Elin Hilderbrand - The Castaways

Andrea kept going. Tess followed like a dog Andrea was dragging on a leash. They reached the peak and they watched the color of the sky warm and lighten. It was a moment from a commercial or a tear-jerker chick flick. It was the moment when everything was supposed to change. They would stand side by side with their arms flung around each other, their faces bathed in the buttery light of a new day, and it would be an epiphany. Tess would be cured. The realization would hit: it was time to move on.

Instead Tess found that her legs were unable to support her, and she collapsed on a rock. She was howling like a trapped animal. Andrea thought, I have seriously fucked up. I made her hike up here, but she has no prayer of making it down. I am going to have to carry her. And though Andrea would have said that she would be willing to carry Tess anywhere, she could not realistically get Tess down the mountain.

Andrea had to call the front desk at Canyon Ranch and have them send a rescue team. Andrea had had a speech written in her head, words she had planned to deliver at the summit. Something like this: The baby is dead. It was not your fault-you have to deal with it like the reasonable, strong woman you are. You have to put the pieces back together and move forward. The delivery was supposed to be no-nonsense and tough-but Andrea couldn’t say the words to Tess in her current whimpering state. So they sat next to each other on the rock, waiting for nearly ninety minutes until two strapping men showed up with a stretcher, on which they carried Tess down the mountain.

The only thing Tess and Andrea talked about while they waited for the rescue team was what they would order for breakfast once they made it back to the dining room. Andrea was addicted to the Canyon Ranch granola (almonds, dried cherries, amber nuggets of dried apricots) with house-made yogurt.

Tess said she wanted four poached eggs with salt and pepper.

Which in itself felt like a victory.

In November, Tess got pregnant again and miscarried the day after she found out.

She said to Andrea, “I can’t do this anymore. I’m going back to using my diaphragm.”

Andrea said, “Okay.”

Jeffrey jumped in here. He had been sitting quietly on his milk crate, but when Andrea reached this point, he sprang to life. Because wasn’t it the painful truth that in the harrowing aftermath of Tess’s second lost pregnancy, Delilah had gotten pregnant with Drew? The farmer and his wife were pregnant! It was happy news, except for the fact that they were intimate friends with a couple who had lost two, then three consecutive pregnancies. Delilah could not bring herself to tell Tess she was pregnant; and because she didn’t want Tess to find out from a third party, she didn’t tell anyone else, not even Phoebe. Jeffrey was angry about this. It was unfair that he and his wife could not celebrate their pregnancy because of Tess and Greg’s difficulties. Jeffrey said, “Greg and Tess are going to understand. They’re going to be happy for us.”

Delilah said, “If you believe that, then you do not understand anything about human nature. She is going to hate me. I am going to lose one of my best friends.”

Jeffrey and Delilah told Phoebe and Addison first, at a private dinner at 56 Union. Or rather, Phoebe guessed, because Delilah had ordered a club soda instead of her beloved espresso martini. Phoebe and Addison were happy for Jeffrey and Delilah. Phoebe had just watched her brother, Reed, and his wife go through the whole childbirth thing; she now had a nephew, and was enjoying being an auntie. And now Delilah! Phoebe couldn’t wait; she hoped Delilah had a girl; she wanted to buy tutus and glow-inthe-dark nail polish. Jeffrey and Delilah drove home from that dinner feeling good about the pregnancy. Of course Greg and Tess would offer their blessing! Delilah picked up the phone as soon as she got home; it was ten-thirty on a Saturday night, but Delilah didn’t care. The dread of telling Tess about the pregnancy was eating away at her; the anxiety had to be bad for the baby. Delilah was getting it over with now!

Greg picked up the phone.

Delilah said, “Greg, I’m pregnant.”

There was silence.

Delilah said, “Would you put Tess on the phone, please?”

Greg said, “No, no, no. I’ll tell her myself.”

Delilah said, “ I’ll tell her. Put her on.”

There was silence. A shuffling sound. Then Tess came on the phone, sounding very young and half asleep.

“Hello?”

“Tess? It’s Delilah.”

“Hi.”

“Hi.” Delilah swallowed. “Listen, I’m pregnant.”

Silence.

Then Tess said, “I bet it wasn’t easy for you to tell me that.”

And Delilah burst into in tears.

Drew was born by cesarean section after eighteen hours of labor. He weighed ten pounds. Delilah was exhausted and in extreme pain; they put her on a morphine drip. She was the only person in the maternity ward, so Jeffrey left her and baby Drew in the capable hands of the labor and delivery nurses and went to the Begonia to meet Tess and Greg, the Chief and Andrea, and Addison and Phoebe. They had all been at the Begonia since the news of Drew’s birth had reached them four hours earlier. They were in a festive mood, raising their glasses to toast Jeffrey as he walked in. Greg got up to play a set and started with “Danny’s Song,” dedicated to Andrew Jeffrey Drake, Nantucket’s newest native son. Jeffrey was attentive to Tess; he was concerned about her, but she looked great, she looked happy. She kissed Jeffrey full on the lips; he tasted the sweet tang of the champagne she was drinking.

That night, Tess got so drunk that she (famously) forgot to put in her diaphragm. Nine months later, the twins were born.

Andrea sighed. She was teary. She was always teary during her time in the farm attic with Jeffrey, because it was like reliving secret, stolen time with Tess, but this story made her teary for a different reason. This was the Greatest Story Ever Told-the story of a woman who deserved something good who hung in there and persevered and got something miraculous. Not one healthy baby, but two, a boy and a girl, a perfect matched set. Andrea could remember holding Finn in his bunting at the hospital, and Tess was glowing like the Virgin Mary (never mind that the conception had been less than immaculate, including as it had six glasses of Moët & Chandon). Tess asked Andrea at that moment if she would be Finn’s godmother and Andrea said, “Oh my God, I would be so honored.” As if she hadn’t been expecting it.

Tess said, “I’d like to thank you for not lecturing me when we were stuck on top of that godforsaken mountain at Canyon Ranch. I don’t think I could have handled it.”

Andrea said, “I had my speech all prepared.”

Tess said, “I did okay without the speech. I finally, finally did okay.”

Andrea said, “You did better than okay, honey. These children are beautiful.”

Tess said, “So I just have one other question.”

“Shoot.”

“Will you be Chloe’s godmother?”

“Oh my God,” Andrea said as she sank onto the side of the bed next to Tess, because this she had not been expecting, this was an embarrassment of riches, two darling babies to guide spiritually, the way she had been guided by her mother’s sister Katharine, the way Tess had been guided by her Aunt Agropina. They were, Andrea felt at that moment, all going to be okay. “I would be so honored.”

He was going to give them one shining moment together before things fell apart.

And really, it should be his wife telling this, she was better at it than he was, she remembered every last detail about each one of their group trips, down to what they ordered for dinner, who sat next to whom on the airplane, and what the bar bill was at the end of the night. But Delilah wasn’t available and this story needed to be told, even purely as an antidote to the sad and difficult material that came before and to what was yet to come.