The Island (46 page)

At the picnic table, she turned the package in her hands.

She wanted a glass of wine or a cigarette—or preferably both—but there wasn’t time. The others might appear at any second.
So open it, open it!

It was a painting. Rather, it was part of a painting, part of one of the nudes of India, which Lula had cut into a five-by-five-inch square and reframed. India studied the small canvas; she turned it in the sun. Then she got it: it was the curve of India’s hip, delicately shaded to accentuate the sensual sweep toward what lay south. India immediately knew which canvas Lula had cut up: it was the magnificent canvas that Spencer Frost had bought for the school. India gasped at the thought of that breathtaking painting now vandalized; Lula had snipped the hip from the painting like a woman clipping a coupon. But the act was anything but casual, India knew. Lula would have had to lift the painting off the wall and carry it to her studio. This would have been a fairly easy thing to do undetected; in the summertime, the halls of PAFA were deserted, and the school had zero budget for security measures for student work. Although Lula had withdrawn from the school, she wouldn’t have to turn in her keys or vacate her studio space until mid-August.

India pictured Lula’s studio: She had one of the coveted corner units, with a big window looking south over the city. She had a battered leather sofa, which was smudged with paint, and an old steamer trunk that she used as a coffee table. She had a half fridge, a full-size drafting table that she had salvaged from outside a big architecture firm, and stacks and stacks of art books and magazines—
Vogue, Playboy, Nylon.
She had a docking station for her iPod, and a makeshift closet, where she kept clothes so that she didn’t have to go back to her apartment to change before she went out at night. The studio was her holy space. Lula had laid the canvas on the drafting table, perhaps, and studied it to decide where and how much to cut. Her procedure would have been as serious as a surgeon’s. In cutting the painting, she was cutting herself. What she had sent, India realized, was her own version of van Gogh’s ear. It was love and it was insanity.

In some ways, the small painting reminded India of the details of paintings shown in art history texts—portions of paintings were zoomed in on to show the reader the exquisite brushwork or technique. But in another way this small piece became something else. It could be the inside of a shell, or the swirl of a sand dune. Lula was, as ever, a genius. This small painting was its own whole.

There was a tiny white envelope with the painting, the kind used by florists when delivering flowers. India ripped it open. One word.

Try?

The question mark got her. Lula was asking, begging, pleading.

Try? Could she try?

Barrett kept a tool box in the bottom of the downstairs closet. India raided it and found a hammer and a nail. Upstairs in her bedroom, she pounded the nail into the wall. Her first try punched the nail right through the plaster. She had to find a joist. She tried another spot, and the nail met with resistance. India hammered; the walls of the house shook, and India imagined them folding like a house of cards. She got the nail in, however, and she hung the painting. It was perfect here, she decided. It looked like the curve of Bigelow Point, or like the peachy inside of a whelk shell that the kids had picked off Whale Shoal.

She regarded Roger. “What do you think?” she asked.

His seaweed hair waved in the breeze.

BIRDIE

F
rom the tip of Bigelow Point, she called Grant.

“He’s in a meeting,” his secretary, Alice, said. “Shall I have him call you back?”

“No,” Birdie said. “That’s okay.”

She hung up the phone, immediately disenchanted. Now see? This was the Grant Cousins she had known for thirty years. In a meeting. On the eighth fairway. On a conference call with Washington, Tokyo, London. At dinner at Gallagher’s. Unavailable. Can I have him call you back? Can I take a message?
Yes, tell him I need him. Tate pushed another child off the slide and that child has broken her arm. It will be a miracle if the parents don’t sue. It’s urgent. I’m miscarrying, again, on my way to the hospital. Please make sure he picks the girls up at preschool. It’s an emergency. Tell him I’d like to speak to him about Ondine Morris. Someone overheard her praising Grant’s fine physique in the ladies’ locker room at the club. Have him call me immediately. I’m bored, I’m lonely, I should never have left my job at Christie’s, I loved carpets, the stories they tell, the hands that knot them, he knew that. Why did he ask me to quit? Tell him earning ten million dollars a year doesn’t mean he can effectively ignore his children. They’re clamoring for him.

