We Were Liars

She said don’t be silly. “You’re risking the future,” she said. “Our house. Your education. For what?”

“Love.”

“A summer fling. Leave the boy alone.”

“No.”

“Love doesn’t last, Cady. You know that.”

“I don’t.”

“Well, believe me, it doesn’t.”

“We’re not you and Dad,” I said. “We’re not.”

Mummy crossed her arms. “Grow up, Cadence. See the world as it is, not as you wish it would be.”

I looked at her. My lovely, tall mother with her pretty coil of hair and her hard, bitter mouth. Her veins were never open. Her heart never leapt out to flop helplessly on the lawn. She never melted into puddles. She was normal. Always. At any cost.

“For the health of our family,” she said eventually, “you are to break it off.”

“I won’t.”

“You must. And when you’re done, make sure Granddad knows. Tell him it’s nothing and tell him it never was anything. Tell him he shouldn’t worry about that boy again and then talk to him about Harvard and te

I did not and I would not.

I ran out of the house and into Gat’s arms.

I bled on him and he didn’t mind.

LATE THAT NIGHT, Mirren, Gat, Joh

We collected the ivory goose from Clairmont, the elephants from Windemere, the monkeys from Red Gate, and the toad from Cuddledown. We brought them down to the dock in the dark and smashed them with the hammers and the wrench and the shears until the ivory was nothing but powder.

Gat ducked a bucket into the cold seawater and rinsed the dock clean.

68

WE THOUGHT.

We talked.

What if, we said,

what if

in another universe,

a split reality,

God reached out his finger and

lightning struck the Clairmont house?

What if

God sent it up in flames?

Thus he would punish the greedy, the petty, the prejudiced, the normal, the unkind.

They would repent of their deeds.

And after that, learn to love one another again.

Open their souls. Open their veins. Wipe off their smiles.

Be a family. Stay a family.

It wasn’t religious, the way we thought of it.

And yet it was.

Punishment.

Purification through flames.

Or both.

69

NEXT DAY, LATE July of summer fifteen, there was a lunch at Clairmont. Another lunch like all the other lunches, set out on the big table. More tears.

The voices were so loud that we Liars came up the walkway from Red Gate and stood at the foot of the garden, listening.

“I have to earn your love every day, Dad,” Mummy slurred. “And most days I fail. It’s not fucking fair. Carrie gets the pearls, Bess gets the Boston house, Bess gets Windemere. Carrie has Joh

Granddad stood from his seat at the head of the table. “Penelope.”

“I’ll take her away, do you hear me? I’ll take Cady away and you won’t see her again.”

Granddad’s voice boomed across the yard. “This is the United States of America,” he said. “You don’t seem to understand that, Pe

The little boys nodded, chins quivering. Granddad continued: “We Sinclairs are a grand, old family. That is something to be proud of. Our traditions and values form the bedrock on which future generations stand. This island is our home, as it was my father’s and my grandfather’s before him. And yet the three of you women, with these divorces, broken homes, this disrespect for tradition, this lack of a work ethic, you have done nothing but disappoint an old man who thought he raised you right.”

“Dad, please,” said Bess.

“Be quiet!” thundered Granddad. “You ca

Bess crumpled in tears.

Carrie grabbed Will by the elbow and walked toward the dock.

Mummy threw her wineglass against the side of Clairmont house.

70

“WHAT HAPPENED THEN?” I ask Joh

“You don’t remember?” he says.

“No.”

“People started leaving the island. Carrie took Will to a hotel in Edgartown and asked me and Gat to follow her as soon as we’d packed everything. The staff departed at eight. Your mother went to see that friend of hers on the Vineyard—”

“Alice?”

“Yes, Alice came and got her, but you wouldn’t leave, and finally she had to go without you. Granddad took off for the mainland. And then we decided about the fire.”

“We pla

“We did. We convinced Bess to take the big boat and all the littles to see a movie on the Vineyard.”

As Joh

“When they left we drank the wine they’d left corked in the fridge,” says Joh

“He was right,” I say.

Joh

“Clairmont was like the symbol of everything that was wrong.” It is Mirren’s voice. She came in so quietly I didn’t hear. She is now lying on the floor next to Joh

“The seat of the patriarchy,” says Gat. I didn’t hear him come in, either. He lies down next to me.

“You’re such an ass, Gat,” says Joh

“It’s what I mean.”

“You sneak it in whenever you can. Patriarchy on toast. Patriarchy in my pants. Patriarchy with a squeeze of lemon.”

“Clairmont seemed like the seat of the patriarchy,” repeats Gat. “And yes, we were stupid drunk, and yes, we thought they’d rip the family apart and I would never come here again. We figured if the house was gone, and the paperwork and data inside it gone, and all the objects they fought about gone, the power would be gone.”

“We could be a family,” says Mirren.

“It was like a purification,” says Gat.

“She remembers we set a fire is all,” says Joh

“And some other things,” I add, sitting up and looking at the Liars in the morning light. “Things are coming back as you’re filling me in.”

“We are telling you all the stuff that happened before we set the fire,” says Joh

“Yes,” says Mirren.

“We set a fire,” I say, in wonder. “We didn’t sob and bleed; we did something instead. Made a change.”

“Kind of,” says Mirren.

“Are you kidding? We burned that fucking palace to the ground.”

71

AFTER THE AUNTIES and Granddad quarreled, I was crying.

Gat was crying, too.

He was going to leave the island and I’d never see him again. He would never see me.

Gat, my Gat.

I had never cried with anyone before. At the same time.

He cried like a man, not like a boy. Not like he was frustrated or hadn’t gotten his way, but like life was bitter. Like his wounds couldn’t be healed.