The Island (14 page)

She watched them eat. She didn’t know what to do. She smelled smoke and looked up and saw India framed in the upstairs window like a picture on an Advent calendar. She was holding a cigarette. It was a momentarily distracting thought: India still smoked. (Tate remembered India and Uncle Bill smoking when she and Chess were children. They smoked in an elegant way; it went with the fact that they vacationed in Majorca and went to parties in Soho lofts and knew famous people like Roy Lichtenstein and Liza Minnelli.) But now India was smoking inside the Tuckernuck house, which was a pile of tinder and which would absorb the smell of her cigarettes and hold on to it for the next seventy-five years. Birdie was going to have an aneurysm. Tate nearly shouted this up to India, but India wouldn’t give a shit.

Tate was also quieted by the way India was looking down on the three of them, by the way she seemed to see
exactly
what was happening. She was connecting the dots to make… a love triangle.

Tate was angry now. She announced, in a loud voice, that she was going to shower.

Chess and Barrett both looked up at her. She smiled. She said, “Chess, would you be a doll and get me one of those yummy new towels that Birdie bought?”

Chess said, “Okay, in a minute.”

Tate said, “Please? I’m a dirt sandwich. I need to hop in
right now.
” She strode over to the outdoor shower and enclosed herself inside. The outdoor shower had the same picket walls with eighth-inch gaps between each board, and a slatted “floor,” which was a pallet set in the grass. The showerhead and knobs were frosted with mineral deposits. Tate turned on the water, and out came a fine spray of cold.

“Whoo-hoooo!” she screamed. “It’s freezing!”

Barrett said, “Ah, the joys of Tuckernuck living.”

Tate could see him pivot on the bench of the picnic table, looking her way now. Imagining her nude and wet? Could he see the shape of her through the gaps in the wood? Had she done it? Had she trumped Chess?

Chess reappeared and flipped one of the fluffy new polka-dot towels over the side of the shower. “There.”

“Thanks, lovey!” Tate said. “How about shampoo? Or a sliver of Irish Spring? There’s nothing in here.”

“Forget it,” Chess said. “Birdie might be your slave, but I’m not.” She picked up her plate and headed for the kitchen.

“You barely touched your food,” Barrett said.

“I need soap!” Tate cried out, but no one was listening.

Chess said, “I don’t have much of an appetite these days.”

Barrett said, “Yeah, I know what that’s like.”

Chess nodded once, curtly, then disappeared into the house. Barrett looked after her. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. He worked on his plate of pancakes. He had forgotten about Tate in the shower.

Tate leaned her head back and let the water flow over her face. Barrett was a lost cause. But Tate loved him. She couldn’t make herself stop.

She emerged from the shower wrapped in the towel, her hair wet and sleek. At that second, Chess emerged from the house with a bar of soap.

“Here you go,” she said.

“I’m done,” Tate said. She sat down at the picnic table next to Barrett.

“Aren’t you going to put clothes on?” Chess asked.

“Aren’t you?” Tate asked.

They glared at each other.

Barrett stood up with his syrup-smeared plate. “Those were good pancakes,” he said. “Do either of you ladies need anything from the big island?”

Tate smelled smoke again. She looked up. Aunt India waved.

INDIA

B
ill was everywhere on this island. She heard his voice, smelled the smoke from his cigarettes and the lime from his gin and tonic. She saw him from behind on the beach—his hair dark as it used to be before it thinned and grayed, his back and arms strong enough to carry one or another of the boys piggyback. She could even picture his bathing suit—fluorescent orange trunks. Those trunks had been loud.
Jesus, Bill, turn down your bathing suit! I can’t hear myself think!

He had been happy here, on Tuckernuck, for the two weeks that they stayed each summer. He, unlike Grant, had loved being unplugged. No dealers calling, no deadlines looming, no pressure to be a great artist. Here, he was a father. He built the bonfires, he whittled the marshmallow sticks, he told the ghost stories (always with ridiculous, goofy endings so the kids wouldn’t go to bed scared). He organized footraces and gin rummy tournaments and nature walks. He gave driving lessons in the Scout. He collected shells and driftwood and beach glass and made things from them (because he couldn’t
stop
being an artist). He had made the sculpture they called “Roger” for India the day after a terrible fight. The fight had emerged from India’s happiness rather than from her unhappiness. This was right when Bill’s sickness began to present itself in a way that she could no longer ignore. On Tuckernuck, Bill was relaxed and unfettered. He was able to laugh and to be her lover. They made love on the squishy mattress (filled with jelly, they used to joke), they made love out of doors—on the beach, in the Scout, at the end of the dirt road, and once, recklessly, in the old schoolhouse.
Why couldn’t Bill be like this at home?
India had asked. She was crying. She was so happy here, right now, like this! And at home, in their real life, things were miserable.

