We Were Liars(8)

Gat never got it, though. He’d mention my father offhandedly— quite a lot, actually. Dad had found Gat both a decent chess opponent and a willing audience for his boring stories about military history, so they’d spent some time together. “Remember when your father caught that big crab in a bucket?” Gat would say. Or to Mummy: “Last year Sam told me there’s a fly-fishing kit in the boathouse; do you know where it is?”

Dinner conversation stopped sharply when he’d mention Gran. Once Gat said, “I miss the way she’d stand at the foot of the table and serve out dessert, don’t you? It was so Tipper.” Johnny had to start talking loudly about Wimbledon until the dismay faded from our family’s faces.

Every time Gat said these things, so casual and truthful, so oblivious—my veins opened. My wrists split. I bled down my palms. I went light-headed. I’d stagger from the table or collapse in quiet shameful agony, hoping no one in the family would notice. Especially not Mummy.

Gat almost always saw, though. When blood dripped on my bare feet or poured over the book I was reading, he was kind. He wrapped my wrists in soft white gauze and asked me questions about what had happened. He asked about Dad and about Gran—as if talking about something could make it better. As if wounds needed attention.

He was a stranger in our family, even after all those years.



When I wasn’t bleeding, and when Mirren and Johnny were snorkeling or wrangling the littles, or when everyone lay on couches watching movies on the Clairmont flat-screen, Gat and I hid away. We sat on the tire swing at midnight, our arms and legs wrapped around each other, lips warm against cool night skin. In the mornings we’d sneak laughing down to the Clairmont basement, which was lined with wine bottles and encyclopedias. There we kissed and marveled at one another’s existence, feeling secret and lucky. Some days he wrote me notes and left them with small presents under my pillow.

Someone once wrote that a novel should deliver a series of small astonishments. I get the same thing spending an hour with you.

Also, here is a green toothbrush tied in a ribbon.

It expresses my feelings inadequately.

Better than chocolate, being with you last night.

Silly me, I thought that nothing was better than chocolate.

In a profound, symbolic gesture, I am giving you this bar of Vosges I got when we all went to Edgartown. You can eat it, or just sit next to it and feel superior.

I didn’t write back, but I drew Gat silly crayon drawings of the two of us. Stick figures waving from in front of the Colosseum, the Eiffel Tower, on top of a mountain, on the back of a dragon. He stuck them up over his bed.

He touched me whenever he could. Beneath the table at dinner, in the kitchen the moment it was empty. Covertly, hilariously, behind Granddad’s back while he drove the motorboat. I felt no barrier between us. As long as no one was looking, I ran my fingers along Gat’s cheekbones, down his back. I reached for his hand, pressed my thumb against his wrist, and felt the blood going through his veins.





12




One night, late July of summer fifteen, I went swimming at the tiny beach. Alone.

Where were Gat, Johnny, and Mirren?

I don’t really know.

We had been playing a lot of Scrabble at Red Gate. They were probably there. Or they could have been at Clairmont, listening to the aunts argue and eating beach plum jam on water crackers.

In any case, I went into the water wearing a camisole, bra, and underwear. Apparently I walked down to the beach wearing nothing more. We never found any of my clothes on the sand. No towel, either.

Why?

Again, I don’t really know.

I must have swum out far. There are big rocks in off the shore, craggy and black; they always look villainous in the dark of the evening.I must have had my face in the water and then hit my head on one of these rocks.

Like I said, I don’t know.

I remember only this: I plunged down into this ocean,

down to rocky rocky bottom, and

I could see the base of Beechwood Island and

my arms and legs felt numb but my fingers were cold. Slices of seaweed went past as I fell.

Mummy found me on the sand, curled into a ball and half underwater. I was shivering uncontrollably. Adults wrapped me in blankets. They tried to get me warm at Cuddledown. They fed me tea and gave me clothes, but when I didn’t talk or stop shivering, they brought me to a hospital on Martha’s Vineyard, where I stayed for several days as the doctors ran tests. Hypothermia, respiratory problems, and most likely some kind of head injury, though the brain scans turned up nothing.

Mummy stayed by my side, got a hotel room. I remember the sad, gray faces of Aunt Carrie, Aunt Bess, and Granddad. I remember my lungs felt full of something, long after the doctors judged them clear. I remember I felt like I’d never get warm again, even when they told me my body temperature was normal. My hands hurt. My feet hurt.

Mummy took me home to Vermont to recuperate. I lay in bed in the dark and felt desperately sorry for myself. Because I was sick, and even more because Gat never called.

He didn’t write, either.

Weren’t we in love?

Weren’t we?

I wrote to Johnny, two or three stupid, lovesick emails asking him to find out about Gat.

Johnny had the good sense to ignore them. We are Sinclairs, after all, and Sinclairs do not behave like I was behaving.