Snow Angels (10 page)

“So I hear,” Barb says. “You know what I say? I say you deserve whatever you get.”

“I can't quit,” Annie says.

“That's not my problem,” Barb says. “You're a big girl. You did this to yourself. Just don't expect me to talk to you. Stay out of my way.”

When they're done, Annie is disappointed, as if she'd expected more. She's surprised Barb called at all. I wouldn't have, she thinks. The whole thing reminds her of high school, how easy it was to give herself to someone for a week, a month, how hard it is now. Trust wasn't what she needed then (and still isn't, she wishes; she's young, it's not her fault she fell in love). She doesn't expect Barb to forgive her immediately.

Her mother's not happy with her either. She says Annie could have told her about Brock, but then won't
come over when he's there. Annie knows she thinks she's a fool, that she does these things with no regard for the consequences. Whether it's true or not, Annie thinks her mother should be on her side. They spar where Tara can't hear them.

“Obviously you take after your father,” her mother lets slip.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Annie asks.

Her mother ignores her as if she'd never said it. “It's not you I worry about, it's Tara.”

“Everything is fine,” Annie insists. “There's nothing to worry about.”

“Olive called me,” she says. Usually Glenn's mother is a joke they share but not now. “It sounds like he's taking it hard. You can't blame him.”

“This has nothing to do with Glenn,” Annie says, but even she doesn't believe it. She recognized his truck the other night. “He's been calling me,” she admits. “Saying things.”

“He's hurt. Surely you can see that.”

“I'm not afraid of him.”

“You know that you can always stay here if you want.”

“I have a home,” Annie says, tired of having to explain her life. They stop talking, call it a draw.

“Oh honey,” her mother says, not satisfied with the tie, “I wish you had told me.”

The only saving grace, Annie thinks, is Brock. To think she wanted him gone. His shift at the Overlook Home gets off at eleven. Three afternoons a week he watches Tara. He lets her ride his neck, swings her around by the feet. Watching cartoons, he reads the captions for her—“Acme Rocket Company,” “Tasmanius Horribilus”—explains what 4-F was. They stay in their pajamas all day, snuggling under her blanket. Like Glenn, he leaves the discipline to Annie, which is right because Tara's not his daughter. If they were serious it would be different. Sometimes watching him sling her over his shoulders, Annie reconsiders him, thinks that now she can count on him—until he comes home at one in the morning reeking of weed. All she can think of is that he cheated on Barb. He apologizes, says he's not used to living with a family.

“Then you had better get used to it quick,” she warns him, but only because she's been working all day and had wanted to spend the few sane hours she has with him. In bed she forgives him, and they sleep folded into each other.

Later that week they're sleeping when Annie wakes to breaking glass, a dog barking far off. It's too close to be coming from the pond. Again, in front. The clock radio says three-fifteen. She jostles Brock.

“I hope that's not him,” he says, “because I will kick his fucking ass.” He rolls out of bed and lands
feet-first as if he's been ready for this. He takes his jeans off the closet doorknob and yanks them on over his pajama bottoms, lets the belt buckle dangle. From outside comes another crash, and across the hall Tara wakes up, complaining. Annie picks up Tara and follows Brock to the head of the stairs. She waits at the top while he goes down to the front door and with a finger lifts the curtain.

“It's him,” Brock says, and before she has a chance to react, clicks the outside lights on and opens the door. “Hey!” he shouts. “Fuckhead!”

“Brock!” she whispers, trying to call him back in. She hears Glenn shouting something and rushes into the front room to see what's happening. They keep the door shut to save on heat, and the chill makes her hold Tara closer, stroke her for warmth. She leaves the lights off and goes to the window.

Below, Glenn's truck sits in the middle of the road, Glenn in the headlights, waving his arms, a beer in one hand. He's lumbering drunk, surrounded by smashed bottles. Bomber's in the cab, going nuts. Beyond the truck the field stretches black to the woods; the water tower glows like a blue moon.

“It's Daddy,” Tara peeps.

“No, baby,” Annie says, “it's someone else.”

“Daddy,” Tara shrieks, “Daddy.”

