I said, “Nick will never agree to that.”
Michael said, “He already has.”
It was mid-April, and New Jersey had received springtime like a benevolent gift. The trees were that bright greenish yellow, and the country club had just cut the grass for the first time. They had beds planted with daffodils, crocuses, tulips the color of Easter eggs. Many of the members of the club were still down in Florida, but because of the balmy weather, there were people on the driving range. The country club was the Morgan family’s second home; Cy and Evelyn had joined when the kids were small, and it had become for them a lush, quiet, safe haven where family life unspooled as it should. Nick, I knew, hated the country club, embodying as it did wealth and privilege and exclusivity. Michael loved it; I had to talk him out of holding the rehearsal dinner there.
We drove to the club in a rental car from the city. Cy and Evelyn, Nick, and Dora were to meet us there.
I was, despite the genteel surroundings, a complete basket case. But deep in my heart, I was convinced Nick wouldn’t show. He had just toured the country for six months, playing in dive bars and underground clubs and seedy auditoriums; he wasn’t going to sit down for a martini and prime rib with his parents. He would cancel, and my expectations would be roadkill once again.
I occupied my mind with work. I was throwing around an idea for an article on country club lunches: variations on club sandwiches and Cobb salads and chilled soups that you could serve in your own backyard. I watched my feet walk down the flagstone path to the entrance; my arm was linked through Michael’s. We walked inside. The club smelled the same as country clubs across the country: french fries, pipe smoke, worn leather, polished brass.
“There they are,” Michael said.
I looked over. In the foyer were Cy and Evelyn, Dora, and Nick.
Michael reached his brother first, tested a handshake, which became a bear hug. Michael said, “Man, you look great.”
I kissed Cy automatically; then Evelyn, noting her perfume, which I loved; then Dora, who was home on spring break from Duke. I was moving toward Nick. I had to greet him, but I was afraid.
I said, “Hey, you.”
He said, “Hey, yourself.” And he kissed me like a proper brother-in-law. Side of the mouth. But he had my arm, too, which he squeezed so hard he might have left a bruise.
Evelyn said, “I can’t believe we have the
whole family
together. I think I’m going to cry.”
Cy said, “I think I’m going to order a cocktail.”
Nick said, “I think I’m going to join you.” His voice had a jovial expansiveness I had never heard before. “Lead the way.”
He sounded like Michael, I thought. The anger was gone, the bad-boy vibe held in check. And he
looked
like Michael. He had cut his hair and he was wearing pressed khakis and a navy blazer. And loafers. He looked polished and proper. What was this? I wondered. I lagged behind naturally; the Morgan family were all gifted with long strides and an aggressive get-there-first gait, especially when there were cocktails involved. Nick turned around and winked at me.
I said, “Nice jacket.”
“I wore it for you,” he said.
He sat next to me at dinner, which meant I sat between him and Michael. I thought,
I can do this.
And then I ordered a cosmopolitan instead of chardonnay. Cy gave a brief toast, welcoming Nick back; we all drank. There was a bread basket on the table with packets of crackers in plastic. Dora picked one packet out—two sesame bread-sticks—and said, “This is so retro, but I love it.”
Nick talked about his tour—Charleston and Houston were his two favorite cities, and he was never going back to Ohio again if he could help it (sorry, Ohio). I listened with rapt attention. He was here next to me, this was
him talking,
I could touch him, I did touch him, I handed him the shallow dish that held butter curls in an ice bath, and our fingers brushed. I thought,
What am I going to do? What am I going to do?
Nick had come to the country club, he had gotten a haircut and put on a blazer and loafers to show me something. To show me he could do it.
Michael said, “Well, our wedding plans are coming along.”
Evelyn said, “Oh, yes, they are! Tell Nick about the floating island, Chess!”
I said, “He doesn’t want to hear about the floating island.”
“Tell me about the floating island,” Nick said.
I excused myself for the ladies’ room.
