The Island (13 page)
“Emilie built this house to get away from her sister,” Birdie said. “But now the house is bringing sisters together. You and me. And Chess and Tate.”
India snorted. “Are you always such a Pollyanna, Bird?”
Birdie didn’t take the bait. She would not squabble with India on this, their first night. “You know I am,” she said. She smiled sweetly. “Good night.”
S
he woke up in the morning and thought, in a panic,
Only twenty-nine days left!
Chess was cleaving to her back like a bug. Tate was both irritated and touched. Last night, after a quiet, nearly somber dinner (
What’s with everyone?
Tate had wondered. Even Birdie had seemed subdued and distracted), she and Chess had come upstairs with a flashlight and put the prettiest sheets on their beds. Tate had planned on initiating a long, meaningful conversation with her sister—that, after all, was the main mission here—but Chess made it clear she didn’t want to talk.
Tate had said, “You won’t get better if you don’t let it out. It’s like not cleaning a sore. It will fester. You know that, right?”
Chess tucked a pillow under her chin and slipped it into the case. No response.
Tate had thought three words:
Okay, fine, whatever.
She hadn’t felt Chess climb into bed with her last night, but she wasn’t surprised that she had. Chess was afraid of the dark; all their lives, she had crawled into bed with Tate.
Tate slid out of bed without waking Chess. It was hard for Chess to fall asleep and hard for her to wake up. But not Tate. Tate was a morning person. She put on her jogging bra (gingerly, because she had gotten too much sun at the beach the day before), her shorts, and her running shoes and went down to the second floor to use the bathroom.
The Tuckernuck house had only one bathroom, squeezed in between the two bedrooms. It had been installed when Tate was a child, and everyone marveled at the flush toilet. (Before, there had been an outhouse.) The sink and tub ran only cold water. If you wanted a hot bath, you had to heat the water over the gas stove in the kitchen and carry it upstairs. Water from the bathroom sink had a brownish tinge and tasted like rust. (
Perfectly safe to drink!
Birdie always assured them.) Tate was the only one who didn’t mind the water. She was a traditionalist; the water in the Tuckernuck house had always been dingy and metallic, and if she had come this year and found that the tap yielded clear, tasteless water at remarkable pressure, she would have been disappointed.
She brushed her teeth and did a quick scan of all the products crowding the back of the toilet (the only level surface in the bathroom). There were young women’s products—Noxema, Coppertone—and older women’s products (Tate tried not to examine these too closely). She noticed a new sign hanging on the wall opposite the toilet. In her mother’s handwriting, it said:
Do not flush paper or anything else (please!).
Birdie’s bedroom door was open, the curtains were tied back, and the twin beds were made so tightly that Tate couldn’t tell which one her mother had slept in. The sun was bright. (In the attic, you couldn’t even tell the sun had risen.) A breeze came through the window. Birdie’s room had a zillion-dollar view over the bluff and the ocean. It was such a clear day, Tate could almost make out the figures of the early morning fishermen on the shores of Nantucket.
Down in the kitchen, Birdie had made coffee in a French press. When Tate’s parents had divorced and Birdie first made noise about wanting to get a job, Tate had entertained the idea of hiring Birdie to live with her and be her… mother. Because that was what she needed, a mother. Someone to make her coffee in the morning (Tate spent a small fortune at Starbucks), someone to do her laundry, someone to cook for her, someone to call her and check in when she was spending the night in a hotel.
“Come live with me and be my mom,” Tate had said. Birdie had laughed, though Tate could tell she was considering it.
Tate poured herself a cup of coffee.
“Cream?” Birdie said.
Tate hugged her mother and lifted her off the floor. The woman weighed nothing. Birdie gurgled out a laugh or a cry, and Tate set her down.
“I love it here,” Tate said.
Birdie cracked two eggs into the ancient blue ceramic bowl that she always made pancakes in here on Tuckernuck.
“Blueberry pancakes?” Birdie said.
“When I get back,” Tate said. “I’m going running.”
“Be careful,” Birdie said.
Tate took her coffee out to the picnic table to stretch. There was nothing to fear while running on Tuckernuck, but Tate liked hearing her mother say,
Be careful.
