Mia stood up from the bed, her body and her expression rigid with indignation. She was livid, and incredulous too, unable to believe this was really happening. She faced her mother down with as much rage as Suzy had ever seen in the child, and said with a vehemence she could only have inherited from the woman she was saying it to: “I don’t care. I’m staying here.”
“No, actually,” Suzy countered, “actually, you’re not.”
“I am. You can go. I’m staying.”
“No, Mia, you’re coming with me.”
And they went at it like that for some time, until Mia locked herself in the bathroom, shouting, “I hate you! I hate you!” at the top of her lungs, and Suzy stormed from the room.
She went downstairs, found a housekeeper to post outside the room upstairs to watch Mia, and then went straight for the office and grabbed the keys to a Lodge truck. In the parking lot she tried the keys in three vehicles before she found the right one, cursing herself, the trucks, her father, her daughter, Osprey Island, and everything that had ever conspired to get her born there in the first place. When the engine of the old tan Ford finally turned over, Suzy sank down in the seat, put her head back, and squeezed her eyes shut.
She swung out of the parking lot onto Sand Beach Road and sped up the hill. It felt good to drive, to move that fast, the whipping of wind, the adrenaline of speed. She wanted to stay with that speed, just to drive away, far. And what struck her was the dreadful familiarity of that sensation. It was high school. It was dying for flight, anything just to drive and keep driving. The preposterous, insidious envy she felt for people who lived in open spaces, who could put their car on I-80 in Pennsylvania or Illinois and keep driving until they hit the Pacific. God! The freedom in that! You dreamed of flight on Osprey Island. You dreamed of getting in your father’s Chrysler and gunning for the docks. Dreamed of how it would feel when the wheels lifted off the cobbled planks and took air.
It explained everything. The high school kids who just drove and drove around and around and around that little island, so fast they squealed the curves, grazing the guardrails. They’d swipe the fence on Sand Beach Road and leave their mark in the whitewash, streaking Daddy’s fender. It made the blaming easy. Citizens in their homes heard the skid: tires screaming on asphalt. They called the police, called the sheriff at home in his bed, said Sheriff, it’s the kids again out joyriding . . . and Davey Mitchell and Sheriff Harty roused themselves from sleep to get out and hunt the hooligans down and haul them in, maybe even keep them overnight in the island jail, which was fine; it was better, really, because for those kids anything was better than sitting still. Anything was better than driving your car up onto that ferry and knowing Chip or Matty or whoever was on duty that night would have a call in to your folks, who’d be down there hauling your ass back to bed before you could even smoke a godforsaken cigarette in peace. It wasn’t worth pulling your car onto the damn ferry, since you knew they were going to make you back it right off again.
Suzy pealed off the asphalt and onto the dirt road that bordered the old golf course. The truck slid in the sand, kicking up a spray of pebbles in its wake. She steered into the skid and barreled on up the hill. Rounding the rise, she could see both Roddy’s truck and Eden’s car in the driveway, and Suzy parked beside them, jumped out, and went down the ravine toward Roddy’s shack. She knocked, poked her head in, then turned, let the door fall shut, and went back up toward Eden’s. Halfway up the path, near the chicken coop, she saw the back door open onto Eden’s porch, and Roddy stepped outside. He raised a hand in tired greeting. Such a sweet man, Suzy thought, and the sight of him there in all his exhaustion was such a comfort. She couldn’t think of the last time a man had inspired comfort in her; she wasn’t sure it was something she’d ever felt. The thought made her desperately sad. If she could have done anything in the world right then— the kind of thing Mia asked constantly: If you could be anybody in the world who would it be? If you could have any candy in the whole world, which kind would you get?—if she could do anything right then, she thought, she’d have loaded herself and Roddy and Mia and Squee into Roddy’s truck, all their bags piled under tarps in back and held down with bailer’s twine. They’d drive to New York, enroll Squee at Mia’s school, find Roddy work easily doing construction, contracting . . . Families had been built on a hell of a lot less than that.
