She took another bite of her sandwich, savoring it. After “all that had happened,” Chess had lost interest in food. Food became gray, just like everything else. It was sad, but Chess couldn’t bring herself to care. The return of her sense of taste, today, right now, was something not to herald with excitement but rather to coax gently along.
The prednisone, though, was kicking in. Chess ripped open her bag of chips and had to keep herself from inhaling them. She guzzled her iced tea.
She said, “Is everything okay with Tate?”
“Do we want to talk about Tate?” Barrett asked.
“Should we not?” Chess said. There was something about her face-under the shiny force field of the ointment-that made her feel safe. “Maybe we shouldn’t.”
They were quiet. Chess ate carefully. Because her upper lip was swollen, she couldn’t chew normally. Bits of food fell out of her mouth onto her nightgown.
“Things were so good there for a while,” Barrett said. “Now they’ve gotten weird.”
“Weird?”
“Confusing.”
“How so?” Chess asked.
“My client Anita Fullin-the one who came to look at your house?-wants to hire me full time. Which would mean I couldn’t work for you anymore. Well, I could probably work tomorrow and maybe the next day, but then I’d have to subcontract someone to take care of you and the rest of my clients until you found a new caretaker while I worked for Anita.”
“Is that what you want?” Chess asked. “To work for Anita?”
“God, no,” Barrett said. “Not at all. But she has a stranglehold on me financially. I can’t turn down what she’s offering.”
“Tate knows about this?”
“She doesn’t think I should take the job. I’m not sure she understands the position I’m in.”
“She’s crazy about you,” Chess said.
“I’m crazy about her,” Barrett said.
“Are you in love?”
He winced. It was unfair of her, putting him on the spot. She said, “You don’t have to answer.”
“It’s too soon to tell,” he said. “But yes.” He reddened, took a bite of his sandwich, then looked across the water at the coast of Tuckernuck. “I don’t know what I’m going to do about it, though. She’s leaving in another week. I can’t offer to go with her. I can’t uproot the kids.”
“You could ask her to stay,” Chess said. She drank some more iced tea. “You know what, this is none of my business.”
“It’s okay,” Barrett said.
“Tate would hate it if she knew we were talking about her.”
Barrett ignored this. “I’d ask her to stay, but what if she stays and she’s not happy?”
“She’ll leave.”
“I have to think of the kids. I can’t invite her into their lives and then have her walk out.”
“Well, whatever you do, be careful with her,” Chess said. “This is the first time I’ve known Tate to be serious about anyone. I don’t want to see her get hurt.”
Barrett crumpled the plastic from his sandwich. “I’d never hurt her intentionally.”
Right, Chess thought. But people rarely hurt each other intentionally.
Barrett’s phone rang. “Goddamn it,” he said.
TATE
When she arrived home from her run and discovered that Barrett had taken Chess to the hospital for her poison ivy, she felt psychotically jealous.
“Why did she need to go to the hospital?” Tate said. “Why didn’t she just put calamine on it?”
“It was gruesome,” Birdie said. “Her whole face, her neck, her arms, all covered. She had it in her ears. Her eyes were swollen shut into slits. She was scratching until it bled. Calamine wasn’t going to be enough.”
Well, then, why didn’t they wait for me to get back? Tate wanted to ask. I would have gone with them. Helped out. But this was immature and unreasonable. The poison ivy was a quasi-emergency. Of course they weren’t going to wait around for Tate. Barrett did the right thing. But Tate was consumed with jealousy, new and old. She lay on her towel at the beach, scanning the horizon for Barrett’s boat, wondering where they were, what they were doing, when they would be back. It was nearly two o’clock. They had left five and a half hours ago. Were they still at the hospital? Had they gone somewhere else? Had they gone to Barrett’s house? Tate’s stomach churned. She remembered back thirteen years to that lunch with Barrett at the picnic table. How many times had he looked at Chess with naked longing? He had screwed up his courage to ask her on a date. If Chess hadn’t puked off the back of the boat, they might have kissed. They might have become a couple that summer. Even this summer, Barrett had asked Chess out first. Why? Tate had never asked him; she had just been content to be the one he ended up with. But now Tate wanted to know. Had Barrett asked Chess out first because Birdie pushed him to, or were there vestiges of old feelings that remained? Was Chess the one he really wanted?
“How bad did she look?” Tate asked. “Did she look really bad?”
“Perfectly awful,” Birdie said.
They didn’t get back until four o’clock. Tate was standing on the beach with her hands on her hips, waiting for them. Barrett pulled the boat up, anchored it, and helped Chess down into the water. She said something; he laughed. Then he said something and she laughed. She laughed. Tate was in danger of displaying her anger in a really inappropriate way. She tried to rein herself in. Chess did look atrocious-she was still in her nightgown and those god-awful shorts and their grandfather’s hat. As Chess waded in to shore, Tate could see that her face was a disaster area. It had been colonized by poison ivy.
Tate didn’t get poison ivy. To Chess, this might seem unfair.
Tate said, “Jesus.”
Chess said, “Well, you aren’t going to win any sensitivity awards.”
Barrett had a bag of groceries and a bag of ice. He waded in, staring at his feet.
Tate said, “So you’re okay? They treated you at the hospital?”
“I got a shot,” Chess said. “And some ointment.” She held up a white pharmacist’s bag for Tate to see. “I’m going up.”
Barrett stopped in front of Tate. “Hey,” he said. “How are you?”
“Me?” Tate said. “Oh, I’m fine.”
“Listen,” he said. “I’m going to take that job with Anita.”
“Yeah,” Tate said. “I figured as much.”
“I know you don’t understand…”
“I do.”
“You don’t, though…”
“You’re in her grips, Barrett,” Tate said. “She has you right where she wants you.”
Barrett shook his head. Touch me! thought Tate. Tell me you care about me! Things had been so good, they had been so close, and it was like she had blinked and it was all ruined. It was the scene from Mary Poppins that used to make her cry-the beautiful chalk paintings on the sidewalk, washed away by the spring rains.
“How was your day?” Tate asked. “How was Chess?”
“It was okay. I took her to the hospital, then got her prescription. Then we went to lunch and she took a nap. Then I had to go to the grocery store for your mother, and Chess stayed in the truck. She didn’t want anyone to see her face.”
Tate was stuck back on went to lunch and took a nap. She thought of Chess, sitting in her seat in Barrett’s truck.
“I don’t think we should see each other anymore,” Tate said.