Elin Hilderbrand - The Castaways

Phoebe lifted the poem with her nails; her fingers were coated with chicken grease.

A poem! Ripped from somewhere.

She read the poem, keen to understand it. Literature was her friend now; she had finished Catcher in the Rye and was halfway through the Ellen Gilchrist. The poem was straightforward; she got it, but not really. A birthday party in a restaurant, the men’s room, someone pissing Asti Spumante. Macho! Then Phoebe came to the underlined verses. My life with you has been beyond beyond/And there’s nothing beyond it I’m seeking/I wouldn’t mind being dead/If I could still be with you.

Phoebe set the poem back down on the pile of Addison’s things and weighted it with his keys.

She had seen the poem before. She had seen it at Tess’s house. Tess had handed it to her. She’d said, Look at this. Phoebe had pretended to read it, but of course the words had been little more than ants on sugar.

It’s beautiful, she had told Tess.

Tess had sniffled a little bit. Everything made that woman cry.

Phoebe scooped mayonnaise into the bowl with abandon. Addison could not be saved. She would have to find something else to want.

He summoned them to the Begonia because he didn’t know where else to go. And because he hadn’t yet decided whether he should tell them about the tox report or keep it a secret. If they went to the Begonia, it could be passed off as simply the three of them meeting for beers. Since the evening after Greg and Tess’s funeral, they had done nothing as a group. Nothing-it was odd, and the unexpected thing was, the Chief missed it. He missed gathering, he missed drinking cold beer out on the Drakes’ deck, he missed being invited to swim in Addison’s pool, he missed Delilah’s cooking (she had a knack for always knowing what he was craving), he missed sitting on the beach in a semicircle, talking about boats and listening to the Sox game on the last transistor radio in America, which he had bought on eBay. Delilah called the house once to invite them and the twins over for a barbecue, but Andrea had said no. When the Chief asked why, Andrea said, I don’t care if I ever go over there again.

So along with Greg and Tess, something else had died.

The Chief got to the Begonia first, and Faith greeted him at the door. He kissed her rouged cheek. She said, “How you doin’?” in a way that seemed to be asking more than the obvious, and he said, “Oh, Jesus, Faith. As well as can be expected, I guess.”

Faith said, “We sure do miss him.”

He could do a little detective work here; the Begonia had been Greg’s “third place,” after home and the school. If Greg had been talking to someone who sold drugs, Faith might know about it. But it was imperative to keep things under wraps, and Faith, while a decent woman, was Nantucket’s answer to a daily newspaper. If it was happening, she would tell you about it.

He asked to be seated at the back table, the one that was shielded by half-walls. Everyone called it the Mafia Table. Normally the Chief liked to sit at the bar where he could see the TV and lend an air of neighborhood security to the establishment, but tonight he needed the Mafia Table.

He said to Faith, “I’m meeting Add and Jeffrey.”

She nodded, set down menus, and said, “Please know that Thom and I are thinking of you. And we’re thinking of Andrea.”

The Chief said, “Appreciate that.”

Faith lingered a second and the Chief panicked. He did not want to get involved in a conversation. He picked up his menu even though he always ordered the bleu burger, and Faith reluctantly wandered away.

He took a deep breath. Beer, onion rings, exhaust from the stove. The Sox were on TV and the jukebox was playing Tom Petty. He was in the Scarlet Begonia. He was okay, despite the fact that the tox report was eating at him like a tapeworm, despite the fact that Andrea was certifiably nuts and needed a padded room on a quiet farm in central Pennsylvania. Andrea thought about nothing other than Tess: Tess drowning in Nantucket Sound, Tess almost drowning in Boston Harbor as a child, Tess miscarrying once, losing the second baby in a fall, miscarrying again, Tess suffering through the weeks of Greg’s inquisition, Tess withdrawing from Andrea right after Christmas. This last thing seemed to be the corn kernel stuck in Andrea’s back molar: for the six months prior to Tess’s death, Tess had been distant and strange. Andrea had felt her pulling away. It would have been imperceptible to anyone other than Andrea, but Andrea had sensed that something was wrong. Tess didn’t confide in Andrea, she went two and three days without checking in, and, worst of all, she had stopped going to mass with Andrea on Saturday evenings, which was the one hour of the week that they reserved not only for the Lord but for each other.

Andrea was so consumed with her interior life that she didn’t always notice what was going on around her. The twins had their own set of complicated needs-food, clothing, a chauffeur service, enriching ways to pass the time indoors and outdoors, athletic and educational, for all of their waking hours. Andrea could barely meet the minimum requirements: drop off, pick up, breakfast, lunch, dinner, bath, bedtime. If there were to be outings, if there was to be fun, it had to be provided by Eric, Kacy, or the Chief. Eric and Kacy had jobs and friends. The Chief had a police force to run and an island to keep safe. They did what they could, but it was clear the twins were unhappy. Not only devastated by the tragic loss of both their parents, but bored and uninspired by their new life in the Kapenash house. On Sundays, when the Chief was in charge, he asked the twins what they wanted to do and they invariably said they wanted to play with Drew and Barney; they wanted to go to Auntie Dee’s house. And though that would have been killing two birds with one stone-he would be making the kids happy and resurrecting some of his lost social life (his mouth watered at the thought of grilled corn, cherry tomatoes stuffed with guacamole, the wickedly spicy tuna tartare that Delilah made in the summer)-he could not in good conscience take the kids over there. Andrea would unhinge. This happened more and more frequently-the guitar smashing had been the worst, followed by dumping a platter of perfectly grilled rib-eye steaks into her perennial bed, followed by throwing her cell phone into the ocean. The kids were terrified of Andrea. One morning Finn ate his Cheerios without milk because he was afraid to ask for some.

Chloe had a bad case of the night terrors. She woke up calling for her mom, and Andrea lay there with her eyes open but made no move to deal with it, so the Chief would walk Chloe back to bed, find her doll, and try to make a convincing whispered argument that everything was going to be okay. The poor kid was craving her mother, a woman with peppy energy and feminine warmth, and what she got was her gruff uncle who had a big, scary job and carried a gun.

In a brave moment, the Chief had told Andrea that the best way to honor Tess now was to concentrate on caring for the children.

Andrea had basically spit on him for that. She said, “I am caring for them, Ed.”

But she wasn’t. She was too caught up in her grief. It was backward, upside down, inside out.

Here at the Begonia, the Chief stroked the scarred tabletop. Addison was next to arrive, and he must have stopped at the bar, because he was carrying a drink. The Chief stood, they shook hands, Addison sat down opposite, and the Chief felt nervous suddenly, like he was on a blind date. He and Addison had been friends for eons. It was true that he and Addison did not have a whole heck of a lot in common; Addison was slippery like a fish. Impossible to grasp. He had had a fancy education, he’d lived and worked in other countries, he had a daughter who lived in California like a character in one of those Teen Disney shows that Chloe wanted to watch but Andrea prohibited. Addison was a businessman; he was Nantucket’s real estate magnate. He did deals where he made so much money it felt illegal. He made connections, he culled favors, he lived in a six-thousand-square-foot house with his fragile wife.