The Snow Garden (34 page)

     “Justice Parker?”

     Trying not to seem startled, Kathryn turned and got up from the bench at the sound of a nickname she hadn’t been called in almost a year. Kerry looked well—she acknowledged how freighted that phrase was even as she thought it. Her longtime friend resembled a 1950s Hollywood starlet on a photo shoot in the wilds of Africa. A barrette lifted her bangs off her forehead, and two flaps of platinum blonde hair fell to both shoulders. Her smile brightened her green eyes and widened to turn them into slits above her baby fat cheeks (“pouty,” Kerry would have called them). Her alabaster skin was unblemished and without pallor. But her safari jacket was loose fitting and her cargo pants sagged around the knees. Kathryn guessed the outfit had a dual purpose; it concealed curves she no longer wanted to advertise as well as the fanny pack on her waist, containing what Kathryn knew to be her regimen of protease inhibitors.

     They kept standing several feet apart, with tourists weaving around them; Kerry smiling warmly and expectantly, and Kathryn so stricken by Kerry’s evident health she wasn’t conscious of the emotions her face betrayed. “Sorry,” Kerry finally said. “I know you used to hate that nickname, but the whole drive here I was thinking about that time you walked out on Mr. Connors in the middle of history.”

     “Didn’t he tell me to shut up?”

     “ ’Cause you were totally mouthing off to him.”

     “Probably because he was going to test us on shit we hadn’t covered.”

     “See? Justice Parker!” Kerry gestured to Kathryn with one hand that swept the length of her body, indicating that some things never change, even though she was examining her old best friend as if they hadn’t seen each other in twenty years.

     Kathryn was surprised by the lump in her throat. Kerry closed the distance between them. Kathryn prepared herself for a hug that might mist her vision, but instead Kerry just tugged one of her hands. “Let’s walk. Keep warm.”

     They started down the pier, slowly, as if each was afraid of knocking the other off balance.

     “The number your mom gave me. I didn’t recognize it.”

     “I moved,” Kerry said with a faint, satisfied smile. “I got an apartment in the Richmond. It’s closer to school.”

     “San Francisco State?”

     “The one and only.”     

     “You’re not taking any of your dad’s classes, are you?”

     “Are you kidding? No. But it’s tough going around campus as Ernest Slater’s daughter. People think I’m going to kick their ass if they don’t use the recycling bins.”

     After several years working as a freelance journalist, during which time his pieces were slashed to death by editors reminding him that the sixties were over, Kerry’s father had returned to academic life as a professor of environmental ethics, and had once again taken up the task of turning young minds against every new real estate development from the Presidio to Palo Alto.

     “Remember the aquarium they were going to put in here?” Kerry asked.

     “Right. Those plastic tubes under the bay that people were going to walk through.”

     “And my dad got so pissed. Like the bay needs any more crap put in it.”

     They were almost to the end of the pier, where gift shops gave way to a few restaurants, the sun-streaked bay visible through their windows. Kathryn guessed that if the pier didn’t end, they would have kept walking. It was easier than standing face to face.

     “How’s Atherton?”

     “Great,” Kathryn answered flatly.

     Kerry would still know Kathryn well enough to know that she was bullshitting. But Kerry didn’t press, and as they slowed their steps, their absence of conversation bloomed like fog between them.

     “The other girls and I... we meet,” Kerry finally began. “Actually, we’re meeting tonight, if you want to come. If you hadn’t called me, I was going to call you,” she explained before she trailed off, staring down at her feet as she kicked the toe of one duck boot with the other.

     “Other girls?” Kathryn asked tightly.

     “Heather comes sometimes. And Callie. Do you remember hep
¹
She was Peter’s girlfriend.”

      When Kerry finally met Kathryn’s eyes, Kathryn realized the warmth of Kerry’s greeting and the ease with which she had started the conversation arose from her sense of camaraderie. Shared victimhood.

     “I’m negative,” Kathryn told her as gently as she could.

     For a brief second, Kathryn saw the sting of her words in Kerry’s eyes. Kerry managed to harden her ever-youthful face into an adult mask of resolve. She was nodding slightly to display her approval of this news.

     “It was stupid of me anyway. Asking you to hang out with all the girls Jono was cheating on you with. I just thought...”

