Osprey Island

In the Lodge office, Nancy mustered a bit of her usual fussiness to search for the maid’s key. She bustled about with an air of downtrodden frailty, like a consumptive on a mission. Suzy found something in a file cabinet labeled “Housekeeping” and sat down to pore over a sheaf of duty rosters circa 1967, which she supposed was probably the last time anyone had kept track of what got done and what went slack.

“Oh! Suzy . . .”

Suzy spun toward her mother, whose hand was clutched at her chest.

Nancy spoke as if the breath might be her last. “I think I found it!”

“Well,” Suzy said, attempting brightness, “let’s give it a try, shall we?” And she went toward the maid’s room again with the key in hand. Nancy followed, pausing for breath by the main staircase before she continued behind Suzy. Suzy tried to steel herself, not so much for what lay behind the locked door as for her mother’s reaction to it, which, she was certain, would most likely make her want to strangle the woman on the spot. She gritted her teeth.

The lock took some fiddling, and Nancy tried to edge Suzy out of the way to try it herself, as though Suzy might not know how to use such a fancy contraption as a door key. Suzy held her ground. Too much fight on Nancy’s part would have betrayed health or vigor.

The room was, of course, a wreck. As bad as the laundry shack had been, only tighter and more cramped. Nancy peered in over Suzy’s shoulder and clucked at the shame of it. “That poor girl.” Nancy shook her head sadly. “She really had control of nothing in her life, did she?”

That was that—Suzy lost it. “She was a fucking slob, Mom. Your head housekeeper was a total fucking slob! Period. It doesn’t mean she needed saving; it means she was a lousy housekeeper, OK? Can you drop the saint act, please? I just really can’t take it today, all right? I just can’t . . .” Suzy looked pleadingly at her mother. She’d have given a lot at that moment for Nancy to fire something back at her. Anything but continue the martyr act. Which is exactly what Nancy did: her face dropped and her body seemed to contract in a wince of psychic pain. Suzy would not have put a fainting spell past her mother at that moment. But Nancy just turned on wobbly legs and walked back down the hall, leaving Suzy alone in that filthy maid’s supply room.

When the five o’clock whistle sounded down at the docks, whatever headway Suzy had made in the room was not yet visible to the naked eye. It was highly unrewarding work as such. She relocked the door behind her, tucked the key into her pocket, and started back toward the maintenance shop–cum-laundry. The appliance truck had finally arrived while Suzy had been sequestered in the Lodge, and now a gaggle of burly men in incongruous lavender baseball caps were unloading some less-than-state-of-the-art industrial washers and dryers down the truck ramp and into the shop. Roddy was already coming toward her, pulling off his work gloves as he walked.

“I don’t know why I’d been imagining new equipment. This is my father we’re talking about . . .” Roddy and Suzy were unclear on how they should greet each other, so they simply did not greet at all, just stopped at a few paces and hovered uncomfortably.

“How you doing?” Roddy asked, feeling out her mood.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said.

“Get the kids from Reesa’s and go to Morey’s?” Roddy asked. “Squee likes it there.”

Merle Squire treated Squee like a secretary might treat the boss’s child: fine, but not as her own. That evening she entered Morey’s through the back door, came up behind Roddy and Suzy and the kids at the bar and silently placed her hand on Squee’s head by way of hello. He was nearly asleep on his stool, his dinner uneaten, and he didn’t even start at the surprise of Merle’s touch.

“How’s everyone holding up?” Merle asked them quietly. She looked at Squee, smoothed his hair tenderly. “Your dad’s missing you something awful.”

Squee was not the only one confused by this assertion.

Roddy said, “How is he?”

Merle shook her head. “He’s OK, I guess. Honestly, I think he needs to get back to the Lodge. I think he needs something to do.”

“You think he’s ready, already?” Suzy asked.

“Eh, I don’t know,” said Merle. “When are you ever ready for something like that?”

Roddy nodded at his plate of clam strips. “So when’s he going to come back?”

Merle touched the hair at the back of her neck, patting it in place. “Tomorrow, I think. It’s not doing either of us much good having him with me. Bickering . . .” She looked to Squee then, to see if he was listening, but he was zoned out completely.

“And that means Squee goes home too?” Suzy said quietly. “With that fire pit right outside his front door?”

“Lance really wants to . . . so soon?” Roddy asked Merle.

“Well, he doesn’t want to stay with me!” she said certainly.

Later, Roddy and Suzy waited in the truck while they sent the kids into Shakes for ice cream.

“We just can’t guarantee that he’ll stay up at my mom’s,” Roddy was saying. “We can’t exactly lock him in. I could lock the door to the shack, but still, it’s weird, if he comes down . . .”

“You’re right.” Suzy was nodding as Roddy spoke. “You’re right . . . I know, I just wish we could find, like, an hour, just that . . .”

Roddy was nodding too. “I just don’t know how . . .”

“This is so stupid. The kid’s mother is dead and I’m trying to stash him somewhere.”

“He’ll be back with Lance tomorrow night for better or worse. And then you can ditch your own daughter all you want and come share my shack with me.” He smiled.

“I’m not such a terrible mother as I sound,” she said.

“I didn’t say you were a terrible mother.”