At home, in their real life, Bill would work in fits and bursts. He went for days without sleeping and eating. He stayed out back in his studio, and India would bring him cigarettes and bottles of Bombay Sapphire, which he drank straight over ice. He had hired a fabricator out in Santa Fe to construct his larger pieces; the pain with the larger pieces was the sketch—first the overall effect, and then the excruciating detail—and the measurements had to be exact. Bill was a perfectionist—all great artists, all great people were—but perfection could only be judged in his eyes. Something that looked gorgeous to India would look not quite right to Bill. He would swear at the top of his lungs, throw things and break things; even from his closed-up studio a hundred yards away, the boys would hear him. India tried to intervene, but he wouldn’t allow it. He was his own slave driver.

That was Manic Bill, a real monster, someone to be feared and avoided like a hurricane. Please use all evacuation routes.

Manic Bill was always shadowed by Depressive Bill, who was even more unwelcome. Depressive Bill was sad and pathetic. He didn’t work, couldn’t work, couldn’t take a phone call or eat a sandwich or get an erection or, many times, rise from bed except, thankfully, to go to the bathroom. The very first depressive episode came at a convergence of events in 1985: The
New Orleans Times-Picayune
published a scathing review of a sculpture of Bill’s that had recently been installed in City Park. The paper called it “hideous and inorganic” and lambasted the city council for spending two hundred thousand dollars of the taxpayers’ money on “a grotesque misstep by an otherwise laudable artist.” Although the review was bad, it had been published in New Orleans, so no one Bill and India knew personally would see it, but then the
Philadelphia Inquirer
got hold of the review and ran a feature piece about what happened when great artists put out “bad product,” and named Bill and the New Orleans piece specifically. At the same time, Bill contracted bronchitis, which turned into pneumonia. He was bedridden for days, then weeks. He was dirty and bearded. India took to sleeping in the guest room. She was a decent nursemaid, she thought. She brought him homemade Italian wedding soup and focaccia from his favorite deli on South Street, she made sticky date pudding from his British mother’s recipe. She brought him his antibiotics every four hours and kept his water glass fresh and filled with ice. She borrowed books from the library and read them at his bedside. He got better physically; the fluid cleared from his lungs. But he didn’t get better mentally. He stayed in bed. He missed the kids’ soccer games; he missed a benefit at MOMA where he was being honored. One night, India heard a noise coming from their bedroom, and when she opened the door, she found Bill sobbing. She sat on the side of the bed and smoothed his hair and contemplated leaving him.

Then, his favorite hockey player, Pelle Lindbergh, was killed in a car crash, and somehow this provided the impetus Bill needed to get out of bed. He wasn’t saddened by Lindbergh’s death; he was angry.
Goddamned waste of talent.
He was back in the studio, returning phone calls, sketching a new commission for a private garden in Princeton, New Jersey.

Between Manic Bill and Depressive Bill there was a normal man, on an even keel. It was Bill Bishop of 346 Anthony Wayne Way, owner of fourteen acres and a stone farmhouse and barn-cum-studio, husband of India Tate Bishop, father of Billy, Teddy, and Ethan.

Bill and India lived in the suburbs, and their boys attended Malvern Prep and played sports. Bill and India attended functions and parties, they went to movies and restaurants, they celebrated holidays. They took their trash to the dump and raked leaves and mowed the lawn. It was all well and good that Bill was a “famous artist,” but they had a life to live and it required sanity.

In those days, India had depended on Tuckernuck to clear Bill’s mind. Bill was good on Tuckernuck. He was strong; he was sane. Back then, when the final day arrived, India had never wanted to leave.

