The Island (43 page)

“I feel like such an ass,” she said.

“Please don’t.”

“I’m in my nightgown.”

“Nobody knows that,” he said. “And nobody cares.”

He was right. Chess hopped out of the truck and landed in the hot sand. Her legs and feet were fine—smooth and clean, untouched by the scourge. She was eager for her lunch. She settled into the chair. Her upper lip was swollen and her face felt numb, like she’d been shot up with Novocain.

Barrett sat in the chair next to her. He pointed out across the water. “You see that land out there? You know what that is?”

There was, of course, only one answer, but it took Chess by surprise. “Tuckernuck?”

“Yep.”

Chess stared at the distant green coastline. It was surreal. For the past three weeks, and for years and years before that, Chess had gazed out at Nantucket without any thought that people on Nantucket were, in turn, gazing at her. She could envision Tate lying on the beach, and Birdie and India in their upright chairs, eating their gourmet sandwiches on slender baguettes, reading, swimming, throwing the Frisbee, maybe walking the beach and finding a sand dollar or a whelk shell. Chess longed for them, much the way she longed for everyone else. She had the funny feeling she would never see them again.

“I feel like I’m on vacation from my vacation,” she said.

Barrett unwrapped his sandwich, and Chess took this as the starting gun. She very carefully peeled away the layers of Saran Wrap around her BLT, trembling with anticipation. She took a bite—smoky, crunchy, juicy, tangy, crispy. God! She couldn’t remember the last time eating had given her such pleasure. Before “all that had happened,” eating had been Chess’s passion. As Michael used to tease her, food had meant more to her than sex. There was truth in this; Chess took a very sensual pleasure in everything from salty chips and cold, creamy dip, to the velvety texture of foie gras, to the sparkling crispness of French champagne. She was partial to tomatoes, raspberries, corn on the cob, good cheese, fruity olive oil, rosemary, smoked paprika, and onions sautéing in butter. Her goal at
Glamorous Home
had been to create recipes that were both trustworthy and surprising: a really good pasta dish that could become a signature, a certain kind of birthday cake that became a tradition.

She took another bite of her sandwich, savoring it. After “all that had happened,” Chess had lost interest in food. Food became gray, just like everything else. It was sad, but Chess couldn’t bring herself to care. The return of her sense of taste, today, right now, was something not to herald with excitement but rather to coax gently along.

The prednisone, though, was kicking in. Chess ripped open her bag of chips and had to keep herself from inhaling them. She guzzled her iced tea.

She said, “Is everything okay with Tate?”

“Do we want to talk about Tate?” Barrett asked.

“Should we not?” Chess said. There was something about her face—under the shiny force field of the ointment—that made her feel safe. “Maybe we shouldn’t.”

They were quiet. Chess ate carefully. Because her upper lip was swollen, she couldn’t chew normally. Bits of food fell out of her mouth onto her nightgown.

“Things were so good there for a while,” Barrett said. “Now they’ve gotten weird.”

“Weird?”

“Confusing.”

“How so?” Chess asked.

“My client Anita Fullin—the one who came to look at your house?—wants to hire me full time. Which would mean I couldn’t work for you anymore. Well, I could probably work tomorrow and maybe the next day, but then I’d have to subcontract someone to take care of you and the rest of my clients until you found a new caretaker while I worked for Anita.”

“Is that what you want?” Chess asked. “To work for Anita?”

“God, no,” Barrett said. “Not at all. But she has a stranglehold on me financially. I can’t turn down what she’s offering.”

“Tate knows about this?”

“She doesn’t think I should take the job. I’m not sure she understands the position I’m in.”

“She’s crazy about you,” Chess said.

“I’m crazy about her,” Barrett said.

“Are you in love?”

He winced. It was unfair of her, putting him on the spot. She said, “You don’t have to answer.”

“It’s too soon to tell,” he said. “But yes.” He reddened, took a bite of his sandwich, then looked across the water at the coast of Tuckernuck. “I don’t know what I’m going to do about it, though. She’s leaving in another week. I can’t offer to go with her. I can’t uproot the kids.”

“You could ask her to stay,” Chess said. She drank some more iced tea. “You know what, this is none of my business.”

“It’s okay,” Barrett said.

“Tate would hate it if she knew we were talking about her.”

