Light on snow_ a novel - Anita Shreve [86]
The tree is too tall, so my father has to take it outside again to saw off six inches. Once we’ve screwed it into the stand, I step back and see that it’s tilted. We work on it for a while, until my father finally decides to tie it to a doorknob so that it won’t fall into the room. He sorts the lights and strings them on the tree while I lay the ornaments on the table.
I am tall enough this year to reach the top branches of the tree. I hang the ornaments in an orderly way, trying to put them equidistant from one another. My father leaves me to it and goes upstairs to have a shower. The tree has fat colored lights, the kind my father says he had in his childhood. Last year, Jo’s tree had tiny white lights with silver balls and scarlet ribbons and looked like something on the cover of a magazine.
When I am done I step back to admire my creation. I admire it in the reflections from the three darkened windows. I call my grandmother in and make her admire it, too. I sit in my father’s leather chair, trying to decide whether or not I should move the macaroni plate to hide a bare spot, when I suddenly remember Charlotte. In jail. On Christmas Eve. I slap my hands over my face. She is in a cell. Her parents must know now about the baby. She might have to stay in jail for a very long time.
I lean my head back against the leather cushion and stare at the ceiling. I know that Charlotte will always be with me, that I will think about her every day. She will become one of my small cast of characters with whom I frequently speak, whose lives I daily have to imagine. There are four of them in my little playlet: my mother, who remains the same age she was when she died and who gives me bits of advice on how to handle my father; Clara, who is three and who is getting a Cabbage Patch doll for Christmas; Charlotte, who will do my hair and shop with me for clothes and be my friend; and also Baby Doris, who might be having a bottle now. Or a nap.
I sit for a few minutes. I decide to put all the presents under the tree. There aren’t too many, but I notice my name on a few. In the morning I will give my father the mittens I made, my grandmother the necklace with the sculpted pendant. She’ll make a fuss and exclaim, but I’m guessing she’ll probably never wear the necklace once she leaves the house.
My grandmother asks me to set the table, which is still sticking halfway out of the kitchen. I arrange it as festively as I can, running an assortment of half-burned candles down the center. I’m trying to think of something we own that will work as napkin rings when I see a flash of lights in the driveway. The car comes to a stop, and the lights go out.
My father, who’s been in the den enjoying the luxury of not having to cook, walks into the kitchen, removing his reading glasses as he does so. “Stay here,” he says to me and my grandmother.
My grandmother comes to stand by my side. We hear a car door shut. A few seconds later I hear a man’s voice.
Detective Warren steps inside the house.
This is it, I think.
I worry about my grandmother. About the dinner she has made. About the presents under the tree. Who will be here to open them?
“I know I’ve come at a bad time,” Warren says.
“Come in,” my father says, shutting the door.
Warren does a quick two-step on the mat. His navy coat is opened, and the scarf hangs loose. I am used to his face, but I wonder at its effect on my grandmother: the gravelly scars, the flap of skin.
“Nicky,” Warren says.
“Hi,” I say.
“This is my mother,” my father says.
“How do you do?” Warren says to my grandmother. “I’m George Warren.”
No Detective. No state police.
My grandmother,