The Castaways

ANDREA

S he didn’t know what stage she was in anymore. She was in stage limbo. She missed Tess, she missed Greg, she missed Jeffrey, she missed Eddie and her kids, but mostly she missed herself.

She wondered, was she ever coming back?

There were certain things she could handle and certain things she could not. She could handle the fact that Tess had had a lover. Andrea was forty-four years old, old enough to realize that the heart wanted what the heart wanted whether it made sense, whether it was right or wrong. What Andrea could not handle was not knowing who Tess’s lover was. She had to find out. She wanted to know him; she wanted to make sure that he had loved Tess enough. Had it been someone at the funeral? Who exactly had attended the funeral? Should Andrea pore over the guest book? Andrea couldn’t recall anyone except their immediate group, the children, horrid April Peck and her mother, and Father Dominic. Finished with the Lord. Tess had stopped going to church altogether. Was Tess having an affair with Father Dominic? He was a young man, in his late thirties, and he was handsome as far as priests went. She could handle Tess having a lover, but not if it was Father Dominic. She struck his name off her mental list for her own sanity. She thought of other teachers at school, the principal, the superintendent. Flanders? Andrea stopped. Not Flanders. For a brief second, she smiled.

Andrea could handle small outings, but not big ones. Ed came home with two tickets to the Island Conservation benefit, a cocktail party on the savannah, that Phoebe was chairing.

“It’s on Friday night,” he said. “Kacy agreed to watch the kids. We’re going.”

“No,” Andrea said.

“I bought the tickets,” he said. “I told Phoebe we’d be there.”

“No.”

“She wants our support. The poor woman hasn’t done anything since before—”

“I’m not going, Ed.”

“She said she has a surprise for us.”

“Now I’m really not going.”

He put his hands on her shoulders. This was a gesture that nearly always worked. His face was inches from her face, his hazel eyes, his five o’clock shadow. She loved his face despite the fact that it only ever held one expression, one that conveyed steadfast dedication to the forces of righteousness. It was the proximity of his face that was meant to convey meaning, and the weight of his hands pressing down on her shoulders, telling her that he was present, he would not let her float away, but that he had needs and desires, too, and this was one of them. Going to this event for Phoebe was important to him. But she couldn’t do it.

“You go,” she said. “I just can’t. I’ll stay home.”

He lifted his hands. “We’ll talk about it later.”

She could not handle a cocktail party, but she could handle a trip to the post office to mail a box to Esmeralda, Tess’s adopted Brazilian orphan, who was, all of a sudden, sixteen years old. Andrea woke up suddenly in the middle of the night, realizing that she had forgotten all about Esmeralda. Tess still sent her care packages every three months. Andrea wrote a letter explaining that Tess had passed away, but that she had cared for Esmeralda very much; she had displayed Esmeralda’s photo on her desk at school. Andrea wrote that she, Andrea, would be sending packages now. Along with the letter, Andrea packed brown rice, steel-cut oats, graham crackers, a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird , a new pair of flip-flops, a journal, and a framed picture of Tess.

Andrea struggled a bit with Tony at the post office about how to send the box and how to insure it, but they worked it out; all it took was paperwork and money. Tony flipped the box casually into the airmail bin and Andrea winced, thinking of the graham crackers, but she felt a sense of accomplishment nonetheless.

As she turned to leave, she saw a man in line and her knees buckled. She stopped and stared, and the woman coming up to the counter nudged her out of the way. Andrea stutter-stepped aside, still staring at the man unabashedly. He looked at her and smiled. It was the man from her dream, the Russian, Pyotr, who had made love to her in her old black Jeep, who had said, It’s your car, you can do what you want in it. Who had been drowning until she saved him. It was him, not merely someone who resembled him.

Part of Andrea wanted to hurry out and not look back. But she had to know.

She said, “Do I know you from somewhere?”

The blue eyes narrowed. “Don’t think so,” he said. He had a broad accent. Australian? He stuck out his hand. “I’m Ian Bing. Teach Pilates at the health club. Do you belong to the health club, then?”

