Birdie clucked and cooed and Tate felt herself heating up. Her mother was
such
a pushover. “How about that! Well, I must say, it’s nice to have a visitor. We’re getting awfully used to one another around here. I’m Birdie Cousins.”
“Anita Fullin.”
“And this is my sister, India Bishop.”
“Hello,” India said. “Nice to meet you.”
“And this is my daughter Tate. Tate!”
Tate wondered if she could continue with the charade of being asleep. Chess, lucky bitch, was actually asleep up at the house. Slowly, Tate rolled over. She lifted her head and had to go to the trouble of seeming surprised to find Anita Fullin on her beach.
“Hello.” Tate now understood why Adeliza Coffin stood on her front step with a shotgun. “What are
you
doing here?”
The question was rude, Birdie would be positively
verklempt
about Tate’s lack of manners, but Anita Fullin just laughed her deep, dusky storm cloud of a laugh and said, “I finally convinced Barrett to bring me over.”
They all watched Barrett wading to shore holding a bag of groceries (Tate could see the newspaper and a carton of eggs peeking out from the top) and a massive bouquet of flowers. The flowers were grandiose, bordering on tacky; they were wrapped in plastic and tied up with a wide red and gold ribbon. The flowers weren’t going to work this time, Tate decided. She wasn’t a pushover like her mother. She wanted an apology and a good explanation for all of this. Although really, bringing Anita Fullin to Tuckernuck was unforgivable.
Birdie said, “Those are beautiful flowers.”
Barrett said, “They’re for you.”
“For me?” Birdie said.
For Birdie?
Tate thought. She was glad she was wearing her sunglasses, so that no one would see her eyeballs turning to little molten balls of hellfire. Tate watched as Birdie carefully opened the cellophane and plucked out the card. She needed glasses to read and so she borrowed India’s glasses. Tate realized the flowers must be from the boyfriend, Hank, and she felt a second of pure, generous happiness for her mother before returning to self-pity. Nothing was fair.
Birdie said, “My law, they’re from Grant.”
“Dad?” Tate said.
“Grant?” India said.
“They’re from Grant,” Birdie said. She passed back India’s reading glasses, and her cheeks took on a flush. “Well, he shouldn’t have, but they’re beautiful.”
Barrett said, “I’ll carry them up for you and put them in water. Is it okay if I take Anita on a tour of the house?”
“Certainly,” Birdie said. “I’ll come along. Tate, will you come?”
“Chess is asleep up there, you know,” Tate said.
“I don’t want to disturb anyone,” Anita said.
“Don’t be silly,” Birdie said. “If Chess wakes up, she wakes up. She should wake up. She’s been sleeping far too much.”
“Well, that’s kind of the point,” Tate said. “I mean, she came here to rest.” The world had now completely flipped upside down: her father had sent her mother flowers and Tate was defending Chess. Since there was nothing left to lose, Tate followed her mother and Barrett and Anita Fullin up the stairs and across the bluff to the house.
Chess was awake. She sat bleary eyed at the picnic table with a glass of iced tea. Tate tried to see her as Anita Fullin would see her. Chess seemed smaller than she ever had before. She wasn’t wearing her blue crocheted cap and so her head, covered with blond stubble, was exposed. Despite all the time on the beach, she didn’t have any color. Her face was pinched and her lips were chapped. She was wearing her dirty Diplomatic Immunity T-shirt and army-surplus shorts. Tate shook her head. She found herself longing to brag about her sister—food editor at
Glamorous Home,
the youngest editor for any Diamond Group publication—but the picture Chess was presenting now was not impressive, and in fact, Anita Fullin didn’t even seem to notice Chess and might have walked right by her if Barrett hadn’t stopped and said, “And this is the other lady of the house, Chess Cousins.”
“Nice to meet you, Jess,” Anita said.
Chess didn’t bother correcting her, which either showed how little Anita Fullin mattered to Chess or how shocked she was to find this interloper here with Barrett.
She looked at Tate in alarm and confusion, and for the first time since they had climbed into their mother’s Mercedes nineteen days earlier, Tate felt a connection with her sister. She raised her eyebrows at Chess and thought,
Oh, yeah, we’re going to talk about this.
Barrett said, “So this is the Tate house, built in 1935 by Birdie and India’s grandparents, Arthur and Emilie Tate.”
“Nineteen thirty-five?” Anita said. “My word! How did people get here in 1935?”
“By boat,” Barrett said, and Tate, despite herself, smiled. “Back in the day, Tuckernuck had a schoolhouse. The people who lived here year-round were fishermen, or farmers.”
