Chess said, “I’m not watching it.”
Tate said, “What? Come on! It’s our favorite movie.”
Chess said, “It
was
our favorite movie.”
Tate said, “So, what, you’ve grown up now, you have another favorite movie? Fine. That doesn’t mean you can’t watch it. It’ll be fun.”
“No,” Chess said.
Tate said, “Fine, I’ll watch it myself.”
Chess said, “Knock yourself out.”
Tate said, “So I guess you’re not going to ask me how my date was.”
“That’s right.”
Tate said, “It was amazing.” She paused, waiting for Chess to comment or look at her, but Chess did neither. “I’m in love. So you can tell me anything and I’ll understand. I’ll understand because I’m in love now, too.”
Chess gazed at her sister’s earnest face. It was as always: Tate trying to keep up with Chess. The roles they would never abandon.
“You know something?” Chess said. “It was really nice here without you.”
Tate flinched. She still had the remains of last night’s makeup shadowing her eyes.
“Was it?” Tate said.
“It was.”
Tate rummaged through her overnight bag and pulled out a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. She wielded it like a club, and for a second, Chess thought Tate was going to slug her with it.
“I brought you this,” Tate said. She tossed it on the bed. “Enjoy.”
W
hen she woke up on Monday morning, the sky was blue, the sun was out, and all of Tuckernuck was green and sparkling. Tate went downstairs for coffee, and there was Birdie, squeezing oranges for juice.
“Good morning,” Birdie whispered.
Tate kissed her mother’s soft cheek. God, life was hard. Chess had been such a bitch yesterday, so cruel and cutting; it was like they were teenagers again. She had practically brought Tate to tears. Tate had been on the verge of saying,
Fuck you, I’m not sitting around for this, I’m leaving.
The experiment had failed. Tuckernuck wasn’t bringing them closer; it wasn’t healing them. Chess hadn’t told Tate the first thing about what happened between her and Michael Morgan; she hadn’t pulled back the covers to reveal an inch. It was just like always: Chess didn’t think Tate was smart enough or
emotionally evolved
enough to understand.
You know, it was really nice here without you.
Tate would be leaving today with her duffel bag packed and the volume on her iPod turned all the way up—if it weren’t for the fact that she was in love with Barrett Lee. And really, she couldn’t leave Birdie. Birdie, who squeezed Tate’s juice and pressed her coffee; Birdie, who provided exactly the kind of love that Tate needed.
Chess is such a miserable bitch!
Tate nearly said it out loud. She would have, except the words would destroy Birdie. And Tate
was
emotionally evolved enough to realize that Chess was hurting and she wanted others to hurt. Tate thought Chess might try to climb into bed with her, and if she had, Tate would have welcomed her and all would have been forgiven. But she hadn’t. For the first time since they’d landed on Tuckernuck, Chess had slept in her own bed.
Tate stretched, using the picnic table. She finished her coffee. She said to Birdie, “Okay, I’ll be back.”
Birdie said, “Be careful!”
As Tate ran, her thoughts switched to Barrett. She didn’t know what to expect. She was in love with Barrett wholly and completely, but her feelings had had a thirteen-year head start. She couldn’t expect Barrett to feel the same way. He felt something, she knew that. He liked her, he wanted to spend time with her. But what did that mean? What would that look like day-to-day? She had no idea how to conduct a relationship, but she didn’t tell Barrett this. She was afraid he’d find out on his own.
She finished her run, and before she headed back up the stairs, she scanned the horizon. No boats.
She hung by the tree branch from her knees. She was distracted. He was coming, right? He had to come—not for her, but because it was his job. A watched pot never boils. Never? She did twenty-five ups and had decided she would do ten more, when she heard him say, “Hey, Monkey Girl.”
He was walking toward the house with groceries in one hand and a bag of ice in the other. He was grinning.
Her heart was hanging upside down. What to do? She did ten extra ups while Barrett was in the kitchen talking to Birdie, and then she flipped to the ground. This was excruciating. She loved him, she wanted to scream it, she wanted to tackle him. She didn’t know how to act or how to arrange her face. They hadn’t talked about another date. They hadn’t talked about how things would be.
