The Island (18 page)

“Well,” Hank said, “I don’t know what to say. I’m speechless.” He sounded uncomfortable, or perhaps he was just taken by surprise. Or perhaps he was embarrassed that she had broken the sacred family rules on his account. Or perhaps he was disappointed in her.

“I just wanted to wish you a happy Fourth of July,” she said. “And tell you that I miss you.” She tried to emphasize the words “miss you” because that was why she was calling. It had nothing to do with the Fourth of July; she had only called on the Fourth because she couldn’t make it another day without hearing his voice.

“That’s very sweet,” Hank said. He didn’t say,
I miss you, too.
Why did he not say it?

“Where are you?” Birdie asked. “What are you doing?”

“I’m at a picnic at the Ellises’ house,” he said. “I was getting my ass handed to me in horseshoes, but you saved me from that.”

The Ellises had been friends of Hank and Caroline’s for decades. There were other couples Hank had mentioned—the Cavanaughs and the Vauls and the Markarians—whom Birdie couldn’t meet because they would not approve of Hank dating while Caroline was still alive. He hadn’t seen much of these friends since he and Birdie had started dating, but he was at the Ellises’ now and this stung for some reason.

“Well, I don’t want to keep you from your game,” she said, though she had walked two miles in the heat of the day to do exactly that.

“Okay,” Hank said. “I hope you’re having fun…”

Birdie said, “Oh, I am…” If waiting on everyone hand and foot could be considered fun, if watching your daughter’s depression up close and not knowing what to do about it could be considered fun, if cold showers and a twin bed and lukewarm milk were fun, then yes, it was fun.

“Well, it’s good to hear your voice,” he said.

This, she sensed, was as loving and tender as he was going to be. He was probably standing only a few yards away from his old friends. “Yours, too,” she said.

“Take care,” he said, as if she were an acquaintance from childhood he had bumped into at the airport.

“Okay,” Birdie said, heartbroken. “Bye-bye.”

“Bye.”

Birdie hung up. She was staring across the water on a magnificent stretch of beach on an island that she had called home all her life. There was nothing before her but more water, calm and blue, a few seagulls, half a dozen distant boats, and the shoreline of Muskeget. She was devastated. Was this too strong a word? She didn’t think so. What about dancing to Bobby Darin, Hank’s arms strong and possessive around her back, his face nuzzled into the side of her neck? Had he forgotten? Birdie’s insides were disintegrating. She doubted she would be able to make the walk back to the house.

Hank!

He didn’t love her, and he didn’t miss her. He sounded fine without her. He was at a picnic at the Ellises’ house, playing horseshoes, laughing, drinking a beer or a glass of wine, socializing with the friends he’d neglected since he’d met Birdie. He wasn’t talking to these friends about Birdie because they didn’t know she existed; they only knew Caroline existed.

Birdie headed back, and with each step she grew angrier at herself. She had told Hank she wouldn’t call, couldn’t call, and what had she done? She had thought of nothing since leaving New Canaan except how to call. It had been a mistake to call; it had been weakness. She looked at her cell phone. She wanted to call back right that second and ask him,
Do you miss me? Do you love me?
But no, she wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t call him again.

But calling Hank turned out to be like scratching a mosquito bite. She knew she shouldn’t, but she did. And scratching felt so good at first. Then, not so good. But it always led to more scratching.

She had to call in the middle of the day; it was the only time she could sneak off. And in the middle of the day, Hank was busy. On the fifth, he was swimming laps at the pool. Birdie left a message, then called back twice more, and when she finally reached him he was in the hardware store and seemed preoccupied with locating the garden hoses. On the sixth, he was in the car with his son and daughter-in-law on his way to Brewster to see Caroline. He couldn’t talk freely; he barely said anything at all. Was this the same man who said he would gladly go bankrupt romancing her?

“I miss you so much,” Birdie said.

“I hope you’re having fun,” Hank said. “You’ll be back before you know it.”

“Do you miss me?” Birdie said.

“You bet,” Hank said. “Bye-bye.”

