Light on Snow (9 page)

I have hardly ever seen Marion without knitting needles in her hands. Today she’s making something in red and yellow stripes. I hope it’s not for anyone over two years old. “So tell me all about it!” she says.

“Um,” I say, thinking.

“Something that wasn’t in the papers.”

I think another moment. “We wrapped her in flannel shirts and put her in a plastic laundry basket.”

“You did?” Marion says, seemingly happy with the detail. “Were you just completely freaked out?”

“Pretty much,” I say.

Marion picks up her knitting. “You went to the hospital, too?”

“I did.”

“Did you get to stay with the baby?”

“We visited for a minute.”

“What’s going to happen to her?”

“We don’t really know,” I say.

Marion loses her rubbery smile. “It’s sad,” she says.

“Well, we did find her,” I say, not yet willing to relinquish the role of heroine.

“No, I mean sad for the person who did it,” she says. “There must have been a terrible reason.”

I think about how the person who did it is in our bathroom at home right this minute.

“You finish the hat for your dad?”

“Yes,” I say, inching closer to the aisles.

“How did it come out?”

“Pretty good,” I say. “I think it’ll fit him.”

“You ended up liking the rolled edge?”

“I did,” I say.

My mother taught me how to knit when I was seven. I forgot about knitting until one day I saw Marion at the counter with hers and confessed that I knew how. Confessed is the right word. In those days, in the early 1980s, knitting was not a hobby a preteen would readily admit to. But Marion, ever enthusiastic, pounced upon me and insisted that I show her something I’d made. I did—a misshapen scarf—which she praised extravagantly. She lent me a raspberry-colored wool for another project, a hat for myself. Since then I’ve been knitting pretty continuously. It’s addictive and it’s soothing, and for a few minutes anyway, it makes me feel closer to my mother. When I run into trouble with a particular stitch or a pattern, I go down to the store, and Marion helps me sort it out. Usually, I am fascinated by whatever Marion is knitting, by the way a ball of string can become a sweater or a baby blanket, but today I just want to get away from the counter as fast as I can. I think of my father waiting in the car, about the way the snow must be covering the windshield already.

I know where the feminine products are kept, and I move in that direction. The box of Kotex seems larger than I imagined it would be. I take it down from the shelf and return to the counter.

Marion sets her knitting on her lap. “Oh, my,” she says, looking at the Kotex.

Foolishly, recklessly, I blurt, “It’s not for me.”

Marion tilts her head and smiles a maternal smile. It’s clear she doesn’t believe me.

I take the ten-dollar bill from my pocket. The Kotex pulses and sings a tune on the scuffed Formica. Marion punches prices into the register. “You feeling okay?” she asks.

“I’m just fine,” I say.

“You know, if you have any questions about anything, anything at all, you can always ask me.”

I nod. My face is hot.

“You not having, you know, your mother around,” she says lightly.

I bite my lip. I just want to leave.

“Not too many people in today,” Marion says. “But yesterday you should have seen the rush for milk and canned goods. Stocking up. It’s supposed to be a big storm. Biggest of the season, they’re saying, but they’re always wrong.”

I put the money on the counter.

“Have you seen the baby since that night?” Marion asks, making my change.

“No.”

Marion looks up quickly, and behind me there’s a voice. “Nicky, isn’t it?”

A blue overcoat and a red muffler slide beside me. I didn’t hear the bell announcing Detective Warren’s arrival. Well, maybe there wasn’t a bell, I realize; maybe he was already in the store, in another aisle.

“How are you?” he asks.

“Fine,” I say through tight lips.

Marion slips the Kotex into a paper bag, but not before Warren has surely seen my purchase. Sweat blossoms inside my parka. I stand as though I’m not really there—head slightly bent, back hunched. Warren puts his magazines and a package of gum on the counter.

“I’m going now,” I say.

“Camels,” Warren says.

“Have a good Christmas,” Marion calls to me. “And tell your dad I think he’s a hero, too.”

“Yes, you and your dad have a good holiday,” Warren says.

I walk as fast as I dare to the door. All I can think about is what will happen if my father sees the detective.

The bell rings as I open it. I slip and skid off the top step and take the rest on my butt. I pick myself up and run to the truck.

