Family of Liars(41)

I don’t want to be with him like this. I could fall over. Or fall asleep. “You have to go,” I whisper.

He kisses my neck. “Please. I don’t want to go home.”

I am too sleepy. Too drugged. And there’s Rosemary.

“I love that you risked getting murdered,” I say. “That is a truly romantic gesture. But go.”

I open the door.

“Please, Carrie. Please.”

“No, I took a sleeping pill. I can’t.”

“Please?”

“Bye.” I push him out.

He goes. But then he stands on the other side of the door and whispers, “Can you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Are you mad?”

“No.”

“Are you a tiny bit mad?”

“No.”

“Then why did you kick me out?”

“Go to bed, you big goof,” I tell him. “We can go boating in the morning. Alone, just you and me. Okay?”

“Okay. I’ll set an alarm,” he says. “For six. Will you set an alarm?”

I am dizzy with sleep. My veins feel heavy, my thoughts thick. “Yes,” I tell him. “I will.”





43.


ROSEMARY DOESN’T SHOW up again that night. She is absent for several days, in fact, but one morning she wakes me at seven o’clock by bouncing one of her stuffed lions next to my face.

We play Scrabble. I let her win.

She is still hungry after her potato chips, so I go downstairs and bring up a bowl of sliced watermelon and some warm banana bread.

Then we thread brightly colored plastic beads onto jewelry string to make bracelets. The colors used to be organized, but the set is old and they’re pretty much jumbled together.

Rosemary sorts them. She is a slob, but she does love color coding, like Bess and Tipper. While she works, I read her another story.

I want to tell that story to you now, because—well, like the other fairy tales, it may help you understand this difficult thing I am trying to say, the part of my life that I cannot yet put into my own words.





Mr. Fox


ONCE UPON A time, Lady Mary longed for love.

She lived with her two brave brothers in a house of their own, but she believed in love and wished for a husband.

When Mr. Fox came along, Lady Mary felt the days had grown brighter. Mr. Fox was clever and amusing, handsome and adoring. If he sometimes seemed careless, that was no matter. He told her she was beautiful, clever, and impressive. He wanted her to be his wife. Lady Mary loved him and she accepted his proposal.

No one knew where Mr. Fox came from, but that was no matter, either.

“Where shall we live when we are married?” Lady Mary asked Mr. Fox.

“In my castle,” he said.

A castle sounded good to Lady Mary.

But Mr. Fox did not invite Lady Mary, or Lady Mary’s two brave brothers, to visit his castle, even as weeks went by.

That was a little strange.

One day, Mr. Fox was traveling on business of some sort, so Lady Mary went in search of his castle. She had to search long and hard, but at the end of the day, she found it. The building was made of stone, tall and majestic, with a moat and crenellations and all that good castle-y stuff.

Lady Mary walked across the drawbridge and found the gate open. She entered the castle and went up a long flight of stone stairs. There was no one around.

She continued, looking into rooms and running her fingers along the walls, imagining her future life as mistress of this immense place. Oh, the fun they would have together! She relished the thought of their nights alone in the dark, and their bright sunny mornings of laughter.

On the top floor of the castle, at the end of a very long hall, Lady Mary found a closed door. It was made of steel, larger and wider than an ordinary door. A shudder went through her as she stood before it, but she pulled it open nonetheless.

Inside was a long corridor. It was filled with bones and the dead and bloody bodies of women.

Trophies. That was what women were to Mr. Fox. Objects of pleasure and then disgust, to be silenced and kept in a closet for memory’s sake while he went in pursuit of the next.

Lady Mary turned and ran, but as she reached the ground floor of the castle, she heard the front door begin to open. She hid herself up in a cupboard and held still, barely breathing. Looking out.

Mr. Fox came home.

He was dragging the body of a young woman, dead as could be. He stopped in the entryway and dumped her on the hard stone floor. The woman wore a heavy diamond ring on one finger. Mr. Fox tried to take the ring for himself, but it stuck.

In fury, he drew his sword and cut the dead woman’s hand off.

Then he dragged the body up the stairs.

Lady Mary scooped up the hand and ran home as fast as she could.

The next day, they were to be married. Before the ceremony was a breakfast. Mr. Fox, Lady Mary, her two brothers, and their guests all sat down together at the table.

“I had a terrible dream last night,” Lady Mary announced to the company.

She told the story of her visit to Mr. Fox’s castle. She told them of the closed steel door, and of the corridor behind it, filled with bodies. She told them of the dead woman, whose hand was cut off for the sake of a diamond ring.

“It is not so,” said Mr. Fox. “It was only a dream, my darling.”