“But not in our day,” Birdie said. “In our day, it was just like this: privately owned by summer residents.”
“You’re quite the historian, Barrett,” Tate said.
He looked at her for one quick second to see if she was being funny or mean, but she wasn’t sure herself.
“This is the kitchen,” he said. “There’s a generator that provides running water, cold only, and the ladies have a half fridge that doesn’t get very cold, I’m afraid. And a cooler of ice that I keep replenished. They cook on that camp stove there, or they grill.”
“A camp stove!” Anita Fullin said. She was wearing a white T-shirt and bright orange Lilly Pulitzer pedal pushers and white thong sandals. Her toenails were painted tangerine. Orange was now a color that Tate officially detested.
“This is the living room,” Barrett said.
“It’s so charming,” Anita said. “It’s so
bare bones.
”
Barrett checked with Birdie. “Okay if I take Anita upstairs?”
“Oh, yes!” Birdie said, but she didn’t look up. She was too busy arranging her flowers. There were too many flowers to fit in one vase, or even two, so she was divvying them up among old mason jars. The whole first floor smelled like a hothouse.
Barrett and Anita marched up the stairs, and Tate followed. “Two bedrooms,” Barrett said. He swung the door open to Birdie’s bedroom: twin beds, tightly made up with the prim yellow sheets, and chenille bedspreads, suitable for a convent. “And one bathroom.”
“Does the toilet flush?” Anita asked. “Does the bathtub work?”
“Yes,” Tate and Barrett answered at the same time.
“Cold water only in the tub,” Barrett said.
Anita looked at Tate. “Honestly, I don’t know how you do it. I have this fantasy about building a house over here, but the truth is, I probably couldn’t handle it.”
Tate thought,
You’re probably right.
Barrett swung open the door to India’s bedroom. The squishy mattress was sliding off the box spring like icing off a cake. The bedclothes were disheveled and the room smelled like black lung. If Barrett and Anita didn’t feel shameful at peering at India’s private chamber, Tate did. Birdie’s room was neat and tidy as a Holiday Inn, but viewing India’s lair was voyeuristic. Unfortunately, Anita’s gaze caught on Roger, who was manning his post by the bureau lamp.
“Look at that sculpture!” Anita said. “It is the most fabulous thing I have ever, ever seen. Who did it?”
Barrett was quiet. Tate hoped he was abashed at having brought Anita Fullin into their house and allowing her to observe them like they were a circus sideshow.
“My uncle,” Tate said. And then, because pride got the best of her, she said, “Bill Bishop.”
Anita Fullin gasped. “Bill Bishop is your
uncle?
”
“He was,” Tate said. “He died.”
“Of course,” Anita said. “I know the story. I
thought
that looked like a Bishop, but then I thought, no way. It’s too small… but there’s something so
distinctive
about it.” She smiled at Tate. “I have to say, I’m a bit of a fan. There was a Bishop outside our first apartment building in New York. Of the woman walking the dog. But so abstract. So
signature.
I felt like it was my sculpture, it spoke to me, and then we moved to the West Side, and I hardly ever saw it again, but when I did, I used to call out to her. Like she was a friend of mine.”
Tate nodded. People felt that way about Uncle Bill’s work. It was big and industrial and civic, but it was personal.
Before Tate knew what was happening, Anita Fullin pulled out her iPhone and took a picture of Roger.
Tate said, “Oh…”
Barrett said, “Anita…”
Anita said, “I hope that’s okay. It’s just for me, so I can remember this little guy. What’s his name?”
“Roger,” Tate said. Then she felt like she’d betrayed a confidence.
Anita slid the phone back into her pocket. “I’d like to buy Roger,” she said.
“He’s not for sale.”
“I’ll give you fifty thousand dollars.”
“You can ask my aunt, but she’ll tell you he’s not for sale.”
Barrett looked squeamish. He said, “Anita, would you like to see the attic?”
“The attic?” Anita wrinkled her nose. “Are there more Bishops hiding up there?”
“No,” Tate said.
“Then no, I don’t think so,” Anita said.
Tate was offended. To her, the attic was the best part of the house, but only because it was her part. What would it seem to Anita Fullin but a hot, square room filled with beds and shadowy corners? Plus, Tate wanted Anita Fullin out of the house, off their property, off their island. Tuckernuck was unspoiled paradise primarily because there were no
people
to ruin it.
