Light on snow_ a novel - Anita Shreve [83]
In years to come, through all the noise, these are the two rules I will remember.
My father stares straight ahead, as if he hadn’t said a word.
“Okay,” I say in a small voice.
His face visibly relaxes. After a minute I dare to take another bite of the whoopie pie. When I’m finished, I glance out the window and see that something has happened to the snow. It has melted and then frozen again into fine crystals that sparkle on every surface. I lick my thumbs and forefingers, put them together, and make a clicking sound.
“What are you doing?” my father asks.
“I’m taking pictures,” I say. “I’ve been doing it all day.”
“What are you photographing?”
“Just the snow,” I say. “The shapes it makes. The way it lies on things. Like trees. And fences. The way it twinkles. The way it looks like diamonds.”
We pass the cottage with its evidence of boys. A sled is propped against the front porch. I notice a wreath on a door. I peer into the windows. I think I see a fireplace, though maybe I only imagine it. In the driveway at the side of the house, a small gray car is stuck. A woman is inside it, and with her is a boy who looks about eight years old. As we pass by I can hear the engine revving, the wheels spinning.
My father pulls to the side of the road and stops. He opens his door and steps down onto the road. His hands in his pockets, he walks to the gray car. I lean over the seats and roll down my father’s window.
“Hello there,” my father says.
“Hi,” the woman says.
“Want a hand?”
“I backed up, and now my car is stuck,” she says apologetically.
“Let me give it a try,” my father says.
The woman gets out of the car. She has on a green parka, and her jeans are tucked into rubber boots that come almost to her knees. A navy knitted hat covers her hair. The boy gets out of the car, too.
We listen to my father rev and spin, rev and spin, until finally my father gets out of the car. “You have a shovel?” he asks.
“I don’t want to put you out,” the woman says, squinting into the sun.
“No trouble.”
“Well . . . all right . . . thank you,” she says haltingly. She takes a step forward and puts out her hand. “I’m Leslie, by the way.”
“Robert,” my father says, shaking her hand. He turns and points to me in the truck, my cue to get out. “My daughter, Nicky.”
“And this is Jake,” the woman says, putting a hand on her son’s shoulder.
I move to my father’s side as the woman fetches the shovel from her garage.
My father accepts the shovel from the woman, who laughs a little when she hands it to him. Over my father’s shoulder, I can see an older boy, maybe ten or eleven, looking out of a window.
Jake moves closer to me. “You’re the one who found the baby,” he says. He has a round face with a receding chin. Snot has frozen on his upper lip, and he’s a candidate for braces. I notice that the top of his mitten is chewed through. Who would want to chew on yarn?
“My father and I did,” I say.
“And it was alive?”
“She’s still alive.”
“It was a girl?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“And it didn’t have a finger?”
“No, she had all her fingers,” I say. “It’s just that one finger froze, and they had to take it off.”
“Yuck,” he says.
“Yeah, well.”
I peer into every window of the house, cataloging white ruffled curtains, a flowered print wallpaper, a roll of silver wrapping paper, a lamp in the shape of an airplane. I note that there’s a fireplace after all. From where I’m standing, on a snowbank, I can see into the kitchen, its light still on. Someone has made a terrific mess on a table. There are bits of dough and a thin layer of flour, a crumpled bag of King Arthur. On the kitchen counter is an economy-sized bottle of orange soda and next to it a mug with a tea bag draped over it. On a door that might lead to a cellar or to a pantry is a Santa done in needlepoint.
“You want to make a snowman?” the boy asks.
“Sure,” I say. “Why not?”
Jake and I step-fall, step-fall into the snow in opposite directions. I roll the bottom of the snowman while Jake rolls the top. We make jerky swaths across the front yard. I push my monster snowball to his more modest