Elin Hilderbrand - The Castaways

That left Addison in the condo… with Tess. He hadn’t realized it, but Tess did not end up going along with the others. She didn’t ski, though Greg had spent much of their four-hour, wine-soaked fondue dinner the night before trying to convince her to take a private lesson. Tess had been reluctant, but Greg seemed to have persuaded her in the end. And yet when Addison closed the door behind Phoebe (he stayed at the sidelight until Phoebe pulled away, wondering if it was wise even to let her drive in the snow, much less ski) and returned to the kitchen to his coffee and the Wall Street Journal, there was Tess at the table, wearing a heather gray Nordic sweater and black leggings and socks, assiduously punching numbers into her cell phone again and again.

“There’s no reception here,” she said.

“Who are you trying to call?”

“The kids. The baby-sitter.” Tess smiled, then flushed, embarrassed. “I know they’re fine, but…”

“You’re a good mother,” Addison said. “And good mothers worry.”

She set the phone down on the kitchen table and looked at him. Really looked at him with her wide blue eyes. It took him by surprise.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for saying that.” She cast her eyes down at the table. “Greg thinks it’s ridiculous how much I worry. But they’re my children. I like to know they’re okay. I like to know what they’re doing, what they’re eating, if they slept well, what they dreamed about.”

“They’re lucky to have you,” Addison said.

“I don’t want them to think I’ve just abandoned them, the day after Christmas. And the tree is still up with the lights on it, and I told Cassidy not to build a fire, but it gets so cold in our house, so then at the last minute I told her that if it was freezing then it was okay for her to build a fire, and I was up half the night worried that she would build a fire and the house would burn down…”

“You don’t have to explain it to me,” Addison said. “I get it.”

Tess sighed. “I guess I’ll have to call them from town. What are you up to today?”

“I’m going to the fitness center right now,” Addison said. “Then I thought I might walk into town for some lunch.”

Tess was staring at him. She was pretty, like a doll. Of course, Phoebe was pretty like a doll, too. Phoebe was an exquisite china doll, delicate, fragile. Tess was pretty like a Bobbsey Twin, like Mary Ann from Gilligan’s Island. She was cute, perky, freckled, kindergarten-teacher pretty.

“What?” he said.

“I like it that you made a plan for yourself,” she said. “You’re not worried about the others, you’re not worried about Phoebe-”

I’m always worried about Phoebe, he thought. But he would never say this to Tess.

“You just asked yourself what you wanted to do today, and you’re going to do it.”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m very selfish.”

“My New Year’s resolution is to be more selfish,” Tess said. “To do things that I want to do-not that the kids want me to do, or Greg wants me to do. What I realized-this year, you know-is that I put far too much time and effort into looking out for Greg. And meanwhile, Greg is looking out for Greg. He’s doing a terrible job, of course.”

Here Tess gave a weak laugh, and Addison thought, Are we going to talk about it?

Tess paused. She looked for a moment like she was sizing him up. Was he worthy of a conversation about the big, forbidden topic?

He was not.

She said, “So one of the things I decided is that I’m going to spend more time and energy taking care of myself.” She fiddled with her iPhone; with its yellow cover, it was as bright as a child’s toy. “I don’t even know where to start.” She glanced up. “So for today, can I tag around with you?”

Had it started then? Getting closer.

Addison filled with warmth. And anticipation. Would it seem odd to the others if he and Tess spent the day together? The hallmark of these group trips had always been unexpected alliances. Addison remembered the four-hour canoe trip he and the Chief had taken during their vacation at the Point, on Saranac Lake. They had gotten lost somehow, had debarked and carried the canoe over their heads like Indians until they came across a dirt road, where they hitched a ride back to the Point with two dope-smoking hippies who seemed markedly less jolly when they discovered Ed was a police chief. That story was now legend. It remained the touchstone of Addison and Ed’s friendship.

So today would be his day with Tess.

“I’d love it,” he said.

They went to the fitness center, which was down the hill, at the base of the condo complex. Addison signed them in under Jack’s name. The place was deserted except for a very fit-looking older gentleman on the elliptical and a muscle-bound kid of about twenty-five who was wearing a complicated knee brace and pumping iron. Both the older man and the kid eyed Tess in the mirror as she stripped down to her workout clothes-a pair of incredibly flattering yoga pants and a jog bra that left the pale, toned plane of her abdomen bare. Addison wore gym shorts and the tattered gray Princeton T-shirt that he’d ordered ten years earlier from the back of the alumni magazine. It was a revolting spectacle, according to Phoebe, but it was the T-shirt he liked to work out in.

He got on the treadmill. Forty minutes, level 7 with hills, just as he did six days a week at the gym. Why did he feel like a stranger to this machine? Why did he feel self-conscious and uncoordinated? Tess was on the mat in front of the mirror, stretching. Or doing yoga-Addison couldn’t tell. She was incredibly flexible. The young guy was watching her, too; Addison was surreptitiously watching him watching her. Okay, it was impossible to exercise this way. Addison put on his headphones and tried to keep up with the pace he’d set.

He gave it more than usual. He gave it too much. He was running at a 9 with hills, he was sweating like a wild boar, the Princeton T-shirt was dark and sopping. Addison’s face was red, and he was forced to remove his glasses because they kept slipping down his nose. He set them on the tray next to the Newsweek he was too pumped up even to open, but without his glasses, he couldn’t see Tess. Or rather, he could see her-first on the exercise bike, then doing sit-ups on the inclined bench, then lifting weights and chatting with the young stud in between sets. But Addison’s eyes were very bad (everyone told him to get Lasik surgery, but he could not abide the thought of a laser or anything else touching his eye), and hence he could not see Tess’s facial expression, he could not see the muscles in her stomach tense and release with the sit-ups, and he could not hear clearly what she was saying to the young stud. Blind people, apparently, had a keen sense of hearing to compensate for not being able to see, but without his eyeglasses, Addison felt completely adrift. He might as well have been up on the mountain, buried in a snowbank. He heard Tess laugh, heard her say “Nantucket,” heard her say, “Oh, that’s too bad. Such bad luck.” Maybe this guy was telling her the reason for the knee brace. (Ski accident, Addison guessed. Torn ACL.) It was as if Tess and the guy were speaking a foreign language, and not one of the three Addison was fluent in.

Had Tess noticed him? Did she see how fast he was flying up one electronic hill after another?

He realized simultaneously that he was trying to impress Tess and that he was jealous of the kid with biceps the size of grapefruits and a sympathy-evoking knee injury. Jealous! But no, not possible. He asked himself: if some blond, hulking Adonis on the cross-country trail decided to accompany Phoebe and then later join her for lunch, would Addison be jealous? The answer was no. Men hit on Phoebe regularly because she was so beautiful, and Addison’s prevailing emotion for these men was pity.