Page 20 of Under the Stars

Audrey

Winthrop Island, New York

The trunk is made of wood and dust and dark, old leather.

When I try to move it out of the way, it won’t budge.

I step back to pull my phone from my pocket and run the flashlight across the surface.

No label, no identifying marks. It’s about three feet wide by two feet long, a couple of feet high.

Big and heavy, not going anywhere. I raise the beam to travel along the rough wall behind it—stone covered by mortar or plaster or whitewash of some kind—until the light finds a rectangle of dark metal.

Bingo. I make my way around the trunk and pry open the panel door.

Behind me, the cellar steps creak. “Audrey, what the hell?”

“Just trying to figure out your electrical panel down here,” I call back. “Who the heck wired this place? Ben Franklin?”

“You stay the fuck away from my electricity, Audrey. I asked you to fry up a couple of hamburgers on a Tuesday night and what happens? My fry cook quits on me three days later.”

I flip the switch that’s knocked the wrong way. “You need a professional in here, Mike. I can’t believe the whole place hasn’t burned down by now.”

“No shit, I need a professional. I had one. He just quit.”

I turn to shine the flashlight across the gloom until it finds Mike near the doorway, neck hunched to avoid cracking his skull on the ceiling. The light from a McCarthy-era bulb pokes through the darkness behind him.

“Are you talking about Darryl? A professional, Mike? Have you even noticed the state of that kitchen?”

“The kitchen was just fine until you walked in three days ago and turned it fucking upside down.”

“If by turned it fucking upside down, you mean cleaned it? For the first time since Bush was in office? The first Bush?”

“Audrey—”

“Mike, I found a can of peaches with an expiration date from before I was born. I mean, what were those even for ? A fruit cocktail cup with a maraschino cherry on top?”

He roars out, “Can you stop shining that shit on my face and come upstairs? My bar opens in minus eight minutes, my cook just quit, and you’re fucking around with the electricity panel?”

I swipe off the light and make my way to the cellar steps. “Mike, here’s the situation. If I turn on the mixer, the circuit blows out that apparently runs the refrigerator.”

“Then don’t turn the mixer on, genius!”

“I need to turn on the mixer, Mike, in order to prep the whipped cream.”

“We got plenty of whipped cream!”

“In cans, Mike. Aerosol cans. ”

“Would you stop speaking to me like I’m in fucking preschool? I’m your father !”

I put one hand on each of his shoulders.

“Listen to me, Mike. You were the one who asked me to step in and help. It’s not my fault you have a kitchen that looks like a meth lab and a fry cook who belongs in a rehab facility.

I mean, in case you’re wondering why he orders so much vanilla extract.

I’ll give you a hint—it’s not because he’s baking cupcakes back there. ”

Mike folds his arms over his chest and stares at me resentfully. “So what the fuck am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know. Hire another cook?”

A spark zaps the air behind us. Then the smell of smoke.

“Oh, Jesus. Now what have you done?”

“ Me? I’m just standing here!”

A voice calls down from above. “Yo! Mike! You down there?”

Mike turns his head to bellow up the stairs. “Be up there in a second, asshole! I have a situation down here.”

“Bro,” the voice calls back, “I think you have a situation up here .”

—

By the time the firefighters arrive, the blaze in the kitchen is mostly out.

To his credit, the guy in the bar who sounded the alarm (metaphorically, I mean, since the actual kitchen smoke alarm failed to go off when the departing Darryl tossed his final defiant joint on the floor next to the electrical cord from the refrigerator) managed to locate a fire extinguisher behind the bar and coolly spray down the flames.

“Another minute and the whole place would’ve torched,” says the fire chief, surveying the kitchen with a little too much satisfaction, in my opinion. “Thanks, man. Trained you well.”

The guy clasps his hand. “I’ll just skip my next shift, then, right?”

“Fuck you, man. Hey, Mike? We gotta talk.”

Mike turns from the fridge. A smudge of ash decorates his forehead, like it’s the start of Lent. He runs a hand over his wet head and says, bewildered, “What?”

The fire chief throws an arm over his shoulder. “Come outside with me, okay?”

I watch them walk out the kitchen door to the parking lot, where the Winthrop Island fire engine sits at an urgent angle, lights flashing lazily, and turn to the guy from the bar. “What was that about? You’re an actual fireman?”

“Nah, I just volunteer once a week. Stave off the boredom.” He holds out his hand. “Sedge Peabody. I think we’ve met already.”