I slam the door and throw my head back against the seat. There’s snow in the paper bag. “Let’s go quick,” I say. “I have to pee.”

T
he ride back to the house is tense and long. At times my father has trouble finding the road. Again and again I feel the sway of the rear tires skidding out or jumping a rut. We see only a couple of other vehicles on the roads—few willing, it seems, to venture out in the storm.

We pass the small white cottage with its evidence of boys. I rub the condensation from the truck window and strain to see inside. The house has candles in the windows. I can see a lit tree in a living room. The mother is in the kitchen near a counter. She has her hair pulled back into a ponytail. Fragments of Christmas memories float across my vision:

She puts the baby ornament on the tree.

The ribbon on the package is bright red, curled with a rip from the scissors.

He is on his knees, his head beneath the branches, looking for the socket.

I am thinking about Christmas trees and ornaments when I have a sudden realization: Did I really tell Marion the Kotex wasn’t for me? Did the detective, lurking in the aisles, hear that?

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

My father parks in his usual spot at the far side of the barn. I look at the woman’s blue car as I open the door and head for the house. I find her sitting on the bench in the back hallway. She has on her white shirt and the bottoms of my flannel pajamas. They barely fit—the thighs tight with pink and blue animals, the cuffs just inches below her knees. Her legs are white to the tops of her gray angora socks. Her jeans, which she has washed, hang on a hook, drying.

She looks chastened and subdued, a student waiting outside the principal’s office. I hand her the paper bag. She says thank you and slips inside the bathroom. I take off my jacket and hang it on a hook not far from the one that holds her jeans.

Beyond the bathroom door, I hear a rip of cardboard, the rustle of paper.

The woman has had a baby. What does it feel like? I want to ask. I know where babies come from, but that doesn’t tell me what I crave to understand. Does it hurt? Was she frightened? Does she love the man who is the father? Is he waiting out of sight down the road for her to return? Is the ridiculously named Baby Doris the result of a grand passion? Does the woman behind the bathroom door cry for her lover and her lost child?

The woman emerges from the bathroom looking more careworn than passionate. We stand for a moment in the back hallway, and I’m not sure what to do with her. “Thank you,” she says again. “Was it bad out?”

“It was fine.”

My father brings a wave of cold air with him as he stomps the snow off his boots. He slips his sleeves from his jacket and puts it on a hook. “You should lie down,” he says to the woman.

I lead her past the kitchen and into the den. I point to the couch. She falls onto the sofa in a kind of loose collapse. Her stomach swells over the elastic band of the pajamas, visible where the white shirt parts at the waist. The shirt isn’t clean: rings of dust, like fine stitching, run along the inside edges of the cuffs. She lies with her eyes closed, and I examine her, this prize.

Her lips are dry, and she wears no makeup, a minor disappointment. Her eyebrows have been expertly plucked, however, suggesting prior care and grooming. Her eyelashes are thick and blond. There are blackheads on her nose and one or two faint depressions on her cheeks. Her hair falls over her face, and I think she must have fallen asleep already not to mind its touch on her skin. Her breasts are large and list toward the couch cushion.

I wait, as one might beside a mother’s bed, for her to wake up or to open her eyes. In the kitchen I can hear the electric whine of a can opener, the scrape of a saucepan against a burner. I cover her with an ugly black-and-red crocheted blanket my grandmother made and which my father refuses to throw out. I plump the pillows behind her head, hoping this will rouse her, and it does.

She sits up quickly, once again as if not knowing where she is—the beauty in the fairy tale who has slept a thousand years.

“I’ve left him,” the woman says.

I sit up straighter. Left
him?
The
man?
The one who took the baby into the snow?

She shivers.

“You’re cold,” I say. “I’ll get your jacket.”

“My sweater’s in the bathroom.”

I am up in an instant, eager to be of use. I find the folded pink cardigan on a corner of the sink. It’s made of a fleecy wool—not angora but mohair—and has large mother-of-pearl buttons down the front.

When I return the woman lifts herself up. I wrap the cardigan around her shoulders, trying to tug it down. She seems to have lost the use of her arms, and her body is heavy.

