The Castaways

ANDREA

H er time in the farm attic was coming to an end. The thought was hard to bear. She and Jeffrey had painstakingly detailed twenty of Tess’s thirty-five years on earth, and Jeffrey had suffered through stories from Tess and Andrea’s childhood in South Boston with the police department, the Mafia connections, the priests and nuns. Jeffrey had aired out a few stories of his own, stories Andrea had never heard (Jeffrey and Tess had discovered a mangy fox while hiking around Saranac Lake, and Tess had insisted that Jeffrey call a vet to try to save it. Did Andrea know that? No, she didn’t, and the story delighted her.)

They were down to the wire now, though. They had talked, circumspectly, about the April Peck incident. Andrea had been very tense during this session. She waited for Jeffrey to reveal details she had never heard before, but no, he had been fed the same story as the rest of them. They had talked about the trip to Stowe, their last group trip. This brought them to within six months. And it was the last six months that troubled Andrea, because for the last six months of Tess’s life, Tess had been different. She had been distant and unavailable; she had stopped going to mass with Andrea. She had told Andrea lies.

Lies! Andrea had not confronted Tess about the lies, because she had been baffled by them, embarrassed even. If Tess was lying to Andrea, then there must be something wrong with Andrea. Andrea was hesitant to discuss all this with Jeffrey, but maybe he could help her. This process they’d been through together had been painful and rough in places, but ultimately it was working. It was allowing Andrea to keep a tenuous grip on her sanity.

“So, let me ask you,” she said. She was, as ever, at Jeffrey’s desk, in his chair, overlooking charts and graphs of various crops’ growth, piles of invoices to go out to restaurants, and bills. Jeffrey sat on a milk crate a few feet away. “Did you notice a change in Tess last winter?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Maybe,” he said. “She seemed sadder to me, less gullible, less innocent. All of which you can chalk up to a woman who had been through what she had been through with Greg.”

“Every Saturday night, five o’clock, rain or shine, we used to go to mass, right?”

“Right,” Jeffrey said.

“So, at the beginning of February, the start of Lent, she quits church altogether. She cancels on mass for the first time, saying she has a PTA meeting. At five o’clock on Saturday? And there, at the church, I see both Karen and Lizzie, president and vice president of the PTA , and I know there’s no meeting, I know she’s lied to me. But the thing is that Karen and Lizzie were always at five o’clock mass and Tess knew it, so why would she hand me that particular story if she knew she was going to get caught?”

“Did you say anything to her?” Jeffrey asked.

“No. I let it go.”

“And then?”

“Then she skipped Ash Wednesday. For the first time in thirty years, she did not go to get her ashes. When I asked her what was up, she said her day had been busy. She had a conference with a parent after school. Then she canceled on mass the following week, and then the next week she told me she would meet me at St. Mary’s and she never showed. And when I called her, she said her car wouldn’t start.”

“The Kia?” Jeffrey said.

“The most reliable car in the history of automotives,” Andrea said. “And there was other stuff…” It was all little stuff, stuff only Andrea would notice: Tess’s tone of voice, her attitude. She was at times euphorically happy and at other times she burst into tears for no reason. She was uneven. But all women were uneven, weren’t they? They suffered from PMS , hormonal ups and downs; Tess had had her share of reproductive chaos. Maybe her body chemistry was out of whack. But deep down, Andrea didn’t buy it. Tess was not like other women. For starters, she was a kindergarten teacher: she was patient and kind, creative and organized. She loved children and she believed in the power of paint and crayons and glue and clay and story-books. She had a class pet, a long-haired rabbit named Knickerbocker. She liked to play kick ball and push kids on the swings; she kept a drawer full of snacks and clean underwear and Band-Aids. Her room was always clean, she always wore a skirt or dress, she did not raise her voice. When she wanted quiet, she turned out the lights and held a finger to her lips. She was a saint. To see her moody and peevish… something was wrong.

Andrea had asked Ed more than once, “Do you think there’s something wrong with Tess?” In response, Ed would shovel in mashed potatoes or grunt from behind the newspaper. If Andrea pressed him for an answer, he would say, “She seems fine to me.” Andrea called this a typical male answer. To which Ed said, “When I give you a typical female answer, you can complain.” Andrea brayed with disgust and Ed gave her some line about how women clearly felt things more deeply; they read sub-text where men saw only white space.

“If you think there’s something wrong,” Ed said, “why don’t you ask her?”

Right. Andrea found, however, that she was afraid. Afraid of her own best friend, her own younger cousin, whom she protected and worshipped. It took a night at Delilah’s house and seven glasses of wine for Andrea to confront her. It was Oscar night. Every year Delilah served champagne and good caviar and she made Beef Wellington and they all dressed up (Addison always wore a tux and Phoebe her Valentino or Dior, and the rest of them did what they could). They filled out ballots, threw money into a pot, and the person with the most correct guesses won. This was usually Jeffrey, which was ironic, since he was constitutionally unable to stay awake through an entire movie. Oscar night usually saw them very drunk, and this past year had been no exception. Andrea stumbled across Tess sitting alone on the stairs in her black lace top and black silk pants, and Andrea, with chardonnay courage, decided that this was the time to confront her.

Is everything okay?

Tess looked up, unsurprised by the question. Yeah.

No, I mean it. Something’s going on. What is it? You haven’t been to mass in weeks.

I’m finished with the Lord.

