Osprey Island

by Thisbe Nissen

  “Where was the boy?” she asked, breathless and rushed.

  Jeremy seized the imperative. “Under the deck, playing Ping-Pong before . . .” And without another word the two took off toward the Lodge to find Squee, his self-appointed guardians, teenage social workers certain they had only the best intentions: to look after the child.

  Peg and Jeremy rushed out the sliding door and onto the porch, hand in hand, stopping just beyond the threshold, the sea breeze blowing in their faces as they scanned the crowd like young cops closing in on their man. Squee was scrunched into a wicker lounger with Mia, playing cat’s cradle with a piece of old string. Peg and Jeremy came at them. Jeremy stopped and suddenly checked his watch. It was just past ten.

  “You two want to go into town and get some ice cream?” he said brightly, a camp counselor at heart.

  The children struggled excitedly out of their chair.

  “Go on and ask your mum,” Peg said to Mia, who dashed upstairs.

  When she returned, nodding vehemently, she took Peg’s hand, and the group made their way down the steps to the parking lot and Jeremy’s car. The porch sitters heard the grumpy car engine turn over, die again, then turn over at last. When the car rolled around the bend in Sand Beach Road, conversation on the porch resumed as though nothing had happened. A few people made excuses and started up the hill toward the barracks. Brigid and Gavin sat and had another glass of whiskey. The last of the drinking boys headed off to bed. Brigid and Gavin smoked a cigarette. The night was warm, the air saturated with mist.

  “What’s between our respective roommates, do you think?” Brigid asked.

  Gavin gestured toward the stairs down which they’d disappeared with the kids. “What you see, I guess.” He shrugged and took a long, pensive drag on his cigarette, as if to imply that he had other things on his mind.

  “You don’t get on, then?” Brigid asked.

  Gavin shrugged again. “Don’t think we’ll be best friends.”

  Brigid laughed, too eagerly.

  “I think I’m going to head up.” He motioned to the hill. “You going to hang here?”

  Brigid yawned conveniently. “Nah, I’m knackered.”

  He gave a laugh, then pushed back his chair, gestured— after you.

  She let herself lead.

  They walked single file up the trail, not quickly, but with purpose. Brigid let her heart beat faster. The back door was propped open with a cinderblock, and Brigid pivoted on the stoop of the barrack so that she stood facing him in the threshold. The look on his face conveyed an acknowledgment of the inevitable. He took another step to her as if to plow her down in the doorway, but then he stopped abruptly. A breath escaped him, high and short, and he leaned in. His hands went to her shoulders, pushing her inside the building, against the dark wall of the downstairs hallway. He kissed hard, allowing her no opportunity to kiss back, only to take, as if this kiss was something he needed to give to her, like a present she might refuse if he equivocated in the slightest. She wanted to say, I wouldn’t turn you away, wanted to say it in her kiss, but couldn’t find the voice, the right intonation of movement, so she just let herself be kissed by Gavin and let herself think about how Peg and Jeremy were out with Squee and Mia, and how both their rooms were empty, and how, maybe, with this same kissing fervor, he might push her down onto that pathetic creaking cot bed and do whatever he wanted. She was quite sure she knew precisely what she wanted.

  Gavin pulled away, took a step back in the hall as if to see what he was doing. “Good night, Brigid,” he said, and he turned and started up the stairs.

  For a second Brigid thought he meant for her to follow, but then it seemed clear that wasn’t the case at all. She’d been kissed good night, nothing more. She leaned against the wall for a minute, her lips feeling large on her face. Then she collected herself and stepped back onto the stoop. Sleep seemed impossible now. She thought about going down to the pub; she wished everyone hadn’t already gone to bed. She even half wished she’d run into Peg and Jeremy, persuade them to come along. She could go alone. And maybe would, she thought.