I sit on the floor next to her. The room is filled with bookcases that tower over us. Besides the couch there are only the two lamps, a coffee table, the leather club chair my father saved from our New York house, and one other chair. My father comes in with a tray: Chicken with Stars in a bowl, a fan of saltines hastily arranged on a plate, a glass of water. “You’re dehydrated,” he says, studying her.

She brings herself up to a sitting position. Her hand is shaky as she holds the spoon.

“As soon as the storm stops . . . ,” he says, gesturing toward the window.

As soon as the storm stops,
what?
I’d like to know. Wrestle the woman to the truck? Make her drive her blue car down an unplowed road?

My father sits and assumes his usual position: head bent, legs spread, his elbows on his knees. The room darkens, and my father reaches over to turn on the lamp. “How did you find me?” he asks.

“I read about you in the newspaper,” she says. “Your name was there. It was easy enough to find out where you live.”

Beyond the windows the snow falls in fat flakes. “Have you seen a doctor?” he asks.

She looks up.

“While you were pregnant,” he adds.

“No.”

“You never saw a doctor?”

“No,” she says again.

“That was foolish,” my father says.

She opens her mouth to speak, but he holds up his hand, cutting her off. “I don’t want to know,” he says, standing. “Nicky, I want you to start shoveling.”

“Now?” I ask.

“Yes, now,” he says. “I have to go over to the barn and finish that bureau.”

“But —”

“No buts. If we don’t keep up with the storm, we’ll never get out of here.”

I stand reluctantly with a parting glance at the woman on the couch. She doesn’t look up at me. I drag myself to the back hallway, sit on the bench, and put on my boots. What if she needs me? I think. I put on my jacket and hat and mittens. Should she be left alone? I go outside and bend my head against the snow. What if something happens to her and I’m not there?

I use a wide shovel and push it forward like a plow. Of all my chores I hate shoveling the most, particularly when it’s snowing and it’s clear that in a couple of hours I’ll have to do it all over again. I make rows, pushing the snow to the far edge of the top of the driveway. I’m impatient, and I do this in record time. After twenty minutes, I survey my work. It’s sloppy, but I can’t bear to be outside a minute longer. I lean the shovel by the back door, step inside, and undress quickly. I walk to the den.

The woman is still sitting on the couch with the tray on her lap. She has left the stars to float in an oily golden puddle at the bottom of the bowl. I always eat the stars first. She leans over to set the tray aside, but I take it from her. Clara Barton. Florence Nightingale.

Again she lies down. The light from the lamp falls on her hair and her face. I sit once again on the floor and lay my arm against the piping on the cushions. “What’s your name?” I ask.

“Your father doesn’t want to know,” she says. “You’re not supposed to be in here.”

“I won’t tell him,” I say.

She says nothing.

“We have to call you
something,
” I point out.

The woman thinks a minute. Two minutes. “You can call me Charlotte,” she says finally.

“Charlotte?” I ask.

She nods.

Charlotte,
I repeat silently. I don’t know any Charlottes, have never known a Charlotte. “It’s a pretty name,” I say. “Is it your real name?”

“It is,” she says.

I want to know so much then. How old is she? Where is she from? Who is the man? Did she love him very much?

“The baby’s doing fine,” I say instead.

Sobs—a gulp, a second gulp—escape her. Her eyes scrunch up and snot runs down her upper lip. She is not a delicate crier. She wipes her nose with a pink sleeve. I run to the bathroom and come back with a wad of toilet paper.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

She waves my apology away.

“Tell me about it,” I plead.

“I can’t,” she says, blowing her nose. “Not now.”

But the
now
is everything, isn’t it?
Now
implies a future, a time when she will confide in me and tell me her tale—if only I can wait, if only I can be patient. I am dizzy with the promise of the word.

“I think I really need to sleep,” she says, giving her nose a final tidying.

“We have a guest room,” I say. “For my grandmother. She’s coming for Christmas. You can close the door and sleep there.”

“Your father won’t mind?”

“No,” I say with no authority whatsoever.

