“That’s right,” Tate said. “Barrett caretakes for my family as well.”
“Oh, really?” Mrs. AuClaire said. This information seemed to take her by surprise. She had probably thought Barrett met Tate at a strip club on the Cape. “Where do you live?”
Tate took a breath. The glass of champagne she’d inhaled was taking its revenge; the gases were threatening to come out her nose. Her face was warm and she felt dizzy. She was unsteady in her shoes and Barrett had let go and she didn’t want to take his arm for fear of seeming clingy or seeming, to Mrs. AuClaire, like she was anything more than a client, just like them.
“We have a house on Tuckernuck,” Tate said.
Mrs. AuClaire’s eyes popped open—a facial expression her plastic surgeon had not anticipated. It looked like her face was going to break and fall to pieces in the grass. “Tuckernuck!” she said. “I love Tuckernuck! Oh, we adore it, but of course it’s private and you have to be invited. We used to take the kids to Whale Shoal on our boat when they were little because Whale Shoal is open to everyone, and they would collect those whelk shells. Oh, my darling girl, you don’t know how lucky you are. Eugene, this girl”—Mrs. AuClaire had clearly forgotten her name, too—“lives on Tuckernuck!”
The news was intriguing enough to tear Mr. AuClaire away from his discussion of striped bass off Sankaty Head. “You
live
there?” he said. “How does that work, exactly?”
“Well,” Tate said, “our house has a well and a generator. The generator runs the pump so we have running water—cold only, there’s no water heater—and we have electricity for a few small things. A half-size refrigerator, a few lamps. We cook on a grill and on a gas camp stove. And Barrett”—here, Tate did take his arm because her enthusiasm had set her teetering and she was afraid she would fall—“brings our groceries each day and bags of ice and my mother’s wine.” Mrs. AuClaire smiled. “He brings us the newspaper and takes away our trash and our laundry. We live very simply. We go to the beach, mostly. We read and play cards.” She paused. The AuClaires were looking at her eagerly. “And we talk. We tell each other things.”
“Marvelous,” Mrs. AuClaire whispered.
Barrett excused them from the AuClaires’ company in order to search out the Fullins. They found Mrs. Fullin standing on the edge of the lawn, surrounded by women friends. Mrs. Fullin had long, wavy black hair with a brightly colored scarf weaved through it. She was deeply, glamorously tanned, like a woman stepping off a yacht in the Mediterranean. She wore—Tate blinked—an orange halter dress with white polka dots. It was Chess’s rehearsal dinner dress, exactly. Mrs. Fullin was on fire in it. She had a curvy body and beautiful, slender legs; she wore very high orange patent leather sandals, which didn’t seem to be giving her one iota of trouble. When Mrs. Fullin saw Barrett, she let go a scream like teenage girls did for the Jonas Brothers.
“Barrett, you did it! You wore a jacket! God, are you
gorgeous!
” She hugged Barrett and kissed him, leaving a coral smudge on his cheek. Her eyes were very dark, rimmed by electric blue liner. She was probably forty-five, Tate guessed, but she had the va-va-voom factor of a twenty-one-year-old supermodel. She beamed at Tate. “And you—you’re the girl from Tuckernuck?”
Tate smiled. She felt dowdy and tongue-tied; she felt like her teeth were coated with moss. “Tate Cousins,” she said.
“So, ladies,” Mrs. Fullin said to her entourage, “Tate lives on Tuckernuck.”
“Where’s Tuckernuck?” one of the women asked.
“Is that the place with the seals?” another asked.
“No,” Tate said before she realized she had even spoken. “That’s Muskeget. Tuckernuck is closer in. It’s half a mile off Eel Point.” The women stared at her blankly, and Tate realized that although they all probably owned humongous summer homes, they might not know the island well enough to know where Eel Point was.
Mrs. Fullin said, “I am very jealous of you, having Barrett come over there twice a day. In fact, I can hardly stand it. If I could, I would have him live here with us.” She winked. “Of course, Roman would begin to wonder.”
“For good reason,” one of the women said.
Mrs. Fullin said, “Isn’t Barrett the most gorgeous creature you have ever laid eyes on?”
Barrett said, “Anita, please.”
Mrs. Fullin looked at Tate. “I hate you for stealing him away from me. I hate you, your sister, your mother, and your aunt.”