It would be nice to hear when she was in New York City, say, heading out to Central Park at five in the morning. Or when she was in Denver, where she nearly fainted from the altitude. Or Detroit, where she ran in the wrong direction and very quickly ended up in a sketchy part of town. Or San Diego, where she encountered a gang of drunken sailors wearing navy blue uniforms with white trim like nursery school children; they looked like they would have eaten her if they could have caught her.
Be careful!
She raced down the new stairs to the beach. She was ready to go! She took off.
The circumference of the island was five miles; it took Tate an hour to run it. It had been harder than she thought. It was rocky in some places, and it was swampy around North Pond, where she sank to the tops of her ankle socks. But for the most part, the run was magnificent and exhilarating. She saw two seals in the water off the western coast; she saw oystercatchers and piping plovers and flocks of terns. She saw two seagulls as big as terriers fighting over the remains of a beached bluefish. She wondered if the seagulls were sisters. One seagull would tug at the fish carcass while the other one squawked at her—her beak opening and closing, making a nearly human and definitely female protest. Then the other bird would peck at the fish and the first bird would yap like Edith Bunker. Back and forth they went, taking turns at eating, taking turns at complaining.
Just like that, Tate remembered something about the night before. She remembered Chess climbing into bed, throwing her arm over Tate, and asking, “Have you ever been in love?”
Tate had opened her eyes. It was very, very dark and she was confused. Then it came to her: Tuckernuck attic, Chess. Tate hadn’t responded to the question, but Chess must have sensed the answer was no. Or maybe Chess believed the answer was yes; after all, what did Chess know about the details of Tate’s life? Tate could be in love with the CEO of Kansas City Tool and Die, whom she had done hundreds of hours of work for this year; she could have been in love with the concierge at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, which was where she liked to stay when she was in Vegas. Tate came in contact with dozens of men daily; she took, on average, six flights a week. She could have fallen in love with the married father of four girls who sat next to her in first class on her way from Phoenix to Milwaukee, or the cute United Airlines pilot with the cleft chin.
But the answer was no, Tate had never been in love. She had never even been close. She had had a boyfriend in high school named Lincoln Brown. Lincoln Brown was the only black student in Tate’s graduating class. He was handsome, he was the cleanup batter for the baseball team, he was, like Tate, a computer whiz. Tate had loved Linc, yes, she had, but it was a brotherly love, it was a protective love, it was a proud love. (She was proud that Linc was black and she was white, she was proud that her parents didn’t care either way, she was proud to call a person who was so utterly fabulous her boyfriend.) She lost her virginity to Lincoln Brown and liked it. But she was not in love with Lincoln Brown. He was not her heart’s one desire.
There had been other guys in college—Tate’s taste ran to nerdy computer geeks and funny, outspoken fraternity guys—but these guys were for sex and goofing around only. She had not fallen in love with any of them.
She hadn’t fallen in love as an adult. Sometimes a man at Company X would hit on Tate as she was trying to work, and she would look up from the screen at so-and-so’s bland pudding face, his Van Heusen shirt and Charter Club tie and pleated-front pants, and she would think,
Are you kidding me? I’m trying to fix your system here.
No, she had never been in love. But last night she had been too tired to say so. Plus, with Chess in her current condition, Tate feared it would sound like she was bragging.
At the end of her run, Tate raced up the beach stairs, pumping her arms like Rocky, expecting to find her mother and her sister sitting at the picnic table ready to indulge her in some applause—but the house was quiet. Tate, breathless, entered the kitchen. Her mother was juicing a crate of oranges by hand. Tate was so thirsty that she drank straight from the pitcher. Gross, she knew, and uncouth. If her aunt or Chess had been around, she would have exercised restraint, but being with her mother was like being with herself. Birdie didn’t scold and she didn’t sigh.
She said, “Isn’t it good?”
Tate needed a mother to squeeze her orange juice fresh each morning.
“Water?” Tate said.
Birdie pulled a bottle of water from the dinky fridge. “It’s been in there overnight and it’s still not cold,” she said. “Sorry. Barrett is bringing ice in a cooler today.”
Tate inhaled the water. She burped enthusiastically. The pancake batter was foaming in the blue ceramic bowl. “Everyone else asleep?”
“Asleep.”
Tate nodded as an unspoken understanding passed between her and her mother. It was nearly nine o’clock! How could anyone still be sleeping? Life was far superior when you enjoyed the top of the day.
