Light on Snow (8 page)

“You finish your glue-up?” I ask my father.

It seems to take a minute for his eyes to focus on mine. “Sort of,” he says.

“Did you know him well?” I ask. “I don’t remember him from when I visited your office.”

“Not very well. He worked in another department.”

“She’s pretty, don’t you think?” I snatch a knitted cap from a hook and start to bat it in the air.

“I guess,” he says.

“What did you write on the piece of paper?”

“Just a number.”

“Whose?”

“No idea,” he says.

I pick up the cap, which has fallen to the floor. “You want a tuna sandwich?” I ask.

“That sounds good.”

But still we stand in the hallway, neither of us willing to leave. I notice through the window that it’s snowing more heavily now.

“Dad?” I ask, moving closer to him.

“What?”

I put the hat on my head. “Did you like your job when you worked in New York City?”

“I did, Nicky,” he says. “Yes, I did.”

“Were you good at it? Being an architect?”

“I believe I was.”

“What kind of things did you design?”

“Schools. Hotels. Some renovated apartment buildings.”

“Will you ever go back to it?” I ask.

He plucks the cap off my head and puts it on his own. “I don’t think so,” he says.

“Is this going to be a big snow?” I ask.

“Could be,” my father says. He looks silly in the hat.

“What a waste,” I say. “It’s vacation now.”

“You just had a snow day,” my father says.

“When’s Grammie coming?” I ask.

“Tomorrow night.”

“Did you get my Christmas present yet?”

“Not telling,” he says.

“I was thinking I might like a tape player. Actually, I
need
a tape player.”

“Is that so,” my father says.

Later that afternoon I am working on a beaded necklace for my grandmother when I hear a motor. I go to the window and look out and see a small blue car in the driveway. I watch as it keeps going to the side of the barn where my father keeps his truck.

Wow, I think. A Christmas rush.

I run down the stairs and open the door. A young woman stands on the doorstep, her hands in the pockets of a pale blue parka. She looks up through her dark blond hair. She pushes the hair off her face and tucks it behind her ear. Her hair is very fine and dead straight.

“Is Mr. Dillon here?” she asks in a voice so faint I have to lean my head out the door.

“Did you say
Dillon?
” I ask.

She nods.

“Yes, he’s here.”

“A man at the antiques store says Mr. Dillon makes furniture and has some pieces for sale? That I should come up here and take a look? I’m sorry, I didn’t know where to park.” Her voice is strained, and she speaks in a rush. She has eyes that match her jacket, and her lashes are covered with flakes. The snow is making a lace cap at the top of her head.

“You better come in,” I say.

She steps across the threshold. Her jeans fall over her boots and are wet at the hems. She takes a quick glance around the back hallway—at the woolen hats and baseball caps, at the fall and winter jackets, at a bag of road salt and a can of WD-40 on a shelf. It has grown darker with the snow, so I flip on the light switch. The woman flinches slightly with a small twitch of her head. Her hair falls across her face again, and she tucks it behind her ear.

“I’ll get my father,” I say.

I run along the passageway and into the barn. He looks up from the drawer he’s working on.

“You’ll never believe this,” I say. “We’ve got another customer.”

“I thought I heard a motor,” he says.

He returns with me to the house. The woman is still standing by the back door. Her shoulders are hunched, and she has her arms folded across her chest.

“The furniture’s in the front room,” my father says, gesturing with his hand.

“I should take off my boots,” the woman says.

I am about to say that it doesn’t matter, but the woman is already unzipping a black leather boot. She shakes it off and then unzips the other. She places them side by side on the mat. The hems of her jeans fall to the floor. When she stands, I can see that her face is pasty—not unusual in the winter in New Hampshire.

“I need something for my parents for Christmas,” she says.

“I can show you what I have,” my father says. He glances through the window. “You have any trouble with the road?” he asks.

“It’s pretty slippery,” she says.

I follow my father and the woman into the front room. Her parka flares at her hips. Her hair is caught in the back of her collar. She moves stiffly, and I’m guessing she’s wishing that she hadn’t come.

In the front room the light is such that my father and I can see what we didn’t just an hour earlier: the cherry and walnut and maple tables and chairs are covered with a fine layer of dust.

“Let me get a cloth,” my father says.

When he leaves the room, the woman frees her hair from her collar. She unzips her parka. I examine her clothes. She has on a pink cardigan over a white blouse that she hasn’t tucked into her jeans. At her throat is a silver amulet on a leather cord. I make beaded necklaces on fine rawhide with silver clasps. I plan to sell them in the summer with the raspberries.

“I like your necklace,” I say.

“Oh,” she says, her hand going to her throat. “Thanks.”

“I make jewelry,” I add.

