Light on Snow (10 page)

In the kitchen he studies the dishes in the dish drainer. I fetch a glass from the cabinet, fill it from the tap, and hand it to him. I can smell spearmint on his breath. I try not to look at his scar.

“We found a flashlight,” he says. “Wanted to know if it was your father’s or if it belonged to the guy.”

“It’s probably my father’s,” I say quickly. “We lost one in the snow that night.”

“Thought it might be,” Warren says, looking over my head toward the den. “You put your tree up yet?”

“We’ll do it Christmas Eve,” I say.

Warren takes a long swallow. “How old are you again?” he asks.

“Twelve,” I say.

I hear the back door open. “Dad,” I say, looking just past the detective.

I am dead.

“What’s going on?” my father asks. The vertical lines on his forehead are pronounced.

“Came to see if you lost a flashlight the night you found the baby,” Warren says. “You find your ax?”

My father says nothing.

“Remember, Dad, how you said you were going into the woods to find your ax?” I say, meeting his eyes.

“We found a flashlight,” Warren says. “Nicky said you lost one that night.”

“I did.”

“What brand?”

“Don’t know. Black with a yellow switch.”

“Yeah, the same,” Warren says.

I let a hand fall to just below my waist. I shut my eyes and wince slightly, the way I’ve seen the girls at school do, as if waiting for a cramp to pass.

“So you guys getting ready for Christmas?”

My father unzips his jacket.

“We got our tree up already,” Warren says, taking a sip of water. “One of my boys—the eight-year-old; he’s autistic—likes having it up.”

My father nods.

“There’s a specialist in Concord,” Warren says. “Supposed to be the best in New Hampshire. It’s why we moved into the city.”

I hear a slight creak along the upstairs hallway. I glance at Warren to see if he has heard it, too.

From a hook I snatch a rag and begin to skate with the cloth, drying the floor, the way my father is always trying to get me to do.

“Still, though,” Warren is saying, “hard on my wife, hard on Mary. Tommy, that’s my son, he doesn’t like being touched.”

A murmur from my father. A pause and then another string of words. I skate my way to the bottom of the stairs and glance up. Charlotte, her face creased with sleep, is on the upstairs landing.

“We’ve got a clan coming,” Warren is saying. “We’ll have nineteen, twenty anyway, for Christmas Eve.”

With a quick glance to see that Warren isn’t looking, I shake my head once, an emphatic
No.

“Mary and her sister will do up three hundred pierogies,” Warren is saying. “My wife’s Polish.”

I pick up the rag and reach forward to wipe a step. Silently I beg Charlotte to understand.

Her head tilts then, and I see the way her eyes begin to listen, the moment that she registers the foreign voice. She holds her arms out like a ballerina, and I think for a moment she might fly off the top step. Pirouetting on her toes, she retreats from the landing.

Very carefully, I step away from the stairs. I let out a long breath.

Through the window I can see that the snow has turned icy. It pings against the glass.

“I’ll bring you some,” Warren is saying. He sets the water glass on a shelf. “Looking bad out there. Better get yourself another flashlight.”

“Plenty where that came from,” my father says.

“You could lose your power in this,” Warren says.

“We could.”

The detective glances my way as he pushes open the door against an inch of snow. Warren gives a small wave and bends into the storm, holding his overcoat closed with one hand. He trudges, collar up, across the drive. He wipes the snow off his windshield with his gloves and climbs into his Jeep. As he does he glances at the muffled maze of tracks in the snow. The truck and the blue car cannot be seen from where he is standing. He would have to walk further toward the woods to get the right angle. He does not. I watch him reverse, make the turn, and finally leave.

My father shuts the door. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?” he says to me.

I stare at the floor.

“You’re going to get us in more trouble than we’re in already.”

I look up. “I was just trying to get rid of him,” I say.

This is true and not entirely true.

“She came to the top of the stairs,” I add.

“I know she did. I heard.”

“You heard?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think he heard?”

“I don’t know,” my father says. “But I hope for your sake he didn’t.”

My father closes his jacket with an angry zip. “I’ll be in the barn,” he says.

