Osprey Island (24 page)

“Syrup’s on the table,” Nancy told him.

“Thank you.” He reached for the bottle.

Bud watched impatiently. “You planning on telling me anytime this morning who
did
?”

Roddy set the syrup back down without using it. If it crossed his mind just then to say,
You planning on telling me about how you got
a seventeen-year-old girl pregnant? You plan on telling that to your
wife here?
he managed not to. For all he knew, Nancy might be well aware of it all. He looked to her apologetically as he reached into his back pocket for the note. He passed it to Bud. “This was in the truck.”

Bud eyed Roddy suspiciously, took the note without lifting his gaze from the man across the kitchen table. Then he looked down at the paper. There wasn’t much to read. He stared at it longer than necessary, then lifted it in his hand and slammed it down as he stood. “Jesus!” he cried, and stormed away from the table.

The contents of the breakfast table jumped, and so did Roddy and Nancy. Then the front door slammed, and the bang set them in motion again like a starter’s gun. Nancy moved to the table, a dishrag in one hand, her eyes questioning Roddy, and picked up the note. What Roddy really wanted to do was pour some syrup on his pancakes, eat breakfast, and get to work. What he most wanted to do at that moment was to act as if nothing had happened. But before he could think even a step beyond that, Nancy had finished the note and was shaking it in her hand, saying, “Did you
know
about this?” She looked at the pancakes she’d given Roddy as if she meant to take them back. “Do you have something to do with this?” she asked, then, at a loss, repeated herself. “Does this have something to do with you? Did you two have a fight or something?”

“What?”
Roddy couldn’t help but feel like he kept missing something.

Nancy jumped on him: “You can’t tell me you think we don’t know what’s . . . going on between the two of you.” She gestured back and forth with her dish towel, as though pointing between Roddy and an invisible Suzy she’d decided to seat beside him. “Christ Almighty, you’re smarter than that!” Nancy spat out her words, and the effort turned her ugly, made her mouth large and gummy. She looked, Roddy realized, like her son. She looked—he could see the resemblance so clearly now—like Chas. Her mouth open in shock, she just kept looking at him, expecting something.

Finally he said, “She came by my mother’s last night to say good-bye.” And maybe during that moment’s admission Nancy could see for herself—maybe it was written right there on his face?—the magnitude of the loss that
he
was suffering in the wake of Suzy’s departure. Something in her shifted, as if she’d lost her train of thought and instead of searching just decided to shake it off and move along. There was a moment more of silence while they got their bearings and reclaimed their places in the world, and then Nancy took off her apron and went toward the staircase. Halfway to the bedroom, where she would take to her bed for the day like an invalid, she paused on the step and turned back to Roddy. She said, “Don’t let your breakfast get cold.” He took it as a blessing, for which he was thankful, and he poured the syrup and began to eat, realizing something as he chewed. Suzy’d left a note for her father, and she’d come by Eden’s place to say good-bye to Roddy before she left. Her mother hadn’t gotten anything at all.

Twenty

GRIEF-SPURRED, SWIFT-SWOOPING

“Bird” in Greek and Latin also means “omen.”

—DR. EDGAR HAMILTON, PH.D., “How Our Island Was (Mis)Named”