On that day, the sixth, after Birdie had been rejected a third time (though feeling rejected was silly, she knew. Hank wasn’t rejecting her. She was just calling at a time of day that was inconvenient for him to talk), she hung up the phone and stared at the ocean. The water was flat, the day brutally hot. There were flies on Bigelow Point and they swarmed Birdie’s face. No sooner would she swat them away than they would land again on the bridge of her nose or the sensitive skin above her lip. She remembered the old joke.
How do you know Tuckernuck is so great? Fifty thousand black flies can’t be wrong.

On a whim, she called Grant.

She called his cell phone, even though she knew he would be at his office, but he answered on the second ring.

“Hello?”

“Grant?”

“Bird?” he said. “Everything okay?” His voice was concerned and kind, and Birdie felt tears rise. She had the bizarre sense that Grant was her father. He would protect her, he would put to rest all the crazy doubts that her conversations with Hank were causing.

She said, “Everything’s fine, everything’s great.”

“You’re on Tuckernuck?”

“Yes!” she said. “Can you believe the reception I’m getting? Barrett Lee told me the trick. You have to stand at the tip of Bigelow Point and it’s clear as a bell.”

“Wish I’d known that years ago,” Grant said.

“I know,” Birdie said. She pictured Grant on his cell phone, back in the day. He called from the edge of the bluff, and he would just have gotten his secretary on the phone when he would lose the line. He would have to call back ten or twenty times to get through one conversation. “You remember Bigelow Point, right? I’m standing in the spot where we got the Scout stuck. Remember? When Chess was a baby?”

“Oh, God, yes,” Grant said, chuckling. “And I was pushing and the tide kept coming in, burying the back tires with wet sand. I thought that car was a goner.”

“Me, too,” Birdie said. She could picture what she’d been wearing—a daisy-print caftan over her white maternity bathing suit. She sat behind the wheel of the Scout with a howling Chess on her lap and she steered while Grant pushed. It was amazing to think that they were those very same people.

Grant cleared his throat. “How are the daughters?”

“Tate is fine, takes each day by the horns. Chess worries me. I’m not sure what to do for her.”

Grant said, “You don’t have to do anything, Bird. Just being there is enough.”

Birdie thought,
You have no idea what you’re talking about.
But she hadn’t called to be uncharitable. She said, “And India’s hanging in there better than I expected. She said she hasn’t gone a week without a cosmopolitan or take-out Indian food in fifteen years, but she’s doing fine. We’re both sitting for hours in the sun, just waiting for the cancer to come get us.”

Grant laughed. “I wish I was there.”

“Oh, heavens,” Birdie said. “You do not. You hate it here.”

“I don’t hate it there.”

“You do so. You never once enjoyed yourself.”

“That’s not true, Bird. That sounds like more of your revisionist history. Plus, back then, when we were going every summer, I was distracted with work. Now, it would be a different story. I’d be out surf casting at first light. I’d be gossiping with you and India on the beach.”

He was full of nonsense, but Birdie didn’t want to argue. She said, “What’s going on there?”

“Here?” Grant said. “It’s been only me here this week and a few ambitious associates. Everyone else is off on vacation. On the Fourth, I was here alone.”

“You worked on the Fourth?” Birdie said.

Grant coughed dryly as he had for the past thirty years whenever he was uncomfortable. “I had some things to finish up.”

He had nowhere else to go. Birdie felt a wave of empathy. She thought of Grant putting on a suit and tie and driving in to work on the nation’s birthday. She thought of him sitting behind his desk while the rest of the firm’s offices remained quiet and dark; everyone else was at picnics or barbecues, at the country club or the beach.

“Why on earth didn’t you play golf?” Birdie asked.

“I was going to, but my foursome fell apart. It’s hard to find people with as much free time as I have. The other guys have families to see and lawns to mow.”

Birdie nearly asked Grant if he was lonely, but she refrained. Clearly the answer was yes. Birdie felt sorry for him, then battled this feeling. She had spent thirty years feeling lonely. She had spent countless Fourths of July at the country club pool with the kids while Grant golfed or spent three hours on a conference call with Japan. Still, she could understand being lonely. Would she have called him if she weren’t lonely herself?

She said, “Would you like to come up here, Grant? Spend a few days? It would be easy. If you get yourself to Nantucket, Barrett will bring you over.”

