The Island (2 page)

After Birdie hung up, she had to sit down and take a moment. How mercilessly the years flew by! Birdie had known Barrett Lee all his life. She remembered him at five years old, a towhead in an orange life preserver sitting beside his father on the Boston Whaler that picked up Birdie and Grant and the kids from Madaket Harbor on Nantucket and delivered them to the slice of beach, as white and soft as breadcrumbs, that fronted their property on the tiny neighboring island of Tuckernuck. Was Barrett Lee old enough to take over a business? In age, he had fallen somewhere between Chess and Tate, who were thirty-two and thirty respectively, making Barrett thirty-one or so. And Chuck had retired like a normal sixty-five-year-old man, whereas Grant still rode the train into the city every morning and, for all Birdie knew, still took clients to Gallagher’s for martinis and sirloins after work.

Birdie called Barrett Lee’s cell phone, and sure enough, a man answered.

“Barrett?” Birdie said. “This is Birdie Cousins calling. I own the Tate house on Tuckernuck?”

“Hey, Mrs. Cousins,” Barrett Lee said casually, as though they had spoken only the week before. “How’s it going?”

Birdie tried to remember the last time she had seen Barrett Lee. She had a vague memory of him as a teenager. He had been quite handsome, like his father. He played football for the Nantucket Whalers; he had broad shoulders and that white-blond hair. He had come out on his father’s boat alone early one morning to take one of the girls fishing. And then another time he had taken one of the girls on a picnic lunch. For the life of her, Birdie couldn’t remember if he had taken Chess or Tate.

How’s it going?
How was she supposed to answer that?
Grant and I divorced two years ago. He lives in a “loft” apartment in Norwalk and dates women he calls “cougars,” while I bounce off the walls of the family homestead in New Canaan, six thousand square feet filled with rugs and antiques and framed photographs documenting a life now gone. I cook an elaborate meal on Monday and eat it all week long. I still belong to the garden club. I go to a book group once a month and frequently I’m the only one who’s read the selection; the rest of the women are just there for the wine and the gossip. Chess and Tate are grown up, with lives of their own. I wish I had a job. I spend more time than I should feeling angry at Grant for never encouraging me to work outside the home. Because now, here I am, fifty-seven years old, divorced, becoming the kind of woman who inflicts herself on her children.

“It goes well,” Birdie said. “I’m sure hearing from me is something of a shock.”

“A shock,” Barrett confirmed.

“How is your father?” Birdie asked. “He’s retired?”

“Retired,” Barrett said. “He had a stroke just before Thanksgiving. He’s fine, but it slowed him way down.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Birdie said. This also gave her pause. Chuck Lee had had a stroke? Chuck Lee with his military buzz cut, and the cigarette clenched in the corner of his mouth, and his biceps bulging as he pulled the ropes of the anchor off the ocean floor? He was slow moving now? Birdie imagined a land turtle, bald and lumbering, then quickly erased it from her mind. “Listen, Chess and I are going to spend the week of the Fourth of July in the house. Can you get it ready?”

“Well,” Barrett said.

“Well, what?”

“It’s going to need work,” Barrett said. “I stopped by there back in September and the place is falling down on itself. It needs to be reshingled and it probably needs a new roof. You’ll need a new generator. And the stairs down to the beach have rotted. Now, I didn’t go inside, but…”

“Can you take care of it?” Birdie asked. “I want it to be usable. Can you buy a good generator and fix the rest of the house up? I’ll send a check tomorrow. Five thousand? Ten thousand?” In the divorce, Birdie had gotten the house and a generous monthly stipend. Grant had also promised that if she had larger expenses, he would cover them, as long as he deemed them “reasonable.” Grant hated the Tuckernuck house; Birdie had no idea if he would deem the cost of fixing it up reasonable or not. She smelled a possible battleground, but she couldn’t let the Tuckernuck house fall to pieces after seventy-five years, could she?

“Ten thousand to start,” Barrett said. “I’m sorry to tell you that…”

“No, don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault…”

“But if you want the house back to where it was…”

“We have no choice!” Birdie said. “It was my grandmother’s house.”

“You’d like it ready by July first?”

“July first,” Birdie said. “It’s just going to be Chess and me for one last hurrah. She’s getting married in September.”