BRIGID WOKE EARLY THAT MORNING on the Squire cottage sofa to the smell of frying bacon wafting up the hill from the Lodge kitchen. The doors to both Lance’s and Squee’s bedrooms were closed, and Brigid could remember drifting to sleep on the couch with Squee curled beside her. She remembered vaguely the television station signing off and Lance coming by to lift Squee from her arms and carry him to bed, and how she’d been touched, even through the wash of sleep, by a tenderness in Lance, and wished she could have invited them all in—Peg and Jeremy and the lot of them—to bear witness. Lance put Squee into bed, closed the boy’s door, and came back toward Brigid on the couch. She’d been quite awake by then. She felt a rush of fear and caught her breath, the act of which took that fear and transformed it, took her quickened heartbeat and moved the pulse of blood down between her legs in an arousal that in turn both scared and excited her. She lay on the couch beneath her own dorm blanket, eyes closed as if in sleep, and waited for what Lance would do. A waft of sweat and cigarettes traveled with him, emanating from his clothes when he got near, and he stopped by her head and bent down toward her, and then she could only smell the sweet yeast of beer clouding hot and dense out of his mouth as he put his lips, hot and cracked, to the bare skin of her forehead and said, “G’night, angel,” before he stood again, walked to the bathroom, and pissed for what seemed a very long time. And then he’d flushed the toilet, flipped off the light, gone into his own room, and shut the door. And the next thing Brigid knew it was morning and there was bacon on the griddle down at the Lodge.

She was hungry. Wrapped in the blanket, pillow in hand, Brigid hurried back to the staff building. She walked into the room without knocking—it was her room too, wasn’t it?—and found Peg and Jeremy asleep in Peg’s bed. Even in sleep, Jeremy seemed to be trying to envelop Peg’s body like a human cocoon. He stirred as Brigid entered and struggled to focus. He lifted his head, a nod of greeting or acknowledgment. Brigid flashed a split-second mockery of a smile and proceeded to change her clothes without giving a bloody fuck whether he watched or not. She found some flip-flops under her bed, took a sweatshirt from the hook on the back of the door.

In the dining room she sat alone at a table near the windows. The other girls weren’t yet up—which was fine with Brigid, as she’d decided that they were, to a one, boring and insipid—and she’d certainly no intention of sitting at the long east wall table with the lot of Neanderthal construction workers who looked about ready to whip out their waggling cocks whenever she passed by.
Hello,
she had a mind to tell them, did not mean
oh please let me blow you.
She thought she’d rather sit about with Jock, the cook, who liked to tell them all to suck his fat French dick but at the end of the day was really quite a sweet man, who’d been a young widower and raised, on his own, two teenage girls, whose photographs hung in plastic-wrapped frames by Jock’s workstation in the kitchen. Once Brigid had inquired about his “girlfriends up there,” and Jock had wiped his hands on his apron, motioned Brigid over, and told her all about Margeaux and Jeanine, both married now, one in Cleveland, the other in France, with a grandchild on the way. “The first,” he beamed, thumping his chest.

When she finished eating, Brigid picked a cheap paperback from a shelf of guests’ discards in the office and went out onto the deck to smoke. The novel turned out to be in Italian, so she just smoked and watched the birds instead. There looked to be ospreys in two of the nests she could see from the Lodge, busy with their breakfast as well, taking off from the nest and looping out over the water, just swooping and gliding, hardly any motion to their wings at all. Even after two cups of Jock’s industrial coffee, the broken night of sleep on the Squires’ couch caught up with her, and Brigid began to doze off in the deck chair, Italian novel open face-down on her lap, half-smoked cigarette falling limply from her fingers and onto the deck, where it went out, unnoticed and meaningless.

When she woke again, the girls were all inside, eating around a circular center table with the waiters. The construction workers had gone up the hill, and soon the boys went to join them, leaving the girls to clean up the mess of the meal while they waited for Suzy to come down and give them the day’s directions.

At eight-fifteen when Suzy still hadn’t shown, Peg was dispatched to go knock on her door upstairs, and returned reporting no answer. She sat back down, and someone dealt her in to a hand of rummy.

At eight-thirty Reesa Delamico came in, and when someone asked if she knew where Suzy might be, she got a funny, mischievous look on her face and went into the office to make a phone call. She got Eden, who said that no, the driveway was empty and as far as she knew she was home alone. Reesa reentered the dining room, frowning, shaking her head with a shrug, saying, “I’m sure she’s on her way,” but she didn’t look sure at all as she left them to their vigil and went about her own business in the salon. Cybelle Schwartz and Janna Winger got to the Lodge a few minutes behind Reesa, but neither of them had any idea where Suzy Chizek might be. Peg—as she was wont—began to worry.