Tate was thunderstruck. She could survive the attack—it was delivered tongue in cheek, meant to be a joke. But Tate felt violated. The only way this woman could have known about Tate’s mother and sister and aunt was if Barrett had talked about them. Did he talk about them with Anita Fullin? What did he say?
They
didn’t make him change the paper towel roll! Tate tried to smile, though she was sure she looked like she was in pain. What she wanted to say was,
I heard you ruined Barrett’s fishing trip the other night.
When Barrett told her that story, Tate had pictured someone older, perhaps even elderly, fragile, helpless. The reality was that Anita Fullin was a bombshell and it sounded like she had a crush on Barrett.
Barrett intervened, to change the subject. “This is a great party,” he said.
“It is great, isn’t it?” Mrs. Fullin said. She reached for his hand. “I am so glad you’re here. Last year wasn’t the same without you.”
They looked at each other, and something passed between them. Tate guzzled the rest of her champagne. She checked the faces of the other women, all of whom were watching Barrett and Mrs. Fullin like it was something being shown on TV.
Barrett said, “I just couldn’t do it last year.” He took a sip of his drink.
“Of course not,” Mrs. Fullin said. She beamed at him and then at Tate. “But look, life goes on!”
The interaction with Anita Fullin left Tate feeling threatened and uncomfortable. She had half a mind to sneak into the house, find the computer, and lose herself in the electronic world. (This temptation was very real. It was, Tate imagined, the same urge her father felt when he passed a golf course.) But Barrett hung on to Tate, and sensing that her shoes were driving her insane (they weren’t called killer heels for nothing), he directed her to the seawall, where they sat side by side and admired the harbor. Tate was happier. She drank her champagne and Barrett flagged down servers and they ate mini crab cakes and sticky Chinese ribs and cheddar tartlets.
Tate said, “Mrs. Fullin loves you.”
“Yeah,” Barrett said. “It’s a problem.”
“She’s beautiful,” Tate said.
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
Dinner was served in the side yard under a tent. There were ten round tables of ten and a rectangular head table of sixteen, which was where Barrett and Tate were seated. Barrett was placed at one end of the table, to Anita Fullin’s left, and Tate was all the way at the opposite end, to Mr. Fullin’s left. This was, in Tate’s mind, the worst possible scenario, and she thought that Barrett might do something about it—switch the place cards?—but he just licked his bottom lip.
“Are you going to be okay down here by yourself?” he asked.
No,
she thought. But she said, “Yes. Absolutely.”
It was an honor to be seated at the head table, Tate recognized, even as she wished that they’d been stuck in Siberia with the middle-aged AuClaires. Barrett and Tate moved through the buffet line together. The food was amazing and Tate didn’t hold back. She piled her plate with grilled lamb, green beans, a beautiful potato salad, and sautéed cherry tomatoes, as well as a lobster tail, six jumbo shrimp, and four raw oysters, which she drowned with mignonette. She plucked another glass of champagne off a passing tray. Then she sat in her assigned seat and watched as Barrett journeyed to the other side of the world.
Roman Fullin was bald and wore square glasses. He had the distracted manner of a very important man who made lots of money. He sat down, flagged a server, and asked for a glass of red wine from one of the bottles he had set aside. For this table only, he said. He inspected his plate of food as though he didn’t recognize anything on it; then he shifted his eyes to Tate’s loaded plate; then his eyes swept up to Tate’s face. Who was this woman sitting next to him at the head table? Tate felt like she was encroaching on his personal territory; she felt like he had just discovered her in his master bedroom.
“Hi,” he said, offering a hand. “Roman Fullin.”
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Tate Cousins.”
“Tate Cousins,” he said, repeating it loudly, perhaps to see if it rang a bell.
She said, “I’m Barrett Lee’s date.”
“Ah,” Roman said, though he still seemed nonplussed. He considered the people to his right and Tate’s left, whom he clearly knew a lot better. “Betsy, Bernie, Joyce, Whitney, Monk—this is Tate Cousins.”
“Cousins?” one of the men said. All of the men at the table looked alike, and Tate hadn’t been able to pin down any names. “You aren’t by any chance related to Grant Cousins?”
Tate was sucking down an oyster, which gave her a second to think. People either loved her father or they hated him. She was feeling too vulnerable to lie. “He’s my father,” she said.
“Whoa!” the man said. “What are the chances? He’s my lawyer.”
