The Island (29 page)

“But wait,” Alison said. Alison was heavy and had long, thick black hair and fearsome eyebrows. “You’re leaving me to clean all this up?”

Chess was already yards away. “Can you?” she called over her shoulder. And with that, she was gone. She weaved and bobbed. There were too many people to flat-out run, but she was hurrying. Then she spied an opening. She ran with the cash box under her arm, around parked cars, over spread-out blankets weighted down with potato salad and six-foot subs. She thought of Jim Cross, the star running back for Colchester’s football team. She was Jim Cross! She thought,
Barrett Lee! Why? What for? How?
It was a glorious autumn Saturday. Summertime—Tuckernuck, the beach, bonfires, the fateful picnic—was long forgotten. Those things belonged in another season.

What was he
doing
here?

Soon, Chess was on the street. She was making her way to the Delta Gamma house. She would drop off the cash box, then sneak through the backstreets to the stadium. She would avoid Barrett Lee until the game was over, by which point, she was sure, he would have given up and left.

She marched up the steps of the sorority house. It was a delft blue Victorian with white trim like icing on a cake. They had a house mother, Carla Bye, who kept the girls on-task with cleaning and straightening, and Chess was glad. She had moved from the dorms into the house that year and she appreciated the quiet, feminine order. The dorms had been loud and lawless; there were boys in Chess’s dorm who chewed tobacco and left plastic cups half-filled with brown spit on the windowsills. They played Frisbee in the halls at two in the morning, drunk, blaring Guns N’ Roses. The Delta Gamma house was more like Chess’s mother’s house in its civility, except that it was college and Chess was free to do exactly as she liked.

She just had to drop the cash box—give it to Carla if she was around, or exercise due diligence and lock it up in the house safe. From the front porch, Chess heard a tremendous, distant roar and knew that the Colchester team had stormed the field. Shit. She was going to miss kickoff.

She heard Carla Bye chatting away in the front room. Some of Chess’s sorority sisters found Carla Bye annoying and pathetic; others blatantly disregarded the house rule about overnight guests, claiming that Carla didn’t mind.
Carla Bye
wants
us to get laid!
was an oft-repeated battle cry, one with which Chess couldn’t disagree. On mornings when a young man descended the stairs, Carla often volunteered to make him an omelet.

On football weekends, Carla kept hours in the front parlor, where she was available to welcome alumnae Delta Gammas or DGs from other chapters. Carla had the gift of gab; she thrived on this kind of interaction.

She was chatting with someone now, and all Chess thought was,
Good, give her the cash box and bolt!

Chess rushed into the parlor. Carla Bye said, “What luck! Here she is!”

Chess was confused. Then she looked at the occupant of the chintz wingback chair: Barrett Lee.

Chess gasped in horror, which was mistaken for surprise by Barrett Lee and Carla Bye. Meanwhile, Chess was thinking,
Shit! This is not happening!
She felt the walls of her perfectly constructed weekend caving in.

Carla Bye was staring at her. Manners!

“Barrett?” Chess said. “Barrett Lee?”

He stood up. Carla Bye had already plied him with cider and pumpkin muffins. There was a white and blue duffel bag that smelled vaguely of locker room next to his chair.

“Hey, Chess,” he said. “How are you?” He bent in to—what? Kiss her? She bypassed his lips and gave him a chaste, sisterly hug.

“He came all the way from Nantucket this morning!” Carla proclaimed.

“Took the first plane,” Barrett said. “And drove six hours.”

Why?
Chess thought.
Why are you here?

Carla said, “I invited Barrett to leave his duffel bag in your room,” she said. “He wanted to wait until you arrived. Such a gentleman.”

Chess said, “I’m on my way to the game. I’m sorry, I don’t have a guest ticket…”

He said, “Would you like to go for a walk? Or get some lunch?”

Chess felt hot and panicky. Her heart was still racing from her gallop across town. She said, “Let’s talk out on the porch.”

Carla took her cue. “Yes, let me give you young people some privacy. I’ll just take Barrett’s bag up to your room, Chess.”

Carla Bye
wants
us to get laid!

No!
Chess thought. But she was too polite to shout it out. It didn’t matter. They could get his bag later; Barrett Lee wasn’t staying.

Barrett followed Chess out the front door onto the porch. She leaned against the railing and he sat on the swing. She heard another cheer from the stadium. The game!

