Osprey Island (28 page)
Epilogue
AN EYRIE OF OSPREY
What is a bird family? In life, a bird family is exactly like a human
family. It consists of father, mother, and children. But in the books a
family means quite another thing.
—OLIVE THORNE MILLER, The Second Book of Birds
IT WAS NOT A GOOD SEASON for the Lodge at Osprey Island. A fire was one thing; a fire, and a death, and a family rift, and a restraining order were quite another. Not to mention rumors of a rape too, but the girl wouldn’t press charges or even admit she’d been harmed in any way. It was her roommate who’d started the rumors, and she’d fled home to Ireland, too shaken by the whole incident to remain at the Lodge. The alleged rapist—a longtime staffer and head of maintenance at the Lodge—got taken in on a drunk and disorderly. When further charges were filed against him—trespassing, reckless endangerment, child abuse, assault—there was no one willing to put up bail, so he sat in jail on the mainland. They couldn’t be sure how long he’d stay away, but that didn’t keep people from speculating. Some said he’d never return to Osprey Island, that they’d never hear from him again.
Nope,
said others, they’d hear about him, all right, when he got himself killed in a bar fight or died midwinter on a subway grating in some large eastern city, all the liquor in his veins not enough to keep him from freezing to death. A few Islanders who’d been around a long while were on hand during such speculation to remind folks that the man in question had never spent a night— let alone lived—anywhere but Osprey Island in his entire life, and it didn’t take a great mind to guess that regardless of what he’d done, the minute he could he’d come straight back to Osprey Island, where his mother’d probably take pity and let him live in a trailer out back of her own house, and it would be there that he’d die, by his own hand if the alcohol didn’t take him first, or by the hand of whomever he managed to piss off badly enough. There might not have been a lot of people on Osprey Island that summer, compared to usual, but there was more than enough talk.
The Lodge lost plenty of guests—not a lot to recommend it that year. They lost staff too: a few waiters who wanted out of the whole deal, out of that place and away from everything that had happened there. Plus two other Irish housekeepers who felt frightened and uncomfortable and just wanted to go home. Service in the dining room was inconsistent and rampant with neglect. Housekeeping was shoddy at best; at worst it was nonexistent. The swimming pool was leafy, the tennis courts weedy, the lawns overgrown with dandelions. The laundry machines ran smoother than ever—when you could find someone to operate them—and the food was the same as it had always been—it was, some said, maybe even a bit better, as the chef had fewer people to cook for and could afford to take time with his preparation and presentation. There were certainly fewer complaints that summer about hotel staff out drinking on the porch late at night.
When they opened officially for Fourth of July weekend, the Lodge still hadn’t found a head housekeeper. The new head of maintenance— who started the season with three broken ribs, two black eyes, and a heart that would take a lot longer to heal than the rest of his injuries combined—had for his right-hand man an eight-year-old child with a badly broken arm and a dislocated shoulder, not to mention a dead mother, an absent father, and so persistent a habit of running away from his custodial grandparents that they gave up and allowed the boy to take up unofficial, temporarily permanent residence with an eccentric widow who raised chickens and her quiet draft-dodger son who lived in a shed out back of the main house, for it was where the boy seemed to want to be.
And if the rumors and tales of the bad luck that had befallen the Osprey Lodge weren’t enough, two weeks of near-nonstop rain in August did such an effective job of emptying rooms that even the ever-diminishing crew of chambermaids could manage to get all the beds made each morning. By Labor Day, Bud and Nancy Chizek were ready, after thirty-nine seasons as proprietors of the Lodge at Osprey Island, to call it quits. They closed down the hotel for the last time, put the entire property on the market, and went south, first to North Carolina, people heard, then Georgia, then finally Florida. They had no family left on Osprey and they’d never had many friends, so there was no one to keep in touch with, really, no way for anyone to keep tabs.
The Lodge sold and got refurbished, and reopened for business the next summer. The new proprietors were capable and sure-handed, though it was hard going for the first few years. People’d heard enough of what had taken place that they didn’t have such a pretty image of Osprey Island as a vacation spot anymore, and it took a while for the sense they had to fade, and change, be replaced by something once again quaint, and rustic, and charming. A nice postcard.
A
great place to bring the family.
