Elin Hilderbrand - The Island

“Traveling?” Birdie said. “What does that mean?”

“I’m thinking about India,” Chess said. “Or maybe Nepal.”

“India?” Birdie said. She was trying not to become hysterical. “ Nepal? ”

“Listen, Bird, can we talk about all this when I get home?”

“Home?” Birdie said.

“I’ve sublet my apartment for the summer. I’m coming home to you next weekend.”

“Next weekend” was Memorial Day, and Birdie had plans to go to the North Fork of Long Island with Hank. Reluctantly, she canceled. She said to Hank, “Chess has quit her job and sublet her apartment, and she’s coming home. And I should be there for her. I’m her mother.”

Hank said, “Do you want to talk about it?”

Birdie thought for a second. Hank had handled Chess’s broken engagement artfully, convincing Birdie that if Chess was no longer in love with Michael, then breaking the engagement was the only decent and humane thing to do. He might be able to make sense of these new developments. But Birdie held back. “No,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay, well then, we’ll go to the North Fork another weekend. I promise. Now go take care of your little girl.”

Birdie changed the sheets in Chess’s room and put roses in a vase by her bed. She made Tuscan lemon chicken, Chess’s favorite dinner, for Friday night. Birdie had half a mind to plan a barbecue for Sunday afternoon, inviting some of Chess’s high school friends, but thought better of it. And how wise! Chess, when she arrived, looked, not like a beautiful thirty-two-year-old newly liberated from fiancé and high-powered job, but wan and puffy eyed and painfully thin. Her long blond hair was greasy and tangled; her shoulders were hunched. She wore a ratty T-shirt featuring the logo of the band Diplomatic Immunity, and a pair of surplus army shorts. She hadn’t bothered with makeup or jewelry; the holes in her pierced ears were red and swollen. She looked like a homeless person.

Drugs, Birdie thought. Or a cult. India? Nepal?

Chess pulled her cell phone out of her incongruously elegant Coach purse and dropped it into Birdie’s kitchen trash. “I am done with phone calls,” she said. “I am done with e-mails and done with texting. I don’t want to talk to Michael or to anyone else about Michael. I don’t want to talk to anyone from work about why I left or where I’m going. I am all done talking. Okay?” She looked to Birdie as if for permission, and her eyes filled with tears. “I’m just really confused, Bird. The way this has all played out… the things that have happened… honestly? I’m done with other people. I want to be a hermit and live in a cave.”

“What’s wrong?” Birdie asked. “What ‘things’ have happened?”

“Are you not listening?” Chess said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Birdie, not knowing what else to do, poured Chess a glass of Sancerre and led her to the picnic table, which was set for two overlooking the garden. (Would it make Chess uncomfortable to gaze at the acreage where her wedding reception was to have taken place? Probably, but what could Birdie do? It was her backyard.) She plied Chess with Tuscan lemon chicken and a gratin of potatoes and fennel, and haricots verts sautéed with garlic, and rolls and butter. And a wedge of rhubarb pie for dessert. Under Birdie’s hawklike gaze, Chess ate four bites of chicken, one green bean, a bite of roll, and two bites of pie. She didn’t want to talk, and Birdie-despite four or five really important topics hovering over the table like hummingbirds-wouldn’t make her.

After dinner, Birdie rescued Chess’s phone from the trash can. She checked the display-fourteen new messages. Birdie was tempted to see who the messages were from. What kind of “things” had happened? Birdie supposed her curiosity was natural, but she was determined to shine as a mother, which meant respecting Chess’s privacy. She wiped the phone off and set it on the counter next to the house phone.

Upstairs, she drew her daughter a lavender-scented bath in the claw-foot tub and turned up Pachelbel’s Canon. She laid a fresh white eyelet nightgown on Chess’s bed. She set a copy of her reading group’s latest selection on the night table.

Before retiring to her own room that night, Birdie peeked in on Chess, after knocking lightly and waiting to be invited in. She was happy to find Chess tucked between the crisp linens, reading. The light was soft; the roses by the bed were fragrant.

Chess looked up. “Thanks for everything, Birdie.”

Birdie nodded. It was what she did, it was who she was: a mother. Chess was home. She was safe.

Which was a good thing, because three days hence, on Monday, Memorial Day, the call came saying that Michael Morgan was dead.

He fell a hundred feet while rock climbing in Moab. He broke his neck and died instantly.

This was crisis. This was hysteria. Upon hearing the news-from Michael’s brother over the phone-Chess screamed like she was being stabbed. Birdie rushed into Chess’s bedroom, where Chess was sitting on the floor in her wet bikini. (Chess and Birdie had spent the majority of the weekend at the country club pool, picking at club sandwiches and hiding from acquaintances behind copies of Vogue. ) Birdie said, “Chess, what is it?” And Chess put the phone down and looked at Birdie and said, “He’s dead, Mommy! He’s dead!”

For one stricken second, Birdie thought she was talking about Grant. She thought, Grant is dead, and felt a vertigo that nearly pulled her to the floor as well. The children had lost their father; she was all they had left, and she had to be strong. But how could she be strong when Grant was dead? Birdie wasn’t quite sure what led her to understand that it was Michael Morgan who had died and not Grant. It was something Chess said over the phone to Nick, or perhaps the fact that it was Nick on the phone clued Birdie in. Birdie got the story straight: Michael and Nick had been rock climbing in Moab. Everything had been fine; the rock climbing had been going well. They had good weather, perfect conditions. On Monday morning, Michael had arisen at dawn and gone for a climb by himself in Labyrinth Canyon. He had not been harnessed properly; he had lost his footing and fallen. A park ranger found him.

The funeral would be Friday at the Presbyterian church in Bergen County.

Birdie didn’t know what to do. She called Hank, but he was on his way to Brewster with his children to see Caroline at the facility and couldn’t be interrupted. She called Grant and was shuttled to his voice mail, which meant he was golfing. (Of course: Grant golfed every Memorial Day.) Birdie called their family physician, Burt Cantor, at home. Burt, too, was golfing, but his wife, Adrienne, was a nurse practitioner and she called in a prescription for Ativan to the pharmacy. Chess was screaming deep into her pillow, she was wheezing and hiccuping, and Birdie sat on the bed next to her, put a hand on her back, and felt as useless as she ever had in her life. She thought: if Chess was this upset now, how upset would she have been if Michael Morgan were still her intended? Or maybe this was worse somehow; Birdie didn’t know.

Tears flooded Birdie’s own eyes as she thought of Evelyn Morgan. What kind of hell must she be experiencing right now? To lose a child. To lose her big, handsome, smart, talented, charming, athletic firstborn-who would only have been a little boy in Evelyn’s mind. Birdie rubbed Chess’s back and smoothed her pretty hair, which was stiff with chlorine from the pool. It was the world’s greatest privilege to be a mother. But God knows, it was a punishment as well.

Birdie said, “Adrienne Cantor called in a sedative. I’m going to run to Fenwick’s and get it.”