“Come live with me and be my mom,” Tate had said. Birdie had laughed, though Tate could tell she was considering it.
Tate poured herself a cup of coffee.
“Cream?” Birdie said.
Tate hugged her mother and lifted her off the floor. The woman weighed nothing. Birdie gurgled out a laugh or a cry, and Tate set her down.
“I love it here,” Tate said.
Birdie cracked two eggs into the ancient blue ceramic bowl that she always made pancakes in here on Tuckernuck.
“Blueberry pancakes?” Birdie said.
“When I get back,” Tate said. “I’m going running.”
“Be careful,” Birdie said.
Tate took her coffee out to the picnic table to stretch. There was nothing to fear while running on Tuckernuck, but Tate liked hearing her mother say, Be careful. It would be nice to hear when she was in New York City, say, heading out to Central Park at five in the morning. Or when she was in Denver, where she nearly fainted from the altitude. Or Detroit, where she ran in the wrong direction and very quickly ended up in a sketchy part of town. Or San Diego, where she encountered a gang of drunken sailors wearing navy blue uniforms with white trim like nursery school children; they looked like they would have eaten her if they could have caught her.
Be careful!
She raced down the new stairs to the beach. She was ready to go! She took off.
The circumference of the island was five miles; it took Tate an hour to run it. It had been harder than she thought. It was rocky in some places, and it was swampy around North Pond, where she sank to the tops of her ankle socks. But for the most part, the run was magnificent and exhilarating. She saw two seals in the water off the western coast; she saw oystercatchers and piping plovers and flocks of terns. She saw two seagulls as big as terriers fighting over the remains of a beached bluefish. She wondered if the seagulls were sisters. One seagull would tug at the fish carcass while the other one squawked at her-her beak opening and closing, making a nearly human and definitely female protest. Then the other bird would peck at the fish and the first bird would yap like Edith Bunker. Back and forth they went, taking turns at eating, taking turns at complaining.
Just like that, Tate remembered something about the night before. She remembered Chess climbing into bed, throwing her arm over Tate, and asking, “Have you ever been in love?”
Tate had opened her eyes. It was very, very dark and she was confused. Then it came to her: Tuckernuck attic, Chess. Tate hadn’t responded to the question, but Chess must have sensed the answer was no. Or maybe Chess believed the answer was yes; after all, what did Chess know about the details of Tate’s life? Tate could be in love with the CEO of Kansas City Tool and Die, whom she had done hundreds of hours of work for this year; she could have been in love with the concierge at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, which was where she liked to stay when she was in Vegas. Tate came in contact with dozens of men daily; she took, on average, six flights a week. She could have fallen in love with the married father of four girls who sat next to her in first class on her way from Phoenix to Milwaukee, or the cute United Airlines pilot with the cleft chin.
But the answer was no, Tate had never been in love. She had never even been close. She had had a boyfriend in high school named Lincoln Brown. Lincoln Brown was the only black student in Tate’s graduating class. He was handsome, he was the cleanup batter for the baseball team, he was, like Tate, a computer whiz. Tate had loved Linc, yes, she had, but it was a brotherly love, it was a protective love, it was a proud love. (She was proud that Linc was black and she was white, she was proud that her parents didn’t care either way, she was proud to call a person who was so utterly fabulous her boyfriend.) She lost her virginity to Lincoln Brown and liked it. But she was not in love with Lincoln Brown. He was not her heart’s one desire.
There had been other guys in college-Tate’s taste ran to nerdy computer geeks and funny, outspoken fraternity guys-but these guys were for sex and goofing around only. She had not fallen in love with any of them.
She hadn’t fallen in love as an adult. Sometimes a man at Company X would hit on Tate as she was trying to work, and she would look up from the screen at so-and-so’s bland pudding face, his Van Heusen shirt and Charter Club tie and pleated-front pants, and she would think, Are you kidding me? I’m trying to fix your system here.
No, she had never been in love. But last night she had been too tired to say so. Plus, with Chess in her current condition, Tate feared it would sound like she was bragging.
At the end of her run, Tate raced up the beach stairs, pumping her arms like Rocky, expecting to find her mother and her sister sitting at the picnic table ready to indulge her in some applause-but the house was quiet. Tate, breathless, entered the kitchen. Her mother was juicing a crate of oranges by hand. Tate was so thirsty that she drank straight from the pitcher. Gross, she knew, and uncouth. If her aunt or Chess had been around, she would have exercised restraint, but being with her mother was like being with herself. Birdie didn’t scold and she didn’t sigh.
She said, “Isn’t it good?”
Tate needed a mother to squeeze her orange juice fresh each morning.
“Water?” Tate said.
Birdie pulled a bottle of water from the dinky fridge. “It’s been in there overnight and it’s still not cold,” she said. “Sorry. Barrett is bringing ice in a cooler today.”
Tate inhaled the water. She burped enthusiastically. The pancake batter was foaming in the blue ceramic bowl. “Everyone else asleep?”
“Asleep.”
Tate nodded as an unspoken understanding passed between her and her mother. It was nearly nine o’clock! How could anyone still be sleeping? Life was far superior when you enjoyed the top of the day.
She said, “I’m going outside to do my sit-ups.”
Birdie smiled. “Be careful.”
Tate hung by the knees from the longest, sturdiest branch of their one tree. She had visualized herself doing this back when she was in her air-conditioned state-of-the-art fitness center in Charlotte, but she’d really had no idea if the branch she was thinking of was going to be strong enough or high enough off the ground to make sit-ups feasible. She was delighted to find the branch was ideal. She pulled herself up once, up twice. Her abs were screaming in protest after five ups, and the juice and water churned in her stomach. After ten ups, the backs of her knees were sore from the abrading bark. She couldn’t do 150 sit-ups. She could maybe, with fortitude, do 25. But at 25, it was easier. She did 30, 32.
Then she heard a voice say, “Wow.”
She dropped back down to hang by her knees. Even upside-down, he was beautiful. Damn it. Her thighs were weak; her heart was encroaching on her throat. She grabbed the branch with both hands, inverted into a skin-the-cat, and hit the ground with a thud.
“Morning,” she said.
“I’m impressed,” Barrett said. He was staring at her in a way that made her sizzle. She worked out in a fitness center where the walls were made of mirrors; she knew how she looked. Sweaty, red faced, lank haired, bug eyed. And she smelled worse than that. But Barrett’s expression was bright and interested, she thought. She had him captive.
But quick, what to do with him?
“I ran around the island,” she said. Okay, that was bad. That sounded like bragging.
“The whole thing?” he said. “Really?”
She was out of breath. It was hard to sound adorable and fetching when she was panting like a Saint Bernard. “What you got there?” she asked. Though she knew it was a cooler filled with ice.
He said, “A cooler filled with ice.”
She said, “Can I lie down in it?”
He laughed and said, “You’d better not. It’s for your mother’s wine.”
They were both laughing. Barrett was wearing a darker pair of khaki shorts with blue gingham boxers peeking out from the bottom, and he wore a red T-shirt with a logo for Cisco beer. He wore a visor and flip-flops; his sunglasses hung around his neck by a blue foam strap. Every detail of Barrett Lee was endlessly fascinating. And now Tate knew that his wife had died. Tate found this romantic in some inexplicable way. And he had two little boys. He was a father. Was there anything sexier? When he turned toward the house, Tate stared at him. She had twenty-nine days left. Would she kiss him? Would she sleep with him? It seemed impossible, but what if the answer were yes?