The Island (20 page)

“Really,” Birdie said.

“Why have I never heard of him?” Tate said.

“He hasn’t been around very long,” Birdie said. “I met him at the end of April. I met him at the same time that your sister broke her engagement. So there have been a lot of distractions. And I’m not sure how serious it is.”

“Are you in love?” Tate said, praying the answer was no.

“I’m in love,” Birdie said. “At least, that’s what I’m calling it in my head. He is not in love with me, however. I thought he was, he said he was, but our conversations since we’ve been here tell me otherwise. He sounds positively uninterested.”

Uninterested,
Tate thought. Like Barrett.

“Hank is married,” Birdie said.

“Mother!” Tate said. She tried to sound shocked, though she wasn’t at all. She knew how the world worked; she knew that betrayals were as common as anthills.

“His wife has Alzheimer’s,” Birdie said. “She’s in a facility. She’ll stay in the facility until she dies.”

“Oh,” Tate said.

“So here’s the thing I don’t understand, still, at my age,” Birdie said. “In the two years between the time your father and I split and the time I met Hank, I was fine. I was reasonably happy, I had hobbies and interests—my gardening, my reading, the house, you kids, my friends. Then I met Hank. And he likes to do things—go out for dinner, go to the theater, spend the night in nice hotels, go dancing. God, it was intoxicating to have someone to
do
things with. You have no idea. I’d always been alone, throughout my marriage, alone, alone. The problem is that my happiness, now, depends on Hank.” Birdie clenched her fists. “It’s not fair that someone should be able to affect me this way! But I don’t want to go back to how things were before I met him. I was lonely. Then, with Hank, I was not lonely. And now, without Hank, I’m even lonelier than I was before.”

Tate watched her mother. She wasn’t happy to hear about Hank, but she understood. She felt the same way. She had been in love with Barrett Lee either since she was seventeen or for the past six days—but either way, it wasn’t fair.

“I don’t understand why he won’t talk to me,” Birdie said. “I don’t understand why he’s pulling away. Just now I called and he was with his three-year-old granddaughter at the farm at Stew Leonard’s. I want him to tell me that he misses me and he loves me, and all he wants to tell me is that it’s ninety-two degrees in Connecticut and the cow’s name is Calliope.”

“You got him at a bad time,” Tate said.

“It’s been a bad time every time I’ve called.”

“Have you called him every day?”

“Every day since the Fourth.”

Tate had noticed that Birdie wandered off around this time each day, but she figured her mother was on some typical Birdie mission: picking wildflowers for the dinner table, or hunting down chives for the salad.

Tate said, “If it makes you feel any better, I’m in love with Barrett Lee.”

Birdie gasped. “You
are?
”

“Oh, come on, Mom,” Tate said. “Tell me it’s not obvious. I’ve loved him forever. I’ve loved him since I was a child.”

“You have?” Birdie said. “I always thought it was Chess who was interested in Barrett.”

“Of course you did,” Tate said. “Chess always gets to play the romantic lead. Why is that?”

“Oh, Tate—”

“No, I’m curious. Why is she always the one who gets to fall in love and have relationships, and never me?”

“It will be you, soon enough,” Birdie said.

“I’m thirty years old,” Tate said. “How much longer do I have to wait?”

“I didn’t know you were in love with Barrett Lee,” Birdie said. “I’m sorry. It helps to know now. I’ve been trying to throw him and Chess together.”

“Can you stop?” Tate said. “Please?”

“It’s not working anyway,” Birdie said.

“He asked me about Chess this morning, and then he asked her out—I saw them talking by the Scout—but I think she said no. Did she mention it?”

“Not a word,” Birdie said. “You’ll be glad if she said no?”

“It doesn’t change the fact that he wanted to ask her.”

“Love is perfectly awful,” Birdie said. “I’d forgotten how awful it was. I don’t remember feeling like this with your father. Grant and I found each other, and we knew. There wasn’t any game playing. We joined forces and we moved through life—he worked, we bought the house, I had you and Chess. Then I lost those two pregnancies right in a row, which was upsetting, but I recovered. Your father was free to worry about making money and playing golf and I could worry about returning the library books on time and getting you girls to dance class. I never remember feeling this addled. Loving your father was frustrating, but it wasn’t painful.”

