Light on snow_ a novel - Anita Shreve [82]
“Took all that time to get to your road. We’d just pulled up when we saw the Malibu.”
“It’s sad,” my father says.
“They’re all sad,” Warren says.
My father and I go out into the bright light. My father puts on his sunglasses. I hold up my hand to shade my eyes.
“What happened?” I ask.
“He asked me a lot of questions.”
“Did they have a two-way mirror?”
“Yes.”
“Did they have a bright light overhead?”
“It was just an ordinary room with a table and a couple of chairs.”
“And all you did was talk?”
“More or less,” my father says. He looks at me. “Why? What did you think was going to happen?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Something.”
We climb into the frigid truck. My father starts the engine and backs the truck out of the parking space. He merges cautiously into traffic. He pulls too late into the right-hand lane and cuts a driver off. The driver honks his horn, but my father seems not to hear it. His movements are slow, his eyes glassy. He stops at a red light.
“Do you think we’ll ever see Charlotte again?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” my father says.
The light changes but my father doesn’t move. The car behind us honks again. “The light’s green,” I say.
We leave the city of Concord, my father driving like a senior citizen, to go back to our remote house at the edge of the woods. My father is lost in thought or replaying scenes in his head or thinking about what Detective Warren once said about needing to return to the places that moved us. I watch the road the way you might with a driver who seems likely to fall asleep. Both lanes are open, and the traffic is moving at a good clip. It is Christmas Eve, and everyone has somewhere to be.
We drive through town on our way home from Concord. I no longer have to tell my father to pay attention to the lights. He stops in front of Remy’s and says he has to get a few items on Grammie’s list. Each year, my grandmother calls ahead to tell my father what ingredients she’ll need for the Christmas Eve meal. When she arrives she hits the ground cooking.
I wait in the truck for the six or seven minutes it takes my father to find what he needs. He’s the fastest shopper in southern New Hampshire. I still have sleep on my face and I need a shower. I haven’t brushed my teeth since breakfast the day before. But I am content to sit in the truck, my feet upon the dash, and watch people scurry to Remy’s or to Sweetser’s or to the basement of the church where the Congregationalists are holding their annual Day-Before-Christmas Fair. Even men are taking baby steps on the slippery sidewalk, holding their arms out for balance. I see Mrs. Kelly, the mother of my friend Roger, on her way to the post office. I see Mrs. Trisk, my Spanish teacher, and I take my feet off the dash. My father comes out of Remy’s, paper bag in hand, the minor miracle of a newspaper sticking out of the top. He sets the groceries on the seat between us and tosses me a devil’s food whoopie pie. Muriel’s sister makes them in the mornings, and they’re usually gone by ten a.m. My father unwraps one for himself and bites into it as he backs the truck into traffic.
“Can we visit Charlotte in jail?” I ask, licking the cream that has squished out the sides of the pie.
“We’ll try,” my father says.
“Can I bring her the necklace?”
“I don’t know the rules.”
We pass the three stately houses, Serenity Carpets, the fire department.
“Listen,” my father says. “I’m going to tell you two rules that you must never break.”
I stop all movement, my tongue attached to the whoopie pie as if frozen to it.
“Never have unprotected sex,” he says, pausing a moment to let this sink in. “And never, ever get into a car with a driver who’s been drinking, including yourself.”
These rules are spoken in a stern parental voice. I’m positive that the word sex has never before been said between us.
I slip my tongue back into my mouth. What brought this on? I wonder. And then I get it. That my father has delivered this pronouncement less than three hours after I revealed I got my period cannot be coincidence.