We Were Liars

16

WHEN I WAS eight, Dad gave me a stack of fairy-tale books for Christmas. They came with colored covers: The Yellow Fairy Book, The Blue Fairy Book, The Crimson, The Green, The Gray, The Brown, and The Orange. Inside were tales from all over the world, variations on variations of familiar stories.

Read them and you hear echoes of one story inside another, then echoes of another inside that. So many have the same premise: once upon a time, there were three.

Three of something:

three pigs,

three bears,

three brothers,

three soldiers,

three billy goats.

Three princesses.

Since I got back from Europe, I have been writing some of my own. Variations.

I have time on my hands, so let me tell you a story. A variation, I am saying, of a story you have heard before.

ONCE UPON A time there was a king who had three beautiful daughters.

As he grew old, he began to wonder which should inherit the kingdom, since none had married and he had no heir. The king decided to ask his daughters to demonstrate their love for him.

To the eldest princess he said, “Tell me how you love me.”

She loved him as much as all the treasure in the kingdom.

To the middle princess he said, “Tell me how you love me.”

She loved him with the strength of iron.

To the youngest princess he said, “Tell me how you love me.”

This youngest princess thought for a long time before answering. Finally she said she loved him as meat loves salt.

“Then you do not love me at all,” the king said. He threw his daughter from the castle and had the bridge drawn up behind her so that she could not return.

Now, this youngest princess goes into the forest with not so much as a coat or a loaf of bread. She wanders through a hard winter, taking shelter beneath trees. She arrives at an inn and gets hired as assistant to the cook. As the days and weeks go by, the princess learns the ways of the kitchen. Eventually she surpasses her employer in skill and her food is known throughout the land.

Years pass, and the eldest princess comes to be married. For the festivities, the cook from the inn makes the wedding meal.

Finally a large roast pig is served. It is the king’s favorite dish, but this time it has been cooked with no salt.

The king tastes it.

Tastes it again.

“Who would dare to serve such an ill-cooked roast at the future queen’s wedding?” he cries.

The princess-cook appears before her father, but she is so changed he does not recognize her. “I would not serve you salt, Your Majesty,” she explains. “For did you not exile your youngest daughter for saying that it was of value?”

At her words, the king realizes that not only is she his daughter—she is, in fact, the daughter who loves him best.

And what then?

The eldest daughter and the middle sister have been living with the king all this time. One has been in favor one week, the other the next. They have been driven apart by their father’s constant comparisons. Now the youngest has returned, the king yanks the kingdom from his eldest, who has just been married. She is not to be queen after all. The elder sisters rage.

At first, the youngest basks in fatherly love. Before long, however, she realizes the king is demented and power-mad. She is to be queen, but she is also stuck tending to a crazy old tyrant for the rest of her days. She will not leave him, no matter how sick he becomes.

Does she stay because she loves him as meat loves salt?

Or does she stay because he has now promised her the kingdom?

It is hard for her to tell the difference.

17

THE FALL AFTER the European trip, I started a project. I give away something of mine every day.

I mailed Mirren an old Barbie with extra-long hair, one we used to fight over when we were kids. I mailed Johnny a striped scarf I used to wear a lot. Johnny likes stripes.

For the old people in my family—Mummy, the aunties, Granddad—the accumulation of beautiful objects is a life goal.

Whoever dies with the most stuff wins.

Wins what? is what I’d like to know.

I used to be a person who liked pretty things. Like Mummy does, like all the Sinclairs do. But that’s not me anymore.

Mummy has our Burlington house filled with silver and crystal, coffee-table books and cashmere blankets. Thick rugs cover every floor, and paintings from several local artists she patronizes line our walls. She likes antique china and displays it in the dining room. She’s replaced the perfectly drivable Saab with a BMW.

Not one of these symbols of prosperity and taste has any use at all.

“Beauty is a valid use,” Mummy argues. “It creates a sense of place, a sense of personal history. Pleasure, even, Cadence. Have you ever heard of pleasure?”

But I think she’s lying, to me and to herself, about why she owns these objects. The jolt of a new purchase makes Mummy feel powerful, if only for a moment. I think there is status to having a house full of pretty things, to buying expensive paintings of seashells from her arty friends and spoons from Tiffany’s. Antiques and Oriental rugs tell people that my mother may be a dog breeder who dropped out of Bryn Mawr, but she’s got power—because she’s got money.

GIVEAWAY: MY BED pillow. I carry it while I run errands.

There is a girl leaning against the wall outside the library. She has a cardboard cup by her ankles for spare change. She is not much older than I am.

“Do you want this pillow?” I ask. “I washed the pillowcase.”

She takes it and sits on it.

