Johnny told Carrie.
Carrie asked Gat to stop coming to supper at Clairmont. “It’s riling Harris up,” she said. “It would be better for all of us if you just made some macaroni at Red Gate, or I can have Johnny bring you a plate. You understand, don’t you? Just until everything gets sorted out.”
Gat did not understand.
Johnny didn’t, either.
All of us Liars stopped coming to meals.
Soon after, Bess told Mirren to push Granddad harder about Windemere. She was to take Bonnie, Liberty, and Taft with her to talk with him in his study. They were the future of this family, Mirren was to say. Johnny and Cady didn’t have the math grades for Harvard, while Mirren did. Mirren was the business-minded one, the heir to all Granddad stood for. Johnny and Cady were too frivolous. And look at these beautiful littles: the pretty blond twins, the freckle-faced Will. They were Sinclairs, through and through.
Say all that, said Bess. But Mirren would not.
Bess took her phone, her laptop, and her allowance.
Mirren would not.
One evening Mummy asked about me and Gat. “Granddad knows something is going on with you two. He isn’t happy.”
I told her I was in love.
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 tennis team and the future you have in front of you. Do you understand me?”
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, Johnny, and I went down to the toolshed behind Clairmont. We found hammers. There were only two, so Gat carried a wrench and I carried a pair of heavy garden shears.
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 other 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 Johnny and you’ll give him Clairmont, I know you will. I’ll be left alone with nothing, nothing, even though Cady’s supposed to be the one. The first, you always said.”
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, Penny, so let me explain. In America, here is how we operate: We work for what we want, and we get ahead. We never take no for answer, and we deserve the rewards of our perseverance. Will, Taft, are you listening?”
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 cannot expect me to accept your disregard for the values of this family and reward you and your children with financial security. You cannot, any of you, expect this. And yet, day after day, I see that you do. I will no longer tolerate it.”
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 Johnny. We are still lying on the floor of Cuddledown, early in the morning. Summer seventeen.
“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 planned it out,” I say.
“We did. We convinced Bess to take the big boat and all the littles to see a movie on the Vineyard.”
As Johnny talks, the memories form. I fill in details he hasn’t spoken aloud.
“When they left we drank the wine they’d left corked in the fridge,” says Johnny. “Four open bottles. And Gat was so angry—”
“He was right,” I say.
Johnny turns his face and speaks into the floor again. “Because he wasn’t coming back. If my mom married Ed, they’d be cut off. And if my mom left Ed, Gat wouldn’t be connected to our family anymore.”
“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 Johnny, holding his other hand.
“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 Johnny kindly. “You always say patriarchy.”
“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 Johnny, his voice suddenly loud.