She was hot and sweaty. Should she get in the shower and let him head on his way? She didn’t know. She was confused. He was still in the kitchen with Birdie. He was saying, “Yeah, she had them all eating out of her hand. They loved her.” Did he mean Tate, on Saturday night? Of course he did. But he may have been playing it up for Birdie’s sake. Tate wanted to grab him, but she reined herself in. Stop. Be quiet. Be still. Let him come to you. She stretched out against the picnic table.
She heard Birdie say, “Okay, then, we’ll see you this afternoon.”
She heard his footsteps coming out of the house. She didn’t turn. He would leave, then, without another word? She sang the beginning of “Hungry Heart” to herself, softly, to calm her nerves. She heard him whisper, “Pssst.”
Was she imagining that?
“Psssst.”
She turned. He was nodding his head.
Follow me.
The anxiety cleared; she was empty, light, expectant.
She followed him to the front of the house. He said, “You
cannot
ignore me like that. You will make me crazy.” He pushed her up against the wall and kissed her. The kissing was so new, so passionate, she could have kissed him for hours. His tongue, his face, his hair, his shoulders. She would never tire of him, never get enough. And there he was, feeling the same way, she could tell. He didn’t pull away, he didn’t look at his watch or check over her shoulder. He was focused on her. For ten minutes, fifteen minutes. When they did stop kissing long enough to speak, he said, “God, I missed you after you left.”
“I know,” she said.
“I thought about you all day, all night, every second this morning. The anticipation of seeing you made me buzz, you know?” He shook his head. “I never thought I’d feel this way again.”
She said, “What do you have to do today?”
He said, “I have five places to be right now.”
She said, “So you have to go?”
“And leave you? No way.”
He did pull himself away. Anita Fullin needed him at ten, and he had clients out in Sconset with a wasp’s nest in the eaves. That had to be dealt with this morning.
He said, “I’ll be back this afternoon, okay?”
They kissed, they couldn’t pull apart, but then, yes, he went, she pushed him. He turned and waved three times between the house and the bluff.
Tate walked around in a daze. She showered, ate breakfast, put on her bathing suit, headed down to the beach. Chess came down to the beach, too, but Tate ignored her. It was surprisingly easy. Birdie and India came down with their upright chairs and the cooler of lunch; India carried the Frisbee. She said to Tate, “You forgot this.”
Tate said, “I don’t want to play.” She was distracted. All she wanted to do was think about Barrett.
Chess said, “You’re awfully quiet.”
Tate snorted. “That’s the pot calling the kettle black.”
Chess said, “Do you want to go for a walk?”
Tate said, “Not with you.”
Chess said, “Suit yourself.”
There was a note in Chess’s voice that snapped at Tate like a rubber band hitting her in the face. “Okay,” she said. “You want to walk? We’ll walk.”
Chess looked back at Birdie and India. “We’re going for a walk.”
Birdie smiled. “That will be nice.”
Tate shook her head. Her mother was wonderfully naive. She thought this was it, the breakthrough. Well, it was a breakthrough of sorts because Tate was done trying.
They walked for a long time without talking. Tate thought that Chess might apologize for what she’d said the day before. And then Tate decided that she wouldn’t speak at all unless Chess apologized. So there was silence. Chess didn’t apologize and Tate didn’t speak. It was a test of wills, and as with any kind of competition with Chess, Tate knew she would lose. They walked all the way down to Whale Shoal, where Tate had seen the sister seagulls squawking at each other.
Chess said, “I hate you because you’re happy.”
Tate felt a small sense of accomplishment. Finally, Chess was telling her the truth.
That afternoon, Barrett showed up earlier than normal. They were all lying on the beach when his boat pulled in.
Birdie said, “My word, Barrett is early.”
India said, “I wonder why?”
Tate sat up on her blanket. There was a woman inside her, jumping up and down like a contestant on a game show.
Barrett anchored the boat and waded to shore. He had a bag of groceries in one hand and a bouquet of flowers in the other hand—blue hydrangeas, pink lilies, white irises. Tate sucked in her breath. He presented the flowers to her with a flourish.
“For you,” he said.
“For me?” she said. She couldn’t believe it. Tears stung her eyes. She was thirty years old and she hadn’t been given flowers by a man since Lincoln Brown picked her up for the prom and brought a wrist corsage.