Chess said, “What are you doing here, Barrett?”

He shrugged, grinned. “I had island fever. I needed a road trip.”

“So you came
here
to see
me?
Why?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about you. We never really got together.”

“That’s right,” Chess said. “We never really got together.”

“So I thought, maybe now…”

“Maybe now what?”

“Maybe now we could get together. So I drove up here.”

“You didn’t call,” Chess said. “You gave me no warning. I have plans this weekend.”

“You do?”

“Yes! For starters, I’m supposed to be at that football game. My friends are waiting for me.”

“I’ll go with you. I’d like to meet your friends.”

“I don’t have a guest ticket,” she said. “Because I had no idea you were coming. And the game is sold out.”

“Is it a big game?” he asked.

“They’re all big games,” Chess said. “There are only six home games, and they’re all big.” She tried to calm down; she was squeaking like a child. “I have tailgating plans after the game and then dinner plans and then a party tonight, which is invitation only.” This wasn’t strictly true, though the SigEps would not be thrilled about a strange guy in their fraternity house; they liked to keep the male-female ratio in their distinct favor. “And tomorrow I have to study. I have a paper due.”

“A paper?” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “A paper. A college paper. Fifteen pages on
The Birth of Venus.
”

He stared at her. She said, “It’s a painting. By Botticelli.”

He stood up. “I’m starving. Do you want to get lunch? I saw a place in town that looked good.”

Chess felt her eyes cross. “Are you not listening to me? I’m supposed to be at the game.”

“Skip it.”

“I don’t
want
to skip it,” Chess said. She was officially acting like a petulant child. She wondered for a minute what Birdie would have her do. Drop everything to spend the weekend with Barrett Lee?
Make a compromise,
Birdie would say.
Go to lunch with him, then bid him good-bye.
But Chess couldn’t even bring herself to do that. “Listen, I appreciate that you got up at dawn and took the first flight and drove all the way here to see me. But I didn’t know you were coming. And I’m sorry, Barrett, but I have plans already. I have plans all weekend and I can’t include you in them.”

“You can’t?” he said.

He was making her feel like a complete ogre, ungenerous, ungracious, inflexible. And she hated him for making her feel that way. It wasn’t fair. His showing up here
was not fair;
it was manipulative. She checked her watch: it was one thirty. The first quarter would be nearly over.

She said, “I have to go.”

He said, “Should I just wait for you here, then?”

Island fever. I needed a road trip.
What he needed, Chess thought, was to be going to college himself. In a flash of empathy she realized that this was the first fall that Barrett had no school. The fishing and the carpentry and the partying weren’t fulfilling him.

“You should go,” Chess said.

“Go?”

“Or stay. Stay here in town if you want. But you can’t stay with me here. If you had called me, I might have been able to make arrangements, but you didn’t call. You just showed up and expected me to drop everything.”

“It’s a weekend,” he said.

“My weekends are
busy.
I have a
life.
”

“Okay,” he said. “Don’t get upset. I’ll go.”

“Great,” Chess said. “So now I feel terrible that you drove six hours to get here and I’m turning you away. But why should I feel terrible? I did nothing wrong.”

“You did nothing wrong,” he said. “I thought maybe we could hang out. But whatever… I’ll get my bag.”

“I’ll get your bag,” Chess said. “You don’t know where my room is.” She bounded inside and upstairs and grabbed his duffel bag off her rocking chair.
I’m sorry, Birdie!
she thought. Her mother would be horrified, she was sure. Downstairs, the front parlor was deserted. Chess snatched two of the pumpkin muffins and wrapped them in a paper napkin for Barrett. See? She wasn’t completely thoughtless.

Barrett was standing on the top step, looking down on the street.

“Where did you park?” Chess asked. As a tiny concession, she figured she would walk Barrett to his car on her way to the stadium. But even this was mostly so she could be sure he got into his car and drove away.

“Right there.” He pointed to a battered blue Jeep with a black vinyl top. Tate, Chess thought, would love that car. If Barrett had been smarter, he would have headed south instead of north. He would have gone to New Canaan to surprise Tate. She would have been as fantastically happy as Chess was agitated and disturbed.