It’s funny, what people think. How real their ideas may seem, how proven and justifiable and true. But take reality. Take this: an image, a scene from right then, Fourth of July, 1988. A postcard, if you will. The New Hampshire Red hen has hatched her clutch of seven chicks, and they’re yellow and new and velvety as pussywillow nubs. It’s evening, then night, and the sky is dark, but with stars. The chicken coop is quiet. On the back porch of a clapboard house atop a steep hill overlooking a ravine, three people sit, intermittently looking up— over the hillside trees and above the beach that stretches far below them—to watch the sapphire sky. The woman sorts seed packets on a squat stump fashioned into a table by her late husband—stupid, but good with a wood saw. The man, bruised up like a scrap-fighter, sits awkwardly, accommodating his injuries, sipping at a can of beer. The boy, one arm bandaged and hung in a sling, is cross-legged on the floor, playing solitaire with his one useful hand, the visor of a lavender baseball cap pulled low over his eyes.
The woman glances up. There is a flash in the dark sky. “Oh!” she says, “Here they go!” and as the first pink and orange and yellow chrysanthemums explode, the boy lays down his cards. With his good hand he takes off his cap, then resettles it backward on his head, so he can see.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to Eric Simonoff (for his faith, patience, and support), Jenny Minton (whose insight, guidance, and pep talks were invaluable), Jordan Pavlin (who swooped in, took me under her wing, and did an amazing job), Myra Nissen (my favorite mother/editor/research assistant/publicist in the world), Lee Klein (for raising the bar and cracking the whip), Judy Mitchell (for all her invaluable help, especially The Great Wisconsin Eyes-Like-Papercuts Poll), Peter Orner (to whom I gratefully dedicate the prologue), Lisa Jervis (who is still willing to ask, “What is this story about?” ten years after the workshop that brought us together), Erin Ergenbright (for being there and reading this all the way along), Katie Hubert (for being brilliant!), Allison Amend (for trading monsters with me and for the Pixie Pit Scrabble that sustained us both during trying times), Malena Watrous (for listening to my point-of-view rants over Sunday breakfasts at Lou Henri), Dave Daley (for his support, and for putting “Morey’s Dinghy” in the
Hartford Courant
), the PWW (Curtis Sittenfeld, Jeremy Mullem, Jeremy Kryt, Trish Walsh, Lewis Robinson and Bridget Garrity), Lucy Roche (for island research and lore), Josh Emmons (for listening to me rant), Sarah Townsend (for listening to me rant and making the best tuna sandwiches on the entire planet), Laurel Snyder (for listening to me rant and ranting back), everyone who got caught in the radii of my ranting, Michelle Forman (for coping with the highway superintendents while I sang Joan Armatrading, prime-rib blood trickling down my arm), Jennie Allen-Cheng (for long-ago baby-sitting lectures on Russian history and Beatles lore), Erik Maziarz and Robert Marshall (for their generous help with the details of fires and fire investigation), Roger Tory Peterson (for his very helpful and inspiring 1969
National Geographic
article “The Endangered Osprey”) and John Rutter (for his kind and patient assistance in securing permissions to said article), Michael Foley (for his thoughtful insights regarding issues of draft resistance), Jeff Skinner (future book designer!), Sandy Dyas (who came to my rescue once again), and, last, but hardly least, Gabriel Haman and Mary Schowey (the
real
Chicken Ladies).
THISBE NISSEN
Osprey Island
Thisbe Nissen is a graduate of Oberlin College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and she is a former James Michener Fellow. A native New Yorker, she now lives, writes, gardens, and collages in Iowa City, Iowa.
ALSO BY THISBE NISSEN
The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook
(with Erin Ergenbright)
Out of the Girls’ Room and into the Night
The Good People of New York
FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, JUNE 2005
Copyright © 2004 by Thisbe Nissen
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the National Geographic Society for permission to reprint an excerpt from “The Endangered Osprey” by Roger Tory Peterson (
National Geographic
, July 1969).
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Nissen, Thisbe, [date]
Osprey Island / by Thisbe Nissen. —1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Single mothers—Fiction. 2. Custody of children—Fiction.
3. Accident victims—Fiction. 4.Community life—Fiction.
5. Summer resorts—Fiction. 6. Islands—Fiction. 1. Title.
PS3564.179085 2004
813’.54—dc22 2004040843
eISBN: 978-0-307-42717-5
v3.0