Family of Liars(8)

But my insides are made of seawater, warped wood, and rusty nails.





9.


THE MORNING AFTER our arrival, I am up at six. I pull on a sweater over my nightgown, since mornings on Beechwood are chilly. On my way downstairs for coffee, I pause at the door to Rosemary’s old room.

Inside, it is bare. The bunk beds are made up neatly with old quilts from my mother’s collection. Used to be, Rosemary kept about thirty stuffed animals on the upper bunk with her, mostly lions. But they are not here anymore. Not even her favorite lion, a floppy white one named Shampoo.

Rosemary’s books are absent, too: old picture books and chapter books, collections of fairy tales. Gone are her Barbies, her spiral drawing thing, her Magic 8 Ball. The room’s built-in shelves display a few pretty objects I don’t remember—a green-and-white vase, a few books on botanical subjects. When I open the closet, it is empty except for some neatly folded blankets.

Tipper must have worked hard to put every reminder of Rosemary out of sight, not wishing to cause pain to anyone who might wander in here without thinking.

I climb to the top bunk, where my sister used to sleep.

I should have played more “lion family” with her.

I should have done her hair in French braids, though Bess did that.

I should have made cookies with her more, though I did sometimes.

She was the baby who wanted to go up and down the porch steps a thousand times, right leg always stepping up, left leg following. The four-year-old in tutus, running along the walkways with a magic wand. The seven-year-old in a snorkel mask and flippers, stomping in frustration that no one wanted to take her down to the beach. The ten-year-old with a battered stack of Diana Wynne Jones novels; asking for seconds of strawberry rhubarb pie; baking cookies studded with butterscotch chips; demanding I read her fairy tales, even though she was too old to be read to.

“Mother cleared this out when?” Penny stands in the door. Her shiny, pale hair is chaotic from sleep. She wears her green North Forest gym shorts, an old chamois shirt, and beloved slippers that have lamb faces on the toes.

“Don’t know. Maybe Luda did it last fall.”

“I need coffee,” says Penny. But she climbs into Rosemary’s bunk with me.

I know she doesn’t want to talk about our sister. About our feelings. She never does. She’ll lash out if you push her, so I stay silent.

Penny puts her feet in the air, still in the lamb slippers. They touch the ceiling.

I put my feet in the air, too, in blue scrunchy socks.

We wiggle our toes on the ceiling together.

“Would you want to go hunt in the attic?” I ask, getting an idea. “Just to look for maybe some of the old books? And maybe games? We might want them.” I don’t mention Rosemary’s other things, her clothes and stuffed lions and so on.

“I wouldn’t say no to a game of Clue.”

“Also those Diana Wynne Jones books,” I say.

“Those are sweet,” says Penny. “I could do a reread of some of those babies, for sure.”



* * *



—

WE PAD UPSTAIRS to my parents’ floor. At the end of the hall is a doorway to a narrow wooden staircase. That goes up to our attic space—the turret. It is a hexagonal room with two windows and a finished wooden floor, but it tends to be stuffy and hot, so Tipper uses it for storage.

The room smells of wood and dust. There are a couple of carpets, in rolls. Trunks and cardboard containers are carefully labeled in our mother’s handwriting. As I expected, there’s a cluster of new-looking boxes against one wall, neatly taped.

Penny and I spend the next half hour looking through the contents. I say hello to Shampoo and the other stuffed lions, to Rosemary’s shorts and T-shirts. Oh, I miss her. But I want to keep Penny with me, so I close those boxes quickly. Instead, I focus on games. We find Clue, Scrabble, and the Magic 8 Ball. Do we want the Spirograph art thing? No.

Penny shakes the 8 Ball while I rummage some more. “Will I fall in love?” she asks it.

Better not to tell you now, it says.

“Will I at least make out with someone? This summer? Anyone?”

Reply hazy. Try again.

“Ugh. Will there be kissing?” she asks, exasperated.

Signs point to yes.

“That’s more like it,” Penny says.

Boys have lined up for her attention ever since she started at North Forest, but Penny claims that she was never in love with any of them. “Some were extremely cute,” she told me once. “But they were too stupid to love.”

It seems unfair that this magnetism and beauty should be so heavily gifted to Penny, as if by some fairies at her birth, and that she should value it so little. She has kissed too many people to keep count, is asked early to every dance, is never alone unless she wants to be. She is valued for the good fortune of her cheekbones, the blue of her eyes, the extra length of her neck. And she has never known any other way of being in the world.

“Will Carrie fall in love?” she asks the 8 Ball.

As I see it, yes.

“Ooh, Carrie, you’re falling in love.”

“It didn’t say when,” I remind Penny. “I might be falling in love when I am thirty.”

“Will Carrie fall in love this summer?” Penny asks the 8 Ball.