What does that mean?

I don’t want to talk about it.

Are you mad at me? This was Andrea’s fear, a fear greater, perhaps, than she was willing to admit. Andrea knew she was tough, she knew she was prickly, aggressive, unforgiving, she knew there were women who disliked her and that even Phoebe and Delilah had their moments with her. But she had always saved her nicest, kindest, sweetest self for Tess.

Tess softened. No. God, no, Andrea. I could never be mad at you.

Andrea felt herself about to cry chardonnay tears. She had been racking her brain, trying to figure out if she had done something wrong, if she had made some kind of egregious misstep that had hurt Tess.

Is it… April Peck?

April Peck? Tess looked confused. Then she shook her head and her chin wobbled. April Peck is such small potatoes.

Such small potatoes . The phrase had stuck with Andrea because it was an odd turn of phrase, and because those were the final words on the topic. Addison had come bumbling into the conversation, interrupting them, pulling Tess to her feet, imploring her to come watch. They were about to announce best actress.

“Small potatoes?” Jeffrey said now.

Andrea looked at him. “What do you think that meant?”

Tess canceled lunch dates, she skipped her monthly book group, she claimed to be taking an intense Pilates class at the gym that met three afternoons a week. The Pilates class met from four to five on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, but one Wednesday, Andrea saw Tess in the ever-reliable Kia barreling down the Polpis Road at five minutes to five. She was driving like a bat out of hell, which was what caught Andrea’s attention in the first place (this may have been a standard complaint from the police chief’s wife, but in her opinion, people on this island drove way too fast). Then Andrea saw it was Tess and she nearly called her, though the last thing Tess should be doing was speeding and talking on the phone. Andrea checked her mental calendar, trying to figure out what would have put Tess on the Polpis Road at five minutes to five on a Wednesday. Didn’t she have Pilates class? The health club was on the other side of the island. Andrea was the police chief’s wife, not the police chief, but she decided to do some investigating herself. The detective work was elementary. Andrea called the health club to inquire about the Pilates class held at four o’clock on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. The man who answered the phone was flummoxed.

“Pilates? We offer Pilates Tuesday and Thursday at ten A.M. and Monday and Thursday at six A.M. and six P.M.”

“Nothing on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at four?”

“Spinning class Monday and Wednesday at three. Jazz dance Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at five-thirty. Do you want jazz dance?”

“Jazz dance?” Andrea said.

Later she called Tess at home. Tess was upbeat. “I’m making quesadillas,” she said.

Andrea paused. “How was your Pilates class?”

“It was great!” Tess said. “I can feel it working. My abdomen is so much tighter.”

Jeffrey was quiet. All Andrea could hear was the sound of the fans, which nicely mimicked the sound his spinning brain might make as it came up with myriad possibilities, then flung them away.

“Should I state the obvious?” he said.

“She was seeing someone?” Andrea said.

“She was seeing someone.”

They sat with that a minute, Andrea shocked by the sound of the words. Well, hello, she wasn’t an idiot. This possibility had shadowed each of Tess’s mood swings, each lie, and particularly the phrases “finished with the Lord” and “small potatoes” when used in regard to April Peck.

If April Peck was small potatoes, what was big potatoes?

Seeing someone? But who?

“She would have told me,” Andrea said.

“You’re right,” Jeffrey said.

“No, she wouldn’t have,” Andrea said.

“You’re right,” Jeffrey said.

“She thought of me as her mother.”

“She wouldn’t have wanted to disappoint you.”

“I wouldn’t have been disappointed in her,” Andrea said. But even as she said them, the words felt false. Andrea had always had mixed feelings about Greg, but she believed in marriage. (She was Catholic! She grew up with a nun living in her basement!) When Tess and Greg had separated during that week in November, it was Andrea who had talked her into going back. It was Andrea who had made the picnic for the anniversary sail. She had broken the sacred rule of no gifts because she wanted Tess and Greg to be happy on their anniversary. She had sensed that Tess was getting ready to leave the marriage, and she had been saying, Stay!

She was seeing someone.

Andrea felt the firm clutches of certainty. Tess had been seeing someone. It explained everything.

She stood up to leave. She could handle only one revelation per day, and this was a biggie. But was it really as shocking as Andrea was making it out to be? Wasn’t it like a pile of dirty laundry in the corner with a blanket thrown over it? Pull back the blanket and there it was, just as you knew it would be all along.

Jeffrey stood as well. He was looking at her intently, and she couldn’t bear it, because this was goodbye. This was the end of the secret, strange journey the two of them had taken together. Andrea had entrusted her grief to Jeffrey, and he had been tender with it, he had spent hours and hours talking Tess’s life through. It was a painstaking process that no one else would have donated the time to. Andrea had come here because she loved Jeffrey, and Jeffrey let her stay because he loved her, too. Now they had come to the end of the life story of Tess DiRosa MacAvoy, and this meant that Andrea would stop coming here, there would be no more stolen hours in the sweltering attic, and this was its own kind of heartbreak.

He came closer, and she knew he meant to kiss her. It was okay. He was a matter-of-fact man; she believed in his moral compass, in his sense of right and not-right. He took her chin and kissed her with the same deft skill that he did everything else—slip an egg out from underneath a hen, bruise a basil leaf and inhale its scent. He kissed her goodbye, a key turning in a lock.

“I don’t want you to fret about this,” he said.

But both of them knew she would.