The Island (25 page)

“I’m not saying that to evoke pity,” Chess said. “I just want you to know you can borrow whatever you want.”

“Okay,” Tate said. Even at home in her own closet, Tate didn’t have one single appropriate outfit for an evening like tonight. She didn’t own summer dresses meant for dinner parties because she didn’t get invited to dinner parties. She didn’t have dinner with her boyfriends’ parents. She was, she realized at that second, socially retarded. All she did was work, and occasionally she spent a whoop-de-do night performing karaoke in a hotel bar with clients and their much more spirited secretaries. Just as Tate was about to wallow in self-pity over this and move from there into panic—would she know how to
act
at this dinner party?—Chess said, “Try on the red one.”

Tate pulled a red dress out of the closet. It was a simple silk sheath. “This doesn’t come with some devastating memory attached?”

“Well, sort of,” Chess said. “That was what I wore to Bungalow Eight the night I broke up with Michael.”

“Jesus, Chess,” Tate said. This was the dumping dress?

“Try it on,” Chess said. “For a while there, I considered that my lucky dress. And I have killer red Jimmy Choo heels to match.”

Tate tried the red dress on. It was a stunner. She tried on the killer heels. They were red suede peep toes with red snakeskin uppers. Tate felt like a woman, perhaps for the first time ever. What did that say about her? She didn’t want to think about it. She just wanted to stay in this dress forever, despite the fact that it had a backstory even more lurid than the orange polka-dot dress. “This is it,” Tate said. “This is the one.”

“That’s it,” Chess agreed. “Your lucky dress. Your break-somebody’s-heart dress.”

Tate had the dress and the shoes, and she had her tan. She worked on the rest, but it was tricky. She filed and polished her nails—perfect except for the sand scattered across the polish. She washed and conditioned her hair in the bracing shower, then brushed it out. A hair dryer would have been nice; as it was, she had to hope for the best. She allowed India to apply makeup to her eyes and lips. Tate never wore anything more than Chap Stick, but India insisted on mascara, eyeliner, a little lip gloss. Birdie lent Tate a silver clutch that she claimed had belonged to Tate’s great-grandmother in the 1930s and was a denizen of the top drawer of the dresser in Birdie’s room. (Was she making this up?) India lent her a gold wrap (pedigree: Wanamaker’s, 1994). Why India had brought a gold wrap to Tuckernuck was beyond Tate, but she didn’t question. She was Cinderella today; it was okay if things just appeared.

“How do I look?” Tate asked. There wasn’t a mirror in the house where she could get a fair read. She was worried about her hair.

“Oh, honey,” Birdie said, “you look just beautiful.”

“I’m going to take your picture,” India said. She had brought one of those disposable cameras that came in a cardboard box. This was, to Tate’s knowledge, the first time she’d used it. It had been an uneventful trip.

Tate was embarrassed as she mugged for the camera. She felt guilty getting all dressed up and going out for a dinner party on the big island—the real world, with electricity and hot water and other people engaging her in conversation. Shouldn’t she stay home and eat corn on the cob and blueberry pie and play solitaire while everyone else read or needlepointed or sunk deeper into their interior lives? No, that was silly. She was going.

This was, in so many ways, all she’d ever wanted.

She was standing on the beach in her red silk dress with India’s wrap and her great-grandmother’s clutch purse and Chess’s shoes in her hand when Barrett pulled the boat in at six o’clock. There was also a backpack at her feet, containing a nightgown (borrowed from Chess), her toothbrush, and her running clothes. Up on the bluff, Tate had kissed and hugged everyone good-bye as though she were leaving on a long journey.

“I’ll be back in the morning,” she said. It was funny how Tuckernuck, one of the most remote places on the eastern seaboard, now felt like the center of the universe.

Barrett cut the engine. He was staring at her in a way that Tate had been waiting for all her life. Staring! He said, “Man, do you look good.”

Tate bowed her head so he wouldn’t see the stupid expression on her face. The dress had worked. And the makeup. And whatever else he was reacting to. Barrett hopped out of the boat and dragged it to shore, just as he always did. But this time was so different: He was wearing a white oxford shirt, a kelly green tie printed with sailboats, a navy blazer, and khaki shorts. He approached Tate and said, “I’m going to get this out of the way.” And he kissed her. He tasted like beer. His mouth was warm and soft, and Tate felt a jolt, blood flowing to all the right places. Her stomach dropped, her eyelids fluttered. Ka-bam!

Oh, God,
she thought.
Kiss me again.

