“You didn’t!” she said.
“I did.”
“You asked my mother?”
“I did. I wanted to make sure I had things you liked. I want you to be happy.”
He wanted her to be happy. He didn’t realize he didn’t have to try. He didn’t realize that she was delirious just sitting in the cab of his truck, just gazing upon his face.
The song was “Thundercrack.” Tate sang along.
Barrett’s house was way out in Tom Nevers, down one dirt road and then another. It was dark, but Tate could see that his house was tall and skinny, with a deck off the second story. The yard was cluttered with things—a boat trailer, buoys clustered like grapes, lengths of rope, plastic buckets and shovels, a spade, a rake, a toy car big enough for two kids to sit in. There was a clothesline with beach towels flapping; the wind had picked up. Barrett led Tate by the hand, and she was taking gulps of chilly night air, trying to sober up. Barrett pointed to a dark square. “There is my pathetic attempt at keeping the garden going,” he said.
The wife’s garden,
Tate thought.
He stopped at the clothesline, unpinned the towels, and folded them in neat squares. “It’s supposed to rain,” he said.
He led her up a flight of stairs to a side door, and they entered the house. They were suddenly in the kitchen, which was cluttered and homey. Tate blinked. There were children’s storybooks and coloring books and crayons and empty juice boxes on the counter, a plate with pieces of hot dog and a smear of ketchup, the core of a pear. There was mail in a pile next to a dying houseplant. A stack of old
Sports Illustrated
s.
Barrett grabbed the dirty dinner plate and the empty juice boxes and said, “I meant to clean up before. The day got away from me.”
Tate said, “Please don’t worry about it.” She liked the mess; she liked the story it told. She could imagine Barrett trying to get his kids dinner so he could drop them off at his parents’ house, while at the same time trying to get dressed up, while at the same time trying to get to Madaket Harbor to get the boat to Tuckernuck for Tate at six. If Barrett were to see the space that Tate called home—the white condo empty and clean except for the mattress on the floor in front of the big-screen TV—he would think what? That she was lonely and worked too hard.
She stepped into the living room. It was an upside-down house with all of the common space on the second floor. There were big windows overlooking the moors of Tom Nevers and the southeast coast. There was a door that led to the deck. Tate peeked out: there was a gas grill, a potted pink geranium that seemed to be faring better than the garden or the houseplant, and two white Adirondack chairs.
“This is nice,” Tate said.
Barrett was busy in the kitchen. Tate noted the TV (a fifty-two-inch flat-screen Aquos, just like her own) and the furniture—some of it newish looking from Restoration Hardware (a leather sofa, a pine coffee table) and some of it thrift-store-esque, perhaps borrowed or inherited from caretaking clients or his parents (a green easy chair that may have been a recliner, a cabinet for the big TV). There was only one thing Tate was interested in, and that was a picture of his wife. She found what she was looking for on a long, narrow table under the biggest picture window. On this table was a glass lamp and a slew of framed photographs.
The first one Tate picked up was a wedding picture: Barrett and Stephanie in a horse-drawn carriage. Stephanie was lovely. She had the kind of red hair that people commented on, and milk glass skin. And lots of freckles. She had a cracking, mischievous smile. Tate was so taken with this picture that she cooed. She hadn’t known what to expect, but she had
not
been expecting red hair; she had been picturing someone cool and blond like Chess, or maybe someone dark like Anita Fullin. Tate picked up another picture—Stephanie holding one of the babies. This gave Tate a closer look at her face. That milky skin, the pale blue shadows under her green eyes. Her freckles were remarkable. In the picture, she looked exhausted but luminous. Tate reached for another picture—Stephanie sitting in Barrett’s boat. She was wearing a yellow bikini. She was very thin.
“Hey.” Tate felt Barrett’s hand on her back. She fumbled the picture; it fell and knocked over other pictures.
“Oh, God,” Tate said, trying to set everything upright. “Sorry. I was just worshipping at the temple.”
“Come with me,” he said.
She thought they were going to the bedroom, but instead he led her out onto the deck. He had a bottle of champagne in his hands.
“Do you like Veuve Clicquot?” he asked.
