Page 15 of We Were Liars

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.