Family of Liars, page 19
“I came every other day, like you said,” says Luda.
“I know you did,” says Tipper. “It’s not your fault in the least. They were just piglets.”
We run the washing machine and the dishwasher, wipe counters, pour half-empty beers and cans of soda into the sink. Tipper takes the curtains down for cleaning. Luda vacuums under all the cushions of the couches. “You’ll have to get them reupholstered. God, there’s like, dried—oh, I don’t even want to know,” she says. “I can cover them with quilts for now.”
Upstairs, I stand in the doorway of Pfeff’s room. His clothes are still on the floor. The bed is unmade.
He is gone.
I haven’t let myself feel sad or sorry. I can’t afford to.
I can’t think about how his parents loved him and how broken and lost they are. I can’t think about how he was my first kiss, my first everything. I can’t think about his beloved sci-fi novels and his ridiculous socks, the way he kneeled before my mother at the Lemon Hunt, the way he swam to my boat in his hoodie, the way he kissed me at the tire swing. I mustn’t think of how he worked to make me laugh, and how he made up silly song lyrics, and how he didn’t want to waste the moonlight. One day, he might have left Amherst and traveled far away, to Italy or Mexico, in search of beautiful food and adventure. Maybe he’d have found a job at a restaurant, worked his way up to manning the kitchen, made friends everywhere he went. Cooked the hell out of the dinner shift every night. Made small things exciting and beautiful, the way he knew how.
No. I have to stop these thoughts.
He was hurting Penny. He wouldn’t have stopped. He was a terrible person. And then he was dead.
There was nothing else to do once he died but drown the body like we did. It was the only way. And now we have to live with it.
My job is to make myself believe the story we told, to let that story erase what really happened, like ocean waves erasing marks in the sand. He wasn’t a ridiculous, beautiful moonlight boy, and he wasn’t a terrible person, either. He was a cute guy I fooled around with a bit. A fling. A summer acquaintance. He drank too much, went swimming, and got eaten by a shark. What a sad tale. I feel shocked that he died, and shaken, but I didn’t know him that well. That’s my story.
It strikes me, suddenly, that Pfeff might come back. He might crawl out of the sea, shirtless and dripping. His ghost might return to this haunted island to—what?
Apologize?
Take revenge on me and my sisters?
Hurt Penny again?
A shudder runs through me.
I slam the door to Pfeff’s room and run downstairs to the safety and bustle of the cleaning project. Without Tipper asking, I get on my knees and scrub the sticky spots off the kitchen floor.
LATER, WHEN GOOSE is fit for company again, my mother and Luda take themselves over to Pevensie to look for quilts. I head toward Clairmont alone. I am passing the stairway to the Tiny Beach, when I hear a sound, carried on the wind. Almost like a voice, whispering.
A tune from Mary Poppins.
Take no prisoners, do some crimes
Know your math facts! Step in time.
68.
SHAKING, I WALK slowly down the steps.
The phrase repeats, so quiet I can barely hear it. Maybe I am imagining it.
Take no prisoners, do some crimes
Know your math facts! Step in time.
When I reach the beach, I see Pfeff at the far end of the cove. He’s standing in the shallow water, looking out to sea. He wears his blue striped board shorts and his Live-Aid T-shirt. His hands are clasped behind him.
He turns when I am near. “I was hoping it was you.”
“Don’t come back here, Pfeff,” I say loudly. “We do not want you.”
“I’m sorry, Carrie,” he says. “Can we talk?”
“You have to go. You can’t haunt this island.” Rosemary never visited our mother after Tipper sent her away. Not once. If I banish Pfeff, I think he will go.
“I came to say sorry,” he says.
“It’s too late for that.”
“I saw my mom last night, up in Pevensie.” Pfeff walks forward, through the water. He looks alive and solid, squinting in the sunshine. “I had to say goodbye to her,” he continues. “Make sure she’s all right.”
“Okay.”
“And—she made me see I have a lot to apologize for. She cooked me some eggs and toast in the kitchen up there.”
“Did you tell her how you died?”
“No.” He scratches the back of his neck. “I was trying to—you know. Make her feel better. Tell her I’m okay.”
“What do you remember?” I ask. “I mean, about—about how you died?” I don’t want him to tell his mother the truth.
“Not much, actually,” he says. “I was drunk. Everything’s kind of fuzzy because of that.”
“And?”
“I was on the dock with Penny. And I felt a sharp pain in my head. I might have screamed. There was blood in my eyes. Then everything went dark and very quiet. Like a long sleep. It was comfortable after that, actually. Like a rest.”
That’s what Rosemary says, too. That it’s comfortable. The actual dying didn’t hurt.
“Then I woke up again last night,” Pfeff continues. “And I found myself on the beach. With like, my feet in the sand. I was hungry and everything. Just like being alive. It was so strange. I thought, I’m here for some reason, I guess. And I walked up to Pevensie because that seemed like where I wanted to go. And I knew I was right when I saw my mom sitting on the porch. She was staring out at the night. So I talked to her. I wanted her to know I loved her and stuff. I was worried she didn’t know, because we’d kind of been in a fight all summer. So I told her. After that, we just hung out. We kept talking, and I filled her in about the summer, about George and Major and living in Goose. The stuff we did. And also about you and me.”