Andrea blinked. “No,” she said. “I don’t.” Inside, she was fizzing and popping. He taught Pilates at the health club! This was the sign. This was the guy. Tess’s lover. Andrea said, “But my cousin belonged to the health club. Tess MacAvoy? Did you know Tess?”

Ian’s face was blank. He shook his head, the salt-and-pepper curls. “No. ‘Fraid I don’t.”

Andrea scrutinized him. He looked sincere, but Andrea didn’t believe a soul anymore. She checked his ear—no earring. Still, it was him. He had done all those things to her in her dreams. She blushed, she couldn’t help it, and then she said, “So you didn’t know Tess?”

“No,” he said. “Did she take Pilates?”

“No,” Andrea said.

Ian smiled at her as if to say… well, as if to say nothing. He did not know Andrea, he did not know Tess. Andrea was making a complete ass of herself, but it was him, Pyotr, the Russian.

Andrea hurried out to the parking lot.

Andrea could handle Kacy taking care of the twins, but she could not handle Delilah taking care of them. Twice Delilah had called to see if she could take the twins to the carnival with Drew and Barney, and twice Andrea had said no on the basis that the carnival was a ripoff and the rides were operated by heroin junkies. Kacy then took them to the godforsaken thing and they ate junk and rode the unsafe rides and came home with dirty feet, a stuffed giraffe whose eye fell out during the car ride home, and a pump-action toy gun for Finn, which Tess never would have tolerated, but how could Kacy protest when the Chief carried a gun? Andrea huffed about the carnival, and Kacy said, as only a righteous sixteen-year-old can, “If you don’t like the way I’m taking care of them, do it yourself.”

Delilah had called Kacy about the movie. The movie was more than a movie; it was a phenomenon. Vunderkids 3 was premiering on Friday. Delilah had flown all four kids off-island to see Vunderkids and Vunderkids 2 for the big movie-house premiere experience the two previous summers, and she wanted to take them again this year. It was now a tradition.

“So they’re going with Delilah,” Kacy said on Friday morning.

“What?” Andrea said. She tried to keep her voice level, because the twins were right there at the breakfast table eating Cheerios, wiggling with excitement about going to see Vunderkids 3, off-island, with Auntie Dee and Drew and Barney. In a real theater with Dolby surround sound and real popcorn with real butter --

“It’s not real butter,” Kacy said.

“—and big boxes of Milk Duds and Junior Mints. And huge cups of Sprite.”

“Auntie Dee lets us get whatever we want,” Chloe said.

Andrea pulled Kacy into the hallway. “What were you thinking?”

“Delilah said it was a tradition.”

“How can anything be a tradition after only doing it twice before?”

Kacy huffed. She was lovely. Her brown hair was glossy, her face was golden with the sun, the acne across her forehead had cleared up. After thirty months of braces, her teeth were straight and pretty; she brushed with whitening toothpaste four times a day. She had been so, so helpful with the twins. She had essentially been their nanny all summer, and she hadn’t asked for a penny. She looked at her mother and said, “If you don’t want them to go, please call Delilah yourself. And then tell the twins yourself.”

“You should have asked me,” Andrea said.

“You leave me in charge to do everything except make decisions? Even you, Mom, can see that’s unfair. It sounded fine to me. They’re leaving after camp, and they’ll be home on the last plane. I’ll be here to wait for them because you and Dad are going out.”

“No, we’re not,” Andrea said.

“Yes, we are,” said Ed, emerging from the bedroom in his uniform. “The party starts at seven. And if you don’t have anything to wear, I suggest you go out today and get something new.” He was using his police chief voice. He was not suggesting anything at all; he was demanding it.

Andrea glared at her husband, then at her daughter. They walked away, Ed out the door to work, Kacy into the kitchen to gather the kids for camp. Andrea retreated to her bedroom. She started to shake. She could not handle this! Everyone else was ready to pick up and move on—go to the movies, go to cocktail parties—but Andrea was not ready! She did not want to move forward a single step without Tess.

She picked up the first thing that caught her eye, the swimming trophy that she won in the city championships her senior year in high school. She had broken the record for the 200-meter butterfly. She threw the trophy against the wall, leaving a hole in the plaster the size of someone’s head. Andrea collapsed on the bed. She had been doing so well.