Family of Liars(6)

   The Black Pearls





7.


OUR ISLAND IS quite a ways off the coast of Massachusetts. The water is a deep, dark blue. Sometimes there are great white sharks off the shore. Beach roses flourish here. The island is covered with them. And though the shoreline is rocky, we have two sweet inlets edged with patches of white sand.

At first, this land belonged to Indigenous people. It was taken away from them by settlers from Europe. Nobody knows when, but it must have happened.

In 1926, my great-grandfather bought the island and built a single home on the south shore. His son inherited it—and when he died in 1972, my father and his brother Dean inherited it. And they had plans.

The Sinclair brothers demolished the home their grandfather had built. They leveled the land, where needed. They carted in sand for the island’s beaches. They consulted with architects and built three houses—one for each brother, plus a guesthouse. The homes were traditional Cape Cod style: steep roofs, wood shingles, shutters on the windows, big porches.

Some of the money for these projects came from my mother’s trust fund. Tipper’s family money came (in part, going back some generations) from a sugar plantation near Charleston, South Carolina. That plantation used enslaved people for labor. It is ugly money.

Other money came from my father’s family. The Sinclairs were owners of a long-standing Boston publishing house. And more came from my father. Early in his career, Harris bought a small company that puts out a number of literary and news magazines.

That’s ugly money, too. Just in different ways. The history there includes exploited workers, broken contracts, and child labor overseas—along with journalistic integrity and belief in the freedom of the press.

When the Sinclair brothers were done with their improvements, there were two docks, a boathouse, and a staff building. The island was crisscrossed with wooden walkways and planted with lilacs and lavender.

I have spent every summer here since I was five.



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IT IS JUNE now, 1987. The summer the boys arrive. The summer of Pfeff.

We drive from Boston to the Cape. Gerrard, the Beechwood groundskeeper, meets us in the town of Woods Hole. He has brought the big motorboat. Gerrard is about sixty years old, short and smiley. He says very little, except to my mother. She has eager questions about rhododendrons and lilacs, various repairs that are needed, the installation of a new dryer. In a few days, Luda will take a rental car down with more stuff from the Boston house.

With the boat loaded up, we motor two hours to the island with Gerrard at the wheel. Penny, Bess, and I sit together, our hair whipping around us.

It is the same ride as every year, only without Rosemary in her orange life vest.

Without her.



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CLAIRMONT HOUSE LOOKS the same as ever—three stories and a turret up top. The wooden shingles are gray from salt air. A wide porch stretches around two sides. There is a hammock on one end of the porch and a collection of cozy armchairs on the other. On the lawn is an extra-large, custom-made picnic table. We eat supper there most nights. At the foot of the lawn stands a maple tree. From a low branch hangs our tire swing on a single thick rope.

Coming up from the dock, Penny throws her suitcases on the lawn and runs to the swing. She hurls herself into it and spins wildly. “Carrie, get over here. You need to say hello to the swing!” she calls.

Okay, then. I’m feeling melancholy, thinking of Rosemary—but I go over anyhow. I run and climb on, standing with my feet on either side of Penny’s legs. The rush of air in my ears, the dizziness—for a moment, I forget everything but this.

“It’s summer now!” cries Penny.

When Bess gets up from the dock, she leaves her bags and comes to join us. We are too big, and it’s hard to fit, but we get gloriously dizzy together, the way we did when we were children.

Inside Clairmont, the carpets are worn but the woodwork is oiled. The kitchen’s round table boasts the stains and scrapes that are inevitable with a big family. The living room features a number of oil paintings and a bar cart glistening with bottles, but the den is more comfortable. It bursts with books and blankets, plaid flannel dog beds and stacks of newspapers. There’s a study for my father, filled with framed New Yorker cartoons and fat leather furniture; and a crafting studio for my mother, all quilting fabrics and jars of buttons, calligraphy pens and boxes of pretty stationery.



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MY PARENTS’ ROOM is on the third floor, away from the noise of us girls. When I go in, about a half hour after our arrival, Tipper is unpacking, sliding shirts into a drawer. Her beige linen dress is creased from traveling.

Wharton (our Irish setter) stretches across the bottom of the bed. I lie down beside her. “Make room, you dumb queen of a dog.”

“Oh, don’t say that,” scolds Tipper. “She’ll feel bad.”

“Stupid is part of her charm.” I stroke Wharton’s soft ears. “She’s eating Harris’s sock.”

My mother comes over and takes the sock from Wharton’s mouth. “That’s not a food,” she tells the dog.

Wharton looks up soulfully, then begins to lick the bedspread.

Tipper putters from the dresser to the dressing table, in and out of the closet, and back and forth to her suitcases. When I was sick, we were often just the two of us, but since school ended, I have only seen my mother with my sisters around.