We Were Liars (16 page)

As he talks, memories flash across my skull, so hard and bright they hurt. I flinch and put my hands over my eyes.

“Do you remember any more about the fire?” he asks gently. “Is it coming back?”

I close my eyes for a moment and try. “No, not that. But other things.”

Johnny reaches out and takes my hand.

SPRING BEFORE SUMMER
fifteen, Mummy made me write to Granddad. Nothing blatant. “Thinking of you and your loss today. Hoping you are well.”

I sent actual cards—heavy cream stock with
Cadence Sinclair Eastman
printed across the top.
Dear Granddad, I just rode in a 5K bike ride for cancer research. Tennis team starts up next week. Our book club is reading
Brideshead Revisited.
Love you
.

“Just remind him that you care,” said Mummy. “And that you’re a good person. Well-rounded and a credit to the family.”

I complained. Writing the letters seemed false. Of course I cared. I loved Granddad and I did think about him. But I didn’t want to write these reminders of my excellence every two weeks.

“He’s very impressionable right now,” said Mummy. “He’s suffering. Thinking about the future. You’re the first grandchild.”

“Johnny’s only three weeks younger.”

“That’s my point. Johnny’s a boy and he’s only three weeks younger. So write the letter.”

I did as she asked.

ON BEECHWOOD SUMMER
fifteen, the aunties filled in for Gran, making slumps and fussing around Granddad as if he hadn’t been living alone in Boston since Tipper died in October. But they were quarrelsome. They no longer had the
glue of Gran keeping them together, and they fought over their memories, her jewelry, the clothes in her closet, her shoes, even. These affairs had not been settled in October. People’s feelings had been too delicate then. It had all been left for the summer. When we got to Beechwood in late June, Bess had already inventoried Gran’s Boston possessions and now began with those in Clairmont. The aunts had copies on their tablets and pulled them up regularly.

“I always loved that jade tree ornament.”

“I’m surprised you remember it. You never helped decorate.”

“Who do you think took the tree down? Every year I wrapped all the ornaments in tissue paper.”

“Martyr.”

“Here are the pearl earrings Mother promised me.”

“The black pearls? She said
I
could have them.”

The aunts began to blur into one another as the days of the summer ticked past. Argument after argument, old injuries were rehashed and threaded through new ones.

Variations.

“Tell Granddad how much you love the embroidered tablecloths,” Mummy told me.

“I don’t love them.”

“He won’t say no to you.” The two of us were alone in the Windemere kitchen. She was drunk. “You love me, don’t you, Cadence? You’re all I have now. You’re not like Dad.”

“I just don’t care about tablecloths.”

“So lie. Tell him the ones from the Boston house. The cream ones with the embroidery.”

It was easiest to tell her I would.

And later, I told her I had.

But Bess had asked Mirren to do the same thing,

and neither one of us

begged Granddad

for the fucking tablecloths.

GAT AND I
went night swimming. We lay on the wooden walkway and looked at the stars. We kissed in the attic.

We fell in love.

He gave me a book.
With everything, everything
.

We didn’t talk about Raquel. I couldn’t ask. He didn’t say.

The twins have their birthday July fourteenth, and there’s always a big meal. All twelve of us were sitting at the long table on the lawn outside Clairmont. Lobsters and potatoes with caviar. Small pots of melted butter. Baby vegetables and basil. Two cakes, one vanilla and one chocolate, waited inside on the kitchen counter.

The littles were getting noisy with their lobsters, poking each other with claws and slurping meat out of the legs. Johnny told stories. Mirren and I laughed. We were surprised when Granddad walked over and wedged himself between Gat and me. “I want to ask your advice on something,” he said. “The advice of youth.”

“We are worldly and awesome youth,” said Johnny, “so you’ve come to the right end of the table.”

“You know,” said Granddad, “I’m not getting any younger, despite my good looks.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said.

“Thatcher and I are sorting through my affairs. I’m considering leaving a good portion of my estate to my alma mater.”

“To Harvard? For what, Dad?” asked Mummy, who had walked over to stand behind Mirren.

Granddad smiled. “Probably to fund a student center. They’d put my name on it, out front.” He nudged Gat. “What should they call it, young man, eh? What do you think?”

