell in love with a dashing, romantic, handsome French newspaper reporter who at that time was covering the United Nations for a Paris paper. Mother left Daddy and went to live with Jean-Paul, and a few years later, they went on to Paris.

We stayed with Daddy. This was partly because we wanted to stay with Daddy and partly because Mother wasn't sure we would fit in with her new lifestyle. Although we could agree that Angus wouldn't fit easily into anybody's lifestyle, my sister, Joanna, and I did not like hearing that we wouldn't either.

Joanna, who is the oldest, is spending her entire summer with Mother and Jean-Paul. She is the first of us to visit France. Joanna left the very afternoon that school ended—
June 17—and won't be back until school starts again— September 8.

Daddy likes us to write to Mother, but I have a bad attitude toward this activity. A few weeks ago, I sat down at the computer and e-mailed Joanna (I don't correspond with my mother by any method) that Angus was enjoying his new leg.

Mother telephoned, which we don't do all that much because of the time difference and because Angus and I are apt to be rude. She demanded to know what had happened to Angus's old leg. Angus said it had gotten all crushed and thrown in the dump, but he had gotten a new one cheap, and Mother wasn't to worry about her share of the bill.

Mother telephoned Daddy at work for details. (It is hard to say which of them hates these phone calls more.) Of course, Daddy didn't know Angus had any fake legs, let alone cheap ones, so it was just the sort of conversation that had made Mother abandon Daddy in the first place. Mother called back to Vermont and demanded to speak to Annette about the leg, but Annette is afraid of Mother and whispered to Angus to say she wasn't home, and Angus of course said, “Annette says to tell you she's not home.”

By then I don't think Mother really cared about Angus's leg. I think she called Daddy in New York again just to be difficult. This time Daddy remembered that Angus likes to use an old hollow detachable mannequin's leg as a briefcase or
tote bag, down which he stuffs any papers he might need to carry around, such as the contracts for time-shares, although Daddy didn't know about those yet. Daddy gave Mother a sane, reasonable explanation for the leg story, but Mother did not think anybody in the picture was being either sane or reasonable.

But that was in the past.

Nobody cared about Angus's leg anymore. I just wanted to take the pressure off the bomb-share deals, so I ran into the house to read Aunt Maggie's letter out loud.

My father had sunk into the only chair in the summer house large enough to support him. Summer house furniture turned out to be flimsy, but Annette doesn't mind, as this means she gets to redecorate and replace all of it.

The house in Vermont has no curtains on any downstairs window. By day, the sun moves slowly from one pane of glass to the next. Hot little squares of sun first lie on the living room floor, then slide to the table, drift into the next room and become late-afternoon slants across the kitchen counters.

The heat of the day was already vanishing, and Daddy, exhausted from either his long drive or his children, was closing his eyes. The afghan on the back of the easy chair was pale blue with pink flowered trim. It sank down when Daddy did, and it lay around his shoulders like a baby blanket on a grizzly bear.

“You want to hear a letter from Aunt Maggie?” I said, but
I didn't give anybody a chance to say no. “ 'Dear Brother Charlie,' ” I read.

Daddy said that made him sound like an inmate at an institution. We did not tell him that he also looked like one, what with the baby blanket scootched around his cheeks.

“ 'It is hard to believe, but Todd and I are approaching our twentieth wedding anniversary!!!!!!!!' ” I read out loud. “Eight exclamation points,” I told my listeners.

Enough to make anybody gag, but especially Daddy, who did not reach his first anniversary with Wife Number One, hit a twelfth with Wife Number Two (our mother) and is barely within reach of a second with Wife Number Three (Annette).

“Don't worry, Dad,” Angus consoled him. “All those exclamation points mean that Aunt Maggie is as surprised as anybody that her marriage lasted all those years.”

“ 'And of course we want to have a big and wonderful family celebration of this unique event.' ”

“Notice she's rubbing in how unique it is,” said Daddy.

I kept reading. “ 'So we've planned a family reunion gala for August!' ”

My aunt Maggie is known for her enthusiasm, which tends to tire out everybody but Aunt Maggie. Now even her handwriting was bigger and more excited. I made a note to get a library book on handwriting analysis because I was sure there were depths to plumb in Aunt Maggie's.

“ 'We're even getting in touch with all our old friends
from high school, Charlie!!!!!!!! We'll want everybody to come!! Joanna must fly back from Paris, and this will be our chance to get to know dear Annette at last, and how wonderful it will be for Shelley and Angus to be back in Barrington again!!!!' ”

“Where they have all those backyards,” said Angus.

Annette looked as if she would rather postpone meeting the Perfects for another generation or so. In her situation I would feel the same, since Annette does not measure up to anybody, especially Wife Number Two (Mother) and Aunt Maggie.

“What else is in the letter?” asked Angus. “It's awfully thick.”

“The invitation the other several hundred people are getting,” I said. “Miscellaneous driving directions and flying information, and the latest family photographs.”

Annette began fussing with the Queen Anne's lace. Angus read that you can dye the flowers, so he has bunches of them sitting in glasses of water mixed with entire containers of food coloring. Nothing has happened with yellow or green, but red and blue have promise. The flower heads are now a sick pastel instead of white. Annette shifted Queen Anne's lace glasses all over the table.

“Can I telephone Joanna and tell her all about the family reunion?” I begged. “Please, please?”

Daddy looked wary. His usual excuse against phoning
Europe is the expense—therefore we should e-mail—but actually he's afraid Mother will be home and he'll have to talk to her, or worse, that Jean-Paul will answer and they'll have to have a civilized conversation. The crummy thing about divorce and remarriage is how you're required to be civilized about it and not scream ugly things, especially when several years have gone by and, if you have any stability at all, you have gotten over it.

“I'll tell Joanna you're not here,” I said kindly.