Family of Liars(13)
—
OUR FAMILY HAS always loved fairy tales. There is something ugly and true in them. They hurt, they are strange, but we cannot stop reading them, over and over.
I want to tell you Rosemary’s favorite now. My own version of it.
I want to tell it because the story feels to me like a way to tell the story of my family and that summer when I was seventeen. I can’t yet figure out how to explain what happened, any other way.
Cinderella
THERE ARE THREE sisters, living in a house together.
Two of them have pretty faces, but their hearts are twisted.
The third sister, their stepsister—Cinderella—is not only pretty but pious and good.
She has it tough, though. She scrubs their floors on hands and knees. Her hands and face are covered in ashes. Her nails are black with soot.
One day, the prince announces a festival, with balls and parties going on for days. There will be music and delectable things to eat.
Of course, everyone wants to go.
Cinderella wants to go, as well, but more important, she wants her sisters to accept her. Could she go to the festival with them? Please?
The answer is no. The sisters, vain and consumed with their own internal lives, blind to the suffering of others,
drunk on the hot liquor of the desire for parental approval, desperate for love and validation— they see Cinderella as competition.
The stepmother replies that Cinderella may not go to the festival because she does not have a dress. Everyone leaves without her.
So Cinderella goes to the grave of her late mother. Above the grave, there is a bird in a hazel tree. The bird throws down a golden gown for Cinderella to wear.
We all know how the story goes from there. After dancing with the prince, Cinderella runs away. She runs from the prince because she is ashamed of being the unloved, ash-covered sister.
She drops a slipper.
The prince picks it up. He searches for her.
When he comes to their home looking for the woman whose foot will fit the slipper, the stepsisters try for his affection. They maim their own feet, trying to please their mother (who wants them to marry well) and hoping to find love.
One cuts off her big toe.
The other slices off the back of her heel.
They slide their butchered feet into the slipper, but the blood seeps out each time. The prince can tell they do not really fit the shoe.
When the prince asks if the third daughter might try on the shoe, her own father replies that she is only a “deformed little Cinderella.”
But she does try it on, and her foot slides into the blood-caked slipper easily. She is not deformed at all.
The prince recognizes her and takes her off to be married.
* * *
—
THIS IS MY story.
That is, I am Cinderella.
I am the good sister,
the outsider,
the one who mourns.
Like me, Cinderella is made over from deformity to beauty and social elevation.
Her new appearance is my new appearance.
But I am also a stepsister.
I am vain and consumed with my own internal life,
drunk on the hot liquor of the desire for parental approval, desperate for love and validation,
self-mutilated,
seeing my sisters as competition.
Bloody.
PART FOUR
The Boys
15.
A COUPLE DAYS after Rosemary first appears, my uncle Dean arrives with his kids, Yardley and Tomkin (full name: Thomas). Dean brings Penny’s friend Erin Riegert with him as well. Gerrard drives them all over in the big boat, which has a cabin below.
Dean is a good time. He lives in Philadelphia. He’s a lawyer, though he doesn’t seem to work that much.
When he divorced his wife eight years ago, he let her have the kids during the year. He gets them for the summers and brings them to the island. He’s the fun dad, making up for lost time. When he’s here, Luda does his laundry, unloads his dishwasher, and rinses the soap scum out of his bathtubs, but Dean has always been the grown-up who did the most things with us kids. He happily takes us sailing or to Edgartown for ice cream, when Tipper is busy with domestic matters and Harris on the phone with his office. Dean seems to be fully on holiday when he’s here. He horses around with Tomkin in the water. He lives large, drinks beer, slaps backs.
He and my father own Beechwood together, but today, Harris greets Uncle Dean like a guest. The boat arrives at noon. We all go down to the dock.
“Where ya been?” Harris calls jovially as Dean disembarks. “We had to start the summer without you.”
“Business got messy,” says Dean. “Is there lunch? I could eat a Cadillac.”
“Sandwiches and potato chips,” says my mother. “Should be ready at Clairmont in an hour.”
“That sliced beef I like with the horseradish?”
“On sourdough. And tuna salad. Your own fridge is full if you can’t wait.” Pevensie has been aired, cleaned, and restocked.
“Tomkin has to pee,” says Dean. “Bess, will you take him up to pee?”
“I can pee by myself,” says Tomkin. He is narrow and freckly, with brown hair and a nose that turns up. His eleven-year-old legs are covered with scrapes and bug bites. Here on the island, he spends his time staring into tide pools and climbing rocks. Last year, he and Rosemary built a collection of fairy houses around a stump at the back of Pevensie. Some were made of stones, and others were held up by twigs and roofed with leaves, fitting homes for Rosemary’s smallest dolls but mostly left empty for actual fairies. They were furnished with shells and bits of moss, plucked rose hips and beach roses. Tomkin is good that way. He’ll go along with girls. This year he hardly seems taller than before.