“That’s great,” she says in a voice that makes it clear she isn’t thinking about jewelry.

She fingers a table, leaving a meandering trail in the dust.

“So you need a present,” I say.

“Yes,” she says. “For my parents.”

“Do you live in Shepherd?” I ask, pretty sure I haven’t seen her in town.

“I’m just shopping,” she says.

“Sorry about this,” my father says as he returns with a dustcloth.

The woman stands to one side as he polishes the table. “Your stuff is nice,” she says.

She wanders from piece to piece, touching each one as she passes by. She rubs her fingers along the back of a chair and touches the side of a bookcase. She keeps glancing at my father. “Maybe they’d like a bookcase,” she says. I think she’s going to add something else, but then she shuts her mouth. She has a full face, though she doesn’t seem especially fat. Her eyes look wrong, though, as if they belonged in a different face, an unhealthy face maybe. There are bluish half-moons beneath her lower lids.

I decide she’s too embarrassed to ask about prices, so I volunteer the list. “We have a price list,” I say.

My father gives a quick shake of his head.

The woman tosses her hair out of her face. “Yes,” she says. “Sure.”

Ignoring my father I take a pamphlet from the mantel and hand it to her. I watch as she reads it. “What’s this made of?” she asks my father, pointing to a small cabinet.

“It’s walnut,” my father answers, failing to add that it has paneled doors, inset hinges, and a beeswax finish as well. He’s hopeless as a salesman.

The woman walks around to the back of the chair. She puts a hand out and leans on it. “This is really beautiful,” she says.

She takes a step sideways and catches the hem of her jeans under her foot. She bends and rolls the hem into a cuff. I watch her as she does this. She rolls the other pant leg and stands, but I am still looking at her feet. In the moment that my mind registers the socks with the cable knit up the side—pearl-gray angora socks—she says to my father, “I didn’t come here to buy a piece of furniture.”

M
y father looks confused for a moment. He thinks her a reporter, come to interview him under false pretenses.

“I don’t understand,” he says.

But I do, and how is that? The socks, of course, with their angora cable, frayed slightly at the heel. I see it in her face as well, even though I shouldn’t be able to see—I’m too young; I’m only twelve—the puffiness, the bluish commas under the eyes, the skin like something wet.

Her hand on the chair presses down, and I worry that she’ll fall. “I’ve come to thank you,” she says to my father.

“For what?” my father asks.

And now it’s she who seems surprised. “For finding the baby,” she says, her voice light on the word
baby,
as if she hardly dared to say it, as if she might not be allowed to say it now.

But still my father, who always seems to understand everything, doesn’t understand.

“For finding her,” she repeats.

He frowns and gives a quick shake of his head.

I whisper to him, “
The mother,
”and his head shoots back in sudden comprehension.

“You’re the mother?” he asks, astonished.

Her cheeks pinken, making her eyes look as blue as the fish I once painted in Clara’s bedroom.

The snow at the windows makes no sound. The woman’s hand, on the rung of the chair, is as white as a pearl.

“You’re the mother of the infant who was left in the snow?” he asks.

“Yes,” the woman says, pressing her lips tightly together.

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” my father says.

“I just wanted to say —”

“Save it,” he says curtly.

She is silent, but she doesn’t move.

“You can’t be here,” my father says. “You left a baby to die in the snow.”

“I need to see the place,” she says.

“What place?”

“Where you found her,” she says.

My father seems bewildered by her request. “You ought to know the place.”

But how can she know the place where her child was left to die, I want to ask, if she didn’t take the baby there herself? Wasn’t it the detective who said it was a man who put the baby in a sleeping bag?

“I should never have come,” the woman says. “I’ll go now.”

“Please,” my father says.

The woman begins to zip up her jacket. She moves sideways around the furniture.

“You should leave this area,” my father says. “They’re looking for you.”

“I know,” she says.

“Then what are you doing here?” he asks.

“Will you turn me in?” she asks.

“I don’t even know your name.”

“Do you want to know it?” she asks, offering herself up to my father, to this stranger, to this man to whom she owes everything.

“I don’t even want to know you exist,” my father says.

The woman shuts her eyes, and I think that she will fall. I take a step forward and then stop—too young, of course, to be of help.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” he asks.

“It wasn’t . . .” she begins.

I am certain she was about to say,
It wasn’t me,
and apparently my father thinks so, too. “You were there, weren’t you?” he asks.

“Yes,” she says.

“Don’t say another word,” my father says as he turns to me. “Nicky, leave the room.”

“Dad,” I say.

The woman’s knees go first, and she seems about to squat. She thrusts her arms forward, but she takes the corner of the table with her chin. I have never seen a real person faint. It’s not like in the movies or in books. It’s ugly, and it’s frightening.

