The Winter Girl (20 page)

Even though it was for only a moment, Elise looked dazed, two small gashes on her forehead quickly welling up with blood. I watched a sudden arc of spit land on her face and then I saw Carmelita kick her in the head. Her sneaker made a dull slapping sound as it connected with my wife's cheekbone.

I fell on top of Elise like the Good Samaritan I never was, still holding the shotgun with my left hand.

“Put it in her mouth,” Carmelita said. “I'll pull the trigger.”

But when I lifted up the gun, it was Carmelita I was aiming at. First her chest, and then her back as she walked unsteadily toward the sliding glass door, and then she was on the patio, her blood left on the white handle.

“We can't let her go,” Elise said.

I walked past my wife without saying a word, following Carmelita onto the flagstones. Her left hand was pressed against her collarbone again, as if she were pledging some strange allegiance. For a few seconds, before she moved out of the light cast on the stones, I could see how much pain she was in, her mouth curled downward. The faces injured children make when they're waiting for an adult to comfort them. She stood still for a moment, and then, hearing the distant throttle of a truck on 27, turned and started to walk that way.

“He married her,” Carmelita said softly. “He actually gave her his dead wife's ring and she wore it all summer. Or maybe she stole it.”

The shock of her injury had made her dizzy and she lost her balance for a moment. I caught her just before her knee hit the frozen ground, and she righted herself again. I knew that Elise was right behind me and was carefully listening to everything the girl said. I was terrified that if I said something too sympathetic my wife might bludgeon me next. Even after all the violence that had happened, when I spoke my voice sounded detached, as if I were reading from a transcript Elise might approve of.

“I want to hear all about this,” I said. “But it's freezing out here. Let's go back inside the house.”

“Ask her where she keeps the ring. I bet she never threw it away. Her dead mother's ring. Ask her about her mother.”

But her voice was trailing off now, as if she realized her survival was more important than wasting the ugliest secrets on me.

I followed her around the far corner of the house, past the shrouded BBQ grill that Swain had once used, and then onto the gravel of the driveway, the fibrous branches of a willow tree clacking in the wind. She waited there, only a foot from me, waiting for another sound from the highway. Was it a minute or two minutes that we waited there, the ocean fizzling restlessly behind us, some distant airplane blinking over the house? Elise, I know, was sobbing. I could hear her behind me.

The next sound was just a passing car, nothing more than that, its headlights now visible over the wooden fence that separated Swain's property from the highway.

“I need your help, Scott,” Carmelita said. “I'm in so much pain. I can feel the bone moving in my shoulder.”

“You've got to come back to the house,” I said. “You can't leave now.”

She looked at me as if I were crazy, and then, realizing I meant it, stopped in her tracks, just as I had asked her to.

“Good girl,” Elise said, just a foot behind me now.

For another second, maybe two, Carmelita considered this vicious compliment, and then she began to walk away again, taking two tentative steps in the gravel of the driveway, then a third.

I raised the gun and pulled the trigger, just before she took the fourth step.

T
here was an old wooden bulkhead that sat beneath Swain's property. Elise and I dragged Carmelita to the edge of the overgrown lawn and then let her roll down the hill toward the water. Then we walked across the gully and grabbed a flashlight and shovel from the shed under Victor's deck.

Elise and I hardly said a word to each other as we made our way back to the bulkhead, walking along the bay. When I saw the lights from Swain's living room on the bluff above me, I ducked into the gap in the wrecked wall and painted the underbrush and sand with the flashlight until the beam found her hand, her arm twisted behind her back. I stopped there. I didn't want to see what the blast had done to the back of her head. Handing Elise the flashlight, I began digging into the sand, listening to the distant sound of a boat's engine.

Turning off the flashlight, Elise stood by me and we waited until we couldn't see the red and green running lights of the fishing boat slowly making its way to the inlet.

“Maybe this isn't the best place,” Elise said, flicking the flashlight back on and cupping it with her hand. She pointed it down at the hole as I shoveled out more sand. I hit a long tree root and whacked it in half with the edge of the shovel.

“Too late to take her anywhere else,” I said numbly.

I leaned over the shovel and tossed another clump of sand aside, focusing all my attention on the hole. The only thing I'd buried in my life up to then was a parakeet, adorning its tiny mound with intricately arranged pebbles.

By the time we'd pulled Carmelita into the hole and covered her with sand and seaweed and dead branches, I thought the sky was turning paler.

“You've got her blood on your cheek,” Elise said softly, pointing the flashlight at my face one more time. I nodded, too tired to offer my thoughts about this particular issue. I watched myself walk down to the edge of the water, where small waves barely flopped onto the sucking sand. I watched myself kneel down and cup my hands in the bay, lifting its stinking water to my skin, again and again. Over the inlet, like suspended flecks of dark blue inside a marble, the clouds on the horizon became distinct. Elise was already walking back to Victor's with the shovel in her hand, turning toward me and violently waving at me to join her.

It was at the end of that same month, January, that Elise and I allowed ourselves one brief weekend in Miami, unable to relax for one moment. Conspicuously pale and exhausted, we ordered one round of mai tais from the pool bar and then abandoned them by our deck chairs. We spent most of the time on our concrete balcony, trying to read the paperbacks we had picked up at the Hudson News at LaGuardia.