My bed is uncomfortable that night, but it’s for the best.

GIVEAWAY: PAPERBACK COPY of King Lear I read for school sophomore year, found under the bed.

Donated to the public library.

I don’t need to read it again.

GIVEAWAY: A PHOTO of Granny Tipper at the Farm Institute party, wearing an evening dress and holding a piglet.

I stop by Goodwill on my way home. “Hey there, Cadence,” says Patti behind the counter. “Just dropping off?”

“This was my Gran.”

“She was a beautiful lady,” says Patti, peering. “You sure you don’t want to take the photo out? You could donate just the frame.”

“I’m sure.”

Gran is dead. Having a picture of her won’t change anything.

“DID YOU GO by Goodwill again?” Mummy asks when I get home. She is slicing peaches with a special fruit knife.

“Yeah.”

“What did you get rid of?”

“Just an old picture of Gran.”

“With the piglet?” Her mouth twitches. “Oh, Cady.”

“It was mine to give away.”

Mummy sighs. “You give away one of the dogs and you will never hear the end of it.”

I squat down to dog height. Bosh, Grendel, and Poppy greet me with soft, indoor woofs. They’re our family dogs, portly and well-behaved. Purebred goldens. Poppy had several litters for my mother’s business, but the puppies and the other breeding dogs live with Mummy’s partner at a farm outside Burlington.

“I would never,” I say.

I whisper how I love them into their soft doggy ears.

18

IF I GOOGLE traumatic brain injury, most websites tell me selective amnesia is a consequence. When there’s damage to the brain, it’s not uncommon for a patient to forget stuff. She will be unable to piece together a coherent story of the trauma.

But I don’t want people to know I’m like this. Still like this, after all the appointments and scans and medicines.

I don’t want to be labeled with a disability. I don’t want more drugs. I don’t want doctors or concerned teachers. God knows, I’ve had enough doctors.

What I remember, from the summer of the accident:

Falling in love with Gat at the Red Gate kitchen door.

His beach rose for Raquel and my wine-soaked night, spinning in anger.

Acting normal. Making ice cream. Playing tennis.

The triple-decker s’mores and Gat’s anger when we told him to shut up.

Night swimming.

Kissing Gat in the attic.

Hearing the Cracker Jack story and helping Granddad down the stairs.

The tire swing, the basement, the perimeter. Gat and I in one another’s arms.

Gat seeing me bleed. Asking me questions. Dressing my wounds.

I don’t remember much else.

I can see Mirren’s hand, her chipped gold nail polish, holding a jug of gas for the motorboats.

Mummy, her face tight, asking, “The black pearls?”

Johnny’s feet, running down the stairs from Clairmont to the boathouse.

Granddad, holding on to a tree, his face lit by the glow of a bonfire.

And all four of us Liars, laughing so hard we felt dizzy and sick. But what was so funny?

What was it and where were we?

I do not know.

I used to ask Mummy when I didn’t remember the rest of summer fifteen. My forgetfulness frightened me. I’d suggest stopping my meds, or trying new meds, or seeing a different physician. I’d beg to know what I’d forgotten. Then one day in late fall—the fall I spent undergoing tests for death-sentence illnesses—Mummy began to cry. “You ask me over and over. You never remember what I say.”

“I’m sorry.”

She poured herself a glass of wine as she talked. “You began asking me the day you woke in the hospital. ‘What happened? What happened?’ I told you the truth, Cadence, I always did, and you’d repeat it back to me. But the next day you’d ask again.”

“I’m sorry,” I said again.

“You still ask me almost every day.”

It is true, I have no memory of my accident. I don’t remember what happened before and after. I don’t remember my doctor’s visits. I knew they must have happened, because of course they happened—and here I am with a diagnosis and medications—but nearly all my medical treatment is a blank.

I looked at Mummy. At her infuriatingly concerned face, her leaking eyes, the tipsy slackness of her mouth. “You have to stop asking,” she said. “The doctors think it’s better if you remember on your own, anyway.”

I made her tell me one last time, and I wrote down her answers so I could look back at them when I wanted to. That’s why I can tell you about the night-swimming accident, the rocks, the hypothermia, respiratory difficulty, and the unconfirmed traumatic brain injury.

I never asked her anything again. There’s a lot I don’t understand, but this way she stays pretty sober.

19

DAD PLANS TO take me to Australia and New Zealand for the whole of summer seventeen.

I don’t want to go.

I want to return to Beechwood. I want to see Mirren and lie in the sun, planning our futures. I want to argue with Johnny and go snorkeling and make ice cream. I want to build bonfires on the shore of the tiny beach. I want to pile in the hammock on the Clairmont porch and be the Liars once again, if it’s possible.

