Family of Liars(19)

We eat on the lawn instead of at the picnic table. White and yellow cotton blankets, old and mismatched, some of them patchwork quilts, are laid out for people to sit on as supper is served.

George cozies up to Yardley on the porch hammock. Penny, Erin, and I sit with Pfeff and Major, while Bess and Tomkin get out croquet mallets and hoops. Those two have little interest in chicken and salad and sourdough bread. They are saving themselves for dessert.

We watch them play. Our croquet set is old and used to belong to Harris’s mother. We don’t use it often. It’s more of an affectation than an actual game. Bess and Tomkin perform beautifully, batting the colored balls, running and laughing, being picturesque.

Major talks about a movie, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, that no one else has seen. He’s explaining the story, beat by beat, but Pfeff interrupts him. “Don’t tell them the plot.”

“Why not?”

“People don’t want to hear the plot of a goddamned movie, Major. It ruins the fun.”

“I want to hear it,” I tell him. “We’re movie starved. Boarding school and now here—I never see anything.”

“We have a couple VCRs,” explains Penny. “But there’s nothing to watch.” She flops back on the picnic blanket. The boys’ eyes all go to her legs as her skirt slides up above her knees.

“I think we own twelve movies between all three houses,” I say.

“It’s eleven,” corrects Penny from her lying-down position. “And the most random movies you could ever own.”

“Kids’ movies, mostly,” I add. “From when we were little.”

“We have Bedknobs and Broomsticks,” says Penny. “I have seen that thing like a million times.”

“And some classics our dad thought would be good for us,” I add.

“They’re not even real classics,” says Penny. “It’s just things that old men like, like Ben-Hur.” She shakes her head. “God, that’s a stupid movie.”

All the while we’re talking, my eyes are on Pfeff. It isn’t that he’s so handsome. His lips are thin. The space between his nose and the top of his mouth is probably a bit too short for actual beauty. But he is voracious—eating hungrily and enthusiastically, declaring his adoration of the chicken, the sourdough. Getting up for seconds. “I’m going to move in and live with your mom instead of mine,” he tells me. “I’m done with my mother entirely. Adopting your family. That’s it, you have to take me. I’m going to eat like this every day until I go to college.”

“Don’t be vile,” says Penny. Vile is her favorite word this season. She says it when vile is not what she means at all.

He keeps looking at me but answers her. “The way to my heart is through my stomach, I’m just saying.”

“It’ll be all cafeteria food at Amherst,” says Major. “You better eat up now.” Major and Pfeff are both going to Amherst, a college in western Massachusetts.

“I’m on it,” says Pfeff.



* * *



—

TIPPER HAS ASKED me to proclaim the rules of the Lemon Hunt. For all her hostessy impulses, she never likes to stand up in front of a crowd, and I have done this announcement for the past couple years. I don’t mind public speaking. I know I have a strong voice, and it contradicts what people think when they look at my jaw. Or what they used to think.

When she gives me the signal, before dessert, I stand on the Clairmont steps and ring a bell.

“The nearly annual Sinclair Family Lemon Hunt will commence momentarily,” I proclaim as everyone gathers at the foot of the steps. “With tremendous thanks to my mother, the miraculous Tipper Sinclair, you will find that there are one hundred lemons and a single lime hidden across Beechwood Island. There are none that will endanger you to retrieve. None on rooftops or in brambles. And none indoors, though they may not be visible to the naked eye. Each of you, adults and children, is to take a basket.”

I gesture at a collection of baskets Luda has brought out. They are wicker, some dark and some light. They’re all different shapes, but each is tied with a pale yellow ribbon.

“Collect lemons,” I continue. “Wander near, wander far. Please do not go swimming on your own.” I see Tipper wince, but I feel I have to say it. The idea of Tomkin or Bess or anyone, really, swimming alone on those beaches chills me. “You needn’t bother around the staff building, but anywhere else is potential asylum for a citrus fruit.” Though I say this every year, there is a ripple of laughter. “At the end of the hunt, you will hear this bell again. At that time, lemons will be counted—by Tipper”—here, I curtsy toward my mother—“and two prizes will be awarded. One for maximum lemons, the other for the lime.”

“Off you go!” calls Tipper, waving to the group. “Good luck!”

The baskets are collected. Flashlights are turned on.

The music inside the house gets louder as people leave the lawn.

One hundred lemons (and the single lime) await.





20.


THE BOYS HEAD out together. Penny grabs Erin and they head for the boathouse. Uncle Dean grabs Tomkin and the two of them run off. Bess, a serious hunter, disappears around the back of Clairmont, skirting the house.