Light on Snow (11 page)

“You can come downstairs when you’re ready,” I say.

“I shouldn’t have come here,” she says, gazing at the dull threads of light around the shade at the window.

“I’m glad you did,” I blurt out.

“What was it like?” she asks. “When you found her?”

I realize then that I know something she doesn’t, and the knowledge seems unearned. I hear my father call my name again. In a minute he will climb the stairs looking for me.

“She was a little messy,” I say. “But her eyes were amazing. She seemed so calm, like she was waiting for us. She had dark hair.”

“A lot of babies have dark hair at first,” Charlotte says. “It falls out. I read about that.”

“She was beautiful,” I say.

I brace myself for an animal moan—a cow lowing for its calf; a lioness searching for her cub—but when there is only silence, I leave the room.

T
wo or three times a year I would visit my father’s office in New York City. It was on Madison Avenue near St. Patrick’s Cathedral, a location my father appreciated because he could sprint, if necessary, to Grand Central when he took the train; an address my mother approved of because it was centrally located for her
day out,
as she referred to these trips. “Want to have a day out?” she would ask, and I would know it meant a visit to the city. I’d have to wear my best outfit and shoes (no sneakers), and there would be a small refresher lesson in manners, in much the same way a pilot is periodically required to get checked out on the equipment he flies.

We’d board the train at our station, and my mother would let me have the window seat so that I could gawp at the Hudson River, at the sheer rock face of the Palisades, at the expanse of the George Washington Bridge as we traveled into Manhattan. If there was a seat free, I would move to the other side of the train as we approached the city. I tried to imagine the people who lived in the tenements by the tracks. I peered down the long uptown avenues. I was awed by the tall apartment buildings and wondered, as we clicked along, if anyone actually used the balconies twenty-five stories up. We’d enter a long tunnel and then emerge to the cavernous Grand Central Station. I’d try to keep step with my mother’s clicking heels as we crossed the stone floor. She would not let go of my hand until we entered the revolving door of my father’s office building.

The lobby of my father’s office was decorated with models in glass cases of the buildings the company had designed. Intricate and precise, with matchstick figures and bushes no bigger than my thumbnail, they were miniature universes into which I wanted to climb. My father would walk out to the lobby and make a fuss, even though we’d just seen him at breakfast. His white shirt would billow slightly over his belt, and his long sleeves would be rolled. A tie would be snug inside his collar. In exchanges as ritualized as those of a church service, he would give my mother a kiss and tell her not to spend too much money; she would laugh and tell me to be a good girl.

As my father and I walked along a corridor of cubicles, secretaries and draftsmen rolled out into the hallway to say hello or give me a high five. I remember a woman named Penny who kept hard candies in a jar and who always invited me into her cubicle to sample a few. I especially liked Angus, my father’s boss, who would set me on a high stool in front of a draftsman’s table and give me a set of colored pencils that had never been opened. He’d also give me a T square and a job: I’d have to draw a house or a school or the front of a store. I worked at these tasks with dedication, and the praise was always extravagant, both from Angus and from my father. “How old are you again?” Angus would ask with what appeared to be complete earnestness. “We might have to hire you right out of junior high school.”

Sometimes I’d wander into my father’s office and pretend to be a secretary while he was on the phone or at his drawing table. At noon he would slide his arms into the silky lining of his jacket and we’d go to lunch. We ate at a deli where I could order cheese blintzes and a bowl of coleslaw. The desserts rotated in a glass case, and I remember the agony of trying to choose among the cherry cheesecake or the éclairs or the chocolate cream pie. My father, who normally never ate dessert, would get one for himself so that I could at least taste two. After lunch we’d go to the zoo in Central Park or to a bookstore where I was allowed to pick out a book. My father would be Rob in the office, Mr. Dillon in the deli, and a freshly minted Dad to me, sophisticated and fascinating in his white shirts and suits, his overcoat swinging open as we walked the sidewalks, his arm up, finger pointed, signaling for a taxi.

By three thirty a slight sensation of fatigue and boredom would begin to overtake me, but my mother was usually prompt at four o’clock. She’d arrive, shopping bags in tow, flushed and slightly breathless from her
day out.
I always had the sensation she’d been running. The shopping bags would be exotic: some had shiny pink and white stripes; others were black with gold lettering. My father would pretend horror at the excess, but I knew he didn’t really mind. Once, when they thought I’d left the room to go to the bathroom and were standing with their backs to the door, my mother took an item out and slipped it from its tissue wrap. I saw a fold of blue silk, a swath of delicate lace. My father goosed my mother, causing her to feint away and laugh.

