Light on snow_ a novel - Anita Shreve [48]
“You seem a lot better,” I say.
The golden-tinged toast swims in melted butter. I pour a glass of juice and take my tray to the den. After a couple of minutes Charlotte follows me.
She sits on the sofa and I in my chair, as if we had already established our familial positions. Her tray tilts for a second and the syrup drips onto the flannel of the pj’s. “Sorry,” she says, licking it off with her finger.
She holds her hair back with one hand as she bends over her plate. She cuts her toast with her fork in a frantic motion, scraping the plate. She has the slovenly ease of someone who’s eaten breakfast in the den with me for years.
“How many inches do you think we got?” she asks.
I glance out the window. “I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe three feet?”
“Good for the skiers,” she says.
“I’m going skiing after Christmas,” I say.
“Where?”
“Gunstock.”
“You’ll get to paint another mountain,” she says.
“I already bought the paint.”
Charlotte sits back, the tray still balanced on her knees. I look at my breakfast, hardly touched. My appetite has deserted me. I’m not used to this creature who can be heartbroken one minute and bursting with life the next.
“How long will it take to get plowed out?” she asks.
“I’m not sure,” I say. “We’re just about the last road the town gets to. It could take a day, maybe more.”
“That long,” she says, gazing out the window.
I don’t know whether this is good news or bad. I am curious about where Charlotte will go when she leaves us.
Without explanation, I stand and take my tray to the kitchen. I feel nervous in the room with Charlotte, worried that my father will come down and find Charlotte so at ease in our house. I climb the stairs and pause at my father’s door. I put my ear to the wood and can hear nothing. “Dad?” I call softly.
“Come in,” he says from the other side.
He is sitting fully dressed at the edge of the bed. He has on jeans and a navy sweater over a flannel shirt. He’s been pulling on his socks. His hair is matted at the sides and peaked at the top, like a screwy-looking bird in a Saturday-morning cartoon.
In the dim light I can see his bureau, covered with magazines, loose change, a balled handkerchief, a lone leather glove, and his wallet. In the corner is a chair that functions as a closet. It is piled high this morning with flannel shirts and jeans and a towel. On his bedside table are an alarm clock, a white mug, and a book about the Civil War. Also on the table are a candle in a candleholder and a flashlight. Just in case.
I take a step closer. “Are you okay?” I ask.
“Sure, why?”
“You didn’t come down.”
“I was up late last night.”
My eyes adjust to the gloom, and I notice that my father has little thickets of gray hair over his ears. Is this new?
“Still snowing?” he asks.
“Yup.”
My father stands, massaging his lower back. “I want to keep the path to the woodshed clear in case the power goes out.”
“I’ll do it,” I say.
My father raises an eyebrow. I never offer to help with chores I hate. He walks to the window and snaps up the shades. Though the light is still the dull gray of a storm, it reflects off the surface of a small photograph on the bureau. I take a step into the room so that I can see the picture.
It is of Clara, just a year old. It would have been taken shortly before the accident. In the picture she has on a royal blue sweater, but someone, possibly me, has wrapped my father’s navy scarf around her neck and put his ski cap over her head. An uneven fringe of bangs peeks out under the hat, and hair sticks out over her ears as well. Her eyes, unnaturally large, have taken on the color of the sweater. The light from the flash has caught her broad cheeks and nose, and they glow as if with an inner light. Her lower lip glistens pink. She seems delighted with her new getup and is smiling so that her top two teeth are showing. On her right eyebrow is a tiny red scab, the size of a pea.
It is a new photograph, which is to say an old photograph that has recently been put on the bureau. Though I seldom go