“Married?” Barrett said. He paused, and Birdie realized that it must have been Chess that he’d taken on the picnic.

“On September twenty-fifth,” Birdie said proudly.

“Wow,” Barrett said.

By the middle of April, tax time, every last detail of Chess’s wedding to Michael Morgan had been tended to—including the dress for the flower girl, the catering menu, and the selection of hymns at the church. Birdie called Chess at work much more frequently to get her opinion and her approval. Most of the time what Chess said was, “Yes, Birdie, fine. Whatever you think.” Birdie had been both surprised and flattered when Chess had asked her for help with the wedding. She had essentially dropped the thing in Birdie’s lap, saying matter-of-factly, “You have exquisite taste.” Birdie happened to believe this was true; her good taste was a fact, like her green eyes or her attached earlobes. But to have Chess’s confidence was gratifying.

Three hundred people would be invited to the wedding; the service would be held at Trinity Episcopal, with Benjamin Denton, the pastor of Chess’s youth, presiding. The ceremony would be followed by a tented reception in Birdie’s backyard. The landscapers had started working the previous September. The pièce de résistance, in Birdie’s opinion, was a floating island that would be placed in Birdie’s pond, where the couple would take their first dance.

Grant had called only once to complain about cost, and that was in regard to the twenty thousand dollars for the engineering and manufacturing of the floating island. Birdie had patiently explained the concept to him over the phone, but he either didn’t get it or didn’t like it.

“Are we or are we not paying for a regular dance floor?”

“We are,” Birdie said. “This is a special thing, for the first dances. Chess dancing with Michael, Chess dancing with you, you dancing with me.”

“Me dancing with you?”

Birdie cleared her throat. “Emily Post says that if neither of the divorced spouses is remarried, then… yes, Grant, you’re going to have to dance with me. Sorry about that.”

“Twenty thousand dollars is a lot of money, Bird.”

It took a phone call from Chess to convince him. God only knows what she said, but Grant wrote the check.

At the end of April, Birdie went on her first date since the divorce. The date had been set up by Birdie’s sister, India, who was a curator at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Center City, Philadelphia. India had been married to the sculptor Bill Bishop and had raised three sons while Bill traveled the globe, gaining notoriety. In 1995, Bill shot himself in the head in a hotel in Bangkok, and the suicide had devastated India. For a while there, Birdie had feared India wouldn’t recover. She would end up as a bag lady in Rittenhouse Square, or as a recluse, keeping cats and polishing Bill’s portrait in its frame. But India had somehow risen from the ashes, putting her master’s degree in art history to use and becoming a curator. Unlike Birdie, India was cutting edge and chic. She wore Catherine Malandrino dresses, four-inch heels, and Bill Bishop’s reading glasses on a chain around her neck. India dated all kinds of men—older men, younger men, married men—and the man she set Birdie up with was one of her castoffs. He was too old. How old was too old? Sixty-five, which was Grant’s age.

His name was Hank Dunlap. Hank was the retired headmaster of an elite private school in Manhattan. His wife, Caroline, was independently wealthy. The wife sat on the board of trustees at the Guggenheim Museum; India had met Hank and Caroline at a Guggenheim benefit years earlier.

“What happened to Caroline?” Birdie asked. “Did they get divorced? Did she die?”

“Neither,” India said. “She has Alzheimer’s. She’s in a facility upstate.”

“So the wife is still
alive,
they’re still
married,
and you dated him? And now you want
me
to date him?”

“Get over yourself, Bird,” India said. “His wife is in another world and won’t be coming back. He wants companionship. He is exactly your type.”

“He is?” Birdie said. What
was
her “type”? Someone like Grant? Grant was the devil’s attorney. He was all about single-malt whiskey and expensive cars with leather interiors. He was not the kindly headmaster type, content with a salary in the low six figures. “Does he golf?”

“No.”

“Ah, then he is my type.” Birdie swore she would never again be romantically involved with a golfer.

“He’s cute,” India said, like they were talking about some sixteen-year-old. “You’ll like him.”

