Family of Liars

by E. Lockhart

I let him drink whiskey because he’s dead anyway.

Telling this story will be painful. In fact, I do not know if I can tell it truthfully, though I’ll try.

Tipper, our mother, threw wonderful parties. She did it because she was lonely.

“Not all pain is worth it,” said Tipper. “Some pain is just pain.”

They hadn’t come to see how I was feeling. They had come to tell me to stop feeling that way.

Now that I am grown, I think don’t take no for an answer is a lesson we teach boys who would be better off learning that no means no.

“Some were extremely cute,” she told me once. “But they were too stupid to love.”

“We need you” means my sisters love me, they rely on me, they admire me.

We can argue about it in hell.

“You think you’re the only one who has any feelings, don’t you?” “What?” “Carrie got sick, Carrie’s in love, Carrie misses Rosemary, Carrie’s crying in the middle of the school carnival, or the middle of a family party—like you’re the only one who’s sensitive, when really, you’re just the only one who’s a complainer. You know that?”

I don’t want to see anyone. Ever. Maybe I’ll stay up here for the rest of my life, medicating myself and talking to Rosemary, safe in my room where no one can hurt me. But eventually I get hungry.

But when people know you are capable of killing someone—well, you’re no longer a credit to the family. Let’s put it that way.

If she’s not sure she’s doing something perfectly, she won’t do it at all.

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.

I was not her full sister. She could feel it. I was convinced of it. I know now that this idea is false, that families are made and earned and need not be built on biology, but in the moment, it seemed undeniable. I was not enough.