If Penny thought it strange that Squee uttered not a single word as she ushered him through the house and the rituals of bedtime, both of which were somewhat alien to him, she said nothing of it. She tucked him to bed without much flutter, as she’d tucked Lorna in for the better part of seventeen years, closed the door, and went across the hall to join poor Art in his heartbroken slumber.
Ten minutes later, Squee had his shorts and sneakers back on and was out the window and on his way back up the hill toward Eden’s.
GIVEN AN OPTION, it’s not likely that either Suzy or Roddy would have chosen sex on a camp cot. But sometimes such constraints render certain couplings more urgent. Roddy and Suzy were restricted by space, by time, and by circumstance, and driven by a desire that felt like necessity. It made such sense, and felt, for both of them, so good that they found themselves surprised, laughing afterward at how their bodies were like dogs, that they were the owners watching their puppies gallop and play. They sure seem to like each other, don’t they? Yeah, they sure do.
And then the world came back to them, and they remembered in earnest the things that had led them to the place they were in.
“What’s going to happen tomorrow?” Roddy asked.
“What do you mean?” Suzy balked.
“I guess I start clearing . . . debris . . .” He said it as if it were an unfamiliar word, difficult to speak. “Make way for that new-and-improved laundry!”
Suzy said, “Please don’t hate me because my father’s such a . . .”
Roddy propped himself on an elbow, touched her hair. “That hasn’t ever been much of a problem,” he said, laughing a little.
She craned up and kissed him, ran her hand across his chest, down his side. “Really, how’d you get this scar?” She traced her fingertips over its surface again. “It’s a nasty one, huh?”
“Yup,” Roddy said. He pulled the sheet up to cover himself, bent in to kiss her.
She pulled away. “Not your favorite thing in the world to discuss, huh?”
“No.” He paused, then relented. “I was working out West at a sawmill for a while . . . You don’t really want the details.”
“OK,” she said, though it was clearly not.
The air outside was awhirl with early-summer crickets. “What’s your tomorrow like?” he asked.
“I could check my appointment book.”
“That was a joke, right?”
“Yeah.” She lay back down, ran both hands through her hair and held it by the ends away from her head as if to yank it from the scalp. “Jesus, I guess depending on Mia, how she is, I guess I take on my new and illustrious position as head housekeeper! I guess I might get called on to help plan a funeral.”
Roddy closed his eyes, shook his head back and forth.
“I should get back,” she admitted.
“Yeah.”
“I’d rather stay . . .”
Roddy nodded. “Your bed back at the Lodge’ll give you a hell of a better night’s sleep than here.”
“A little lonely, though . . .”
Roddy went back to shaking his head. “Oh boy,” he said. “Oh boy, am I in for it now . . .”
Suzy grinned mischievously. “And why’s that?”
Roddy’s head just wagged back and forth.
“I’ll see you tomorrow?” Suzy asked.
“I’m sure you will,” he answered.
Suzy quietly shut the door to Roddy’s cabin and started up the path toward her truck. She was just passing Eden’s house when something moved on the porch. Suzy yelped. She backed away, peering into the shaded darkness. In seconds, the shed door slammed and Roddy was rushing toward her, the bedsheet clutched around his waist.
“What happened? Are you OK?”
She nodded, gestured to the porch. “There’s something on the porch. It’s probably just a raccoon.”
A light went on inside the house. Roddy grabbed a log from Eden’s woodpile. There was shuffling from the house, a series of lights flicking on inside as Eden made her way to the back door. She pushed open the screen and flipped on the porch light to reveal Squee crouched beside the rocker like a criminal caught in the searchlight, head darting, trying to decide which way to flee.
The porch light also brought to Eden’s attention her son, a log raised over his head, his other hand gripping a sheet around his otherwise naked body. And Suzy Chizek, standing on the path between the house and the driveway, looking as if she didn’t know which way to run.
“Jesus Christ, Squee!” Roddy dropped his log to the ground. “What the hell?” He clutched the sheet tightly.
“I’m not staying at Grandma and Grandpa Vaughn’s. I don’t care what you do to me, I’m not staying there.” Squee remained squatting in the shadows by the outdoor sofa’s armrest.
