The Island (23 page)

India entered the front room, which held huge, soaring canvases—like Delacroix at the Louvre—they were all Lula’s and they were all of India. It was India deconstructed and reconstructed—India in Rothko’s smudged planes of color—India’s breasts and legs and once-magnificent ass resplendent in a way that suggested fluid motion. Her skin was luminescent, the lines flawless. India had to jockey for position—the room was packed, and India’s heart momentarily went out to the students whose work would receive one-tenth of this attention—because she wanted to
see
them. When she viewed them properly, she was triumphant. Not for herself (well, maybe a little bit for herself) but for Lula.

What she thought was,
She did it.

India rose from the picnic table with the letter. She poured herself another glass of wine and carried the letter upstairs to her bedroom. Roger was perched on the dresser; in the humidity his seaweed hair had gone limp. She tucked the letter from Lula into her dresser drawer and contemplated taking a nap on her jelly-filled mattress, but that would lead to her waking in an hour or two with a flannel mouth and a pounding headache. No, thank you.

Downstairs, she thought she heard Chess stirring. She shut the dresser drawer tight.

Was I wrong about you?

The 108th ASE was a success such as neither Lula nor India could have imagined. Lula sold every painting. She sold two to Spencer Frost for his private collection (and it was well known that he only collected
dead painters
), and one to the school through Spencer Frost. She sold her largest canvas to Mary Rose Garth, rubber heiress, who was the most flamboyant presence at the ASE (she had been known to come to the show with a sheet of red dot stickers in her purse so she could claim the best paintings before anyone else even saw them). Lula sold one canvas to a collector in Seattle (it was unconfirmed, but rumor had it, it was Bill Gates), and one to the most prestigious all-female law firm in Philadelphia. Every gallery owner present had offered to represent her. Lula was going to be rich, and she was going to be famous.

“But I’m not dropping out of school,” she told India. “I’m going to finish. Get my goddamned certificate.”

“Of course you are, silly girl,” India said. “Silly goose.” She was quite drunk. It was late—twenty minutes past three. Lula and India had survived the show and the after-show reception, and the dinner at Tria after the reception, and drinks at Valanni after dinner, and dancing at 105 Social after those drinks. They smoked a joint on their way back to North Broad Street. Lula wanted to see the paintings one more time—some of them would be whisked away by their new owners in the morning—and India did, too.

It was as they stood in front of the paintings and Lula announced her promise to stay in school that Lula wound her arms around India’s waist and India felt Lula’s mouth on her neck. India was drunk and high and shimmying with the aftershocks of the most extraordinary night of her life. She might well have submitted to Lula, slipped underwater and drowned in the girl.

But instead, India pulled away. “No,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

Lula tried again. She was gentle and her voice was calm. “I saw it in you when you posed for me. I saw it in you, but I waited.”

What could India say? The hours that she had posed for Lula were the most erotic hours of her life. India couldn’t deny that. Had Lula made her advances when India was prone on the suede sofa, India would never have been able to rebuff her.

“I’m sorry,” India said.

“I love you,” Lula said. “I mean it. I love you, India.”

India shivered. For the first time that night, she thought of Bill and how frenzied and full her life with him had been. Even when the kids were sick and the weather was gray, even when he was manic or depressed, India felt alive. She felt engaged, interested, challenged. Such was life with a genius.

But she couldn’t do it again.

“Lula,” India said. She touched Lula’s chin and turned her face so Lula would look at her. “I’m sorry.”

Lula slapped her, hard, across the face.

India cried out. In the cavernous room, the cry echoed. Again, Bill: He had slapped her once in public, on a subway platform in Stockholm. She had promised to divorce him. But she hadn’t.

Should she slap Lula now? Did Lula want a catfight, with pulled hair and torn clothes? Would it end with the two of them intertwined in a writhing pile on the floor?

India turned. She picked her clutch off the waiter’s tray and walked out of the room.

“India!” Lula called. “
INDIA
!”

