Mystery

“That Spence girl is really something, isn’t she?” said Kate Redwing. “I’m not sure she’s properly appreciated in these parts.” She clinked her glass against his and gave him a sparkling, conspiratorial look over its brim as she drank.

A stir of movement took place at the bar, and Kate Redwing said, “The heir apparent.”

Katinka Redwing swept toward the top of the stairs as Buddy came up beside the young man with oily hair. A tall, lanky young person with limp blond hair and a large nose trailed up behind them. Buddy wore a baggy polo shirt and large Bermuda shorts and boat shoes without socks; Kip Carson wore floppy jeans, sandals, and a cheesecloth Indian shirt. Buddy looked glazed and red, as if he had just come out of an oven.

“I think we could go to our table now, Marcello,” said his mother.

“Who’s the toad in the necktie?” Buddy asked. Baked eyes in the baked-apple face glared at Tom. “One of Roddy’s playmates?”

The party at the bar broke up. Katinka Redwing bent whispering toward her son as they followed Marcello toward a long table near the terrace. Roddy and Buzz carried their drinks toward a table for two behind the Langenheims. The senior Spences attached themselves to either side of Ralph Redwing, and Sarah rolled her eyes and fell in with Tom and Kate.

“Buddy enjoys being bad,” the old woman said quietly as they followed the procession to the table. “But I must say, I’ve always rather liked toads myself. Useful little things. I’ve even sort of grown to resemble one, though a nice one, I trust. Do you suppose Buddy might have meant … no, I don’t suppose he did.” She grinned wickedly, but it might have been at the game of musical chairs going on at the head of the table. Mrs. Spence wished to sit between Ralph and Buddy Redwing, and Buddy wanted to sit beside Kip Carson; Katinka Redwing was determined to sit at the side of her husband and to banish Kip Carson to the table’s other end. Mr. Spence and Mrs. Redwing urged Sarah into the chair opposite Buddy. Ralph Redwing took the chair at the head of the table. Everybody else sat down more or less where they wanted to. Tom sat opposite Kip and between Sarah and Kate Redwing, who was opposite Mr. Spence.

Marcello distributed handwritten menus the size of theater placards, and Kip passed two or three small objects to Buddy, and Buddy inserted them into his mouth. Both the host, and then Kip Carson, declared their willingness to live year-round in Eagle Lake. Mrs. Spence could be observed to grasp Ralph Redwing’s knee, and Sarah slid her leg next to Tom’s. Katinka Redwing stared into some private arctic space and alluded to the anticipation on Mill Walk of “Ralph’s book.” Buddy told a dirty joke, largely to Sarah, and an incomprehensible one about an elephant and a homosexual to the room at large. Everybody—everybody except Kip Carson, who ate nothing but drank six large glasses of water—ate hugely, drank hugely, and most talked without stopping or listening. Tom noticed that Sarah had been wrong about Buddy Redwing and Kate had been right: Buddy enjoyed being bad, he was acting up, but part of his awfulness was that he had no real talent for that kind of badness. He was too ordinary for it. In ten years, he would be talking with romantic nostalgia about how wild he used to be; in twenty, he would be an overweight tycoon who cheated at golf and thought that he had a divine right to steal whatever he could get his hands on.

“I’m glad you didn’t take off your tie,” Kate Redwing said to him.

“My mother told me to wear this tie,” said Tom, smiling.

“She would have been thinking of the old Eagle Lake, when things were much more formal. She probably still has memories of eating at the club with her father. I can remember seeing her here, the summer I was engaged. How is she now?”

Tom hesitated for a moment, then said, “She could be better.”

“Is your father a very sensitive man?”

Tom found himself unable to answer that question, and she patted his hand to tell him that she understood his silence. “Never mind. I’m sure that you make up for a lot. She must be very proud of you.”

“I hope she can be,” Tom said.

“I used to worry about your mother. She was a dear little thing, but absolutely forlorn. So very pretty, but so unhappy. This is none of my business, of course.”

Up at the other end of the table, Ralph Redwing was explaining that he saw Eagle Lake as a world apart from his family’s businesses, and that was why he had turned down many opportunities to invest in the area. He would not sully the place with money—he was content with their lake, their friends, their little piece of the woods.

“In spite of what we could do with this area,” he said. This was a speech that required an audience, and all faces were turned to him, even those of Buddy and Kip. “We could turn this whole part of Wisconsin right around—we could wake it up—we could start putting money into people’s pockets …”

“I daresay,” Kate whispered to Tom.