Perfect Family Read Free

could, William would be stuck with Andrew. She read him. “Don’t worry,” she said, putting the drinks on the table between them. “I’ll be fine.”
    â€œI thought you quit.” There’d been a time, before she had Andrew, when the family had worried about her.
    â€œI did,” she said, taking a long swallow.
    The phone rang in the living room. Pony grabbed her glass and went inside to answer it. “Hello. Hi. Yes. Uh-huh. Shit,” she said,and then “Yeah, well, not much you can do about that, I guess.” After a few moments, the door banged again and she was back. She sank into the chair opposite. “I thought you’d be here later.”
    â€œIs that a problem?”
    She shrugged. She handed him a blistered strip of four photographs, taken in one of those old-fashioned photo booths, of a girl and boy in perhaps their late teens. The girl was blond and wore a feathered headdress. Her long hair hung like curtains on either side of her face. The boy was partly hidden behind her. He had dark hair swept back like Nixon’s. It took a moment for William to understand the girl was their mother. “Where did this come from?” he asked. He turned the strip over. The words Livvy, 1968 were written on the back. “Nobody ever called her Livvy.”
    â€œI know. Isn’t that a riot? Daddy always called her Olivia.”
    â€œBut where did you get this thing?” he asked again. The family albums were full of pictures, but none of their mother as a girl. “Lost,” their mother always said vaguely when William asked, and she would allude to a flooded basement in which photos were destroyed or to a move in which they were lost. It was always one incomplete explanation or the other.
    â€œCool your jets,” Pony said.
    â€œWho’s the boy?”
    â€œNot now, okay? Later.”
    Andrew let out a wail. Pony put her drink on the rail, and William noticed it was fuller than before; she must have added to it. She dragged Andrew’s playpen from the corner of the porch, and bumped it down the stairs to the lawn. It was a big expandable circle she could put down anywhere, and it kept Andrew in pretty much the same place for a while. She pulled it open as far as it would go. Then she lowered Andrew into it.
    William’s good mood from driving up earlier was shot. He felt uneasy; anxious, even. Pony was up. She was down. In and out of the house. He wished she’d just sit still and tell him what was up. He looked out at the water. The surface was still alive with tiny whitecaps. The cold water would calm him down. It would suck the annoyance right out of him.
    â€œI’m taking a refresher lifesaving course at the town beach. I figured I’d better, what with Andrew,” Pony said.
    He was so glad to hear this. Everybody would be glad to hear it. Pony was a great mother, if you asked him, but anything that made her more conventional as a mother was going to make the rest of the family happy. “That’s just great,” he said.
    â€œI haven’t forgotten much.”
    â€œLike riding a bicycle,” he said. All the Carteret kids had taken the lifesaving and water-safety-instructor courses over at the town beach the summer they were old enough. Their mother had insisted on it because she herself hadn’t learned to swim until she was an adult, and she was a very nervous swimmer. She didn’t care if they ever used it, if they ever got lifesaving jobs or saved anybody. No, she just wanted them to know how. The town beach lessons were famous for something called the drowning game. It should be illegal, William thought, but it was part of the Lake Aral program. The way it worked? Everybody swam into deep water at once, the whole class of twenty or thirty kids. They’d tread water for a minute or so, adrenaline going, and at the signal, each of them was to attack someone else, get the person into a hold, and