India didn’t stop. She drove all the way home and slept like a baby until noon the next day.

It was Memorial Day weekend. India spent it quietly at home, tending to her garden. By Tuesday morning, the news had spread like an epidemic: Tallulah Simpson was withdrawing. Transferring to Parsons.

When India got downstairs, Chess was blinking, her eyes wide and dazed like the eyes of someone who had just been born.

“What time is it?” Chess asked.

“Nearly five,” India said, though it was only quarter past four. “Would you like a glass of wine?”

“Yes,” Chess said. “Where’s my mother?”

“She’s out on a walk,” India said.

Chess nodded. “I’ve been asleep forever.”

“Do you sleep at night?” India asked.

“Like a rock.”

“Lucky you,” India said, though there was nothing lucky about it. The girl was depressed. India filled with guilt. She was supposed to talk to Chess. She was supposed to help. That was why she’d been invited along.

India poured Chess a glass of wine and refilled her own. She was drunk or nearly so, which was not a bad state to be in when embarking on a frank conversation.

“Sit with me,” India said.

Chess accepted the wine gratefully and sat at the picnic table. India rummaged through the kitchen for snacks—she found half a tin of Spanish peanuts and a box of Bremner wafers that had gone stale and tasted like wet cardboard.

India had an opening line on her tongue.
Your mother wanted me to talk to you.
But how awkward, how schoolmarmish. She would sound like a scold. The idea, India knew, was for her to talk to Chess about Bill—how Bill had died and what that had felt like and how she had recovered. But India didn’t want to talk about Bill. Her mind was elsewhere.

India pondered for a second as she studied Chess’s face. Without the frame of her hair, Chess’s face was even more striking than usual. She had light blue eyes with a dark ring around the iris, the effect of which was quite arresting. There were pink, crosshatched marks on her face where her cheek had met with the ass-scratching material of the living room sofa. The poor girl was dying for something—a scrap, a hint, some direction about what to do. She had broken her engagement; her fiancé had died. There were other things that she wasn’t telling. She wasn’t ready to talk, but looking at her now, India wondered if she might be ready to listen.

Would she be able to handle the story about Lula and her dear old aunt?

Oh, hell, India,
she told herself.
Get on with it!

“I received a letter today,” she said.

CHESS

H
er depression was a place to hide. Birdie had knocked and Chess had ignored her. Barrett Lee had knocked and Chess had told him to go away. India had knocked and Chess—mostly because she couldn’t bring herself to be rude to her aunt—had agreed to listen. Aunt India talked about a student at PAFA, and a connection between them that couldn’t be reduced. The story was engrossing. For the first time since she’d arrived, Chess thought about something other than herself.

“Do you love her?” Chess asked.

India put her fingers to her temples and rolled her eyes back in her head, like a swami trying to see the future. “I don’t know,” she said. She smiled at Chess, then lit a cigarette. “The thing is, my darling, human emotions present themselves in any number of shocking ways. Do you know what I’m telling you?”

“What?” Chess said.

“I’m telling you that you aren’t alone.”

Day seven.

Human emotions present themselves in any number of shocking ways.

—India Bishop

Nick had kissed me. I thought about that kiss a hundred times a day, a thousand times. I tried to remember how I had acted or reacted, but it had happened so quickly that I couldn’t remember myself. I could only remember him. I wondered if I should have said something different or done something different, because after that one kiss, there was nothing for a long time. I should have said something to let him know how I felt about him, I should have kept him there longer, kissed him some more, done more than kiss him.

I continued to date Michael. I saw Nick infrequently—once a month we would go watch him play at the Bowery Ballroom or at Roseland and he would look upon me with intense longing, but only once, and then he wouldn’t look again. He always had women around him—skinny, long-haired girls in jeans and tank tops and handmade jewelry, beautiful, underfed girls who were the band’s groupies—but I never saw the same girl twice, and the one time I asked Michael if he thought Nick was dating, he said, “What, exactly, qualifies as dating?”

