That afternoon, Birdie returned to Bigelow Point with her cell phone. She told herself she wanted the walk; the exercise would be good for her, and the me-myself time would be good for her. When she reached the point, she called Hank. She had no expectations. He wouldn’t answer, she wouldn’t leave a message. Calling was fruitless. But she couldn’t not call. Not calling was, somehow, beyond her.
She dialed the number, then waited. The tide was low; the water was ankle deep. She was wearing her father’s hat, which protected her face from the beating sun. Could it protect her in other ways? She wondered if her father would approve of Hank. She decided the answer was no; he would not approve on principle. Her father had been a traditionalist; he had adored Grant.
The phone rang twice, three times, four. Predictable. Birdie waited for the sound of Hank’s voice on the voice mail. To hear his voice, even in the five-second recording, was worth the hour-long walk.
This is Hank. I’m not available. Leave a message.
The man spoke the truth, Birdie thought. He wasn’t available. She would not leave a message. She hung up. She gazed out at the water and thought what she always thought:
Enough of this, Birdie! Move on!
She wished she hadn’t said anything to India about Tate that morning. She had been a mother for thirty-two years, and she was still making regrettable mistakes.
The phone sprang to life in her hand. It vibrated, it sang out its electric tune. She held it at arm’s length so she could read the display. It was Hank, calling her back.
She opened the phone. “Hello?”
“Hello, Birdie,” he said.
“Hello, Hank,” she said. The hand she held the phone in was shaking. This was a case of “Be careful what you wish for.” She had Hank on the phone, but she didn’t know what to say. She should have prepared something.
He said, “How are you?”
How are you?
Was she supposed to answer that? What if she
did
answer that? What if she told him the truth? Would the world end?
“I’ve had an emotional couple of weeks,” she said. “It’s tough, you know, living with India and the girls out here in the middle of nowhere. Well, what’s tough is that we talk all the time, we have nothing to do but talk, and we strike nerves every once in a while and we backpedal, and… oh, jeez, you can imagine.”
Hank didn’t respond. Maybe he couldn’t imagine. What, after all, did he know of mothers with daughters, or sisters with sisters?
“And I’ve been missing you,” Birdie said. “I think about you far too often. I feel this longing, this aching—made worse by the fact that you don’t seem to miss me at all. When I called last week, you sounded uninterested. And then when I called you in the middle of the night, you didn’t answer. I left a message. Did you get that message?”
“I did,” he said.
“Where were you?” Birdie asked. “Why didn’t you answer the phone? I called four or five times.”
“I wasn’t at home,” Hank said. “I heard my cell phone ringing but I wasn’t in a place where I was free to answer it.”
“Are you seeing someone else?” Birdie asked. This was her biggest concern: that someone would steal Hank away. The world was filled with single women, and Hank was a desirable catch. Birdie pictured her rival as someone like Ondine Morris, the redheaded siren who had been after Grant all those years ago. Ondine Morris was both a golfer and a socialite, and when her husband lost all his money in the stock market crash of 1987, Ondine had pursued Grant shamelessly, despite the fact that she and Birdie were friends. Grant couldn’t have cared less about Ondine Morris; all women were extraneous to Grant, even those women with an eight handicap. But the threat of Ondine Morris or someone like her remained a specter to Birdie, always lurking.
“No,” Hank said.
“You can tell me if you are,” Birdie said. “I’ll understand.”
“I’m not seeing anyone else, Birdie,” Hank said. “But I have been preoccupied, and not very forthcoming, for which I apologize.”
“Well, be forthcoming now, please,” Birdie said. “Explain yourself.”
“It’s Caroline,” Hank said. He gave off a huge, heavy sigh. “She’s dead.”
Birdie gasped. “She’s dead? She died?”
“When you called that night, I was with her at the facility. They had moved her upstairs. I was asleep in a chair next to her bed, holding her hand. She had a massive stroke, they told me it was bad and I went, and she died on Sunday morning.”
“Oh, Hank,” Birdie said.
“We held the funeral on Wednesday,” he said. “The church was packed. I have enough casseroles to last me the rest of my life.”