  She started back down the hill she’d just climbed and entered the Lodge through the back kitchen entrance, headed toward the dining room. She’d cross the porch, down the steps to the beach, which she’d follow to Morey’s, have a pint, sit on the back deck by herself if it came to that. She wanted that moment back, to do it again and prolong it, extend it, change it somehow so it would come out different. She felt cheated, and sore, as if she had reached for her wallet and realized it was missing, unsure whether she had lost it or someone had fleeced it from her. Just as she reached to slide open one of the glass dining room doors, her eye caught a tiny orange glow, which for a split second relieved her. There’s a bonfire down on the beach, she thought. Someplace to go! Then the image rearranged itself and she stopped and turned quickly. In the armchair in the dark back corner of the room, Lance was smoking a cigarette.

  “Hey, gorgeous,” she heard him say. His tone was predatory but not menacing.

  “Mr. Squire?” Brigid said to the dark corner.

  Lance laughed, his head thrown back for a second in exaggeration. “Mr. Squire,” he repeated, mocking.

  “Sorry,” Brigid said.

  Lance shook his head. He waved her toward him, but she stood where she was. “No, no, honey,” he said. “That’s all right.” And they both stayed there, not saying anything for a minute.

  “I was just on my way . . .” Brigid began.

  “Rough night?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Yeah, me too, baby,” he said.

  “I’m about gumming for another drink . . .” she said, her voice drifting as she spoke.

  “Go-min?” he mocked.

  “Oh bleedin’ ”—she took on a dreadful American accent—“I want a drink,” she drawled.

  “Yeah?” he said. “Yeah, I almost think I could use a drink myself,” he said softly, so sadly she almost felt sorry for him.

  “I’ve some whiskey,” she offered.

  “Oh . . .” he said, as though relishing the thought, knowing its power, knowing he shouldn’t, feeling how much he wanted it. “Oh . . .” he said again.

  “Come, have a whiskey with me on the porch, won’t you?” she said.

  “Oh, honey,” he said. “Could I do that?” His voice was different, the harsh tones gone, sadness overtaking.

  “Come on,” she said. “I’ll fetch it. Find us some jars—glasses— find us some glasses, why don’t you? And meet me on the porch.” She felt compelled to give him some direction, as if he were sitting there asking her, Please, tell me what to do.

  He seemed grateful, and he struggled to his feet to make his way toward the bar at the far end of the dining room. “A hot redheaded angel,” he said, more to himself than to her. “A hot little angel.” Brigid went to the office, to Gavin’s staff cubby, where they’d stashed the whiskey.

  On the deck, Lance took over Gavin’s chair from earlier that evening; Brigid reclaimed her own. She tipped whiskey into their glasses. He lifted his gingerly. “Cheers,” she suggested. “To better evenings.”

  “Shit,” he said, and clinked her glass. He was a practiced drinker— downed his shot and lifted the bottle, his eyes on her: OK if I take another? She gestured: Be my guest. He poured and drank again.

  “I thought you didn’t drink,” she said.

  “Fuck you.” His tone mocked hers. Then he said, “It’s been a bad night.”

  “Cheers,” she agreed.

  “So what fucked you up tonight, pretty girl?” he asked.

  “Whiskey,” she said, “and men.” She drank.

  The night was quiet. Across the sound, pier lights from the mainland wharves and docks reflected on the water. A radio tower blinked. In the water, red and white lighted buoys bounced as the tide lapped and strummed against Sand Beach. A seagull flew in, landed on the porch railing nearby, and pecked at a fallen corn chip.

&nbs
p; “And what’s it been that fucked with you this evening, Mr. Squire?” Brigid said.

  Lance laughed again. “Mrs. Squire.” He took another long drink.

  “I expect that’s as it’s meant to be,” Brigid said.

  “Hmm.” Lance snorted. “Yeah, guess so.”

  The seagull knocked the chip to the porch, hopped down behind it. Peck peck peck.

  “Ever been married, beautiful?” he asked suddenly.

  She laughed at that. “I’m just nineteen.”

  Unfazed, he said, “So was I.”

  “Nineteen? When you were married?”