At eight-forty-five Bud Chizek came down the hill, through the back kitchen door, and into the dining room on his way to the salon to see if Reesa was in yet, when he came upon the table of card-playing Irish girls. He stopped in his tracks, as though he’d happened on some infestation of vermin he’d forgotten to exterminate. Bud stood there in the middle of the dining room, trying to say something, with a look on his face that was—a number of the girls would later note—just this side of sheer hatred. He stammered, then finally spat out: “Take the day off—all of you!” He scowled, as if his words alone should have succeeded in removing them from his sight instantaneously. “Just get out of here!” he cried, and then he stormed toward the salon, leaving the girls with a distinct sense that when he reemerged they’d better have been long gone.

They conferred quickly among themselves. A moment later Peg stepped from the group and came tentatively through a sliding door and onto the deck toward Brigid, who stared her down as she approached. Peg said, “You heard that, did you? Bud’s told us to knock off work for the day . . . We thought we’d go to a different beach, if you’d like to come . . . ?”

It was a peace offering in which Brigid had little interest. “No thanks,” she said coolly, and picked up the novel on her lap as though eager to get back to reading.

But Peg didn’t leave. She just kept standing there, with something else she wanted to say but didn’t know how. Brigid slapped the book back down:
“What?”

Peg looked as if she were swallowing a lemon. “I suppose,” she began, “that I’m the last person you’d want to do a favor for . . .”

Brigid lifted the corners of her mouth into a mean smile that conceded the point.

“It’s not for me,” Peg qualified, then inhaled deeply and let the breath out in a slow wash as if to steady herself. “We’d like to bring Squee—have him come to the beach with us today—and if
you
might ask his father for us, ask if the boy might come along. It would seem . . .” Oh, she was trying so desperately not to spoil it! “We thought, as you’re . . . perhaps he’d be more inclined to agree if it was you who asked, don’t you think?”

If what Brigid really wanted to say was
You pathetic whining
coward,
she managed to merely nod definitively in Peg’s direction and spit out a curt “Fine,” as she flipped the book back over and attempted to feign great absorption.

Peg still wouldn’t leave. “We’ll be ready to go just as soon as we’ve changed . . .”

“Bleedin’ Christ!” Brigid slapped the book down on the table beside her, got quickly to her feet, and stalked off. And Peg watched after her, unsure as to whether she’d succeeded in getting what she wanted or if she’d simply managed to drive Brigid away.

REESA, JANNA, AND CYBELLE were sitting around the salon drinking coffee from Styrofoam cups when Bud came up to the glass door that divided the dining room from the beauty parlor and stood outside, miming a knock. Reesa waved him in, but already she could see something was wrong. The pieces started to assemble in her mind: Suzy missing in action, Bud looking mad . . . She didn’t know what it added up to, but she couldn’t imagine any way that it might be good.

Bud pushed through the door. He was a man who dispensed with niceties like
Good morning,
as if it was generally acknowledged that it was his wife who took care of such civilities in their family. “Reesa, I need to talk to you alone” was all he said. He did not acknowledge Janna and Cybelle except to make clear his wish for their absence.

Reesa, equanimous to a fault, reached for her purse and pulled out a few dollars. “Why don’t you guys go pick up some doughnuts from the IGA. We’ve got plenty of work here today . . . we’ll need them.” She tossed Janna her keys. “North lot.”

Reesa stood. “What’s wrong?” she said, before the door had even finished closing.

Bud looked down at his shoes with mild surprise, as if he couldn’t remember how they’d gotten on his feet. “Well, Suzy’s run off again,” he began.

“She’s gone?” Reesa broke in. Then more softly she said, “She did it.”

Bud nodded suspiciously. “Last night, maybe this morning. Left a truck in Menhadenport. Room’s cleaned out.” He gestured to where the proof lay.

Reesa waited for more.

