The Sudden Weight of Snow (16 page)

I
arrived home half an hour before the service began, Gabe in tow. He insisted on walking me to the door; it was Christmas Eve, and he must have assumed that, if I had a family that was going to church, I had a family that expected boys to walk girls to doors.

I stepped into the front hall as my mother went into the bathroom, a flurry of beige nylons and slip. Gabe followed me in. I looked into the living room, where a Christmas album by Ian and Sylvia Tyson played on our ancient turntable. The tree was propped up between the end of the couch and the wall, a mess of needles dusting everything. There were boxes of ornaments piled on the floor and someone had plugged the tree lights in, left them draped across the couch.

Gabe stood beside me in the hall, each of us holding a different-sized tree stand, neither of us sure what to do next. I called to Vera in the bathroom. When the door started to open, I quickly said, “Uh, Mom, I have a friend here.”

The bathroom door closed again. Vera cleared her throat and asked, “Can you get my dress off the bed, honey?” in a controlled voice that was clear, if not loud.

I handed a tree stand to Gabe and went into my mother’s room. The dress was laid neatly over the bedspread, which was smoothed just as immaculately over the bed. It was a red-and-white bedspread, quilted in the pattern of a large six-pointed star. Cresting the top and meeting the headrest was a row of decorative pillows covered in Victorian lace. The bed had been in the same place in the room since we had moved in, the pillows set there just so, every morning. Returning with the dress, I knocked on the bathroom door and handed it to my mother. My arm was barely withdrawn before the door closed again. Vera was dressed and out of the bathroom within a minute, smoothing her hair and smiling toward Gabe, her grin tight, as though she already knew everything she needed to about him.

After I introduced them, Vera glanced at me, her gaze swift and sharp, then asked, in a tone of forced politeness, if Gabe wanted to go to the service with us. Before I could say anything, he accepted, as though he had been asked to come along to the fair, or a ball game, or something equally festive and wholesome.

The record ended. Vera asked, “Why aren’t you dressed yet?” then said, “Never mind,” and turned to the table by the door. She picked up her camera and turned it over in her hands. “I guess you have a ride. Nick and I will meet you there – Nick!” she called before she looked at Gabe and smiled quickly, asking, “You’ll get her there on time?”

I heard Gabe assuring Vera that he would as I collided with
Nick on my way up the stairs. I got dressed, hands shaking and heart beating so fast I could feel it filling my chest and throat, while Gabe waited downstairs alone. In the last moment before leaving my house, Gabe said, “The lights.”

“What?”

“The tree lights. Shouldn’t we unplug those?”

“Oh, yeah.” I went into the living room and got down on my hands and knees and crawled behind the couch, struggled for the outlet. When I backed out and stood up, he was beside me, the dim glow reflected off the snow outside the only illumination in the room. Gabe’s skin looked fine and thin in the blue light. We stood like that, breathing close to each other’s faces, until I said, “We should go now.” We walked out to the truck. I gave Gabe directions and put my hands under my thighs, crossing my fingers, as if holding my nervousness and excitement there, tight and small.

When we filed into the church, Friends greeted each other saying, “Christ has come!” as though the birth had just taken place, the hay in the manger still stained with the afterbirth. To which others replied, “He has come to deliver you and me!” I grinned and bore it all, teeth clenched, Gabe beside me. Some Friends held their hands out to him saying, “Welcome, welcome in the name of Jesus,” and pumped vigorously. The rest of the congregation tried not to stare at us – or, rather, at Gabe – but they did, out of the sides of hugs, between bending to unlayer children from coats and scarves and standing again. Gabe stood out not only because he was a stranger but because he was wearing jeans, boots, and large wool sweater while the rest of us were decked out in finery.