Roddy pulled off his hat, ran a hand over his head, back and forth, rubbing the hair one way and the other so it stuck up like he’d slept on it wrong. She climbed the porch steps and he began to speak, updating her on the latest developments as though he were the one with something to tell. “We’ve got one of your housekeeping girls inside.” He flicked his head toward the door, replaced his hat and secured it down as if preparing to go out into a storm. “Peg?” he said. “Peg, right?” He rolled his eyes slightly. “She’s worried . . .” He said it half-mockingly, then seemed to retract the judgment as it came out of his mouth and just shook his head, saying, “Worried about Squee. About what Lance might do to him.”
It was all the validation and prompting Suzy needed. “He’s dangerous,” she said. “Mia’s been hysterical all day—he is dangerous.” She felt the power in that reiteration; it became truer each time she said it. She felt a blooming sense of freedom, the freedom to say anything, because she was out of there! She was already gone, she was on that ferry, and nothing mattered anymore. She wasn’t going to get up tomorrow and do her father’s bidding another day. She wasn’t going to put her kid through this any longer, no matter how that kid felt about it after a day at the beach and three scoops of pistachio ice cream.
“Lance is dangerous,” she said again. She fought the urge just to keep saying it, over and over and over again. “Of all people, I should know how dangerous Lance Squire really is.”
“What?” Roddy was confused. “What do you . . . ?” And then he commanded himself to stop—all thought, all action, everything— until he understood what she was saying. She could see him shutting down, the way you’d close the doors and batten down the windows in the threat of an oncoming twister. Only it ceased to look like steeliness. It was a slackening, if anything—like the way Squee looked when Lance came at him.
Suzy choked. Then she began suddenly, almost violently, to cry. She sucked in breath and held her hair in her hand, the arm blocking half her face to cover at least a fraction of her shame. Her words came in sputters. “You can ask your mother,” she choked out. “She knows it all.” And then she didn’t know how to go on, for she was saying something she had never said in her life, and though it had always been true, she had never felt its truth the way she felt it right then. “I lost my virginity down in that ravine”—she threw a hand out behind her—“when I was sixteen years old.”
“To Lance?” Roddy said. “I knew you . . . I didn’t know it was—”
“Everybody and their fucking grandmother knew I slept with him. He basically raped me—Lance, there, in that ravine—when I was sixteen years old. Ask your mother,” she sobbed, “just ask your mother. She probably remembers more than I do. Ask Eden . . . That’s how I know. That’s how I know what Lance is capable of.” She paused then, drew in her breath, and looked up at Roddy for the first time since she’d begun. “I have to leave,” she said. “I feel like I’m losing my mind. I can’t stay here. I can’t. I have to leave.”
She started to say “Come with me” but he stopped her.
“I can’t . . . ,” he said.
“You could . . . ,” she said. She didn’t know if it was true, or if she wanted it, but she said it anyway.
He said, “My mother . . . Squee . . .”
And she just sobbed harder until finally he had to take her in his arms. It was easier to hold her and feel her sadness than it was to stand by and feel his own. So he held on to her, relieved that he had something to hold on to, at the same time realizing that the real relief would be in letting her go.
BRIGID WAS IN THE ROOM when Peg returned from
Eden’s. She was lying on her bed, on her back, in gym shorts and a skimpy tank. It was hard for Peg to know what to say to her. It was hard for Brigid to know what to say to Peg. Peg was well enough aware that Brigid hadn’t come back to work with the rest of the girls after lunch; she’d run off after Lance Squire and never returned to her duties. The way Peg thought of it, she didn’t see Brigid as having run after Squee— didn’t even consider that Brigid might be concerned about the boy at all.
Brigid, for her part, had still been sitting on the Squires’ porch with Lance when the other girls had gotten off work, and had seen Peg climb into a car and get whisked away down Sand Beach Road. She hadn’t come to dinner. No one knew where she’d gone, not even Jeremy, who’d passed the meal in a state of demonstrable concern.
“Where’ve you been at?” Brigid said, looking off toward the window as if she was merely asking out of politeness and couldn’t have cared less where Peg had spent the last few hours.