He kissed her again. It was like a scene straight from her seventeen-year-old fantasies. Then she heard a noise, a wolf whistle, and cheering, and when she glanced up at the bluff, she saw Aunt India and Birdie watching. Barrett laughed, and in one smooth movement, he scooped Tate up and deposited her gently in the boat named
Girlfriend.
Tate accepted her accoutrements and her backpack. Barrett hopped in and pulled the anchor, and they were off. Tate waved good-bye.

It was, Tate knew, a very big night for Barrett. The people who were having the party, the Fullins, were his most important caretaking clients. By “most important,” Barrett meant that they were high maintenance; Anita Fullin was the woman who had called Barrett in from fishing because her pipes were making noise. Anita Fullin needed him to do everything for her, he said, right down to replacing the paper towels in the kitchen.

“You’re kidding about that, right?” Tate said.

“Right,” he said.

The Fullins had money to burn, and they paid premium rates; the boat,
Girlfriend,
had been their boat. They had given it to Barrett as a bonus at the end of last summer. He had to take good care of these people; they were his patrons.

The Fullins threw this party each year, inviting everyone they knew on the island—which meant friends from Manhattan who were renting on the Cliff, as well as Barrett, Mrs. Fullin’s masseuse, the manager of their beach club, Mr. Fullin’s favorite golf caddy, the maître d’ from LoLa 41. It was a nice mix of summer people and locals, Barrett said. It was a nice party, though he’d missed it the past two years because—well, he said, because of Stephanie.

“This is the first time I’ve been out,” he said. “Like this, you know, since she died.”

Tate nodded. She wanted to know everything. And in addition to knowing everything, she wanted to kiss Barrett some more, loosen that tie, unbutton that shirt… she was a racehorse bucking at the gate. But this had always been her problem with men, right? She came on too strong, too soon. She had dry spells that lasted years (the last man she’d slept with had been Andre Clairfield, who was on the practice squad for the Carolina Panthers, but that had been a drunk, late-night sex thing and should probably not be counted), and then when she found someone she really liked, she was out of practice with ladylike restraint. She was too hungry, too eager, and she frightened men away.

She would not frighten Barrett away. He was, she realized, a man of few words. (Had this always been the case, she wondered, or was it a result of losing his wife?) He was trying hard now, she could tell, to talk about the evening ahead so she would be prepared.

“Where are your kids?” she said.

“With my parents,” Barrett said. “And they’re spending the night.”

Tate had wondered if she would wake up in the morning to find two little boys staring at her as though she were a visitor from another planet, the way it always seemed to happen in the movies. Tate, naked or nearly so, in their father’s bed. The older one proclaiming, “You’re not my mommy.”

“Okay,” Tate said. They were now in Barrett’s car—a black Toyota pickup—barreling down Madaket Road. After a week on a deserted island, with its rutted dirt paths, the sensation of driving this fast seemed foreign. They passed the dump, which smelled like a rotten-egg omelet, but Tate pretended not to notice. Barrett hummed along with the radio, Fleetwood Mac singing “You Make Loving Fun.” Then the DJ came on with the weather report: clouds overnight, rain tomorrow, wind from the southwest at fifteen to twenty knots.

They drove into town. When Tate was young, her father would bring her and Chess over for one day trip per summer. He would use the phone at his insurance agent, Congdon and Coleman, to call his office while she and Chess were set free in town with spending money. They went to the pharmacy lunch counter for peppermint-stick ice cream at 10
A.M
. They browsed Mitchell’s Book Corner (though this was mostly Chess; what Tate remembered about the bookstore was begging Chess to leave). They went to the Hub to ogle
Seventeen
magazine and buy candy. Then they reunited with their father for lunch at the Brotherhood of Thieves; in the dark, subterranean dining room, they ate chowder and thick burgers and curly fries. Tate remembered using the hot water tap in the bathroom, letting it run over her hands; she remembered looking in the clear silver of the mirror. Everything was a novelty after being on Tuckernuck; the soap dispenser hanging from the wall was a novelty. In the afternoon, their father took them to the Whaling Museum or to the Jetties to play tennis. Or they rented bikes and rode out to Sconset to see the Sankaty Lighthouse and get yet another ice cream from the Sconset Market. The Nantucket days had always been fun, and before they left they always paid homage to the yellow clapboard house with the wraparound porch on Gay Street that had, decades earlier, belonged to their great-grandparents, Arthur and Emilie Tate. Nantucket had never been home for Tate, however. It had never been more than a gateway to Tuckernuck. Tuckernuck was the real thing. It was an island for purists.