She said, “I’m going outside to do my sit-ups.”
Birdie smiled. “Be careful.”
Tate hung by the knees from the longest, sturdiest branch of their one tree. She had visualized herself doing this back when she was in her air-conditioned state-of-the-art fitness center in Charlotte, but she’d really had no idea if the branch she was thinking of was going to be strong enough or high enough off the ground to make sit-ups feasible. She was delighted to find the branch was ideal. She pulled herself up once, up twice. Her abs were screaming in protest after five ups, and the juice and water churned in her stomach. After ten ups, the backs of her knees were sore from the abrading bark. She couldn’t do 150 sit-ups. She could maybe, with fortitude, do 25. But at 25, it was easier. She did 30, 32.
Then she heard a voice say, “Wow.”
She dropped back down to hang by her knees. Even upside-down, he was beautiful. Damn it. Her thighs were weak; her heart was encroaching on her throat. She grabbed the branch with both hands, inverted into a skin-the-cat, and hit the ground with a thud.
“Morning,” she said.
“I’m impressed,” Barrett said. He was staring at her in a way that made her sizzle. She worked out in a fitness center where the walls were made of mirrors; she knew how she looked. Sweaty, red faced, lank haired, bug eyed. And she smelled worse than that. But Barrett’s expression was bright and interested, she thought. She had him captive.
But quick, what to do with him?
“I ran around the island,” she said. Okay, that was bad. That sounded like bragging.
“The whole thing?” he said. “Really?”
She was out of breath. It was hard to sound adorable and fetching when she was panting like a Saint Bernard. “What you got there?” she asked. Though she knew it was a cooler filled with ice.
He said, “A cooler filled with ice.”
She said, “Can I lie down in it?”
He laughed and said, “You’d better not. It’s for your mother’s wine.”
They were both laughing. Barrett was wearing a darker pair of khaki shorts with blue gingham boxers peeking out from the bottom, and he wore a red T-shirt with a logo for Cisco beer. He wore a visor and flip-flops; his sunglasses hung around his neck by a blue foam strap. Every detail of Barrett Lee was endlessly fascinating. And now Tate knew that his wife had died. Tate found this romantic in some inexplicable way. And he had two little boys. He was a father. Was there anything sexier? When he turned toward the house, Tate stared at him. She had twenty-nine days left. Would she kiss him? Would she sleep with him? It seemed impossible, but what if the answer were yes?
What if the answer were yes?
“Good morning.” At that very second, Chess stepped out of the house wearing a white eyelet nightie and the blue crocheted cap. Barrett’s color heightened, and when he spoke, his voice was husky.
“Hey, Chess. How goes it?”
Chess was holding two plates of blueberry pancakes.
“One of these is for you,” she said.
“For me?” Barrett said.
“Birdie insists,” Chess said.
“Okay,” Barrett said. “Let me set this down.”
Tate watched in horror as Barrett hurriedly placed the cooler in the shade of the house and settled at the picnic table with Chess. What was Birdie thinking? Birdie was supposed to be on
Tate’s
team, the early riser team. But she had made pancakes for Barrett and
Chess?
This was wrong. This was, day one, off on the wrong foot. Chess had taken a seat at the far end of the picnic table from Barrett and on the opposite side. If it were Tate, she would have sat right next to him; she would have fed him his pancakes. Barrett asked Chess what she did for a living.
Chess said, “Well, I
was
the food editor at
Glamorous Home,
but I quit.”
“Did you do any writing?” Barrett asked. “I remember back when you were at Colchester, you said you wanted to write.”
He remembered that from thirteen years ago? Tate tried not to panic. Barrett Lee was the person from Tate’s past who evoked the deepest and most poignant longing—but what if that person, for Barrett, was Chess? What if even as Barrett got married and had children, he had been thinking of Chess, wondering about her, pining for her? What if, in the nights after his wife passed away and he was left a lonely widower, he had thought of Mary Francesca Cousins, the Tuckernuck two-week-a-summer girl with the beautiful body and the grouchy father and the big, thick novels? What if when Birdie called him up in the spring to say,
Fix up the house, Chess and I are coming,
his heart had leaped with anticipation, just the way Tate’s heart had leaped when Birdie said the name “Barrett Lee”? What if Barrett Lee’s feelings mirrored Tate’s own except that they were for the wrong sister?