T
he day we left New York, my father packed up a trailer with boxes and tools and suitcases, bicycles and skis and books. He tied a blue plastic tarp over all of it, bent his head to the plastic, and stood for so long I wondered if he’d fallen asleep.

All that morning I’d been expected to help with the packing. The movers would come to get the larger items after we left. My father had put me in the kitchen with a stack of old newspapers and a dozen fresh cardboard boxes and had asked me to see to the dishes. But I was lost in the fatigue of anger and inertia: I didn’t want to be packing up to leave. I would lift an item up and look at it and set it down and then pick it up again and think, How am I supposed to pack a pressure cooker? What do I do with a Cuisinart? My legs hurt, my arms hurt, my head hurt from crying.
This is the last time I’ll ever see my hallway at night,
I’d been saying to myself for the last twenty-four hours.
This is the last time I’ll ever sit on my swing. This is the last time I’ll ever reach for the Cheerios in this particular cabinet.
Leaving was a weight upon the entire house and its contents, so that it seemed a Herculean task simply to lift a glass. I packed indifferently, tumblers and plates in the same box, more plates in another box, and I forgot to label the cartons. For months after we moved into the new house, we had to unpack six or seven boxes to find the toaster or the measuring cups or the wooden spoons.

I wouldn’t go when my father said it was time to get into the car. He let me be for an hour as he checked and rechecked rooms and closets, looking into cabinets and under beds. In the end, he had to take me bodily from the only home I’d ever known, the one that still had surfaces my mother and Clara had touched. I sobbed all the way to the Massachusetts Turnpike.

The drive from New York to New Hampshire can be done in three hours, but it seemed to take far longer than that to reach our destination. My father drove up Route 91, the highway that runs between New Hampshire and Vermont, not even knowing which state we’d eventually settle in. Exhausted, he stopped in White River Junction, where we ordered a late-night supper neither of us could eat. We asked directions to the nearest motel, where I fell onto my bed fully clothed, meaning to get up and brush my teeth and undress, but I never did. I woke the next morning disoriented and dirty. I felt as though I’d slipped through a hole in time, caught between life as it had been and life as it would be. I had no enthusiasm for the future, and I knew my father didn’t either.

In the morning I whined all through the blueberry pancakes, and my father left the diner in disgust. When I finally got into the car, he tried to find his way out of White River Junction in order to continue north. I remember a series of bewildering interchanges, and it was a minute or two before my father realized we were actually heading south on Route 89. “We’ll see where this goes,” he said, shrugging.

The highway ascended slowly into small mountains with ledges of startling white rock. Waterfalls had frozen blue, and there were still patches of snow on the north sides of the trees and houses. We hadn’t gone far—only half an hour—when my father veered off the highway at an exit. Perhaps he realized that if he didn’t get off soon, we’d be back in Massachusetts, or maybe he simply needed gas; I can’t remember now. We glided off the exit ramp onto Route 10, drove for a mile or two through a small town, and coasted to a stop in front of Croydon Realty.

I was an uncooperative ball in the passenger seat, my arms crossed over my bulky parka, my chin tucked into the collar. I refused even to look at my father.

“Nicky,” he said gently.

“What?”

“We’ve got to do our best here,” he said.

“Do our best
what?
” I asked.

“Do our best to try to make a go of it,” he said.

“I don’t want to make a go of it,” I said.

He sighed, and I could hear him tapping his fingers against the steering wheel. He waited. “I know how hard this must be for you,” he said finally.

“You have no idea,” I said, curling myself into an even tighter ball.

“I think I might,” he said, his voice deliberately quiet, deliberately calm.

Mine was not. “This is so
unfair!
” I shouted.

“Yes, it is,” he said.

“But why?” I wailed.

“There isn’t any
why,
Nicky.”

“Yes, there is,” I said. “We didn’t have to leave. We could have stayed at home.”

“No, Nicky, we couldn’t.”

“You mean
you
couldn’t.”

“That’s right. I couldn’t.”

I began to cry and to shake with the crying. It seemed my natural state then. My father put a hand on my shoulder. I was exhausting both of us. “I’m sorry, Nicky,” he said.

I flung his hand off with a twist. I sat up and looked around. “Where are they?” I cried in a sudden panic.

