Light on snow_ a novel - Anita Shreve [76]
He unzips his jacket, tosses it to the bench. “I’d like to think I would have.”
“Well, if you don’t do something now,” I yell, “they’re going to put her in jail. She’ll never get her baby back.”
“Is that what this is all about?” my father asks, kicking off his boots.
“No,” I say. “It’s about saving Charlotte.”
I’m vaguely aware of an exaggerated sense of drama, of a language my father and I never use. “You have to do the right thing,” I say evenly. “You just have to.”
“Nothing I can say will make any difference at all.”
I glance down at the necklace in my hands. I whip it as hard as I can in his direction.
The necklace hits him in the jaw. From the way he brings his hand to his cheek, I can tell that it stings. “Nicky,” he says, more bewildered than angry.
“Charlotte made that,” I say. “And now she’ll never have it. So you have it.”
My father takes a step forward, but I hold my ground. He removes his hand from his cheek. There’s a red mark where the necklace hit him. “Go to your room,” he says.
“No.”
“That’s enough,” he says, his voice more stern now.
“No, I won’t go to my room,” I say, “and there’s nothing you can do to make me.”
And suddenly I know that this is true. There’s nothing my father can do to make me go to my room. The realization is both exhilarating and terrifying.
“You’re just weak, you know that?” I say, putting my hands on my hips. “You’re afraid to go to the police station. You’re afraid to go anywhere. You just hide from the world.”
“Nicky, don’t,” he says.
“You just retreat from the world like a coward.” A thrilling kind of terror runs along my spine. I have never spoken to my father like this.
“There are reasons,” he says.
“Oh really?” I ask. “Well, just in case you want to know, I lost my mother and sister, too.”
My father briefly shuts his eyes. I wait for his face to close up on me in that terrible way it does—the eyes vacant, seeing only images from the past. For a time neither of us says a word.
“I know you did,” he says.
“You’re not living a normal life, Dad.”
“I do the best I can.”
I thrust my face forward. “But I don’t have a normal life,” I say. “How do you think it feels to be me? No friends to the house. No TV. We never go anywhere. You never answer the phone. We didn’t even have a phone for six months because you didn’t want to talk to anyone. And why did you give that Steve guy the wrong number, huh? Because you didn’t want him calling you. That’s sick, Dad. It’s just sick.”
“You want too much,” he says.
“I just want my life back! Is that too much to ask?” I don’t want to be crying—it ruins all arguments—but I am.
“You can’t have that life back,” he says.
I’ve gone too far—I know I have—but I can’t stop myself. “I could have some life at least,” I protest.
My father turns to look out the window. He puts a hand to the woodwork to support his weight. “A hundred times I’ve regretted the move,” he says.
“We could have stayed in New York,” I say.
“You were young, and I thought you’d get over it quickly.”
“Well, I didn’t,” I say.
“I always thought you were doing pretty well,” he says.
“I just pretend,” I say. “For your sake.”
He turns to me, surprised now. “You pretend?” he asks. “All this time you’ve been pretending?”
“So you wouldn’t be sad,” I say. “I can’t stand it when you’re sad.”
My father bites the inside of his cheek. I can see that I’ve hurt him.
“Are you just trying to stay sad?” I ask. “To hold on to Mom and Clara?”
My father doesn’t answer me.
“Because, Dad, here’s the thing,” I say. “I can’t take care of you anymore!”
My father looks away. A white noise rushes into my ears. With deliberately slow movements he puts his boots back on and reaches for his jacket. In three strides he is out the door.
I fall onto the bench, lightheaded and breathless.
I won’t run after my father, I decide.
The sun beats in through the windows of the back hallway. It has grown warm with the solar heat. My socks are soaked at the soles, and I take them off.
I won’t apologize.
I pick up the necklace and hoist myself up the banister of the stairs as if I weighed