“Shush,” Annie says, “it's not Daddy,” and
squeezes her, turns so she can't see. She sways as if Tara's a baby again.

Brock stands in the frosted yard in his pajama top, barefoot, trying to reason with Glenn. Annie thinks of her father's gun in her night table, the telephone by her side of the bed. Tara squirms in her grip, trying to see.

Glenn tosses his beer into the air and lets it shatter at his feet. He points at Brock, shakes his finger at him. Brock shrugs, palms up—what's the trouble?—then waves Glenn toward him with both hands as if helping someone park a car. Glenn steps to the edge of the property; Brock moves toward him, then stops. They lean forward to bellow at each other over an invisible line. Bomber's claws scrabble at the window.

Annie can see the steam coming out of their mouths and hear how loud they're yelling, but the words are lost in Tara's sobs. She thinks that it won't do any good to call the police; they won't get here in time. She carries the struggling Tara into her bedroom and closes the door, goes into her own bedroom and gets the gun.

It's unloaded so Tara can't hurt herself with it, but Glenn won't know that.

“It's okay, honey,” she shouts at Tara through the door, and heads downstairs.

Outside, the stoop is freezing on her feet. It's all
over. Brock is sitting on Glenn's chest like in a schoolyard fight and shouting into his face, “Don't you ever try to pull shit like this with me again.” Bomber has steamed up the cab. Glenn has a cut under his eye and his teeth are rimmed in blood. His upper lip is torn like a thumbed peach. Brock looks fine except his pajama top is ripped. He sees the gun and tells her to put it away. Glenn turns his head and spits out a dark string.

“I'm going to let you up,” Brock says. “I want you to get in your truck and get out of here, you understand? I don't want to hurt your dog.”

Glenn nods, but at the same time looks at Annie, trying for some sympathy. His eyes swim; she's never seen him so drunk. But his face. It's his fault, she thinks, and turns away.

“Move back,” Brock warns her, then says, “Okay, Smokin' Joe,” and pushes himself off Glenn.

Glenn rolls over. Wet leaves stick to his back. On his hands and knees he touches his fingers to his mouth and then his cheek. He gets up like an old man, stumbles and makes his way across the yard, not looking back. Annie takes Brock's arm and they watch him fit himself into the truck. Bomber mobs him. It takes him a minute before he shuts the door. He gets it in gear, but before he crunches across the smashed glass, leans out and spits again.

“I will not be deceived by this world,” Glenn says in a croak. He's crying.

“Take off, you shithead,” Brock says, and gives him the finger.

As the truck passes under the streetlamp, Brock massages his knuckles and spits, puts a finger to his lips. “I think I chipped one of the ones in front.” He lifts his chin and smiles for her, and while she's inspecting him, asks through clenched teeth, “Did you call the cops yet?”

M
Y MOTHER INSISTS
that the snow never left that winter. According to her, the first flurries struck in mid-November and we didn't see the grass again until spring. I clearly remember a flock of toddlers bulky as astronauts in their snowsuits playing on the moonscape
of frozen mud beneath the jungle gym, but the strict truth is unimportant; what my mother is trying to say is that we were cold at Foxwood, which we were.

Our apartment had no thermostat. We found out when two weeks after we moved in the temperature dropped twenty degrees overnight. My mother went from room to room, expecting a box on the wall.

“Arthur,” she called, “come help me.”

When we couldn't find one, she sagged onto our couch and held her forehead with both hands. “I'm sorry,” she said.

“It's okay,” I said.

The super said that our building was on a schedule, which meant we heard a feeble clinking in the electric baseboard as we were waking up. The lower halves of the windows were coated with ice. My mother put on coffee and bought a soft toilet seat. We wore sweaters to bed.

By then my mother had decided that moving to Foxwood had been a mistake, but she had signed the lease and we were stuck. She was angry she had been fooled by the new paint and wall-to-wall carpeting. Daily she apologized for the lack of hot water as if it were a crime, then ten minutes later shrieked at me for not unplugging the toaster. She needed my help, she said, didn't I see that?