  He nodded. “Lorna was seventeen . . . prettiest girl you ever saw.”

  “Is she still, then?” Brigid asked.

  “Sure,” he said. “Lorna,” he said, as if introducing them.

  “I haven’t had the pleasure,” she told him.

  He wrinkled his brow. “You’re kind of a bitchy little thing, aren’t you?”

  “What?” she said. “Why? What’ve I done?”

  “What, me? Who, me?”

  “And I’d begun to think you weren’t such a bollix as they’ve made you out to be.”

  “What the fuck’s that?”

  “Bollix? An arsehole,” she said.

  “Well, you’d be wrong about that,” he told her.

  “I suppose I would, wouldn’t I?” She drank the rest of her whiskey down and reached for the bottle.

  “Should I fuck him up a little for you? Your college boy? He’s the one you’re pissed at? Should I fuck him around some for you?” Lance offered.

  “No,” she said. “Grand of you to offer, all the same.”

  “No problem.” There was another pause. “You like it when they treat you wrong?” he asked.

  Brigid let out a soft snort. “I bloody must, mustn’t I?”

  Some quiet, sipping.

  “What’s happened between you and your wife?” she asked.

  “Oh, married woes,” he said, as though she wouldn’t understand.

  “I see: you’ll ask the questions, but you won’t stoop to answer them then, will you?”

  Lance was flustered, suddenly afraid she might get up and leave. “No no no no no,” he said. “No, you got me wrong.”

  “Oh I do, do I?”

  “What do you want to know? I’ll tell you. You tell me what you want to know.” He waited. “Come on, you ask me. Anything you want to know.”

  Brigid considered. “Do you cheat on your wife, Mr. Squire?”

  Lance paused before answering. “I do not,” he told her.

  “Hmm,” she said.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “That’s the truth, is it?”

  “Do I look like I’m lying?”

  She fixed her stare on him. “You always rather look as though you’re lying.”

  “Nothing new,” he said, dejected. “You’re nothing new, sweetheart. That’s nothing, nothing, nothing new to me in the world.”

  “Hmm,” Brigid said again. “Why’s that?”

  “Why’s what?”

  “Why’s it you always look as though you’re lying?”

  “Couldn’t tell you.” He pouted out his lower lip and shook his head slowly.

  “Couldn’t or wouldn’t?” she asked, but all he did was laugh.

  “You wouldn’t believe I was telling the truth anyway, would you?”

  Now she laughed. “You claim you’ll not cheat on your wife,” she repeated, a detective taking inventory of the facts. “Yet you look on me as though you surely would . . .” It was not something she’d have said sober, and she knew it. Her ego was talking, nursing bruises.

  Lance laughed uncomfortably. “Just wishing . . .”

  “Wishing, are you?”

  “Wishing,” he said, “wishing things were different . . . that everything was different . . .” he trailed off, then snapped back to attention. “You’re a nice girl,” he told her. “You’re a real nice girl.”

  “I’m not all that nice of a girl,” she corrected him.

  “Oh, you’re a nice girl . . . You don’t even know how nice of a girl you are.”

  “If you’d be so kind as to tell that to the fucking college boy . . .”

  He raised his glass. “To the fucking college boy.”

  “To fucking the college boy, cheers,” she said, and he laughed, and they clinked and drank.

  A car came up the beach road, its headlights cutting the night between water and Lodge. It slowed and turned into the Lodge’s driveway. Headlights disappeared, doors slammed. Brigid and Lance looked to the stairs. Peg was herding the kids, who stumbled before her as if they’d been awoken from sleep. When Peg looked up and saw Brigid, she started. Then her gaze fell to Lance and she froze, disapproval washing across her face. “Hel—hello.”

  Lance’s eyes went to Squee, nearly asleep on his feet, and everything about Lance changed. The fuddled man drinking with Brigid on the porch receded, his confusion replaced by anger. He addressed his son. “Where the hell do you think you’ve been?”

