Light on snow_ a novel - Anita Shreve [72]
She has removed my father’s clothes and has on her wrinkled white blouse and jeans. Her face is pink and creased with sleep. Her hair, uncombed, separates at one ear. She hugs her arms. “I rolled the bags,” she says.
In the other doorway, as if summoned, my father appears as well. His hair is spiked in all directions. He has on a maroon sweatshirt and a pair of tan moccasins, frayed at the heel. For a moment all I can think about is my father and Charlotte in the kitchen together last night.
“Hi,” he says. He looks the same as he did yesterday. I realize I’ve been expecting a different father, a different Dad.
“Good morning,” he says to Charlotte.
“Good morning,” she says back to him.
I glance from Charlotte to my father and back again. Do I see an acknowledgment pass between them, or do I only imagine it?
“Pancakes,” my father says. “Good. I’m starved.”
He takes the pot from under the Mr. Coffee and fills it with water.
“What can I do?” Charlotte asks.
“Nothing, really,” I say. I pause. I have an idea.
“Watch these,” I say to my father, indicating the frying pan. “I just put them in. I’ll be right back. Charlotte, come with me.”
Charlotte follows me into the front room, lit just as bright as the other rooms. I touch a walnut dining table—oval and beautifully finished.
“What are we doing?” she asks.
“We’re going to lift this off and carry it into the kitchen,” I say. “Take that end.”
Together Charlotte and I maneuver the tabletop through the kitchen door and prop it up against the cabinets.
My father studies us, spatula in hand.
Charlotte walks with me to the front room again and helps me bring the bottom structure into the kitchen. We set that down as well and then lift the tabletop onto it. The table takes up most of the kitchen. For us to be able to cook and wash dishes, a good third of it will have to stick out into the passageway between the den and the back hallway. But we have a table in the kitchen.
“Well,” my father says.
I set the plates and the silverware and glasses on the table and store the trays over the fridge. I bring out two chairs from the front room and get the third from my bedroom. I pour orange juice in glasses and fill a white pitcher with raspberry syrup.
My father sits at the head of the table, Charlotte and I across from each other. For a few seconds the three of us look at one another and at the stack of pancakes, as if we are a family pondering whether or not to say grace. Sitting at a table in our kitchen feels both strange and familiar. It is a simple thing, but my father and I have gone a long time without it.
I look at the place on the kitchen floor where Charlotte was sitting last night. I remember the clink of ice cubes, the small circle of light from the lantern. I remember all these sights and sounds, but the words I heard last night seem part of a dream.
“These are good,” Charlotte says.
I pick up my fork and take a bite. I decide I like having my plate on a stable surface, being able to shift my legs while eating. I enjoy the sight of the small white pitcher of raspberry syrup against the dark wood. For the second time that day, I wish I had a camera.
“This is a beautiful table,” Charlotte says after a time.
“My father taught me the rudiments of carpentry when I was fourteen,” my father says. “I helped him build a house.”
I didn’t know this fact. I examine my father. There might be whole universes of facts about him I don’t know. “When’s Grammie’s plane?” I ask.
“Two thirty,” my father says.
I stir my hot chocolate. The marshmallows are little cardboard pellets. I know that if I drink the cocoa, I’ll be sick.
“You have a present for her?” my father asks.
“I made her a necklace,” I say.
I hear a sound that at first I can’t identify. I hold my breath and listen. The sound is faint—a motor, but more than a motor, a motor that grinds and then scrapes, grinds and then scrapes. I set down my spoon. It’s a sound as unwelcome in that still and silent world as a tank rolling into a village it’s about to level.