Light on snow_ a novel - Anita Shreve [59]
I balance two trays in my hands and find Charlotte sitting on the sofa in what is rapidly becoming her spot. She has rolled the cuffs of the jeans and has my father’s sweater on over her own pink sweater. She looks as though she were playing him at a Halloween party. I set a tray in front of her. She examines it but makes no move to pick up a fork.
My father enters with his tray and the lantern, clearly taken aback to see Charlotte in his clothes. In the lantern light, the windows are black and reflective. I can see my face, distorted, in the old glass.
Charlotte lifts her fork and takes a restrained bite. I know she must be as hungry as I am, but her gestures are stiff and formal. I’m less restrained, and were it not for the power outage or my father’s painfully rigid silence, he almost certainly would tell me not to shovel my food.
What makes a family? I wonder. My father and I are technically a family, but it’s a word neither one of us would ever use. Yes, we are father and daughter, but because we were once members of a family that was torn apart, we think of ourselves now as half a family or a shadow family. As we sit there with our trays on our laps, however, I feel, or perhaps only imagine, a “family” consisting of my father, Charlotte, and me.
I imagine it because I want it. I want an older sister who will not be a replacement for my mother or Clara, but instead something in between. Someone who will tell me how to wear my hair or what to say to a boy, who might know how to dress. My father, Charlotte, and I do not have blood in common, but we are united by a person whose presence hovers in that room, who might be lying in the center of that room on warm, soft cushions.
“This is good,” Charlotte says.
My father shrugs.
The telephone rings, a harsh and foreign sound. I always forget that when the power is out, the telephone still works. For a moment none of us moves. I think about Detective Warren. I jump up. “I’ll get it,” I say.
I’m relieved when I hear Jo’s voice at the other end. “Hi,” I say.
“What are you doing?” Jo asks.
“Eating.”
“I’m so bored.”
I glance over into the den. Jo wouldn’t be so bored if she knew that the mother of the abandoned baby was sitting across from my father.
“This storm is a drag,” Jo says.
“Yeah.”
“We were going to the movies before this.”
“With who?”
“My cousins. You’re still coming skiing?”
“Yup,” I say.
“So what did you do all day?”
I took the mother of the abandoned baby into the woods and watched her go nuts.
“Nothing,” I say. “Wrapped a few presents.”
“Me, too.”
“I kind of have to go,” I say. “Call me later?”
“Sure,” Jo says.
I hang up the telephone. I stand a minute in the kitchen. I eat another piece of bacon. When I return to the den, Charlotte has finished her dinner and sits primly, as if waiting for instructions. My father finishes his meal.
Charlotte stands and removes my father’s tray from his hands and slips it under her own. I watch her walk out to the kitchen.
“What did Jo want?” my father asks.
“Nothing,” I say. “I don’t know why you do that.”
“Do what?” my father asks, though he knows perfectly well what I mean.
“Not talk to Charlotte. I don’t get it. Is it going to kill you to talk to her?”
“I hardly know her,” my father says.
“She doesn’t want to live here,” I say. “She keeps saying she wants to leave.”
“And as soon as we get plowed out, she will,” my father says, standing. “This isn’t a social occasion.”
“What would you know about social occasions?” I snap.
When I reach the kitchen, Charlotte is scraping the plates. I set the lantern on the stove. Charlotte’s hair is burnished gold in the light.
“Do you play chess?” I ask.
“Not really,” she says.
“You feel like toasting marshmallows?”
“In the fire?”
“Yes.”
“Um, not really. But you have some,” she says.
I remember how sick I felt yesterday. I can hear my father shoveling outside.
“But if you have another game or something, I’ll play it with you,” she adds.
“What did you used to do at night?” I