Gabe and I sat at the back of the church, behind and across the aisle from my family. During the service, I watched my mother take deep breaths when she prepared to sing, her back expanding beneath her dress with each inhalation. I watched Nick lean over and drum his fingers on the back of the chair in front of him until Vera swatted his hands away, gave him a look. I felt Gabe’s body beside me, wondered why he gave off so much heat, if I did the same. We sat and rose, rose and sat, and I sang along to every song, although not loudly, clasped my hands together for every prayer. I focused on the flicker of candles against the banners that hung alongside the looming cross until the colours bled together. I tried not to listen to Gabe breathe but counted each of my own exhalations like a rosary.

At the end of that afternoon at the church, Gabe invited me to the farm for New Year’s Eve.

Anticipation infused my thoughts, turned them into something physical, an internal upheaval whenever I thought about when I would next see him. Before that could happen, I knew I had to get through the Week of the Word. For five long days the men from the congregation met to discuss doctrine, politics, and the finances of the Free Church, the women gathered together in prayer groups and healing circles to pray the cysts, lumps, and viruses out of each other, and the children went to Bible school. Then there was us, the teens who fell into a category of our own.

Krista, Nick, and I, two boys named Danny and Scott, and
Pastor John’s son, Matthew, sat every day on fold-out chairs in the foyer. Matthew was home from Bible college on the coast, wearing thick-soled black shoes and baggy jeans, walking in a way that could only be called strutting. It was Matthew who had gotten Krista and me drunk for the first time on communion wine stolen from the church basement. He had led us with the bottles into one of the fields around the church and by the time Krista and I were drunk, wondering how we would get home and what we would do once we got there, Matthew had disappeared.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him on our first afternoon.

“Don’t you remember me, Sylvia? I’m the eldest son of our spiritual leader.”

“Yes, and as such, shouldn’t you be with the other men discussing sacred policy?”

“Don’t you wish. Instead, I have been assigned the illustrious task by my father, your pastor, to lead us all in prayer and a close study of the scriptures.”

“Oh, we’re blessed, I’m sure,” said Krista.

I bit my nails down to the skin and said, “All right, Pastor Matthew, lead away.”

The week dragged on and on. The room was cold, the stacking chairs were thin and narrow, and my back and legs would inevitably ache with immobility, boredom. Though Matthew had done nothing to earn it, Nick seemed struck by awe for him. I guessed that he was looking for a big-brother figure. It didn’t take a psychologist to figure that out. Vera had signed Nick up with Big Brothers when he started elementary school, but despite their rigorous screening process, it was a
disappointment of colossal proportions. The first Big Brother got his girlfriend pregnant and skipped town. The girlfriend then visited us for months, Vera pouring her tea and encouraging her to find strength as she bloated larger and larger. The second, Ray, was older and had a distinct air of loneliness about him, something picked up easily by kids and, I’d suspect, dogs. He owned a sporting goods store in Sawmill and he was a clean, solid guy. Ray once made the mistake of coming by with the stain of beer on his breath. A couple of slurred sentences to Vera at the front door and Nick never saw him again. The last was the golden boy of the Pentecostal Church. He was the closest Nick would get to a good Christian example. Lean and blond, he was the closest I, at fourteen, had been to someone whose beauty looked like it could have radiated from a movie screen. On the first of July, he miscalculated the depth of water and jumped off a cliff into the lake, never came back up.

I imagined that Nick was, in a way, trying to replace a string of disappointing male role models with Matthew. I didn’t guess what else he was to my little brother.

On those nights after the endless days spent at the church, I couldn’t fall asleep easily. I listened to the central heating creak and sputter, the hum of the fridge, and trucks downshifting, their engine brakes making a long, sour sound out on the highway. On the fourth night, the smell of marijuana slipped through my window. I got up, went downstairs, and pulled my boots on, put a coat over my pyjamas, and was led by the smell. After that, it was simply a matter of following Nick’s footsteps in the snow until I found him.

