Light on snow_ a novel - Anita Shreve [56]
I wait for Charlotte to catch up. “That’s it,” I say, pointing.
Charlotte stands a minute, trying to slow her breathing. I wait to see what she will do. My job is done. I am simply the guide. I have no place here except to show her the way home.
Charlotte moves forward and I follow, our positions now reversed. A wind bends the tops of the pines, sending snow dust to the ground.
Charlotte slips under the orange tape.
The footprints with their outlines of red paint have been erased. The mound of snow might be a bed for a burrowing animal. I refuse to think about how a baby might have lain here covered, as if with a heaping pile of quilts.
Charlotte walks to the center and kneels. She has on the purple-and-white-striped hat I gave her; she’s taken off the mittens already. Kneeling in the snow in snowshoes is always awkward at best. They bend her feet and dig in at the small of her back.
She scoops up snow and brings it to her face. She covers her mouth and nose and eyes. She holds it there for what seems like minutes. It begins to melt from the warmth of her face and dribbles off her chin. She is crying, her shoulders shaking. She makes a quick feline movement and lies over the snow, her face buried.
I stand outside the enclosure. When she has not moved in some time, I say her name. “Charlotte?”
She snaps back up onto her knees and begins to cuff the snow. First with her right hand and then with her left. Right, left. Right, left. Right, left. Angry swipes accompanied by words I can’t at first make out. I think she’s simply groaning or crying, but then I hear the word stupid. And after that, the words could I. She bends forward and slaps at the snow in a frenzy. I hear her say, God, God, God.
I did not imagine this. I pictured a quiet scene, satisfying and healing. Not this fury. Not this hurtling grief.
Charlotte turns and sits on the snow, her legs to one side, her hands braced behind her. Her face is crimson and wet.
I wait, feeling as helpless as I ever have.
“God,” she says. Not to me, and not to any god she might or might not believe in. She lifts her face to the sky.
She leans forward and crosses her arms over her chest. She bends her head, as if closing in on herself. She remains that way for five, maybe ten minutes, without moving.
“Charlotte?” I ask.
She glances up and seems surprised to see me there. She pushes her hair off her face.
“I think we’d better go back,” I say.
With difficulty, she stands. She stumbles on the snowshoes. She leaves the enclosure, slipping under the tape. I see that she has left the purple-and-white hat behind, but I don’t want to ask her to go back for it.
“You walk in front this time,” I say. “The tracks will be easy to follow. I’ll let you know if you go wrong.”
Her face is scratched and chapped. The bruise on her chin from when she hit the corner of the table is turning yellow and green. She looks as though she’s been beaten up. I slip back to get the hat and stuff it into my pocket. I watch the back of her blue parka as I follow her. She wipes her nose on her sleeve, which can’t be much help. I think about her scratched face and worry that she might have given herself frostbite when she put her face in the snow.
Charlotte moves slowly, and it’s hard not to step on her snowshoes. I don’t want to lead, however, because I’m afraid she might simply lie down or wander off. I wonder at her rage and grief. Was it rage at herself or at the man who left the baby there? Not a man, a boy. A college boy. A student, like herself. She is only nineteen. Is a nineteen-year-old a girl or a woman? I wonder. A boy or a man?
At the place where I took the wrong turn, I call ahead to her and tell her which is the correct path. She’s an automaton on bamboo, proceeding forward because there isn’t any other alternative. If she stops she’ll lie down and curl up in the snow, and I’ll never get her to stand up. She stumbles