The Sudden Weight of Snow (5 page)

I wore my jeans looser, which wasn’t difficult with my figure, or lack thereof. The waistband of my jeans hung on the bone handles of my hips. My sweater was cropped and whenever I moved there was only skin in the place where a belt might have been between shirt and jeans. Nothing holding my jeans up or holding me in.

We worked meticulously on our faces, Krista convincing me they needed a lot of help. A light shadow beneath the brow, darker shade in the crease, liner as a frame for the eye. Mascara on the top lashes only, on the bottom lashes it was prone to smudging and would look cheap. Cheeks hollowed out with blush. The amount of effort put into covering our lips baffled me but I followed Krista’s lead. Lips lined first, then filled in with lipstick, blotted, smeared, blotted again, glossed iridescent. Lips of many layers. If you bit into those lips, you would leave marks. The mark of ridges in layers of colour and gloss, a pink stain on teeth. We refined our faces until I was sure my mother had fallen asleep.

My mother slept as though night descended for her own personal benefit, designed to plunge only her into darkness, a place where all her senses were wiped black and nothing could reach her. When we were children, this frightened Nick and me. We would come to her in the night or early morning, and if Vera was asleep, she was gone from us – unwakable even when we bounced together at the foot of her bed, using her legs as a hurdle. It wasn’t until exactly seven and a half hours
had passed that she would sit up in bed, suddenly and irrevocably awake. By the time I was seventeen, Vera’s deep sleep was a boon. Her sleep was my freedom and I was sure that I could feel it when it settled on the house. The feeling of old wood contracting, of ground shifting. Once it fell, we could walk right out of the house, no need for cunning.

The air hit us as soon as we stepped out the door, a slow, cold bank. It was always thick in November, before it snowed, and hung in the fields like sheer fabric. The mill made the air like that. The smoke was laced with a smell I identified as wood processing and the lingering scent of trees divided and stripped to the grain. The mill yard was always lit and, although it was out on the highway, its light seeped into the air and everything glowed pink. It could’ve been beautiful, if you didn’t know what it was from. The valley did things to the air as well. In the summer it would hold heat, which would push the clouds out, keep the valley arid and light. In the winter, cold would settle on the valley floor and the air would clot up until there were banks of it, surface upon surface of drafts, woodsmoke.

“Fuck, it’s cold,” Krista said, digging her hands into the pockets of her jacket, tossing her hair around her face like a scarf as we started down the driveway toward the road.

“Yeah, and those jeans are going to cut off the blood flow to that heart-shaped ass.”

“Uh, thanks, Mom.”

“Like your mom would say that. She’d say, ‘Can’t you get ’em any tighter, honey?’ ”

“Granted.”

The road was wet, no ice yet but dense, wet cold. I didn’t
want to walk to the party. It was across town, up on the hill where the people with money lived. “Hey,” I called to Krista, who was already walking, or mincing, her steps short and quick in the jeans. “Let’s take the bikes.”

“The bikes? Why would we do that?”

“Because it’s so cold. We’ll get there faster on bikes – and we’ll be warm by the time we do.” I turned back to the shed at the end of the driveway, my mind made up.

Krista yelled at me in a whisper clenched between teeth. “Harper, are you crazy? We can’t ride bikes to a party. Numero uno, my jeans will split. Numero twono, hello? We will look so cool arriving on bicycles. I can hardly wait for
that
.”

“We’ll bike into town, park them, and walk to 7-E to find a ride,” I said with finality. “We bike into town or I’m not going.”