We attended family dinners with Cy and Evelyn, but Nick never came.

Michael saw Nick on Wednesday nights at his poker game. The game was hosted by Christo Snow, who had gone to Englewood High with Michael and Nick. The games were high stakes, the food was catered, and Christo hired not only a dealer from Atlantic City but a security guard as well. Michael made money or lost money. Nick always made money; it was his primary source of income. One night, after the game, Michael came home with a rosy, swollen eye. Nick had punched him.

I gasped, “Why?”

“We had a fight.”

“About what?”

As was usual after these poker games, Michael was drunk. Otherwise, he would never have told me.

“About you.”

“Me?”

“He said I wasn’t right for you.”

“Not right for me?”

“Not good enough for you.”

My head swam. I remembered that Michael had long ago broken Nick’s nose, over a girl. I should have felt some sympathy for Michael, but instead my heart felt like it was being carried away by bluebirds. Nick had feelings for me.

“Well, that’s silly,” I said.

I saw Nick again the week before Christmas. He was sitting on a bench in the lobby of my office building. I was leaving for the day; we had just put the February issue to bed with its comforting soups and stews and a menu for a snow-day sledding party. I felt the same massive relief I always felt when I put an issue to bed and the issue was good, and in addition, it was Christmas, I had twelve days off from work, and there was a fancy Christmas party that night for Michael’s company, which was being held at the Morgan Library. I was in a singular mood. I didn’t love Christmas the way Birdie or Tate loved Christmas; Christmas was for children and I didn’t have any children and I was no longer a child myself—but on that day, I was in the spirit.

And then I saw someone who looked like Nick but would never be Nick, sitting on a vinyl bench by the revolving door of our office building. I got closer and saw his face, his hair, those eyes. He was wearing a black wool coat and jeans, and the security guards that manned the entrance eyed him suspiciously.

I said, “Nick?”

He gave me the look. My head buzzed. They played carols in the lobby, and the song at that moment was Burl Ives singing “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas.”

He said, “I was in the neighborhood.”

That was a lie. I worked in Midtown. Nick Morgan would never have had any reason to be in Midtown.

I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t take my eyes off him and I didn’t want him to take his eyes off me. We stood in the marble lobby of my building with people going past in both directions and Burl Ives crooning, locked in some kind of silvery force field.

Finally, he said, “Let’s get out of here.”

We walked. He led, I followed at his elbow. We walked up Fifth Avenue amid the throngs of people. So many people, so much Christmas cheer—tinsel on lampposts and wrapping paper covering the Louis Vuitton store and sugarplum visions in the window at Henri Bendel. We walked in front of the Plaza Hotel; across the street, the line at FAO Schwarz was five hundred people long. When I walked in the city with Michael, these details interested me. With Nick, I cared only about Nick.

We walked into the park, we took the first footpath. It was cold, but I didn’t care. Nick guided me toward a tree—bare-branched, majestic, sheltering. It instantly became our tree. I turned around to face Nick and he kissed me. He really kissed me, we were kissing, and God, he was the best kisser I had ever known. More sensual than Michael—more careful, less careful. He said, “I am obsessed with you.”

This should have come as a surprise to me, but it didn’t. Although I was dating Michael, I thought of Nick every hour of every day. I dreamed about him. I fixated on the poster in Michael’s kitchen and on the pictures of Nick and Michael as children in Cy and Evelyn’s house. I created excuses to say his name.

I said, “What are we going to do?”

He didn’t answer.

I thought about what would happen if I just told Michael,
Listen, I’m in love with your brother.
It would be bad, certainly; there would be another swollen eye or broken nose, or worse. Cy and Evelyn would be stymied, but would they let it destroy their world? Would they disown Nick, and if they did disown him, would it destroy our world?

Nick was shaking his head. He said, “I hate the guy, I really hate him, but I love him, too, and I just can’t
do
that to him.”