Tate wanted to share her memories with Barrett, but Barrett was preoccupied with pulling in behind a long line of cars parked on the street. They had arrived. Barrett looked in the rearview mirror and straightened his tie. He smiled at Tate. She was still worried about her hair, especially after the boat ride.

I can look even better than this,
she wanted to tell him.
Really, I can.

He said, “You are so beautiful, Tate. Honestly, I could eat you.”

She inched toward him. She didn’t want to be pushy, she didn’t even want to be easy, but the man was a magnet. They started kissing again. Tate thought,
Let’s forgo this party and go back to your house and eat each other up.
But then she remembered herself and pulled away. She sensed this was what Chess would do.

“Please?” he said. “Don’t stop?”

Tate said, “Let’s go. We’re expected.”

The party, in Tate’s mind, was just something to be survived before she and Barrett could be alone. But as they approached the house, she rearranged her expectations. The house they were going to, Tate could see, was gargantuan, with massive windows and multilayered decks. Barrett led Tate through a white latticed archway dripping with ‘New Dawn’ roses (Birdie’s favorite; Tate would have to remember to tell her). There were people all over the lawn holding drinks, there were wait staff in white shirts and black vests offering things on silver trays, there was live music coming from somewhere. Tate scanned the property: a jazz trio played on one of the decks. Tate was dumbfounded. She felt like she was stepping onto a Broadway stage and didn’t know any of her lines. India could handle this kind of glittering social scene, and Chess in her former state could handle this, even Birdie could handle this—but Tate could not.

Her heels sunk into the grass. She had to unplug herself with every step. She looked around. Other women were wearing heels and they didn’t seem to be sinking. Was there something wrong with the way she was walking? Oh, probably. Tate was most comfortable in sneakers. To work, she wore loafers or ballet flats. She should have asked Chess for a heels tutorial.

“Hold on to me,” Barrett said, offering his arm. “I want to get a drink and then we’ll find Anita to say hello.”

Yes, thought Tate. What you needed when you attended a party like this was a plan, at least to start with. If left to her own devices, Tate would wander around, accept a tequila drink, eat something from a tray that she was allergic to, and trip in her heels, ending up on her knees in the flower bed.

Barrett handed her a glass of champagne. She guzzled it—straight down the hatch—and then quietly burped. This was exactly what she meant by too eager.

Barrett laughed. “You don’t have to be nervous,” he said.

“I’m not nervous,” she said.

She lassoed a server with more champagne and took a second glass, placing her first glass on the tray. All this without spilling or breaking anything.

“I’m going to sip this one,” she promised.

They weaved through the crowd. They had a mission: find the hostess. The rear of the house, Tate soon discovered, fronted Nantucket Harbor.

“Look at this view,” she said.

“It’s no better than the view from your house,” Barrett said.

This was true. The Tuckernuck house looked out over the water. Still, there was something breathtaking about the manicured lawn and the pale strip of private beach and the expanse of Nantucket Harbor with Brant Point Lighthouse, sailboats, the descending sun.

Barrett was stopped in his tracks by a middle-aged couple. The man had gray hair and broken capillaries across his cheeks. The woman had frosted hair in a bob; she was wearing Birdie’s perfume, Coco by Chanel. Tate tried to focus, look them in the eye, smile, sparkle. She loved Barrett; she wanted to do a good job for him.

“Tate Cousins,” Barrett said, “I’d like you to meet Eugene and Beatrice AuClaire. The AuClaires are clients of mine on Hinckley Lane.”

Mrs. AuClaire (Tate had already lost her first name. Beverly?) smiled at Tate with a certain look on her face. What was that look? “Lovely to meet you,” Mrs. AuClaire said. She and Tate shook hands. Tate’s grip was too firm; Mrs. AuClaire flinched and Tate thought,
Oh, shit.
She was gentler with Mr. AuClaire, but Mr. AuClaire wasn’t interested in Tate; he was interested in Barrett. He wanted to know where the fish were jumping. This left Tate to think of something to say to Mrs. AuClaire. Mrs. AuClaire smelled like Birdie; it was distracting. Mrs. AuClaire was examining her. Tate feared for her hair, she feared for her makeup; it felt like she had crumbs in her eyes. Mrs. AuClaire said, “You’re a friend of Barrett’s, then?” And Tate, all of a sudden, recognized the certain look.
You’re not my mommy.
Mrs. AuClaire must have known Barrett’s wife, Stephanie. For all Tate knew, Stephanie had been Mrs. AuClaire’s niece, or her daughter’s best friend.