Snow Angels (11 page)

I helped her with the dishes and retreated to my room to practice and then, when the neighbors complained, to listen to my headphones. My mother smoked and watched TV, sometimes having a glass of my father's scotch, never more than two. When her show was over—
Upstairs, Downstairs
, or one of those
snooty movies about a weekend-long party at an English country mansion—she would look into my room, carrying an ashtray, and start talking at me as if she'd only been taking a break. Take off the headphones, she gestured, and trapped, I did. We did not discuss what she had done or who my father was seeing; that was in the past. She told me things I didn't want to know about the relatives of her co-workers; she replayed conversations she'd had in her travels around the county. I knew she was lonely but by that time of night I was tired of her using me as an audience. I wanted to fall asleep to
Dark Side of the Moon
and forget everything that had happened to us in the last month, and I resented her for reminding me of it, simply by her presence. I sensed, in her flow of words, a desperation I myself was trying to overcome.

Around the house I tried to fill in for my father where I could. We were still going through boxes from the move, trying out the few different combinations of furniture the tiny living room allowed. I stood around like my father would have, and when my mother pointed, picked up a table or chair or the end of the couch and then stood aside again. It was my job now to take out the trash and lug it to a communal dumpster in the visitors' lot. When my mother asked which dish I would rather have for dinner, I learned to prefer one firmly over the other, when in truth I did not care. But
I could not talk to her the way my father had, I could not argue with her. Even if he did little around the house, when something important came up, we looked to my father to tell us what to do. Right or wrong, in the end he was responsible. When my mother tried to discuss something serious with me—like what we would do about my sister returning from Germany in May, or whether we should break the lease—I had nothing to say to her, gave back only faint echoes. She sighed, letting me know that I was no help, that she would have to decide by herself. And at night I could not replace my father, but lay awake across the hall from her, wishing she wasn't so alone.

One snowy morning at the bus stop, I was talking with Lila when we heard a car spinning its tires on the drive. The high-pitched whine of rubber on ice cut through the trees, and furious bursts of the engine. I knew from the roar that it was our Country Squire. My mother had been meaning to pick up a set of chains. I flicked my cigarette into the snow and, like a hero, coolly excused myself.

I followed our bootprints down the winding drive. It was slippery if you kept to the tracks, but the edges and the hump had a few inches of wet hardpack good for traction. The sound of the engine was coming closer, idling now behind a bend, then suddenly
stopped. Beside me in the ditch a trickle made its way downhill. In the woods, snow dropped from the high pines.

It was her. The rear of our car was in the ditch on the right side, the long hood angled out over the road, only one front tire touching the ground. My mother was still inside, and when I jumped the trickle to make sure she was all right I could see she'd been crying but was done now. Her keys were on the dash. She had her driving gloves off and was smoking a fresh cigarette.

“You think they'd salt the goddamn thing,” she said.

“What if I push?”

“This car?” She got out and pocketed her keys, put on her winter gloves. “What's the guy's name with the tow truck—the guy with the beard? I'll see if he'll do it for free.”

“I know him,” I said. “I'll go.”

“You've got school,” she said, and started walking down the drive. It was a long way but I could not argue, only watch her go. She'd made it twenty feet when she fell, yelping with surprise.

It would have been funny—it was funny—but my mother had had enough. She thrashed around in the snow, screaming, “You son of a bitch, I hate you,” kicking and flinging her purse about like a mace.

I scuttled over to her, but by then she had stopped and lay there as if shot, her made-up face in profile against the snow, jaw set.

“Is anything broken?” I asked.

She would not look at me, and I knew better than to push it. I looked skyward at the pines, back at the car.

“Help me up,” she said.

That night she called Astrid and hung up and waited with her hand on the phone for my sister to call back. The Air Force gave her a certain number of minutes free a month, and special rates after that. They talked for almost an hour before my mother motioned me over.

“What are you doing?” Astrid demanded.

“What?” I said.

