Osprey Island (20 page)

Suzy sat there a moment, still, holding Mia’s arms and staring at her daughter as though she’d just been the vehicle of an otherworldly transmission, a voice speaking through this girl from someplace beyond. Suzy’s eyes were grave, and she was nodding her head. “OK,” she said to Mia slowly. “OK.”

Suzy carried Mia back downstairs and left her in the care of the Irish girls again. Then she went to find Reesa in the salon, which looked, as she entered, as though it had been ransacked. Reesa sat in the middle of the linoleum floor, surrounded by ten thousand bottles, tubes, and aerosol cans.

“Jesus,” Suzy said.

Reesa tilted her face toward the door. “And I’ve got a shipment coming in today!” She looked around, trying to figure out where she might possibly store anything else. “I have to keep reminding myself how much spray those ladies like, and what a pain in the ass it is to deal with orders coming in midsummer. I’m planning ahead. Tell me it’s a good thing.” She looked to Suzy, then registered the concern on her face. “What?” Reesa glanced around her again. “It’s not
so
bad . . . Really, you’d be amazed how fast it goes. Suzy! What? What’s going on?” Reesa was getting it now: something was wrong. She started to her feet.

“No.” Suzy shook her head, waved Reesa back down. “No, no, you’re busy. I just . . . I need to get Mia . . . and Squee . . . You’re waiting for a shipment?”

“Yeah, why? Suze, what’s going on?” Reesa had gotten up anyway and was coming toward Suzy, wiping her hands on her jeans as she walked.

Suzy ran a hand through her hair, felt the scrap of cloth that was holding it back. “No, I just . . . you don’t know what time, do you? When they’re coming? I need to get the kids out of here, Reese. I need to go deal with things. Lance is . . . I don’t know what he is. He’s been at Squee, yelling, whatever, I don’t even know . . . Mia’s a wreck. I just want to get them away from him, just out of here for the afternoon. Just anywhere. I’m probably being totally melodramatic. Mia freaked me out though.” Suzy gestured vaguely with a hand in the direction of their room upstairs. “I don’t know what to do, but while I figure it out I don’t want my kid in his line of fire.”

Reesa put a hand on Suzy’s arm to still her:
Hang on a minute,
don’t move.
She went toward the back of the shop. “Janna? Jan . . . you there?”

A head poked out from the storage closet. “Yes, ma’am,” Janna chirped.

“Why don’t you and that boyfriend of yours go to the beach this afternoon?”

“Um . . .” Janna regarded her quizzically, as if Reesa might be going a little off in the head. “Um, because I’m working . . . ? Is this a trick question?”

Reesa spoke slowly, letting out each word as she struck together a plan in her mind. “Why . . . don’t . . . you and Mister California”— Reesa had become markedly skeptical about Gavin since hearing of his dalliances with Brigid—“take the afternoon, and take Squee and Mia to the beach? Not Sand . . . take them over across the island . . . Wickham, or Scallopshell . . . Why don’t you guys do that?” She peered at Janna, waiting for an answer.

“You providing the vehicle, boss lady?”

“Ah, shit, that’s right . . . yeah, no, take the truck. That’s fine . . . I don’t need it . . . Do I? No, that’s fine.” Reesa leaned toward the counter, pawed around for her keys. “Here . . . OK, so Mia’s . . . ? Suze? Where?” Suzy pointed toward the dining room. “And Squee?”

Suzy gave a panicky shrug: Where
was
he? She didn’t know.

“We’ll find him,” Janna assured them.

“He might be up with Lance?” Suzy suggested.

“OK.” Janna took the keys.

“In which case, it’ll be a good thing it’s you, not me,” Suzy said.

Reesa nodded ruefully. “Oh, he likes Janna, all right.”

Janna started toward the door. “When’d you want ’em home, Suzy?”

“You keep them away as long as you can.” Suzy dug in her pocket, thrust some bills at Janna. “Go for clam rolls for dinner . . . something . . . whatever . . . You want to go off-island to a movie, great. Keep Squee out of here as long as you can.”

Janna paused by the door. She looked back at them with the first signs of her own worry. “Is everything
OK
?”

“Yes,” said Reesa.

“No,” said Suzy, at the exact same time.

Janna looked warily at them both. “Gotcha.” And then she turned and fled before Reesa could have a change of heart.

“What the fuck am I going to do?” Suzy said aloud.

“What’re you thinking about doing?”

Suzy waited, then said it, as if it had only just come to mind. “Leaving?”

Now was when Reesa had to pretend that Suzy didn’t say that very thing every summer she came back to Osprey. Patiently, she asked, “Would it solve anything?”

