Family of Liars(17)
“Hell yeah,” says George. And Pfeff hangs up with his mother.
Beach towels are in a cupboard by the door. The boys find their swimsuits, Pfeff riffling through his duffel, tossing shirts and jeans across the porch in his search, then changing in the mudroom, yelling, “Don’t come in and look at my weenie.”
Major yells back that it’s not the kind of weenie anyone would be interested in, and Pfeff says “What on earth does that mean?”—still from the mudroom. “It’s a perfectly normal weenie. A good weenie, even. Oh god, now Carrie’s going to think terrible things about me. Major, you’ve never even seen it. Carrie, he’s never seen it. Seriously.”
George tells him to shut up and Major says he doth protest too much. The two of them change quickly upstairs in the bedrooms. George phones Yardley, who is over at Pevensie, and together we troop down the long wooden staircase to the Tiny Beach.
* * *
—
TWO O’CLOCK IS the perfect time to swim on Beechwood. The sun has heated the water all day. The cove is protected from the wind. The shore is rocky. The sand on the Big Beach is nicer, but there is a private feeling to the Tiny Beach that’s magical.
All three boys run whooping into the water, diving under the gentle waves as soon as they hit knee-deep. I stand for a moment and watch them. The muscles in their backs ripple. Their shoulders are sleek with water. They flip their hair out of their eyes and splash each other. George swims a serious-looking crawl toward the sharp rocks that edge the cove, then stops to tread water and look around. Major floats on his back, looking up. Pfeff shouts and swims out to join George.
“You coming?” Major asks me. “We won’t bite.”
I strip down to my swimsuit and go in. The codeine I took earlier blocks all thoughts of what happened to Rosemary in this very same water. Instead, I hear the echo of the waves, feel the warm drumbeat of the sun and the cucumber cool of the seawater against my skin.
I am awake. I am expanding.
The nerves in my fingertips cry to touch someone, the pulse in my veins jumps.
They are here on our island, these boys. Transforming it. Possibly desecrating it.
They may last a week.
They may stay forever.
18.
BEFORE SUPPER, I put on one of several white cotton dresses I own. I feel too old for yellow, and for the Lemon Hunt, we all must wear yellow or white. I comb my hair and dust blush on my cheeks.
The black pearls sit on my dresser, still there from several nights ago, and it occurs to me that I wasn’t meant to keep them. Tipper will be cross that I didn’t return them sooner. She can be sharp about things like that, small breeches of etiquette that she thinks mean you don’t appreciate something. “Manners are kindness,” she always says. She feels they show you value other people; that you consider their time, their possessions, their creative effort.
I know she is downstairs, apron on, working with Luda in the kitchen, so I write a short note.
Dearest best mother, loaner of pearls,
Thank you for the chance to wear these, and for saying they will someday be mine.
With love,
Carrie
* * *
—
MY PARENTS’ DOOR is open. The room is empty except for Wharton. She lies sleeping on a cotton blanket at the foot of the bed and doesn’t stir when I come in.
Harris’s clothes are tossed over an armchair. His bedside table is cluttered with a couple pairs of eyeglasses, books (The Fatal Shore, Lonesome Dove, a book about the CIA), nasal spray, tissues, and an orange plastic jar of prescription sleeping pills. Halcion, they’re called.
Tipper’s table has only a pretty glass container of scented hand cream and a small dish where I know she puts her earrings.
I stare for a moment at Harris’s side of the bed.
He uses nasal spray.
He needs pills to sleep.
He forgets to throw away his tissues.
The Harris Sinclair I know is always alert, always decisive. His tennis serve is brutal, his opinions likewise. But his nightstand seems vulnerable. It speaks of discomfort and fatigue.
Looking around to be sure I am alone, I open the bottle of Halcion. I shake a small handful into the pocket of my dress, leaving a good amount in the bottle. I recap it.
Then I go to Tipper’s vanity. I place the black pearls inside the jewelry drawer, tucking my note underneath them like a surprise.
She will like that.
I am about to shut the drawer when I feel the pull of the photo. Though I told myself otherwise, part of me has intended to look at it all along. And I did not want my sisters with me.
I lift the black velvet liner and slide the picture out from underneath. It has been crumpled, then flattened out again. Folds crisscross the image.
It looks like it was taken in the late sixties or early seventies. On one side is my mother. She looks as she did in college and when she was first married: her hair in a headband, with a tease behind it. She’s sitting on a bench, outdoors. Her dress has a Peter Pan collar. Behind her, I’m guessing it’s Harvard Radcliffe. Old brick and large trees, a snatch of lawn. She’s laughing, and her eyes are directed at a man—who isn’t there.
His face has been scratched out, as if with a box cutter.
I can tell that he’s white, and average weight. It could be my uncle Chris, whom I’ve never met. Or it could be someone else. The man wears a plain white T-shirt and blue jeans that sit high on his waist, the way jeans used to. His feet aren’t in the picture, and he’s pointing at the camera, as if to give instructions to the photographer, who snapped the picture at just the wrong moment.