Elin Hilderbrand - The Island

Tate was perched tentatively on the arm of a chair, which she realized was quite rude, but that was all the commitment she was willing to give. She didn’t want to sit. Anita set the glasses of wine on the glass coffee table and plopped down ever so casually on the sofa, and what could Tate do? She had been raised by Birdie. She sat in the chair and smiled at Anita and said, “Your house is lovely.”

Anita picked up her wineglass. “Cheers!” she said. She reached out to clink Tate’s glass, forcing cheers upon her. That was fine, but Anita couldn’t make her drink. Tate brought the glass to her mouth. Anita was watching her. She took the tiniest sip, just enough to dampen her lips.

“You like it?” Anita said.

“Delicious,” Tate said.

Anita said, “You look nervous. Are you nervous?”

“Kind of,” Tate said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”

“Oh!” Anita said. “You aren’t interrupting a thing. I was just relaxing in the sun. I’m really very lazy.” She smiled as she said this and Tate thought she was joking, so Tate laughed what she thought was the appropriate amount. But Anita set her wineglass down harshly on the glass table, and there was a noise like a dissonant bell. And Tate thought her laughing must have been inappropriate; she should have said something soothing instead, like, Well, you are on vacation. Tate wasn’t great with social cues despite Birdie’s tutelage. Anita said, “Roman thinks I’m completely useless, sitting here on Nantucket, going out for lunch, going out for dinner, spending his money, not working, not contributing to my local community or what he refers to as ‘the wider world.’ So we’ve separated, he’s in New York and I’m here, we’re no longer a couple, and that is fine with me.”

“Oh,” Tate said. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Sorry?” Anita Fullin said. “ Sorry? ” She threw back some more wine and her hair fell into her face, and Tate wondered exactly how much Anita Fullin had had to drink that morning already. Had she poured a glass with her Grape-Nuts? “So of course what Roman doesn’t know, what I could never have told him, is that I had hopes for Barrett. I became very close with Barrett when his wife was dying and then even closer after she died. I lent him a lot of money, but that didn’t matter because I adore Barrett and would do anything for him. And then, just recently, last week, when I hired him to work for me exclusively, I thought it would be a good opportunity to make him into something.”

“Make him into something?” Tate said.

“Make him into a successful man,” Anita said. “Introduce him to the right people, find him a job…”

“He has a job,” Tate said. “He owns a business.”

Anita stared at Tate. Her face was tan and absolutely unlined. Her lipstick was perfect. “He can do more. He can be like Roman: An investment banker, a man of the world. A man with money and power. He deserves that. He deserves so much more than what’s befallen him.”

“You think so?” Tate said.

“Yes,” Anita said. She finished her wine. She stared at Tate’s untouched wine, and Tate nearly offered it to her. “I do.”

Something about the way Anita said these last two words made Tate realize that, for Anita, men fell into the same two categories: Barrett, and men who weren’t Barrett.

Anita said, “But he blew it today. He walked out on me. I’ve decided to give him until noon to come back. Otherwise I’m going to sit down and make the calls.”

“Make the calls?” Tate said.

“I’m going to call all of his clients and tell them what a selfish bastard he is. I am going to call all of my friends and have them call their friends. I’m going to repossess his boat. I’m going to speak to my attorney about the money he owes me. I’m going to cut off all his other options so he has no choice but to come back here.” She picked up her empty wineglass and stood. “I would have called you, too, but you don’t have a phone.” She smiled. “So it’s lucky you stopped by!”

Tate excused herself to use the ladies’ room. Anita repaired to the kitchen for more wine. Tate walked to the end of a long hallway, past the powder room, onto a sunporch. It didn’t have what she was looking for. She tried another door and found a sitting room with two yellow cats reclining on a love seat. Tate turned around and saw a set of back stairs. She climbed the stairs and crept around-master bedroom, guest room, guest room-until she found the study. The home office. She sat down at the desk in front of the computer and lightly tapped the keyboard. The screen jumped to life. Tate grinned; it was a good, expensive model, a Dell, one of Tate’s favorites. Tate felt like she was seeing an old friend. She checked out the configuration of the desktop and got to work. Her fingers flew. She could do this in her sleep. It was scary, really, but being a computer genius cut both ways. She heard Anita downstairs calling out, “Hello? Hello?” Tate scrambled to work faster and faster until she had the system on its knees; if she pushed one more button, she would wipe out the entire hard drive-all the documents, all the e-mails, all the pictures, all the music, everything. Wipe it out! Tate was giddy.

“Hello?” Anita called up the stairs. “Tate?”

Tate waggled her fingers in the air above the keyboard, a piece of personal theater she liked to use to remind herself of the witchcraft she was capable of. Just having the ability to visit a technical hurricane on Anita Fullin was good enough. Tate stood up from the desk. She experienced a bloom of unexpected satisfaction. Anita Fullin knew her name.

Tate descended the stairs. Anita was waiting at the bottom.

“I think you’d better go,” Anita said.

Tate held up her hands to show she hadn’t stolen anything. Upstairs, the computer waited, hanging by a thread. Maybe Anita Fullin would push the magic button herself.

“I think you’re right,” Tate said.

Tate walked down the hot street toward town. This was where Barrett was supposed to appear and scoop her up so they could drive off into the midday sun. He had quit Anita Fullin; he had set himself free. But where was he?

She bought two bottles of cold water in town and walked all the way back to Madaket Harbor. It was sunny and hot, and unlike on Tuckernuck, the bike path here was paved and populated; people zipped around Tate on bikes, chiming their bells. On your left! Cars zoomed past, and she thought each one might be Barrett. But no.

She reached Madaket Harbor at two o’clock. She bought a sandwich and another bottle of water at the Westender store, and she ate on the dock with her feet dangling in the water. She wanted to swim but hadn’t brought her suit. She considered jumping in in her shorts and T-shirt-but she was determined, from this point forward, to act like a grown woman. Not a woman like Anita Fullin or like Chess or like her mother or like Aunt India-but like the woman that was inside herself.

Then she thought, The grown woman inside me is hot and sticky. And she jumped in.

She was asleep on the deck in her drying clothes when Trey nudged her with his Top-Sider.

“Hey,” he said.

She opened her eyes, then closed them. When she opened them again, it would be Barrett standing over her, and not Trey. She understood then why Chess slept all the time: when life wasn’t going your way, it was much easier to snooze.

“Come on,” Trey said. “We’re going.”

Tate sat up, bleary eyed. Madaket Harbor was spread in front of her like a painting. Blue water, green eelgrass, white boats. Trey had a bag of ice and a bag of groceries; he was untying the dinghy. She stumbled down onto the beach. Her clothes were stiff with salt, and she didn’t even want to think about her hair.