She recognized the bottle as the champagne that Chess had ordered once at a restaurant when Tate was in New York on business, but Tate didn’t drink champagne except for at weddings and at very fancy parties like the one they had just attended. She drank wine, but only with her mother. If left to her own devices, Tate drank beer; at home in her sadly stocked fridge, she kept a six-pack of Miller Genuine Draft. This was pathetic. It was unworldly and unladylike.
She took the bottle from him and stuck it in the dirt of the potted geranium. “I don’t want it right now. It would be wasted on me.”
“Okay,” he said. He gathered her up and they leaned against the railing of the deck. She buried her face in his shirt; he’d taken off his tie and his shirt was open at the neck. She kissed his neck, she tasted him—sweat and charcoal smoke. He made a noise. He raised her chin and they kissed gently for a second, one second, two; then the switch was flipped, the power surged. There was no point holding back. He was a lonely single dad; she was just plain desperate. She’d wanted him since she was seventeen. They kissed madly, they tore at each other’s clothes. Tate popped one of Barrett’s shirt buttons and he yanked at her dress, and it occurred to her that he should be careful with the dress because it was Chess’s, but who cared? She struggled to get the dress over her head. She would replace the dress for Chess a hundred times. She unhooked her bra and set her breasts free in the misty night air and Barrett roared like a lion and led her back inside. She was wearing only her lace thong, but he had on pants and a belt.
“Goddamn it,” he said. “I want you so badly.”
She fell back on the sofa and offered up a prayer of thanks.
Thank you thank you thank you.
This was all she’d ever dreamed about.
He knelt before her. There were tears in his eyes.
So that, Tate thought later, was what sex was supposed to feel like. Heady, electric, immediate. Thrilling like a bungee jump, satisfying like a deep drink of cold water. Now Barrett was asleep, snoring softly next to her on the bed. They had moved downstairs to his bedroom, which was, surprisingly, Stephanie-free. There was a pencil-post bed covered with a sumptuous down comforter and some awesome pillows. There was a dresser with a large mirror attached. A painting by Illya Kagan hung over the bed; it was the view across North Pond on Tuckernuck.
Tate couldn’t sleep, would not sleep at all this night, she knew. She climbed out of bed to pee, then tiptoed upstairs. She retrieved the bottle of champagne from the planter on the deck and put it in the fridge. There was Heineken in the fridge and juice boxes, a package of Ball Park franks, a gallon of whole milk. There was a carton of Minute Maid no-pulp and a jar of garlic dill pickles, some nice-looking lettuce, half a cucumber wrapped in plastic, and a pound of Italian roast beef in the deli drawer.
Okay,
Tate thought. Barrett’s fridge held nothing gourmet or intimidating. The freezer contained chicken nuggets, Ziploc bags of striped bass filets with the date marked on them in black Sharpie, and a bottle of vodka.
Tate poured herself a glass of ice water. She walked back over to the pictures.
* * *
In the morning, Barrett found her asleep on the sofa.
“What are you doing up here?” he said.
She was confused. She didn’t remember lying down, but her head was on a throw pillow and she had covered herself with the fleece blanket. She checked surreptitiously to see if she’d brought over any of the photographs. She had studied them all. They were all neat and upright on their home table, thank God.
“I’m not sure,” she said.
He squeezed onto the sofa next to her. “It’s raining,” he said.
“Is it?”
“Do you just want to stay here today? We could drink that champagne. Eat strawberries in bed, listen to Springsteen, stay under the covers.”
Tate thought,
Yes!
But then she thought for a minute. “What about your kids?” she said.
“I could ask my mother to keep them.”
“It’s Sunday,” Tate said. “I’m sure they want to see you.”
“They do,” he said. “For sure they do. We could hang out with them together. Go to lunch, take them to the movies.”
“That sounds great…,” Tate said.
“But?”
“But not today,” Tate said.
“It’s too soon?” he said. He sounded worried.
What she wanted to say was that it was
not
too soon; it couldn’t be too soon since she had waited thirteen years for this. She would marry him tomorrow and adopt the kids on Tuesday. She would quit her job, sell her condo, and learn everything there was to know about Thomas the Tank Engine. But this, she sensed, fell under the category of Too Eager. Staying here even one more hour would be pushing some kind of invisible envelope.
