Like Anthony scouting for Soviet submarines, Robbie and Duncan became concerned about security. They formed the Wangert & Wangert Detective Agency. Anthony considered this an indication of growth in his little brothers, after their lemonade and cookie stand on the Great Tusk town dock with its dubious pricing policy. One cookie for ten cents, two cookies for twenty-five, and three cookies for fifty cents.
Detectives Robbie and Duncan spent hours hiding in the bushes of the Yacht Club grounds, gussied up with pine needle paths and gravel drives that were gathered up at the end of the season and washed. When Geneva joined the detective agency, they changed its name to Wangert & Salter & Wangert. As an island resident, Geneva had better leads on evildoers.
Geneva organized their after-hours stakeout of the general store’s gas pump. The pump had no locking switch. Gas sales worked on an honor system. Big-bellied Marsden often grumbled about nighttime “siphoners.” They never actually caught anyone in the act, but Marsden assured them that their efforts—advertised by a sign taped to the pump, “Premises patrolled by Wangert & Salter & Wangert”—were definitely scaring off the “siphoners.”
From their nocturnal perch behind the tank, they also had a clear view of the parking area above the town dock. On Great Tusk nobody locked their cars. The detectives noticed that plenty of activity occurred inside the parked cars after dark. Glow of cigarettes. Clink of bottles. Splash of oars. Dinghies floated in and out from the sailboats on the guest moorings.
“Night people,” Geneva announced, pulling her watch cap lower over her pigtails. They each wore black watch caps, emblazoned with the firm’s badge.
“You mean, like zombies?” Duncan whispered.
“There’s a song about them on the radio,” Geneva said.
Robbie said, “I wonder if it’s a full moon.”
“I wish we didn’t have to be home by ten,” Duncan grumbled.
Under supervision from his father, who was spending more time on the island now, Anthony monitored his brothers’ curfew. After supper he drove them into town to Geneva’s house and picked them up at 9:55. Robbie and Duncan considered this very generous of their older brother, until they realized he had an ulterior motive. Anthony, upright Anthony, was one of the night people!
Duncan spotted him through binoculars. Sharing a cigarette with one of the staff from the yacht club. A debate ensued about informing on him. What fun to get Anthony in trouble! Geneva counseled further surveillance. She pointed out that informing on Anthony probably meant losing their ride home every night.
In the full bloom of puberty, Geneva also pushed her fellow detectives into philosophical debates on big questions, such as, “Would you rather have your parents die or a hundred people you didn’t know?” These discussions usually occurred at their office, located in the loft of Johnny Salter’s bait shack. The town’s recently installed diesel generator made it possible to run an extension cord out from the house to power Geneva’s 45 RPM record player. She started their meetings by playing a record. She liked Elvis.
Duncan liked whatever she liked.
Robbie routinely offered contrarian opinions, so that Geneva would think him different from Duncan. Their entry into puberty was bringing out physical contrasts too. Duncan grew taller and stockier. Robbie’s voice sounded crackly and lower, like his father’s.
“Can you believe some of the cottages at Cliff Head have trash chutes that run straight from their kitchen to the edge of the cliff, so their trash goes right out into the ocean?” Geneva said.
“That’s bad,” Duncan said. “If I were First Selectman, I’d have signs posted all around the island.”
“People out here don’t like being told what to do,” Robbie said.
Whenever their discussions became too technical, Geneva guided them back to the larger philosophical realm. “I wouldn’t want Great Tusk to be exactly like the mainland. This is a special place, after all.”
“You’re lucky you get to live here year round,” Robbie said.
“Don’t you ever think about going somewhere else?” Duncan asked.
“Not me,” Geneva said proudly, “I’m an islander through and through.”
Robbie said, “Dad was talking with Ranger Amos about the hippie tourists camping illegally.”
“That could be our next stakeout.” Geneva announced, “We’ll track illegal campers in the park.”
“Neat!” Duncan exclaimed.
Robbie, to his infinite dismay, did not get to participate in the illegal camping stakeouts. He came down with chicken pox. A doctor from the mainland traveled out to make the diagnosis. Duncan and Geneva teased Robbie for catching a “chicken illness.” His condition was exacerbated by a severe attack of what his mother called “F.O.M.O.—Fear of Missing Out.” To keep him from fleeing his bedroom quarantine, Mary and Ward took turns sitting with the restless captive.
They installed Robbie in the guestroom at the far end of the upstairs hall. It featured the same peeling, floral wallpaper as when Ward sat quarantined with his unwritten novel many years before. He and Robbie watched the clock and waited for Mary’s afternoon trips into town to pick up the mail.
They ripped open their letters together. Ward was eager for Rusalka’s reports from the office, and Robbie for Vincent’s commentary on a new game called “Dungeons and Dragons.” They listened to Red Sox games on the radio and played Scrabble. Robbie truculently specialized in words such as ‘piss’ and ‘crap,’ which Ward turned into ‘dogpiss’ and ‘crapper,’ scoring a few extra points with his son. Mary moved the telescope upstairs, so Robbie could track the stars over Zippy Cove at night.
Mary told him about her hospitalization at age ten for scarlet fever, trying to illustrate that quarantine can be a time for personal discovery—in her case, adventure books.