India lay back on the mattress—filled with jelly, Jell-O, toothpaste, lemon curd, caviar, something impossibly squishy—and studied Roger. They called him Roger, but really the little man with the driftwood torso and the blue beach-glass eyes and seaweed dreadlocks was Bill when he was happy.

God, she missed him.

She had made up her mind to leave Tuckernuck on Wednesday. First of all, she was smoking. Smoking helped calm her nerves, it kept her hands occupied, it allowed her to think—but when Birdie found out India was smoking, she would kick India out of the house. Just as the headmistress at Miss Porter’s School had kicked India out for smoking when she was fourteen. (India then went to Pomfret, where smoking was tolerated, and then to college at Bennington, where smoking was mandatory.)

There was a knock at the door. India panicked. She sat up in bed and tried to wave the smoke out the open window—but it was pointless. Anyone who entered would know she was smoking. She was fifty-five years old; she had to be accountable for her actions. But Birdie was such a Goody Two-shoes. This had always been the case. She hadn’t married a tempestuous, mentally ill sculptor, she had never snorted cocaine at two in the morning at an underground club, she had never romantically kissed another woman. Birdie made pancakes and squeezed the juice from oranges; she went to church. She was the reincarnation of their mother.

“Come in!” India said, praying for one of the girls.

The door opened. It was Birdie.

“You’re smoking?” Birdie said.

India inhaled defiantly and nodded.

Birdie sat on the corner of the gelatinous mattress. “Can I have one?”

“One what?”

“A cigarette.”

India smiled. She couldn’t help herself. This was
funny.
Birdie might have been joking, but the woman couldn’t pull off sarcasm or irony; her voice was full of its usual earnest. Little Birdie, Mother Bird, wasn’t going to send India home for smoking. She was going to join her in the filthy vice.

India didn’t remark. She didn’t want to scare Birdie away. She plucked a cigarette from her pack and handed it to Birdie. Birdie placed it between her lips, and India lit it with her gorgeous jeweled Versace lighter. Birdie inhaled. India watched, fascinated. Birdie had the smooth mannerisms of a practiced smoker. India realized then how little she knew about Birdie’s adult life. Birdie and Grant hadn’t smoked at home; of this, India was certain. Grant had puffed his cigars on the golf course and with brandy at the steak house, but when did Birdie find occasion to smoke? At the country club dances, perhaps, in the ladies’ room when the women were all fixing their hair and thinking about sleeping with one another’s husbands? Or maybe the smoking was new since the divorce. Maybe it was a sign of further rebellion. Because although Birdie was a Goody Two-shoes like their mother, she had done that which would have been unthinkable to their mother: Birdie had left her husband. It amazed India now how little she knew about Birdie’s divorce.

There had been one phone call to India’s office at PAFA. India knew something was up; Birdie didn’t call unless someone had died or was sick.

“What’s going on?” India had said.

Birdie said, “I’m divorcing Grant.” Her voice was bloodless, matter-of-fact.

“You are?” India said.

“I am,” Birdie said. “It’s time.” Like she was talking about putting the dog to sleep.

“Did you catch him cheating?”

“No,” Birdie said. “I don’t think women interest him. And that includes me.”

“Is he gay?” India asked. This couldn’t be true—not Grant!—but she lived in the art world, where she had seen the most unlikely people come out of the closet.

“God, no,” Birdie said. “But he has his golf, the Yankees, the stock market, work, his car, his scotch. I’m sick of it.”

“I don’t blame you,” India said. “You have my full support.”

“Oh, I know I do,” Birdie said. “I just wanted to tell you first. You’re the first person to know other than the kids.”

“Oh,” India had said. “Well… thanks.”

That had been the extent of their conversation on the topic, though now India wished she had asked more questions. What had the deciding factor been? Had something happened, had they fought, did Grant check his Blackberry one too many times, did he fail to look up from the
Wall Street Journal
when she called his name, had he not thanked her for his eggs (over easy, perfectly salted and peppered)? Or had something shifted in Birdie’s own mind? Had she read a book, seen a movie? Had one of her New Canaan friends asked for a divorce? Had Birdie fallen in love?

India hadn’t asked then, but she could ask now. Now they were alone, face-to-face, with a string of empty hours ahead of them. They were smoking together.