“Do you want to go for a walk?” I said, staring at the tinted windows of the high-rise condo across from us. It had started to rain, but neither of us moved. Inside our room, a football game was playing on the flat-screen television, but I'd already forgot who the two teams were.

Elise was wearing a gauzy silk wrap, her feet kicked up on another chair. Although she still stared down at her Harlan Coben thriller, I knew she'd been stuck on the same page for half an hour.

“What if the water reaches her body?” Elise finally said. “Won't it loosen the sand? Maybe someone passes by and sees some fabric. Or that stupid dog…”

“What do you suggest we do about it? Fly back tonight and start hacking her to pieces?”

The word
hacking
made me feel funny. Sick to my stomach, actually. I wasn't going to dig up Carmelita under any condition. How much had she decomposed underneath the sand? What kind of winter larvae were feeding on her? Her corpse would be bloated now, the skin stretched blue and black in places.

“Someone's going to find her,” Elise said, finally closing the paperback and tossing it on the ground. “The sooner we deal with it, the better.”

The rain had become steadier now, but after months spent on freezing Shinnecock Bay, the warmth of the heavy drops didn't bother me at all. I stood up and leaned over the balcony, where I could see a sliver of the harbor through the buildings. Two WaveRunners sped past, two rooster tails of water arcing behind them. I was so tired that my shoulders ached, and yet it had been impossible to sleep for more than a few minutes at a time. The only consolation had been that when I turned over on my side and faced Elise, her eyes had been open too.

But now, when I turned toward her and gently suggested that we go inside, she didn't move at all. I took a step in her direction, raised her sunglasses and saw that her eyes were closed, her mouth parted, the rain rolling down her forehead and cheek. I bent over her and gave her a kiss on the top of her head.

I was on the verge of wrapping my arms around her, with the idea of gallantly carrying her into the room so she could finally get some rest, when I had a flashback of what it felt like to carry Carmelita's body toward the edge of Swain's property. It's true what they say about dead weight being so much heavier. She kept on slipping through my arms, as if she somehow had some last idea about escaping. I reached under her armpits again and again and held her as tightly as I could, looking for the best place to let her roll down to the sea.

“Elise,” I said, looking down at her. “Let's wake up, okay?”

I watched her stir for a moment, then change position in the chair, letting her head fall slowly onto her other shoulder. Inside the room, her cell phone was ringing. I picked it up and stared at the 347 area code, then I answered the call.

“Merry Christmas,” the voice on the other end said. “Is my sister there?”

“It's almost February,” I said. “But thanks.”

It was the first time I'd spoken to Ryder, and considering I was his brother-in-law, and the fact we'd exchanged exactly zero words up to that point, I thought I might ask him a few questions. The first one was the most important. Was he still in jail?

“No, sir,” he said with an ironic politeness. “I am a free man. Overcome with the possibilities of the unconfined day.”

“I'd love to meet you someday,” I said.

“I'd love to meet
you,
” he said, smashing back my hollow pleasantry. “Shake your hand for putting up with that dying prick. Buy you a beer at least.”

“Beer sounds great,” I said, noticing the steadier drops of rain falling on the concrete balcony. Elise was awake now. She stood up and arched her shoulder back, only gradually realizing I was on her cell phone.

“I'm going to have to let you go,” he said. “I have a thing or two to say to my sister.”

“Yeah,” I said, already irritated by the way he'd manhandled the conversation. “Merry Christmas too, Ryder.”

I handed the phone to Elise, but she didn't even come inside the living room. Whatever it was he was telling her was important enough that she let the rain drench her body. Behind the closed sliding door, I watched a liquid streak of lightning fork on the horizon. Drops of water rolled off her chin and she turned away again as she realized I had begun to try to read her lips.

W
e cut the Miami trip short, of course, and spent a fortune changing the flight. I guess I shouldn't have given it a second thought, considering we had cashed out 112,000 of Victor's preferred Hensu shares, worth a little over twelve bucks each. But we had yet to experience a single moment of joy. In the week since we had “protected ourselves,” as Elise put it, we found it harder and harder to sleep each night. In small ways we had become intensely paranoid.

It was Elise though who really started to lose it first. As we were standing in line before security, she had become increasingly agitated.

“Do you think it's weird I'm wearing this cardigan?” she said, plucking at the dark sweater and looking at me imploringly.

“It's just the TSA,” I said softly, giving her a sideways hug. “They just want you to walk through their little X-ray peep-show machine.”

“I should take it off,” she said, starting to tug it off one arm. “It's freezing in here. Isn't it? Is it just me?”

“Yeah, the air-conditioning is turned up pretty high,” I lied. The truth was I was wearing only a T-shirt and there was already a sheen of perspiration on my face. I watched Elise roll up her sweater and stuff it in her carry-on.

“I'm good,” she said, flipping back her bangs with a finger and giving me a quick smile.

