Family of Liars(9)

It is certain.

“There’s no one to fall in love with,” I tell the ball. “There’s not anyone for Penny to kiss, either.”

She sighs. “That’s true.”

We do not know the boys are coming then. We don’t know how they will spin us around, rile us; change our conceptions of ourselves and upend our lives like drunken gods playing with the fates of mortals.

But we are both in the mood to be upended.

Penny goes on asking the ball ridiculous questions. “Will I ever memorize the periodic table?” “Will I marry Simon Le Bon?” He is the lead singer of a band she likes. “Is Bess the biggest pill on earth or are there bigger pills in existence?” “Will Wharton overcome her fear of seagulls?”

We take Clue, Scrabble, and a backgammon set for ourselves, plus some worn Wynne Jones novels. Last, we open a box of Rosemary’s fairy-tale books. Many of them are old, having belonged to my father when he was young, and to his mother before that. They are grand, their pictures deep with mystery. Curlicue letters begin their chapters. These are the books I used to read to Rosemary before she went to bed.

“Mother used to read those to me and Bess,” says Penny, touching the fairy book on the top of the stack. “But I don’t remember Rosemary having them.”

“She did.”

“I hope they didn’t scare her. Some of them are pretty bloody.”

“She was never scared of stories.”

I take the books to my room. Then Penny and I go downstairs, where Tipper has made fresh carrot muffins studded with raisins, coconut, and walnuts. We drink mugs of milky coffee and eat hot muffins on the porch, where the air is warming in the sun.

I beat Penny at Scrabble.





10.


“CARRIE,” BESS CALLS from the sand as I walk onto the Big Beach. “We need you.”

My sisters say this all the time. They say it because I am the eldest. In this case, they need me to set up the umbrella, a large white contraption with a persnickety mechanism—but it began with “We need you” to tie our shoes. That became “We need you” to play mermaids with us, became “We need you” to cut out paper dolls, became “We need you” to tell the nanny we didn’t mean to paint the dining table.

More recently, it evolved into “We need you” to show us how to shave our legs, to help Bess write a paper, to get Penny reinstated on the tennis team when she’s missed so many practices. To help Penny pack when she’s left it till the last minute, to convince Tipper to let Bess have a low-cut dress she wants, to redirect the gossip that swarms around school now that Penny’s dumped Lachlan two weeks before the end of term. “We need you” means my sisters love me, they rely on me, they admire me.

After I set up the umbrella, the three of us spend the middle of the day stretched out beneath it. Our parents come for shorter periods, and Gerrard takes a dip during his break, but my sisters and I have set up camp. Two printed cotton blankets are laid end to end. The umbrella gives us shade. We have strawberries, blackberries, ham-and-Brie sandwiches on baguettes, and thin buttery cookies. A cooler of drinks. We have a pile of magazines and a boom box we only play when our mother isn’t around. She hates music on the beach.

We listen to cassettes: Terence Trent D’Arby, Pet Shop Boys, R.E.M., Duran Duran. We lie on our backs and dance by waving our legs and arms in the air.

When we swim, we do it together. We don’t speak about it, but none of us ever swims alone.

“Tipper has a secret photograph hidden in her jewelry drawer,” I tell my sisters as we flop onto the blankets, dripping and breathing hard. I didn’t intend to blurt what’s on my mind, but it pops out.

Bess’s eyes widen. “What of?”

“I didn’t see it,” I say. “Only the corner. She shoved it underneath so I wouldn’t see.”

“It’s probably Rosemary,” says Penny.

“She would let me see Rosemary. I asked if it was Rosemary.”

“Maybe not. If she thought it would make you sad.”

“Maybe it’s Uncle Chris,” says Bess. My mother’s brother, Christopher Taft, ran away to South America with a woman quite a bit older than he. That is all I know about him. None of us kids have ever met him, and as far as I know, Tipper never hears from him. Her parents “washed their hands of Chris”—that’s what our late Granny M used to say.

“Oh, yeah, Christopher,” says Penny. “Should we go peek at it?”

“Ooh, yes,” says Bess.

“We can’t go prying in her stuff.” I am suddenly worried they’ll run upstairs and dig out the photograph, leaving a trail of sand and making a mess of our mother’s jewelry drawer.

“She shouldn’t be keeping things from us,” says Bess, pouting. “We deserve to see all her pictures.”

“Come on,” Penny says to me. “You wouldn’t have told us if you weren’t curious.”

“We could sneak in when she’s busy in the garden,” adds Bess. “You could be the lookout while Penny and I steal the photo.”

“No,” I say sharply. I don’t want them upsetting our parents. “What if it’s her and Harris naked?”

“Oh, blech. No.” Penny sticks out her tongue.