Light on snow_ a novel - Anita Shreve [84]
“All right,” I say, “let’s put your ball on top of mine.”
The two of us struggle to get the snowman’s middle onto its bottom. I roll another quick ball for the head. We gouge out eyes. “We need a carrot,” I say. “And two stones.”
“Mom,” the boy yells, “do we have a carrot?”
“In the fridge,” she says.
The boy heads for the house, and I follow, uninvited. I stomp my boots in the back hall, but Jake runs directly for the fridge, leaving small grids of snow across the floor.
The older boy I saw in the window and now a younger one, maybe six or seven, come to stand at the threshold of the kitchen. The older boy has on a Bruins shirt. The younger has thick glasses that make his eyes bug out.
“You live up the hill,” the older boy says. “You found the baby.”
“It had a frozen finger,” Jake announces, slamming the vegetable drawer.
“I know, stupid,” the older boy says.
The kitchen is painted yellow and is smaller than I imagined. A jar of jelly with a knife sticking out of it sits beside a toaster. A box of Cocoa Puffs is on the floor. I see what the mess on the table was for: two plates of cookies, snug in plastic wrap, are on top of the fridge.
“We need stones,” Jake says.
“What for?” the older boy asks.
“The eyes.”
The older boy scans the kitchen. He settles upon a box of Whitman’s. He tears the cellophane, lifts the lid, and reveals twelve dark round chocolates inside.
Perfect, I am thinking.
He passes the box around, and we each eat one. I take two and lay them on the palm of my hand. The boys put on jackets and boots. The older boy finds an extra hat and scarf for the snowman. “What’s your name?” I ask.
“Jonah,” he says. “And he’s Jeremy,” he adds, pointing to the little boy with glasses. They all look like the mother, with small upturned noses and wide cheekbones, though only Jonah and Jake are brunets. Jeremy has nearly white hair.
We dress up our snowman. The carrot and the chocolates give him a good-natured but dopey personality. When we’re not looking, Jonah eats one of the eyes. Jake, furious and near tears, throws a hastily made snowball at his older brother. Instantly I am part of a snowball fight, though it’s not clear whose side I am on.
“Boys,” the mother calls wearily, as if she’s said it fifty thousand times.
Jonah falls onto the snow and makes an angel with his arms. I can’t resist and fall backwards, too. The snow gets up and under my jacket and my shirt. I remember that I just got my period and sit up. I’m too old for this, I think.
My father gets back into the car, guns the engine, and shoots forward. The woman named Leslie takes off her hat. Brown curls fall to her shoulder. Her bangs are stuck to her forehead. My father gets out of the car and says something. I can’t hear what it is. The woman points toward the house, and I guess that she’s inviting him inside for a cup of coffee or hot chocolate. My father looks at me and gestures toward the truck. Groceries, he must be saying to her. My mother at the airport. The woman smiles at my father, and I know she’s thanking him profusely. He shakes his head. It was nothing.
“Nicky,” he calls.
“See you,” the boys say to me.
My father and I climb into the truck. I’ve got snow in my socks and down the waistband of my jeans. The woman waves us all the way to the turnoff.
“So,” my father says.
While my father fetches my grandmother from the airport, I sort out the decorations for the tree. I’m working with the second-string ornaments. The box containing the “best” decorations is missing, and neither my father nor I know what happened to it. Among the ornaments we have left are six hand-painted wooden cutouts of snowmen. It’s immediately obvious which ones I painted and which my mother did. There are five silver balls with fake jewels stuck to them, the result of another crafts project when I was eight. I remember the smell of the glue, the way the glitter fell onto the table, and how months later you could still see sparkles in the