She was sad to see him go, but grateful that he’d told her where to use her phone, grateful that he had admitted to having had a crush on Chess years ago, grateful that he hadn’t flat-out refused to spend time with Chess. That was all she was asking as a concerned mother; she couldn’t make them confide in each other. If Barrett thought she was a nut, he was right: she was. She was tired and addled from travel, she had yet to get her bearings, and she was worried about her daughter. She wondered how it was that she could feel more alone here when she was living with three other people than she did when she was at home in New Canaan by herself.
She missed Hank in a way she hadn’t thought possible at her age.
Thank God there were eight bags of groceries to unpack. Thank God there was dinner to make. Birdie stood up and got to work.
The Tuckernuck house had been built seventy-five years earlier by Birdie and India’s paternal grandparents, Arthur and Emilie Tate. Arthur Tate was trained as an orthopedist, and he had written a seminal medical text used by bonesetters across the country. He held an endowed chair at Harvard Medical School, and he and Emilie lived in a glorious brownstone on Charles Street. They took their summers on Nantucket. They owned a yellow clapboard house on Gay Street; the front porch was hung with fuchsias and ferns. Emilie’s half sister, Deidre, from her father’s second marriage, had wed a wealthy Parisian businessman, and they, too, spent summers on Nantucket, in a house on the side of Orange Street that overlooked the sparkling harbor.
Emilie hated Deidre. This was family legend, but Birdie’s father had saved Emilie’s diaries, so Birdie could see for herself: abhor, detest, nouveau riche, unmannered, inconsiderate, French, Franco, froggy, faux, faux, foe! The half sisters saw each other only on Nantucket, and even that wasn’t often because Gay Street society and Orange Street society didn’t commingle. Arthur was a sailor. He and Emilie were members of the Nantucket Yacht Club, where they ate their dinners out, attended dances, sailed, and played tennis. Problems between Emilie and Deidre arose only at the onset of the Great Depression. No one had any money, the country was sinking, the currency devalued. Somehow, Deidre’s French husband, Hubert, was able to procure a membership to the Nantucket Yacht Club with money, rather than with connections as had been the custom-or at least this was Emilie’s suspicion. And so, in the summer of 1934, when Arthur and Emilie arrived on Nantucket, they found Deidre and Hubert sitting at the next table at dinner and playing doubles on the neighboring tennis court. Emilie found her mortal enemy in her club! At the end of the summer, a scene ensued between the two sisters on the parquet dance floor during the Commodore’s Ball. The orchestra had stopped playing. Emilie insulted Deidre. Deidre raised her hand to Emilie. Both women left the club in tears.
The next summer, the summer of 1935, Arthur and Emilie sold the house on Gay Street and bought a parcel of beachfront land on Tuckernuck for $105. They built the house, grandiose for its time. In her diary, Emilie noted that they wanted something simpler. A simple life. Town life on Nantucket had become fraught with social obligations. It has become not so different from life in Boston, Emilie wrote. We seek a quieter place, a more remote escape.
Tuckernuck.
But the truth was, Emilie had come to Tuckernuck to escape her sister.
Birdie reminded India of this story as they lingered outside their respective bedrooms with only their flashlights to see by. Birdie was flat-out exhausted, but India seemed to be looking for something to do at nine o’clock at night. She knew there were no clubs on Tuckernuck, right? No bars, no restaurants, no whorehouses. There was only peace and quiet, and the weight of their family history. They had come here as girls, their father before them, their grandparents before him.
“Emilie built this house to get away from her sister,” Birdie said. “But now the house is bringing sisters together. You and me. And Chess and Tate.”
India snorted. “Are you always such a Pollyanna, Bird?”
Birdie didn’t take the bait. She would not squabble with India on this, their first night. “You know I am,” she said. She smiled sweetly. “Good night.”
TATE
She woke up in the morning and thought, in a panic, Only twenty-nine days left!
Chess was cleaving to her back like a bug. Tate was both irritated and touched. Last night, after a quiet, nearly somber dinner (What’s with everyone? Tate had wondered. Even Birdie had seemed subdued and distracted), she and Chess had come upstairs with a flashlight and put the prettiest sheets on their beds. Tate had planned on initiating a long, meaningful conversation with her sister-that, after all, was the main mission here-but Chess made it clear she didn’t want to talk.
Tate had said, “You won’t get better if you don’t let it out. It’s like not cleaning a sore. It will fester. You know that, right?”
Chess tucked a pillow under her chin and slipped it into the case. No response.
Tate had thought three words: Okay, fine, whatever. She hadn’t felt Chess climb into bed with her last night, but she wasn’t surprised that she had. Chess was afraid of the dark; all their lives, she had crawled into bed with Tate.
Tate slid out of bed without waking Chess. It was hard for Chess to fall asleep and hard for her to wake up. But not Tate. Tate was a morning person. She put on her jogging bra (gingerly, because she had gotten too much sun at the beach the day before), her shorts, and her running shoes and went down to the second floor to use the bathroom.
The Tuckernuck house had only one bathroom, squeezed in between the two bedrooms. It had been installed when Tate was a child, and everyone marveled at the flush toilet. (Before, there had been an outhouse.) The sink and tub ran only cold water. If you wanted a hot bath, you had to heat the water over the gas stove in the kitchen and carry it upstairs. Water from the bathroom sink had a brownish tinge and tasted like rust. (Perfectly safe to drink! Birdie always assured them.) Tate was the only one who didn’t mind the water. She was a traditionalist; the water in the Tuckernuck house had always been dingy and metallic, and if she had come this year and found that the tap yielded clear, tasteless water at remarkable pressure, she would have been disappointed.
She brushed her teeth and did a quick scan of all the products crowding the back of the toilet (the only level surface in the bathroom). There were young women’s products-Noxema, Coppertone-and older women’s products (Tate tried not to examine these too closely). She noticed a new sign hanging on the wall opposite the toilet. In her mother’s handwriting, it said: Do not flush paper or anything else (please!).
Birdie’s bedroom door was open, the curtains were tied back, and the twin beds were made so tightly that Tate couldn’t tell which one her mother had slept in. The sun was bright. (In the attic, you couldn’t even tell the sun had risen.) A breeze came through the window. Birdie’s room had a zillion-dollar view over the bluff and the ocean. It was such a clear day, Tate could almost make out the figures of the early morning fishermen on the shores of Nantucket.
Down in the kitchen, Birdie had made coffee in a French press. When Tate’s parents had divorced and Birdie first made noise about wanting to get a job, Tate had entertained the idea of hiring Birdie to live with her and be her… mother. Because that was what she needed, a mother. Someone to make her coffee in the morning (Tate spent a small fortune at Starbucks), someone to do her laundry, someone to cook for her, someone to call her and check in when she was spending the night in a hotel.