“Until the end?” Tate said.

“It wasn’t even painful at the end,” Birdie said. “I just ran out of rope. I didn’t want to stay with your dad anymore. I wasn’t getting anything out of the marriage.”

Tate nodded. This felt like a conversation she should have had with her mother two years ago, but it had never happened. Tate hadn’t wanted to know what went wrong; she just wanted them to fix it.

“Grant was my big relationship. He was the co-president of the corporation of our life. But what I realized when I met Hank”—here, Birdie rested her chin on her tented knees—“was that there might be a chance to have another kind of relationship. A dessert, if you will. Hank already has his family, and I have mine; Hank is finished with his career. We both have money. All that remains is possibility: ten, twenty, thirty years to enjoy life with someone. I never got to enjoy life with your father because we were so damn busy. Hank likes all the same things that I like—he cooks, he gardens, he enjoys the same music and the same wine. And that is what makes my love for him so terrible. I don’t want to gallivant about with just anyone. It has to be Hank. Before I came here, we were inseparable. I cried when we parted, and he cried, too. But now… I’m losing him.” When she looked at Tate, her eyes were watery. “Oh, honey. I feel like a girl.”

“That’s okay,” Tate said. “That’s good, Mom.” Tate
did
think it was good. Her mother was in love, she was feeling things. Her mother was a woman, a human being: Had Tate ever really considered this? Does anyone think this way about her own mother—that she’s a person with desires and longings and tender, aching spots? Tate had always fiercely loved her mother, but had she ever known her?

Tate walked to the waterline. Birdie followed. Tate picked up a rock and threw it the way she’d seen Chess do.

“Barrett Lee,” she said.

Birdie bent down and picked up a rock the size and shape of an egg. She threw it, and it plunked a few yards offshore.

“Hank,” she said.

Were they getting rid of the men? Tate wondered. Or beckoning them?

Birdie said, “I should have thrown my phone.”

Birdie headed back to the house; she didn’t want Chess and India to worry, she said. Neither of them knew where she was.

“Your secret is safe with me,” Tate said.

“And yours with me,” Birdie said. “If it makes you feel any better, I had a terrific crush on Chuck Lee when I was a girl.”

“On Chuck?” Tate said. “Really? You did?”

“And so did India,” Birdie said. “It’s like everything cycles through: Tate women with crushes on Lee men, generation after generation.”

After Birdie was gone, Tate lay on her towel in the sun. Her mother was in love with Hank. This felt like something she and Chess could whisper about in the dark nighttime attic—but Tate didn’t want to share her mother’s confidence. As Tate drifted off to sleep, she thought back to when her mother had lost those two pregnancies. She remembered her mother in the hospital at least once; what she remembered was that their father had given them chocolate ice cream for dinner, and when Tate told her mother, in the hospital, that Daddy had given them chocolate ice cream for dinner, her mother had cried. Tate hadn’t eaten chocolate ice cream since. Tate had been pretty young, four or five, and she didn’t remember anyone explaining what had happened, although perhaps her father or Aunt India had tried, because it was right around that time that Tate began to pray fervently for another brother or sister. She had even asked Santa to bring one on Christmas Eve. And then, when no new sibling appeared, Tate invented one—she alternated between a brother named Jaysen (spelled just that way) and a sister named Molly. Tate marveled: she hadn’t thought about Jaysen or Molly in a long, long time. The important thing, Tate remembered, was that Jaysen and/or Molly was her very best friend, devoted solely to her. The Jaysen and Molly of Tate’s imagination didn’t even know Chess existed.

Tate awoke to the sound of a boat motor. She opened her eyes and propped herself on her elbows. Barrett Lee’s boat had come up the gut into the pond. She heard a second noise, small music, a faraway tune, something familiar. Her iPod was on at her feet. It was playing “Glory Days.”

She grabbed the iPod and shut it off, grateful for the distraction from the main event: Barrett Lee in his boat. Here? She looked out to where her stone had finally submerged; he was closer than that now.

She had to wake up.

She drank what was left of her lemonade. It was warm and sour. She was awake; this was real. Barrett anchored the boat, jumped over the side, and waded in. Tate stared at him.

He said, “They told me you were here.”

