As he walked toward the bluff, India let out a sharp wolf whistle. The others sucked in their breath, scandalized.
“India,” Birdie scolded. “Really!”
Barrett turned around and waved.
“He better get used to it,” India said.
D
ay one.
Here is my confession.
I met Michael and Nick on the same night, the first Friday in October, less than two years ago. I had just put the Thanksgiving issue to bed—a very big deal in the world of food magazines—and I was out to celebrate with my best friend from the city, Rhonda, who was a perpetual student and lived on the floor below mine in an apartment that was subsidized by her influential father. I invited Rhonda up to my apartment for martinis. We played Death Cab for Cutie, we drank, we put on makeup and fixed our hair and checked our outfits. It was finally autumn weather after a hot and breezeless summer. We were ready to go.
We went to the Bowery Ballroom to see a band called Diplomatic Immunity. There was a line around the block, but Rhonda’s father was a hotshot at the United Nations, a recipient of some kind of diplomatic immunity himself. He knew someone everywhere in the city, it seemed, including at the Ballroom, and we strolled right in. Plus, Rhonda was gorgeous. She had been naturally gorgeous, and then she got her boobs done, after which we could cut any velvet rope in Manhattan and beyond.
Michael was standing at the bar. He was six foot six, impossible to miss, a head taller than everyone else. He was handsome in the way that I liked—clean cut, smart, bright eyed—and I smiled at him.
He said, “You look happy to be here.”
I said, “God, yes, I am. I am so happy!”
His face lit up. Happy begat happy. “Let me buy you a drink, happy girl.”
“Okay,” I said. It had taken five seconds, and I was his.
The band had yet to begin, so we talked. He told me Princeton, Upper East Side (renting), started his own business (head hunting, not as violent as it sounded, he promised). He said Bergen County, New Jersey, parents still married, one brother, one sister. He said jogging in the park, food and wine,
New York Times
crossword puzzle, poker on Wednesdays.
I told him Colchester, food editor at
Glamorous Home,
West Sixty-third Street (renting). I said New Canaan, Connecticut, parents just announced they were splitting after thirty years, one sister. I said jogging in the park, food and wine, reading, shopping, skiing, and the beach.
He said R.E.M., Coldplay. He said
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, GoodFellas.
He said Hemingway, Ethan Canin, Philip Roth.
I said Death Cab for Cutie, Natalie Merchant, Coldplay. I said
The English Patient, Ghost, American Beauty.
I said Toni Morrison, Jane Smiley, Susan Minot.
He said, “Are we a match?”
I said, “You’re a man, I’m a woman. If you’d said your favorite movie was
Ghost,
I would have walked away.”
He said, “You have beautiful hair.”
I said, “Thank you.” This was a compliment I was used to.
When I introduced Michael to Rhonda a few minutes later, he stuck out his hand and said, “I’m Chess’s boyfriend, Michael Morgan.”
I swatted him. I said, “He is not my boyfriend.”
Michael said, “I’m her fiancé.”
The band started playing. I had heard that they were good, and they were good. Michael led Rhonda and me through the mayhem to the front row. That was when I got my first look at Nick. What to say? My heart melted away. He was beautiful in a brooding, rock-star way. He had light brown hair that fell into his eyes, which were blue. His nose was a little crooked, as if it had been broken. He was wearing a Death Cab for Cutie T-shirt. He was tall, though not as tall as Michael, but he was leaner and more fit. His voice was a mystery, it was textured and rich, husky at some moments and clear as a choirboy’s at others. At the time, I didn’t know he was Michael’s brother. I only knew he was the lead singer of the band, and he seemed focused on me. There was eye contact and I drank it in like cold water. He was singing a song that I thought must be called “Okay, Baby, Okay,” because those were the most oft-repeated lyrics, and when he sung those words, he looked at me. He sung them
to me.
Michael shouted above the noise of the crowd, “I think he likes you.” It was quite a position to be in: I had just met an amazing man custom made for my bright side, and I was face-to-face with a rock star who was sexier and more intriguing, a soul mate for my dark side.
Michael, to his credit, didn’t try to touch me while the band was playing. He was into the music; he knew every word to every song.