Mornings I was careful to agree with her first
choice for breakfast. Without my father to serve, we were early. My mother was not used to it. She wandered through the apartment at half speed, trying to find her lighter, her lipstick, her driving gloves. I stuffed the pockets of my jean jacket with matches, Marlboros and whatever I had to share with Warren and buttoned the flaps, hauled on my fat down jacket and gloves and said I was leaving.

“Christ almighty,” she said from the other room, and cut short her search to look over my clothes and give me a kiss—something she'd stopped when I was in middle school. She saw my trombone case and, regardless of the day, asked if she needed to pick me up. I merely said yes or no. Outside, a cold surge of relief hit me, and at the same time a feeling of shame at having escaped.

At the bus stop Lila and I talked and shared cigarettes while Lily sniped at us, jealous. “Mom is going to kill you if she finds out.”

“So what?” Lila said. Since she'd rescued me, I had begun to wonder what she looked like without her glasses, and was working up the courage to ask her if I could try them on. We had turned our clocks back weeks ago, and a gray half light lingered over the tree-tops like fog, softening her face. It was hard to flirt with Lily beside her all the time.

From our frigid mornings together, I found that
both Raybern sisters loathed Foxwood as much as I did, for the same reasons. I dreaded getting on the bus to that laughter I used to be part of. I hated being left off at the gate in the snow like a trio of orphans and having to walk half a mile down the drive to reach the smashed chapel and our barrackslike townhouses. When I groused about the landlord—some corporation from Baltimore—Lila and Lily just nodded. It made me like them. I think now that I mistakenly pitied them because I assumed they would never get out, while I was just there temporarily. At school I acknowledged them in the halls, and people looked at me. In a stall on the third floor by my homeroom, someone wrote, “Arty Party Eats Fox Meat.”

I only told Warren.

“Lila Raybern?” he said. “Are you shitting me?”

“What's wrong with her?”

“I don't know,” Warren said. “She's crazy and has a twin sister. Isn't that enough?”

“She's nice,” I said.

“That and she dresses like Mr. Rogers.”

“Okay,” I said, “I'll give you that one.”

In school I could almost pretend my life hadn't changed. I skipped gym and study hall with Warren, then wandered back from Marsden's Pond around lunchtime. It was that in-between season when only the dead trees hold their leaves and the sky threatens
constantly. Going inside, stoned, I looked back at the woods as if they were a promise, a haven.

Tuesdays and Wednesdays I practiced in the music room, and Fridays watched snowflakes dissolve on the plastic-coated music attached to my tarnished, dented bell. For homecoming we were doing an all-Sousa revue. In class Mr. Chervenick praised my embouchure and outside hustled up behind me during the tornado, shouting, “That's the way, Arthur, lift those knees!”

My mother was invariably late picking me up. Sometimes I was the last one standing there by the locked doors, and I wondered if she could have forgotten. It was dusk, the dark was falling a little earlier each day; below, in town, the streetlights came on in strings, as if in a humming room somewhere a man was flicking switches. Every few minutes the janitor with his pushbroom and stub of a cigar peered out at me. But no, here she was, just late, apologetic. We rode home past our old house, no longer commenting on it. Instead, she told me about her work and asked after my classes, listed all the tasks she needed to get done. She talked from the time I climbed in until she parked beside the cheesy coachlight in front of our apartment. I liked riding with her even less than the bus. It was here, spinning alongside the cropped fields, that she asked me questions I did not want to answer.

“Do you want me to call your father?”

I watched the gray, see-through barns sail by.

“Do you need to talk to Astrid?”

Beside the road, green signs the size of playing cards told workmen where the lines changed from solid to dotted.

“I don't know what you want me to do.”

“Nothing,” I said, but she could not accept that this was the truth.

At home, cooking dinner with her shoes off, she badgered me about my unhappiness, my slipping grades, my cigarettes.

“Next year if I can help it we'll be out of here,” she said over our Hamburger Helper. She did not know much, she said, about handling money, but she would be careful. We would be all right. While she was used to doing everything for us, I could see it was a strain on her to be so hopeful for me. She did not suddenly become tough and efficient, as I had wished, but put on a false, nearly tireless optimism that I had always associated with my father and that—naturally, as a teenager—I partly believed yet refused to share.