18.
BEFORE SUPPER, I put on one of several white cotton dresses I own. I feel too old for yellow, and for the Lemon Hunt, we all must wear yellow or white. I comb my hair and dust blush on my cheeks.
The black pearls sit on my dresser, still there from several nights ago, and it occurs to me that I wasn’t meant to keep them. Tipper will be cross that I didn’t return them sooner. She can be sharp about things like that, small breeches of etiquette that she thinks mean you don’t appreciate something. “Manners are kindness,” she always says. She feels they show you value other people; that you consider their time, their possessions, their creative effort.
I know she is downstairs, apron on, working with Luda in the kitchen, so I write a short note.
Dearest best mother, loaner of pearls,
Thank you for the chance to wear these, and for saying they will someday be mine.
With love,
Carrie
* * *
—
MY PARENTS’ DOOR is open. The room is empty except for Wharton. She lies sleeping on a cotton blanket at the foot of the bed and doesn’t stir when I come in.
Harris’s clothes are tossed over an armchair. His bedside table is cluttered with a couple pairs of eyeglasses, books （The Fatal Shore, Lonesome Dove, a book about the CIA）， nasal spray, tissues, and an orange plastic jar of prescription sleeping pills. Halcion, they’re called.
Tipper’s table has only a pretty glass container of scented hand cream and a small dish where I know she puts her earrings.
I stare for a moment at Harris’s side of the bed.
He uses nasal spray.
He needs pills to sleep.
He forgets to throw away his tissues.
The Harris Sinclair I know is always alert, always decisive. His tennis serve is brutal, his opinions likewise. But his nightstand seems vulnerable. It speaks of discomfort and fatigue.
Looking around to be sure I am alone, I open the bottle of Halcion. I shake a small handful into the pocket of my dress, leaving a good amount in the bottle. I recap it.
Then I go to Tipper’s vanity. I place the black pearls inside the jewelry drawer, tucking my note underneath them like a surprise.
She will like that.
I am about to shut the drawer when I feel the pull of the photo. Though I told myself otherwise, part of me has intended to look at it all along. And I did not want my sisters with me.
I lift the black velvet liner and slide the picture out from underneath. It has been crumpled, then flattened out again. Folds crisscross the image.
It looks like it was taken in the late sixties or early seventies. On one side is my mother. She looks as she did in college and when she was first married: her hair in a headband, with a tease behind it. She’s sitting on a bench, outdoors. Her dress has a Peter Pan collar. Behind her, I’m guessing it’s Harvard Radcliffe. Old brick and large trees, a snatch of lawn. She’s laughing, and her eyes are directed at a man—who isn’t there.
His face has been scratched out, as if with a box cutter.
I can tell that he’s white, and average weight. It could be my uncle Chris, whom I’ve never met. Or it could be someone else. The man wears a plain white T-shirt and blue jeans that sit high on his waist, the way jeans used to. His feet aren’t in the picture, and he’s pointing at the camera, as if to give instructions to the photographer, who snapped the picture at just the wrong moment.
Did my mother scratch this photo, then crumple it—then change her mind?
I tuck the picture back beneath the black velvet of the jewelry drawer, making sure it’s exactly as it was.
19.
THE LEMON HUNT is an evening tradition. Sometimes it is done at the start of a summer, sometimes near the end, and some years skipped. Tipper has a dress for it, a lemon-yellow cotton sundress with pintucks. She wears it with a white cotton cardigan. I can remember her in that dress when I was three. Penny and I wore pinafores printed with lemons, bought specially for that night.
When I get downstairs, fairy lights outline the porch, and torches glow along the edges of the lawn. Bess is spinning our younger cousin Tomkin on the tire swing that hangs from the big tree in the front yard. Tomkin wears a white button-down and white Bermuda shorts, already fairly dirty. Bess is barefoot, wearing a bright yellow dress with puffed sleeves and a sweetheart neckline.
Uncle Dean mans the grill, as promised, dressed in white Bermudas and a terrible checked yellow shirt that I think he wears to play golf. He is in his element, managing a huge number of chicken breasts marinated with lemon.
The epic picnic table is covered in my mother’s lemon-printed tablecloths. On a separate table, the beginnings of the buffet are laid out. There are stacks of green napkins, bouquets of white and yellow flowers, trays and bowls of “nibbles”—meaning things to eat during cocktail hour. Bowls of salty olives mixed with lemon rind, salmon mousse and sesame crackers, cashew nuts and yellow cherry tomatoes.