But she wasn't. The line curled around the rope chain two more times and I noticed that Elise was staring at a particular woman standing a few feet ahead of us. The woman had a plain white face and light brown hair. She might have been in her late forties or early fifties. The problem was that she was staring right back at Elise, then me, without the vaguest hint of an expression. Her lips stayed pressed in a tight, flat line.

That was enough for Elise. She whispered something to me I couldn't even hear, then ducked under the rope. I did the same, catching up to her at the freakishly bright counter of an Auntie Anne's.

“I'll take the pretzel nuggets,” Elise said, glancing at me. “You want to share them or are you going to want your own?”

“I'll have two of yours,” I said, giving the counterperson a patient smile. “My wife's a little bit of a mess. Family funeral.”

The counterperson offered his condolences, but I could feel Elise's eyes glued on me as we moved our little red tray down the counter and paid.

She waited until we had taken a seat, and then she lashed into me.

“Don't ever fucking do that again,” she hissed at me. “You never make one more joke about any of this. Do you hear me?”

I let her think she'd won that one. Dipping a pretzel nugget in mustard sauce, I leaned back in the chair and chewed it thoughtfully.

“That's going to require an apology,” I said.

“Or what?”

“I don't know,” I said, squinting at a bland watercolor of some empty golf course at dawn on the wall. “I have to think about it.”

My warning, barely a threat at all, seemed to empty all the color from my wife's face. Intently, she watched me pop the second pretzel nugget in my mouth, the way a scientist might study an injected rabbit at Plum Island.

“Scott,” she said as I continued to analyze the golf-course watercolor. It looked like heaven to me. I imagined myself purring up to the green in a golf cart, the bracing chill in the air, a family of amiable wild parrots watching me high up in some palm tree.

“Yeah,” I said. “I'm still here.”

She reached for my hand and pulled it toward her stomach earnestly.

“I'm sorry, okay? I'm completely freaked out.”

All the anxiousness had vanished from her face. The fluorescent lights revealed the darkness of the circles under her eyes. Her nails were bitten down to the cuticles. She wasn't wearing any makeup. And despite how humid it was inside the airport, she had to hug herself again, to keep from shivering.

The counterperson, a tall black man with a receding stubble of hair around his temple, approached our table with a basket of fresh cinnamon pretzel nuggets.

“On me,” he said kindly. “Looks like you two lovebirds are having a rough time.”

W
hen we landed at LaGuardia, we retrieved the Volvo from long-term parking and drove back to Park Slope. A few inches of snow had fallen the night before and was still visible atop the median as we sped down Grand Central Parkway.

We parked the car and walked up President Street and climbed the two flights of narrow, buckled stairs to the one-bedroom we had sublet to a friend of Elise's for the last five months. The key, as promised, was under the mat. Elise had told Michaela that we'd be stopping by to grab some of the photo equipment I'd been storing in one of the closets.

It was unnerving walking into our old apartment, our old life, and seeing how completely Michaela had made it her own. It was tidier than ever before, with a new two-gallon Brita filter sitting on the kitchen counter and one of those collage family photos sitting on our bedroom dresser. Michaela, with the same identical smile, cheek to cheek with everyone she loved. I was looking at it, more than a little resentfully, when I saw Elise cross behind me and flop onto our old bed.

“She's going to be home in a couple of hours,” I said, but Elise was already asleep. Her mouth open and a thin line of spit descending onto Michaela's freshly puffed-up pillow.

On the couch, as promised, Michaela had been collecting our mail. It sat in two heaps, bound with rubber bands. I sat down and started throwing out the junk—credit-card offers and auto-insurance quotes. There were a few bills I needed to keep, and I set them aside. Then there was a brown envelope addressed to me, taped up so thoroughly I had to cut it open. Inside, a plastic DVD jewel box and an untitled disc inside.

I gently closed the door of the bedroom and walked into the living room. I slipped the disc into the DVD player. The screen turned from blue to black, but no image appeared. Then suddenly, staring at me with that same condescending smile, was Victor himself. He was standing outside Swain's home in a tan windbreaker, his white hair tossed by a gust of wind. It looked like it might be late summer, just before he was admitted to the hospital.

“Beautiful summer day, isn't it?” he asks, wincing into the wind as if he were standing on the prow of a yacht. The cameraman takes a few steps backward, and more of Victor comes into focus. There are fresh drops of blood on his windbreaker, just beneath the neat little snap-on epaulet. Then he turns and walks back across the cracked paving stones of Swain's patio, the cameraman's dark shape briefly reflected in the sliding glass door, and then the sound changes as they walk inside. It's crystal quiet, quiet enough to hear a woman's voice, instantly familiar, repeating Victor's name.

Victor stops at the small bar, not to pour himself a drink but to fastidiously adjust the cap of the bottle of crème de menthe. Then, followed by the camera, he enters the downstairs bedroom, where Carmelita lies on the bed.

She is barely conscious, her face covered with blood. The window shade has been pulled and the dim light in the room makes it even more revolting to watch. As the camera moves closer to her face, Victor's hand brushes in and out of frame, as if he were introducing an object he had made. But the light is all wrong, and all that can really be seen are the whites of Carmelita's eyes. The rest of her battered face streams away in undifferentiated pixels, as if it were running downstream.