“What did you tell her?”
“How it ended badly when I scammed around with Penny.”
I stare at him. Shaking.
“She asked a lot of questions,” Pfeff continues, “and … she made me think how it might have felt to you. For all that to happen. And I really am sorry. That I hurt your feelings.”
I should banish him. I need to, so Penny and Bess and I can stick to our lies. So Penny and Bess can be safe. But I have wanted Pfeff to be sorry since I first saw him with Penny. I need to hear him out.
“I see that you must have been very upset,” says Pfeff. “And that I probably led you on. And that Penny wasn’t the best person to— I was wrong.” He holds his hand out in my direction. “Can we say sorry to each other and set it to rest?”
Wait. “You want me to say sorry?”
“I’m saying sorry,” he says. “So yeah. You owe me an apology, too. Don’t you?”
“No.”
“I think you do. You got so mad, and you turned Yardley against me and all that. Even George and Major. George and I had a whole argument about it. And Penny. Penny is confusing, you know? One minute she’s all Come hither and Let’s be alone and I know how to make a guy feel good, and the next minute she’s changing her mind. She doesn’t account for a guy being drunk and revved up or whatever, and she’s saying no, but not like she means it, and now you’ve both decided I’m this terrible person. That’s the problem, right? That Penny told you I’m terrible.”
I stare at him.
“Did it ever occur to you that Penny says shit behind your back?” he goes on. “Did it ever occur to you that I wouldn’t have been with her if she didn’t like, explicitly go after me in the first place? That she put me in that situation?”
“Leave us!” I shout, the words exploding out of me. “I don’t want you here!”
“Aren’t you sorry?” he cries. “Aren’t you sorry at all?”
Saying no
but not like she means it, he said.
She doesn’t account for a guy being drunk
and revved up
or whatever.
She put me in that situation.
“No, Pfeff,” I tell him. “I’m not sorry. For anything. At all.” In this moment, I don’t care if his mom loves him. I don’t care if there were good things about him. He was hurting Penny, and my loyalty is with my sister, no matter what else she has done.
“Carrie,” he persists. “I’m like, back from the dead to talk to you. You don’t want to apologize?”
“I’m through with you, Lawrence Pfefferman,” I say.
“But—”
“No. You don’t get to say sorry. Not to me, not to Penny. We won’t forgive you.”
“You wanted to talk to me,” he says. “We were standing right here. Remember? You were begging me.”
“And you didn’t care.”
“Come on.” He takes a step toward me.
I put up a hand to stop him. “Nothing you do matters anymore. You are not welcome here. Stay away from my family.”
He stands there, looking at me.
“I mean it,” I say.
Pfeff shrugs. “You’re going to feel terrible about this later,” he says. “You’re going to wish you’d said sorry. You’re going to wish we’d made up.”
“No I won’t. Just leave us and never come back.”
Pfeff walks forward into the ocean. The water hits his middle and he begins to swim. He swims out past the sharp rocks, beyond the cove to the open water.
I watch until I cannot see him anymore.
WHEN THE POLICE boat arrives, it contains the same two officers we met with earlier. They have really come to speak with the Pfeffermans, but we all gather in the Clairmont living room, almost like a tea party. Tipper serves hot drinks and stacks of white toast with butter.
The weathered, pythony officer takes the lead. He explains that divers and rescue teams on boats have searched the area since Pfeff was reported missing. Sometimes bodies are found quickly, if they drown in shallow water, he says. Or if they are in a discrete area, like a pond. But in deep water, or in very cold water, it is common for a body not to surface. Depending on various factors, the body could float, or not.
In a situation like this one, a shark attack is certainly a possibility. “White sharks are widely known in Cape Cod waters. They have a migration pattern.”
“Will you continue to search?” asks Harris.
The officer shakes his head. “I’m sad to say the search is closed,” he says. “If you want my evaluation, I’d say the shark.”
Mrs. Pfefferman breaks down crying. Mr. Pfefferman puts an arm around her.
Penny, Bess, and I busy ourselves clearing teacups and tossing uneaten toast into the trash.
69.
LATER THAT DAY, after Harris has taken the Pfeffermans back to the mainland with Lor’s possessions, Tipper knocks on my door.
She sits on my unmade bed. Self-consciously, I begin picking up dirty clothes and putting them in the hamper. I straighten the objects on top of my dresser.
“I know you must be devastated,” says Tipper after a silence. “You are holding up so well. I wanted to tell you how beautifully I think you are doing.”
“Thank you.” I am not sure what she means.
“He was a great boy. Dashing and smart and funny—everything a girl could want, really. Your dad liked him. And Amherst, that’s a very good school,” she says. “I could tell you were happy together.”
Some part of me wants desperately to confide in her. I could tell her how I found Pfeff with Penny. I could share how cold he was, and cruel, could let her see how wrecked I’ve been. She would comfort me. I could snuggle into her arms and be her baby again, the one who needs the most care. I could become the priority, like I was when my jaw was infected.
