Osprey Island

The Lodge at Osprey Island that stands on the site today is not quite so illustrious as the original. There have been fires, hurricanes, wars, a Great Depression, and the resort has been built and rebuilt, knocked down and made over again. The Lodge in its present incarnation opened in 1940 under the ownership of a man named Chizek, a wealthy Texan whose oil money the Depression seemed to have passed right by. It’s more of a family place now, hardly as grand and photogenic as it once was, but it’s a nice place to bring the kids on holiday—a couple of hours from New York City by train, then a short ferry ride across the bay. Really, a perfect place to bring the family.

Here’s a popular postcard scene: a man and a boy standing on a dock—the Lodge’s boat dock, which still has some of the old charm that the Lodge itself now lacks—with the water and the shoreline and the world washed in golden sunset glow. The man and boy might be father and son—they aren’t, but they might be. For the sake of the postcard: a man and his son washed in gold and peachy light at the end of a jutting, dilapidated pier. A man and his son, nearly silhouetted against the horizon, gazing across the water toward an outcropping of land where a post rises from the shoreline scrub brush. The post is as tall as a telephone pole, and sturdy. Atop the post, a tremendous nest. Atop the nest, a tremendous bird. The bird—it’s about to take off—spreads its wings, ready to rise like a phoenix. The boy lifts his hand—An osprey!—and the man’s gaze follows. They are not hotel guests, these two; both were raised on this island. There were hardly any ospreys when the man was a child, but now things are different: DDT banned, the food chain back on track. See? There’s the proof, up in that nest: an osprey, one of many returned to the island that bears their name. See the boy on the dock—it’s for him that the osprey has come home.

One

THE LODGE AT OSPREY ISLAND

Vacation this summer at the Osprey Lodge—open Fourth of July Weekend through Labor Day—Boating—Tennis—Beachfront—Swimming pool—Full-service dining room with local reknowned [sic] chef—Cocktail bar with outdoor patio seating—On the shore of beautifulOsprey Island—The Lodge at Osprey Island—A Family Place!

—promotional brochure, 1988

IT WASN’T UNTIL LANCE AND LORNA SQUIRE showed up to the barbecue—forty-five minutes late, and drunk, hair combed back wet from the shower—that anyone got dessert. The Osprey Lodge’s head cook, Jock, was chain-smoking beside a table full of watermelon he’d hacked into slices with such samurai ferocity that no one would venture near it for fear of losing a limb. But Lance Squire strolled up, surprised Jock with a clap on the back that made him drop his cigarette in the pooling watermelon juice, and took over. “Come on now, don’t be shy!” Lance barked across the lawn. A few brave souls crept tentatively forth for watermelon. Jock glowered from the sidelines.

Jock’s name was actually Jacques, but that didn’t sound any different from Jock to anyone around there. Jock looked less like a Frenchman than a truck-stop short-order fry cook, and he took great pleasure in presenting himself as such. He hardly spoke except to swear at his waitstaff in vulgar Franglais. The Lodge’s kitchen help spoke mostly Spanish. Each summer Tito and Juan brought in a crew of their friends and relatives who worked for cash under the table and, for reasons that seemed not merely obvious, but enviable, talked only to one another. It was the waitstaff who caught the brunt and gist of Jock’s rampages. The boys laughed—“Steady there, Jocko!”— and went about their business, filling water pitchers and folding permanent-press napkins while Jock hurled epithets around the kitchen. Waitresses always had a bit more trouble: it was hard to keep count of your dinner salads or remember how many steaks and how many filets when Jock was flinging them on the grill, hollering, “What you say? How many you say? How many fucking shit steak slabs you say, gorgeous? We go outside, I fuck you so hard you speak up then, yeah? Fucking how many you say?”