I want to remember my accident.

I want to know why Gat disappeared. I don’t know why he wasn’t with me, swimming. I don’t know why I went to the tiny beach alone. Why I swam in my underwear and left no clothes on the sand. And why he bailed when I got hurt.

I wonder if he loved me. I wonder if he loved Raquel.

Dad and I are supposed to leave for Australia in five days.

I should never have agreed to go.

I make myself wretched, sobbing. I tell Mummy I don’t need to see the world. I need to see family. I miss Granddad.

No.

I’ll be sick if I travel to Australia. My headaches will explode, I shouldn’t get on a plane. I shouldn’t eat strange food. I shouldn’t be jet-lagged. What if we lose my medication?

Stop arguing. The trip is paid for.

I walk the dogs in the early morning. I load the dishwasher and later unload it. I put on a dress and rub blusher into my cheeks. I eat everything on my plate. I let Mummy put her arms around me and stroke my hair. I tell her I want to spend the summer with her, not Dad.

Please.

The next day, Granddad comes to Burlington to stay in the guest room. He’s been on the island since mid-May and has to take a boat, a car, and a plane to get here. He hasn’t come to visit us since before Granny Tipper died.

Mummy picks him up at the airport while I stay home and set the table for supper. She’s picked up roast chicken and side dishes at a gourmet shop in town.

Granddad has lost weight since I saw him last. His white hair stands out in puffs around his ears, tufty; he looks like a baby bird. His skin is baggy on his frame, and he has a potbellied slump that’s not how I remember him. He always seemed invincible, with firm, broad shoulders and lots of teeth.

Granddad is the sort of person who has mottos. “Don’t take no for an answer,” he always says to us. And “Never take a seat in the back of the room. Winners sit up front.”

We Liars used to roll our eyes at these pronouncements—“Be decisive; no one likes a waffler”; “Never complain, never explain”—but we still saw him as full of wisdom on grown-up topics.

Granddad is wearing madras shorts and loafers. His legs are spindly old-man legs. He pats my back and demands a scotch and soda.

We eat and he talks about some friends of his in Boston. The new kitchen in his Beechwood house. Nothing important. Afterward, Mummy cleans up while I show him the backyard garden. The evening sun is still out.

Granddad picks a peony and hands it to me. “For my first grandchild.”

“Don’t pick the flowers, okay?”

“Penny won’t mind.”

“Yes, she will.”

“Cadence was the first,” he says, looking up at the sky, not into my eyes. “I remember when she came to visit us in Boston. She was dressed in a pink romper suit and her hair stuck up straight off her head. Johnny wasn’t born till three weeks later.”

“I’m right here, Granddad.”

“Cadence was the first, and it didn’t matter that she was a girl. I would give her everything. Just like a grandson. I carried her in my arms and danced. She was the future of our family.”

I nod.

“We could see she was a Sinclair. She had that hair, but it wasn’t only that. It was the chin, the tiny hands. We knew she’d be tall. All of us were tall until Bess married that short fellow, and Carrie made the same mistake.”

“You mean Brody and William.”

“Good riddance, eh?” Granddad smiles. “All our people were tall. Did you know my mother’s side of the family came over on the Mayflower? To make this life in America.”

I know it’s not important if our people came over on the Mayflower. It’s not important to be tall. Or blond. That is why I dyed my hair: I don’t want to be the eldest. Heiress to the island, the fortune, and the expectations.

But then again, perhaps I do.

Granddad has had too much to drink after a long travel day. “Shall we go inside?” I ask. “You want to sit down?”

He picks a second peony and hands it to me. “For forgiveness, my dear.”

I pat him on his hunched back. “Don’t pick any more, okay?”

Granddad bends down and touches some white tulips.

“Seriously, don’t,” I say.

He picks a third peony, sharply, defiantly. Hands it to me. “You are my Cadence. The first.”

“Yes.”

“What happened to your hair?”

“I colored it.”

“I didn’t recognize you.”

“That’s okay.”

Granddad points to the peonies, now all in my hand. “Three flowers for you. You should have three.”

He looks pitiful. He looks powerful.

I love him, but I am not sure I like him. I take his hand and lead him inside.

20

ONCE UPON A time, there was a king who had three beautiful daughters. He loved each of them dearly. One day, when the young ladies were of age to be married, a terrible, three-headed dragon laid siege to the kingdom, burning villages with fiery breath. It spoiled crops and burned churches. It killed babies, old people, and everyone in between.

The king promised a princess’s hand in marriage to whoever slayed the dragon. Heroes and warriors came in suits of armor, riding brave horses and bearing swords and arrows.

