The Island (4 page)

She said, “I can’t speak for Chess, Michael. She told me she doesn’t want to get married. Her feelings have changed. You proposed in a very public way.” This came off as an admonition, and it was: if Michael Morgan had proposed privately, Chess might have answered differently. “Maybe Chess felt like she had to say yes when what she meant was that she wanted to think about it.”

“I proposed six months ago,” Michael said. “She’s had time to think about it.”

“She’s had time to think about it,” Birdie said. “And I know this comes as cold comfort, but having her realize now is much better than having her realize in ten years when you have four kids and a mortgage. This is a perspective that comes with age, and you’re going to have to take my word for it.”

Michael said, “I can’t give up hope. I love her, Mrs. Cousins. I am madly in love with your daughter, and I just can’t turn it off like a faucet. My heart…” Here, he started to sob, and Birdie cringed. The boy was used to getting whatever he wanted, but he couldn’t have Chess. He didn’t know it, but this kind of earthshaking disappointment would be good for him. “My heart is in a thousand pieces.”

“You need to talk some more with Chess,” Birdie said.

“I was just with her for four hours.”

“A little later, maybe. Once she’s had time to reflect.”

“I have to go back to San Francisco,” he said. “I left two candidates for a seven-figure job sitting at the Marriott.”

“Go back to San Francisco,” Birdie said. “Talk to Chess when you get home.”

“If she doesn’t change her mind, I don’t know what the hell I’m gonna do,” he said.

“You’ll survive,” Birdie said, looking at Hank on the sofa, wiping crumbs from his lips with a cocktail napkin. “We all do.”

In the week that followed, there were all sorts of other conversations, conversations upon conversations. Birdie had never had so many conversations. One of the most difficult, predictably, was Birdie’s conversation with Grant, which she chose to undertake at nine o’clock at night when he would be at home in his “loft” rather than at the office.

She said, “Grant, I’m calling to tell you that Chess has broken the engagement. The wedding is off.”

“Off?” he said.

“Off.”

Silence. Birdie had wondered how Grant would meet the news. It was telling that after thirty years of marriage, she had no idea. She figured his main concern would be for Chess’s welfare, and once he realized the murder had come at Chess’s own hand, he would be worried about his money. Birdie waited for his questions, but none came.

“Grant?”

“Yes?”

“What do you think?”

“What am I supposed to think? You want to tell me what the hell happened?”

Of course, she should have guessed that he would not react at all until Birdie told him how he was supposed to feel. She had always done his emotional work for him.

“Chess wanted out. She’s not in love with him.”

“Not in love with him?”

“That’s the gist of it.” It was no longer Birdie’s job to shield Grant from the unpleasant realities about his children. Birdie had to deal with it, and now so did he. “She’s not in love. She doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life with him.”

“I don’t get it,” Grant said.

Of course he didn’t get it. This was why Chess had wanted Birdie to call; Birdie was supposed to make him understand. Grant was eight years her senior; he had been thirty-one to her twenty-three when they got married. Grant had just made partner at the firm; he was expected to marry, start procreating, move to the suburbs, join a country club. He had come after Birdie like a bull charging; he had tracked her like a hit man.
I want you, you, you.
There had been dinners and musicals and weekends skiing in the Poconos, where they kept separate rooms for the sake of appearances. Birdie had an entry-level job at Christie’s, where she showed a proclivity for carpets. She idolized the head of fine carpets, a man named Fergus Reynolds, who was always dashing off to Marrakech or Jordan. He spoke fluent French, Spanish, and Arabic and wore silk scarves in the style of Amelia Earhart. Birdie wanted to be a female incarnation of Fergus. She wanted to smoke clove cigarettes and appraise estates on the French Riviera. But instead, she succumbed to Grant. Within a year of marrying, she had quit her job; within two years, she was pregnant with Chess. The ways in which Grant Cousins had curtailed her potential were too numerous to name.

And then, once they were married and the girls had been born and the household established, Grant vanished. He was still present physically—sitting at the head of the dinner table with his tumbler of scotch and his benevolent, slightly baffled smile—but his mind was elsewhere. He lived in a state of constant distraction. The office, the cases, the clients, the billable hours, his handicap, the Yankees game, the Giants game. Birdie had grown to feel that anything and everything was more important to Grant than she and the girls were. He was kind to them, and generous, but they could never quite capture his full attention.

