What if the answer were yes?
“Good morning.” At that very second, Chess stepped out of the house wearing a white eyelet nightie and the blue crocheted cap. Barrett’s color heightened, and when he spoke, his voice was husky.
“Hey, Chess. How goes it?”
Chess was holding two plates of blueberry pancakes.
“One of these is for you,” she said.
“For me?” Barrett said.
“Birdie insists,” Chess said.
“Okay,” Barrett said. “Let me set this down.”
Tate watched in horror as Barrett hurriedly placed the cooler in the shade of the house and settled at the picnic table with Chess. What was Birdie thinking? Birdie was supposed to be on Tate’s team, the early riser team. But she had made pancakes for Barrett and Chess? This was wrong. This was, day one, off on the wrong foot. Chess had taken a seat at the far end of the picnic table from Barrett and on the opposite side. If it were Tate, she would have sat right next to him; she would have fed him his pancakes. Barrett asked Chess what she did for a living.
Chess said, “Well, I was the food editor at Glamorous Home, but I quit.”
“Did you do any writing?” Barrett asked. “I remember back when you were at Colchester, you said you wanted to write.”
He remembered that from thirteen years ago? Tate tried not to panic. Barrett Lee was the person from Tate’s past who evoked the deepest and most poignant longing-but what if that person, for Barrett, was Chess? What if even as Barrett got married and had children, he had been thinking of Chess, wondering about her, pining for her? What if, in the nights after his wife passed away and he was left a lonely widower, he had thought of Mary Francesca Cousins, the Tuckernuck two-week-a-summer girl with the beautiful body and the grouchy father and the big, thick novels? What if when Birdie called him up in the spring to say, Fix up the house, Chess and I are coming, his heart had leaped with anticipation, just the way Tate’s heart had leaped when Birdie said the name “Barrett Lee”? What if Barrett Lee’s feelings mirrored Tate’s own except that they were for the wrong sister?
She watched them eat. She didn’t know what to do. She smelled smoke and looked up and saw India framed in the upstairs window like a picture on an Advent calendar. She was holding a cigarette. It was a momentarily distracting thought: India still smoked. (Tate remembered India and Uncle Bill smoking when she and Chess were children. They smoked in an elegant way; it went with the fact that they vacationed in Majorca and went to parties in Soho lofts and knew famous people like Roy Lichtenstein and Liza Minnelli.) But now India was smoking inside the Tuckernuck house, which was a pile of tinder and which would absorb the smell of her cigarettes and hold on to it for the next seventy-five years. Birdie was going to have an aneurysm. Tate nearly shouted this up to India, but India wouldn’t give a shit.
Tate was also quieted by the way India was looking down on the three of them, by the way she seemed to see exactly what was happening. She was connecting the dots to make… a love triangle.
Tate was angry now. She announced, in a loud voice, that she was going to shower.
Chess and Barrett both looked up at her. She smiled. She said, “Chess, would you be a doll and get me one of those yummy new towels that Birdie bought?”
Chess said, “Okay, in a minute.”
Tate said, “Please? I’m a dirt sandwich. I need to hop in right now.” She strode over to the outdoor shower and enclosed herself inside. The outdoor shower had the same picket walls with eighth-inch gaps between each board, and a slatted “floor,” which was a pallet set in the grass. The showerhead and knobs were frosted with mineral deposits. Tate turned on the water, and out came a fine spray of cold.
“Whoo-hoooo!” she screamed. “It’s freezing!”
Barrett said, “Ah, the joys of Tuckernuck living.”
Tate could see him pivot on the bench of the picnic table, looking her way now. Imagining her nude and wet? Could he see the shape of her through the gaps in the wood? Had she done it? Had she trumped Chess?
Chess reappeared and flipped one of the fluffy new polka-dot towels over the side of the shower. “There.”
“Thanks, lovey!” Tate said. “How about shampoo? Or a sliver of Irish Spring? There’s nothing in here.”
“Forget it,” Chess said. “Birdie might be your slave, but I’m not.” She picked up her plate and headed for the kitchen.
“You barely touched your food,” Barrett said.
“I need soap!” Tate cried out, but no one was listening.
Chess said, “I don’t have much of an appetite these days.”
Barrett said, “Yeah, I know what that’s like.”
Chess nodded once, curtly, then disappeared into the house. Barrett looked after her. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. He worked on his plate of pancakes. He had forgotten about Tate in the shower.
Tate leaned her head back and let the water flow over her face. Barrett was a lost cause. But Tate loved him. She couldn’t make herself stop.
She emerged from the shower wrapped in the towel, her hair wet and sleek. At that second, Chess emerged from the house with a bar of soap.
“Here you go,” she said.
“I’m done,” Tate said. She sat down at the picnic table next to Barrett.
“Aren’t you going to put clothes on?” Chess asked.
“Aren’t you?” Tate asked.
They glared at each other.
Barrett stood up with his syrup-smeared plate. “Those were good pancakes,” he said. “Do either of you ladies need anything from the big island?”
Tate smelled smoke again. She looked up. Aunt India waved.
INDIA
Bill was everywhere on this island. She heard his voice, smelled the smoke from his cigarettes and the lime from his gin and tonic. She saw him from behind on the beach-his hair dark as it used to be before it thinned and grayed, his back and arms strong enough to carry one or another of the boys piggyback. She could even picture his bathing suit-fluorescent orange trunks. Those trunks had been loud. Jesus, Bill, turn down your bathing suit! I can’t hear myself think!
He had been happy here, on Tuckernuck, for the two weeks that they stayed each summer. He, unlike Grant, had loved being unplugged. No dealers calling, no deadlines looming, no pressure to be a great artist. Here, he was a father. He built the bonfires, he whittled the marshmallow sticks, he told the ghost stories (always with ridiculous, goofy endings so the kids wouldn’t go to bed scared). He organized footraces and gin rummy tournaments and nature walks. He gave driving lessons in the Scout. He collected shells and driftwood and beach glass and made things from them (because he couldn’t stop being an artist). He had made the sculpture they called “Roger” for India the day after a terrible fight. The fight had emerged from India’s happiness rather than from her unhappiness. This was right when Bill’s sickness began to present itself in a way that she could no longer ignore. On Tuckernuck, Bill was relaxed and unfettered. He was able to laugh and to be her lover. They made love on the squishy mattress (filled with jelly, they used to joke), they made love out of doors-on the beach, in the Scout, at the end of the dirt road, and once, recklessly, in the old schoolhouse. Why couldn’t Bill be like this at home? India had asked. She was crying. She was so happy here, right now, like this! And at home, in their real life, things were miserable.