Tate stopped in the bathroom for deodorant and lotion. And there, out the bathroom window, she saw Chess and Barrett leaning against the front of the Scout. They were facing the water, not looking at each other. There was no reason for them to be out by the Scout except that the Scout was on the far side of the house, out of view and earshot of anyone in the kitchen or eating at the picnic table. Tate knew she shouldn’t, but she spied mercilessly. The bathroom window was open and she could hear their voices, but she couldn’t quite make out what they were saying.
Then Barrett turned to face Chess and he said, “You’re sure?”
She said something back, but the words were lost to the wind and the ocean. Barrett walked away.
He’d asked her out.
Tate scowled at herself in the dingy mirror. It wasn’t fair. Chess had won again, and the thing that pissed Tate off and demoralized her at the same time was that Chess wasn’t trying. She looked like Telly Savalas, she was bald, for God’s sake, and yet Barrett was still attracted to her. Meanwhile, Tate was athletic and smiling and happy and a gung ho positive life force. Tate weighed 111 pounds, she was tan, and she had straight white teeth. Tate was gainfully employed in the world economy’s leading industry. This summer, Tate was the better choice. Could he not see that?
Is she all right?
Yes, Aunt India, I’m fine, Tate thought as she stepped into her bikini. Except for where my sister is concerned.
When she descended to the kitchen with her backpack (containing lotion, her iPod-which she had not listened to since she’d arrived-two towels, and the Tuckernuck house copy of John Irving’s Cider House Rules, which Tate had read already but would happily read again because she knew she liked it), Birdie, Aunt India, and Chess were all sitting around the “dining room table,” ostensibly reading the newspaper. But Tate could tell they were waiting for her. She decided to pounce on them before they could pounce on her.
“Nobody needs the Scout, right?” she said. “I’m going to take it to North Pond and hang out there today.”
“I’ll go with you,” India said. “I haven’t gone anywhere yet, my bones are so lazy.”
“I’d like to go alone,” Tate said. They all stared at her. “I need some me-myself time.”
Birdie said, “Tate, is something the matter?”
She didn’t like being put on the spot like this. “Can I plead the Fifth on that?”
Birdie said, “By all means. Let’s all plead the Fifth on everything while we’re here and have a very quiet and unproductive month. And then when we get back to the mainland, we’ll be seething with all the things we’ve kept inside.” Tate was taken aback. She looked at Chess, who had her forehead in her hands.
Tate said, “It’s not a big deal, Mom. Would you mind packing me a picnic?”
Chess made a kind of snorting noise, perhaps indicating that she found the request for a picnic audacious, because their mother was neither Tate’s personal chef nor her slave. (They were sisters; Tate could read her mind to the word.) But Tate didn’t take the bait.
Birdie said, “I will, if you’ll apologize to your aunt about being rude on the stairs.”
Tate looked at India. “I’m sorry,” she said.
India waved a hand. “Accepted.”
When Birdie stood up, Tate sat down in her chair, and Birdie brought her a plate of eggs and the brittle bacon and a glass of fresh-squeezed juice and a buttery English muffin, and then she clattered around in the kitchen making a picnic for Tate. Chess rested her face on the table, and India read the paper and smoked a cigarette. Tate was getting used to the smell.
She said, “I hope you’re not offended that I want to go alone?”
India said, “Heavens, no. I can go tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day. Or the day after that.”
Birdie said, “Are you absolutely certain that you want to go to North Pond?”
“Yep,” Tate said.
“Because the undertow is bad there,” Birdie said.
“It’s a pond, Mom,” Tate said.
Chess said nothing, but Tate didn’t care.
Barrett had asked Chess on a date, but Tate wouldn’t think about it.
The Scout was a magic vehicle; it could deliver her to a different frame of mind. Tate drove the dirt roads very slowly, because she enjoyed the ride and because someone from the homeowners’ association would complain about any vehicle topping eight miles per hour. Tate parked out at North Pond and then hiked to the end of Bigelow Point. The sand was golden and granular, and even on the ocean side, the water was clear to the bottom and as warm as bathwater. Tate spread out her towel and put in her earbuds. She listened to “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” “For You,” “Viva Las Vegas,” “Atlantic City,” “Pink Cadillac,” and “The Promised Land.” There wasn’t another soul for miles. It was liberating, being so alone. Tate went for a swim on the ocean side; she swam a couple of hundred yards, then a couple of hundred yards farther. She was a quarter mile out; she could see the entire west coast of the island. The water was calm and Tate was tempted to go even farther. But there were sharks out here. Well, there was an occasional shark, one sighted every forty years or so. As Tate treaded water, her legs felt tingly and vulnerable. She was angry, yes, and she was jealous. She loved Barrett, but Barrett loved Chess. Still, Tate didn’t want to get eaten by a shark. She loved life too much. She loved Bruce Springsteen and her mother’s cooking. She loved running on the beach and driving the Scout. She loved sleeping in the hot attic and she loved her sister. Yes, she did; it was undeniable. The bitch crawled into bed with her every night, and every morning Tate woke up happy to find here there.
She swam back to shore.
She read the first few pages of Cider House Rules, but then she tired of it. She had never been a great reader; she had never been able to concentrate and think about what the words meant and what subtext might be lurking between the lines. Reading, for Tate, was too much work. Chess thought this was a flaw in her personality. But Tate hadn’t had any of the good high school English teachers, and Chess had had them all. Chess read all the time. She owned thousands of books-her “library,” she called it-she read the fiction in the New Yorker and the Atlantic Monthly. She had poems taped to her bathroom mirror in her apartment in New York. She was that kind of person, but Tate wasn’t. Tate liked computers, she liked flashing screens, information made clear and interesting with pictures. Click on this link and the screen changed, click on that link and you were somewhere completely new. The Internet was alive, it was an animal that Tate had trained, it was a planet where she had learned the terrain. The world was at her fingertips. Who needed books?
She used Cider House Rules as a pillow.
But she wasn’t tired, and lying in the sun gave her too much time to think. She didn’t want to think.
Barrett had asked Chess out on a date. It looked like Chess had said no. But she hadn’t said no out of loyalty to her sister. She’d said no because she didn’t feel like going out with Barrett and having fun. Fun was beyond her.
Tate pulled out the picnic Birdie had packed her: a mozzarella and tomato sandwich with pesto that had grown warm and melty in the sun, a bag of potato chips, a plum, a Tupperware of raspberries and blueberries, a bottle of lemonade, a brownie. Tate thought about how much she loved her mother and how perfect it would be if Birdie agreed to come live with her. Even for just a month or two in the winter. Charlotte never got really cold, not like the Northeast. It rarely snowed. Tate’s condo complex kept the outdoor pool heated; her mother could swim laps in January. But Tate was never home; she was always on the road. Her mother would grow bored in Charlotte; she would have no friends and little to do. Tate’s apartment didn’t have a garden. It barely had furniture; Tate owned a fifty-two-inch flat-screen TV and a queen-size futon that sat on the floor in front of the TV. Tate couldn’t imagine Birdie spending one night in the condo in Charlotte in its current condition. Birdie and Grant had come to Charlotte once, a couple of years earlier, when Tate first moved there. Tate’s parents had stayed in a Marriott and the three of them had eaten dinner at a steak house whose name Tate couldn’t remember. Tate’s connection to Charlotte was tenuous. Maybe she should move someplace else. Las Vegas appealed-all those flashing lights.