“I’m sorry,” Birdie said. “I had no idea.” Never once had it occurred to her that something had happened to Caroline. Caroline had Alzheimer’s, and Birdie had assumed she would decline incrementally for years and years. For her to fall so dramatically wasn’t something Birdie had expected. Caroline’s death was certainly sad news, but her quality of life had been poor, and now Hank was free. There would be a period of mourning, maybe as long as a year, before Birdie would be officially introduced around, until she would meet Hank’s children and grandchildren, but it would be worth the wait.
Birdie said, “Oh, Hank, I didn’t say this before I left, but I wanted to, and so I’ll say it now: I love you. I love you, Hank Dunlap.”
Hank coughed, or cleared his throat. “You are such a wonderful woman, Birdie.”
And Birdie thought,
Oh, God, no.
She said, “Hank…”
He said, “I can’t see you anymore. I am… well, I’m taking Caroline’s death badly. I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I’m filled with sadness, but I’m also plagued with guilt. It haunts me that I was out enjoying life with you—I was at the theater with you, I was in hotel rooms with you—while she was trapped in an institution. I should have waited until she was gone.”
Birdie was trying to process what he was saying, but it was coming together slowly. He
regretted
the theater? He
regretted
their night at the Sherry-Netherland? “Well, why didn’t you, then? Why didn’t you wait?”
“I was so lonely…,” he said.
“Hank,” Birdie said, “it’s
okay.
Caroline was very sick, Hank. Why, one of the first things you told me was that she didn’t recognize you or the kids. She thought you were a kind stranger, bringing her chocolates every week. You had every right to continue to live your life.”
“There was more than just you,” Hank said. “I was unfaithful before Caroline got sick. I never deserved her love. I see that now and I feel I owe her something, an atonement, a penance. And my penance is going to be giving you up.”
“Giving me up?” Birdie said. “But why?”
“I was conducting a relationship with you while I was married.”
“But Caroline could have hung on for fifteen or twenty more years, and what were you supposed to do? Squander those years? I thought you… well, I thought you’d come to terms with your actions within yourself.”
“I thought so, too.”
“You just need time,” Birdie said. Because Hank’s reasoning was so strange and convoluted, it sounded like a case of temporary insanity.
“Birdie,” he said.
And with that word, her name, she knew. He was gone. It was stupid, it was a sham, his offering her up as an atonement to his dead wife like some sacrificial lamb. He had been unfaithful throughout his marriage: this was news to Birdie, big news. They had talked for hours about their respective marriages, they had dissected them and labeled the good and the bad, but Hank had never confessed to having been unfaithful. He was a liar, Birdie thought. Caroline might not even be dead. This whole thing might be an elaborate story concocted to end their relationship. But it didn’t matter. The story’s ending was the same no matter what the circumstances: He didn’t love her. It was over.
She said, “We were so perfect together.”
He said, “You’re a wonderful woman, Birdie.”
She could stand many things, but she would not be patronized. She hung up the phone without saying good-bye.
He called back a second later, and Birdie didn’t answer. Now
that
felt good.
Standing there, she was both fuming and incredulous. Damn Hank Dunlap! (She couldn’t stand the thought of him arriving at her front door with the bouquet of hyacinths, wearing his little glasses; he was like a demon sent to trick her.) She thought Hank was one person, but he was someone else. It was okay. It happened to the best of us.
Birdie called Grant at work. His secretary, Alice, put her right through, and when he answered, “Hey, Bird,” so casual and familiar, she burst into tears. He shushed her; he’d always been a good, soothing shusher, since it required no language or expression of actual sentiment.
He said, “Is it Hank again?”
“We broke up.”
“For good?”
“For good.”
“What happened?”
She told him: Caroline dead, Hank guilty, Birdie gone.
“So if you’d met him in six months, after his wife was already dead, it would have been fine?”
“Yeah,” Birdie said. “It makes no sense.”
“Well, Birdie, what can I say? The guy’s an idiot.”
“You don’t even know him.”
“He let you go. He’s an idiot.”
“You let me go,” Birdie said.
“And I’m an idiot,” Grant said.
Despite herself, Birdie smiled. This was as sweet as Grant got.