My father kneels beside the woman, and he lifts her head off the floor. She comes to almost immediately and seems not to know where she is. “Nicky, get me a glass of water,” my father says.

Reluctantly I leave the room. My hands are trembling as I turn the faucet on. I fill the glass nearly to the brim, and it spills a bit as I run with it to the den. When I get there, the woman is sitting up.

“What happened?” she asks.

“You fainted,” my father says. “Here, drink this.” He hands her the glass of water. “Can you make it to the car? We have to get you to the hospital.”

Her hand is so fast I barely see it. It snakes around and clutches my father’s wrist. “I can’t,” she says, looking at him. “I won’t.” Her face is pale, almost green. “I’m leaving,” she says, letting go of my father’s wrist. “I shouldn’t have come. I’m sorry.” She makes an effort to stand. Beads of sweat have popped onto her forehead.

“Sit down,” my father says, and after a second’s hesitation, she does. “When did you last eat?”

“If you take me to the hospital,” she says, “they’ll arrest me.”

A simple truth. They will.

The woman bends over and vomits onto her jeans.

My father puts a hand on her back. I can hardly believe what I am seeing. The fainting, the vomiting—it’s all wrong in our house.

“Nicky,” my father says, “get me a wet paper towel and a pot.”

In the kitchen I rip a wad of paper towel from the holder and wet it. I find a saucepan in a cabinet. When I return I hand the woman the paper towels so that she can clean herself up. I’m shaking as I set the pot on the floor.

The woman wipes her jeans. She leans against the leg of the table. “I need a bathroom,” she says. With effort, she makes it to her feet. She begins to sway. My father reaches for her arm and catches her.

“Steady now,” he says.

Together, my father and the woman move to the back hallway, where the bathroom is. I watch as she detaches herself, enters the bathroom, and closes the door.

Agitated, my father runs his hands through his hair. “This is a disaster,” he says.

“You can’t take her to the hospital,” I say.

“She needs medical help.”

“Maybe she hasn’t eaten. Maybe she’s just tired.”

“She can’t stay here.”

“But Dad . . .”

My father and I stand between the kitchen and the bathroom, near enough to hear the woman if she calls out but not so close that we can listen to whatever is going on behind the door. My father puts his hands in his pockets and jiggles the change there. Each of us is silent then, absorbing the fact of the woman who has entered our house, who has, however briefly, entered our lives. My father walks to the back door, opens it, gazes out at the snow, and shuts the door. He crosses his arms in front of his chest again.

“Christ,” he says.

I climb the stairs and head for my room. On a shelf in my closet behind a duffel bag, I find a pair of pajamas my grandmother made for me. I hate them and wanted to throw them out, but my father insisted that I keep them to wear when my grandmother comes to visit. They have childish pink and blue bears on them and a big elastic waist.

When I return, my father is in the kitchen. He has lit a cigarette. The smoke rises and makes a quick left turn in a draft from the window. We hover, my father with his cigarette and I with my flannel bundle, as if waiting to be called upon to save the young woman in the bathroom. First the infant and now the mother.

The door opens and the woman’s head pokes through. She looks at my father and then at me. “Can I speak to you?” she asks.

I point to myself, a question on my face.

“Yes, please,” she says.

I walk to the door.

“Do you have a Kotex?” she whispers.

A Kotex, I am thinking. Oh God, a Kotex.

“No,” I say, chagrined.

“None?” She seems surprised.

“No.”

She tilts her head. “How old are you?”

“Twelve.”

I have a pad that the school nurse gave each of the seventh-grade girls at the beginning of the school year
just in case,
but it’s in my locker. “I’m sorry,” I say, and I truly am. I’m more than sorry—I’m mortified.

The woman looks out the window at the falling snow. “It’s bad out there, isn’t it?”

I offer up the flannel pajamas.

“What’s this?” she asks.

“Pajamas,” I say. “They’re too big for me. The waist is elastic.”

Her arms slide through the gap, and I see that her legs are naked. She glances out the window again. “Maybe there’s something?” she adds as she shuts the door.

I return to the kitchen and lean against the red counter. How am I ever going to manage this? I wonder. I close my eyes and think a minute.

“Dad?” I say finally. “I need to go to Remy’s.” My tone is slightly defiant, anticipating an argument.

“Remy’s,” my father says, stubbing out his cigarette in a saucer he keeps for the purpose.

“I have to get something.”

“What?”

I shrug.

“Something for you or something for her?” he asks.

“Something for her,” I say.

“What is it?”

“Something for her,” I repeat.

My father gets up and walks to the window again. He examines the snow, gauging depth and speed. The tracks of his truck and the blue car are nearly covered now.

“It’s
important,”
I add.

“There’s nothing else that will do?” he asks.