“I don’t know how else to say it,” Birdie said. “She’s not going to marry him. And rather than beating her up, we should be praising her for calling it off before it was too late. If she’d gone ahead and married him, she’d regret it.”

“The way you regret marrying me?” Grant said.

Birdie inhaled. Honestly!

“I do not regret it,” Birdie said.

“Sure you do.”

“I do not regret raising our children. And for many years, I didn’t regret marrying you.”

“You regretted being hemmed in to a certain life,” Grant said. “You wished your life had contained more than PTA open houses and garden club. I do listen when you talk, Bird.”

Infuriating. He was playacting now, trying to fudge the exam when he hadn’t read the book. “Well, this will come as a surprise to you, I’m sure, but I’m not exactly dead yet. In fact, I’m dating someone.”

“Congratulations,” Grant said.

He was so patronizing. Birdie chastised herself for telling him. Her love life was none of his business, and no reaction—not even one of jealousy, which would have been disingenuous—would have satisfied her. Dating Hank was a source of private delight; to make it public would poison it.

“So anyway,” Birdie said, “there are the matters of the wedding arrangements. I assume you’d like me to try to get your deposits back?”

“Yes, please,” Grant said.

“All I can do is try,” Birdie said. She had half a mind to simply let Grant’s cash sink to the bottom of the ocean, but his money was her money, and wasting it was foolish. “And Grant?”

“Yes?”

“Call your daughter, please.”

“And say what?”

“What do you think?” Birdie said. “Tell her you love her.”

In the days and weeks that followed, Birdie had a hard time reaching Chess. When she called Chess at work, she was stonewalled by Chess’s assistant, Erica, who claimed that Chess was no longer accepting personal calls at work.

“But she’s there, right?” Birdie said. “She’s alive?”

“Affirmative,” Erica said.

When Birdie tried Chess’s cell phone, she was inevitably shuttled to voice mail, where her messages stacked up like newspapers in the driveway of someone who had moved away.

“Call me,” Birdie said. “I’m worried.”

Birdie sought refuge in conversations with her daughter Tate. Birdie didn’t love Tate any more than she loved Chess, but Tate was easier.

“Have you talked to your sister?” Birdie asked.

“A couple of times,” Tate said. “Mostly I just leave messages.”

“Oh, good,” Birdie said. “I thought I was alone in that.”

“You know I’d never leave you alone, Mama,” Tate said.

Tate—Elizabeth Tate Cousins—was, at the age of thirty, a computer genius who was flown in by the biggest companies in America to fix glitches in their systems. She had such specialized knowledge and expertise that she was able to call her own shots: She wore jeans to even the swankiest workplaces, she worked with her iPod blaring Bruce Springsteen at top decibel, she ate lunches of tuna fish sandwiches and creamy tomato-basil soup from Panera and, in cities where there was no Panera, from Cosi. She demanded an astronomical fee.

“Where are you today?” Birdie asked. Technically, Tate lived in Charlotte, North Carolina, a place that Birdie didn’t understand. It was a “new” city, known as a banking capital. Charlotte was the first place Tate had worked on assignment, and she had spontaneously plunked down money on a condo in a complex that had a beautiful swimming pool and a state-of-the-art fitness center.

Why Charlotte?
Birdie had asked.

And Tate said,
Because it was there.

There had been a period of time in junior high school when Tate had dressed like a boy. She had worn jeans and a boy’s white undershirt and a red bandanna wrapped around her wrist or her ankle; she had cut her hair very short, spiking it some days and slicking it back on others. She even sounded like a teenage boy; she was constantly making flip remarks. She had been caught engraving the lyrics to “Darlington County” into a desk at school, and when asked why, she had shrugged and said,
Because it was there.
Birdie had wanted Tate to see a therapist, but the guidance counselors at school assured Birdie that Tate was experiencing a phase and it would pass. It had passed, but the teenage boy lived on in Tate. She was still fanatical about Bruce Springsteen, and about computers, and about NFL football. She had bought her first piece of real estate in a city where she knew no one “because it was there.”

“I’m in Seattle,” Tate said.

“Microsoft has computer problems?” Birdie said.