We were used to riding bikes at night. In the summer, we rode to the subdivisions on the hill, where the houses were separated by narrow corridors of lawn. Backyards full of pools. Motion-sensor lights hadn’t gained popularity yet and these were people whose pets were clean and quiet, kept inside at night. The pools lay ready to be entered, fences and plastic covers the only things keeping us out. We had learned trees and fences already, ways to climb seemingly flat surfaces, ways to land with the minimum sting to the soles of feet. Pool covers were easily folded back or rolled up. It was the undressing that was the hardest part. Even though we wore only shorts over our bathing suits to straddle fences, and sandals for grip, taking those off was a final statement: we’re going in; if we get caught, we’ll be close to naked. We both prided ourselves on our stealth
and ability to slip into water without a sound. The feeling of pool water then, in those moments of heightened awareness of slight movement and the possibility of lights, was like nothing else. The water, a smooth secret on every inch of skin.

That night, we got on the bikes – one mine, one Nick’s – and pedalled to the top of a hill, bracing ourselves against the cold. The road led away from my house like a ribbon unrolling in either direction. One direction led to town. The other eventually met the highway and led out. My hair whipped back from my face and I could feel the ends meeting violently behind me, forming knots. The air was as sharp as pins on my cheeks and uncovered hands.

The 7-Eleven was new in Sawmill Creek. It had arrived on my fifteenth birthday, erected on the strip of town closest to the highway. Across the street there was a Husky gas station and diner. I had memories of Husky diners and they all involved Jim Harper. On our road trips, Vera liked to prepare food in the van to save money. She had some kind of kitchen rigged up – a cooler, milk crates full of plastic plates and cutlery, blue jugs of water, orange plastic sinks. Jim had even built a storage space into the van that held all these things together and a makeshift counter. It was Vera who did the grocery shopping, Nick in the safety seat of the cart, me in the back. She placed the food around my limbs. The last thing in was always ice for the cooler. Vera preferred a block; it didn’t melt as fast. To me, grocery stores are still this: the feeling of the metal mesh of the grocery cart beneath my backside, holding ice between my legs.

Jim, on the other hand, was a great crusader for the
integrity of roadside diners. Ma-and-Pa diners were the best – the backbone of the road, and thus the spine of the North American landscape – however, Husky’s presence right across the continent impressed him. He felt a kinship with truck drivers through their shared appreciation for the lure of the road. Even as a kid, I could tell that the truckers felt uncomfortable when Jim waxed poetic about this. I was most often too happy with the grilled-cheese sandwich and fries that my father always let me order to be concerned for long though. Collecting paper Husky placemats on each of our trips, I traced our routes along the map of Canada, hearts on the places where my parents got along, Xs on the places where they fought.

Sawmill Creek did not register on the Husky-placemat map of Canada. It was on the way to and from places that made it onto the map and towns that didn’t, but were quainter and had more endearing name – Cherryville, Summerland, Peachland. The name Sawmill Creek had its own charm. We did have a huge carving of a lumberjack wielding a chainsaw to welcome people to town, but when the tourists found out that there was nothing there but dead boring main street and a dark mall, they moved on. On their way to bigger lakes, vineyards, and golf courses, they were able to pull off the highway, fill up with gas and eat without ever having to see the town that extended past the strip. They could get back into their cars and never get caught in the back roads that tattooed the landscape in grids, mapping out fields and orchards in never-ending squares.

The 7-Eleven in Sawmill was a meeting place for those without cars and those looking for passengers. A terminal
where everyone’s destination was a party. When there were no parties to be found, the 7-E become a destination in itself. Cars were parked and kids stood around in packs, blocking the No Loitering sign. Girls fidgeted and fixed their hair, glancing over their shoulders as though any minute a stranger from out of town would appear on the edge of the parking lot to whisk them away. Guys shuffled their feet, arranged their chests and called out to each other in false baritones. In the summer, the clerks would come out, walk around the side of the building for the hose, and spray us full force with water until we got back into our cars and drove away. Even 7-Eleven clerks wouldn’t do that to us in the winter. We couldn’t stand around outside for long in November, regardless.

