Osprey Island

—CHERYL OLINKEWITZ, “The Rape and Exploitation of Indigenous New England Populations: Osprey Island, A Case Study,” an unpublished undergraduate thesis

IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN LORNA—and if not Lorna, then Lance— who took the housekeepers on a tour of the Lodge and grounds the following morning, showed them the supply closets, oriented them to the vacuum cleaners and the stubborn faucets and the tricks it took to try and make a down-at-the-heels resort appear rustic and not ratty. But as mornings had it, the Squires were “indisposed,” a state of being more commonly associated with aging screen idols than hired hands.

Mia had woken up early, as six-year-olds are wont, and had gone knocking her way down the hall in her nightgown to introduce herself to other guests and make friends. Half asleep, Suzy tried to explain that there were no guests yet. Mia didn’t get it. A hotel was supposed to be a big place with people in every room, the way the sky was a big place with lots of stars, there even when you can’t see them. Mia put on clothes and went out scouting. Suzy rolled over and went back to sleep.

An hour later, Suzy got up and put on a bathrobe. She stepped into the hall to see where Mia might have gotten to and was greeted by a throng of peaches-and-creamy, brogue-throated girls, all dolled up for housekeeping, leaning awkwardly against the walls like stood-up prom dates.

“Good morning,” they seemed to sing in unison.

“Hi,” Suzy said, peering past them down the hall for Mia.

“Hi, Ma!” Mia squawked. She was seated in the cross-legged lap of an Irish girl, her hair done up in a chambermaid’s babushka with Suzy’s blue bandanna.

“Hi, Suzy!” Squee was perched on a wicker loveseat, gnawing his way through a Snickers bar.

“There’s a nutritious breakfast.” Suzy tightened her terrycloth belt.

Squee grinned. Covered in caramel-peanut goo, his two new front teeth were about the size of his ears.

“So”—Suzy leaned on the door frame—“just . . . hangin’ out in the hallway?”

Brigid spoke up. The lavender top she had on made her skin glow orange as a jack-o’-lantern. “Mr. . . .” she began, “Mr. Ciz . . . Mr. . . .”

“Bud,” Suzy told her.

The girl sighed her relief. “Bud,” she said. “He . . . We’d been told to gather for an orientation at half-seven, though we’ve seen no one but the children.” She looked entreatingly to Suzy, taking little pains to conceal her annoyance with the situation.

It was nearly eight-fifteen. Suzy looked to Squee. “Where’re your folks?”

Squee shrugged, pouted out his lower lip—search me—and continued his breakfast.

Suzy wandered out to the lobby and onto the deck. She found Roddy up on a ladder, cleaning rotted leaves and muck out of the dining porch rain gutter. “Excuse me,” she called from the sliding door, “do you know anything about the housekeeping orientation this morning? We’ve a slew of maids and no matron to be found.” One exchange and she was sounding like the Irish already. Suzy was convinced that she went back to New York with a brogue every August.

Roddy did not look at her. “You don’t remember me, do you?” he said, eyes trained on the gutter.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re Suzy, right?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Did you work here at the Lodge last summer? I’ve got a terrible memory for faces, for people at all, really, actually, about everything . . .”

“I’m Roddy Jacobs.” He tossed down a clot of slimy twigs. “I was friends with your brother. I High. Class of ’sixty-eight.”

“Oh,” Suzy said. Chas. Chas as he was at I High: cocky, young, crossing the football field with his friends, heading out to the woods beyond school grounds to get high. Chas’s friends: Lance Squire, Jimmy Waters—decent guys, not the brightest, but neither was Chas. “Roddy Jacobs?” Suzy repeated.

He nodded.

“Sure,” Suzy said, “sure. You were friends with Chas.”

Roddy nodded solemnly. Chas had died in Vietnam not long after graduation.

Suzy said, “So, you know anything about this housekeeping thing the girls are waiting on?”

Roddy climbed down from his ladder.

“Oh, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I just wondered if . . .”

Roddy nodded. “I’ll take care of it,” he said, and passed her, pulling the glass door shut behind him. Suzy remembered Roddy somewhat. A quiet friend of Chas’s. With Chas and Lance, it would have been hard to exist as anything else. Roddy had hovered in the background of high school, and of Chas and his gang. It was a long time ago. Almost twenty years since Chas’s death, and Suzy tried to think about that time as little as she could. She’d managed to hardly remember Roddy at all.