One by one, these men were slaughtered and eaten.

Finally the king reasoned that a maiden might melt the dragon’s heart and succeed where warriors had failed. He sent his eldest daughter to beg the dragon for mercy, but the dragon listened to not a word of her pleas. It swallowed her whole.

Then the king sent his second daughter to beg the dragon for mercy, but the dragon did the same. Swallowed her before she could get a word out.

The king then sent his youngest daughter to beg the dragon for mercy, and she was so lovely and clever that he was sure she would succeed where the others had perished.

No indeed. The dragon simply ate her.

The king was left aching with regret. He was now alone in the world.

Now, let me ask you this. Who killed the girls?

The dragon? Or their father?

AFTER GRANDDAD LEAVES the next day, Mummy calls Dad and cancels the Australia trip. There is yelling. There is negotiation.

Eventually they decide I will go to Beechwood for four weeks of the summer, then visit Dad at his home in Colorado, where I’ve never been. He insists. He will not lose the whole summer with me or there will be lawyers involved.

Mummy rings the aunts. She has long, private conversations with them on the porch of our house. I can’t hear anything except a few phrases: Cadence is so fragile, needs lots of rest. Only four weeks, not the whole summer. Nothing should disturb her, the healing is very gradual.

Also, pinot grigio, Sancerre, maybe some Riesling; definitely no chardonnay.

21

MY ROOM IS nearly empty now. There are sheets and a comforter on my bed. A laptop on my desk, a few pens. A chair.

I own a couple pairs of jeans and shorts. I have T-shirts and flannel shirts, some warm sweaters; a bathing suit, a pair of sneakers, a pair of Crocs, and a pair of boots. Two dresses and some heels. Warm coat, hunting jacket, and canvas duffel.

The shelves are bare. No pictures, no posters. No old toys.

GIVEAWAY: A TRAVEL toothbrush kit Mummy bought me yesterday.

I already have a toothbrush. I don’t know why she would buy me another. That woman buys things just to buy things. It’s disgusting.

I walk over to the library and find the girl who took my pillow. She’s still leaning against the outside wall. I set the toothbrush kit in her cup.

GIVEAWAY: GAT’S OLIVE hunting jacket. The one I wore that night we held hands and looked at the stars and talked about God. I never returned it.

I should have given it away first of everything. I know that. But I couldn’t make myself. It was all I had left of him.

But that was weak and foolish. Gat doesn’t love me.

I don’t love him, either, and maybe I never did.

I’ll see him day after tomorrow and I don’t love him and I don’t want his jacket.

22

THE PHONE RINGS at ten the night before we leave for Beechwood. Mummy is in the shower. I pick up.

Heavy breathing. Then a laugh.

“Who is this?”

“Cady?”

It’s a kid, I realize. “Yes.”

“This is Taft.” Mirren’s brother. He has no manners.

“How come you’re awake?”

“Is it true you’re a drug addict?” Taft asks me.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“You’re calling to ask if I’m a drug addict?” I haven’t talked to Taft since my accident.

“We’re on Beechwood,” he says. “We got here this morning.”

I am glad he’s changing the subject. I make my voice bright. “We’re coming tomorrow. Is it nice? Did you go swimming yet?”

“No.”

“Did you go on the tire swing?”

“No,” says Taft. “Are you sure you’re not a drug addict?”

“Where did you even get that idea?”

“Bonnie. She says I should watch out for you.”

“Don’t listen to Bonnie,” I say. “Listen to Mirren.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. But Bonnie’s the only one who believes me about Cuddledown,” he says. “And I wanted to call you. Only not if you’re a drug addict because drug addicts don’t know what’s going on.”

“I’m not a drug addict, you pipsqueak,” I say. Though possibly I am lying.

“Cuddledown is haunted,” says Taft. “Can I come and sleep with you at Windemere?”

I like Taft. I do. He’s slightly bonkers and covered with freckles and Mirren loves him way more than she loves the twins. “It’s not haunted. The wind just blows through the house,” I say. “It blows through Windemere, too. The windows rattle.”

“It is too, haunted,” Taft says. “Mummy doesn’t believe me and neither does Liberty.”

When he was younger he was always the kid who thought there were monsters in the closet. Later he was convinced there was a sea monster under the dock.

“Ask Mirren to help you,” I tell him. “She’ll read you a bedtime story or sing to you.”

“You think so?”

“She will. And when I get there I’ll take you tubing and snorkeling and it’ll be a grand summer, Taft.”

“Okay,” he says.

“Don’t be scared of stupid old Cuddledown,” I tell him. “Show it who’s boss and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He hangs up without saying goodbye.