Light on snow_ a novel - Anita Shreve [36]
“I think I really need to sleep,” she says, giving her nose a final tidying.
“We have a guest room,” I say. “For my grandmother. She’s coming for Christmas. You can close the door and sleep there.”
“Your father won’t mind?”
“No,” I say with no authority whatsoever.
She rises up from the couch, sloughing off the sweater and the throw. I lead her to the back stairs. She walks haltingly and uses the banister to pull herself up. She follows me to a room with a double bed covered with a white spread that used to be on my parents’ bed years ago. I take a quilt from the closet and lay it as best I can over the coverlet. Beside the bed is a small table with a lamp on it, and to its right a bureau with a mirror. In another corner is a rocking chair, and beside that an especially bright lamp that my father set up so that my grandmother can sit and read when she visits. The woman moves directly to the bed, draws back the covers, and lies down at once.
“I’ll come back in a while and see if you’re all right,” I say.
The woman’s eyes are closed, and she seems already to have fallen asleep.
Reluctantly I turn and leave. I shut the door with exaggerated care. I sit on the bottom step for a time—for the time it would take to give the area nearest to the house a really good shoveling—and then I walk over to the barn.
“I’ve put her in the guest room,” I say.
My father stands back from the table saw. “I don’t want you talking to her,” he says, lowering his safety goggles. “I thought I made that clear.”
I shrug.
“As soon as this lets up, I’m going to insist that she leave. You can’t be part of this, Nicky.”
“You mean you can’t be part of this.”
“No, I mean you,” he says, pointing a finger. “This is serious business. And you’re not to say a word to anyone. Not now. Not ever. Do you understand?”
I turn and leave my father’s shop before he can get going on a lecture. I fetch the tray from the den, take it into the kitchen, and wash the dishes. I finish off the soup, spooning it directly from the saucepan. I climb the stairs and stand outside the guest room, listening for a telltale sound, any sound with which to weave a story. Disappointed, I walk into my room and sit at my desk and try to work on the beaded necklace for my grandmother—a complicated and ambitious project with a sculpted pendant—but I am jumpy and can’t make my fingers do what I want them to do. From time to time I move to the window and look out at the snow and am comforted by the whiteout and the wind that has come up, signaling a blizzard. Clothes might be a problem, I am thinking, but she can wear my father’s shirts. Her jeans will dry soon enough. Fitful, I lie on my bed and stare up at the ceiling and imagine a week during which Charlotte will stay with us. I see the two of us sitting in various cozy positions, my father conveniently gone, while she tells me her fabulous and lurid tale.
I sit up. I have an idea.
I collect the hair dryer from the upstairs bathroom and take it downstairs. I lift the jeans from the hook in the back hallway and hang them instead on the hook on the back of the bathroom door. The jeans are wet all along the inner thighs. I hold out the legs and aim the dryer the way I’ve had to do with T-shirts, the ones that come back from the Laundromat slightly damp because of my father’s impatience to “get going.”
The heavy denim takes longer to dry than I think it should, and I hope I’m not waking Charlotte with the sound. I don’t want her to catch me doing this; I simply want her to find her clothes warm and nicely folded.
When I turn off the hair dryer, I hear knocking at the back door.
Another customer? Impossible, I think. We barely got up the road ourselves.
I step out of the bathroom and see a flash of red in the window of the door. I freeze in place, like a statue in a child’s game. I suck in my breath. I have no choice but to walk forward and open the door.
“Nicky,” Warren says, stepping inside.
There’s a staccato of stomped feet, snow falling to the floor. “Your father around?” he asks.
A silent screech rings in