A woman stepped out the door of Croydon Realty. She wound a scarf around her neck. She had on ankle boots with fur on them.

“Where are who?” my father asked.

“You know who,” I said. “Mom! And Clara! Where are they?”

“Oh, Nicky,” my father said, hopelessly defeated. He shut his eyes and leaned his head back against the headrest.

“I hate you!” I screamed.

I opened my door and stepped out onto the road between the car and the curb. In my fury, I’d forgotten that I’d taken my boots off in the car, as I almost always do, to keep my feet from overheating. I stood in a pile of slush in my stocking feet. The woman on the steps of Croydon Realty paused. My father bent his forehead to the steering wheel.

The woman looked at me and then into the car at my father. She glanced at the trailer with the tarp. She sized us up as a sale. She went back into the office. My ankles ached from the icy water. I hopped back into the car and slammed the door as hard as I could. My father opened his door and stepped out. He adjusted his gray tweed overcoat (the last time he would ever wear it), jumped a puddle, and headed for the Realtor’s.

And such was our introduction to Shepherd, New Hampshire.

I climb the stairs to the guest room. I knock and call Charlotte’s name.

I hear no answer and call her name again. I open the door a crack.

The shades are drawn, and it takes a minute for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. When they do I see that she is sitting in my grandmother’s chair. She has her hands folded in her lap, and her posture is rigid.

“Charlotte?”

“You want me to come downstairs,” she says evenly.

“No,” I say. “No.” And I understand that she’s been waiting in the silly pajama bottoms to be called downstairs and sent away, possibly even arrested. “No,” I say again. “It’s just me, Nicky. I’ve brought you your jeans. And this,” I say, holding out the pink sweater.

“Everything’s all right?” she asks.

“Everything’s fine,” I say, and even in the gloom of the room, I can see her shoulders relax.

“Who was it, then?” she asks.

“A detective. His name is Warren. He’s the one trying to find you.”

“Oh God, I thought so,” she says. “How did he know I was here?”

“I don’t think he did,” I say. “He came to tell my dad that they’d found a flashlight. . . .” I stop, fearing another collapse. “At the . . . you know,” I say quickly.

“Your dad didn’t tell him I was here?”

“No.”

“Oh God,” she says again, but I hear relief and not panic in her voice this time.

“It’s okay,” I say. “He left. He won’t be coming back. Not in this weather.”

“I’ve made you an accomplice,” Charlotte says.

Accomplice,
I repeat silently. I love the word.

She runs her hand over the pink sweater in her lap.

“You want something to eat?” I ask.

“Not right now.”

“I should let you sleep,” I say.

“Don’t go,” she says.

She rises from the chair and sets the jeans and sweater on the cushion. She makes her way to the bed, draws back the covers, and climbs in. It seems such an ordinary gesture in such an ordinary room that I have to remind myself of the awfulness of her crime. Uncertain as to what I should do, I sit on the floor next to the bed, my legs folded beneath me.

“Do you know anything about the baby?” she asks.

I am surprised by the bravery of the question, but I’m afraid to answer it in case she begins again to cry. In the dusk of the bedroom, I can barely see her face. She lies like a child, with her hands tucked under her cheek. I think I can smell her: a warm, yeasty smell, not unsweet.

I take a deep breath and speak rapidly. “She’s going to be fine,” I say. “Really fine. But she’s lost one finger. Her toes and everything else are good, though. I don’t know which finger.”

“Oh,” Charlotte says. It’s a small
oh,
not a wail, but a sound that sinks away into the corners.

“She’s being cared for by a foster family,” I say. I speak carefully now, each word a potentially treacherous step, likely to unleash an avalanche of tears.

“Where?” Charlotte asks.

“We don’t know,” I say. “I don’t think they plan on telling us. They’re calling her Baby Doris.”

“Doris,” she says, clearly surprised.

“We don’t know why,” I say. “It might be a system they have. You know, like naming hurricanes.”

“Doris,”
she says again, and I can hear a note of indignation in her voice. She sits up a bit.

“That won’t be her name . . . you know . . . later,” I say.

“Someone will change it,” she says.