Barrett ignored this. “I’d ask her to stay, but what if she stays and she’s not happy?”

“She’ll leave.”

“I have to think of the kids. I can’t invite her into their lives and then have her walk out.”

“Well, whatever you do, be careful with her,” Chess said. “This is the first time I’ve known Tate to be serious about anyone. I don’t want to see her get hurt.”

Barrett crumpled the plastic from his sandwich. “I’d never hurt her intentionally.”

Right,
Chess thought.
But people rarely hurt each other intentionally.

Barrett’s phone rang. “Goddamn it,” he said.

TATE

W
hen she arrived home from her run and discovered that Barrett had taken Chess to the hospital for her poison ivy, she felt psychotically jealous.

“Why did she need to go to the hospital?” Tate said. “Why didn’t she just put calamine on it?”

“It was gruesome,” Birdie said. “Her whole face, her neck, her arms, all covered. She had it in her ears. Her eyes were swollen shut into slits. She was scratching until it bled. Calamine wasn’t going to be enough.”

Well, then, why didn’t they wait for me to get back?
Tate wanted to ask.
I would have gone with them. Helped out.
But this was immature and unreasonable. The poison ivy was a quasi-emergency. Of course they weren’t going to wait around for Tate. Barrett did the right thing. But Tate was consumed with jealousy, new and old. She lay on her towel at the beach, scanning the horizon for Barrett’s boat, wondering where they were, what they were doing, when they would be back. It was nearly two o’clock. They had left five and a half hours ago. Were they still at the hospital? Had they gone somewhere else? Had they gone to Barrett’s house? Tate’s stomach churned. She remembered back thirteen years to that lunch with Barrett at the picnic table. How many times had he looked at Chess with naked longing? He had screwed up his courage to ask her on a date. If Chess hadn’t puked off the back of the boat, they might have kissed. They might have become a couple that summer. Even this summer, Barrett had asked Chess out first. Why? Tate had never asked him; she had just been content to be the one he ended up with. But now Tate wanted to know. Had Barrett asked Chess out first because Birdie pushed him to, or were there vestiges of old feelings that remained? Was Chess the one he really wanted?

“How bad did she look?” Tate asked. “Did she look really bad?”

“Perfectly awful,” Birdie said.

They didn’t get back until four o’clock. Tate was standing on the beach with her hands on her hips, waiting for them. Barrett pulled the boat up, anchored it, and helped Chess down into the water. She said something; he laughed. Then he said something and she laughed. She
laughed.
Tate was in danger of displaying her anger in a really inappropriate way. She tried to rein herself in. Chess did look atrocious—she was still in her nightgown and those god-awful shorts and their grandfather’s hat. As Chess waded in to shore, Tate could see that her face was a disaster area. It had been colonized by poison ivy.

Tate didn’t get poison ivy. To Chess,
this
might seem unfair.

Tate said, “Jesus.”

Chess said, “Well, you aren’t going to win any sensitivity awards.”

Barrett had a bag of groceries and a bag of ice. He waded in, staring at his feet.

Tate said, “So you’re okay? They treated you at the hospital?”

“I got a shot,” Chess said. “And some ointment.” She held up a white pharmacist’s bag for Tate to see. “I’m going up.”

Barrett stopped in front of Tate. “Hey,” he said. “How are you?”

“Me?” Tate said. “Oh, I’m fine.”

“Listen,” he said. “I’m going to take that job with Anita.”

“Yeah,” Tate said. “I figured as much.”

“I know you don’t understand…”

“I do.”

“You don’t, though…”

“You’re in her grips, Barrett,” Tate said. “She has you right where she wants you.”

Barrett shook his head.
Touch me!
thought Tate.
Tell me you care about me!
Things had been so good, they had been so close, and it was like she had blinked and it was all ruined. It was the scene from
Mary Poppins
that used to make her cry—the beautiful chalk paintings on the sidewalk, washed away by the spring rains.

“How was your day?” Tate asked. “How was Chess?”

“It was okay. I took her to the hospital, then got her prescription. Then we went to lunch and she took a nap. Then I had to go to the grocery store for your mother, and Chess stayed in the truck. She didn’t want anyone to see her face.”