The ladies’ room had an antechamber, a sitting room with satin-cushioned seats in front of a long mirror. Under the mirror was a ledge that held glass ashtrays. I sat down and imagined the married women of suburban New Jersey sitting here to smoke and reapply their lipstick and gossip. No doubt they had had terrible problems themselves and excruciating decisions to make. They were unhappily married and having an affair, their husband was in danger of losing his job or had a drinking problem or gambled. They were carrying an unwanted pregnancy or couldn’t seem to get pregnant.
I looked at myself in the mirror for a while, I don’t know how long. Too long.
I thought,
I don’t want to get married.
There was a knock at the door. Michael, I thought, who had come looking for me. Evelyn would have just walked right in. I said, “Here I come!” And I opened the door.
Nick.
I looked around. A Hispanic woman in a maid’s uniform was pushing a cordless sweeper over the dark red carpet.
I said, “I don’t want to get married.”
He said, “Then you’d better do something about it.”
I wanted to grab him and kiss him, pull him into the empty ballroom and touch him, but I couldn’t exactly do that in the middle of the Fairhills Country Club. We walked back to the table side by side, talking softly, like any regular soon-to-be in-laws.
I said, “You sent me those postcards.”
He said, “I did.”
I said, “You missed me?”
He said, “I did.”
I said, “How much?”
He stopped in his tracks. A grandfather clock sounded the hour. He said, “I pined.”
This made me smile.
He said, “You have a big job ahead of you.”
I said, “You’ll help me?”
“No. This is for you to do or undo. For your own reasons. This can’t have anything to do with me.”
I didn’t respond.
“Do you understand?”
I did understand, but I felt abandoned anyway.
He laughed, not kindly. “You’ll never do it.”
* * *
I sat back down at the table, incensed. I had been dared. I was determined to win. The next time I ate dinner with these people, I decided, I would be with Nick.
But once I was ensconced in the car with Michael, I feared Nick was right. I was happy with Michael, happy enough. We belonged together, a wedding was in the works, tens of thousands of dollars had been spent on my behalf. I wasn’t the kind of person to topple the apple cart. I wasn’t the kind of person to change the course of history, however narrowly.
Michael went to California. Despite the demanding nature of his work, he almost never traveled for business. Having him gone was an unexpected luxury. The whole city seemed different. I was free! I called Rhonda and we made a plan: start with drinks at Bar Seine, move on to Aureole, the Spotted Pig, Bungalow 8.
I was happy that night. I called and talked to Michael on my way from Aureole to the Spotted Pig. I was very drunk; talking to him didn’t seem real. He was in another time zone. He sounded serious and grumpy; he had not one but two candidates in the final three for a huge CEO position with a monster tech firm. I wished him luck. I hung up.
I was very drunk. I sent a text to Nick that said:
Meet me at Bungalow 8.
There was no way he would ever do it. He had never met me anywhere. But then again, I had never asked him. I wondered if he knew Michael was out of town. I checked the Diplomatic Immunity website religiously; I knew Nick was free.
No sooner had Rhonda unlocked our way into Bungalow 8 than I saw Nick. He had a drink; he was standing at the bar talking to a couple of young guys who seemed eager, like fans.
Nick saw me. I held up a hand. I needed a minute. I was with Rhonda, after all. It took her only thirty seconds to find someone she knew, some tall, dark Mediterranean guy who absorbed her like water into a sponge.
I said, “I’ll be right back.”
I grabbed Nick and we left.
He said, “Where do you want to go?”
“Central Park,” I said.
He said, “It’s not safe at night, Chess.”
I said, “Walk with me.”
We walked all the way uptown, nearly seventy blocks. I sobered up and we talked. What were we doing? Was it real? What would it be like? He was recording an album. He had already gotten a check and he was looking at new places to live. He would have to travel and he wanted me to go with him. Would I go with him? Would I quit my job? I said I would. He said, “You will not.” But I would. I liked being the food editor of
Glamorous Home
but there was something more for me out there, something bigger, deeper, wider. I wanted to leave Michael that very night. I would break the engagement—not for him, but for myself. I wanted Nick. Did he want me?