“For goodness sakes,” said Eden. She opened the screen door again and held it ajar. “Come on inside. We’ll give Penny a call, let her know where you are.” Squee scuttled up, his eyes on Roddy the whole time, lest he pick up the log again and lunge.
Roddy and Suzy turned to each other and began to speak at the same time.
“You OK?” he asked.
“I’m sorry,” she was saying.
“Go on. Go back to Mia.”
“OK.”
“Get some sleep,” he said.
“Yeah, OK.” She backed away a few steps, then turned and walked briskly toward the truck.
Roddy watched her drive away, then went down to his shack to put on some clothes.
“Toga party’s over?” Eden said, smirking, as Roddy came to the back door. Squee was at the kitchen table eating graham crackers with milk, and Roddy shot Eden a look through the screen.
“You get ahold of Penny?” Roddy asked. Eden nodded. Then, with a mustering of will that perhaps only Eden could have perceived, Roddy pulled open the door and stepped into Eden’s home. He went and stood behind Squee, put his hands on the boy’s shoulders and gave him a playful and affectionate shake. Squee’s body went slack under Roddy’s hands. Roddy dropped to his knees at the boy’s side. “What happened?” He searched Squee’s face for signs of distress. “You OK? Are you OK?”
Squee had straightened up quickly.
“Something happen at your grandma and grandpa’s?” Roddy asked. “How come you ran off like that? What’d you do, go out a damn window? Jeez. Squee . . . you’d’ve scared your grandma half to death. What’d you go and do that for?”
Squee could be as evasive as Eden. “I like it here,” he said.
“And we’re very glad to have you,” Eden jumped in. “But that doesn’t make it OK to go running out on your grandparents like some sort of . . . runaway.”
Squee stood up suddenly and stepped away from the table as if he might make a dash for it. Eden pretended to notice nothing. “You finished with these?” she asked him, her hands near his glass and plate.
Squee nodded, disarmed. “Are you going to make me go back?”
“Of course not,” Eden said. “You’ve disrupted everyone’s rest enough tonight already. You’ll stay here and we’ll handle all this in the morning.”
Squee looked to Roddy. “Can I stay with you?”
Practically before the question was out of Squee’s mouth, the “No” was out of Roddy’s.
Eden laughed. “You’ll stay up here in Roddy’s old room. In Roddy’s bed from when he was your age.”
Squee was clearly disappointed.
“Yeah,” Roddy agreed. “There’s more room for you up here.” And with that he seemed to take full stock of the fact that he was inside Eden’s house, which really wasn’t someplace he liked to be. He turned to his mother: “You got everything under control up here?”
Eden tried not to crack a smile. “I think we’re fine,” she managed to say.
“Where are you going?” Squee blurted, then looked embarrassed.
“Just back down to my place.”
“Can I come?” Squee asked.
Roddy winced inwardly,
struck dumb for a moment until Eden jumped in: “Oh, so you don’t want to stay with me either?” She sniffed dramatically.
“I’ll see you in the morning, OK partner?” Roddy said.
Squee nodded but did not meet Roddy’s eyes. Roddy reached out and tousled the kid’s hair. He made a quick exit through the back door.
“Let’s get you to sleep, OK?” Eden said to Squee. He followed her obediently down the hall.
MOREY OPENED HIS BAR to the mourners that night, gave them a place to gather and grieve, locked off the pool table, unplugged the juke, though the muted TV was on as always. Morey tended bar himself since Merle Squire was at home with Lance. There wasn’t a big crowd, just a few tables of people talking more quietly than usual, drinking harder alcohol, drinking it more slowly. They all went home early. Last to depart, at half past twelve, were Brigid and Gavin, who purchased a fifth of whiskey from Morey, under the table, before they left.
They crossed the footbridge over Fisherman’s Cove, then stepped off into the sand and made their way slowly along the beach, feet dragging, circling back and around each other. They were just passing the Lodge dock when Gavin looked up the hill then turned back to Brigid and said, “Would you want to camp, maybe, on the beach tonight?”
“Would I want to . . . if what?” Brigid asked.