“Look,” Bud said, “here’s what I came down to ask: I need a head of housekeeping. I need someone who knows this place. Someone who can put all those girls to work . . . I don’t know what the hell’s going on with her, but you know Suzy . . .” His words were frothing with bitterness. “I got to assume she’s not coming back.”

Reesa sat there a moment, not realizing that Bud had already gotten out what he’d apparently come to say. Then she understood. “Are you asking
me
?”

“There’s you . . . There’s my
wife,
” he said, as though the absurdity of such a thought was patently indisputable. “I don’t know who the hell else knows this place well enough not to just make more trouble instead of cleaning it up . . .”

“Bud”—Reesa was trying to keep her voice calm—“I’ve got a business to run here.”

“Not if
I
don’t have a business to run, you don’t.”

Reesa breathed in sharply. “It’s not coming to that.”

“Well, it just might!”

“A hotel does not go under because it’s missing a head housekeeper!”

“Yeah?” Bud said. “Exactly what do you know about what keeps a hotel from going under? What exactly do you know about running a hotel?” He was getting angrier, and it was Reesa’s bad luck to be the one still left on the island to take it. “Why don’t
you
take over running the damn hotel then?” he spat. “You take the hotel, and
I’ll
be the goddamn chambermaid! Or we’ll just let the whole place fall to shit and you can cut hair in your goddamn kitchen all year round!” And with that he turned and stormed back out into the conspicuously empty dining room.

LANCE WAS ON THE PORCH SMOKING when Brigid came fuming up the hill. He started to smile, but his expression shifted as hers came into view. “Oh boy,” he said, “that’s one pissed-off girl coming up the way.” The words took on an inadvertent singsong. “That’s one pissed-off girl, I’d say . . . What’s pissing off the pissed-off girl?” He looked almost happy, prattling on. “Come tell me who went and pissed off the pissed-off girl . . .”

He’d actually almost managed to make Brigid crack a smile. “Well,” she said, “we’ve been given the day off for god knows what reason, and the
girls
”—she sneered—“are heading to the beach and they’d like to bring your son along, only they’ve commissioned me to ask your permission, as they’re rather afraid you’ll eat them if they get a bit too close.” She stood squarely on the ground before him and waited for a response.

“Eat
their
nasty shit?” Lance puckered up his face in distaste. “No fucking way I’d eat their nasty asses!” They both laughed. Then Lance said, “You going with the
girlies,
Pissed-Off Girl?”

“Are you joking? I’d rather be working.”

Lance smiled broadly. Then he got an idea. “You been over to Dredgers’ Cove yet?”

Brigid shook her head. She’d not even heard of it.

“Tell you what,” Lance said. “I say we give them the damn kid, and you and me take a cooler of beer and some fishing rods and we go over to the prettiest cove on this island and get the fuck out of this place for a little while. What d’you say, gorgeous?”

And if there was a part of Brigid that said,
Don’t do it,
there was a bigger part, a stronger part, a part that was more important to her that said,
Don’t be like them, don’t be like Fiona, don’t be like the
people you don’t want to be,
and so whatever fear or dread or caution or suspicion she might have felt got covered in a sleepy, grateful, relief-filled smile as Brigid said, “Mr. Squire, that’d be
lovely.
”

Dredgers’ Cove was on the far eastern side of the island, an old clam-digging site that had been incorporated into the Manhanset Nature Preserve. It was accessible only via an abandoned logging road, which was now prohibited to cars by a heavy padlocked chain stretched between two thick oaks. Lance yanked up the emergency brake, hopped from the truck and strode ahead. At the tree he stopped, took a ring of keys from his belt, undid the lock, and loosened the chain. It clunked to the ground, and Lance stepped back to the truck, drove over the chain, and then went back to pull it taut again and resecure the lock.

“What do they do—just pass round keys to the lot of you who live here?”

Lance grinned. He hadn’t been so animated since the fire. “Nobody
gives out
anything around here, baby. You want something, you
find
a way to get it.”