I am clamoring for him. Please have him call me.

Birdie wanted to talk to Grant about the girls. He was their father. But when he learned the girls were fighting, what would he say? Would he be as concerned as Birdie was? Or would he wait, as always, for Birdie to tell him how to feel? She had thought, in the weeks since she’d been here, that she’d sensed a change in Grant. An emerging sensitivity. He had been sweet and attentive on the phone, supportive about her travails with Hank; he had been wistful and romantic. He had sent those flowers and worded the card perfectly. Birdie found it hard to admit, but she had been entertaining notions of being with Grant again. She would never, ever live with him, but they could be friends. They could do things together, alone, and with the children. She had thought she was immune to the old hurt.
He’s in a meeting. Shall I have him call you back?

But she wasn’t.

She stumbled across Tate by accident, although Tuckernuck was small and Birdie knew where to look. At first she guessed Tate would be at North Pond, and when she wasn’t there, Birdie guessed East Pond. East Pond was smaller than North Pond and not quite as beautiful, although it had its own charms; the part of the pond that was farthest inland was bordered by fragrant
Rosa rugosa
and beach plum. Birdie guessed that Tate was in the mood for East Pond, feeling smaller and not quite as beautiful herself.

Birdie was right. Tate was there, with her earbuds on. She was propped on her elbows, but when she saw Birdie, she fell back flat. Birdie had half a mind to keep walking. Tate didn’t want to see her, and Birdie didn’t belong in the middle of whatever was happening between her daughters. When the girls were teenagers, Birdie had such a hard time with their squabbling that she went to see a family counselor, who advised Birdie to let the girls work it out themselves. Had she listened? No. They were her daughters; she wanted them to love each other. She had brokered the peace treaties then, and here she was, doing it now.

She marched over and sat next to Tate. She touched Tate’s arm and Tate removed an earbud and sat up halfway.

“Hi,” Birdie said.

Tate said, “Birdie, don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t try to make me feel better. Because it’s not going to work. This isn’t something a mother can fix.”

“Okay,” Birdie said.

“I miss Barrett,” Tate said. “I sent him away and now I want him back.”

“I’m sure he misses you, too,” Birdie said.

“You never thought we had a chance,” Tate said. “But I did. Because I love him. I’ve loved him forever.”

“It wasn’t that I thought you didn’t have a chance…”

“You thought it was a pipe dream. A stupid summer fantasy.”

“Tate, don’t be mean.”

“You’re the one who’s mean. You and my sister.”

“Tate.”

“I told Chess I hated her, and I meant it. I hate her. Everything I wanted in life, she took away.”

“That’s not true,” Birdie said.

Tate pressed her lips together, and Birdie saw her as a little girl, stubborn, defiant, angry. She had always been full of love, but she had also always been angry. Nothing Birdie had done in the past thirty years had been able to change that.

Birdie stood up and wiped her palms on her shorts. “I’m going to let you girls work this out yourselves,” she said.

Tate muttered something as she flipped onto her stomach, but Birdie didn’t hear what it was and she wouldn’t ask Tate to repeat herself as she might have done when Tate was a teenager. But as Birdie walked the path back to the house, she wondered what Tate had said. Probably “Whatever,” or “Yeah, right.” Or maybe she had said, “Thank you,” which was the best that Birdie could hope for.

TATE

T
hat night, Tate left the house during the communal screened-in porch hour and descended the stairs to the beach. The moon, which had been fat and full the night of the bonfire, was now a waning crescent, which made Tate sad. Tomorrow there would be four days left, and the next day three—and then they would start to pack up. Across the water, the lights of Nantucket twinkled.

Barrett!

What was he doing tonight? Was he at home with the kids, or out with Anita at some fancy benefit because Roman was stuck in the city?

He had to be missing her. He had to be thinking about her. He was in love with her. He had told Chess he was in love with her (unless Chess was lying, but even she wouldn’t cross that line).

Prayer worked, she reminded herself. And so she prayed.
Please please please please please please please.

Tomorrow, Tate decided, he would come.

The next morning, Tate was standing on the beach when
Girlfriend
pulled into the cove.

Trey was driving the boat.

