Osprey Island

COUNTY SANITATION HAD already brought a dumpster to the Lodge, set down—at Bud’s direction, no doubt—so that it blocked the view from Sand Beach Road to the laundry shack’s blackened husk. It was a terrible-looking thing: monolithic charred and melted washers and dryers rising above the rubble, like a miniature city, incinerated. Fire Chief McIntire was there, inspecting the wreckage, collecting data for the reports he would have to file. There were a few construction guys from the island milling around, hired for the demolition. Bud had dressed himself in a pair of old, stained Bermuda shorts and a striped polo shirt splotched with bleach, as if he planned to help with the demolition work, though it was hard to imagine Bud doing anything but bark orders from the sidelines and go inside to make “important” phone calls just when large items needed lifting. Bud was waving Roddy over. “Good morning, good morning.”

Bud started rattling off instructions when Roddy was still a good distance away. “There’s nothing we can do right here till the insurance boys make it out to have a look. They promised me they’d hustle through—we’ll start tearing it down the minute they’re done.” Roddy stopped about ten feet from Bud and listened to him orate. The construction crew guys listened too, though it seemed they’d already heard the speech. “For now, this morning, we’re waiting for the new equipment—they promised before noon—and we’ll need to get the maintenance shop cleared out. We’ll use this as an opportunity to get rid of whatever crap’s in there we don’t need—toss it all in the dumpster, but check with me first, you hear? Then I’ve got dimensions for the exhaust holes we’re gonna . . .” Bud dropped off. “Ach,” he said. “Screw it, save that for later. Let’s get the damn thing cleared out first. Load it into the pickups. We’ll store everything in the meantime off the staff quarters . . .” He turned and pointed. “That storage shed, there.” And thus a tedious and labor-intensive process began.

AT THE EAST END of the first floor in the Lodge there was a door without a room number. An index card was thumbtacked over the peephole. On it, in ballpoint pen that had faded to nearly nothing, someone had written “MAID.” Hunting down a key to the door was Suzy’s first order of business, and she walked up the hill to her folks’ house to see if Nancy had any ideas. Her mother was up and dressed and wanted to come down to the Lodge and find the key for Suzy. Making herself useful was an effective form of martyrdom for Nancy. Suzy was too tired to fight. They walked down the hill in silence, watching the men haul tools and equipment. Suzy slowed her pace to her mother’s. Nancy’s face looked thinner; she seemed perpetually near tears.

The insurance guys had shown up, and they circled the periphery of the burn site, one speaking into a handheld tape recorder, the other making marks on a company clipboard with a company pen. Bud could be heard nearly from the road, directing traffic down inside the maintenance shop.

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?”