“Harris Sinclair Hall?” Gat ventured.

“Pah.” Granddad shook his head. “We can do better. Johnny?”

“The Sinclair Center for Socialization,” Johnny said, shoving zucchini into his mouth.

“And snacks,” put in Mirren. “The Sinclair Center for Socialization and Snacks.”

Granddad banged his hand on the table. “I like the ring of it. Not educational, but appreciated by everyone. I’m convinced. I’ll call Thatcher tomorrow. My name will be on every student’s favorite building.”

“You’ll have to die before they build it,” I said.

“True. But won’t you be proud to see my name up there when you’re a student?”

“You’re not dying before we go to college,” said Mirren. “We won’t allow it.”

“Oh, if you insist.” Granddad speared a bit of lobster tail off her plate and ate it.

We were caught up easily, Mirren, Johnny, and I—feeling the power he conferred in picturing us at Harvard, the specialness of asking our opinions and laughing at our jokes. That was how Granddad had always treated us.

“You’re not being funny, Dad,” Mummy snapped. “Drawing the children into it.”

“We’re not children,” I told her. “We understand the conversation.”

“No, you don’t,” she said, “or you wouldn’t be humoring him that way.”

A chill went around the table. Even the littles quieted.

Carrie lived with Ed. The two of them bought art that might or might not be valuable later. Johnny and Will went to private school. Carrie had started a jewelry boutique with her trust and ran it for a number of years until it failed. Ed earned money, and he supported her, but Carrie didn’t have an income of her own. And they weren’t married. He owned their apartment and she didn’t.

Bess was raising four kids on her own. She had some money from her trust, like Mummy and Carrie did, but when she got divorced Brody kept the house. She hadn’t worked since she got married, and before that she’d only been an assistant in the offices of a magazine. Bess was living off the trust money and spending through it.

And Mummy. The dog breeding business doesn’t pay much, and Dad wanted us to sell the Burlington house so he could take half. I knew Mummy was living off her trust.

We.

We
were living off her trust.

It wouldn’t last forever.

So when Granddad said he might leave his money to build Harvard a student center and asked our advice, he wasn’t involving the family in his financial plans.

He was making a threat.

A FEW EVENINGS
later. Clairmont cocktail hour. It began at six or six-thirty, depending on when people wandered up the hill to the big house. The cook was fixing supper and had set out salmon mousse with little floury crackers. I went past her and pulled a bottle of white wine from the fridge for the aunties.

The littles, having been down at the big beach all afternoon, were being forced into showers and fresh clothes by Gat, Johnny, and Mirren at Red Gate, where there was an outdoor shower. Mummy, Bess, and Carrie sat around the Clairmont coffee table.

I brought wineglasses for the aunts as Granddad entered. “So, Penny,” he said, pouring himself bourbon from the decanter on the sideboard, “how are you and Cady doing at Windemere this year, with the change of circumstances? Bess is worried you’re lonely.”

“I didn’t say that,” said Bess.

Carrie narrowed her eyes.

“Yes, you did,” Granddad said to Bess. He motioned for me to sit down. “You talked about the five bedrooms. The renovated kitchen, and how Penny’s alone now and won’t need it.”

“Did you, Bess?” Mummy drew breath.

Bess didn’t reply. She bit her lip and looked out at the view.

“We’re not lonely,” Mummy told Granddad. “We adore Windemere, don’t we, Cady?”

Granddad beamed at me. “You okay there, Cadence?”

I knew what I was supposed to say. “I’m more than okay there, I’m fantastic. I love Windemere because you built it specially for Mummy. I want to raise my own children there and my children’s children. You are so excellent, Granddad. You are the patriarch and I revere you. I am so glad I am a Sinclair. This is the best family in America.”

Not in those words. But I was meant to help Mummy keep the house by telling my grandfather that he was the big man, that he was the cause of all our happiness, and by reminding him that I was the future of the family. The all-American Sinclairs would perpetuate ourselves, tall and white and beautiful and rich, if only he let Mummy and me stay in Windemere.

I was supposed to make Granddad feel in control when his world was spinning because Gran had died. I was to beg him by praising him—never acknowledging the aggression behind his question.