She rises up from the couch, sloughing off the sweater and the throw. I lead her to the back stairs. She walks haltingly and uses the banister to pull herself up. She follows me to a room with a double bed covered with a white spread that used to be on my parents’ bed years ago. I take a quilt from the closet and lay it as best I can over the coverlet. Beside the bed is a small table with a lamp on it, and to its right a bureau with a mirror. In another corner is a rocking chair, and beside that an especially bright lamp that my father set up so that my grandmother can sit and read when she visits. The woman moves directly to the bed, draws back the covers, and lies down at once.

“I’ll come back in a while and see if you’re all right,” I say.

The woman’s eyes are closed, and she seems already to have fallen asleep.

Reluctantly I turn and leave. I shut the door with exaggerated care. I sit on the bottom step for a time—for the time it would take to give the area nearest to the house a really good shoveling—and then I walk over to the barn.

“I’ve put her in the guest room,” I say.

My father stands back from the table saw. “I don’t want you talking to her,” he says, lowering his safety goggles. “I thought I made that clear.”

I shrug.

“As soon as this lets up, I’m going to insist that she leave. You can’t be part of this, Nicky.”

“You mean
you
can’t be part of this.”

“No, I mean
you,
” he says, pointing a finger. “This is serious business. And you’re not to say a word to anyone. Not now. Not ever. Do you understand?”

I turn and leave my father’s shop before he can get going on a lecture. I fetch the tray from the den, take it into the kitchen, and wash the dishes. I finish off the soup, spooning it directly from the saucepan. I climb the stairs and stand outside the guest room, listening for a telltale sound, any sound with which to weave a story. Disappointed, I walk into my room and sit at my desk and try to work on the beaded necklace for my grandmother—a complicated and ambitious project with a sculpted pendant—but I am jumpy and can’t make my fingers do what I want them to do. From time to time I move to the window and look out at the snow and am comforted by the whiteout and the wind that has come up, signaling a blizzard. Clothes might be a problem, I am thinking, but she can wear my father’s shirts. Her jeans will dry soon enough. Fitful, I lie on my bed and stare up at the ceiling and imagine a week during which Charlotte will stay with us. I see the two of us sitting in various cozy positions, my father conveniently gone, while she tells me her fabulous and lurid tale.

I sit up. I have an idea.

I collect the hair dryer from the upstairs bathroom and take it downstairs. I lift the jeans from the hook in the back hallway and hang them instead on the hook on the back of the bathroom door. The jeans are wet all along the inner thighs. I hold out the legs and aim the dryer the way I’ve had to do with T-shirts, the ones that come back from the Laundromat slightly damp because of my father’s impatience to “get going.”

The heavy denim takes longer to dry than I think it should, and I hope I’m not waking Charlotte with the sound. I don’t want her to catch me doing this; I simply want her to find her clothes warm and nicely folded.

When I turn off the hair dryer, I hear knocking at the back door.

Another customer?
Impossible,
I think. We barely got up the road ourselves.

I step out of the bathroom and see a flash of red in the window of the door. I freeze in place, like a statue in a child’s game. I suck in my breath. I have no choice but to walk forward and open the door.

“Nicky,” Warren says, stepping inside.

There’s a staccato of stomped feet, snow falling to the floor. “Your father around?” he asks.

A silent screech rings in my ear. “No,” I say.

“I just had one or two questions for him,” Warren says, beginning to melt on the welcome mat. “I wanted to get over here before the storm does its worst.”

For a moment I can’t speak.

“Where is he?” Warren asks, studying me.

“Um . . . he had to go into the woods to find his ax,” I say. “He left it in the woods. He wanted to find it before it gets buried in the snow.”

I feel dizzy. The lie is huge. Magnificent.

“Really,” Warren says. He opens his coat and shakes it out, a winged bird.

From the back hallway, through the kitchen, I have a view of the den, the couch, and the ugly red-and-black crocheted throw.

“Wicked out there,” Warren says.

A pink mohair sweater with mother-of-pearl buttons is lying against the pillows. It is spread open, as if a woman had just risen from it.

Warren wipes his feet a dozen times on the mat. “Could I get a glass of water?” he asks, looking over at the coats on the hooks.

“Um. Sure,” I say.

He walks with me to the kitchen. He glances up the stairs as he goes. “I’ve got snow tires, but even so,” he says.