Dead at Breakfast

For Robin Clements

M
aggie Detweiler, new-minted
woman of leisure
and not at all sure she was going to like it, had no sense of impending tragedy as she posed in front of the broad stone veranda of the Oquossoc Mountain Inn that bright October morning. She didn't really know what made her say to Hope, “When your picture's being taken, don't you always wonder if it's the one that will run with your obituary?”

“Well, that one won't be,” Hope Babbin said, consigning the image to the digital trash can. “Hold still and smile, will you?”

Maggie did.

“And no, of course I don't. What a strange woman you are.” Hope showed Maggie her cheerful image now glowing on the screen of her iPad, of a smallish pleasant-looking woman with a warm smile, intense blue eyes, and a halo of feathery white hair.

“Oh, am I? I think it's much better to keep in mind that it's waiting for all of us than to have it come as a surprise,” said Maggie.

For Maggie, it was probably something to do with retirement, which already was not at all the way she had once pictured it. To begin with, in the time it took you to get to Bergen, Maine, you could have flown to London. When her husband was alive they had dreamed of retiring to a bedsit in the West End. But in this first
unstructured autumn of the rest of her life, she had instead taken a train to Boston to meet her friend Hope who had recently left New York for a Beantown suburb. Together they had trailed out to Logan Airport and after a longish wait for “a piece of equipment,” which turned out to be the plane (there had been fog somewhere along its puddle-jumping route), they had flown to Bangor. There Hope insisted on being the one to rent a car, because it was her treat, this whole trip. They drove another hour and a half through the early dusk, past a stark northern moonscape of blueberry barrens studded with vast boulders dropped by haphazard glaciers in the last ice age, then on narrow roads that felt like tunnels cut through blue-black evergreen forests pressing in on them from both sides. By the time they reached Bergen, Maggie had come to fear that Hope had no peripheral vision at all. When you lived in New York, you didn't know what kind of drivers your friends were. Hope never actually hit anything, but Maggie thought it a miracle that the car still had both side mirrors when they finally found the Oquossoc Mountain Inn, the late Victorian stone pile that hulked at the head of Long Lake.

So it wasn't London, but the inn was charming, and it made sense for Maggie and Hope to see if they traveled well together. They'd been friends for years. They made each other laugh. They shared a penetrating curiosity about how people had chosen to live their lives, now and in the past. Maggie's life list of things to do before the rocking chair and the ear trumpet was heavier on museums and medieval ruins than Hope's, and Hope's was longer on palaces and gardens than Maggie's, but both had a yen to see sites of ancient civilizations in uncomfortable parts of the world, which Maggie's much mourned late husband would have loved, and Hope's unlamented ex would have hated.

Hope could afford to travel in far grander style than Maggie, thanks to having years earlier caught the father of her children, a
hedge fund monster, in an extremely compromising position with the children's nanny, indeed a position worthy of the Kama Sutra. The husband did not wish the details of their ensuing divorce aired in the New York scandal rags, let alone the
Wall Street Journal,
so he had made a generous settlement with Hope on the condition that she never talk about it, and she never had, which was more than could be said for his next three wives.

So the Oquossoc outing was a trial run. Here, it would be easier to pull the plug than if they were halfway up the Andes when they discovered that it wasn't working out. Hope had signed them up for a cooking course being given by the inn's resident chef, whose food was winning some attention on luxury travel blogs. Maggie remained agnostic about the amusement value of this, since her culinary skills were mostly confined to working the microwave. But retirement is a time to learn new things. They'd been given rooms in the original part of the inn with lake views as recommended by TripAdvisor and had enjoyed a late and excellent dinner in the dining room the night before, where they got a chance to take the measure of their fellow inmates. They had spent this morning canoeing and been thrilled when an enormous blue heron, hidden among some rushes they were plashing toward, had suddenly erupted from its hiding place with a crashing of water and great paddling of wings.

And now, they were happily heading back down the mountain to the village of Bergen, dimly seen the night before, with its two white-steepled churches on opposite sides of the main drag and its interesting Richardson Romanesque public library. Someone in Bergen had had a good deal of money 150 years ago.