Surprise! Birdie liked him. She had decided to forgo all of the “I can’t believe I’m dating again at my age” worrywart nonsense and just be a realist. She
was
dating again at her age, but instead of fretting, she got showered and dressed and made up as she would have if she and Grant were going to the theater or to the country club with the Campbells. She wore a simple wrap dress and heels and some good jewelry, including her diamond engagement ring (it had been her grandmother’s and would someday go to one of
her
grandchildren). Birdie sat on her garden bench in the mild spring evening with a glass of Sancerre and Mozart playing on the outdoor speakers as she waited for old Hank to show up.

Her heartbeat seemed regular.

She heard a car in the driveway and proceeded inside, where she rinsed her wineglass, checked her lipstick in the mirror, and fetched her spring coat. With a deep breath, she opened the door. And there stood old Hank, holding a bouquet of fragrant purple hyacinths. He had salt-and-pepper hair and wore rimless glasses. He was, as India had promised, cute. Very cute. When he saw Birdie, he smiled widely. He grinned. He was darling.

“You’re even prettier than your sister!” he said.

Birdie swooned. “God,” she said. “I love you already.”

And they laughed.

The evening had gone from good to better. Hank Dunlap was smart and informed, funny and engaging. He picked a new restaurant on a trendy street in South Norwalk, among the art galleries and upscale boutiques. This faux Soho (they called it SoNo) was where Grant now lived. Birdie wondered if he hung out on this trendy street (she had a hard time imagining it); she wondered if she would see him, or if he would see
her
out on a date with cute, erudite Hank. It was warm enough to sit outside, and Birdie jumped at the chance.

The food at the new restaurant was extraordinary. Birdie loved good food and good wine, and as it turned out, so did Hank. They tasted each other’s meals and decided to share a dessert. Birdie didn’t think,
I can’t believe I’m dating again at my age.
What she thought was that she was having fun, this was easy; it was easier, perhaps, to have dinner with this man she barely knew than it had ever been to have dinner with Grant. (Beyond his penchant for aged beef, Grant didn’t care what he ate. He ate only to stay alive.) In the last few years of their marriage, Birdie and Grant had barely spoken to each other when they went to dinner. Or rather, Birdie had chirped away about the things that interested her, and Grant had nodded distractedly as he watched the Yankees game over her shoulder or checked his BlackBerry for stock reports. As Birdie ate with Hank, she marveled at how nice it was to spend time with someone who not only interested her but found her interesting. Who not only talked but listened.

Birdie said, “I would run away and marry you tonight, but I understand you’re already married.”

Hank nodded and smiled sadly. “My wife, Caroline, is in a facility in Brewster. She doesn’t recognize me or the kids anymore.”

“I’m sorry,” Birdie said.

“We had a good life together,” Hank said. “I’m sorry it’s going to end for her away from home, but I couldn’t take care of her by myself. She’s better off where she is. I go to see her Thursday afternoons and every Sunday. I bring her chocolate-covered caramels, and every week she thanks me like I’m a kind stranger, which I guess, to her, I am. But she loves them.”

Birdie felt tears rise. The waiter delivered their dessert—a passion fruit and coconut cream parfait. Hank dug in; Birdie dabbed at her eyes. Her marriage had ended badly, though not as badly as some, and Hank’s marriage was also ending badly, though not as badly as some. His wife no longer recognized him, but he brought her chocolate-covered caramels. This was the kindest gesture Birdie could imagine. Had Grant ever done anything that kind for her? She couldn’t think of a thing.

Hank kissed Birdie good night at her front door, and that was the best part of the evening. The kiss was soft and deep, and something long forgotten stirred inside Birdie. Desire. She and Grant had had sex right up to the bitter end with the help of a pill—but desire for her husband’s body had evaporated by the time Tate went to grammar school.

“I’ll call you tomorrow at noon,” Hank said.

Birdie nodded. She was speechless. She stumbled inside and wandered around her kitchen, looking at it with new eyes. What would Hank think of this kitchen? She was a big believer in small details: always fresh fruit, always fresh flowers, always fresh-brewed coffee, real cream, fresh-squeezed juice, the morning newspaper delivered to the doorstep, classical music. Always wine of a good vintage. Would Hank appreciate these things the way Birdie did?

She made herself a cup of tea and arranged the hyacinths he’d brought in one of her cut-glass vases. She was floating. The perfect life, she decided, would be a life filled with first dates like this one. Each day would contain electric promise, a spark, a connection, and desire.