House Under Snow (20 page)

“When will we be there?” I asked. I was twelve.

“In less than an hour. The club organizes this father-and-son trip every year. This is the first year I’ve been able to go,” Max said. “Since I don’t have a son, Ed O’Brian suggested I bring one of my daughters.” Max squeezed my knee and beamed. He opened the glove compartment and reached for a flask of whiskey and took a long swig.

I watched his Adam’s apple move up and down as he drank heartily from the flask.

When we pulled
into the lodge a family of deer sprang over the fence of the parking lot into the fields. I listened to the sound of their footfalls until they’d made it to safety. After we had changed into our hunt clothes, I set off with Max and his three friends, Fred, John, and Ed, and their sons. I was dressed in jeans tucked into black rubber boots, and a red-and-black CPO hunting vest with a hunt cap to match, which Max had bought for me at the club’s supply store before we headed out. Max wore a rough jacket of beaten brown leather with a leather strap slung over his shoulder where he carried his shotgun, and boots that reached his knees.

He handed me the duck call and said, “Here, sport, this is
your territory—you be in charge.” He pulled down the brim of my cap. I felt proud next to him. I felt his hand pat my head, grip my shoulders.

We walked for what seemed like miles, deeper and deeper into the trees, until we came to the part of the woods where there were tall, strangling reeds and the ground was soft and muddy. The clouds hung down in the dirty, overcast sky.

Among Max and his friends and their sons, I felt lonely. The boys grew restless. “Where are those damn ducks?” they kept asking, watching the ominous sky.

Overhead I heard a clatter. Two large Vs of geese traversed the sky.

From the other direction three ducks came in close to the ground. The men raised their shotguns. The ducks came down, one after another.

I listened to the thump, thump, thump and imagined pieces of their souls falling bit by bit, like feathers to the ground. The boys squinted at the sky and shouted loudly, after each crack of the gun.

How was it possible that the ducks were dead, when an instant before they’d been free to roam the large sky? I stayed back as the men fetched the birds. A swarm of mosquitoes circled like a dark halo over my head. I admired the strength and nonchalance of Max and his friends. Men, from my perspective, did not grapple with feeling, sort, dissect, obsess, as I did; men took action. When Max walked into our house at the end of the day, my sisters and I stopped fighting over what TV program we wanted to watch, and Lilly, who had been chatting with Aunt Rose long-distance, immediately hung up the phone. Max was a man of limited conversational gifts, but when he spoke he was definite and decisive. We stood back and waited passively for Max to take charge.

And yet, being with Max, I wanted nothing more than to be strong and in control. I had seen firsthand what kind of life was in store for anyone passive and without purpose.

The hunting troop stopped at Squaw Rock—another smoke. Max said it was a ritual they followed after each hunt. The huge rock, large enough to lean against, bore carvings of birds, animals, and Mother Eve guarding the serpent. Max said that the etchings on the rock were the hand of an Indian, before the white man had inhabited the wilderness of Ohio. A particular Indian brave had wandered from camp to the banks of the Chagrin River, where he’d met an Indian maiden to whom he gave his heart. The sculpted rock was his valentine.

“I might just do the same for your mother,” Max said. He laughed so loud the leaves shook on the trees. It made me happy to think that Max was thinking about Lilly.

“Come, here, Anna,” he said. “Boy, it’s good to have you here.” He gave me a big squeeze.

When we got
back to the lodge, Max told me to go upstairs, shower, and change. He was going to the bar to have a couple of beers with the guys. “Put on that pretty new dress I bought you,” he told me, like I was his date. He planted a kiss on my forehead, and a feeling of warmth traveled through my body. I felt as if I were the object of someone’s pride. I tried to enjoy myself, even though my fantasy of being alone with Max wasn’t working out the way I imagined it.

I picked the dried leaves and mud off my boots in the little bathroom off our small room with its two double beds. I took a long time in the shower. When I looked in the mirror after getting dressed, all polished and primped, I wished only to be in my dirty jeans, work shirt, and work boots.

Max and his friends were drinking shots of whiskey and chasing them with beers when I came downstairs. Max sat next to a tall woman with a pile of frosted hair on top of her head and a pair of pastel earrings dangling to her neck. He straddled his arm against the bar and leaned over her as he talked. She wore a tight sweater set that stuck to her body like static.