He stopped me at the corner of Broadway and Thirty-third Street. Not a romantic corner in any respect. He took my face in his hands and said, “I want nothing but you. I will quit the band, quit music altogether, I will give up poker and rock climbing. I will give up red meat, beer, cigarettes, all of it, just to be with you. I will hold your hand and we will walk across this world, and I will sing to you and our babies, and that will be enough for me.”
“Enough?”
“It’s all I want.”
We kissed. The world spun.
That night when I got home, I called Michael and broke the engagement. I broke it like a fistful of linguine over a pot of boiling water. Snap, in half. No putting it back together. I didn’t waver; I didn’t leave room for doubt.
Chess cooked dinner. This was a huge step; only a month earlier she had sworn she would never cook again. But look: chili-lime swordfish with avocado sauce, corn salad, heirloom tomatoes with blue cheese and bacon. It was a feast. Tate wasn’t there, but Chess felt sorry for Tate rather than sorry for herself. Chess and Birdie and India lit the citronella candles and sat at the picnic table and drank and ate and talked over the sound of the waves. The sun set. Chess thought about the night at Bungalow 8 and walking all that way with Nick as though they were the only two people in Manhattan and the world was filled with brand-new possibility. Had it only been three months earlier? So much had changed. Chess cursed the way things had changed; she cursed the fact that Michael was dead, but cursing it, feeling angry about it, was a step in the right direction.
Throw those rocks. Get rid of the heavy stuff.
Suddenly, Chess was crying. India and Birdie stopped talking about what a ghastly cook their mother had been (they had arrived at this topic after praising Chess’s talents as a chef: the swordfish melted in your mouth), and Birdie reached out first, and then India moved so that the two of them were on either side of Chess, bracing her, and she was able to just cry. It had taken her nearly three weeks, but she was on her way toward something else—another state of mind, another way to be.
“Let it out, darling,” Birdie said.
India said, “We’ve been waiting for this. We’ve been waiting for this exact thing.”
Life was sad and difficult. We hurt the ones we love the most. Michael was dead. Nick was gone. Chess wanted to feel it all—the pain, the grief, the guilt.
Bring it on.
She started walking. Tate was a morning person, but Chess liked to exercise in the late afternoon, right before cocktail hour. This was when she used to run in the city—after work, during the sacred hour that separated her daytime from her nighttime. She left the house at four thirty with a bottle of cold water, a hat, sunglasses, and her running shoes, which felt constrictive to her feet after three weeks in flip-flops. She would walk across Tuckernuck to the west coast and back. She would have liked to jog it, but she would have been out of breath in a few minutes, disheartened and discouraged. She used to run with Michael in Central Park; those were the times she had felt closest to him. He always matched her pace, despite the fact that he could have gone much faster. He didn’t like to talk while running and neither did she. They communicated when necessary by pointing. It was both energizing and comforting to have Michael beside her, his stride in sync with hers, his heart beating at the same pace.
Tuckernuck was beautiful. It was, Chess decided, the most beautiful place on earth. The ocean, the blue sky, the simple dirt-and-gravel paths that cut across the acres of former farmland, which were now open space for rabbits and field mice and red-tailed hawks. There were houses here and there, family compounds; her mother and her aunt knew exactly who owned each one and when they had bought it. Those other people—some rich, some famous—had learned the secret of life, and for a flash, Chess felt like she knew it, too.
A blond girl with a ponytail rode toward Chess on her bicycle. Chess was walking up a short but steep dirt hill and the girl was coming down. The bike gained speed, the front tire wobbled. The girl said, “This bike doesn’t have any brakes!” Her legs went akimbo, the expression on her face was comical, and in fact, Chess laughed, but she quickly realized that the girl was going to crash—and worse still, hit Chess. Chess jumped out of the way, but her foot caught on an exposed root and she fell into the brush. The girl and the bike went over with a clatter. The girl shrieked, then started to cry.