The Island (19 page)

“How is Chuck?” Tate said. “I can remember him from when I was a little girl. I thought he owned this island. I thought he was its president.”

“Chuck Lee, president of Tuckernuck. He’ll get a kick out of that.”

“He’s okay? Birdie said he had a stroke.”

“He had a mild stroke. His left arm is affected and his speech is slow, but he gets around a little bit still—one outing a day, the post office or his Rotary lunch. He can’t golf anymore, and taking him fishing is tricky, but I do it. He loves being out on the water. I cast the line and he holds it, and if he gets a bite, I reel it in, and he snaps the line.”

Barrett was a saint, Tate thought. But to say so might embarrass him. “So did you catch anything?”

“Three stripers, one keeper.”

“Are you going to eat it?”

“Tonight, maybe,” Barrett said. “Course, my night went downhill from there. I have one client who is very needy. Her husband is in Manhattan all week, so she’s in the house alone. She heard a noise that she thought was an intruder, so the police came, and they heard the noise, but it turned out to be her pipes knocking. So she called me.”

“Are you a plumber?” Tate asked.

“I’m a little of everything,” Barrett said. “I fixed it.”

“What a pain, though, to have your night ruined.”

“Yeah,” Barrett said. “This particular woman has a problem with boundaries.” He was sitting next to Tate; their arms were practically touching. Tate had dozens of questions.
What do you do aside from working and fishing? Do you ever get to do fun stuff? Do you ever get to go on dates?
As Tate was debating which question to ask, Barrett said, “So what’s the deal with Chess?”

It was like the sting of the cold shower. It was her seventeenth summer all over again.

“The deal?” Tate said.

“Yeah. Your mom told me the fiancé or the ex-fiancé died. And she’s destroyed. Is that why she shaved her head?”

“That would be the logical conclusion,” Tate said. “Although who knows?”

“It’s none of my business,” Barrett said. “But God, she used to be so pretty. Her hair… and she used to be so together. Mature, you know, and cool.”

“I’d love to fill you in,” Tate said, “but she hasn’t even told me how she’s feeling. Not really. So if you want further details, you’ll have to ask Chess yourself.”

Barrett said, “Okay, fair enough.” He stood up, then turned back. “I just get the feeling she doesn’t like me very much.”

“She doesn’t like anyone very much these days,” Tate said.

Barrett looked skeptical.

“Honestly. That’s the best I can do,” Tate said. “She’s in a bad place right now. And that’s why we’re all here.”

Tate did her sit-ups from the tree branch in a haze of sickly green jealousy. When Birdie asked if Tate was all right, she said, “Uh-huh,” and stormed for the shower. The cold water felt good, but it didn’t cool her down. Birdie had made a skillet of scrambled eggs with cheddar and a plate of crispy bacon, Tate’s favorite breakfast, and yet Tate breezed by her darling mother and the beautiful breakfast. She squeezed past India on the stairs when the customary thing to do was to wait at the bottom for the person coming down to descend. The staircase was narrow and could only handle single file. Tate didn’t say good morning to her aunt. When India got to the bottom of the stairs, Tate heard her say to Birdie, “Is she all right?”

Tate stopped in the bathroom for deodorant and lotion. And there, out the bathroom window, she saw Chess and Barrett leaning against the front of the Scout. They were facing the water, not looking at each other. There was no reason for them to be out by the Scout except that the Scout was on the far side of the house, out of view and earshot of anyone in the kitchen or eating at the picnic table. Tate knew she shouldn’t, but she spied mercilessly. The bathroom window was open and she could hear their voices, but she couldn’t quite make out what they were saying.

Then Barrett turned to face Chess and he said, “You’re sure?”

She said something back, but the words were lost to the wind and the ocean. Barrett walked away.

He’d asked her out.

Tate scowled at herself in the dingy mirror. It wasn’t fair. Chess had won
again,
and the thing that pissed Tate off and demoralized her at the same time was that Chess wasn’t trying. She looked like Telly Savalas, she was
bald,
for God’s sake, and yet Barrett was still attracted to her. Meanwhile, Tate was athletic and smiling and happy and a gung ho positive life force. Tate weighed 111 pounds, she was tan, and she had straight white teeth. Tate was gainfully employed in the world economy’s leading industry. This summer, Tate was the better choice. Could he not see that?