“Pardon?” Peg said.
Brigid turned back into the room. “People wondered where you’d gone,” she said.
Peg paused. “The girls were likewise wondering where you’d knocked off to this afternoon.”
Brigid’s face went deadpan with annoyance as she tried to stop her eyes from rolling. “I was in plain sight of the lot of you on the Squires’ porch all afternoon. You couldn’t’ve wondered all that much, now could you?”
Peg couldn’t help herself. “How’s the boy?” she said, her tone a mixture of accusation and longing.
“Squee? He’s just fine,” Brigid said quickly. “They took him to the beach, with Mia.”
“Who took him to the beach?”
Brigid paused, waiting for the acid to drain back from her lips before she spoke. She forced a terrible smile: “Gavin and his new little hoor.”
“Well, if you’re getting off with Lance Squire, what precisely did you expect?”
Brigid sat up. “You’ve bloody got to be kidding.”
“What?”
“You think I’ve passed over Gavin in favor of Lance Squire?” Brigid took it for granted that no one in her right mind would ever pass over Gavin.
“So you haven’t, then?” Peg said casually.
Brigid flopped back down onto the bed and turned to the window.
“Oh, I see, now,” Peg said snidely.
Brigid lay fuming in her bed by the window, words flashing through her brain, retorts and explanations so loud in her skull it seemed Peg should have been able to hear them. She tried to speak, but whatever came to her tongue felt inadequate, and she swallowed a number of beginnings before she managed to sit up and say: “The man’s wife has just passed on. Am I the only one around in this bloody place who thinks he deserves a bit of sympathy? You lot treat him as though he’d killed her himself!”
That struck Peg unexpectedly, for it was true: that was precisely the way she thought of him. “Oh, don’t be thick,” she snapped. “I’ve simply a bit more concern for the welfare of the child who’s been left in his care and’ll likely be scarred for life, or worse, if no one steps in and does a bloody thing about it—”
“Jesus Christ!” Brigid cried. “Who do think you are, then?” She was stammering for the next line when Peg cut her off.
“I’m someone who bloody cares what’ll happen to that child!”
Brigid’s astonishment stopped her from replying. She just sat there blinking at this girl who was her roommate. “My god,” was all she could manage. “Oh my fucking god.”
Peg was riled, every ill feeling she’d ever entertained toward Brigid rising to the surface. “You pass your time licking up to this man and that without opening your eyes and seeing what’s in front of your bloody face! I don’t see how you can so much as sit and talk with the man when you’ve seen the way he treats his son—the way he treats bloody everyone!—acting as though it’s altogether just grand!”
Brigid shook her head back and forth, slowly, in utter disbelief. “Heaven forbid,” she said, “that a man who’s just lost his wife doesn’t act like a bloody saint every fucking minute of the day! God forbid you cut the man just the tiniest bit of slack when he’s been through the worst thing you’ll ever imagine!” She stood up, the words jamming in her throat. She held up her hands: there was nothing more she could even think to say to someone so ignorant.
“You must be blind!” Peg hissed, but Brigid waved her hands by her ears to say she’d hear no more.
“You’re bleedin’ unbelievable,” Brigid finally managed to say. She stared at Peg another moment as she tried to figure out what she might do with herself at that point. Then, suddenly, she snatched the covers from her bed and grabbed up her pillow with the other hand. “Absolutely unbelievable!” And she slammed out of the room.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Peg cried. And then she heard the outside door slam at the end of the hall, and she was quiet, listening. All she could hear were the crickets.
Brigid hadn’t a clue where she was going except that she was going away from that self-righteous, arrogant, preachy little priss she’d been unlucky enough to get lodged with. It was dark out, and the first thing Brigid saw were the lights of the Squire cottage across the way. People were still out on the porch of the Lodge, but Brigid didn’t want to see any of them. She walked across the path and up the steps. Through the window she could see Lance sitting in his easy chair, a beer in hand. Squee was on the couch, his legs crossed under him, playing with an action figure of some sort. They were watching TV. Like any normal, regular, American family, Brigid thought—even a normal, regular American family who’ve recently lost one of their own!— peacefully watching the television in their own bloody living room! She hated Peg with all the ire in her. She knocked on the door, heard Lance call, “C’min,” and opened the door.