“You’re not an idiot,” she said.
T
hey had officially been “together” for only nine days, but every day on Tuckernuck was a lifetime, and so it felt like forever. They had made love sixteen times, they had shared eleven meals, they had watched three movies, gone to two restaurants, taken five boat rides, caught two fish. She had loved his children immediately and not only because they were his children. She had comforted Cameron from a bad dream and changed Tucker’s pajamas and sheets after he wet the bed.
Barrett said he didn’t like to talk about Steph, but he was actually quite eloquent on the topic of his late wife, especially late at night as he and Tate lay in bed. He told her pieces of the story that together formed a cohesive whole. It wasn’t exactly the fairy tale Tate had imagined.
Barrett met Stephanie the summer they both waited tables at the Boarding House. Barrett didn’t think she was pretty right away, but she was friendly and she had a sweet voice. They fell into a predictable routine of closing up the restaurant together after a few postshift drinks; sometimes, they went dancing at the Chicken Box, and sometimes they drove to the beach. He kissed her for the first time at Henry’s sandwich shop. It was morning, and they were headed out to Great Point with a cooler full of beer. At the counter, Stephanie ordered roast beef with horseradish mayonnaise and cucumber, and Barrett kissed her because that was the exact sandwich he was about to order for himself.
They dated for three years. Steph finished up her nursing degree at Simmons College in Boston. Her job waiting tables turned into a job in labor and delivery at the Nantucket Cottage Hospital. Barrett asked his parents for a loan and he bought the house in Tom Nevers, which at the time was just a shell abandoned by another builder, so he got it for a steal and was able to finish it up the way he wanted. Steph moved in with him, and their crazy life settled down. She had a real job; he had a mortgage payment. They got married, and he took over his father’s business.
“Things moved along,” he said. “All of a sudden, I was an adult. I was married, I owned a house, I was running a business. I had to be serious. I was twenty-six years old, and I can tell you, I didn’t want to be serious. I wanted my old life back—the drinking, the smoking, the dancing until two in the morning, then sitting in the hot tub until the birdsong started. But Stephanie threw away my weed, and she decided that every Saturday night we’d have date night. I wanted date night every night, as well as two nights to go fishing and Sundays to golf. Stephanie worked in labor and delivery; all she wanted was a baby. I didn’t want a baby. I
was
a baby! Stephanie went off the pill without telling me, and man, was I pissed when she told me she was pregnant. I left the island; I drove all the way down to Baltimore to see this friend of mine who had a job with the Orioles. We went to three ball games, ate a bushel of blue crabs, went to Hammerjacks to see a heavy metal band. It sucked; I was lonely. I went home.
“So then Cameron was born, and life changed even more, and all of a sudden I’m longing for the days when my only obligation was date night. Because having a child was tough on us. Steph was still working, and the baby was at day care and he was constantly catching something from the other kids, and I would have to stay home or Steph would, or we’d ask my mother to take him. And then, just as soon as he was older—walking, talking a little bit, solidly sleeping through the night—and things were a little bit easier, wham! Steph gets pregnant again. And whereas you’re happy because you now know how great it is to have a kid, there is also this feeling of,
What the hell are we doing?
I felt buried. The business was doing fine, but it wasn’t making us rich. I started having problems breathing, I couldn’t suck air into my lungs or push it out. I went to the hospital for chest X-rays. I was convinced that one of the houses I worked on contained asbestos; Steph thought I had been out smoking dope. What did the doctors tell me? It was stress. So then it was like I got a doctor’s note to go out and have fun. I joined the darts league at the Chicken Box; I was out every Tuesday and Thursday drinking beer with the guys I went to high school with. Steph didn’t like it one bit; she had a little bit of the pregnant-woman paranoia going, where she thought maybe I was seeing someone else.”
“Were you?” Tate asked.
“Nope,” Barrett said. He paused, licked his lips. “There were months when we fought all the time, where we couldn’t stand the sight of each other, and when she called my cell phone, I wouldn’t answer. And then, when she was seven months pregnant, she dropped her coffee cup.”
“Dropped her coffee cup?” Tate said.