My mother and her sisters were dependent on Granddad and his money. They had the best educations, a thousand chances, a thousand connections, and still they’d ended up unable to support themselves. None of them did anything useful in the world. Nothing necessary. Nothing brave. They were still little girls, trying to get in good with Daddy. He was their bread and butter, their cream and honey, too.

“It’s too big for us,” I told Granddad.

No one spoke as I left the room.

MUMMY AND I
were silent on the walk back to Windemere after supper. Once the door shut behind us, she turned on me. “Why didn’t you back me with your grandfather? Do you want us to lose this house?”

“We don’t need it.”

“I picked the paint, the tiles. I hung the flag from the porch.”

“It’s five bedrooms.”

“We thought we’d have a bigger family.” Mummy’s face got tight. “But it didn’t work out that way. That doesn’t mean I don’t deserve the house.”

“Mirren and those guys could use the room.”

“This is
my
house. You can’t expect me to give it up because Bess had too many children and left her husband. You can’t think it’s okay for her to snatch it from me. This is our place, Cadence. We’ve got to look out for ourselves.”

“Can you hear yourself?” I snapped. “You have a trust fund!”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“Some people have nothing. We have everything. The only person who used the family money for charity was Gran. Now she’s gone and all anyone’s worried about is her pearls and her ornaments and her real estate. Nobody is trying to use their money for good. Nobody is trying to make the world any better.”

Mummy stood up. “You’re filled with superiority, aren’t you? You think you understand the world so much better than I do. I’ve heard Gat talking. I’ve seen you eating up his words like
ice cream off a spoon. But you haven’t paid bills, you haven’t had a family, owned property, seen the world. You have no idea what you’re talking about, and yet you do nothing but pass judgment.”

“You are ripping up this family because you think you deserve the prettiest house.”

Mummy walked to the foot of the stairs. “You go back to Clairmont tomorrow. You tell Granddad how much you love Windemere. Tell him you want to raise your own kids spending summers here. You tell him.”

“No. You should stand up to him. Tell him to stop manipulating all of you. He’s only acting like this because he’s sad about Gran, can’t you tell? Can’t you help him? Or get a job so his money doesn’t matter? Or give the house to Bess?”

“Listen to me, young lady.” Mummy’s voice was steely. “You go and talk to Granddad about Windemere or I will send you to Colorado with your father for the rest of the summer. I’ll do it tomorrow. I swear, I’ll take you to the airport first thing. You won’t see that boyfriend of yours again. Understand?”

She had me there.

She knew about me and Gat. And she could take him away.

Would
take him away.

I was in love.

I promised whatever she asked.

When I told Granddad how much I adored the house, he smiled and said he knew someday I’d have beautiful children. Then he said Bess was a grasping wench and he had no intention of giving her my house. But later, Mirren told me he’d promised Windemere to Bess.

“I’ll take care of you,” he’d said. “Just give me a little time to get Penny out.”

GAT AND I
went out on the tennis court in the twilight a couple nights after I fought with Mummy. We tossed balls for Fatima and Prince Philip in silence.

Finally he said, “Have you noticed Harris never calls me by my name?”

“No.”

“He calls me
young man
. Like, How was your school year, young man?”

“Why?”

“It’s like, if he called me
Gat
he’d be really saying, How was your school year, Indian boy whose Indian uncle lives in sin with my pure white daughter? Indian boy I caught kissing my precious Cadence?”

“You believe that’s what he’s thinking?”

“He can’t stomach me,” said Gat. “Not really. He might like me as a person, might even like Ed, but he can’t say my name or look me in the eye.”

It was true. Now that he said it, I could see.

“I’m not saying he wants to be the guy who only likes white people,” Gat went on. “He knows he’s not supposed to be that guy. He’s a Democrat, he voted for Obama—but that doesn’t mean he’s comfortable having people of color in his beautiful family.” Gat shook his head. “He’s fake with us. He doesn’t like the idea of Carrie with us. He doesn’t call Ed
Ed
. He calls him
sir
. And he makes sure I know I’m an outsider, every chance he
gets.” Gat stroked Fatima’s soft doggy ears. “You saw him in the attic. He wants me to stay the hell away from you.”