“Until the end?” Tate said.
“It wasn’t even painful at the end,” Birdie said. “I just ran out of rope. I didn’t want to stay with your dad anymore. I wasn’t getting anything out of the marriage.”
Tate nodded. This felt like a conversation she should have had with her mother two years ago, but it had never happened. Tate hadn’t wanted to know what went wrong; she just wanted them to fix it.
“Grant was my big relationship. He was the co-president of the corporation of our life. But what I realized when I met Hank”-here, Birdie rested her chin on her tented knees-“was that there might be a chance to have another kind of relationship. A dessert, if you will. Hank already has his family, and I have mine; Hank is finished with his career. We both have money. All that remains is possibility: ten, twenty, thirty years to enjoy life with someone. I never got to enjoy life with your father because we were so damn busy. Hank likes all the same things that I like-he cooks, he gardens, he enjoys the same music and the same wine. And that is what makes my love for him so terrible. I don’t want to gallivant about with just anyone. It has to be Hank. Before I came here, we were inseparable. I cried when we parted, and he cried, too. But now… I’m losing him.” When she looked at Tate, her eyes were watery. “Oh, honey. I feel like a girl.”
“That’s okay,” Tate said. “That’s good, Mom.” Tate did think it was good. Her mother was in love, she was feeling things. Her mother was a woman, a human being: Had Tate ever really considered this? Does anyone think this way about her own mother-that she’s a person with desires and longings and tender, aching spots? Tate had always fiercely loved her mother, but had she ever known her?
Tate walked to the waterline. Birdie followed. Tate picked up a rock and threw it the way she’d seen Chess do.
“Barrett Lee,” she said.
Birdie bent down and picked up a rock the size and shape of an egg. She threw it, and it plunked a few yards offshore.
“Hank,” she said.
Were they getting rid of the men? Tate wondered. Or beckoning them?
Birdie said, “I should have thrown my phone.”
Birdie headed back to the house; she didn’t want Chess and India to worry, she said. Neither of them knew where she was.
“Your secret is safe with me,” Tate said.
“And yours with me,” Birdie said. “If it makes you feel any better, I had a terrific crush on Chuck Lee when I was a girl.”
“On Chuck?” Tate said. “Really? You did?”
“And so did India,” Birdie said. “It’s like everything cycles through: Tate women with crushes on Lee men, generation after generation.”
After Birdie was gone, Tate lay on her towel in the sun. Her mother was in love with Hank. This felt like something she and Chess could whisper about in the dark nighttime attic-but Tate didn’t want to share her mother’s confidence. As Tate drifted off to sleep, she thought back to when her mother had lost those two pregnancies. She remembered her mother in the hospital at least once; what she remembered was that their father had given them chocolate ice cream for dinner, and when Tate told her mother, in the hospital, that Daddy had given them chocolate ice cream for dinner, her mother had cried. Tate hadn’t eaten chocolate ice cream since. Tate had been pretty young, four or five, and she didn’t remember anyone explaining what had happened, although perhaps her father or Aunt India had tried, because it was right around that time that Tate began to pray fervently for another brother or sister. She had even asked Santa to bring one on Christmas Eve. And then, when no new sibling appeared, Tate invented one-she alternated between a brother named Jaysen (spelled just that way) and a sister named Molly. Tate marveled: she hadn’t thought about Jaysen or Molly in a long, long time. The important thing, Tate remembered, was that Jaysen and/or Molly was her very best friend, devoted solely to her. The Jaysen and Molly of Tate’s imagination didn’t even know Chess existed.
Tate awoke to the sound of a boat motor. She opened her eyes and propped herself on her elbows. Barrett Lee’s boat had come up the gut into the pond. She heard a second noise, small music, a faraway tune, something familiar. Her iPod was on at her feet. It was playing “Glory Days.”
She grabbed the iPod and shut it off, grateful for the distraction from the main event: Barrett Lee in his boat. Here? She looked out to where her stone had finally submerged; he was closer than that now.
She had to wake up.
She drank what was left of her lemonade. It was warm and sour. She was awake; this was real. Barrett anchored the boat, jumped over the side, and waded in. Tate stared at him.
He said, “They told me you were here.”
She couldn’t risk saying the wrong thing. She waited.
“Listen, I have this thing tomorrow night. It’s a dinner party thrown by that client of mine I told you about. The party is at her house in Brant Point. It’ll be pretty fancy. Would you like to go with me?”
“Yes,” Tate said. The word slipped out on its own, without her permission. The mind was the world’s fastest computer. So many thoughts in an instant, overlapping, colliding thoughts, thoughts without words. A dinner party with Barrett. Yes. Anywhere with Barrett. Did it matter that he had asked Chess first? That Tate was his second choice and everyone would know it? It did matter, but not enough to turn him down. She would never turn Barrett Lee down.
“Yes?” he said. He sounded surprised. He had expected, maybe, to strike out with both Cousins girls.
“I’d love to,” she said. “You’ll come get me?”
“At six,” he said. “Tomorrow night at six. The thing is…”
“What?” Tate said.
“I can’t bring you back until morning,” he said. “By the time the dinner party is over, it will be too late. So you’ll have to stay with me. I’ll bring you back Sunday morning. Early, in time for you to run, I promise.”
In time for her to run. Okay, that was sweet. That was thoughtful. He knew who he was asking out.
“I’ll stay at your house?” she said.
“My house,” he said. “Is that okay?”
“It’s okay,” she said.
“That’s the only thing about dating a Tuckernuck girl,” he said. “No way to get her home at night.”
A Tuckernuck girl.
They said other things, small talk: Good-bye. See you tomorrow. It’s dressy, I think. I’m wearing a sport coat. Tate didn’t remember exactly. Her thoughts were with the God of Tuckernuck. She was before him, clasping his hands in thanks. Kissing his feet.
INDIA
When Barrett appeared in the afternoon, he had a letter for India.
“Mail call,” he said.
This was highly unusual. Grant used to receive mail, of course, documents that needed his signature; these were FedExed to Chuck Lee, and then Chuck Lee would bring them over on his boat and hand them to Grant with a withering look. Receiving mail was understood to be an infraction against the Tuckernuck lifestyle. There was supposed to be no mail, no phone calls, no communication with the outside world. India had been raised in this tradition. And yet, she couldn’t just fall off the face of the earth for thirty days. She had left the address of Barrett’s caretaking business with her three sons and with her assistant, Ainslie. She had been clear: Use the address only in case of emergency. The sight of Barrett waggling the envelope, therefore, inspired worry, which quickly morphed into fear.
Her first thought was, The baby.