He held out the other bag. “And four rib-eye steaks, a head of butter lettuce, champagne vinegar, a wedge of Maytag blue cheese, and a book of crossword puzzles.”
“God bless you,” India said.
Barrett said, “I’ll take it all up. Madame, can I put your flowers in water?”
Tate hopped to her feet. “I’ll come with you.”
Chess, who Tate thought was napping, raised her head off her towel and said, “I think I’m going to puke.”
Tate couldn’t stop thanking him. “They’re beautiful,” she said. “They’re gorgeous. You didn’t have to do this.”
“I wanted to.”
She buried her face in the flowers and inhaled their scent. Did it get any better than this? Did it? The man she was newly in love with had just brought her flowers. They could get married, she supposed, and have children together, but would she be any happier then than she was right this second?
“I want you to look at them and think of me. And know I’m thinking of you. Even when I’m changing Anita Fullin’s lightbulbs.”
In the kitchen, he put the groceries away and she unwrapped the flowers, cut their stems, and placed them in a jug filled with water. He grabbed her. They were in the house alone.
“Do you want to go upstairs?” Tate asked. She filled with a nervous kind of daring. Never in a million years did she think she would be having clandestine sex in the Tuckernuck house. No doubt the house had seen its share of conjugal relations-her mother and father’s, Aunt India and Uncle Bill’s, her grandparents’, her great-grandparents’, for God’s sake. That kind of sex was necessary and sustaining, the kind that created future generations who would then enjoy the house themselves. But the Tuckernuck house wasn’t built for sex that was wild and secret; the walls were thin and the floors unsteady. If a bed started to rock, it might crash through the floor.
Barrett said, “I have a better idea.”
He took her for a ride in his boat. Tate had feared he would invite Chess along, or even Birdie and India, but what he said was, “I’m going to steal Tate away for a little while.” And they hopped in and sped off. Chess, India, and Birdie stared after them with naked longing.
Tate felt guilty for about thirty seconds; then exhilaration kicked in. She loved being out on the water, in the sun, with the wind in her face. They zipped around Tuckernuck, waving to the people they saw on the shore. Life is good! They cruised over to Muskeget, an island even smaller than Tuckernuck that had only two houses. Muskeget was home to a colony of seals; there were some lounging on the rocky shores, and Barrett pulled in close enough that Tate could practically touch them. She was excited to see the seals, more excited than she would be under other circumstances. (In fact, she remembered Barrett’s father taking them on a “seal cruise” when Tate was twelve or thirteen. She had been unimpressed then, filled with adolescent ennui and a touch of disgust-the seals smelled!)
Barrett motored back to Tuckernuck, to the remote northeast coast, to a tiny crescent of beach at the top of East Pond that Tate didn’t even know existed, and he cut the engine. He anchored. He took off his shirt.
“Come on,” he said. “We’re swimming in.”
And they did. They raced. Tate loved this kind of companionship, this playfulness. She nearly beat him, she was a good swimmer, but he flopped onto shore a second before her, and before she could even catch her breath, he was on top of her. They made love in the sand.
They rinsed off in the water-sand was everywhere-and lay back in the sun.
Tate said, “There are all these things I want to know.”
Barrett said, “Take it easy on me.”
Tate said, “How did you meet Stephanie?”
Barrett sighed. “I’m not a good talker. Especially not about Steph.”
“Just answer the question,” Tate said. “Please?”
“We worked together at the Boarding House,” he said. “Waiting tables.”
“You waited tables?”
“Three summers. The first two summers were uneventful. The third summer was Stephanie.”
“She grew up on Nantucket?”
“Quincy, Mass. Irish Catholic. Five brothers and her. Her parents have a cottage in Chatham. She used to work summers in Chatham, at the Squire, but she came to Nantucket one year because the money was better.” He reached out and touched Tate’s face. “Can I be done?”
“I want to know you,” she said.
He pressed his lips together, and Tate feared she’d messed up. He whispered in her ear. “Will you come back with me tonight? Spend the night at my house? Please?”
She swooned. Yes! But no, she couldn’t. She couldn’t abandon her mother and Aunt India. She couldn’t abandon Chess; they had just moved one baby step forward.
“I want to,” she said. “But I can’t. I have to stay with my family. They need me.”
“I need you.”
“They need me more.”
“More than me?”
“I think so.”
INDIA
India was sleeping at night.
It was a miracle. The first night she had been exhausted from traveling, but then she slept just as soundly the second night, then the third night, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth. She lay down on her gelatinous mattress, surrounded herself with the new, firm pillows Birdie had ordered from a catalog, and let the angels carry her away, just as she had when she was a child in this house, then a teenager (she’d slept until noon in those days), then a young wife and mother alongside Bill. She slept for long, luxurious, uninterrupted hours and awoke with the sun streaming in the windows and dust motes dancing in the air and the smell of bacon and the sound of Birdie downstairs humming Linda Ronstadt. And India felt triumphant, as proud of herself as if she’d run a sub-four-hour marathon.
Was I wrong about you?
The letter from Lula hadn’t disrupted India’s sleep. She had feared it might; she feared she would toss and turn, rolling the stupid question around in her mind like an obsidian marble, black and impenetrable. But India lay down, prepared for the worst, and was escorted to the twilight blue waiting room where she loitered in half consciousness until she was whisked to the inner chamber of sleep.
During the day, however, India was restless. She picked at the meaning of the question, she composed possible responses, she revisited the events of the spring until she feared for their veracity. Had all that really happened, or was India embellishing it? She was preoccupied; she couldn’t relax.
Which left her on an equal footing with everybody else.
India took a walk, not to the northwest, where Birdie and Tate liked to go, but to the northeast, past East Pond. This was India’s first venture off the property since they’d been here; she was lazy when it came to exercise, always had been, and the cigarettes punished her lungs with a creeping burn. But India used to be fond of this walk-it was sweet with lilac and honeysuckle. She passed the house owned by the pilot, who kept a Cessna parked in his yard like a car. There was a woman of a certain age in the yard, deadheading daylilies. She waved to India and said, “Life is good!”
“Life is good!” India called back, cringing internally. She and Birdie had been taught as children to always use the proper Tuckernuck greeting, but it made India feel like a dipshit. India picked up her pace so as not to get caught up in an unexpected visit.
She was on a mission, of sorts.
She passed the old schoolhouse, with its white clapboard siding. India could almost hear the schoolmarm slapping her ruler down on the desks. It had been refurbished as a private home, but for a long while it had stood abandoned, and once, years earlier, India and Bill had broken in and made love in the classroom. The room had smelled like chalk dust.
Bill had said, “I’m going to teach you a thing or two.”