Roman Fullin’s eyebrows shot up. “What are the chances, indeed! He’s not the guy who…”
And the other man said, “Yep, the very same one.” To Tate, he said, “Your father is a genius. He really saved my tail. Does he ever mention the name Whit Vargas? I send him Yankees tickets every time they cross my desk.”
Tate sucked down another oyster, and some of the mignonette dripped onto her silk sheath. She forgot her manners when she was nervous, and she was very nervous now, though things had taken a turn for the better. At least she had an agreeable pedigree. She checked on Barrett at the other end of the table; he was locked into conversation with Anita Fullin.
She shook her head at Whit Vargas. “He rarely talks about his clients,” she said. “He likes to respect their privacy.”
Whit Vargas held a dripping piece of tenderloin in front of his mouth. “I should be grateful for that!” he said.
Roman Fullin was filled with new interest where Tate was concerned. “So wait,” he said. “Who did you say you came with?”
“Barrett,” she said. “Barrett Lee.”
“And how do you know Barrett?”
“He caretakes our house on Tuckernuck.”
“Ahhhhh,” Roman said, as though it were all so clear to him now. “You’re part of the Tuckernuck family. The bane of my wife’s existence.”
“Apparently,” Tate said.
“So you
live
on Tuckernuck?” Roman said. “You spend the night there?”
Did people know how asinine they sounded when they asked these questions? “Live there, spend the night there,” Tate confirmed.
“Wait a minute,” Whit Vargas said. “Where is Tuckernuck again?”
“It’s an island, Whit,” Roman said. “Another island.”
“Half a mile off the west coast,” Tate said.
“What do you do about electricity?” Roman said.
By the time Tate finished her dinner, she was the star of the eastern half of the table. She was, more truthfully, a museum exhibit, an anthropological study: Tate Cousins of Tuckernuck, a woman from a respectable family, who was living for a month without hot water (the women couldn’t believe it) and without a phone, Internet, or TV (the men couldn’t believe it). Tate decided to take this particular ball and run with it. She was funny and charming, smart and self-effacing. She checked on Barrett at the other end of the table. Was he watching her? Did he see that she had turned a potentially disastrous social situation on its head and now had all of these Upper East Siders eating out of her hand? Was he impressed? Did he love her?
When the plates were cleared and the band started playing, Roman Fullin stood up and asked Tate to dance.
Tate took his hand. She couldn’t very well turn him down, could she? And yet they would be the first people dancing. Shouldn’t he be asking his wife to dance? Her shoes were another problem; it felt like her feet were caught in a couple of mousetraps.
Tate said, “This is a beautiful party. It’s like a wedding.”
“Every year a wedding,” he said. “Anita has to have it. She lives for this night.”
Other couples joined them on the dance floor, including Barrett and Anita Fullin. Anita was glowing in her orange dress. (Thank God Tate had not worn that dress!) Anita shrieked as Barrett spun her around.
Roman said, “Anita is loaded. I’d better go rescue her.”
They separated and Tate found herself in Barrett’s arms.
He said, “Let’s get out of here.”
Tate said, “You read my mind.”
* * *
As Tate buckled herself into Barrett’s truck, she was sober enough to realize that she was drunk, but she wasn’t sober enough to do anything about it. She felt like she was standing at the top of a ski run and had just been pushed. She was headed downhill without her poles. She pried off her shoes and the blood rushed back into her feet. The relief was nearly erotic.
She said, “Anita Fullin doesn’t like me.”
“Anita Fullin doesn’t know you,” Barrett said. “Plus, she’s very insecure.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Tate said. “She has no reason to be insecure.”
“Trust me,” Barrett said.
Tate said, “I was so stupid. I had this crazy idea that we were your only clients.”
“You haven’t been here in thirteen years,” Barrett said. “If you were my only clients, I’d be in pretty sad shape.”
“I knew you had other clients,” Tate said. “But I didn’t think about them. I didn’t have to meet them. And Anita is so… possessive.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Barrett said. He fiddled with the radio, then popped in a CD. It was Bruce Springsteen’s
18 Tracks.
Tate couldn’t believe it. She said, “Wait a minute, this is Bruce. This is
Eighteen Tracks.
”
“It is.”
Tate said, “Do you like him? Do you love him? This album is only owned by people who love him.”
Barrett grinned. He said, “I like him. A lot. But I don’t love him as much as you do. Full disclosure is I asked your mother what kind of music you liked and she said there was only one answer. So I went out this afternoon and borrowed this disc from a friend of mine.”