     “It’s okay,” Kathryn said untruthfully, touching Kerry’s shoulder weakly before letting her arm fall to her side. Kathryn looked back at the long route they had taken because it was easier than taking in the sight of Kerry, who was unable to hide the fact that this news had devastated her.

     “You know about the window period?” Kerry asked.

     “Six months.”

     “Well, that’s like worst-case scenario. Usually, it’s more like three.” 

     “Kerry,” Kathryn said. “Did the TV people Call you?”

     Kerry grunted. “TV people? What movie is that from?”

     Kathryn said nothing.

     “
Poltergeist
,” Kerry answered herself with a smile, saw Kathryn didn’t wear one and bowed her head. ‘Yeah. They did.”

     “And?”

     “They’re paying,” Kerry said flatly. “I could use the money. I’ve got my parents paying my rent. And I’m on my father’s health plan still. It makes
me
uncomfortable.”

     “How much?”

     “Not a fortune, but I could use it for transition money while I try to get a night job.”

     Kerry’s intention was obvious, to make herself as small a burden on her family as possible, in case illness made her an unavoidable one. “What about you?” she asked.

     “I have the woman’s number....”

     “Heidi?”

     Bothered by the use of the producer’s first name, Kathryn faltered. ‘Yeah. Her. What do they want?”

     “A story. And I’m sure they’re going to ask the same question everyone’s asked.”

     Puzzled, Kathryn met Kerry’s eyes again.

     “Did he do it on purpose?” Kerry said.

     Kathryn held her gaze for as long as she could before bracing her arms across her chest in a tardy attempt to suppress a shiver.

     “Maxine’s is still here,” Kerry finally remarked, gesturing over Kathryn’s shoulder with her chin.

     “Really?”

     “Yeah. Maxine is long gone, but the store’s still right down there.” Kerry pointed to the old vintage clothing store they had visited as children. “Want to check it out?”

     Kathryn just nodded and followed Kerry to the entrance. She and Kerry separated as if they were strangers who had passed through the front door at the same time.

     The woman behind the counter couldn’t have been much older than they. She didn’t look up from her magazine as they hesitantly entered. The store was smaller and more cramped than Kathryn remembered. Classical music droned from hidden speakers; burgundy carpeting muffled their footfalls. The lamps resting on top of the overloaded racks were of every style that could be considered remotely antique. The place looked randomly put together, its stabs at elegance obvious and uncoordinated. The dresses swelling the racks weren’t the fairy-tale gowns they had been to two seven-year-old girls.

     Kerry was standing in front of a mannequin outfitted in a flowing taffeta gown that spilled off the platform, almost reaching the carpet. A plait of gold beads tapered from the breast down to the waist; patches of white indicated where a few had been stripped away by time or abuse. They caught the amber lamplight and sun slanting through the windows. Kerry fingered the hem of the dress in one hand, her lips slightly pursed and a furrow creasing the bridge of her nose.

     Kathryn was struck by the weary resignation with which Kerry regarded the thing of beauty, one fistful of it held in her hand. Kerry’s eyes traveled up the length of the dress. Her stooped posture beneath the baggy clothes made her seem like an old maid regarding a costume she could have donned in her youth.

     Kathryn had to remind herself that disease had not added years to Kerry. If it had brought wisdom, that was only because it brought the prospect of death to her youth. It flattened the eagerness from her voice. Her eyes, still their startling shade of green, seemed to see less.

     Kerry released the fistful of taffeta and backed up several steps, as if to take in the entire dress one last time, like a painting she was about to depart from in a museum.

     Kathryn tried to pinpoint the expression on Kerry’s face: she seemed wary and suspicious of the happiness the dress suggested. At eighteen, her expectations had become liabilities. When Kathryn’s vision started to fog over with tears, she turned and left the store, the entry bells jarring in her wake.

     Kathryn shuffled down a concrete extension of the pier that jutted like a finger into the bay. The winds assaulted her, bringing with them the sharp odor of salt water and the stench of sea death. She had won her battle against the first threat of tears by the time she heard Kerry’s footsteps on the concrete behind her. Kerry took up a post right beside her, and they both stared out at the sun’s last light falling on Alcatraz and the green humpback of Angel Island.