“Are you doing anything at all for Mom?”

“Yes,” I said, reasonably, so my mother wouldn't know we were fighting.

“I'm not there, so you've got to help her.”

“I am.”

“Obviously you're not because she's flipping out. Do you know what time it is here?”

“No,” I said.

“It's four in the morning.”

“It's been a bad day.”

“I guess so,” Astrid said. “It's been a bad day for
me and it hasn't even started yet. Will you do something for me?”

“Yes.”

“Will you please take care of her until I get back there?”

“I'll try,” I said, but again with that sick feeling that accompanies a promise you know will be broken.

Now, more often, I signed up for the last shift at the Burger Hut and after practice walked the exhaust-blackened half mile with my case to punch in and tie on my apron. Weekdays the kitchen closed at nine, and the last hour I was allowed to man the register. It was easy—all the different items were typed right on the buttons and no one talked to me except to ask for ketchup. Closing, I refilled the air deodorizers in the restrooms with pink syrup and dusted the rubber plants. Before punching out, I projected my hours to see how much money I'd keep after giving my mother half. (I was saving for a Stratocaster copy Warren had seen in the pawnshop downtown even though I didn't know how to play guitar.) Mr. Philbin, the manager, gave me a ride home, and as if he knew what awaited me, tuned in the country-western station and said nothing.

But the Burger Hut was not half the respite Friday night became when my mother started going out with friends from her work. After dinner she changed out
of her uniform and into one of two spangly cocktail dresses. Red and blue, they were both short and—she thought—tended to make her legs look a touch heavy. Lying on my bed with Jimi Hendrix thundering, I pretended not to watch her ritual in the bathroom across the hall. She leaned into the mirror to dab on eye shadow, tilted her head to fasten her earrings. With her face made, she looked much younger. I had never been forced before to consider whether my mother was attractive, and while I was intimidated by this version of her, I was also relieved that she had friends and that she trusted me to stay home alone.

The minute our car passed the chapel, I went to my room, opened the window and stoked a bowl. I sprayed Ozium just in case, its lemony scent thick as mist. I ransacked the cupboards, then settled for Pepsi and Pop-Tarts and planted myself on the couch to watch TV. Around eleven—as I was worrying when she'd be home—the police from the sheriff's office would show up, their lights strobing in the trees as they eased down the icy drive. Like the Lawsons downstairs from us, I'd slip on my coat and go out in the snow to watch them referee our neighbors' disputes. I don't remember anyone throwing a punch, only a lot of grappling and cursing, the men from the sheriff's office talking to people in their warm front seats. At eleven-thirty “Chiller Theatre” began,
which I never missed. My mother came in around one, just as John Carradine was being strangled by his latest creation. She drew a tall glass of tap water and sat down beside me, chain-smoking while I told her the plot.

“Where did you go?” I asked, as if I knew the bars around town. “How was it?”

All week she had been assaulting me with the most insignificant details of other people's lives, but now all she said was, “DJ's. It was okay.”

If she was drunk, she'd put her arm around me and say, “You're a good kid, you know that? Jesus, what time is it? I've got to go to bed. You should too.” In minutes I'd hear her snoring. I'd look in and make sure the covers were on her, and the next morning let her sleep while I cooked breakfast.

Saturdays my father was supposed to visit, but he hadn't yet. Though my mother talked to him over the phone, we had not seen him since the move. My mother had put together a garbage bag full of his stuff she'd dug out of her bureau drawers. It waited for him on the landing outside our door.

I did want to see him, partly because I missed him and partly because, as I told my mother, he had promised to teach me to drive. I was going to be fifteen in the spring, old enough for my learner's permit. I was signed up for Driver's Ed and already had the manual.
I thought that once I had access to a car I would be besieged by girls. At the least I could take Lila Raybern to the Sky Vue Drive-In.

“That's not what I'm asking,” my mother said. “I can teach you how to drive. Do you want to see your father or not?”

