Family Reunion Read Online Free PDF Page B

glasses and glasses without even noticing. So your thoughts are more important when you keep them to yourself.”
    “Oh, Joanna, you have to come to the reunion! I don't want to be all concentrated and lonely. I want to pour off my thoughts on you.”
    “No.”
    So we ended our phone call with a nice screaming fight just like old times, and I went back out into the yard feeling good again.
    Annette and Angus came home together. They were both crying. I had never seen Annette break down, and Angus probably hasn't cried since preschool. The dust from the road had swirled up around their faces and caked in the tear tracks. They looked like relatives by blood instead of by marriage.
    “How dare you spy on me?” said Annette, sobbing. “You are horrible, Angus!”
    “I wasn't spying on you!” he said, weeping. “I really wasn't. I was taking notes and making lists. I had a list of feet. I'm thinking of manufacturing a new type of sneaker, and I had to get a good count of what people are wearing. Then, since we're eating so much up here, I figured I might as well keep track of weight while I was at it. What proportion of people in Vermont eat too much? Of course I always carry my license plate list with me, like there's a dentist and his plate reads GUM DZZZ and you never know when you might find another really good plate like that, so—”
    “You were not!” screamed Annette. “You were spying on me. I came out of the psychiatrist's office and you had your binoculars trained on me.”
    “It was a coincidence,” whispered Angus. “It really was. I didn't know where you were. Don't tell Dad, Annette.”
    Luckily I hadn't devoured all of Annette's cake. Quickly I passed out slices, adding scoops of chocolate ice cream and glasses of milk all around, and told Annette that Angus and I loved her cake, that we had sneaked half the cake already because it was so unbelievably scrumptious. Then I ruined it. “Why are you going to this shrink?” I asked.
    “You think it's going to be easy for me to face all those people in Barrington? You don't call them Perfect for a joke. They are Perfect. And they all think that your father's first… well—”
    “Two wives,” I supplied.
    “Were so terrific,” she finished. “And I'll have to show up with you two, and Angus will probably take his leg and—”
    “They won't hold you responsible for my leg!” cried Angus. “They'll say it's just another sign of our unstable life.”
    “They'll say I'm another sign of your unstable life,” said Annette, reaching for a tissue.
    We all dipped into the Kleenex box and mopped up. We finished the cake crumbs. Annette said were there any onion bagels left? and Angus said no, and I said, “Anyway we're out of cream cheese.” Annette checked the discarded Zabar's bag in the garbage that had held the onion bagels, and I said Boston was only two hours away, as opposed to New York, which was five, and they probably had a decent deli in Boston, and Annette said, “Let's go.”
    So we all got in the car and drove to Boston to find a delicatessen.
    “You know,” said Angus, “you're not bad, Annette.”
    “I know my delis,” she agreed. “There are those like you, Angus, who can scent a profit.” (Angus's chest expanded, like Dad's.) “And those like you, Shelley, for whom adorable teenage boys row across lakes.” (I tried again to remember anything about DeWitt except his tan.) “But I myself am a delicatessen-finder of the very highest order.” Taking a pen from her handbag, Annette drew a first-prize blue ribbon on her napkin and draped it over her shoulder.
    “Then I think Dad was wise to marry you,” said Angus. “Because that is a valuable skill.”

Angus opened a roadside stand to sell scarlet and orange zinnias he cut in the back garden. For hours he sat surrounded by iced tea bottles, soup cans and pickle jars filled with water and flowers, holding a pink-striped beach umbrella over himself to keep off the sun. When