Nick, who had been gazing at the trees that separated our
yard from the ravine, letting smoke seep slowly from his mouth, gasped when he saw me and tried to pull the smoke back in, dropping his arm and twisting it behind him. He started to cough. “Ssshhh,” I warned, pointing to the house. Nick nodded back, eyes panicked, and coughed with his arm over his mouth, shaking but making little sound. When he stopped, he looked at me in a way I could only describe as pleading. “You little shit,” I said, without smiling, and enjoyed watching him try to figure out what to say. “Okay, well, the least you can do is give me a drag.”

The joint was out. Nick fumbled in his jacket for matches, his cold hands shaking, fingers gripping the tiny end. When it was lit, he handed it to me and I inhaled deeply, easily, wanting him to know that he wasn’t doing anything I hadn’t done before – and had done better. I handed it back. “This stuff is shake. Where’d you get it?” When I asked, I knew that Nick was more frightened of answering than of being caught with the drug in the first place. He could have shrugged his shoulders and told me it was from some headbanger at school. But he didn’t. Nick’s eyes literally darted from side to side.

“Uh, I can’t really say.”

“Okay, fine.” I left it like that and simply enjoyed a moment with my brother, thought about how lovely it all was – the smell of spruce and pine, the dark circle of dirt visible in the tree wells, sharing a joint with my baby brother for the first time. Then it came to me.

“You got that smoke from Matthew, didn’t you?”

Nick shot up from the wall, stood post-straight, didn’t answer.

“Didn’t you, you little shit?” I said without malice. This was going to be fun. “I can’t believe he brought you such crappy shake from the coast. They’re supposed to have amazing weed out there. I guess not at Bible college, though, huh?”

Throughout the next afternoon, I stared at Matthew in a way I hoped conveyed I knew something. I smirked. I saw Nick squirm uncomfortably in his chair. Finally, Matthew looked straight at me, asked, “Would you like to lead us in prayer, Sylvia?”

“Of course I would. Thanks, Matthew.” I folded my hands together and kept my eyes on him. “Our Blessed Heavenly Saviour, we thank you for guiding us through this week, for keeping our hearts and our minds clear in Christ. We just ask that you help us to keep our minds unclouded in the coming weeks and months, that you help us to see through the smokescreens of our daily lives. We ask that you help us to resist the temptation to distract ourselves from a clean and clear way of living. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

When I was finished, Nick kept his head down, I kept my eyes on Matthew. When he raised his head, his expression was full of something that looked like hatred.

He had a suggestion. “Okay, I think we should pair up and discuss outreach and witnessing, how we can bring our love of Christ to other teens in our community,” Matthew said. “Let’s mix things up a bit. Danny, you go with Nick. Scott with Krista. Sylvia, shall we partner up?” I smiled. I didn’t like the candied authority in his voice. He led me into the sanctuary where the men were sitting on fold-out chairs in a circle near the front. They turned around when we came in, then away
when Matthew raised his hand and nodded. We pulled two chairs into a corner.

“You enjoying our week, Sylvia?”

“Sure. What do you want to talk to me about, Matthew?”

“I don’t know what you mean. We’re brainstorming, remember? Coming up with ways to reach out to other teens.”

“Oh, yeah. Okay, I’ve got a good one. Why don’t we give bad shake to thirteen-year-olds and hope they see God?”

He looked back at me, his eyes level. “Yes, why don’t we, Sylvia.” He paused, then said. “I heard that you went to some kind of solstice ritual at that Pilgrims ‘Art’ Farm. I am shocked that your mother would let you go – I mean, we’re all aware that she’s a little misguided herself, being divorced and on her own and all. I’ve also heard that your mother wants to run for council. I don’t know how well she’ll do at advising congregates if this is the kind of thing she thinks is all right for her own daughter.”

I stared at Matthew for a moment, confused, robbed of response. “What are you, the moral majority all of a sudden? Who are you to talk anyway? Giving my younger brother pot and then lecturing me. And, who’s this
we
anyway? You have no idea. You are so wrong about my mother.”