She couldn’t risk saying the wrong thing. She waited.

“Listen, I have this thing tomorrow night. It’s a dinner party thrown by that client of mine I told you about. The party is at her house in Brant Point. It’ll be pretty fancy. Would you like to go with me?”

“Yes,” Tate said. The word slipped out on its own, without her permission. The mind was the world’s fastest computer. So many thoughts in an instant, overlapping, colliding thoughts, thoughts without words. A dinner party with Barrett. Yes. Anywhere with Barrett. Did it matter that he had asked Chess first? That Tate was his second choice and everyone would know it? It
did
matter, but not enough to turn him down. She would never turn Barrett Lee down.

“Yes?” he said. He sounded surprised. He had expected, maybe, to strike out with both Cousins girls.

“I’d love to,” she said. “You’ll come get me?”

“At six,” he said. “Tomorrow night at six. The thing is…”

“What?” Tate said.

“I can’t bring you back until morning,” he said. “By the time the dinner party is over, it will be too late. So you’ll have to stay with me. I’ll bring you back Sunday morning. Early, in time for you to run, I promise.”

In time for her to run. Okay, that was sweet. That was thoughtful. He knew who he was asking out.

“I’ll stay at your house?” she said.

“My house,” he said. “Is that okay?”

“It’s okay,” she said.

“That’s the only thing about dating a Tuckernuck girl,” he said. “No way to get her home at night.”

A Tuckernuck girl.

They said other things, small talk:
Good-bye. See you tomorrow. It’s dressy, I think. I’m wearing a sport coat.
Tate didn’t remember exactly. Her thoughts were with the God of Tuckernuck. She was before him, clasping his hands in thanks. Kissing his feet.

INDIA

W
hen Barrett appeared in the afternoon, he had a letter for India.

“Mail call,” he said.

This was highly unusual. Grant used to receive mail, of course, documents that needed his signature; these were FedExed to Chuck Lee, and then Chuck Lee would bring them over on his boat and hand them to Grant with a withering look. Receiving mail was understood to be an infraction against the Tuckernuck lifestyle. There was supposed to be no mail, no phone calls, no communication with the outside world. India had been raised in this tradition. And yet, she couldn’t just fall off the face of the earth for thirty days. She had left the address of Barrett’s caretaking business with her three sons and with her assistant, Ainslie. She had been clear:
Use the address only in case of emergency.
The sight of Barrett waggling the envelope, therefore, inspired worry, which quickly morphed into fear.

Her first thought was,
The baby.

Billy’s baby. Heidi, Billy’s wife, was twenty-nine weeks along. Everything was going smoothly; the pregnancy had been closely monitored. Heidi was an obstetrician herself; she had a sonogram machine right there in her office and she used it on herself the last day of every month. Heidi felt a heavy responsibility in carrying Bill Bishop’s grandson, the heir to that famous name, but Heidi was equal to it. She was a medical professional who followed her own advice: she took vitamins, she ate leafy greens and bananas, she had stopped drinking. Still, things could go wrong, so many goddamned things could go wrong during pregnancy or delivery—not to mention a whole wide world of disease and birth defects. Had it been this way when India was pregnant? Probably so, though not everything had a diagnosis like it did now. When India looked at the white of the envelope in Barrett’s hand, she thought,
Heidi has gone into preterm labor. She will deliver before the baby’s lungs are mature. If the baby lives, there will be weeks in the NICU, respirators, and even then, possible brain damage.
Oh, Billy. He and Heidi were perfectionists and overachievers. They would not handle this well.

Or, India thought, the letter could be in regard to Teddy. Of her three sons, Teddy worried her the most because he was the most like Bill. He liked to work with his hands; he had started a roofing company in the northwest suburbs of Philadelphia—Harleysville, Gilbertsville, Oaks—former farmland that now sprouted headquarters for pharmaceutical companies and McMansions for the executives. Teddy had had a longtime girlfriend named Kimberly, but they were always breaking up and getting back together. Teddy was emotionally unstable; he’d had one episode that landed him in the psych ward of Quakertown Hospital. The doctors put him on Zoloft, but he drank too much. He was, India had to admit, a time bomb. So the envelope said what? That he had killed Kimberly? Killed himself?