Elin Hilderbrand - The Island

“You’re welcome,” Trey Wilson said. He smiled at her. “What should I do with the groceries?”

“Just leave them on the counter, thanks,” India said.

He did this, then loitered at her elbow as if he expected to be tipped. He didn’t expect to be tipped, did he? India hadn’t touched money in weeks; she wasn’t even sure where her wallet was. She smiled at him, and he said, “Do you have anything for me?”

What was he asking?

“Trash?” he said. “Laundry? The list?”

“Oh!” India jumped up. Barrett had emptied the trash automatically, and he had taken the list from its usual spot-under the jar of shells and beach glass on the kitchen counter. India wasn’t the woman of the house, but it was falling to her to teach this young man the ropes. Was there really any point, with only five days left?

She said, “The trash is here.” She lifted out the liner and cinched its yellow plastic handle; then she set in a new liner, even though this was something Barrett had always done himself. “And the list is always kept right here.”

Trey nodded glumly and accepted the list.

“Okay,” he said. “Thanks.”

“Thank you, ” India said.

The boy loped away. India missed the real Barrett. And she missed Chuck Lee, the original man of her dreams.

At the picnic table, she turned the package in her hands.

She wanted a glass of wine or a cigarette-or preferably both-but there wasn’t time. The others might appear at any second. So open it, open it!

It was a painting. Rather, it was part of a painting, part of one of the nudes of India, which Lula had cut into a five-by-five-inch square and reframed. India studied the small canvas; she turned it in the sun. Then she got it: it was the curve of India’s hip, delicately shaded to accentuate the sensual sweep toward what lay south. India immediately knew which canvas Lula had cut up: it was the magnificent canvas that Spencer Frost had bought for the school. India gasped at the thought of that breathtaking painting now vandalized; Lula had snipped the hip from the painting like a woman clipping a coupon. But the act was anything but casual, India knew. Lula would have had to lift the painting off the wall and carry it to her studio. This would have been a fairly easy thing to do undetected; in the summertime, the halls of PAFA were deserted, and the school had zero budget for security measures for student work. Although Lula had withdrawn from the school, she wouldn’t have to turn in her keys or vacate her studio space until mid-August.

India pictured Lula’s studio: She had one of the coveted corner units, with a big window looking south over the city. She had a battered leather sofa, which was smudged with paint, and an old steamer trunk that she used as a coffee table. She had a half fridge, a full-size drafting table that she had salvaged from outside a big architecture firm, and stacks and stacks of art books and magazines- Vogue, Playboy, Nylon. She had a docking station for her iPod, and a makeshift closet, where she kept clothes so that she didn’t have to go back to her apartment to change before she went out at night. The studio was her holy space. Lula had laid the canvas on the drafting table, perhaps, and studied it to decide where and how much to cut. Her procedure would have been as serious as a surgeon’s. In cutting the painting, she was cutting herself. What she had sent, India realized, was her own version of van Gogh’s ear. It was love and it was insanity.

In some ways, the small painting reminded India of the details of paintings shown in art history texts-portions of paintings were zoomed in on to show the reader the exquisite brushwork or technique. But in another way this small piece became something else. It could be the inside of a shell, or the swirl of a sand dune. Lula was, as ever, a genius. This small painting was its own whole.

There was a tiny white envelope with the painting, the kind used by florists when delivering flowers. India ripped it open. One word.

Try?

The question mark got her. Lula was asking, begging, pleading.

Try? Could she try?

Barrett kept a tool box in the bottom of the downstairs closet. India raided it and found a hammer and a nail. Upstairs in her bedroom, she pounded the nail into the wall. Her first try punched the nail right through the plaster. She had to find a joist. She tried another spot, and the nail met with resistance. India hammered; the walls of the house shook, and India imagined them folding like a house of cards. She got the nail in, however, and she hung the painting. It was perfect here, she decided. It looked like the curve of Bigelow Point, or like the peachy inside of a whelk shell that the kids had picked off Whale Shoal.

She regarded Roger. “What do you think?” she asked.

His seaweed hair waved in the breeze.

From the tip of Bigelow Point, she called Grant.

“He’s in a meeting,” his secretary, Alice, said. “Shall I have him call you back?”

“No,” Birdie said. “That’s okay.”

She hung up the phone, immediately disenchanted. Now see? This was the Grant Cousins she had known for thirty years. In a meeting. On the eighth fairway. On a conference call with Washington, Tokyo, London. At dinner at Gallagher’s. Unavailable. Can I have him call you back? Can I take a message? Yes, tell him I need him. Tate pushed another child off the slide and that child has broken her arm. It will be a miracle if the parents don’t sue. It’s urgent. I’m miscarrying, again, on my way to the hospital. Please make sure he picks the girls up at preschool. It’s an emergency. Tell him I’d like to speak to him about Ondine Morris. Someone overheard her praising Grant’s fine physique in the ladies’ locker room at the club. Have him call me immediately. I’m bored, I’m lonely, I should never have left my job at Christie’s, I loved carpets, the stories they tell, the hands that knot them, he knew that. Why did he ask me to quit? Tell him earning ten million dollars a year doesn’t mean he can effectively ignore his children. They’re clamoring for him.

I am clamoring for him. Please have him call me.

Birdie wanted to talk to Grant about the girls. He was their father. But when he learned the girls were fighting, what would he say? Would he be as concerned as Birdie was? Or would he wait, as always, for Birdie to tell him how to feel? She had thought, in the weeks since she’d been here, that she’d sensed a change in Grant. An emerging sensitivity. He had been sweet and attentive on the phone, supportive about her travails with Hank; he had been wistful and romantic. He had sent those flowers and worded the card perfectly. Birdie found it hard to admit, but she had been entertaining notions of being with Grant again. She would never, ever live with him, but they could be friends. They could do things together, alone, and with the children. She had thought she was immune to the old hurt. He’s in a meeting. Shall I have him call you back?

But she wasn’t.

She stumbled across Tate by accident, although Tuckernuck was small and Birdie knew where to look. At first she guessed Tate would be at North Pond, and when she wasn’t there, Birdie guessed East Pond. East Pond was smaller than North Pond and not quite as beautiful, although it had its own charms; the part of the pond that was farthest inland was bordered by fragrant Rosa rugosa and beach plum. Birdie guessed that Tate was in the mood for East Pond, feeling smaller and not quite as beautiful herself.

Birdie was right. Tate was there, with her earbuds on. She was propped on her elbows, but when she saw Birdie, she fell back flat. Birdie had half a mind to keep walking. Tate didn’t want to see her, and Birdie didn’t belong in the middle of whatever was happening between her daughters. When the girls were teenagers, Birdie had such a hard time with their squabbling that she went to see a family counselor, who advised Birdie to let the girls work it out themselves. Had she listened? No. They were her daughters; she wanted them to love each other. She had brokered the peace treaties then, and here she was, doing it now.