“I thought it was women only. I thought that was the point.”

“The daughters would love to see you.”

Grant was silent, and Birdie panicked. What if he said yes? What if Birdie had just ruined the trip by inviting her ex-husband along? She wasn’t at all sure the girls would appreciate his presence, and India would most certainly protest. And where would Grant sleep? In the other twin bed in Birdie’s room? Good Lord. It was unthinkable.

Grant said, “Thanks for asking, Bird, but I’m going to let you gals do what you went there to do. Bang your drums and chant and share your secrets by moonlight. You don’t need me around.”

“Okay,” Birdie said. She was relieved!

“It was good talking to you, Bird.”

“You, too,” Birdie said.

“No, I mean really good,” Grant said. “You made my day.”

“I’m glad,” Birdie said. She filled with warmth. These were the words she wanted to hear. Hank hadn’t been able to say them, but Grant had. Life was endlessly perplexing. “We’ll talk soon,” she said, and she hung up. The water was halfway up her shins. She was okay to walk home now, and when she got to the house, she would make herself a Perrier with ice and lime. It wouldn’t be great, but it would be okay.

TATE

P
rayer worked. Sometimes, when Tate was trying to fix a really bad problem in someone’s system, she closed her eyes and said a prayer. And more times than a rational person might imagine, the God that lived inside the computer responded. The screen would clear or jump to life, and she took over from there.

And so, she thought, why not call on the God that lived on Tuckernuck to help her with Barrett Lee? She said a little prayer every day and hoped for the best.
Pick me, pick me, pick me, PICK ME!

She was trying to become Barrett’s friend. This was difficult because her mother and Aunt India were always around, so there wasn’t a good opportunity for a one-on-one chat.

The only time of day when Tate and Barrett got a few minutes alone was in the morning. Barrett normally arrived while Tate was doing her sit-ups in the tree, and the sight of her hanging from her knees was clearly too much to resist because he always stopped to tease her. He took to calling her Monkey Girl, not a flattering moniker by any means, but she would take what she could get. One day, she challenged him to try it.
No, really, I’m serious. I bet you can’t do one!
And Barrett, handsome goddamned devil, set his visor and his sunglasses on the picnic table, pulled himself up into the tree, and hung by his knees. His shirt fell, revealing a perfect abdomen. He did ten sit-ups with his hands behind his head, then he flipped down and said,
Not bad, but I prefer the gym.

Yeah, well, I prefer the gym, too,
Tate said,
but look where I am.

I’ll give you one thing,
Barrett said.
You’re resourceful.

That was right, she was resourceful! The following morning, she left fifteen minutes later than usual for her run. And sure enough—she was finishing just as Barrett’s boat was puttering into their cove. Tate had her hands on her hips and she was panting. She chugged from the bottle of water she left on the beach stairs; then she stretched her hamstrings on the steps. Barrett anchored the boat. Tate sat on the bottom step, waiting for him. Her face was hot and red, she smelled like moldy cheese, but this was it—her chance!

He jumped off the side of the boat, then lifted out a bag of groceries and a ten-pound bag of ice. Tate waved to him; he smiled.

He said, “Good morning, Monkey Girl. Did you sleep in?”

She said, “I decided to run around the island twice.”

His eyes widened. “You are
kidding
me.”

She said, “I
am
kidding you.”

He got closer. She made no move to get up. He… looked like he was going to head past her up the stairs, but then he turned and sat on the step next to her. Tate didn’t know where to look, so she stared at her running watch. Eight fourteen, it said. The hour and the minute of her first real conversation with Barrett Lee. Tate fidgeted with the buttons of the watch; the face turned a ghostly blue. It was a man’s running watch and truly hideous, though Tate remembered ogling it at the sporting goods store in Charlotte—all the things it could do! Now, she wished she’d bought something more attractive, more ladylike. Sitting next to Barrett, she was self-conscious beyond belief.

She said, “So how goes it on this fine day, Barrett Lee?”

He said, “Oh, you know.”

“No, I don’t know,” Tate said. “What is your life like over there? What do you do? Aside from getting my mother her beach-plum jam, I mean.”

“Well, last night I went fishing with my old man,” Barrett said.