When Max caught a glimpse of me, he put down his glass and whistled between his two fingers. “A Shirley Temple for the young lady,” he ordered. I sat on the bar stool next to him.

The woman with the frosted hair uncrossed her legs, took a last sip from her drink, and opened her leather pocketbook, the shape of a long envelope.

“It’s on me,” Max told her.

She snapped her pocketbook shut.

“Anna, I’d like you to meet my secretary, Crystal Martin. She keeps me honest.”

“You look just like your mother,” Crystal said. Then she turned her eyes to Max. “I’ll see you Monday,” she said, nuzzling up to Max’s ear and practically kissing it. She used a voice meant for men, a voice I knew by then.

After she’d left Max and his friends continued to knock down more shots, and order refills for me.

“Max, I’m tired. Do you mind if I go back to the room?” My stomach was feeling queasy from drinking so many Shirley Temples.

“When are you going to start calling me Dad?”

“Dad, can I?”

“Anything for my princess. I’ll have room service send you up a plate of food. Give me a kiss. I’ll be up soon.” He squeezed me to his chest so forcefully I thought I was going to stop breathing.

I walked upstairs, wishing my sisters were with me. Without them, I felt as if I were missing an essential organ. I longed to look into their faces and burst into giggles over the sound of a fart, or to catch one of them roll her eyes at me the way we did when our mother snuggled up to Max. The part of me that, earlier, had been happy to be alone with Max had disappeared.

I took off my dress, slipped into my nightgown, and stared at the wallpaper, covered with dogs, rifles, and figures of men dressed in old-fashioned hunting clothes, wearing black riding boots. Above the bed was a stuffed deer’s head. I pulled the covers around my neck and made myself fall asleep.

I woke near dawn. Max was sprawled next to me, his face buried in the pillow, wearing only his boxer shorts. He smelled liquored up and smoky, so drunk, I guessed, he couldn’t find his own bed. Like the times I used to watch Jackie Gleason sitting next to him on the couch, I was afraid to move.

Then I felt him rub up against my body. My heart began to pound so loud I thought it would wake him. I held myself as stiff as a corpse. Max’s mouth hung open like a window letting in flies. He began to snore loudly through his nose. He mumbled and turned his head toward me. What if he’d gotten himself so drunk that he could lose consciousness completely?

I shook him by the shoulders. “Max, are you all right?”

“Sweetheart,” he moaned. His hand crept up my thighs. “Come here,” he mumbled. “Crystal, sweetheart.” He hadn’t a clue where he was, that it was
me
, Anna Crane, his wife’s daughter, in bed with him. Max’s body was drenched with sweat and burning hot. He was in another universe. I stared at the wallpaper and counted the little hunting dogs as Max’s body rubbed harder against my leg, his penis hard as wood, burning through my skin like a hot coal. A spray of his hot,
warm cum rushed over my thigh. Then Max rolled over, mumbled, and fell into a hard sleep.

I tiptoed to the empty bed and turned my body into the wall. I told myself he didn’t know it was me. I know he didn’t. But I hated him. For the rest of the night I was kept awake by the coarse pull of Max’s mucus-filled snores, vibrating the bed and rattling my half-finished glass of water on the nightstand.

By the time
Max woke up, I was already showered, packed, and dressed. On the car ride home, I closed my eyes and pretended I was asleep while he sang “Strangers in the Night,” to the tune of the radio.

When we stopped for gas, Max turned to me.

“I’m so glad to have you here,” he repeated. “I’ve always wanted to have kids.” He put his hand on my leg. “Ever since I lost my brother, I’ve never really had a family until I married your mother,” Max said. “Can you keep a secret, Anna?”

I nodded as he dug into the pocket of his khakis to pay the gas station attendant. Outside the window the sky was a pure, translucent white. You could smell the autumn air in your clothes. “I wasn’t sure how things were going to pan out when I married your mother,” Max continued. “But I think we’re going to make it.” I felt as he said those words that they were what he wanted to believe, but not what was true. Maybe secrets are only told when you’re trying to protect the real truth from coming out.