“Why’d you call me, Kathryn?"

     Kathryn couldn’t tell Kerry that one look from her mother across the dinner table had her feeling like a freak in her own home, that for some reason she had craved Kerry’s companionship because Kerry had known Jono better than she had allowed her parents to.

     “I didn’t mean to say it like that,” she finally said. “Back there, when I told you I was negative.”

     “What do you mean?”

     “It was like I was distancing myself from you or something. I don’t know.”

     “Maybe,” Kerry said. She was leaning forward on the railing, hands clasped in front of her, narrowing her eyes against the windy bay. “That’s your right, I guess.”

     “No. Kerry.. .”

     “Kathryn, just because my immune system is
compromised
now doesn’t mean I get to erase what I did.”

     “I didn’t call you so I could hear you say this. It’s not like you owe me an apology.”

     “That’s fair, I guess,” Kerry said. “Just so you know, that the worse things you could ever say to me—things you might have imagined saying to me a million times—I’ve already said them to myself. You know, the first thing my doctor said when my results came back was, ‘This isn't the death warrant it used to be.’ And you -know what I thought? It should be. But as strange as it sounds, that would have been too easy for me. I could have just curled up in my room, never taken any of my medicines, and thought, ‘Well this is what I get for doing eight balls every weekend and getting so high it didn’t even matter to me that I was sleeping with my best friend’s boyfriend.’”

     Kerry’s candor stung. “How is that easy?” Kathryn asked.

     “It’s harder to live every day with the knowledge of just how low you can go.”

     “You made a mistake.”

     “Kathryn, we never used to bullshit each other like this. That was like our claim to fame.”

     Kathryn met Kerry’s eyes. “This is not how you should pay.” 

     “This?” Kerry turned, resting her butt against the railing, her eyes moving past Kathryn to where the sun had almost completed its descent behind the Golden Gate. “This isn’t as bad as you might think.” Kerry’s words didn’t sound hollow, but her voice was tentative enough to suggest that she had forced herself to arrive at this conclusion recently and hadn’t quite found her footing. “I’m not scared of dying. And I might not. Not ’cause of this anyway. I get scared when I think about what kind of person I’m going to be after so many days of being jealous of anyone who’s well. Just looking at people on the street and trying not to hate them because their blood’s cleaner than mine. That could end up being a much worse illness.” Kerry’s eyes centered on Kathryn’s again. “Why’d you call me?”

     “Because I wanted to know if you were okay.”

     Kerry nodded and bowed her head. Kathryn couldn’t tell if she was disappointed with her answer, or content. She turned to the rail again. “I never said I was sorry, Kathryn.”

     “You don’t have to.”

     “Yeah I do. If not for you, then for me. Part of not dying is calling in a bunch of favors I don’t deserve. And also, it’s being glad that your friends aren’t sick.”

When she got home, Kathryn poured herself a glass of red wine from the bottle she hadn’t touched at Thanksgiving dinner. She made her way out onto the terrace that jutted over the hillside, its wooden patio furniture fenced in by sleek nautical rails. More often than not, her father had to scramble to remove the cushions before they could be torn free by fierce winds. This close to the ocean, sunbathing days were rare, and Kathryn saw that the cushions had been permanently removed, revealing blonde, salt-stained wood.

     She and Kerry had promised to start “communicating again,” whatever that meant. She sipped her wine, craving the drowsy buzz, as she watched the fog move in. Mist hugged the water under the bridge, and thick, gray tides sluggishly rolled in not far behind. Behind her, the big-screen television flickered in the living room, the rest of the house glowing with what Philip had dubbed "fog combat lighting.”

     She’d left the TV tuned to the Weather Channel and its endless footage of snow plows crawling down 1-95, Boston seen through a white, hazy, swirl, weather maps showing what looked like a giant purple omelet lying across the Eastern seaboard. Her mother had been right. She’d made it out just in time. The Thanksgiving Blow was unseasonable and unpredicted. But the sight of it made her strangely homesick for Atherton, and conjured up images of Randall enduring Thanksgiving dinner in his parents’ Park Avenue apartment. Making no effort to call her, just as she had made no effort to call him. With a jolt she realized she didn’t have his phone number at home.