I said, “Are you a fan, then?”
He grinned. “You could say that.”
At the break, Michael said, “Let’s go backstage.”
“Backstage?” I said.
He said, “Nick, the lead singer, is my brother.”
“Your brother?” I said. His brother? It was either good news or it was bad news, I couldn’t tell which. If the lead singer had been anyone else, he would have disappeared from my life and the next time I saw him would have been on VH1. As it was, I was going to meet him.
Michael led Rhonda and me backstage. The band was sitting on the grotty greenroom sofas drinking bottled water and toweling themselves off. Michael shook hands with the other band members—Austin, Keenan, Dylan, we were all cursorily introduced—and then he hugged it out with Nick. Nick seemed much more interested in Rhonda and me.
“Which is yours?” he asked Michael.
“Chess is mine,” he said. “We’re getting married.”
Nick looked at me. I would never forget the way that look
penetrated.
And he said, “Bastard.”
Rhonda, never a shrinking violet, said, “But I’m free.”
Chess considered suicide on Tuckernuck: She could weight the pockets of her grandfather’s yellow rain slicker with rocks and walk out into the ocean. She could plug the tailpipe of the Scout with her Diplomatic Immunity T-shirt and start the ignition. There was a box of rat poison in the bottom of the utility closet. She could slit her wrists with the rusty corkscrew in the kitchen drawer; if she didn’t bleed to death, she would give herself tetanus. She was able to joke about it; that much was good. She was choosing to stay alive; that much was good. Each day, that was something accomplished.
She had five pages of her confession penned in the notebook. She tucked the notebook between her mattress and box spring, away from prying eyes.
Tate was happy. Upon their arrival, she had put on her bikini and run down to the beach. Now she was sitting on her unmade bed, dripping wet, poring through the musty book of flora and fauna she’d found on the shelf of the living room. Chess eyed the box of cheerful new linens her mother had purchased, and then she squinted into the rafters to look for the bats that had populated the nightmares of her childhood. She didn’t see any bats, but she knew they were there. Or they would come.
Tate said, “I just love it here. And I love it that we’re here together. This is home for me. This is more my home than my condo in Charlotte. Or even the house in New Canaan.”
The attic was cavernous, dusty, sour smelling, and hot. Chess unzipped her suitcase, which was the size of a coffin. Michael had not, thankfully, been buried in a coffin. He had been cremated and his ashes were placed in an expensive-looking mahogany box with brass fittings. At the funeral, his parents had jointly carried this box down the aisle of the church while everyone stood. Chess had been numb; before the service, she had taken three Ativan. It was the only way. Evelyn Morgan had invited Chess to sit with the Morgan family. This had taken Chess by surprise. In her drug-muddled state, she couldn’t figure out Evelyn’s motive. Did Evelyn feel sorry for Chess? Did she want to put on appearances by having Chess among the rest of the family, as though the breakup had never happened? Did Evelyn want to be seen as the bigger person? Was she the bigger person? Did Evelyn think that having Chess sit up front with the family was what Michael would have wanted? Had Nick lobbied on her behalf? Chess didn’t know, but she couldn’t bring herself to accept the offer. She sat on the opposite side of the church with her mother and father flanking her like the Secret Service. She was hoping for anonymity, but the people who attended the funeral were many of the same people who would have been attending the wedding. That was the first bad thing; people she didn’t know pointed at her and whispered, and Chess turned around, thinking there was someone important or noteworthy behind her, but it was her they were noticing. The ex-fiancée. The second bad thing was the eulogies. The preacher started off. He spoke about what a full life Michael had lived for someone who was so young.
“He had loved,” the preacher said. “And he had lost love.”
Chess felt her heart go up in flames, like a ball of gasoline-soaked trash. Her father coughed into his hand.
And then it was Nick’s turn. Chess found it difficult to look at Nick at all, though she could feel his eyes on her. Nick recounted the happiest moments of his late brother’s life: beating Englewood High School in the lacrosse championships junior year, buying his own business, and proposing to Chess at the Knitting Factory in front of a mob of strangers.
