Family Reunion Read Online Free PDF

or Kelsey or Bev. We would talk about clothes. What to pack for this family reunion halfway across the nation with four people named Perfect.Summer linen jackets or stained T-shirts? Graceful sundresses or torn jeans?
    The day crept on, slow and hot.
    I thought of Barrington, of barbecues and cornfields. Brett was sixteen and would have interesting friends who might think I was cute. Grandma always had great presents. Aunt Maggie fixed breathtaking amounts of food, as if she thought you couldn't eat well in New York.
    The sun faded and the sky became pale and flat, a sheet hung out to dry. My world felt emptied, as if Angus had punctured it. Toby—whoever and whatever and if ever he was—was under all my thoughts, like water under a boat. From your boat you can stare at the sky or lean into your oars, but the water is always there, deep and cold and dark. Because I had no one with whom to share my thoughts, they were less—but at the same time, more, because they weren't diluted by being hashed over.
    I went inside and telephoned Joanna. I didn't care about the time difference, and neither did she. When the phone rings, answer it; who cares what time it is?
    She had just been to Monet's garden and strolled among the very flowers he had planted and painted, and she was eager to tell me all about it.
    “I don't care about anything French,” I told her. “Angus says there really is a brother we don't know about, and his name is Toby.”
    “Oh, please. Angus is just one tall tale after another. Less loving sisters than we are would call him an out-and-out liar.”
    “But you guessed the same thing, Joanna. It must have been based on something. What did you hear once?”
    “I don't know,” she said uneasily. “I'm sure I made it up, Shell.”
    “Go ask Mother what she knows.”
    But Joanna didn't want to start anything.
    “If Toby doesn't exist, you won't be starting anything.”
    “If he does exist and Mother never heard of him and she gets mad at Dad for never telling her, it'll be awful, Shelley. But stop worrying about it. It's a typical Angus rumor.” She changed the subject. She wanted to talk about boys. Joanna always has lots of admirers. She and Daddy argued solidly the year she was fifteen because he wouldn't let her go out except in a group until she was sixteen. To celebrate turning sixteen, she telephoned every boy she'd been forced to refuse and assigned one night to each boy.
    Joanna and Angus are never shy. I can't imagine asking a boy out. I can't imagine asking my father if he has another boy of his own. One he somehow forgot to mention.
    “So,” said Joanna. “Any boys on the scene?” She had already dismissed the Toby story. But then, she is never taken in by Angus, and I always am. “There's a kid named DeWitt,” I told her. “He paddles around now and then.”
    Sure that I was in the throes of first love, Joanna demanded a physical description. I had not really bothered to look at DeWitt. “He's—well—he's this—you know—I don't know; I think he has a tan.”
    “Oh, well,” said Joanna. “I suppose you're going to be a late bloomer.”
    I would be the quiet bud amidst the splendor of flowers. Just as early-bloomer blossoms fade, petals wilting, stems dropping, I would come out—beautiful and strong in the setting sun: the Late Bloomer. All the boy flowers would look up, startled, and move toward me in the evening.
    Joanna admitted that even she was not blooming well in Paris, where there were tons of boys, but they didn't gather around, and she had no friends her age. I felt better about Paris. Joanna wouldn't stay very long where the boys didn't gather around. I told her how my thoughts had been less when I had nobody to share them with, and yet more, because they weren't diluted.
    “Like concentrated juice,” agreed Joanna, “all your thoughts jammed into one frozen cylinder. But if you have friends to talk it over with, then it's the whole gallon. You could pour off