58
LOOK.
A re.
There on the northern tip of Beechwood Island. Where the maple tree stands over the wide lawn.
The house is alight. The ames shoot high, brightening the sky.
There is no one here to help.
Far in the distance, I can see the Vineyard reghters, making their way across the bay in a lighted boat.
Even farther away, the Woods Hole re boat chugs toward the re
that we set.
Gat, Johnny, Mirren, and me.
We set this re and it is burning down Clairmont.
Burning down the palace, the palace of the king who had three
beautiful daughters.
We set it.
Me, Johnny, Gat, and Mirren.
I remember this now,
in a rush that hits me so hard I fall,
and I plunge down, down to rocky rocky bottom, and I can see the base of Beechwood Island and my arms and legs feel numb but my ngers are cold. Slices of seaweed go past as I fall.
And then I am up again, and breathing, And Clairmont is burning.
* * *
I AM IN my bed in Windemere, in the early light of dawn.
It is the rst day of my last week on the island. I stumble to the window, wrapped in my blanket.
There is New Clairmont. All hard modernity and Japanese garden.
I see it for what it is, now. It is a house built on ashes. Ashes of the life Granddad shared with Gran, ashes of the maple from which the tire swing ew, ashes of the old Victorian house with the porch and the hammock. The new house is built on the grave of all the trophies and symbols of the family: the New Yorker cartoons, the taxidermy, the embroidered pillows, the family portraits.
We burned them all.
On a night when Granddad and the rest had taken boats across
the bay,
when the sta was o duty and we Liars were alone on the island, the four of us did what we were afraid to do.
We burned not a home, but a symbol.
We burned a symbol to the ground.