“I’m at a conference,” Tate said.

“What did Chess tell you?” Birdie said.

“The same things she told you, I’m sure,” Tate said. “She changed her mind. She doesn’t want to marry Michael.” Tate paused. “And she said you were completely cool about it. Not a freakazoid at all.”

Birdie fought a sense of disquiet. She didn’t love the idea of Chess and Tate discussing her, though of course Birdie and her sister, India, had parsed and deconstructed their own mother from the time they were conversant, at ages three and five.

“Did she say if anything had happened?” Birdie said.

“Happened?”

“Did anything precipitate her decision? Or it all just came out of thin air?”

“Out of thin air, I guess,” Tate said.

“Okay,” Birdie said. “Because Michael thinks there’s something else going on. Something Chess might not be willing to tell him. Or her mother. Like maybe she’s met someone else?”

“She didn’t mention anyone else,” Tate said. “But we’re talking about Chess. I’m sure she has men hounding her day and night. I’m sure she has men following her home from the subway like stray dogs, trying to sniff up her skirt.”

Birdie sighed. “Really, Tate, must you be crude?”

“I must,” Tate said. She paused. “So… what about Tuckernuck?”

“Oh,” Birdie said. She had forgotten about Tuckernuck. “What about it?”

“Chess said that you two are going, and I want to come, too,” Tate said. “I want to stay two weeks like we used to. Can we? Chess said she would.”

Birdie was caught off-guard. Amazing, at the age of fifty-seven, that she could still feel so many surprising emotions at once. Both girls on Tuckernuck for two weeks? It was an embarrassment of riches; it was a lavish gift, one Birdie never would have dared wish for. And yet the motivating factor behind this trip had been for Birdie and Chess to spend quality time alone together. Now that Chess wasn’t marrying Michael Morgan, Birdie supposed the need for one-on-one time with her daughter was less pressing. And the trip to Tuckernuck would be more fun with Tate along. Birdie decided to let herself be happy. She would have both of her girls on Tuckernuck for two whole weeks!

“Can you swing it?” Birdie said. “What about work?”

“I am my own boss,” Tate said. “Two weeks is nothing. I could take the whole month off if I wanted to.”

“You’re sure you want to come?” Birdie knew that both her girls loved Tuckernuck as much as she did. But they were adults now, with responsibilities. There was no Internet on Tuckernuck, no TV, and very poor cell phone reception.

“God, yes!” Tate said. “Of course I want to come. The house is still a total dump, right? I think about it all the time. The cobwebs? The bats? The stars at night, bonfires on the beach. And the Scout? I love that vehicle.”

“I spoke to Barrett Lee,” Birdie said. “Do you remember Chuck’s son, Barrett? He’s taken over the caretaking business.”

“Do I
remember
Barrett Lee? Yes, I remember him. He was the object of my private fantasies until Clooney and Pitt did
Ocean’s Eleven.
”

Birdie said, “Was it you, then, who went on a date with him? The lunch date, in the boat?”

“No, he took
me
fishing. He took
Chess
on the picnic. Good old Mary Francesca scored a date with my fantasy man, then proceeded to drink a six-pack of beer, get seasick, and upchuck her ham sandwich off the stern.”

“Really?” Birdie said. She knew there had been a date, but she’d had no clue what transpired.

“Classic Chess, right? The woman gets whatever she wants and then ruins it. That’s her modus operandi, present situation included.”

“Well, Barrett is fixing up the house. He’s reshingling it and repairing the roof. Buying a new generator. Refinishing the floors in the attic, and painting all the trim, I guess. I’ll buy new linens and towels. Perhaps a few pots and pans so we don’t get Alzheimer’s from the corroded aluminum…”

“Don’t bring too much,” Tate said. “The whole point—”

“I know the point,” Birdie said. “I invented the point.” This wasn’t exactly true; her grandparents had invented the point and her parents had refined it. The point was to live simply. “So we’ll go, then, the three of us, for two weeks?”

“I can’t wait,” Tate said.

*   *   *

Thus followed a second conversation with Barrett Lee.

“Chess and I will be coming for two weeks instead of one,” Birdie said. “And my other daughter, Tate, will be joining us.”

“Swell,” Barrett said. “It’ll be nice to see everybody again.”