Light on snow_ a novel - Anita Shreve [43]
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