Family of Liars(2)

We never stayed for the fireworks. Instead, we motored back to Beechwood and ran up from the family boat dock to the real party.

Clairmont house’s porch would be decked out in fairy lights and the large picnic table on the lawn dressed in blue and white. We’d eat corn on the cob, hamburgers, watermelon. There would be a cake like an American flag, with blueberries and raspberries on top. My mother would have decorated it herself. Same cake, every year.

After supper she’d give us all sparklers. We’d parade along the wooden walkways of the island—the ones that led from house to house—and sing at the top of our lungs. “America the Beautiful,” “This Land Is Your Land,” “Be Kind to Your Fine-Feathered Friends.”

In the dark, we’d head to the Big Beach. The groundskeeper, Demetrios in those days, would set off fireworks. The family sat on cotton blankets, the adults holding glasses of clinking ice.

Anyway. It’s hard to believe I was ever quite so blindly patriotic, and that my highly educated parents were. Still, the memories stick.



* * *



—

IT NEVER OCCURRED to me that anything was wrong with how I fit into our family until one afternoon when I was fourteen. It was August, 1984.

We had been on the island since June, living in Clairmont. The house was named for the school that Harris, our father, had attended when he was a boy. Uncle Dean and my cousins lived in Pevensie, named for the family in the Narnia books. A nanny stayed the summer in Goose Cottage. The staff building was for the housekeeper, the groundskeeper, and other occasional staff, but only the housekeeper slept there regularly. The others had homes on the mainland.

I had been swimming all morning with my sisters and my cousin Yardley. We had eaten tuna sandwiches and celery from the cooler at my mother’s feet. Sleepy from lunch and exercise, I set my head down and put one hand on Rosemary. She was napping next to me on the blanket, her eight-year-old arms covered in mosquito bites, her legs sandy. Rosemary was blond, like the rest of us, with tangled waves. Her cheeks were soft and peach-colored, her limbs skinny and unformed. Freckles; a tendency to squint; a goofy laugh. Our Rosemary. She was strawberry jam, scabby knees, and a small hand in mine.

I dozed for a bit while my parents talked. They were sitting in lawn chairs beneath a white umbrella, some distance away. I woke when Rosemary rolled onto her side, and I lay there with my eyes closed, feeling her breathe under my arm.

“It’s not worth it,” my mother was saying. “It just isn’t.”

“She shouldn’t have it hard when we can fix it,” my father answered.

“Beauty is something—but it’s not everything. You act like it’s everything.”

“We’re not talking about beauty. We’re talking about helping a person who looks weak. She looks foolish.”

“Why be so harsh? There’s no need to say that.”

“I’m practical.”

“You care what people think. We shouldn’t care.”

“It’s a common surgery. The doctor is very experienced.”

There was the sound of my mother lighting a cigarette. They all smoked, back then. “You’re not thinking about the time in the hospital,” Tipper argued. “A liquid diet, the swelling, all that. The pain she’s going to suffer.”

Who were they talking about?

What surgery? A liquid diet?

“She doesn’t chew normally,” said Harris. “That’s just a fact. There’s ‘no way out but through.’?”

“Don’t quote me Robert Frost right now.”

“We have to think about the endgame. Not worry how she gets there. And it wouldn’t hurt for her to look—”

He paused for a second and Tipper jumped in. “You think about pain like it’s a workout or something. Like it’s just effort. A struggle.”

“If you put in effort, you gain something from it.”

An inhale on the cigarette. Its ashy smell mixed with the salt of the air. “Not all pain is worth it,” said Tipper. “Some pain is just pain.” There was a pause. “Should we put sun lotion on Rosemary? She’s getting pink.”

“Don’t wake her.”

Another pause. Then: “Carrie is beautiful as she is,” said Tipper. “And they have to cut through the bone, Harris. Cut through the bone.”

I froze.

They were talking about me.

Before coming to the island, I had been to the orthodontist and then to an oral surgeon. I hadn’t minded. I had barely paid attention. Half the kids at school had braces.

“She shouldn’t have a strike against her,” said Harris. “Her face this way, it’s a strike against her. She deserves to look like a Sinclair: strong on the outside because she’s strong on the inside. And if we have to do that for her, we have to do that for her.”

I realized they were going to break my jaw.





3.


WHEN WE FINALLY discussed it, I told my parents no. I said I could chew just fine (though the oral surgeon disagreed). I said I was happy with myself. They should leave me alone.

Harris pushed back. Hard. He talked to me about the authority of surgeons and why they knew best.

Tipper told me I was lovely, beautiful, exquisite. She told me she adored me. She was a kind person, narrow-minded and creative, generous and fun-loving. She always told her daughters they were beautiful. But she still thought I should consider the surgery. Why didn’t we let the question sit? Decide later? There was no rush.