Light on snow_ a novel - Anita Shreve [41]
“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.
“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.
Two 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