“Um . . . if I asked you if you wanted to?”
Brigid mulled this over. “Fucking in the sand . . . it’s terribly gritty, don’t you think?”
Gavin stopped. “Could you preserve just an ounce of mystery here? Just like one little element of the romance of it or something? Would that be so hard?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Brigid laughed. She was in a position with him now that she liked—at least, one she felt she understood. He was not half as menacing when she could see where he stood, anticipate where he was heading. He was a romantic after all, not so rakish as she’d imagined.
Gavin raised his hands as if addressing gods in heaven. “I can’t win,” he said. “What have I done to deserve this woman? What have I done wrong?”
“Oh, you poor thing,” Brigid cooed.
“I ask the lady to camp out on the beach with me—such a nice gesture!—something I think she’s wanting me to do, and what does she do? She makes fun of me! Incredible!” Gavin’s drunkenness was becoming apparent. “What’s a man to do, I ask?”
“Such melodrama!” Brigid goaded.
“I can’t win!” he cried again, and with that he sank to his knees in the sand, then rolled so he was lying down, looking up into the sky.
Brigid came over and towered above him. “Think you’ll recover, then?” she asked, peering down.
Suddenly, Gavin grabbed her by the knees and toppled her into the sand. She yelped, laughing, squealing like a girl, wrestling him in a kicked-up flurry of sand. He pinned her easily, sat straddled atop her, poised. Then he leaned down, still pinning her shoulders to the sand, and kissed her, much as he had the previous evening, only this time he let her kiss back. The sand beneath them was cool, and cooler still as they wriggled down into it, damp and prickly and forgiving, and they rolled around for quite a while until they were forced to pull their clothes back onto their bodies and trudge up the hill to find a damn condom. Except that when they got up to the barracks they found Jeremy and Peg each asleep in their separate rooms, and while they tried to figure out someplace else to go, Gavin managed to sober up enough in the eerie hallway bug light to say, “You know, maybe we should chill out a little, slow down, get some sleep.” And before Brigid could catch her balance enough to protest, he was hugging her limply good night and heading back to his own room, which left Brigid feeling more frustrated then ever.
Nine
AN OSPREY BUILDS ITS NEST OF STICKS AND ALL THE RUBBISH IT CAN COLLECT
An osprey nest is a stupendous affair of branches, sticks, driftwood, cornstalks, seaweed and what have you. The same pair will return to it year after year, adding more and more junk in their repairing operations until the whole thing ultimately weighs several hundred pounds and can be seen against the skyline for a mile or more. There are instances of small birds of several kinds nesting in the crevices of osprey castles, quite unmolested, which speaks well for the big fellows’ tolerance.
—ROBERT S. LEMMON, Our Amazing Birds: The Little-Known Facts About Their Private Lives
WHEN RODDY AWOKE IN HIS SHED the next morning he sat up, swung his feet from the bed, and nearly fell over Squee who—until Roddy kicked him in the leg—was asleep on the floor. To avoid crashing down on top of the kid, Roddy managed to catch himself against the stovepipe, which only provided a moment of resistance until it gave and sent him bashing into the woodstove. Squee recoiled by instinct, without a word or a cry of surprise, and was curled upright but fetal against the far wall when Roddy regained his balance. He straightened his boxer shorts, made sure he was decent, inspected himself for damage. “Did I say there wasn’t enough room for two in here?” he said, shaking his head, half laughing and incredulous. “You been there all night?”
Squee shrugged. He was wearing the same dirty clothes he’d been in since Gavin had pulled him from his bed at the Lodge two days before; he looked like even more of an urchin than usual. Roddy jerked his head up toward Eden’s house. “I’ll put on some clothes, you go up see Eden about taking a shower or something—you’re looking like hell—and I’ll run the truck down to the Vaughns’ and pick up your stuff there. Give you something clean to put on. ’K?”
Squee nodded, lingering by the doorway.
“Go, get on,” Roddy waved at him.
Squee looked as if he was preparing some sort of challenge. Finally he said, “You let Suzy come down here . . .”