“Probably.”

Charlotte’s head falls back against the pillow. “It’s an awful name,” she says.

“You could get her back,” I say quickly. “I’m sure you could get her back.”

She doesn’t speak.

“Don’t you want her back?” I ask.

“I can’t take care of her,” Charlotte says. Her voice is curiously flat, devoid of emotion. “I have nowhere to live,” she adds.

“Nowhere at all?” I ask.

She rolls onto her back and stares at the ceiling. My eyes have adjusted to the dark and I can see her profile: the slightly jutting chin, the lips pressed together, the open eyes, the fabulously long lashes, the smooth forehead. “No,” she says.

“You must have lived
somewhere,
” I say.

“Well, of course I did,” she says. “I just can’t go back.”

I want to ask
why,
but I tell myself to be careful, to be patient the same way my dad has to be patient when starting up his truck. “How old are you?” I ask instead.

“Nineteen,” she says, rolling back toward me. “So it’s just you and your father?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to your mom?”

“She died,” I say.

Charlotte reaches out a hand and touches my shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” she says. Her fingers linger a moment longer, and then she draws them back into the covers. “How old were you?”

“I was ten,” I say.

“You’ve had a rough time, haven’t you?”

I shrug.

“I had a sister, too,” I say. “Her name was Clara. She was a year old. She died with my mom in the car accident.”

I expect the hand on the shoulder again, but it stays where it is inside the covers. “What did she look like?” Charlotte asks.

“Clara?”

“Your mom. What did she look like?”

“She was pretty,” I say. “Not too tall, but thin. She had long light brown hair that was wavy. She cut it after Clara was born, but I remember her best with it long.”

“Like you,” Charlotte says. “You’ll show me a picture?”

“Yes,” I say, “I will.” And already I am thinking about the album I have in my room and how Charlotte and I will pore over it.

“I wish I had a picture,” she says. “You know, just one picture.”

Her wish hits me like a basketball flung at my chest. I realize she probably has no idea what her baby looks like. Was a picture taken in the hospital? Do the police have one on file? “Where did you used to live?” I ask.

“I can’t . . . ,” she says.

“I won’t tell anyone. Not even my father.”

“Let’s just say it’s a small town north of here,” she says.

“In New Hampshire?”

“Um, maybe,” she says. “Your dad seems like a nice man. He doesn’t want me here, and he’s angry, but still, he has a nice face. What grade are you in?”

“Seventh,” I say.

“Do you like school?”

I shift my legs. “Sort of,” I say. The truth is that I do like school, but I don’t want to seem too eager in case she thinks anyone who likes school pathetic. It already matters tremendously what Charlotte thinks of me.

“I was in school,” she says.

“You were?” I cannot imagine Charlotte behind a desk or reading a book.

“In college,” she says. “But I dropped out.” She pauses. “I plan to go back, though.”

I have the sense then that her entire story—the story I long to hear—is contained within that pause.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” she asks. She moves her head so that it rests at the edge of the bed. I can smell her breath. I have no answer for her. I think of the only friend I have who is a boy, and poor Roger Kelly, he simply doesn’t measure up.

“No one yet,” I say.

“Oh, you will,” she says, and I wonder where her confidence comes from.

I bend my head and pick at the carpet. Now is the moment to ask her about the man. But I hesitate, and in the hesitation I lose the momentum that would make the question easy and natural.

“What’s it like outside?” she asks.

“It’s pretty bad,” I say, looking up. “You’ll have to stay here.” I wait for a protest and am heartened when none comes.

“You might have to stay here a couple of days,” I say tentatively.

“Oh, I can’t stay here a couple of days,” she says. She brings her arms out from under the covers. “I didn’t mean to stay here at all.”

“Where would you have gone?” I ask.

“Oh, I have places,” she says vaguely.

Through the shut door and from the bottom of the stairway, I can hear my father calling my name. I unfold my legs and stand up quickly. I don’t want him to come upstairs and find me sitting beside Charlotte’s bed in a darkened room. “I have to go now,” I say. “He’s calling me.”

“He doesn’t want you in here,” she says. She props herself up on one elbow. “Thank you for drying my jeans,” she adds.