But would the whole story spill out? If I tell her the one thing, will I tell her what happened after that? Will floodgates open? I cannot burden my mother with the story of a murder and a cover-up. Her world would shatter completely. She might never forgive us.
Even if I could stop telling the story at the breakup, even if I could tell her only that Pfeff didn’t love me, and explain how he treated me, telling her would be foolish. The story of his death depends on everyone believing that Pfeff made an excellent apology and we agreed to go boating together with my sisters. Once people question that, our story will begin to seem suspicious.
And anyway, Tipper is not asking if I’m all right. She is telling me how well I’ve done pretending everything’s all right. She thinks I have lost my first love to the sea, and she knows nothing more, but she wants me to keep on saving face.
“I’m sad, but it wasn’t really serious between us,” I say. “Just a summer fling before he went to college.” It is the same lie I told the police. “I would never call him a boyfriend, really.”
“Oh,” she says. “I see.”
“You know I really like Andrew at North Forest.” Another lie. There is no Andrew.
“Oh yes, I hadn’t realized Andrew was still in the picture,” she says with a slight frown.
“I hope so,” I tell her. “He’s the soccer player, remember?”
She nods and fingers my green patchwork quilt. “This needs repair. Shall I take it down and fix it?”
“Sure,” I say. “Thank you.”
“I made the chocolate mud pie you like,” she tells me as she folds up the quilt. “The one I always say is too much trouble.”
I know she is trying to take care of me the only way she knows how.
70.
PENNY PEELS HER fingernails until her hands look like raw stumps. Bess brings bottles of wine to her bedroom at night. I up my dosage and spend hours asleep in the afternoons.
We no longer eat supper at the big picnic table. It feels too empty.
We are not well, but we do settle into a quiet life.
A week goes by. Then two.
Rosemary visits now and then, for no particular reason that I can see except she’s bored. Or lonely.
Harris spends a few days back in Boston, handling things at his office. When he returns, we have a visit from his lawyer, who gets taken out on the sailboat and stays a night in Goose.
One day, we all visit Edgartown to hear a famous cellist play an evening concert at the Old Whaling Church. It is dull and beautiful at once. We buy fat rectangles of chocolate fudge and eat them on the long, cold boat ride home.
Yardley calls me the next day.
“George came crawling back after Pfeff died, but I wouldn’t have him,” Yardley says. “It took like three days of arguing and tears to basically be still broken up.”
“My god.”
“Now he’s off being a camp counselor for August.” She sighs. “I love that stupid butthole, but if he’s not going to back me up and believe in me, I honestly don’t want him. Plus, what are we going to do, go out long-distance at college? I’m just done. I want the whole thing to go away.” A pause. “Anyway,” says Yardley. “Lor Pfefferman. Rest in peace. Did you really not see him go down?”
“I really didn’t.”
“No shark fin or anything?”
“Nuh-uh.”
“And why were you out early with him?” asks Yardley. “I can’t help thinking about that, honestly, Carrie. After he and Penny …”
I knew this question might come. It is why I haven’t called Yardley. She was with me when I saw Pfeff with my sister.
I tell her the same lie I’ve told the police. And Tipper. “I wouldn’t call him my boyfriend. It was a summer fling, and I mean, I like this guy at North Forest anyway. So after he apologized, I had to just get over it. It wasn’t worth the drama.”
“No,” says Yardley sharply.
“What?”
“You were together. You and Pfeff. You were holding hands while we watched TV and lying in the hammock together and sneaking off to be alone all the time. It went on for weeks, Carrie, and I know you never had anybody before that. At least, you told me you didn’t, right?”
“Right.”
“And after being totally into you for weeks, that dirtbag, I’m sorry he’s dead and all, but that dirtbag weenie made out with your slimeball sister without even bothering to go somewhere private. It was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen anyone do to anyone. And I don’t think you should have to pretend—not to me, at least—that Lor Pfefferman was a saint or even a decent guy, just because he died, Carrie. He was a messed-up whoring dirtbag of a person, and I will never forgive him, never, for what he did to you, when your heart is so open. You would never, ever hurt anybody like that.”
“I know,” I say.
I love Yardley.
I ask again about George, and the memorial service, and shopping for college, and manage to end our conversation without ever explaining why I chose to go boating with Pfeff and Penny.
Your heart is so open (she said).
You would never, ever hurt anybody (she said).
That dirtbag made out with your slimeball sister
one of the worst things I’ve ever seen anyone do to anyone
a messed-up, whoring dirtbag of a person
I will never forgive him
you were together
you never had anybody before that
I don’t think you should have to pretend
you would never, ever hurt anybody
I don’t think you should have to pretend
you would never, ever hurt anybody.
All those words of Yardley’s, they ring in my ears now. They jumble and tangle as I tell this story to my son Johnny.
Johnny sits in my Beechwood kitchen, asking me to help him understand our family, asking me to help him understand what it’s like between me and my sisters, asking me to help him understand his own life and his death. Did you ever get in trouble? … Tell me. What’s the worst thing you did? Come on, spill it. The absolute worst thing you ever did, back then.
I owe him the truth. I owe him everything.
If I do not stop lying, I worry that he and his friends will never be able to rest.