On the other hand, Buster Babbin, the deputy sheriff of Bergen, Maine, was not happy this morning. His mother was one of those women with the impact of a battleship; you could see her coming like the prow of the USS
Nimitz
. Hope was tall and slim, with care
fully coiffed and blonded hair, an altogether dressier person than her dread friend Mrs. Detweiler. Watching the two of them advancing toward him up Main Street was like being an involuntary spectator at Fleet Week. It mattered little that he knew the objects of his terror thought of themselves as good-natured middle-aged women, salt of the earth and beloved of the young.

Hope and Maggie enjoyed making their way along the uneven leaf-spangled sidewalk, its concrete slabs buckled here and there by the roots of the mighty oaks and maples that lined the streets of the village. There was something so majestic about big trees; you missed that in the city. The sun was bright, and Hope wore huge sunglasses and a broad-brimmed hat. Maggie, who had as usual forgotten her hat, squinted into the sun, shading her eyes with her hand, which made her look to Deputy Babbin as if she thought she was Sacajawea, the Bird Woman, gazing over some rushing gorge, to discern the safest route along which to lead her charges.

“Here they come,” said Sandra. She was looking out the front window of Just Barb's, the village diner, which she ran with her mother-in-law. “Man your stations.” Sandra had greatly looked forward to this visitation, which would be the town's first sighting of anyone from Buster's heretofore storied family of origin. He had for years prevented his mother and sister from showing up in his life and taking over everything by paying just enough home visits to them at birthdays and holidays to keep them pacified. Some of us are content and at ease in the worlds we are born to, and some of us know we've been raised by wolves and take decades to find our true native landscapes. There is no point in trying to explain this to the wolves.

Buster Babbin stood up from his counter stool and checked to see that his shirt was tucked in. He was wearing his holster and gun, just to make a point. Sandra took her place behind the counter.

A glittering burst of bright fall air came into the room with the ladies.

“Well, don't you look official!” Hope exclaimed, moving to kiss her son, whose given name was Henry, but had been nicknamed by his father, then everybody, because of his genius for breaking things. Buster leaned into Hope with his shoulders and head, keeping his body well out of embracing range, and managed to connect his cheek with his mother's ear.

“Mrs. Detweiler,” he said, turning to Maggie with his hand extended. The idea that
she
might try to kiss him as well had presented itself as a possibility.

“Oh, let me be Maggie now, please,” said Mrs. Detweiler, in a voice that was far gentler than the sort of prison guard Klaxon tone he thought he remembered. She was now shorter than he was. She wore her hair in a neat no-nonsense cut and had gained a little weight around the middle, but her warm smile and watchful blue eyes were utterly the same, dreadful as that was to contemplate.

Sandra had appeared in their midst, holding menus, and somehow herded all three of them toward the corner booth.

How the hell was he supposed to call this figure of menace by her first name? The last time he had seen her he'd been thirteen years old, his uniform was torn and his nose was bleeding, and Mrs. Detweiler was on the phone to Hope, explaining that everyone at the Winthrop School felt that Buster would really be happier in a setting where he could get more individual support and would not have to take higher math or a foreign language. Afterward his mother had sent him off for a Wilderness Attitude Adjustment Experience in Nevada and he hadn't come back to live on the East Coast for seventeen years.

While he was gone, his mother and Mrs. Detweiler had bonded over the perfections of Buster's younger sister Lauren, who was cur
rently finishing her residency in obstetrics at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and was also mother of twins. This trip to Bergen, he'd been told, was a present from Hope to Mrs. Detweiler, on her retirement after twenty-three years as Winthrop School head and all-around rhinoceros. In addition to the thrill of seeing Buster in situ, they were staying up at the inn, which, though struggling, was by far Bergen's biggest remaining employer. It was, in fact, pretty much the town's reason for being at this point. Once there had been farming and fishing, copper mining and a small factory that made toothpicks, but now there was leaf peeping in the fall, followed by hunting season, followed by old-fashioned Christmas follies with sleigh rides and taffy pulls and caroling, plus skating and cross-country skiing that lasted if they were lucky until mud season. At least this dreaded visit was boosting the local economy.