Is she all right?

Yes, Aunt India, I’m fine,
Tate thought as she stepped into her bikini.
Except for where my sister is concerned.

When she descended to the kitchen with her backpack (containing lotion, her iPod—which she had not listened to since she’d arrived—two towels, and the Tuckernuck house copy of John Irving’s
Cider House Rules,
which Tate had read already but would happily read again because she knew she liked it), Birdie, Aunt India, and Chess were all sitting around the “dining room table,” ostensibly reading the newspaper. But Tate could tell they were waiting for her. She decided to pounce on them before they could pounce on her.

“Nobody needs the Scout, right?” she said. “I’m going to take it to North Pond and hang out there today.”

“I’ll go with you,” India said. “I haven’t gone anywhere yet, my bones are so lazy.”

“I’d like to go alone,” Tate said. They all stared at her. “I need some me-myself time.”

Birdie said, “Tate, is something the matter?”

She didn’t like being put on the spot like this. “Can I plead the Fifth on that?”

Birdie said, “By all means. Let’s all plead the Fifth on everything while we’re here and have a very quiet and unproductive month. And then when we get back to the mainland, we’ll be seething with all the things we’ve kept inside.” Tate was taken aback. She looked at Chess, who had her forehead in her hands.

Tate said, “It’s not a big deal, Mom. Would you mind packing me a picnic?”

Chess made a kind of snorting noise, perhaps indicating that she found the request for a picnic audacious, because their mother was neither Tate’s personal chef nor her slave. (They were sisters; Tate could read her mind to the word.) But Tate didn’t take the bait.

Birdie said, “I will, if you’ll apologize to your aunt about being rude on the stairs.”

Tate looked at India. “I’m sorry,” she said.

India waved a hand. “Accepted.”

When Birdie stood up, Tate sat down in her chair, and Birdie brought her a plate of eggs and the brittle bacon and a glass of fresh-squeezed juice and a buttery English muffin, and then she clattered around in the kitchen making a picnic for Tate. Chess rested her face on the table, and India read the paper and smoked a cigarette. Tate was getting used to the smell.

She said, “I hope you’re not offended that I want to go alone?”

India said, “Heavens, no. I can go tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day. Or the day after that.”

Birdie said, “Are you absolutely certain that you want to go to North Pond?”

“Yep,” Tate said.

“Because the undertow is bad there,” Birdie said.

“It’s a pond, Mom,” Tate said.

Chess said nothing, but Tate didn’t care.

Barrett had asked Chess on a date, but Tate wouldn’t think about it.

The Scout was a magic vehicle; it could deliver her to a different frame of mind. Tate drove the dirt roads very slowly, because she enjoyed the ride and because someone from the homeowners’ association would complain about any vehicle topping eight miles per hour. Tate parked out at North Pond and then hiked to the end of Bigelow Point. The sand was golden and granular, and even on the ocean side, the water was clear to the bottom and as warm as bathwater. Tate spread out her towel and put in her earbuds. She listened to “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” “For You,” “Viva Las Vegas,” “Atlantic City,” “Pink Cadillac,” and “The Promised Land.” There wasn’t another soul for miles. It was liberating, being so alone. Tate went for a swim on the ocean side; she swam a couple of hundred yards, then a couple of hundred yards farther. She was a quarter mile out; she could see the entire west coast of the island. The water was calm and Tate was tempted to go even farther. But there were sharks out here. Well, there was an occasional shark, one sighted every forty years or so. As Tate treaded water, her legs felt tingly and vulnerable. She was angry, yes, and she was jealous. She loved Barrett, but Barrett loved Chess. Still, Tate didn’t want to get eaten by a shark. She loved life too much. She loved Bruce Springsteen and her mother’s cooking. She loved running on the beach and driving the Scout. She loved sleeping in the hot attic and she loved her sister. Yes, she did; it was undeniable. The bitch crawled into bed with her every night, and every morning Tate woke up happy to find here there.

She swam back to shore.