“No,” I say.

“You’re sure?” he says.

Yes, there might be a cloth or a towel that would do, but I have never before been given such a mission, and I am determined not to fail this woman. “
Please,
Dad,” I say.

“I’ll go,” he says. “You stay here.” But as he says this, I can see him reconsidering. He doesn’t want me in the house alone with the woman.

“Never mind,” he says. “You’ll come with me.”

We dress in silence for the snow. I tap on the door and tell the woman we’re going to the store and that we’ll be right back. We climb into the truck, and my father starts the engine. He steps out and scrapes the snow from the windshield and the windows. I tell myself it isn’t so bad out, but it is: the snow is falling fast and thick.

Our road, unplowed, is slippery beneath the wheels of the truck. My father drives with concentration, and we don’t speak.

I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing I am—that we just left a strange woman in our house, a woman who may have tried to murder her baby.
Murder her baby.
I cannot make the phrase sit still in my head. Since we moved to New Hampshire, nothing ever happens to my father and me; hardly anyone ever drives up the long hill. But in the past nine days, we’ve had three sets of visitors: Detective Warren, Steve and Virginia, and now a woman whose name we still do not know.

We pass the school and the church and the village green. At the corner of Strople and Maine, the rear wheels of the truck begin to float across the street. My father takes his hands off the steering wheel, and after what feels like many seconds, we come to a stop. My father puts the truck in gear and pulls into our lane. I’m praying that we don’t hit something, because if we do it will be all my fault.

Up ahead I can see both Remy’s and Sweetser’s, but my father makes a sudden turn into the post office. I guess he wants to check his mail. Instead of stopping at the post office, however, he pulls behind that building to another building that houses both the police station and the town clerk’s office.

“What are you doing?” I ask, my eyes widening.

My father doesn’t answer me. He parks the truck, turns the engine off, and opens his door.

“Dad?” I ask.

I watch my father walk toward the police station. I open my door and hop out. Did he intend to come here all along? Did he agree to go to the store simply to get me out of the house while the police arrest the mother of the baby? Would my father do that? I’m not sure. Sometimes I think I know my father very well; at other times I wonder if I know him at all. “Dad!” I yell, running after him.

My father stops at the door and waits for me to catch up to him. He bends toward me. In a quiet voice that I know means business, he says,
“Go back to the truck.”

“What are you doing?”

“This has nothing to do with you.”

“But you can’t . . . ,” I say, holding my hands out. “You just can’t.” Already I feel a sense of loyalty to a woman I don’t even know. I shake my head vigorously back and forth.

My father feels a nudge at his back. He steps aside so that the door can open. Peggy, the town clerk, pulls a scarf around her head. “Hi, Nicky,” she says, stepping outside.

I first met Peggy when I applied for a permit to sell raspberries at the end of our road. She charged me seven dollars.

Peggy smiles at my father. “You need me?” she asks.

“Actually I’m looking for Chief Boyd,” my father says.

“You just missed him,” she says. “He and Paul got called out to eighty-nine. An accident at the exit.” Peggy looks at the sky. “Is it urgent? I could raise him on the radio.”

I stare at my father.

“No,” he says after a few seconds. “No, that’s all right. I’ll give him a call.”

I let out a long breath.

“Well, you’ve certainly been in the news,” Peggy says, pulling on her gloves. “What a thing that must have been!” she says. “To find a baby.” She looks at me. “And you were with him, too!”

I nod.

“I’m off to Sweetser’s,” Peggy says. “Have to get some batteries and road salt before the storm gets worse. You want to wait inside? I won’t lock the door.”

“No, we’re fine,” my father says. “Thanks.”

“If I don’t see you later, have a good Christmas,” Peggy says.

My father and I walk to the truck. I climb into the cab. I know enough not to ask a single question, not to say a word.

At Remy’s my father slows to the curb. Through the whiteout and the steamed window, I can see the pale yellow light of a bulb above the register. My father hands me a ten-dollar bill. “Make it snappy,” he says.

The steps are poorly shoveled. A bell rings when I enter the store, needlessly announcing me. Marion sets her knitting down. “Nicky,” she says. “Sweetheart. You’re my hero, you know that? Haven’t seen you since you found the baby. Haven’t seen your dad either.”

“We’ve been kind of busy,” I say.

“Well, I guess so!”

Marion, a large redhead with a rubbery face, married her sister’s husband after an affair of biblical proportions that shocked even the most ardent proponents of New Hampshire’s highly unrealistic state motto,
Live Free or Die.
But that was years ago, and now the woman is a pillar of the community. Her husband, Jimmy, who was once the Regional’s star quarterback, weighs in at over three hundred pounds. One of Marion’s sons is at UNH; the other is at the state prison for armed robbery.