  Peg’s jaw set firmly. “We’ve taken the children for an ice cream,” she said, a thousand curses held under her tongue, which she’d never speak aloud. Even to Lance Squire.

  “Your mother’s probably worried sick,” Lance accused Squee. He didn’t so much as acknowledge Peg’s presence. Jeremy stood by ineffectually. Lance said to Squee: “You didn’t even think about telling your mother where you were at, now, did you?”

  “My mom said it was OK,” said Mia, who was standing beside Squee looking spooked, as if she’d had a bad dream and couldn’t shake the fear.

  Lance fixed his stare on the little girl. “Did I ask what your mother said?”

  No tears came to Mia’s eyes just then, though they were surely only delayed by shock.

  “You get home,” Lance told Squee. “Now.”

  No one moved. Then Peg spoke, finding her voice before the rest of them. It seemed likely that Jeremy might never speak again. Peg looked to her dumbstruck beau, her tone leveled by fury. “Take Mia to her mother, won’t you?” she said. “I’ll walk Squee up the hill.” And she turned without waiting for Jeremy’s response, touched Mia’s shoulder by way of good night, pivoted Squee around with her other hand, and led him away from the porch without another word.

  There was no one in the cabin when Squee got there. He looked out the window and watched Peg walk away toward the staff house. Then he went to his room, prying off his sneakers and stepping out of them as he walked. They made a little trail to his bedroom door, which he closed firmly and locked. In his clothes, which were dirty and sweaty from a day of work outside, his hands and chin sticky with Chocolate Chocolate Chip, Squee climbed into his unmade bed, pulled the covers over him, and shut his eyes so hard against tears that he succeeded in stopping them from coming at all.

  Six

  AS FODDER BLAZES STORED ABOVE THE BYRE

  On November 18, 1926, a fire swept through the massive Osprey Lodge and burned the three-hundred-room hotel to the ground. No one was injured, as the Lodge was closed for the season. Reconstruction began optimistically in 1928, but was halted by the stock market crash of 1929. A skeleton of the new hotel stood in half-erected ruin until the great hurricane of ’38 wiped it off the map entirely.

  —FRANK PERCIVAL, A History of Osprey Island

  IN 1939, WHEN BUDDY CHIZEK was eleven years old, his father, a tightfisted yet entrepreneurial Texan, happened upon Osprey in the course of some business dealings and saw right away the opportunity to be had. He bought up the site of the old Lodge, the waterfront, beach, and hillside, and built a hundred-room hotel, more modest than its predecessors. Just up the hill, by the tennis courts and swimming pool, Charles Chizek commissioned the construction of a fleet of family cabins, nestled among the oaks and pines. The Depression was over, and he foresaw an America of renewed hope, familial dedication, and newfound appreciation for the simpler things in life: badminton with the children, five o’clock
cocktails on the terrace, morning coffee percolating in your very own kitchenette.

  Charles’s wife, Dolly, was a fussy, irritable, and perniciously charming southern belle who placed herself in command of all matters pertaining to decor, cuisine, and social life, and ruled the Lodge at Osprey Island like a dictatorial cruise director. As a parent, she was no warmer than Charles, who was himself about as genial as a prawn. The couple’s three sons were neither nice nor interesting, nor pleased by their parents’ decision to uproot them from sunny Texas and plunk them down on this mildewed penitentiary of an island. They’d have preferred Alcatraz. The two elder boys were put out enough to make sure they were among the first volunteers to head for Europe when the next war broke out. When it came to pass that they were also among the first to die, it was as if they’d done so purely out of spite.

  Bud, the youngest son, was somewhat less spiteful than his dead brothers, and he remained alive to help his grieving (yet prospering!) parents run the hotel. Bud was not a man of great energy or ambition and seemed generally to accept the island and the Lodge as his lot in life. Young and healthy, he may have wanted for more intimate companionship than the occasional romp with the capitulating daughter of a hotel guest, or even a seductive chambermaid, but it was not in his nature to seek anything other than that which was set in front of him.