“A visit’s one thing,” Roddy managed to say. “You don’t see Suzy sleeping on the floor with her sneakers on, now do you?” He paused. “Unless . . .” he leaned over and peered beneath the bed. Squee laughed. Which—Roddy was starting to think—was maybe the only thing that actually really mattered anymore at all. “Get on,” Roddy told him. “Eden won’t let you near her kitchen table as filthy as you are. You want breakfast, you better get up there and get clean.”
Squee moved closer to the door. “I’m sorry.” He stuck his pointy chin toward the spot of floor where he’d lain.
“You’re the one who slept on the floor,” Roddy said.
“Yeah!” Squee’s spirits were lifting his whole body, as if someone had pumped some more air into him. He edged out the door, then turned back at the last second, as if to surprise Roddy. His face washed in a smile. “What kind of a hotel is this, anyway!” he cried, and dashed outside and up the incline toward Eden’s house.
Squee was in the shower, and Eden out collecting the morning eggs from the chicken coop when the phone rang. Eden hurried back to the house as quickly as she could without jostling the basket. She gathered eggs a couple times a day—had a sign out on Island Drive, FRESH ORGANIC EGGS FOR SALE since she had more than she could use herself. If you didn’t gather the eggs often enough the hens’d start laying them on top of the old ones, and it was crowding like that that led to eggs’ breaking, and broken eggs led to egg-eating, and Eden had learned the hard way what happened when one hen started eating eggs. You didn’t cull an egg-eater from the flock immediately and the rest of them just followed, and pretty soon your hens weren’t good for much more than soup.
She got to the phone mid-ring and snatched it up, setting her eggs on the counter. It was Suzy, calling to say she was bringing Mia over to Reesa Delamico’s place out at Scallopshell Cove for the day and did Eden think it sounded like a good idea to get Squee over there too? Reesa Delamico cut and styled hair at her home, but in the summers she relocated her operations to a small salon and gift shop in the lobby of the Osprey Lodge, where she could more conveniently cater to the summer-vacation crowd. Reesa and Suzy and Lorna had all grown up together, same grade in school. Reesa had four kids—one grown, one a baby, but the other two were near Squee’s and
Mia’s ages, and they’d been summer playmates in the past.
On the phone with Eden, Suzy was talking quickly, her tone overly businesslike. She was trying not to let Eden get a word in one way or another, lest it be a word about what Suzy might have been doing out behind the house in the middle of the night, with Roddy wearing only a bedsheet. Suzy prattled on: Reesa wasn’t going in to the Lodge Salon, she’d be with the kids all day . . . Might be good to distract Squee from everything, play with Mia, and Stacey and Mark. Reesa was thinking of setting up the Slip ’n Slide . . .”
Eden said, “Well, I’ve got him here now in the shower—”
“Oh, good!” Suzy said. “I was thinking we’d have to have Reesa toss a bar of soap on there with them!”
“He was getting a little ripe.”
Suzy faltered: “I told Reesa about last night . . . about Squee, I mean, that he ran away from Penny and Art’s . . . anyway, she said she’ll keep a close watch.” Her pace picked up again. “I was thinking if he ran from Reesa’s, that if he runs, it’d just be back to your place probably . . .”
“Maybe,” said Eden. “That may be.”
A terribly awkward pause followed.
“Suzanne,” Eden said, “we’ve got history, you and me, but I’ve got no problem in the world with you, dear—you should know that—and no troubles with whatever’s going on between you and my son. So please, sweetheart, calm down.”
Suzy laughed. “This island is too small!”
“Well, that may be true,” Eden agreed reluctantly. She was ready to let the whole conversation go. “Why don’t you come by here and pick up Mister Squee on your way to Reesa’s, OK? How’d that be?”
“Think I can manage that,” Suzy said, relieved. “That’d be fine.”
If it weren’t for Squee climbing into the passenger seat of Roddy’s truck and insisting on coming with him to help at the Lodge, Roddy would almost certainly have been gone before Suzy made it over to Eden’s that morning. As it was, Suzy pulled up to find Roddy’s truck blocking the driveway, Roddy standing outside the passenger window, talking to Squee in the seat.
Osprey Island Page 11