“It’s too soon,” she said. “Do you mind taking me home?”
He was crushed. She was crushed, too, while simultaneously being thrilled that he was crushed. He kissed her. Under the blanket, she was naked.
She would stay one more hour.
D
ay nine.
The next time Michael and I went to see Nick play, it was at Irving Plaza: Diplomatic Immunity was opening for the Strokes, and it was a very big deal. We couldn’t just stroll backstage; we had to get passes. It was April. I hadn’t seen or spoken to Nick since the week before Christmas in Central Park, and as far as I knew, Michael hadn’t either. Nick had stopped going to Christo’s poker game, which surprised Michael. It was his main source of income.
What had passed between Nick and me in the park was so intense that I had been emotionally hobbled for days afterward. I had been high as a kite at Michael’s company’s holiday party, and then mute and depressed with the hangover. It was a hangover, also, from being with Nick. But when Nick bagged on Christmas and then again on New Year’s, and then when I didn’t see him throughout the cold winter months, my feelings went into hibernation. To long for the impossible was counterproductive. My heart and body ached for Nick, but Michael was my better match: he had money, we did lovely things together at night and on the weekends. I was content.
And then, news arrived—via a text message to Michael—about the show at Irving Plaza. Backstage passes arrived.
As we walked into the show, Michael said, “So tonight we’re going to meet the girl Nick is dating.”
My jaw ached. “He’s dating someone?”
“I guess so. She’s a student. She goes to the New School.”
I got a bad feeling. Was there any way that… but I talked myself out of it.
I could barely stand to watch the show, though the band was better than ever. Opening for the Strokes had raised Diplomatic Immunity to a new level. Seeing Nick in person up onstage was both intoxicating and incredibly painful. I loved him, I desired him, it was
so wrong,
but it was the only right thing. My feelings were so overwhelming that I had tears standing in my eyes, and I thought,
I have to tell Michael.
I would tell him that night, I decided, once we were home.
After Diplomatic Immunity had finished their set, Michael and I fought our way backstage. We saw Nick first, toweling off, still glowing, high from the energy of the crowd. I hated him in that moment; I wanted him to be a musician, sweet and pure, and not a smug and cocky showman. I wanted the glory of it not to matter to him. But he was a human being like the rest of us, and whereas Michael and I experienced a certain kind of glory on a daily basis, Nick didn’t, and so I forgave him his self-satisfied mugging. And then, in a fleeting second, I hated him again because there was someone in his arms, it was a girl, and it was not just a girl but Rhonda.
No, I thought. But yes. Rhonda was the girl, the girlfriend, she was a student at the New School, getting a quasi-graduate degree in urban studies, which had seemed a fanciful way to spend her father’s money and avoid the workforce. I hadn’t seen Rhonda much since that first night at the Bowery Ballroom: I spent so many nights at Michael’s that there were weeks when I returned to my own apartment only on Sunday and Monday nights. I hadn’t nourished the friendship. I felt guilty about this, especially when I saw Rhonda in the lobby of the building and we promised to get together, which I knew would never happen because I was always with Michael—but I reasoned that Rhonda was a big girl with her own life and other friends and she would be fine without me. She would understand. That she was now dating my boyfriend’s brother shouldn’t have felt like an offense, but of course, it did. Why the hell hadn’t she
told
me? Why hadn’t she sent me a text or an e-mail that said,
Hey, heads up, I’m meeting Nick out tonight.
Had she bumped into him somewhere? Or had he sought her out? I had to know but I couldn’t stand to hear the answer.
Michael held my hand. He pulled me toward the spectacle of Nick and Rhonda intertwined. Her boobs were fake, I thought. Did Nick know this?
Rhonda turned and saw me, and her face came alive with irrepressible joy(!). Rhonda didn’t have a deceptive or mean bone in her body, which was one of the reasons I had befriended her. She would only have been thinking of how excited I would be that she was dating Nick. We had been estranged, and now we were reunited. We would be like sisters!