The minute we got home I changed into my blue jeans and walked out back to the gazebo. Behind me, the late-afternoon lights of the house dimmed, leaving it a cloak of darkness against sky and trees. There was no wind. No movement. I
didn’t even hear a bird. My soul felt flat. I imagined a blade of grass in an open field slaughtered by the sunlight. What was my relation, I wondered, to my mother, to Max, to my sisters, to this strange world? I didn’t know, but I felt my existence wrapped up with all of them.

I scratched my arms, and then my legs. I saw that my skin was covered in red bumps and raw patches of sores. I must have rubbed up against some poison ivy. I couldn’t stop scratching. It was as if I had to shed my skin, any memory of that night.

During the lull after the lunch rush, the morning after I’d been to the clinic, as I was refilling the sugar packets, I thought about how I would break the news to Austin that I was pregnant. I was angry that I felt I had to protect him—after all, he was part of why I was in this situation to begin with. Perhaps there were things about Austin that I knew nothing about. I began to doubt him, to find fault with everything he did. I racked my brains, thinking back to each encounter, trying to figure him out. I remembered how strangely Austin had acted the first time that summer when I introduced him to my mother. She was curled up on the couch doing one of her crossword puzzles when we walked in the house. I could smell the burning odor of chemicals in her hair. That morning she had dyed out the gray in the bathroom sink, leaving an auburn ring around the drain.

“So this is Austin.” She stood up to greet him, and as she did, smoothed her hair with her fingers as if she were a Clairol model. “The one who’s taking my daughter away from me.”

She wore a pair of shorts and a tight sleeveless shirt. Her bare toes peeked out from her sling-back, open-toe sandals. Austin ran his eyes along her body, slow and careless, the way all men did.

“I can see where Anna gets her looks.” He reached out and shook my mother’s hand.

Lilly perked up.

“Anna, why don’t you get Austin a glass of iced tea?” Lilly said. “I just made a pitcher.”

“That’s okay, Mom. We’re not staying.”

“I wouldn’t mind a cold glass,” Austin said as he flipped through a magazine on the coffee table. I could barely pry him away.

Once we were in the car, he bombarded me with questions. “What happened between your mother and your stepfather? Did he walk out on her? I just don’t get it,” he said. “The way people think they can just get up and leave. I feel sorry for your mother. It must be fucking hard raising three daughters.”

“I guess,” I said. But I didn’t want Austin feeling sorry for my mother. I didn’t really like to talk about her past. Once I had mentioned to him that years after my father died, my mother had remarried but the marriage didn’t last. I lit a cigarette, even though Austin hated when I smoked in his car.

“I don’t know why your stepfather left your mother,” he continued. “He must have been out of his mind.”

“Same reason your mother left your father, I suppose. Wasn’t your mother having an affair?”

Austin stepped on the brakes. The car came to a crushing halt. “Fuck off, Anna,” he said. “Unless you want to walk.” Then, without looking at me, he floored the gas. What I didn’t know was that a letter he’d recently written to his mother had come back unopened, address unknown. I found it a few days
later in the tack room, between the wall and his bed, where he must have stuffed it, when he got up and went outside to take a leak.

On the way to the track that night we went to the liquor store. Austin bought a bottle of vodka and a carton of orange juice. In the car he spilled out half of the juice from the carton on the ground and then poured in the vodka. He took a swig and passed it to me. I took a long swallow. We spent the better part of an hour that way, in the parking lot, passing the carton back and forth, like a tonic. By the time we got to the tack room, I could barely feel the weight of my body. I lay on the cot and watched the room spin.

“Austin doesn’t look me in the eyes when he talks to me. Have you noticed that, Anna?” Lilly said, when I returned home the next day, queasy and hungover.

“Mom, that’s absurd.” I felt an almost innate urge to defend him. If Austin was ashamed, he had reason to be, I thought. Austin’s shame, I convinced myself, like Heathcliff’s, came from feeling helpless and abandoned. I didn’t mind it. It endeared him to me, the complex range of feeling.

“I have a lot more experience, Anna,” Lilly continued, in the all-knowing voice she adopted when she attempted to be maternal. She picked at the chipped nail polish on her fingers.

That night Austin and I had plans to go pool hopping with a group of friends and, as if to exacerbate my mother’s suspicions about Austin, he stood me up. I waited in the living room, leafing through a magazine, ears listening for his car. I tried to hide my anxiety, but my eye kept darting to the window every time a car sped by.