Tate thought,
So much for prayer.

She said, “How’s Barrett doing?”

Trey shrugged. “He’s busy.”

A few minutes later, she knocked on Aunt India’s door.

“
Entrez!
” India said.

Tate stepped in and noticed something different right away. A painting. A small, square painting on the wall.

“What is this?” Tate asked.

“The inside of a whelk shell,” India said. She was on her bed, smoking and reading.

“Oh,” Tate said. “Yeah, I guess I can see that. Who did it?”

“A student at PAFA,” India said. She exhaled smoke. “Are you visiting for a reason or is this a purely social call?”

“A reason,” Tate said. She wasn’t sure she could go through with this. She didn’t like asking people for help. People asked
her
for help. That was her job; that was how she ran her life.

“Shoot,” India said.

Tate sank onto the bed. The mattress was truly unusual. It was like it was filled with quicksand; you sat on it and it sucked you in. Tate was sure that if they ever cut it open, they would find it was filled with something bizarre and horrifying, like the blood plasma of all her dead ancestors.

“Barrett has this client, Anita,” Tate said.

“I met her.”

“She wants to buy Roger,” Tate said.

“Yes, I know,” India said. “Barrett told me. Fifty thousand dollars.”

“So you told him it wasn’t for sale, and he told Anita. And Anita got mad. And she pulled a power play where she offered Barrett a full-time job, working for her only, with a salary he couldn’t turn down. He owes her a bunch of money anyway, from before, when his wife was sick and she needed private nurses.”

“Oh,” India said. “I didn’t know any of this.”

“Which is why I’m telling you,” Tate said. “That’s why Barrett doesn’t come anymore. That’s why he sends Trey.”

“Ah,” India said.

“And he doesn’t come for me because I got angry that he was working for Anita.” Tate stared at India’s new painting. There was something compelling about it. “I guess you could say we broke up.”

“Thank you for explaining,” India said. “I wondered, but it’s really not my place to ask. I’m just the aunt.”

“No, you’re way more than that,” Tate said. “You’re one of us.”

“Well, thank you for saying that. And you know I love you and Chess like my own children.”

Tate nodded. She swallowed. Her throat was coated with a film of despair. She said, “So anyway, I came up here to see if you would reconsider selling Roger.”

India’s eyes widened, but more in recognition, Tate hoped, than in shock or anger.

Tate said, “I thought if I went back to where the problem started, I could fix it. If you sold Roger to Anita, Anita would leave Barrett alone.”

India said, “I want you to hold Roger.”

Tate picked Roger up off the dresser—but carefully! He was delicate and valuable. He was whisper-light, made of driftwood and dried seaweed, beach glass and shells. He had style, though. His hair looked like dreadlocks and his eyes were round, like funky Elton John glasses.

“How did Uncle Bill get the glass and shells to stick?” Tate asked.

“Chuck Lee lent him a glue gun. Secretly, I guess. And then he filched the electricity off the generator. Bill was resourceful.”

Tate stroked the driftwood, which had grayed over the years, making Roger seem as if he were aging like a real person.

“Your Uncle Bill made him for me after we had a terrible fight,” India said.

Tate nodded. A terrible fight.

“I can’t sell him,” India said. “He doesn’t belong in Anita Fullin’s house or in a museum. He doesn’t even belong at home with me in Pennsylvania. He belongs here, in this house. He will stay here—forever, I hope. And that’s the secret about certain pieces of art. They have their own integrity, and we, as humans, must respect that.” She stubbed out her cigarette. “I would do anything for you, Tate. And I know you love Barrett and I know you’re hurting, but I can tell you that selling Roger to Anita Fullin isn’t going to bring about the kind of change you’re looking for. Only you can do that.”

Tate set Roger back on the dresser. Childishly, she felt hot tears of disappointment fill her eyes—like when she lost the hundred-yard dash at the Fairfield Regional Championships to Marissa Hart, whom she detested. Like when her father grounded her for a D in English and she missed seeing Bruce Springsteen at the Meadowlands. She hadn’t progressed emotionally since she was a teenager—that was the problem. She needed, somehow, to figure out how an adult woman would act.