They descended to the first floor, where the flowers had been set around the house. Birdie, India, and Chess sat at the picnic table, waiting. They hadn’t opened wine. Tate was relieved. If there was wine, they would have to offer Anita Fullin a glass. As it was, Anita could just go.
But she stopped at the table. Her eyes flicked between Birdie and India as if trying to figure out which one would be Bill Bishop’s widow.
Anita said, “Your house is so authentic. It’s redolent of summers well lived.”
Birdie nodded. “Thank you. We’re very happy here.”
Chess rubbed at her tiny red eyes, the picture of happy.
Anita Fullin said, looking at India, “I noticed the sculpture upstairs. The little man?”
“Oh,” India said, clearly taken off-guard. “Roger?”
“Yes,” Anita said. “Roger.” She said his name with such affection and reverence, he might have been a friend of hers. “I’d like to talk to you about Roger sometime.”
India’s eyes widened.
“But not right now,” Anita said. “I can see you’re busy.”
Busy?
thought Tate.
“And Barrett has to get me back to the big island,” Anita said. “It was lovely meeting all of you.”
“Good-bye,” Birdie said.
“Good-bye,” India said.
Good-bye, so long, thanks for coming!
Tate was the most vocal of the four of them in bidding Anita Fullin adieu, and yet as she watched Barrett and Anita Fullin stroll toward the beach stairs, she couldn’t believe she was letting Barrett slip away. She wanted to call him back, demand a private audience; she wanted to know exactly what was going on. Why had he rebuffed her the night before, and why had he not shown up this morning? What was the deal with Anita Fullin? Tate had thought she and Barrett were falling in love.
Had she been dreaming?
S
he hadn’t responded to Lula’s letter. She couldn’t afford to put anything in writing; Lula might hold it up as some kind of
evidence.
India was thinking as though a crime had been committed, and she was forced to reassure herself. There had been feelings, yes; there had been innuendo, yes; but India hadn’t taken action, she hadn’t crossed any boundaries. She hadn’t transgressed. She couldn’t be held accountable for wrongdoing, disciplined for wrongdoing, or, God forbid, fired for any wrongdoing. India had been careful. She had backed away from the fire at the final moment.
She didn’t answer the letter.
What could she possibly say?
In response to India’s silence came another letter. India saw the letter lying on the dining room table, left there by Barrett, and her breath quickened. Blood flooded her face. This reaction in and of itself told India there was
something
between her and Tallulah Simpson beyond the usual collegial relationship. But what was it between them? Jealousy? Sexual tension? Love?
India wanted to rip the envelope open, but instead she saved it for a quiet moment in her bedroom. India had a glass of wine and a cigarette; Birdie was downstairs fixing dinner. The window of India’s bedroom was open; a breeze lifted the strands of Roger’s seaweed hair.
Carefully, she slit the end of the envelope with her fingernail. She opened the letter, read the one line. Shut her eyes.
What do I have to do?
* * *
The nineties had not been kind to Bill Bishop. There was a sense in which he had fallen out of fashion and out of grace. It was a slow, almost imperceptible decline, which had begun back in 1985 with that piss-poor review of the sculpture in New Orleans. Bill’s sculptures were copper and glass, blocky, abstract, funky but industrial. They were part of an era that included pin-striped suits, Wall Street moguls, Ronald Reagan, three-martini lunches. Bill knew nothing of the computer or the Internet; he didn’t give a shit about the environment. And so he found his work becoming stodgy and outdated. Someone from the Art Institute of Chicago approached Bill about a retrospective pulled together for the year 1996 to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of his first installation—which had been there, on Navy Pier.
A retrospective?
Bill said.
That means you’re dead, washed up. It’s like a greatest-hits album. It means there isn’t any new work, or the new work is irrelevant.
Problems with his work tended to drive Bill’s depression. Bill the sculptor and Bill the person were hard to separate from each other. And yet, India didn’t wholly blame Bill’s rapidly deteriorating mental state on his declining popularity. She was pretty sure he would have broken down even if work had been booming. His depression was chemical, she believed, and not situational. In the nineties, the boys were teenagers. The testosterone level in the house was high; they all lived in a fug of aggression and sexual drive. The four males were jockeying for position. Billy and Teddy battled nearly every day; there were fistfights, black eyes, bloody noses. India couldn’t deal with it; she handed it over to Bill, which was a mistake, because Bill’s anger was more formidable than ten Billys or twenty Teddys. He led by very poor example—screaming and yelling and throwing things against the wall, ripping up their homework, handing them coat hangers and saying, “You want to kill each other? Go ahead and kill each other.”