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 explicit 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 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.
Part Two
Vermont
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 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 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 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.”