“Allow me,” he said.
“You’ve done so much already,” Tate said. “The place looks amazing.”
“I hope you weren’t expecting Jacuzzi tubs and granite countertops,” he said. “I think maybe your mother was…”
“No, she wasn’t,” Tate said.
“It cost a fortune just to get the place back to zero,” Barrett said. He took the narrow stairway to the attic, and Tate followed him. The attic was, as ever, hot and gloomy, ventilated by one small window, too high up to provide any breeze. The attic slept six: there were two double beds and a set of bunks. The idea was that all five cousins (Cousins cousins and Bishop cousins) could sleep here at once if need be, though the three Bishop boys-Billy, Teddy, and Ethan-had preferred to sleep downstairs on the screened-in porch. Easier to sneak beer from the icebox and piss in the yard, Tate supposed. The screened-in porch was awful in rain, so the attic beds had gotten used in inclement weather. Tate noticed a large cardboard box from Pottery Barn at the foot of the bunks. She peeked inside and found brand-new summer linens in bright sherbet hues.
“What’s this?” Tate said. The sheets and blankets of the Tuckernuck house were supposed to be threadbare and as full of holes as Charlie Brown’s Halloween costume-that was part of the charm. “Does UPS deliver here?”
“They deliver to me. I brought them over last week. Your mother ordered them. She wants you to be comfortable, she said.”
“I don’t need six hundred thread count to be comfortable,” Tate said. She sat on the double bed that had traditionally been hers, the one farther from the door (Chess had a bladder the size of a golf ball, and she needed to be closer to the door, too, to escape from the bats).
“The other sheets were really bad,” Barrett was saying. “I used them as drop cloths when I painted downstairs.”
Tate took a deep lungful of the stuffy attic air. “So how are you, Barrett Lee?” she said. She had her own business, two hundred thousand dollars in the bank, a condo, a plasma TV, sixteen pairs of True Religion jeans, and a million frequent-flier miles. She was going to be direct with Barrett Lee.
He laughed, as though she were telling a joke. “Ha!” His blue eyes settled on her for one uncertain second, and she thought-ecstatically!-that he was going to say something she could muse over later. Perhaps tell her how great she looked. He took off his sunglasses, ran a hand through his sandy hair, replaced his sunglasses on top of his head.
He said, “I better get the rest of the stuff.” And he disappeared down the stairs.
Tate wondered if she should be offended. Barrett Lee was no more interested in her now than he had been at eighteen. Yet! Tate told herself. After all, this was only the first hour of the first day. There was plenty of time.
INDIA
She had made a terrible mistake in coming.
And goddamn it, it wasn’t like her to have lapses in reason. She was the only person whose judgment she trusted. She, India Bishop, made decisions based on the one thing that had never failed her: her common sense. She didn’t compromise her standards; she didn’t get “talked into” things. So what was she doing here?
India was the widow of one of America’s premier sculptors and the mother of three handsome and successful sons. At one time, her wife- and motherhood had been her entire identity. But then Bill shot himself in the head (fifteen years ago now) and the boys grew up, graduated from college, embarked on careers. Billy was married and expecting his own child, a boy, to be named after his father (of course), at the end of the summer. The boys needed India less and less often, and that was as it should be. India had been free to reinvent herself. She had become the most revered woman on the arts scene in the city of Philadelphia. She was a curator at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts-which was not only a museum but a university-and she consulted for the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Barnes Foundation. There were those people (small-minded, emotionally one-dimensional people) who believed India had acquired her position and accolades solely because she was Bill Bishop’s widow. And while it was true that Bill’s far-reaching fame had allowed India to know all the right people, and while it was true that everyone in the City of Brotherly Love and its bucolic suburbs felt sympathy for India after Bill’s suicide, these two things did not a brilliant curator make. India held a master’s degree in art history from the University of Pennsylvania. She had traveled the world with Bill-to Peru and South Africa, Bombay, Zanzibar, Morocco, Copenhagen, Rome, Paris, Dublin, Stockholm, Shanghai-and in each place, she was exposed to art in its many forms. Plus, India was smart-in an IQ way and in a practical way and in a social way. She dressed well, she said the right things to the right people, she drank white Burgundies and listened to Mahler. She used the money from Bill’s estate-and there was a fuckload of it-to surround herself with exquisite things (a low-slung Mercedes convertible, Jonathan Adler lamps, a slender Patek Philippe, first editions of Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina, season tickets to the Pennsylvania Ballet and the Philadelphia Orchestra). Success had not been given to her out of pity. She had earned it.
But enough tooting her own horn. Today, she should be scolded! Today, she had messed up. She had agreed to spend a month on Tuckernuck, an island the size of Central Park. It was as remote as one of Jupiter’s moons, and she would be here for thirty days! (India loved to swear, a bad habit learned from Bill that she had not shed, although she knew Birdie abhorred it.) Under the best circumstances, when Bill’s psyche had been healthy and the boys were good ages for this kind of outward-bound adventure, they had stayed on Tuckernuck for two weeks. When India had come the two summers following Bill’s death, she hadn’t been able to last more than five days.
So what was she doing here?
India had fielded Birdie’s phone call at a weak moment. India had, only hours before, discovered that the most promising young artist at PAFA, Tallulah Simpson, had withdrawn from the four-year certificate program and absconded with her considerable talent to Parsons in New York. Tallulah Simpson, who was known throughout PAFA as “Lula,” was a protégé of India’s, and not only a protégé but a friend, and not only a friend but an intimate friend. And yes, it did get more complicated than that, and yes, something had transpired between Lula and India that had, most likely, instigated Lula’s defection to PAFA’s biggest rival. If Lula made what had happened public, it would become a scandal. The news of Lula’s withdrawal came as a shock to India-a literal, hair-raising, body-buzzing, 150-volt shock-but she hadn’t let on that this was the case. When India’s secretary, Ainslie, delivered the news, gently, along with India’s usual latte, India didn’t flinch, or she flinched only a little. (She couldn’t be taken by surprise ever again, she believed, after receiving the news that her husband had put a bullet in his brain.) India had to pretend that she had seen this coming. She had to be nonchalant and dismissive, when inside she was hurt and frightened, and filled with regret.
PAFA was on fire: Lula’s departure was all anyone wanted to talk about. India had quietly closed her office door and smoked ten cigarettes while she tried to figure out what to do. Should she contact Lula? Meet her for a drink at El Vez-or somewhere in New York? Should she go to Virgil Seversen, the director of the academy, and explain what had happened? Should she go over Virgil’s head, to her ultimate boss, Spencer Frost, president of the board of directors? India’s actions had been beyond reproach. She had, even in the most intense moments with Lula, followed her doctrine of impeccable behavior. But Lula was young (twenty-six), she was fiery, she was an artist, and she had fallen madly in love with India. Who knew how she would present things?