Krista and I parked the bikes between a fence and hedge at a house around the corner from the 7-E. Krista looked like she was on fire, red curls tangled in a spray around her face, her cheeks and forehead a bright, glazed pink. “Fuck, these jeans are frozen to me,” she said, walking toward the 7-Eleven, legs stiff and nearly straight. I opened my jacket and tried to warm myself, wrapping my arms around my waist to cover the space between sweater and low-slung jeans. Air had shot up under the hem of my jacket, a band of cold on the exposed skin as though painted with a brush dipped in water. The two of us walked in silence till we hit the parking lot. Then we had to start looking casual.

“Whose party did you say it was?”

“Jeff’s. His parents are in Van. Don’t turn around now, I think that’s Rob’s car.”

“You know the sound of his car?” The car cut in front of us
to pull into a space. Rob, Matt, and Mike got out, spitting tobacco and smirking.

“You ladies ride your horses over?”

“Ha. Funny. Look, I’m laughing,” Krista replied and walked past them into the store. I followed. We bought coffee to warm our hands, a carton of orange juice for mix, then loitered near the magazine rack. Two of the guys came up behind us and literally breathed down our necks. I turned around abruptly and glared. Krista turned around slowly, smiling, her expression belying her words. “And what the hell do you think you’re doing?” she purred.

“Oohhh,” one of the guys raised his eyebrow. “Language, ladies. That’s not what they teach you in church, is it?” I didn’t know how to deal with banter, the hollow, slightly malicious tone of it. Nothing was neutral to me, nothing simple or kind. A kind of battlefield, the area in front of that magazine rack, those smirking faces and bodies of boys surrounding us.

“You guys are going to Jeff’s, right?” I asked, pulling their eyes off Krista as they adjusted the shoulders of sweatshirts, tugged at the brims of caps.

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Give us a ride. Let’s get out of here.”

Krista looked at me like I had broken some kind of rule. She was crude and straightforward when she thought it would be shocking, coy and evasive otherwise. I didn’t know the nuances of that language.

We started drinking in the back seat, perched on laps, too many hands everywhere. The guys had guy drink – cans of O’Keefe Extra Old Stock, rye. We had a carton of orange juice,
a two-sixer of vodka and large Styrofoam cups, recently emptied of coffee. Half-and-half, straight down. We plugged our noses and closed our eyes against the burn of alcohol, knew when it went down because of the burn down our throats, the warmth expanding in our stomachs. The party was twenty minutes away in Jeff’s parents’ large, pastel-stuccoed house on the hill. By the time we got there, Krista and I were laughing fire out of our noses. I clutched the door handle as I lifted myself from the car, the air welcoming me, light and electric and suddenly warm. The house twinkled with lights and sound. A wall of noise hit us when we opened the door.

We left our shoes in a pile near the door and held our coats in front of us as we pushed into the house. The guys kept their shoes on and left us as soon as they got in the door. We watched their shoulders part the crowd, their chins raised and jutted in a greeting to other guys. Then the house swallowed them, other faces and bodies turning toward and away from Krista and me in their wake. All familiar faces, no one I wanted to talk to.

Krista and I threw our coats on a bed in a spare room and made our way into the kitchen hugging juice and vodka to our chests. We opened cupboards, looking for glasses, and finally pulled two out of the dishwasher that was partially open, a ball cap perched on one of the racks. The kitchen was already smelling old with smoke. Two guys stood over the stove, one holding knives against the burner and then heating a ball of hash with them, the other holding a two-litre pop bottle with the bottom cut off, ready to take in the fumes. Girls lined the countertops, bare legs dangling out from tight denim skirts,
hands on their drinks or in their hair, touching each other’s shoulders and knees quickly, teasing. The stench of hash was thick in the air, the laughter of girls high and shrill.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said, leaning into Krista. She nodded back. We each had two huge glasses of vodka and orange. We’d be fine. We left the empty bottle and carton in the sink with beer cans, ashes, and waterlogged bits of food. We circled the house, gulping down our drinks, steadying ourselves against walls and pieces of furniture. Everything in the house was cream- and peach-coloured, gleaming with glass and brass fixtures. I suspected that before it had filled up with smoking, sweating high school students the house had smelled strongly of vanilla.