The Sudden Weight of Snow (15 page)

We drove back into the valley with the tree like roadkill strapped to the roof of the car. On the way, Vera told us that she had thrown the tree stand out the year before, because it had nearly fallen apart bearing the light weight of the spindly tree we had then. This being Christmas Eve in Sawmill Creek, the hardware store was closed. We stopped at 7-Eleven, hoping, and I got out to ask.

“I wouldn’t think so, but do you have Christmas tree stands here?” I asked the clerk.

“What?”

“Christmas tree stands, you know, those things that keep a tree standing?”

And then there was a voice coming over my shoulder, a single word, “Hey.” Gabe was standing behind me in line, his arms cradling a carton each of milk, orange juice, eggnog. “Hey, if they don’t have any, I think we probably have an extra stand out at the farm,” he said.

“Miss, was there something you wanted to buy?” the clerk demanded.

“Um, I guess you don’t have Christmas tree stands?”

“No, we don’t.” The clerk looked over me to Gabe. “Sir?”

“Here, just let me get these and then you can come back to the farm and I’ll find you a stand. I can give you a ride back.”

“Um, okay, just a sec.”

The lack of a stand had become an issue. While I was in the store, Vera and Nick were in the car trying to figure out how we would rig the tree up in the living room. When I poked my head in the car window, Nick was explaining how he was
convinced that we could suspend it from the ceiling with dental floss – he had read about how strong floss was if braided – and this worked in my favour. Vera let me go with Gabe, looking straight at me with an expression that said, “I know exactly what you’re up to,” even if I myself didn’t fully understand. It wasn’t that unusual for Vera to surprise me with the things she would allow me to do, as though she were sending me out into the world partially expecting me to be shocked by what I found. To finally understand why she held herself so close.

The snow was falling when Gabe and I started driving out of town, small flakes at first then fattening to the size of coins. The flakes were black in the fallout from lights, white against trees, everything smattered with them. Snow can accumulate in valleys without wind almost instantly and it was piling up that night. When we rounded a corner for the last and longest hill on the way to Pilgrims, Gabe accelerated to make it up, a skiff of snow on the frozen road making it slick and awkward. The truck fishtailed then jerked back and started to climb before the road slipped out from beneath the tires. Gabe tried to move it forward but instead the truck shot across to the other side and into a bank of snow.

“Shit,” Gabe said, looked over at me and shrugged. “I’m a California boy. You don’t know anything about getting trucks out of ditches, do you?”

“Sure,” I said. “What we need is a bit momentum and something for the tires to catch on.” We took the mats from
under our feet, then I slid over to the driver’s side while Gabe got out and placed them behind the tires, then fought his way through the snowbank to the front of the truck. He pushed and I shifted the truck into reverse. We remained like this for a few moments, me with my feet holding the tension between clutch and pedal, the vehicle unmoving, Gabe in front of the truck, pushing. A miscalculation by either of us – not enough balance, not enough force – and the truck would lurch forward, bury Gabe in snow. When nothing happened, I rolled down the window and called to him, “Try jumping on the bumper.”

“What?”

“The bumper. Jump. That might give us more momentum.” He jumped and I played the pedals until the truck lurched and I felt the crunch of mats under tire.

Gabe hopped off and paused to see if it would slip back before he struggled out of the snow. Everything in me tensed – hands, feet, wrists, ankles – as I held it all in balance. I tried to slowly pull the truck back onto the road but even with the mats it lost traction, slumped back into the bank.

“Do you have chains?” I called out to Gabe. “We need more traction, maybe we can put the chains behind the tires.”

He came over to the cab, said, “Chains, hey?” cocked his eyebrow, then, “I think there’re some in here. Lean forward.” I doubled at the waist and rested on the steering wheel while Gabe opened the driver’s-side door and looked behind the seat. He found the chains and pulled them out. He stood outside the door with them in his hands and looked at me. I didn’t want to break his gaze by saying anything or moving. Suddenly, a
bright light reflected off the rear-view mirror and headlights filled the cab.

A door slammed and a man appeared beside the truck. “You need some help?”

“Yeah, thanks, man.” The men dug themselves between vehicle and snowbank and began to rock the truck. This time, when the tires caught the chains, I knew not to let go. I accelerated and shot back onto the road. The guys placed chains on the road ahead of the front tires and I drove onto them, waited until they attached them.

Gabe waved to the man, then held my leg to heave himself into the truck. I tensed my quads and felt him use my muscles as a grip. I threw one leg over the gear shift and began to slide over to the other side. Gabe stopped me there with one of my legs on either side of the shift, his hand on my thigh, his body moving into the cab, filling the driver’s side. When his face was close to mine and I thought he was going to kiss me, he said, “You might as well drive, you’re doing a great job,” and got out of the truck, then back in on the other side. He closed the door. I shifted into first and we started to climb.

You know you will never bring anyone home with you. You’re never sure what you’ll find when you get there. Peter and Anise have become suppliers of quality handmade toddler paraphernalia. Most days, they take their coffees out to the deck and share a thin, smooth joint; then Peter descends to workshop in the basement and Anise goes to work in the rec room, which has been transformed into a sewing and crafts centre. Peter builds cribs, high chairs, playpens, bunk beds. Anise sews blankets, diapers, corduroy overalls. Their productivity may be either helped or hampered by the marijuana they smoke, you’re not sure. The house is full of sticky smoke and cloying wafts of incense. There is sawdust trailing up and down the stairs. In the kitchen, there is a sink full of bottles, glasses, and dirty dishes and a counter covered in jars breeding sprouts, bowls of fermenting soy, and the drippings surrounding a yogurt maker. NPR is playing somewhere and one of the girls is always crying. The place is a mess, even you realize this. You pick your way to your room, put in the earplugs that you took from Peter’s workshop, and read Louis L’Amour and Terry Pratchett novels.