He held out the other bag. “And four rib-eye steaks, a head of butter lettuce, champagne vinegar, a wedge of Maytag blue cheese, and a book of crossword puzzles.”
“God bless you,” India said.
Barrett said, “I’ll take it all up. Madame, can I put your flowers in water?”
Tate hopped to her feet. “I’ll come with you.”
Chess, who Tate thought was napping, raised her head off her towel and said, “I think I’m going to puke.”
Tate couldn’t stop thanking him. “They’re beautiful,” she said. “They’re gorgeous. You didn’t have to do this.”
“I wanted to.”
She buried her face in the flowers and inhaled their scent. Did it get any better than this? Did it? The man she was newly in love with had just brought her flowers. They could get married, she supposed, and have children together, but would she be any happier then than she was right this second?
“I want you to look at them and think of me. And know I’m thinking of you. Even when I’m changing Anita Fullin’s lightbulbs.”
In the kitchen, he put the groceries away and she unwrapped the flowers, cut their stems, and placed them in a jug filled with water. He grabbed her. They were in the house alone.
“Do you want to go upstairs?” Tate asked. She filled with a nervous kind of daring. Never in a million years did she think she would be having clandestine sex in the Tuckernuck house. No doubt the house had seen its share of conjugal relations—her mother and father’s, Aunt India and Uncle Bill’s, her grandparents’, her great-grandparents’, for God’s sake. That kind of sex was necessary and sustaining, the kind that created future generations who would then enjoy the house themselves. But the Tuckernuck house wasn’t built for sex that was wild and secret; the walls were thin and the floors unsteady. If a bed started to rock, it might crash through the floor.
Barrett said, “I have a better idea.”
He took her for a ride in his boat. Tate had feared he would invite Chess along, or even Birdie and India, but what he said was, “I’m going to steal Tate away for a little while.” And they hopped in and sped off. Chess, India, and Birdie stared after them with naked longing.
Tate felt guilty for about thirty seconds; then exhilaration kicked in. She loved being out on the water, in the sun, with the wind in her face. They zipped around Tuckernuck, waving to the people they saw on the shore.
Life is good!
They cruised over to Muskeget, an island even smaller than Tuckernuck that had only two houses. Muskeget was home to a colony of seals; there were some lounging on the rocky shores, and Barrett pulled in close enough that Tate could practically touch them. She was excited to see the seals, more excited than she would be under other circumstances. (In fact, she remembered Barrett’s father taking them on a “seal cruise” when Tate was twelve or thirteen. She had been unimpressed then, filled with adolescent ennui and a touch of disgust—the seals smelled!)
Barrett motored back to Tuckernuck, to the remote northeast coast, to a tiny crescent of beach at the top of East Pond that Tate didn’t even know existed, and he cut the engine. He anchored. He took off his shirt.
“Come on,” he said. “We’re swimming in.”
And they did. They raced. Tate loved this kind of companionship, this playfulness. She nearly beat him, she was a good swimmer, but he flopped onto shore a second before her, and before she could even catch her breath, he was on top of her. They made love in the sand.
* * *
They rinsed off in the water—sand was
everywhere
—and lay back in the sun.
Tate said, “There are all these things I want to know.”
Barrett said, “Take it easy on me.”
Tate said, “How did you meet Stephanie?”
Barrett sighed. “I’m not a good talker. Especially not about Steph.”
“Just answer the question,” Tate said. “Please?”
“We worked together at the Boarding House,” he said. “Waiting tables.”
“You waited tables?”
“Three summers. The first two summers were uneventful. The third summer was Stephanie.”
“She grew up on Nantucket?”
“Quincy, Mass. Irish Catholic. Five brothers and her. Her parents have a cottage in Chatham. She used to work summers in Chatham, at the Squire, but she came to Nantucket one year because the money was better.” He reached out and touched Tate’s face. “Can I be done?”
“I want to know you,” she said.
He pressed his lips together, and Tate feared she’d messed up. He whispered in her ear. “Will you come back with me tonight? Spend the night at my house? Please?”
She swooned.
Yes!
But no, she couldn’t. She couldn’t abandon her mother and Aunt India. She couldn’t abandon Chess; they had just moved one baby step forward.