“Hi,” said Squee, looking up briefly from his play.
“Hey there,” Lance said, waving her inside.
“Could I knock about with you lot a bit this evening?” Brigid said bitterly. “My roommate’s a bloody mulchie wanker!”
Lance’s face broke into a wide, winning grin. “I don’t know what the fuck that means, but our casa is your casa.” With his old magnanimous flair Lance swept an arm broadly across the room. “Beer’s in the fridge.”
She got herself a can, and as she shuffled toward the couch to curl up beside Squee with her blanket and pillow, Brigid could honestly say that she felt welcome and grateful and at home for the first time since she’d arrived on Osprey Island. And as they watched mindless American blather, Brigid settled into an oblivion of comfort for which she was enormously thankful.
Eighteen
WWCD?
One July day in 1957, when Great Island should have been a scene of activity with young birds at the flying stage, I scanned the marsh through my telescope. I saw the usual number of adults about—but where were the young? The nesting season obviously had been a failure. The next year confirmed my suspicions. Although young ospreys ordinarily pip the shell in about 5 weeks, many adults sat on unhatched eggs for 60 to 70 days. Other eggs mysteriously disappeared. One bird brought a rubber ball to the nest and faithfully sat on it for six weeks!
—ROGER TORY PETERSON, “The Endangered Osprey”
WHEN EDEN RETURNED HOME after dropping Peg back at the Lodge, she went straight down to the henhouse. The lamp was on at Roddy’s place and Suzy’s truck was gone. Eden went first to Lorraine’s coop to check on her. They weren’t far from her hatching date now, and Lorraine was viciously defensive about her clutch. Only when Lorraine was off the nest could Eden get in there to make sure she had enough nesting material, stick in a few sprigs of wormwood to deter insects and pests. Eden poked her head into the coop for one, and before her eyes could even adjust, Lorraine was letting out a terrible crrrrrrawk crrrrrrrrrrrawk, loud and screeching. As far back as she and Eden went, if anyone tried to mess with those eggs, Lorraine’d peck their hands into bloody stumps before she’d let them have at
her unhatched babies.
In the main coop old Margery lumbered off her roost the minute Eden entered and wobbled over to say hello. She was like a dog. Eden sank down into an old half-broken chair she’d set by the door, and lifted Margery up onto her lap. Eden stroked the hen’s feathers.
Once upon a time Eden had tried to teach Lorna how to care for the chickens, and the girl had been happy enough to cuddle the feather-puff babies but hadn’t really taken to it beyond that. Seemed you couldn’t teach a woman to mother any more than you could make a hen go broody. Lorna’d been willing enough to go walking with Eden, to help out with the osprey nesting platforms. The thing Lorna lacked, Eden thought, was initiative. Then she thought about why it was that people were always trying to figure out what it was that Lorna was lacking. Maybe they felt if they could isolate what made Lorna who she was they could more easily assure themselves that they weren’t like her, couldn’t be like her, that they were immune. It was that easy. There. Done. Eden—a veritable Napoleon of initiative— could look at Lorna and say, There, that’s it, that’s what she’s missing. That’s what she’s missing and that’s what I’ve got in spades! Therefore I am different from Lorna. Therefore I am safe.
It was all so flawed. So inherently and fundamentally and selfservingly flawed. And it helped them all through another day of their problems and kids and strife and grief. It was hard to imagine what the Islanders were going to do without Lorna. Who was going to step in to come up short in every comparison and make them all feel relatively better about their own pathetic lives? It was Osprey’s system of moral certitude. Sure, you could ask, What Would Jesus Do? But that was often a tough question to answer, because Jesus’ life, well, it was pretty different from their own. But at any time you could ask yourself, What Would Lorna Do? and it was pretty much certain that if you could manage to accomplish the exact opposite of whatever that was, you’d probably be just fine.
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