Nick had cleared his throat and addressed her directly. “He wanted the whole world to know how much he loved you, Chess.”
She met Nick’s gaze for one atrocious second, feeling confused and betrayed. Had Nick really just
said
that? Birdie reached for Chess’s hand, and the program for the service that had been resting on Chess’s lap fell to the floor. Her father coughed again. Chess bent down to retrieve the program; blood pounded in her ears. She wanted to run from the church, to weave through the old tombstones of the graveyard until she could find a place to hide.
Nick.
She had remained seated, thanks to the effects of the sedatives and out of a sense of decorum. She didn’t want to embarrass her parents. But when the final hymn played, she beat a hasty retreat out the side door of the church, leaving her parents to make her excuses. She waited for them in the backseat of her father’s Jaguar, whimpering like a child. They submitted when she said she couldn’t possibly attend the reception at the country club, and then, on the way back to Connecticut, her father asked her if she wanted to stop for ice cream. Ice cream? Chess was stunned. Did he think her problems could be fixed with
ice cream?
But it was early June, the day was hot, and ice cream, she thought, would taste good. So they stopped at a Dairy Queen and sat at a picnic table in the shade. Chess and her two divorced parents in their funeral blacks ate soft-serve cones dipped in chocolate. They didn’t speak—what could they possibly say to one another?—but Chess was grateful for their company. She didn’t know how to feel about anything else, but she knew she loved her parents, and they, of course, loved her.
Chess pulled back the flap of her suitcase to reveal her entire summer wardrobe, neatly folded.
Tate said, “Jesus, you brought a lot of stuff.”
Chess said, “Fuck you.”
Tate looked at her wrist, where she wore a chunky black plastic running watch with so many knobs and dials she could probably use it to land the space shuttle. “That didn’t take long.”
“Sorry,” Chess said.
“You don’t sound sorry. You sound angry.”
“Angry, yes,” Chess said. “My anger is general and not specific to you.”
“But you’re taking it out on me because you can,” Tate said. “Because I’m the one in the room with you. Because I’m your sister and I love you unconditionally and you can say whatever you want to me and I will accept it and forgive you.” Tate stood up and peeled off her wet bathing suit top. “That’s fine. That’s what I’m here for. To be a place where you vent your general anger.” Tate shucked off her bikini bottoms. How long since they had been naked in front of each other? Tate’s body was sleek and muscular. She reminded Chess of a gazelle or an impala. All that contained energy and power. “I’m here for you. If you want to fight, we can fight. If you want to talk about it, we can talk about it. But you cannot alienate me. I love you with hair and without hair. You are my—”
“Only sister,” Chess said.
Tate put on shorts and a T-shirt. “I’m going for a walk,” she said. “Would you like to come?”
“No,” Chess said.
She left, and Chess was glad. Along with anger, she was hosting a hundred other emotions like unwanted party guests—among them sadness, despair, self-pity, guilt, and jealousy. The jealousy had arrived at the moment it became clear that Tate was happy. Tate had every reason to be happy. Tate ran her own extremely successful business; she was, in all ways, her own boss. And she was beautiful now. But Tate’s happiness came from somewhere else; it came from the elusive place that happiness comes from. She could afford to be kind because she wasn’t the one who was hurting.
Chess had never once, in her thirty-two years, been jealous of Tate. It had always been the other way around; that was the direction the river flowed. Chess did everything first; she did everything better. She was pretty and smart and accomplished in a way that caused Tate to give up without even trying. Chess was engaged to be married while Tate had yet to date anyone more than three times since graduating from college. Chess was the bride, Tate the bridesmaid.
The neatly packed suitcase mocked her. Chess shoved the suitcase across the dusty wooden floor to the ancient dresser that had traditionally been hers. Inside, the shelf paper was dried out and curling at the edges; there were mouse droppings that made Chess sigh. This, however, was life in the Tuckernuck house. Everything was just as she remembered it from thirteen years earlier, just as it had been for decades before that. Tate had called the Tuckernuck house “home,” and Chess knew what Tate meant. Every inch of the place was familiar and sturdy and unchanged. Chess knew exactly where she was. Why, then, did she feel so lost?