Osprey Island

Suzy sat down on a chair near the door to wait. She shuffled through a pile of junk mail on the hall table, leafed through a flier of the IGA’s price specials. In the mirror beside the door she caught a glimpse of herself, wearing an old gray T-shirt that had never been flattering, and her failure to recall which boyfriend it had once belonged to made her feel slutty and juvenile. Her hair, which she had only wet, not washed, in the shower that morning, had dried to reveal a lumpish wad of matted hair at the back of her head, a knot that had no doubt formed the previous evening, in bed with Roddy. From her parents’ coatrack on the other side of the door she grabbed a hat— one of the ugly lavender ones from the laundry equipment company, which wasn’t even ugly in a kitschy or cute way, it was just ugly—and put it on. She pulled her hair through the hole in back and tugged down the brim. God, to be incognito! To be someplace where nobody even knew her name! She looked like a suburban housewife ready to carpool the kids on over to goddamn Little League. She never felt so misplaced as when she was at home.

“What’s wrong? What happened?” Her father descended the stairs two at a time, and she turned to see the panic crossing his face. She felt sorry for him for a moment, imagining how he must feel, the dread, all of the many things that could go so wrong when you ran a large operation with a big staff and more loose ends than seams. His face was rigid. His eyes said, Oh god, what now?

“Nothing,” Suzy said quickly. “Everything’s fine. I just wanted to talk to you.”

Bud released his breath, and as his chest sank his expression went from fear to annoyance: he was peeved that she’d caused him this moment’s anxiety, put out at the notion that she wanted something else from him now, as if he didn’t have enough to do and enough to worry about. “What is it?” he said, and though he did not look at his watch, he may as well have.

“I don’t mean to trouble you,” Suzy began obsequiously, for nothing rankled Bud more, and that’s what it was always about between the two of them: who could piss the other off most. On your marks, get set, go!

“I’ve got a busy afternoon,” Bud warned.

“I was just wondering . . .” She spoke so smoothly as to nauseate herself. “I was wondering if there was anything I could do to help in the search for someone to replace Lorna as head housekeeper. I know you’re probably doing everything you can, but if there’s anything I could do to help I’d be more than happy . . .”

“Is it so hard,” Bud spat, “to put a little bit of work into your family’s business?” His voice was raised. “Is it so much to ask . . . ?” His daughter’s audacity rendered him speechless. Her selfishness never ceased to amaze him. Unbelievable! She was lazy and opportunistic, and she could be downright nasty when she didn’t get her way. If he steered clear of his daughter as a rule, it was because his anger toward her was of a variety he recognized to be violent. Too often, he felt himself just one step shy of slapping her insolent face, or shaking that haughty defiance right out of her. Bud held his hands at his sides with a force of will as he managed to reroute his violence to his mouth instead of his fists. “Are you not able,” he bellowed, “to do a single goddamn day’s work without your griping and bitching that everything’s so goddamn unfair?! A woman is dead here . . .”

Nancy, from the kitchen, in a voice that almost topped Bud’s in pitch and command, said dramatically into the telephone (but so loudly that it was impossible to think of the phone as anything but a stage prop), “Look, I’m just going to have to call you back later!” Whereupon she slammed down the receiver, stalked past Bud and Suzy, and climbed the stairs to her bedroom, one hand firmly gripping the banister, the other held across her eyes as though the migraine brewing therein might just kill her this time, as if that’s what her family had been after all along.

They waited for her door to close before they resumed. Then they turned back on each other like cats in a tangle.