Light on snow_ a novel - Anita Shreve [61]
“So then you told him?” I asked.
“I did,” she says.
“And what did he say?”
“He was shocked at first and kept asking how this could have happened. We had always been pretty careful.” She glances at me to see whether or not I know what being careful means. I nod, though I’m a little fuzzy on the details.
“He paced a lot,” she says. “Sometimes he’d say, ‘What are we going to do?’ and then he’d ask me how I was. He wasn’t happy about it. I think he could see his whole life draining away.”
I hate James even more than I did before. “But what about your life?” I ask. “Did he care about that?”
“He cared,” she says, “of course he cared. He didn’t ask me to get rid of the baby. He’s Catholic, too, and I think he knew enough not to ask me to do that. But he did talk about giving the baby up when it was born. He just kept saying, ‘We’ll take this one step at a time.’” She stops for a moment and arches her back. I have the feeling that it’s hurting her. “The morning sickness goes away, and it feels . . . it just feels . . . so wonderful, I can’t explain it. You feel the baby kick,” she says. “It’s an inside tickle, like gas bubbles moving around. But different. Everything is different from anything you’ve ever felt before. And you feel . . . full. Just full.” She smiles. “Even though you’re always hungry. I craved doughnuts most of all. Nothing on them, just the plain, but hot, with a crispy outside. I ate them with milk.”
Charlotte stretches her legs in front of her and leans back, propping herself up with her elbows. She yawns. “It’ll be different for you,” she says, looking at me. “It will be wonderful and perfect, and it won’t have a bad ending. I’m sure of that.”
Charlotte yawns again. “Thank you for taking me to the place,” she says. “I’m sorry it got you in trouble with your dad.”
“That’s okay,” I say. “He’ll get over it.”
I sit to one side of the fire, poking it from time to time to make the flames burn brighter. I put on another log. I remember that I still need to finish my grandmother’s necklace.
I reach for the flashlight and stand. “I have to go up to my room,” I tell Charlotte, “and get my beads.”
Charlotte yawns again. “The fire is making me sleepy.”
I could find my way without a flashlight, but I use it anyway. I locate the shoebox of beads and rawhide and bring it down to the den. I set it near the hearth so that I can distinguish the beads in the firelight. I rummage around in the box to find a crimp.
“That’s beautiful,” Charlotte says.
“It’s for my grandmother.”
The necklace has six round black Kenyan beads with a silver pendant in the center.
“I’d wear that,” Charlotte says. “You must have a very cool grandmother.”
Charlotte watches me fuss with the crimp, always the hardest part of making a necklace. “I have to fit this rawhide into this little thingy here,” I say, “and then clamp it down so the rawhide won’t come out. This makes the catch.”
“Oh,” she says.
I slide the end of the fine rawhide into the crimp. I use the crimper to flatten it. When I’m done, I pull on the rawhide to make sure the crimp worked. The rawhide springs free. “Crap,” I say.
I search through the beads in my box for another crimp. I might have one in my desk drawer upstairs, but I don’t want to have to go all the way up there again.
The beads in the box flicker and catch the firelight. I have glass pony beads and crow beads, seed beads and Bali silver beads. “What’s this one?” Charlotte asks, holding a blue glass bead up to the light.
“It’s Czechoslovakian. It’s a fire-polished bead.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s beautiful,” she says.
“You should see it in the daylight. Do you want it?”
“Oh, no,” she says, dropping the bead into the box.
I take it out again. “I have six of them,” I say. “You could make a necklace, too.”
“But they’re your beads,” Charlotte says.
“I have a lot of beads,” I say.
Charlotte looks at me and tilts her head the way she often does. “Thanks,” she says.
I hand her a coil