When you first move in, Peter and Anise are so concerned about the suburbanness of the split-level that they cover every wall with decorative hangings. Overlapping in each room are knobby scraps of macramé hanging from pieces of driftwood or fabric patterned with concentric circles of bright, dancing figures, assorted gods. The floors, though they are already covered in wall-to-wall beige carpeting, are laid with handwoven rugs from Amish villages in Washington State. Mexican blankets are draped over chairs and couches. Anise would like to display pottery everywhere as well, but there are three children under the age of five in the house, so that would present a problem. Over all the layers of international folk art are more layers of baby blankets and diapers.

When Anise goes through a kick that she calls Early American Folk, she has a garage sale. You are forced to work, apathetic and scowling behind the table. She sells all the wall hangings, rugs, incense-burners, and wind chimes. After this she hangs patchwork quilts on the walls and there are carved wooden Holsteins and flowers everywhere. The girls all wear floral-print dresses, no socks, no shoes. Anise isn’t so concerned with what you wear. You hear her and Peter fighting at night. Your family has no money, certainly not enough money to go redecorating the place, you hear through the walls. You also hear that Peter better go and get a real job and Anise is doing work enough for three people taking care of all these kids.

Peter does get a real job, at the hardware store where he already spends so much time. He takes you there to meet his supervisor, Dave, “a great guy, a truly great guy,” he tells you.
“Dave here is even willing to let me put up a little ad here and there for handyman work. I’ve been teaching Gabe here a bit about carpentry, myself,” he tells Dave. Peter has never taught you a thing about carpentry, although a couple times, when you know he has smoked up because of the way he smells, he has called you into the shop and had you run your palms against the grains of wood, how smooth they can be, how strong.

The rec room is cleared out and transformed into a classroom. You remain at the desk in what was once the dining room and hear chaos reign below, Anise trying not to yell. By the early afternoons, you are able to finish your preplanned daily curriculum. You ask Anise if you can go out when she is in the middle of supervising body painting and colour recognition with the three girls. She always says yes.

Peter loses his job at the hardware store. You can’t trust the establishment, he tells you, even if it is only a lousy hardware chain. That Dave asshole, you’d think he would understand a couple late starts, especially after all the business Peter has brought into the store, you’d think he’d have a little sympathy for a family man, the jerk. Anise cries for two days, then goes to a women’s retreat, leaves you and Peter with the girls. Peter thinks you might all drive up to Wyoming, visit the old grandparents, but when you remind him that the youngest still needs diapers at night and the oldest gets violently carsick, he changes his mind. Instead, the five of you spend three days eating fast food, going to the mall, the minigolf course, and the waterslide. The smallest girls are too young for the minigolf and the waterslide so Peter leaves the two of them in your
charge and takes the oldest. “Don’t worry – girls can’t resist a guy with kids,” he tells you, winks. No girls approach you as your sisters cry and whine despite the colouring books, stuffed animals, and candy that you are equipped with.

Each day ends with all three sisters wailing at the top of their lungs until they exhaust themselves and fall asleep. When this happens, Peter invites you onto the deck and you have your first full beer, your first drag of marijuana. “I’m glad about the way things have worked out, Gabe,” he says one night, referring to what, you don’t know. Peter pauses, looks out to the trees leading out from the yard, continues, “I love all of you guys – Anise, the girls – think we have a good thing going here. But I’m glad you’ve been with me from the start, Gabe, I really am.”

You have no idea how to reply to that, so you don’t. Peter, you sense, is making a touching statement of some kind, but you are tempted to ask, “The start of what?” Your father has obviously been with you since the start of your own life but he didn’t start when you arrived. You have no idea of his own beginnings, though his parents in Jackson Hole give you some inkling. You think about your sisters. They are contradictions to you – both part of your family and part of an entirely different family at once. Peter is the only link between the two, and he seems like a weak one at that. Your feelings for them are equally contradictory. Sometimes you feel as though you would do anything to protect them. Other times, you want to throw them, one by one, in front of traffic. And Anise. Anise is your father’s wife. With not a speck of blood between you, you
sometimes feel as though there is no connection there, only a shared housing situation.

When Anise returns, the girls surround her, competing to tell her what fun they’ve had with Daddy and Gabe. “And then, and then, and then,” they each begin, sucking in breaths so quickly you wonder if they will hyperventilate. That night, you hear a headboard banging and Anise sounding like she’s going into labour yet again. Although it has always disgusted you to hear them doing that, Peter gave you a tiny, little joint that night, a “pinner” he called it, to enjoy on your own as a treat for getting through the three days. You smoked it by yourself out the window of your bedroom and now when you hear them and know what they are doing, you are filled with sticky, sweet heat. You jack off to the rhythm of their bed. When they are finished and the house goes silent, you do it again, rougher this time, hoping, for reasons you can’t quite comprehend, that you will hurt yourself.

Anise suggests gently, and with your consent, of course, that you move your study out of the dining room. Since you rarely do anything in your own room any more except masturbate and sleep, and this takes up little space, you move your desk and shelves in there. The dining room is emptied out and Anise arranges large cushions around the perimeter. She suggests the whole family meditate together and you and Peter agree this is a good idea. You never do and soon the girls have spilled juice, crumbs, and paints in the meditation space and things get stacked there, shoes, toys, Anise’s books. Peter is exploring a new business venture and is rarely around. One
afternoon when you come home, Anise is setting up a brand new TV in the corner of the living room. She tells Peter it is for educational programming. That night, they fight about money and you stay awake, hoping they will make up and the bed will begin banging again.