Family Reunion by Caroline B. Cooney Read Free Book Online Page B

rescue me. I clambered into his boat, and he pushed off again. We weren't ten feet from my dock when he said, “Well? Who is Toby?” “Toby?” I said.
    “You did ask your father, didn't you?”
    DeWitt pulled in the oars and rested them in the bottom of the boat. Now that his hands were free, he put them on my knees. I was wearing baggy shorts in gaudy yellow and orange, and a white T-shirt with alternating rows of tiny green trees and tiny red print saying christmasinvermontchristmasinvermont and so forth. I was smeared with lots of sun-protection lotion, and I had on a new pair of sunglasses with leopard-print frames. I felt mismatched, which was bad, but disguised, which was good.
    “Well?” said DeWitt when we had gotten out to the middle of the lake.
    “Well what?”
    “Does he?”
    “Does he what?”
    “Does your father have another son?” “Oh. I forgot to ask.”
    “How could you forget to ask your own father about the possibility of your own brother existing out there in a family that's not your own?” yelled DeWitt.
    “Shhh! Don't yell! Sound carries.”
    “Your problem is you don't yell enough, Shelley. You ought to be yelling at Angus and yelling at your father and yelling at Joanna and yelling and yelling and yelling!” DeWitt's hands on my kneecaps tightened, and he shook me, the way you shake people by the shoulders. It made the tiny boat rock, and we both laughed.
    “I really did forget,” I said. “I'm sorry you reminded me. What if it's true? Because if it's true, Daddy abandoned that son.”
    DeWitt felt that knowing the facts would make it possible to deal with them. In his family, they always made sure to set forth the facts thoroughly and carefully prior to continuing discussions. I didn't admit that my family was neither thorough nor careful. “The facts of my family are hard enough without adding more of them,” I said to DeWitt. “Anyway, if there is a Toby, then my father is a bad person, the kind of father whose black-and-white photograph hangs in post offices. Wanted: For Failure to Pay Child Support.”
    “You don't know that he didn't pay,” said DeWitt. “You just know that he didn't have Toby at your house for any well-known holidays. But it does seem to me, speaking of course as just an outsider, that your father has made more than his share of major errors. I think—”
    “He has not!” I yelled, thus satisfying at least one of DeWitt's requirements. I jumped up to get rid of DeWitt'shands on my knees, and DeWitt jumped up to emphasize his point, and New Yorkers that we are, we forgot about being in a very small boat, and we flipped.
    It's an effective way to get somebody's hands off your knees. We sank into the icy-cold water—because a northern Vermont lake is not toasty even in July—and came up sputtering and casting blame on each other, especially over my sunglasses, which were now trout property. Then we had to right the boat, which was hard, and get our two bodies back in, which was the most embarrassing exhibition of bad coordination in Vermont that year, and then bail it out and also rescue the oars.
    “I guess that's what it is to be unstable,” said DeWitt, grinning. Lake water ran off his hair, got caught in his thick, wide eyebrows and became little brooks going down the sides of his cheeks. He looked different with his hair plastered down. Older and more interesting.
    “I am not unstable,” I said sharply. I took the oars myself to ensure that we would row to my dock and not to his.
    DeWitt leaned back dramatically, locking his hands behind his head to make himself a pillow. He stared up at the sky as if he were a young intellectual at an English university, punting down the river. I was very proud of my rowing. I also kind of liked the way my wet T-shirt fit. We reached our dock, and I handed him the oars and stepped out onto the splintery gray wood.
    “When you get back from your family reunion,” he said, “I won't be here. We're going