“Sure,” I said. “Yes.”

She called him and put me on, holding the phone out as if daring me to' take it. She pointedly left the room.

“Arty,” my father said, and asked me how I was holding up. My father is not a talker and neither is his son. I stood closemouthed in the living room, trying to make him fill the silences. We dismissed the Steelers and the snow.

“So,” my father said. “I've been meaning to have dinner with you. How's this Saturday?”

“Okay,” I said, trying to sound bored.

“Okay,” he said. I paced between the couch and TV. “Okay, how about putting your mother back on?”

I dropped the phone on the couch and hollered for her.

Lake Vue, where my father now lived, was new. I had never been in it, but when the bus picked up, the kids who got on there were wearing neat Levi's and rugby shirts and blue suede Puma Clydes. They were
semi-preppy in their down vests, and scorned long-hairs like Warren and me. I imagined them poking fun at my aunt's old Nova.

As the week progressed, I grew to resent the Lake Vue kids.

“The lake's not even there,” I explained to Lila. “It's a good five miles away. The only view they have is the Agway across the road.”

“Yeah,” she said, “but I bet they've got hot water.”

By the time my father came to pick me up Saturday, I blamed him for leaving us to rot at Foxwood while he and the mystery woman he was seeing blew my and my mother's money at Lake Vue.

He was on time, driving the Nova. The bumper was sticking out of the trunk, the rear quarter-panel crumpled.

My mother came outside in her sweater and made sure I had the bag of his stuff. She didn't want him to come in because the place was messy. The three of us stood on the lower landing in the cold.

“What happened there?” she asked—gleefully, I thought.

“Little fender bender,” my father said.

“Little,” my mother said.

“It'll fix up.” It had been three weeks since we'd seen him. I had expected him to look different, somehow
changed or dressed-up, but there he was, my father, in his steel-toed workboots and jeans, unshaven because it was a Saturday. “Have you talked to Astrid?”

“Yes,” my mother said.

“How is she?”

“Fine.”

My father waited but that was all she was going to give him. “Well, good,” he finally said. “Arty, are you all ready?”

“He has some things you left.”

My father thanked her and took them, and without peeking in the bag, put it in the backseat. While they hashed out when he would return me, I slid into the front. My mother waved me away as if I were leaving for good.

The Nova made it up the drive easily. Though he owned it, it was not my father's car. The seats smelled of my aunt's cigarettes, and my father had either observed or not disturbed her ritual of keeping a useless box of tissues on the shelf beneath the rear window. We headed west, away from Lake Vue.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“I figured we'd split a pizza, if that's all right. My stove's got problems.”

“Sure.”

“How's everything at your place?”

“Fine,” I said.

“I know your mother doesn't like it there.”

“It's okay.”

“She says you're a big help,” he said, but I didn't bite.

We passed the county fairgrounds and its sign advertising the same three days in August and stopped at a plaza where there was a Fox's Pizza Den. My father ordered for us. I thought he'd meant takeout, but he peeled off his coat and arranged it over a chair, and I did likewise. I wondered if he was living with this woman and didn't want me to see or whether he thought—correctly—that I would compare his apartment to ours and count it as further proof that he was cheating us.

It was not a remarkable meal. We were both hungry and embarrassed, and once the pizza came, said little. My father did not offer me a beer.

“Your mother says you have a girlfriend.”

“No,” I said.

“Working on it.”

“Sort of.”

“Want more?”

“No thanks,” I said.

On the way back, my father said he had to stop by
his place for something. This made sense to me. His mistress—at the time the only word I knew to describe her—would have cleaned up and cleared out.

But when we got to Lake Vue, my father parked the car and said he'd be right back. Colored floodlights bathed the front of the complex aqua. My father's apartment was on the first floor beside a tunnel with an ice machine. He stopped at his door and hunched over his keys. In the quiet of the car I wondered what he was hiding from me, and like a sign, the bag of his crap in the backseat shifted.