Tate was stuck back on
went to lunch
and
took a nap.
She thought of Chess, sitting in
her
seat in Barrett’s truck.

“I don’t think we should see each other anymore,” Tate said.

Barrett looked stricken. Tate couldn’t believe she had just spoken those words. She had said them impulsively, like throwing a glass across a room, and they resonated. Tate’s thoughts were unreasonable and they wouldn’t stop: Barrett loved her sister, he had always loved her sister, he had always longed for her, even when he was married to Stephanie, even when Stephanie was dying, his heart had been with Chess, who didn’t deserve it.

“We only have a week left until I’m gone,” Tate said. “It will be better to cut our losses now.”

“Better to cut our
losses?
” Barrett said. “Is that what you
believe?
”

Tate shrugged. She didn’t believe it, but she wouldn’t backpedal. She wasn’t going to fight for this relationship. She wanted
Barrett
to fight for it. She wanted Barrett to tell her he loved her. But if he had any feelings for Chess—and clearly he did—Tate couldn’t stay with him.

He said, “Okay, well, then I guess I’ll tell Anita I can start tomorrow. And I’ll send Trey Wilson out to bring your supplies. He’s a handsome kid. You’ll like him.”

“What is
that
supposed to mean?” Tate said.

Barrett dropped the groceries and the ice in the sand at her feet. He waded back out to his boat. Before he climbed in, he said, “I’ll tell the kids you said good-bye.”

The kids. Tate’s heart felt like it was being pulverized in the boat’s motor as Barrett started it up, swung the boat around like a cowboy, and sped away.
Boyfriend leaving in
Girlfriend, Tate thought. Then she thought:
The kids. Barrett.

Barrett!

She wanted to cry out, but it was too late. She considered swimming—Nantucket was only half a mile away—but she was too weak.

She sat on the brand-new pressure-treated stairs made from sweet-smelling yellow lumber and cried.

She had been there ten or fifteen minutes when Chess came down.

“What happened?” she said.

“What
happened?
” Tate said. “What
happened?
You happened, that’s what happened.”

Chess said, “I don’t get it.”

“He has feelings for you,” Tate said. “He always has.”

Chess laughed once, sharply. “Jesus, Tate, look at me! He took me to the
hospital,
and then the
pharmacy.
”

“He took you to lunch,” Tate said.

“He didn’t take me to lunch,” Chess said. “We got sandwiches and went to the beach. We talked for a while and then I fell asleep, which was a result of the shot. When I woke up, we went to the grocery store for Bird, and then we came back.”

“What did you talk about?” Tate said. “Tell me exactly. What did you talk about?”

“I don’t know,” Chess said. “Things.” She started scratching her throat; it was raw, red, and bumpy. Just looking at it made Tate’s own throat itch. “I meant to tell you this before, the night of your first date with Barrett.”

“Tell me what?”

“About how, back a million years ago, Barrett showed up at Colchester. To see me. And I was nasty. I basically kicked him out of town. And I always felt bad about it. So today was good. Today gave me a chance to apologize.”

“What are you talking about?” Tate said.

“Barrett came to Colchester my sophomore year,” Chess said. “He drove up from Hyannis.” She then regaled Tate with the details: How she’d been working at the brat stand, how she ran with the cash box back to the sorority house, how Carla Bye was in the sitting room chatting with Barrett. How Barrett had driven six hours in the blue Jeep to see her. How she had turned him away.

The story left Tate breathless with shame for her sister; Chess was a snob, she was mean and stinky, treating Barrett that way. The story also made her jealous—no, it confirmed her jealousy. She had a reason to be jealous: Barrett had loved Chess enough to track her down at Colchester. It made Tate livid: Why had Chess not told her this story before? And why had Barrett never told her?

“I tried to tell you the night you first went out with him,” Chess said. “But you didn’t want to hear it. And I’m sure Barrett didn’t tell you because he’d forgotten all about it. It doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t matter?” Tate said. “Except you felt the need to apologize to him today when you two were alone together. You ate lunch with my boyfriend. You took a nap with my boyfriend.”

“Don’t blow things out of proportion, Tate,” Chess said. She was using her older sister voice now, her fucking food editor voice. “I took a nap in an upright beach chair while Barrett sat on the bumper of his truck and talked to Anita Fullin on the phone.”