“Is that thing loaded?” asked Hope. She had her napkin tucked into her pearls.

“No, Ma,” he said, with heavy sarcasm, “I just wear the holster belt to keep my pants up.”

Hope looked up from the menu at him to see if he was being fresh. Under the table, his knees were jiggling the way they always had since he was small. (He had just remembered it drove his mother crazy, which made them want to jig more.)

“Well how exciting,” said Hope.

Sandra appeared and took their orders. When that diversion was over, Hope returned, as he knew she would, to Inquisitor mode, her version of showing motherly enthusiasm.

“And do you have a jail?”

After a pause, Buster said with dignity, consciously holding his knees still, “We have a chair.”

The women looked at each other.

“It's pretty heavy. We can handcuff them to the arms until someone comes to take them to Ainsley.”

“Well, I'd love to see the chair,” said Hope.

“It's over in the town hall,” said Buster, gesturing at the squat stone building across the street. “In the selectmen's office.” He was not going to spend the week leading these two on a tour of the civic arrangements of Bergen. Sandra arrived with their plates, two on one arm and one on the other.

The large black radio on Buster's belt began to crackle. Buster struggled to get it out from under the table.

“Deputy Babbin here—” He got up and walked outside, where they could see him pacing back and forth on the sidewalk with the zest of a prisoner let out of an oubliette. After he finished his transmission he strode back inside, all business.

“Gotta go,” he said. His mother and Mrs. D looked up from their plates. Buster put on his hat, fastened his radio back in place, and hitched his pants as Sandra, with practiced motions, whisked over to their table with a huge roll of aluminum foil, wrapped his lunch, and handed it to him. “Cow on the road out by Laskey's farm. Get to it before there's an accident,” he said. Sandra nodded, as if she knew he rarely finished a meal without an emergency, and Buster strode out. They watched him swing into the driver's seat of the patrol car out by the curb as if he were mounting a horse, perfectly aware that the ladies were watching; then he was off with what seemed like an unnecessary and declarative burst of speed.

“Does he have an office?” Hope asked Sandra.

“Well, here,” said Sandra. “Or his car. We all know how to find him.”

“I had no idea he knew anything about cows.”

“He's real good with 'em,” said Sandra. “Goats too. If it's pigs, though, he calls for backup.”

“Pigs can be mean,” said the one that wasn't Buster's mother. She had a nice smile.

That evening, Hope and Maggie had declined the gentle yoga class that was offered after the opening session of their cooking course. Several of their classmates could be seen at this moment out on the lawn saluting the setting sun, but the ladies were instead contemplating the cocktail menu in the lounge while they waited for dinner.

“I think an apple martini sounds sufficiently in the harvest bounty spirit,” Hope declared. They had spent the afternoon learning about the importance of using seasonal produce with an emphasis on the wonders of root vegetables and a spice they'd never heard of, called za'atar.

“I only hope the gin is locally sourced and artisanal,” said Maggie as they ordered two.

“You know, it might be,” said Hope. “When I was a girl, Poland Spring up here made gin that came in a green glass bottle shaped like a little old man. My father drank it like water. Took me forever to figure out why he didn't make any sense after lunch until he'd had his nap.”

Around them, the lounge was slowly filling with gastronomes bathed and dressed for dinner. A couple from Cleveland called Homer and Margaux Kleinkramer was across the room drinking something beige and disturbing-looking from coupe champagne glasses. Albie Clark, a long thin grayish man nursing a secret grief or grievance, or both, was sitting by himself reading his Nook book and pulling at a beer.

“I used to hide my cigarette butts in one of those little old man bottles. I loved to smoke,” Hope said dreamily. “It was so glamorous. My friends and I used to spend the afternoon in my brother's tree house, smoking Kents and reading
True Romance
magazines aloud to each other. Do romance magazines even exist anymore?”