Elin Hilderbrand - The Island

Grant had suffered through two weeks a summer in the house on Tuckernuck until Tate was a senior in high school, and then he put his foot down: no more.

Birdie hadn’t been to Tuckernuck in thirteen years. It was time she returned.

And so, in addition to planning Chess’s wedding to Michael Morgan, Birdie also planned a week’s vacation on Tuckernuck. She called their caretaker, Chuck Lee. As she dialed the number-long forgotten and yet familiar-she found herself singing with nerves. Chuck’s wife, Eleanor, answered the phone. Birdie had never laid eyes on Eleanor, much less had a conversation with her, though Birdie was aware of Eleanor’s existence and she was sure that Eleanor was aware of hers. Birdie decided not to identify herself to Eleanor now; it would be easier that way.

She said, “I’m looking for Chuck Lee, please. Is he available?”

“Not at the moment,” Eleanor said. “May I take a message?”

“I have a caretaking question,” Birdie said.

“Chuck doesn’t do caretaking anymore,” Eleanor said. The woman had a pleasant enough demeanor, Birdie thought. In Birdie’s younger imagination, Eleanor had weighed four hundred pounds and had skin the texture of a squid and a faint mustache.

“Oh,” Birdie said. She wondered if Chuck and Eleanor’s phone had caller ID, but decided not. Chuck was a man firmly embedded in 1974 and always had been.

“My son Barrett has taken over the business,” Eleanor said. “Would you like his number?”

After Birdie hung up, she had to sit down and take a moment. How mercilessly the years flew by! Birdie had known Barrett Lee all his life. She remembered him at five years old, a towhead in an orange life preserver sitting beside his father on the Boston Whaler that picked up Birdie and Grant and the kids from Madaket Harbor on Nantucket and delivered them to the slice of beach, as white and soft as breadcrumbs, that fronted their property on the tiny neighboring island of Tuckernuck. Was Barrett Lee old enough to take over a business? In age, he had fallen somewhere between Chess and Tate, who were thirty-two and thirty respectively, making Barrett thirty-one or so. And Chuck had retired like a normal sixty-five-year-old man, whereas Grant still rode the train into the city every morning and, for all Birdie knew, still took clients to Gallagher’s for martinis and sirloins after work.

Birdie called Barrett Lee’s cell phone, and sure enough, a man answered.

“Barrett?” Birdie said. “This is Birdie Cousins calling. I own the Tate house on Tuckernuck?”

“Hey, Mrs. Cousins,” Barrett Lee said casually, as though they had spoken only the week before. “How’s it going?”

Birdie tried to remember the last time she had seen Barrett Lee. She had a vague memory of him as a teenager. He had been quite handsome, like his father. He played football for the Nantucket Whalers; he had broad shoulders and that white-blond hair. He had come out on his father’s boat alone early one morning to take one of the girls fishing. And then another time he had taken one of the girls on a picnic lunch. For the life of her, Birdie couldn’t remember if he had taken Chess or Tate.

How’s it going? How was she supposed to answer that? Grant and I divorced two years ago. He lives in a “loft” apartment in Norwalk and dates women he calls “cougars,” while I bounce off the walls of the family homestead in New Canaan, six thousand square feet filled with rugs and antiques and framed photographs documenting a life now gone. I cook an elaborate meal on Monday and eat it all week long. I still belong to the garden club. I go to a book group once a month and frequently I’m the only one who’s read the selection; the rest of the women are just there for the wine and the gossip. Chess and Tate are grown up, with lives of their own. I wish I had a job. I spend more time than I should feeling angry at Grant for never encouraging me to work outside the home. Because now, here I am, fifty-seven years old, divorced, becoming the kind of woman who inflicts herself on her children.

“It goes well,” Birdie said. “I’m sure hearing from me is something of a shock.”

“A shock,” Barrett confirmed.

“How is your father?” Birdie asked. “He’s retired?”

“Retired,” Barrett said. “He had a stroke just before Thanksgiving. He’s fine, but it slowed him way down.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Birdie said. This also gave her pause. Chuck Lee had had a stroke? Chuck Lee with his military buzz cut, and the cigarette clenched in the corner of his mouth, and his biceps bulging as he pulled the ropes of the anchor off the ocean floor? He was slow moving now? Birdie imagined a land turtle, bald and lumbering, then quickly erased it from her mind. “Listen, Chess and I are going to spend the week of the Fourth of July in the house. Can you get it ready?”

“Well,” Barrett said.

“Well, what?”

“It’s going to need work,” Barrett said. “I stopped by there back in September and the place is falling down on itself. It needs to be reshingled and it probably needs a new roof. You’ll need a new generator. And the stairs down to the beach have rotted. Now, I didn’t go inside, but…”

“Can you take care of it?” Birdie asked. “I want it to be usable. Can you buy a good generator and fix the rest of the house up? I’ll send a check tomorrow. Five thousand? Ten thousand?” In the divorce, Birdie had gotten the house and a generous monthly stipend. Grant had also promised that if she had larger expenses, he would cover them, as long as he deemed them “reasonable.” Grant hated the Tuckernuck house; Birdie had no idea if he would deem the cost of fixing it up reasonable or not. She smelled a possible battleground, but she couldn’t let the Tuckernuck house fall to pieces after seventy-five years, could she?

“Ten thousand to start,” Barrett said. “I’m sorry to tell you that…”

“No, don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault…”

“But if you want the house back to where it was…”

“We have no choice!” Birdie said. “It was my grandmother’s house.”

“You’d like it ready by July first?”

“July first,” Birdie said. “It’s just going to be Chess and me for one last hurrah. She’s getting married in September.”

“Married?” Barrett said. He paused, and Birdie realized that it must have been Chess that he’d taken on the picnic.

“On September twenty-fifth,” Birdie said proudly.

“Wow,” Barrett said.

By the middle of April, tax time, every last detail of Chess’s wedding to Michael Morgan had been tended to-including the dress for the flower girl, the catering menu, and the selection of hymns at the church. Birdie called Chess at work much more frequently to get her opinion and her approval. Most of the time what Chess said was, “Yes, Birdie, fine. Whatever you think.” Birdie had been both surprised and flattered when Chess had asked her for help with the wedding. She had essentially dropped the thing in Birdie’s lap, saying matter-of-factly, “You have exquisite taste.” Birdie happened to believe this was true; her good taste was a fact, like her green eyes or her attached earlobes. But to have Chess’s confidence was gratifying.

Three hundred people would be invited to the wedding; the service would be held at Trinity Episcopal, with Benjamin Denton, the pastor of Chess’s youth, presiding. The ceremony would be followed by a tented reception in Birdie’s backyard. The landscapers had started working the previous September. The pièce de résistance, in Birdie’s opinion, was a floating island that would be placed in Birdie’s pond, where the couple would take their first dance.

Grant had called only once to complain about cost, and that was in regard to the twenty thousand dollars for the engineering and manufacturing of the floating island. Birdie had patiently explained the concept to him over the phone, but he either didn’t get it or didn’t like it.