When it was time to leave, my father would give me a tight hug, as if we were flying to Paris and he might not see us for months, even though he’d be right behind us on the six twenty. My mother and I would have to run to the train, and she would invariably fall asleep before we’d even emerged from the tunnel. I would peek into the shopping bags, taking tops off shoeboxes and fingering wool and silk and cotton. More often than not, I would fall asleep, too, resting my head on her shoulder or collapsing entirely onto her lap.

At dinnertime Charlotte appears wearing the jeans and the white shirt and sweater. She hugs her arms at the threshold of the kitchen. Her eyes look tired, and her nostrils are pink.

“Hi,” I say.

I am fighting with a loose potato peeler. Potatoes and salad are my jobs. My father stands over the stove, frying up three chicken breasts. He has his back to Charlotte and doesn’t turn when I say her name. His hair is standing up at the crown of his head, stuck that way when he pulled off his woolen cap. For most of the afternoon, he has been shoveling, racing and losing against the snow.

After leaving Charlotte’s room, I went downstairs to see what my father wanted, which was simply to make sure I wasn’t in Charlotte’s room. Then I went to my own room to wrap the couple of Christmas presents I had to give: a hat of blue and white stripes with a rolled edge for my father, and a pair of mittens for Jo, with whom I’d shortly go skiing. I still had to finish the beaded necklace for my grandmother. Bored, I wandered into the den, where I made a fire, feeding it with bits of wood from my father’s shop. The fire made me think of marshmallows, and I found a bag half-opened in a kitchen drawer. They were left over from the summer and were as hard as cardboard. I unwound a coat hanger and toasted a dozen, making myself slightly sick and spoiling my dinner. I had a rest on the sofa, legs splayed, staring at the fire until I didn’t feel sick anymore. I thought about how one tiny decision can change a life. A decision that takes only a split second to make. What if, that December afternoon ten days earlier, when my father had looked up from his workbench and said
Ready?
I’d answered
No.
That I had to go inside. That I was hungry or that I had to start my homework. If we hadn’t gone on that walk, there would be no Baby Doris now. She’d have died in the snow. We’d have heard about it from Marion or Sweetser, and I imagine we’d have been kind of horrified and saddened, the way you are when a crime takes place near where you live. Maybe my father and I would have felt guilty at not having taken a walk in the woods that day. There would be no Charlotte or Detective Warren, not in our lives anyway.

“Is Nicky your real name?” Charlotte asks me now in the kitchen.

I wait for my father to answer, to say
something,
and when he doesn’t, I say, “It’s short for Nicole.” My father still has his back to Charlotte, as if he doesn’t know she’s in the room. “Isn’t it, Dad?” I ask pointedly.

My father says nothing.

“Can I help?” Charlotte asks.

“Probably not,” I say.

“I’ll set the table then,” she says, looking around for a table.

“We don’t do it that way,” I explain quietly.

“Then . . . then I’ll just sit down.” Seemingly baffled by the exchange, Charlotte leaves the room.

“Why are you being this way?” I ask my father when she is gone.

“What way?” he replies, taking the chicken out of the pan with tongs.

“You know . . . rude,” I say.

“How are you doing with those potatoes?”

“Fine,”
I say, gouging into the white flesh.

Beyond the kitchen windows the wind whistles. The snow falls steadily for a minute and then whooshes hard against the glass. I think of Warren and wonder if he made it home to his two boys. I think of Baby Doris and wonder if she was collected as planned and where she is spending her first night away from the hospital.