Suzy thought. “I’ve never felt scared before. I’ve been pissed as shit—I’ve been livid!—but I don’t think I’ve ever been scared. It’s always been about me, not about Mia. Not about safety.”

“What’re you scared of, you think?”

Suzy mumbled, “I don’t know.” Then she said: “My dad’s not even looking for someone to replace Lorna. He thought I’d just step right in, take over, spend the summer cleaning toilets.”

Reesa only nodded sympathetically. There was little for her to actually say. Suzy had never been willing to be a part of her family’s business, which was her right, surely, except that you also got the sense she was expecting to inherit the place someday but had no intention to lift a hand at the Lodge until that day came, when she’d probably put it up for sale.

Suzy said, “Mia wants to leave.”

“She does?”

“She’s scared.”

“Of?”

“
Lance,
I think. That’s what she says. I think I’d go, too . . . I think if it were just me and Mia I’d go. But now with Lorna . . . Mia’s afraid for Squee, I think. I think I am too. I don’t know how I’m going to do him any good.”

“You do,” Reesa said. “Like now . . . getting him out.”

“It’s a Band-Aid.”

“They can be useful,” Reesa said.

“I think I’ve been Band-Aiding myself,” Suzy admitted.

Reesa smiled. “That’s what I’ve heard.”

“Jesus! Really? Christ, you can’t have a conversation with someone around here without . . .”

Reesa was laughing, but not unkindly.

“I want to leave,” Suzy said. “Just leave: get Mia out of here, leave my father in the lurch—which he totally deserves—but . . . leave this thing with Roddy . . .”

“Is it a thing?” Reesa asked. “Or a Band-Aid?”

There was an awkward pause. Then Suzy looked right at Reesa as though she were surfacing into another conversation entirely. “You ever worry that you don’t know
what’s
right for your kids? Like you try to do right by them, but what if you don’t even know what right is?”

JANNA TRUDGED a sniffling Mia up the hill, prepared to drop her in Gavin’s care at the staff barracks while she went and wrested Squee away from Lance, but as the Squires’ cottage came into view she could see Lance on the front porch with one of the Irish girls, and Janna shifted direction and walked toward them, waving as she approached. No one waved back. Lance’s head was down, and as they got closer he lifted his eyes, caught sight of Janna and Mia, and started fumbling fast to light a cigarette, turning his face away as though they’d come in on a strong wind. Janna smiled at Brigid. Brigid made no reciprocal gesture. She appeared to be at once ministering to and covering for Lance. From a good twenty feet away Janna made her voice offhandedly casual. “Squee want to come to the beach?”

Lance, still turned away, waved a hand and jerked his head toward the cottage door—
Go ask him yourself.
Mia stayed where she was, unwilling to come any closer. Janna went up the steps and leaned in the door: “Hey, Squee, get your suit! We’re going to the beach!” She paused for a response. Her eyes were adjusting to the inside light, and for a minute all she could see were splotches and shadows. Then she made out Squee, still sitting, stonelike, at his chair. “Come on! Move it, grab your suit!” She watched as he slowly collected himself and got up from the table to follow her orders. On the porch Lance started to speak. He was looking straight out at Mia. From where she now stood on the porch, Janna could see that Lance had been crying.

“You know what pisses me off the most?” Lance said to Mia, his voice ugly and threatening. Mia said nothing, just stood there, frozen. “They think I’m stupid.
Send Janna,
” he cooed in a singsong mimicry.
“He
liiikes
Janna. Send Janna over to get the little fucker . . .”

Mia just took it in, rooted to the ground in her fear. Janna went inside to hurry Squee. Brigid reached her hand out and pressed it to Lance’s upper arm in consolation. He turned at her touch, put his elbows on his knees, and bent over them, shaking his head at the floorboards as if they’d let him down once again. And just when it looked as if he was giving up, he raised his head to Mia again and spat as he spoke. “Your mother is a back-stabbing cunt.” He stood, quickly—Brigid jerked back in alarm—and slammed inside.

PEG SPENT THE ENTIRE AFTERNOON worrying herself nearly sick over the fate of the little Squire boy. Someone else might have excused herself from the maid’s room, gone down to the office, looked up Roddy’s home telephone number, and called him the minute Lance had ordered Squee away from the lunch table. But it was important to Peg to be dutiful, obedient, and—perhaps above all—blameless in all that she undertook, and thus she agonized through her chores until the five o’clock whistle blew down at the ferry docks, whereupon she dashed with breathless determination to the Lodge office and found Cybelle Schwartz behind the desk, reading a dog-eared, three-year-old issue of
Cosmopolitan.

“May I . . .” Peg began, “please, can I ring someone?”

Cybelle eyed her suspiciously.

“I’ve . . . I’ve got to—you—I’ve got to make a call . . . on the telephone!”