She read the first few pages of
Cider House Rules,
but then she tired of it. She had never been a great reader; she had never been able to concentrate and think about what the words meant and what subtext might be lurking between the lines. Reading, for Tate, was too much work. Chess thought this was a flaw in her personality. But Tate hadn’t had any of the good high school English teachers, and Chess had had them all. Chess read all the time. She owned thousands of books—her “library,” she called it—she read the fiction in the
New Yorker
and the
Atlantic Monthly.
She had poems taped to her bathroom mirror in her apartment in New York. She was that kind of person, but Tate wasn’t. Tate liked computers, she liked flashing screens, information made clear and interesting with pictures. Click on this link and the screen changed, click on that link and you were somewhere completely new. The Internet was alive, it was an animal that Tate had trained, it was a planet where she had learned the terrain. The world was at her fingertips. Who needed books?

She used
Cider House Rules
as a pillow.

But she wasn’t tired, and lying in the sun gave her too much time to think. She didn’t want to think.

Barrett had asked Chess out on a date. It looked like Chess had said no. But she hadn’t said no out of loyalty to her sister. She’d said no because she didn’t feel like going out with Barrett and having fun. Fun was beyond her.

Tate pulled out the picnic Birdie had packed her: a mozzarella and tomato sandwich with pesto that had grown warm and melty in the sun, a bag of potato chips, a plum, a Tupperware of raspberries and blueberries, a bottle of lemonade, a brownie. Tate thought about how much she loved her mother and how perfect it would be if Birdie agreed to come live with her. Even for just a month or two in the winter. Charlotte never got really cold, not like the Northeast. It rarely snowed. Tate’s condo complex kept the outdoor pool heated; her mother could swim laps in January. But Tate was never home; she was always on the road. Her mother would grow bored in Charlotte; she would have no friends and little to do. Tate’s apartment didn’t have a garden. It barely had furniture; Tate owned a fifty-two-inch flat-screen TV and a queen-size futon that sat on the floor in front of the TV. Tate couldn’t imagine Birdie spending one night in the condo in Charlotte in its current condition. Birdie and Grant had come to Charlotte once, a couple of years earlier, when Tate first moved there. Tate’s parents had stayed in a Marriott and the three of them had eaten dinner at a steak house whose name Tate couldn’t remember. Tate’s connection to Charlotte was tenuous. Maybe she should move someplace else. Las Vegas appealed—all those flashing lights.

Tate needed to get a life.

She needed a boyfriend.

Barrett!

She didn’t want to think about it.

After lunch she swam in the pond, ignoring common wisdom to wait an hour for her food to digest. She was floating on her back when she saw something move in her peripheral vision. She stood up—the water was chest deep—and squinted. It was another person trekking out to Bigelow Point. Tate recognized the blue terry-cloth cover-up and the floppy white hat that had belonged to her grandfather.

It was Birdie!

Tate waved. She was relieved. She had wanted company, though she was too proud to admit it to herself. Spending all day at the beach alone was beyond her. Her mother realized this and had come to the rescue. She was such a good mother.

Birdie didn’t wave back. Her face held an expression that Tate couldn’t place, though one thing was for sure: she didn’t look happy. She picked her way out onto the slender sandbar that jutted into the water.

Tate called out, “Mom! I’m over here!” Surely her mother had seen her? She didn’t look over. “Mom!” Tate squinted. That
was
her mother, right? It was her mother’s blue cover-up and her grandfather’s floppy white hat, which he used to wear when he took Tate and Chess crabbing in the flat-bottomed rowboat.

It was her mother. And now Tate noticed that she was on the phone. That couldn’t be right. But yes, Birdie was on the phone. She was talking to someone. She was gesturing. The phone call was brief. Two minutes, maybe less. She folded up her phone and slipped it into the pocket of her cover-up.

Tate waited. Her mother gazed out at the ocean for a moment, then took a heaving breath and walked toward the pond. Tate swam to shore.

Birdie approached without a word or a smile. What was wrong? When she was close enough to speak to, Tate found she didn’t know what to say. And rather than say something stupid, she was quiet. She waited.

Together they walked to Tate’s towel and sat down. Birdie said, “I’m sorry. I know you wanted to be alone today.”

“Actually,” Tate said, “I was dying for company.”

“I was just on the phone with Hank,” Birdie said.

“Who’s Hank?” Tate asked.

“He’s a man I’m dating,” Birdie said.

“Really?” Tate said. She felt a sharp, clean slice through her gut. She had held out hope that since neither of her parents were seeing other people, they might someday reunite. She knew it was juvenile, wanting them back together, but that was how she felt.