Charlotte and my father and I sit in the den, with trays balanced on our knees, a skill my father and I have mastered but which seems to confound Charlotte. Her chicken skids across her plate, and her salad lies in bits on her lap. She picks the lettuce leaves off with delicate fingers. My father eats with determination, his face set in a mask. He will not acknowledge Charlotte’s presence beyond the absolutely necessary. I eat, torn between rapt attention for Charlotte and growing impatience with my father. Charlotte, defeated by dinner, eats little and seems the most uncomfortable of the three of us, her eyes barely rising from her plate, each swallow an effort. Color rises to and recedes from her face as if she were periodically flooded by waves of shame. I think that she will bolt from her seat. My father’s rigidity silences me as well. We dine to the sounds of the wind outside, and once or twice the lights flicker, reminding us that we could lose the power at any minute. After two winters in New Hampshire, my father and I have a sizable stash of candlesticks, half-burned candles, and flashlights at the ready. I like losing the power, because my father and I move into the den with its fireplace for the duration of the storm. We sleep in sleeping bags, and our ingenuity is tested in the areas of amusing ourselves and preparing meals. These episodes are cozy and warm, and I am always a little dismayed when the power—in the form of lights you’d forgotten had been left burning—comes back on with all the charm of a police spotlight.

“We’re definitely going to lose our power,” I say. “Charlotte and I can sleep in here. In sleeping bags.”

My father gives me a frosty look.

“I’ll be fine upstairs,” Charlotte says.

“No you won’t,” I say. “There won’t be any heat. The only heat will be from the fireplace. This one here.”

My father rises from his seat and carries his tray out to the kitchen. Charlotte sets down her knife and fork, clearly grateful to be done with the charade. She lays her head against the chair back and shuts her eyes. I stand and take her tray and mine and follow my father. He and I share dish duty—I one night, he the other—and I’m pretty sure it’s my night. But he’s already begun the chore.

“You’re being horrible,” I say.

“This is a fiasco,” he says.

When I return to the den, Charlotte still has her eyes shut, and I think she’s fallen asleep. I sit across from her in my father’s chair and study her. Her eyelids are bluish, and her mouth falls open slightly. I wonder where she’s been and what she’s been doing over the last ten days.

I think about how my father could so easily have told Warren that Charlotte was sleeping upstairs when Warren came to visit. And that would have been that. Charlotte, in my pajamas with the pink and blue bears, would have been handcuffed in our back hallway, walked out to the Jeep, and taken away. We might never have seen her again. My father would always tell me it was for the best, and I would always know that he was wrong.

I wonder where Warren keeps his handcuffs. I wonder if he wears a gun.

I pick up a book I’ve been reading off and on, more off than on, a sign that I’ll probably abandon it soon. I find my place and try to absorb a few sentences, but I can’t concentrate. I drop the book hard onto the table.

Charlotte opens her eyes.

“Do you want to see my room?” I ask.

She sits up, slightly dazed and blinking.

“I could show you a picture of my mother,” I add.

“Uh, sure,” she says.

We climb the stairs and enter my room, which I tidied while Charlotte was asleep. My pajamas and the empty Ring Ding package are nowhere to be seen. Charlotte seems to relax as soon as she crosses the threshold, as if my room were more familiar territory. She stands and admires the mural, or at least pretends to, and, oddly, it doesn’t seem quite as amateurish as it did earlier. I think of Steve with his fictitious phone number and wonder whom he surprised with a call.

“This is great,” Charlotte says with her hands tucked into the back pockets of her jeans, a posture that accentuates the bulge of her tummy. I scan the room and see it from the fresh eyes of a stranger: the desk with its shoebox of beads and coils of rawhide; the bed with the lavender-and-white quilt I brought with me from New York; the shelves of games I no longer play; the table beside the bed with its reading lamp and radio.
To Kill a Mockingbird
is on the floor. I have to read it for school.

Charlotte perches at the edge of the bed, the only place to sit apart from the desk chair.

“Have you ever worn your hair in a French braid?” she asks.

“Not really,” I say.

“I think you’d look good in a French braid. Do you want me to make you one?”

“Sure.”

“Sit here with me,” she says. She lifts her hands to my hair and draws it back over my ears. The delicate drift of her fingers makes me close my eyes. No one has touched me this way since my mother died.

“I’ll need a brush,” she says.

“It’s on the sill.”

I move to my desk and Charlotte stands behind me. She brushes my hair upward. The brushing, like the drift of the fingers, is soothing and maternal, and I fall into a dream state somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. For a time she works without talking.

“Are you an only child?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “I have two older brothers. My parents are French Canadian, very strict, very religious. My brothers are protective.”

“Do they know?”

“Oh God, no,” Charlotte says. “They’d kill me. For sure, my brothers would kill . . . well, you know, my boyfriend.”

Boyfriend.
The word sends a charge through me, much as
accomplice
did.

“Where did you live before?” she asks, drawing my hair into sections.