“Staff’s supposed to use the pay phone downstairs.”

“Please!” Peg cried. “It’s desperately important!”

“Is it long distance? I can’t let you call long distance.”

“No—it’s right here! Do you . . . can you get the number, for the man, the one who fixes things . . . Roddy?”

Cybelle was nodding, haughty and self-important. “That’s Roddy Jacobs. He doesn’t have a phone himself, but you can sometimes get him here.” She dialed the number at Eden’s and passed the receiver to Peg.

Someone answered, and Peg asked for Roddy. He wasn’t in—an obstacle Peg hadn’t anticipated. She paused for such a long time that Eden asked, “Hello? Can I help you with something?”

“Oh,” wailed Peg. She looked to Cybelle nervously, unsure of how she might proceed. “I don’t know . . . I . . . I’m working here at the Lodge and I’ve . . . I’ve got to talk with Mr. . . . with Roddy.” She said his name as if it were a foreign word. “I’m terribly, I’m afraid . . . with Squee . . . I’m just entirely . . .”

“Squee?”
Eden said sharply. “What happened to Squee?”

“What?” said Peg. “No, I don’t . . . I’ve just . . .” And then she burst into tears.

Cybelle, embarrassed, disappeared into the back room.

“Please, sweetheart,” Eden said on the line, “please calm down. Did something happen to Squee? I’m Roddy’s mother,” she explained to the sobbing girl. “Can you tell me what happened, please?”

Peg’s tears abated slightly. “Do you . . . ? You know the Squire . . . Squee? You know Squee?”

“What happened?” Eden’s voice was rip-cord tense. “I’m his god-mother,” she said, and though it wasn’t true, she couldn’t find words that were, some way to explain her relationship to the child.
“Please,”
Eden said shrilly. “Please, is he all right?”

Peg took a gulp of air, and when she let it out inside another sob, all she could think to say was “It’s really that I don’t
know . . .
”

Eden broke in. “You’re at the Lodge? Why don’t I come there? I’m coming down there.”

Peg’s next sob conveyed acquiescence.

“Go down to the Sand Beach Road entrance,” Eden instructed. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

Roddy, who’d also finished up work at the Lodge at five, pulled into the driveway at home just as Eden was pulling out. She saw him and bristled: What in god’s name was Roddy doing home when something was wrong with Squee down at the Lodge? Then she felt relief: if Roddy was home, it could be nothing too bad down there. And then the relief turned to fear: Roddy was home to tell her about whatever terrible thing had happened down at the Lodge. They stopped their vehicles in the driveway and spoke through the windows. In the confusion it took some moments before they were able to make themselves clear.

“I was just there,” Roddy said. “Nothing’s wrong down at the Lodge. Not more than usual. Now . . .”

“She wanted to talk to
you,
” Eden said.

“Well, what?” Roddy was tired, and unprepared for this welcome home. “
What?
You want me to come down with you?” It was not what he wanted at all.

“She’s waiting by the road. Just come with me.”

Roddy did as his mother instructed.

Eden wasn’t sure exactly what would happen when they reached the girl at the Lodge, but when they pulled up beside her on Sand Beach Road, Peg tugged open the back door of the Caddy and climbed in gratefully. She was no longer crying, but her pale skin was splotchy red, her eyelashes slick and wet. “I’m so thankful to you,” she said as she pulled the door shut behind her and slid across the seat, “just for getting out of there for a bit, you know? Just to be away from it all?” So Eden pulled a wide, unruly U-turn and drove straight back the way she’d come, as if it were what she’d planned all along.

Peg sat in the very center of Eden’s couch, perching so precisely in the exact middle of the middle cushion, you might have suspected her of some obsessive tendencies. Eden gave the girl a cup of water and sat opposite her. Roddy hovered, filling the doorway, ready to make a hasty escape should the need arise.

“I’ve wanted to know,” Peg said, “if there’d be someone we might talk with about the legal issues involved here, you know? I don’t know about, like, American law . . . but I’d thought if we might talk with a professional . . .” There was something proprietary and hoarding about her concern for Squee’s welfare, as though she were fighting for his custody. When she described what she’d witnessed that day, and in the course of her brief tenure at the Lodge, she seemed to cast blame for Squee’s circumstance not only on Osprey Island as a whole, but on America at large. Nothing so ugly and unfortunate, she seemed to imply, would have come to pass on Irish soil. Peg appeared at once to trust Roddy and Eden while reserving an incredulity that anyone— even if only through
in
action—had allowed a man like Lance Squire to have his way about the island. Peg wanted to see something
happen,
and was loathe to understand why she—an outsider and virtual stranger—was the one making this call to arms.