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 summer-houses.
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 sunblock anymore,” says Johnny.
“He’s decided the scientists are corrupt and the whole sunblock 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 sunblock 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.
I drive and Mirren trails her hand in the wake.
Mirren isn’t wearing much: a daisy-print bikini top and a denim miniskirt. She walks down the cobblestone sidewalks of Edgartown talking about Drake Loggerhead and how it feels to have “sexual intercourse” with him. That’s what she calls it every time; her answer about how it feels has to do with the scent of beach roses mixed with roller coasters and fireworks.
She also talks about what clothes she wants to buy for freshman year at Pomona and movies she wants to see and projects she wants to do this summer, like find a place on the Vineyard to ride horses and start making ice cream again. Honestly, she doesn’t stop chattering for half an hour.
I wish I had her life. A boyfriend, plans, college in California. Mirren is going off into her sunshine future, whereas I am going back to Dickinson Academy to another year of snow and suffocation.
I buy a small bag of fudge at Murdick’s, even though there’s some left from yesterday. We sit on a shady bench, Mirren still talking.