“She’s got a great head on her shoulders, too,” Granddad says. “Sinclair blood through and through.”
This speaking in stock phrases, he has always done it. “Never complain, never explain.” “Don’t take no for an answer.” But it grates when he’s using them about me. A good head on my shoulders? My actual head is fucking broken in countless medically diagnosed ways—and half of me comes from the unfaithful Eastman side of the family. I am not going to college next year, I’ve given up all the sports I used to do and clubs I used to be part of; I’m high on Percocet half the time and I’m not even nice to my little cousins.
Still, Granddad’s face is glowing as he talks about me, and at least today he knows I am not Mirren.
“She looks like you,” says Thatcher.
“Doesn’t she? Except she’s good-looking.”
“Thank you,” I say. “But if you want the full resemblance I have to tuft up my hair.”
This makes Granddad smile. “It’s from the boat,” he says to Thatcher. “Didn’t bring a hat.”
“It’s always tufty,” I tell Thatcher.
“I know,” he says.
The men shake hands and Granddad hooks his arm through mine as we leave the gallery. “He’s taken good care of you,” he tells me.
“Mr. Thatcher?”
He nods. “But don’t tell your mother. She’ll stir up trouble again.”
42
On the way home, a memory comes.
Summer fifteen, a morning in early July. Granddad was making espresso in the Clairmont kitchen. I was eating jam and baguette toast at the table. It was just the two of us.
“I love that goose,” I said, pointing. A cream goose statue sat on the sideboard.
“It’s been there since you, Johnny, and Mirren were three,” said Granddad. “That’s the year Tipper and I took that trip to China.” He chuckled. “She bought a lot of art there. We had a guide, an art specialist.” He came over to the toaster and popped the piece of bread I had in there for myself.
“Hey!” I objected.
“Shush, I’m the granddad. I can take the toast when I want to.” He sat down with his espresso and spread butter on the baguette. “This art specialist girl took us to antiques shops and helped us navigate the auction houses,” he said. “She spoke four languages. You wouldn’t think to look at her. Little slip of a China girl.”
“Don’t say China girl. Hello?”
He ignored me. “Tipper bought jewelry and had the idea of buying animal sculptures for the houses here.”
“Does that include the toad in Cuddledown?”
“Sure, the ivory toad,” said Granddad. “And we bought two elephants, I know.”
“Those are in Windemere.”
“And monkeys for in Red Gate. There were four monkeys.”
“Isn’t ivory illegal?” I asked.
“Oh, some places. But you can get it. Your gran loved ivory. She traveled to China when she was a child.”
“Is it elephant tusks?”
“That or rhino.”
There he was, Granddad. His white hair still thick, the lines on his face deep from all those days on the sailboat. His heavy jaw like an old film star.
You can get it, he said, about the ivory.
One of his mottos: Don’t take no for an answer.
It had always seemed a heroic way to live. He would say it when advising us to pursue our ambitions. When encouraging Johnny to try training for a marathon, or when I failed to win the reading prize in seventh grade. It was something he said when talking about his business strategies, and how he got Gran to marry him. “I asked her four times before she said yes,” he’d always say, retelling one of his favorite Sinclair family legends. “I wore her down. She said yes to shut me up.”
Now, at the breakfast table, watching him eat my toast, “Don’t take no for an answer” seemed like the attitude of a privileged guy who didn’t care who got hurt, so long as his wife had the cute statues she wanted to display in her summerhouses.
I walked over and picked up the goose. “People shouldn’t buy ivory,” I said. “It’s illegal for a reason. Gat was reading the other day about—”
“Don’t tell me what that boy is reading,” snapped Granddad. “I’m informed. I get all the papers.”
“Sorry. But he’s made me think about—”
“Cadence.”
“You could put the statues up for auction and then donate the money to wildlife conservation.”
“Then I wouldn’t have the statues. They were very dear to Tipper.”
“But—”
Granddad barked, “Do not tell me what to do with my money, Cady. That money is not yours.”
“Okay.”
“You are not to tell me how to dispose of what is mine, is that clear?”
“Yes.”
“Not ever.”
“Yes, Granddad.”
I had the urge to snatch the goose and fling it across the room.
Would it break when it hit the fireplace? Would it shatter?
I balled my hands into fists.
It was the first time we’d talked about Granny Tipper since her death.
Granddad docks the boat and ties it up.
“Do you still miss Gran?” I ask him as we head toward New Clairmont. “Because I miss her. We never talk about her.”
“A part of me died,” he says. “And it was the best part.”
“You think so?” I ask.
“That is all there is to say about it,” says Granddad.
43
I find the Liars in the Cuddledown yard. The grass is littered with tennis racquets and drink bottles, food wrappers and beach towels. The three of them lie on cotton blankets, wearing sunglasses and eating potato chips.
“Feeling better?” asks Mirren.
I nod.
“We missed you.”
They have baby oil spread on their bodies. Two bottles of it lie on the grass. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll get burned?” I ask.
“I don’t believe in sun block anymore,” says Johnny.
“He’s decided the scientists are corrupt and the whole sun block industry is a moneymaking fraud,” says Mirren.
“Have you ever seen sun poisoning?” I ask. “The skin literally bubbles.”
“It’s a dumb idea,” says Mirren. “We’re just bored out of our minds, that’s all.” But she slathers baby oil on her arms as she’s speaking.
I lie down next to Johnny.
I open a bag of barbeque potato chips.
I stare at Gat’s chest.
Mirren reads aloud a bit of a book about Jane Goodall.
We listen to some music off my iPhone, the speaker tinny.
“Why don’t you believe in sun block again?” I ask Johnny.
“It’s a conspiracy,” he says. “To sell a lot of lotion that nobody needs.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I won’t burn,” he says. “You’ll see.”
“But why are you putting on baby oil?”
“Oh, that’s not part of the experiment,” Johnny says. “I just like to be as greasy as possible at all times.”
Gat catches me in the kitchen, looking for food. There isn’t much. “Last time I saw you was again suboptimal,” he says. “In the hallway a couple nights ago.”
“Yeah.” My hands are shaking.
“Sorry.”
“All right.”
“Can we start over?”
“We can’t start over every day, Gat.”
“Why not?” He jumps to sit on the counter. “Maybe this is a summer of second chances.”
“Second, sure. But after that it gets ridiculous.”
“So just be normal,” he says, “at least for today. Let’s pretend I’m not a mess, let’s pretend you’re not angry. Let’s act like we’re friends and forget what happened.”
I don’t want to pretend.
I don’t want to be friends.
I don’t want to forget. I am trying to remember.
“Just for a day or two, until things start to seem all right again,” says Gat, seeing my hesitation. “We’ll just hang out until it all stops being such a big deal.”
I want to know everything, understand everything; I want to hold Gat close and run my hands over him and never let him go. But perhaps this is the only way we can start.
Be normal, now. Right now.
Because you are. Because you can be.
“I’ve learned how to do that,” I say.
I hand him the bag of fudge Granddad and I bought in Edgartown, and the way his face lights up at the chocolate tugs at my heart.
44
Next day Mirren and I take the small motorboat to Edgartown without permission.
The boys don’t want to come. They are going kayaking.