“Okay,” she said. She handed him his duffel bag and the muffins, which he accepted without comment, and she led him down the stairs and stood by the door of the Jeep. If she hurried, she would make it to the stadium by halftime.

“I’m sorry this didn’t work out,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Me, too.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again. Why was
she
apologizing? This wasn’t her fault, but somehow it was.

She wanted him to say,
It’s okay.
She wanted him to exonerate her, set her free. But he just stared at her and then his face got closer and closer to hers, and he kissed her.

The kiss was nice, really nice, but that may have been because Chess knew that was it, the end.

The end, until this summer. Chess had thought squeamishly about that October 18 and the surprise appearance of Barrett Lee over the years, and what she thought was that she should have skipped the game and gone to lunch with him. She could have brought him along to the tailgating and the party. He might even have slept on the floor of her room. But Chess wanted him out of there. It was kind of a class thing, on top of everything else. Chess was sure he wouldn’t fit in.

Birdie had not found out. All that was left was Chess’s shame, which was old and weak now, compared to her more recent shame.

It could be her on Nantucket this morning with Barrett Lee. He
had
asked her first. He had led her out to where the Scout was parked, and said, “I have a dinner party to attend tomorrow night. Very fancy, and I need a date. Would you like to go with me?”

Upon his asking, the whole botched road trip came back to Chess in a flash. Here was her chance to atone for the wrong she’d done him. But she couldn’t say yes. The idea of attending a dinner party paralyzed her, and it had nothing to do with the fact that she would be fielding sympathetic glances from people who thought she had cancer. She wasn’t strong enough to meet people, make chitchat, eat a meal, pretend to be fine. And, too, she didn’t want to lead Barrett Lee on; she didn’t want to give him hope. The fact that a dozen years had passed and Barrett Lee was now a widower and Chess was also a kind of widow did seem an incredible irony, but it wasn’t strong enough to bring them together. She loved someone else.

“I can’t,” Chess said.

“You have other plans?” he said, with an ironic half smile.

She adjusted her blue crocheted cap. “I’m not in a good place.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I can see that. I thought maybe getting out would help.”

“It won’t. I’m sorry. I can’t explain it.”

“Hey,” he said, holding up his palms, “no one’s asking you to.”

She said, “Ask Tate to the party.”

And he said, “I will. She was my first choice anyway.”

He had said this, maybe, to hurt her. But Chess was beyond being able to be hurt by Barrett Lee, and, too, she knew she deserved it.

“She should be,” Chess said.

“She is,” Barrett said.

You were his first choice,
Chess thought. She should have told Tate this before Tate left for the party. Why hadn’t she?

Eleven o’clock. Noon. No Tate.

At twelve thirty, Birdie called up the stairs: the chowder was ready. Chess was actually engrossed in her book—it was one of the good parts with Natasha in the court—but there was no hurry, so Chess set the book down.

Birdie and India had poured themselves glasses of wine. Three bowls of chowder steamed. There was a box of oyster crackers.

India said, “Chess, do you want a glass of Sancerre?”

Chess said no. She sat at the table. She was sad enough to cry, though she couldn’t say why, which made things worse. Her mother brought her a glass of iced tea with a wedge of lemon, just how she liked it. Chess’s eyes welled, but she didn’t want her mother or India to see; if they saw her crying, they would ask why, and she couldn’t explain.

The door flew open. Tate burst in, wearing an army green rain poncho. She was soaking wet.

“I’m home!” she said. “Did you miss me?”

Tate had brought back a portable DVD player and a copy of
Ghost,
which had been her and Chess’s favorite movie growing up. The DVD player was contraband—against one of the long-standing Tuckernuck rules—but Barrett had insisted Tate borrow it, because what else were they going to do in the Tuckernuck house in the rain?

Chess had missed her sister, but now that Tate was back, Chess became consumed with anger. Tate was giddy and glowing with the effects of sex and new love, she was Tate in extremis, Tate times one hundred, and Chess couldn’t handle it. Tate could watch the movie, Tate could enjoy the movie, Tate could cry over the movie (she always did), but Chess wouldn’t join her. She was being mean and petty, she knew this, but she couldn’t move past her anger. It would feel good to hunker under the covers with Tate and watch the movie, it would feel as good as a hot bath, but Chess couldn’t cross the chasm that would take her to happiness, however fleeting. She was stuck in her misery. Stuck!