We Were Liars (5 page)

I stopped writing and deleted all the emails from my sent mail folder. They were weak and stupid.

The bottom line is, Gat bailed when I got hurt.

The bottom line is, it was only a summer fling.

The bottom line is, he might have loved Raquel.

We lived too far apart, anyway.

Our families were too close, anyway.

I never got an explanation.

I just know he left me.

WELCOME TO MY
skull.

A truck is rolling over the bones of my neck and head. The vertebrae break, the brains pop and ooze. A thousand flashlights shine in my eyes. The world tilts.

I throw up. I black out.

This happens all the time. It’s nothing but an ordinary day.

The pain started six weeks after my accident. Nobody was certain whether the two were related, but there was no denying the vomiting and weight loss and general horror.

Mummy took me for MRIs and CT scans. Needles, machines. More needles, more machines. They tested me for brain tumors, meningitis, you name it. To relieve the pain they prescribed this drug and that drug and another drug, because the first one didn’t work and the second one didn’t work, either. They gave me prescription after prescription without even knowing what was wrong. Just trying to quell the pain.

Cadence, said the doctors, don’t take too much.

Cadence, said the doctors, watch for signs of addiction.

And still, Cadence, be sure to take your meds.

There were so many appointments I can’t even remember them. Eventually the doctors came through with a diagnosis. Cadence Sinclair Eastman: post-traumatic headaches, also known as PTHA. Migraine headaches caused by traumatic brain injury.

I’ll be fine, they tell me.

I won’t die.

It’ll just hurt a lot.

AFTER A YEAR
in Colorado, Dad wanted to see me again. In fact, he insisted on taking me to Italy, France, Germany, Spain, and Scotland—a ten-week trip beginning in mid-June, which meant I wouldn’t go to Beechwood at all, summer sixteen.

“The trip is grand timing,” said Mummy brightly as she packed my suitcase.

“Why?” I lay on the floor of my bedroom and let her do the work. My head hurt.

“Granddad’s redoing Clairmont.” She rolled socks into balls. “I told you that a million times already.”

I didn’t remember. “How come?”

“Some idea of his. He’s spending the summer in Windemere.”

“With you waiting on him?”

Mummy nodded. “He can’t stay with Bess or Carrie. And you know he takes looking after. Anyway. You’ll get a wonderful education in Europe.”

“I’d rather go to Beechwood.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” she said, firm.

IN EUROPE, I
vomited into small buckets and brushed my teeth repeatedly with chalky British toothpaste. I lay prone on the bathroom floors of several museums, feeling the cold tile underneath my cheek as my brain liquefied and seeped out my ear, bubbling. Migraines left my blood spreading across unfamiliar hotel sheets, dripping on the floors, oozing into carpets, soaking through leftover croissants and Italian lace cookies.

I could hear Dad calling me, but I never answered until my medicine took effect.

I missed the Liars that summer.

We never kept in touch over the school year. Not much, anyway, though we’d tried when we were younger. We’d text, or tag each other in summer photos, especially in September, but we’d inevitably fade out after a month or so. Somehow, Beechwood’s magic never carried over into our everyday lives. We
didn’t want to hear about school friends and clubs and sports teams. Instead, we knew our affection would revive when we saw one another on the dock the following June, salt spray in the air, pale sun glinting off the water.

But the year after my accident, I missed days and even weeks of school. I failed my classes, and the principal informed me I would have to repeat junior year. I stopped soccer and tennis. I couldn’t babysit. I couldn’t drive. The friends I’d had weakened into acquaintances.

I texted Mirren a few times. Called and left her messages that later I was ashamed of, they were so lonely and needy.

I called Johnny, too, but his voice mail was full.

I decided not to call again. I didn’t want to keep saying things that made me feel weak.

When Dad took me to Europe, I knew the Liars were on-island. Granddad hasn’t wired Beechwood and cell phones don’t get reception there, so I began writing emails. Different from my pitiful voice messages, these were charming, darling notes from a person without headaches.

Mostly.

• • •

• • •

• • •

I WASN’T ENTIRELY
surprised they didn’t answer. Besides the fact that to get online you have to go to the Vineyard, Beechwood is very much its own world. Once you are there,
the rest of the universe seems nothing but an unpleasant dream.

Europe might not even exist.

WELCOME, ONCE AGAIN,
to the beautiful Sinclair family.

We believe in outdoor exercise. We believe that time heals.

We believe, although we will not say so explicitly, in prescription drugs and the cocktail hour.

We do not discuss our problems in restaurants. We do not believe in displays of distress. Our upper lips are stiff, and it is possible people are curious about us because we do not show them our hearts.

It is possible that we enjoy the way people are curious about us.

Here in Burlington, it’s just me, Mummy, and the dogs now. We haven’t the weight of Granddad in Boston or the impact of the whole family on Beechwood, but I know how people see us nonetheless. Mummy and I are two of a kind, in the big house with the porch at the top of the hill. The willowy mother and the sickly daughter. We are high of cheekbone, broad of shoulder. We smile and show our teeth when we run errands in town.

The sickly daughter doesn’t talk much. People who know her at school tend to keep away. They didn’t know her well before she got sick anyway. She was quiet even then.

Now she misses school half the time. When she’s there, her pale skin and watery eyes make her look glamorously tragic,
like a literary heroine wasting from consumption. Sometimes she falls down at school, crying. She frightens the other students. Even the kindest ones are tired of walking her to the nurse’s office.

Still, she has an aura of mystery that stops her from being teased or singled out for typical high school unpleasantness. Her mother is a Sinclair.

Of course, I feel no sense of my own mystery eating a can of chicken soup late at night, or lying in the fluorescent light of the school nurse’s office. It is hardly glamorous the way Mummy and I quarrel now that Dad is gone.

I wake to find her standing in my bedroom doorway, staring.

“Don’t hover.”

“I love you. I’m taking care of you,” she says, her hand on her heart.

“Well, stop it.”

If I could shut my door on her, I would. But I cannot stand up.

Often I find notes lying around that appear to be records of what foods I’ve eaten on a particular day:
Toast and jam, but only 1/2; apple and popcorn; salad with raisins; chocolate bar; pasta. Hydration
?
Protein
?
Too much ginger ale
.

It is not glamorous that I can’t drive a car. It is not mysterious to be home on a Saturday night, reading a novel in a pile of smelly golden retrievers. However, I am not immune to the feeling of being
viewed
as a mystery, as a Sinclair, as part of a privileged clan of special people, and as part of a magical, important narrative, just because I am part of this clan.

My mother is not immune to it, either.

This is who we have been brought up to be.

Sinclairs. Sinclairs.

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
.

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