We Fell Apart: A We Were Liars Novel(32)

“When I was well enough to move to this group home for outpatients who were under twenty-one,” he says, “I saw a painting of Kingsley’s online. The one with your mom in it, actually. Persephone escaping the underworld and looking—well, she looks so happy and relieved, you know? Like I wanted to feel.” Brock examines the clam I just dug up. “That one’s too small, you gotta put it back. We can only clam the big grown-up clams. We gotta leave the babies to grow so we can get them later.”

I glance up at Meer and Tatum. They’re shirtless, Meer soft and graceful, Tatum made of burnished wood and copper wire. Meer’s hair is in a high bun, and he’s wearing reflective sunglasses. He’s splashing around and only half clamming. Tatum digs methodically.

“I was newly sober when I got obsessed with your dad,” says Brock. “I traveled to see some of his paintings, like at LACMA and MASS MoCA and stuff, but that didn’t really scratch the itch. So I hired a private detective to find him. Because you know, his gallery won’t say where he lives. The detective dug around and sent me here, to Hidden Beach. I just showed up.”

Brock pauses because he’s hit a spot in the sand that has a lot of clams. It’s a small jackpot, and we dig them up together. “How did you end up moving here?” I ask.

“I think Meer was lonely. And maybe Tatum, too. There used to be a whole community. Like, when Meer was little and Tatum lived with his parents in the pool house, there were other people, other kids. All these creative people, playing music and taking photographs and weaving or whatever. But by the time I came, all of them were gone. Meer and I got along right away even though I was like, not even a functional person. And Kingsley saw me as having escaped something terrible. And that was a big deal, actually, because it was a new way for me to see myself. Like, I thought I’d been banished from Hollywood, lost my family, become an addict, and all that was shameful. But he saw it as escape. You know how there are escapes in his paintings? Persephone escapes the underworld, Odysseus escapes the island of the Cyclops.”

“Sure.”

“And I had escaped the trash fire of my addiction, and the trash fire of Hollywood. So Kingsley liked that about me, like I was one of his artworks come to life. He wanted to put me in a painting, and the painting took weeks and weeks, and by that time, it was pretty clear Meer was happier with me here. And like I said, maybe Tatum, too. So June said I could stay as long as I needed, for my recovery.”

“What’s the painting of you like?”

“There are these fairy tales where people are trapped in the bodies of animals. A bunch of different tales. And in the stories, they take the skin off and burn it—and after that, they can be human all the time. It’s very weird.”

“You had a skin in the painting?”

“He painted me standing next to a bonfire that’s burning an old donkey skin, yeah. Like burning the old version of me. The canvas isn’t here anymore. Kingsley sold it not that long after he finished it. To a private collector. But it really looks like me. It was wild to see.”

“What’s the name of it?” I ask.

“It’s called Sammy,” he says.





32


That night, June makes clam chowder and bakes a fat loaf of soft wheat bread to eat with it. She sets the dining room table with candles and is sweetly maternal with all three boys. She’s kind to me, as well, asking gentle questions about my sketchbook, which she calls an “art practice.”

When I ask her, she tells stories about Meer when he was little. “He loved making pretend tinctures. I gave him lentils and water and organic food coloring and lots of little jars. I set up a worktable for him out by the garden and he’d just mix and fizz and mix and fizz while I pruned the plants.”

She tells stories about Tatum, as well. In the castle’s early days, he and his parents spent summers in Parchment Tower. His mom and dad were teachers and had long vacations, but they “wanted to be free of institutions and rigid hours and pension plans and educational legislations,” so they accepted Kingsley’s offer to live in the pool house year-round when Tatum was ten. “We always called Tatum a selkie,” says June. “You know, like a seal who’d turned into a boy but was really a seal in his heart. He was never out of the swimming pool, never out of the sea.” She smiles at Tatum, who is looking down at his plate. “Selkies are ocean folk from Scottish legends. Loyal first to the world beneath the sea. Kingsley painted Tatum that way.”

She gestures at a canvas, about eight feet wide but only two feet tall, that hangs on one side of the dining room. I’ve seen it before but haven’t looked closely since it’s mostly ocean, spreading from one end of the painting to the other. Now I stand to examine it.

“Please don’t,” says Tatum.

“Oh, go ahead,” says June to me. Then to Tatum: “You inspired Kingsley, and that connection of painter and subject is a very special one. Don’t shrink from having it witnessed.”



* * *



—

Selkie Child depicts a friendly sea, warm blue and lit through with shafts of sunlight.

The waterline is near the top of the painting, and mostly the sea is empty.

But look a little closer and

on the far left of the wide, wide painting, there is