I accept the hand for a brief shake and squint at his smudged face. “Sedge? I’m afraid I don’t—”

“On the ferry?” He grins. “It’s okay, you were a little upset at the time. Or else I just have one of those forgettable faces.”

“Oh my God. That was you ?”

He shrugs. “So what do you say we leave the scene of smoking ruin and retire to the bar? Because I don’t know about you, but I could sure use a drink right now.”

I’m too shaken to do anything but follow him out of the kitchen and into the dining room.

The freshness of the air makes me realize how the kitchen reeks of smoke.

How close a call this was. He walks to a window and heaves up the sash.

I walk to another one and do the same, and for a second or two I stand there, hands propped on the sill, and breathe in the clean April afternoon.

A couple of people have gathered on the sidewalk with their dogs, peering inquisitively.

I stick out my head and wave. “Everything’s okay! Just a little kitchen fire!”

They nod and walk away, looking back over their shoulders.

I’m guessing that little news update will be all over the island within a quarter of an hour.

I pull myself back inside and turn to Sedge Peabody, who’s making his way around the corner of the bar.

He’s wearing a soft cotton button-down shirt in a cheerful gingham, untucked over a pair of worn chinos.

The sleeves are rolled up to the elbows.

Soot smears his hands and forearms. He turns on the faucet at the sink and squirts some soap on his palm.

“What’s your poison, mystery woman?” he asks me.

“ Mystery woman?”

He wipes his hands on a bar towel and turns to rummage through the shelves for a clean pair of glasses. “I’ve been pondering your identity since Monday evening. It’s not exactly the season for day-trippers, and I’m pretty sure I know everybody else on this damn rock.”

He speaks with the kind of deep, lyric voice you hear on the radio, except that when you see the radio guys in person, they tend to shock you with their weediness, not at all like how you imagined.

But the instrument that produces Sedge Peabody’s voice is proportioned accordingly—a wide, deep chest, some serious meatiness to his shoulders and legs.

I remember I’m supposed to be answering a question.

“Oh. I’m Audrey. Audrey Fisher.”

He starts and turns, glass in each hand. “Audrey Fisher ? As in Greyfriars?”

“I’m Meredith’s daughter.”

He sets one glass on the counter, then the other. He’s staring at my face—picking it apart, feature by feature, cheekbone and eyebrow and chin and lip. Looking for her . They all do it. I offer myself up for examination; I’ve learned you can’t fight it.

When I was sixteen, Meredith took me to Cannes for the awards screening of Her Last Flight .

I still remember the shock of those camera flashes, the analytical quality of all those gazes.

Until then, I was just Meredith Fisher’s adorable little mini-me, her accessory, face blurred respectfully whenever some hungry paparazzo snapped us on a school run or a trip to the supermarket.

In my spectacular couture gown (I forget the designer), I became an object in my own right.

But they measured me against her. Always against the beauty of Meredith Fisher—her face, her hair, her figure, her way of regarding the camera as a lover who could never really know her.

Needless to say, Meredith had planned this debut of mine like a Gilded Age matriarch, down to the complementary colors of our dresses, and the tsunami of publicity made it all worthwhile.

Meredith, as you might remember, was subsequently nominated for an Academy Award for her intense yet nuanced portrayal of Janey Everett, and the gif of her outraged face when they called the name of that eleven-year-old who played the Asperger’s kid in the cancer movie is now one of the internet’s most treasured memes.

Sedge Peabody probably knows all this, or most of it. The bar has a mirror, as most bars do, so I stare past his ear to watch the back of his head and my own reflection—to watch him watching me. Assembling all the pieces together.

“So what can I pour you, Audrey Fisher?” he asks me. “The brown stuff or the clear stuff?”

“Kind of a wine girl, honestly.”

He laughs. “Then you’ve come to the wrong watering hole.”

“Au contraire, Mr. Peabody.” I slide off the stool and toddle out the door and down the cellar steps, where I retrieve a nice ’62 Gevrey-Chambertin and offer it to Sedge, who’s crafting some kind of bourbon drink with the precision of a Nobel chemist.

“Where the hell did this come from?” he asks in awe.

“Cleaned out the Fisher cellars.”

“And you handed it over to Mike ? That dumbass couldn’t tell a crémant from a cream soda.”

I shrug one shoulder and return to my stool.

“What else was I supposed to do with them? My mother’s drying out again, doesn’t want any temptation in the house.

I was going to save them for a special occasion, but they say that’s the wrong attitude to life.

Anyway, there’s three hundred bottles down there, so… ”