“Did you ever spend time in a hospital, Dad?”
“Yes, once, for an asthma attack,” Ward said.
Mary explained, “A lung condition that makes breathing hard. My brother had it too.”
A comparative tracking of illness in Mary and Ward’s families led to a startling revelation: “Before I was born,” Ward said, “an infant sister died from asthma.”
“A sister? How could I have been married to you all these years and never heard about a sister?!” Mary blurted.
“She died before I was born, and I didn’t know about her till I was about ten, so I wasn’t sure if she even counted as a sister,” Ward said. “You know how it was back then. Infant deaths were more common. People just didn’t talk about it.”
“Oh, my God,” Mary sighed, “that explains a lot.”
“About what?” Robbie said.
“About your grandmother.”
“What do you mean?” Robbie asked, bravely stepping into an adult conversation.
“Her stoicism,” Mary said.
“S-T-O-I-C,” Ward spelled for Robbie, “It’s a good ‘S’ word to know.”
Robbie said, “Is that why you sometimes call her a ‘stick in the mud’?”
“I’m never going to call her that again,” Mary said.
Mary’s emotional tone reminded Robbie of her reaction on the night of the basketball players’ party. It nudged him toward recognition that his parents had earlier lives about which he knew very little and that his kid’s eye view of them was largely guesswork.
The next day, Robbie asked, “Do people die of chicken pox?”
Ward quickly assured him, “No, you don’t have to worry about that.”
“Both you and Mom, it turns out, had a sibling who died. Does that make it more likely that something bad will happen to Duncan or me or Anthony?”
Ward reached for Robbie’s guitar on the bed. This question unsettled him. As much as he wanted to offer a quick reassurance, he sensed this was important to Robbie, that the boy didn’t want the easy answer.
“Honestly, I don’t know. I wouldn’t think so,” Ward shrugged and strummed a dissonant chord.
Robbie grabbed the instrument away from his father. He picked out a few chords, while a fogbank slowly consumed the cove outside. He dozed and pondered whether, if he was the brother fated for an early end, should he be buried on Great Tusk or next to his father’s infant sister in Indianapolis or next to the hundred other people who Geneva had chosen to die instead of her parents.
The fog crept toward the house. “Tell me about Gonga’s death,” Robbie said.
Ward woke from a sitting nap. “Do you remember him?” he asked.
“A little,” Robbie said. “Both Duncan and I remember him pushing us on the swing set.”
“He had a heart attack.”
“Yeah, I mean, what happened?” Robbie said.
Ward stood up and sidled over to the window. “Can’t even see the tree,” he said.
“What happened, Dad?”
“It was a second, follow-up heart attack that killed him,” Ward explained. “The first hit him on the golf course in the afternoon. He grabbed his chest and slumped over. I rushed him to the hospital and it looked like he would survive. But he refused to have a catheter and later that night he got up to go to the bathroom and that’s when the second one hit.”
“What’s a catheter?”
“A tube attached to his you-know-what to pee—without having to get out of bed,” Ward explained. “Gonga was just a little too old-fashioned. His opinion was, ‘I’ll get up to pee if I damn well want to.’ He didn’t want the nurse to put it on him.”
“If only he’d had a cuter nurse,” Robbie joked. Another brave step into adult conversation.
It took a moment for this joke to register. Yes, the old man would have liked it, Ward thought. He snorted a strange, hyena-like laugh, fueled by a mix of surprise and nostalgia. The noise was contagious. Robbie joined in and slapped the back of his guitar.
Mary and Anthony came running upstairs from the kitchen. Anthony, attired as always in a Rokeby sweatshirt, called, “What’s wrong?”
“What are you doing home?” Robbie asked.
“Too much fog for sailing today,” Anthony said.
“Is everything okay? We heard a noise,” Mary asked.
Ward, catching his breath, replied, “Yes, yes. I was just realizing that I’m overdue for a talk with Robbie about the birds and bees.”
Anthony said, “You didn’t have that talk with me. All you did was give me a book.”
“I’m sorry,” Ward said. “It was probably the same book Gonga gave me.”
“Is that why you never bring home any girlfriends?” Robbie teased Anthony.
“Shut up,” Anthony said, reddening. He struck back with, “You’re just mad that Duncan is out there in the woods with Geneva, probably making out.”
Mary intervened. “Now, stop, please. Everybody goes at their own pace with this.”
“I’m going to breathe chicken pox on you,” Robbie threatened Anthony, who raised his middle finger at Robbie and quickly backed out of the room.
“Well, I guess I shouldn’t have brought that up,” Ward said.
“It’s okay, Dad,” Robbie offered. “Duncan and I know it all already. Except, actually, there is one thing that we have been wondering about …. ”
“What would that be?” Mary said, relieved that Robbie trusted them enough to ask.
“Bra straps.”
“What about bra straps?” Mary asked, carefully.
“Undoing them.”
“You’ve had some problems with that?” Ward inquired.
“Yes, no, what I mean is, we want to be prepared.”
Ward and Mary scratched their foreheads. Ward finally said, “Keep practicing your guitar. Your left hand especially. Chords that bring your forefinger and thumb close together on the frets.”
For the remainder of his convalescence, Robbie played a lot of guitar.