“Oh,” Chess said. She wasn’t sure she could switch gears and talk about Barrett. “Because of something that happened a long time ago.”
Tate crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue. She was so childish sometimes, as emotionally crippled as a teenage boy. Tate was her sister, her love was unconditional, but the reality was tough: Tate didn’t possess the maturity or understanding to handle the things that Chess wanted to tell her. Tate was a computer person, not a literary person; for Tate, something either worked or it didn’t. She wasn’t interested in situations that were complex or morally ambiguous. She didn’t want to hear what had happened between Barrett and Chess thirteen years earlier; for Tate, the past was the past, and what was the point of revisiting it? Tate wasn’t evolved enough to understand how, in many ways, the past revealed things. Tate was only concerned with the past few hours, today, tomorrow, her and Barrett Lee together. She was floating, and Chess didn’t want to wield the needle that would pop her balloon.
“You’re going to have fun,” Chess said. “I think you and Barrett will be a much better match.”
“Yes,” Tate said. “We will be.”
BIRDIE
At two o’clock in the morning, she found herself awake.
She had gone to bed at ten o’clock as usual, after dinner and several glasses of wine and an hour or two spent needlepointing a stocking for India’s grandson.
She had asked India, “Are you excited about becoming a grandmother?”
They were sitting together on the screened-in porch. India was smoking her hundredth cigarette and drinking, she claimed, her eleventh glass of wine. She was drunk and waxing poetic. “I don’t think anyone is excited to become a grandmother, heralding as it does the fact that one is officially old. It’s hard to think of one’s self as a sex symbol when one is a grandmother, right? I mean, where did our lives go? It seemed like we were teenagers forever, and then we were young wives and then we were mothers, and then there was that interminable time when the kids were growing up and Bill and I were focused on building his career and taking care of the house and making it all work, and then Bill died, and there was a long stretch of mourning and then me picking myself up and getting on with my life, and for about five minutes, it seemed, I was free and independent and insanely productive, and now all of a sudden, it’s over. I’m going to be a grandmother.” She blew out a stream of smoke. “But yes, I think once it happens, I’ll be excited.”
Birdie said, “Well, I’m excited to become a grandparent someday.”
India said, not unkindly, “Oh, Birdie, of course you are.”
Hank was a grandparent, Birdie thought, and he loved it. He was involved in his grandchildren’s lives. He took them on outings to the Stew Leonard dairy and the children’s museum in Norwalk. He picked them up from school every Tuesday.
Birdie sighed. She would like to go just ten minutes, just five minutes, without thinking about Hank. This would only happen, she realized, once she had a nice, long, meaningful conversation with the man. She craved this conversation physically, the way she craved food or nicotine. Tate had made a good point that afternoon: Birdie was calling Hank at a consistently bad time. And so, Birdie thought, she would ambush him. If she woke up in the middle of the night, she would get out of bed, walk to Bigelow Point with the aid of a flashlight, and call Hank then. The idea had wormed its way into Birdie’s subconscious, and voilà!-she woke up.
She felt her way down the stairs. She had left her cell phone and a flashlight next to each other on the counter. She gripped them both. She found her sandals. She slipped outside.
Okay, she thought, as she headed down the dirt path, she was certifiable. Here she was at two o’clock in the morning walking across Tuckernuck to Bigelow Point. She should have taken the Scout, but she was afraid the sound of the engine would wake India and the girls.
There was a waxing gibbous moon, which brightened her way considerably. Birdie shined the flashlight beam at the trail. She wasn’t afraid of wild animals, but she was afraid of tripping on a root or a stone and breaking her leg, or stepping into an unexpected hole and twisting her ankle. She proceeded cautiously, stopping every once in a while to look at Tuckernuck Island in the depths of night. It was starkly beautiful-the trail and surrounding low brush shone in the moonlight.
A simple world. Her complicated heart. She kept going.
It seemed a long way, and at one point, Birdie feared she was lost. Then she approached Adeliza Coffin’s house-even in the moonlight, it was dark and sinister. Her grandparents had told stories about Adeliza standing on her doorstep with a shotgun, scaring away those who dared to trespass on Tuckernuck’s hallowed acres. “She was a formidable woman,” Birdie’s grandfather had said, though it was unclear if he’d known her personally or was simply recounting legend. Birdie hurried past Adeliza’s house-as children, she and India had held their breath and plugged their noses. The good news about Adeliza Coffin’s house was that it was the last landmark before the water. Birdie kept going, and soon she heard waves and saw water sparkling in front of her like a smooth silk sheet. She stepped onto the slender spit of land that contained North Pond: Bigelow Point.
The tide was high. The tip of the point was covered by water. How high was the water? Birdie was in her nightgown, a simple white cotton affair that came to her knees. And she was wearing underwear. India slept in the nude; when she wandered the house, she put on a silk kimono but wore nothing underneath. India couldn’t cross Tuckernuck at night.
Birdie stepped into the water on the ocean side. It was warm, warmer than the air. She waded out toward the tip of the point, and when the water encroached, she lifted her nightgown. The water was at midthigh. The water was so warm, Birdie felt the urge to pee. She would satisfy her urges one at a time, starting with the most important. The most important was Hank.
She called Hank at home. He would be sleeping, but he kept a phone right by his bed in case someone from the facility called about Caroline. Hank was a light sleeper. In the times that they had spent the night together, Birdie never failed to wake him when she rose to use the bathroom or startled from a dream. When the phone rang, Hank would hear it. Hank would answer it.
The phone rang. Four times, five, six, seven. Then there was a clicking noise. It was Hank’s voice on the answering machine. Birdie hung up.
She called right back, praying, Please, Hank, wake up, pick up.
Again, the machine. Birdie called back again. It was the middle of the night. He might be fast, fast asleep, in the deep REM stage, where he heard the phone but thought it was part of his dream.
Again. Again. Again.
Birdie tried his cell phone next. It was quarter past three. There was no reason for Hank to be out at this hour, no way, but he might have been doing sleepover babysitting duty for Nathan or Cassandra.
Hank didn’t answer his cell phone. Birdie called four times. Then, she called his house again, and when the machine picked up she left a message. She said, “Goddamn it, Hank.” And then she hung up.
Goddamn it, Hank: not very eloquent, but it got her point across. She was tired of this. She wanted to talk to him.
She realized the water was getting higher, and in her frenzy to get ahold of Hank she had dropped the hem of her nightgown and now it was soaked. And her underwear was wet; the water was that high. This being the case, Birdie peed, sweet release, then wondered if her urine would draw sharks. The beach looked far away; she might have to swim, which would leave her drenched from head to toe in the middle of the night two miles from home. And in swimming to shore, she would ruin her cell phone. She started to cry-not because she was wet or afraid of sharks, not even because she was bone-crushingly tired. She cried because of Hank.