Snow Angels (20 page)

The divorce was uncontested, legal a week after it was filed by my mother. My father was not living with another woman, but told me he was seeing one. He wanted to be honest with me, and between driving figure eights in reverse and parallel parking, he said my mother knew about her. He seemed solemn and apologetic, yet proud, as if he half resented asking my blessing.

“Has she told you anything?” he asked.

“No,” I said, not really wanting to know.

“Her name is Marcia Dolan and she works at the new Mellon Bank downtown. She has two girls, both a good deal younger than you.” He paused as if he wanted an answer from me, as if I knew who this woman was or had any opinion of her.

“Okay,” I said.

“Maybe we could have dinner sometime, the three of us.”

“Sure.”

Dr. Brady was interested in why I said yes.

“I said ‘sure,' ” I corrected him. “It's different.”

“Then what exactly were you communicating to your father there?”

He didn't have to tell me I was unhappy with the situation. Everyone involved knew that. My mother's hope was that he could tell her why finding the girl didn't seem to bother me. Halfway through the session, his questions turned to the search, and I had to go over it step by step, substituting a cigarette for the roach.

“And when you saw her,” he asked, “how did that make you feel?”

“Afraid,” I said.

“Why?”

“She was dead,” I explained patiently.

I had to gobble the two dogs before my mother came to get me, and riding home in the Country Squire, felt them bubbling in my gut.

“Did you have a good session?” she asked.

“I guess,” I said.

“What did you talk about today?”

“The same stuff as always.”

My mother sighed, tired of my indifference. “I
know you don't like to go, but I think you need to. I can't get you to talk with me about these things.”

“Like what,” I said, “Dad's girlfriend?”

“Like why you're high all the time and don't seem to care about anyone but yourself.”

“Fuck that,” I said—just a sullen mumble—and she hit me. She flung a backhand across the front seat and caught me on the forehead.

“You don't talk to me like that.”

I turned to the window, defiant, viciously proud that I wasn't crying.

“I'm sorry,” she said sternly, not apologizing, and started using how bad her day had been as an excuse.

I sat there pretending not to listen. Outside, drifted snowfences protected the white fields. I was going to win this one, and knowing that let me forgive her. I really shouldn't have said it. I could have said worse things. I could have asked about her lover. (“And why didn't you?” Dr. Brady would say.) It was a pretty good shot, I thought. She hadn't even looked, just lashed her arm out and whacked me.

That night Astrid called. When I got on she asked if everything was all right.

“What do you mean ‘everything'?” I asked. We hadn't talked since I had found the girl.

“I mean you. Are you all right?”

“Yes,” I said, mindful of my mother on the couch.

“Mom says she hit you in the face.”

“Yeah.”

“She's really upset about it.”

“Right,” I answered, as if waiting for her point.

“So will you tell her you're okay? She's flipping out. This is new to her. She never hit either of us before. Dad never hit us.”

“I know.”

“So tell her you're okay, all right? Christ, every time I call it's something new. She thinks you're flipping out about Annie's girl.”

“Not me,” I said.

“Is that right or are you just saying that? That's what she's worried about.”

“I'm fine.”

“If you are, then fine; if you're not, pretend you are and make her believe it.”

“I am,” I said, a little hard, and my mother glanced over.

“Because if you can just hang on I will be back there in four months, but if this shit keeps up I'm going to have to take hardship leave, and I do not want to do that.”

“I wouldn't want you to have to do that,” I taunted.

“All right,” Astrid said, “okay. Now how was Thanksgiving?”

In music and at practice after school, Warren and I bore the ridicule of our bandmates with studied apathy. The Mud Brothers, they called us, but only until the next game, when one of the smaller girl clarinetists went down spectacularly, breaking her wrist. Mr. Chervenick was psyching us up for the final home game in two weeks. It was scheduled, he kept reminding us, the day after Beethoven's birthday, and we were working on the opening of the Fifth Symphony. Dit-dit-dit-daaa. From there we would segue into “Fanfare for the Common Man,” a favorite with both the brass and the percussion. Since the summer the band had improved musically, Mr. Chervenick said, but the tornado was a joke. He was like a coach dressing us down after a sloppy game.

“Just once before I die,” he said from his little podium, “I would like to see it done right. I don't think you are the group that is going to do it. I would be very surprised if you were. I think you're capable of it. Anyone is capable of it. Any one hundred and twenty-two students from this school are capable of making the tornado, but you have to want to do it. You have to want it with everything inside you. Every single one of you has to say to yourself, ‘I am going to
make this happen. Me.' Nobody else is going to do this for you. I know, I know, the football team lost its chance, but we still have ours. So are we going to be like them and blow it?”

“No!” everyone yelled. I decided I liked him when he got himself worked up.

“Or are we going to be the ones who finally do it right?”

“Yes!”

“Do we have what it takes inside?”

Warren tapped me. “What the hell is he talking about?”

I shrugged and bellowed, “Yes!”

Between practice and seeing Dr. Brady I only rode home with Lila once a week. I had seen her without her glasses. We were walking uphill in the cold when she stopped and took them off to wipe the fog from her lenses. She did not suddenly become beautiful, only more vulnerable, squinting like someone who's just woken up. I daydreamed of inviting her over Friday night when my mother was out drinking with her friends: we would get stoned and watch TV with the lights out like all those couples in the commercials, except no one would interrupt us. Mornings, when we met at the bottom of the hill, we greeted each other formally, saying, “Lila,” “Arthur,” and alone
in bed I'd hear her voice saying my name and imagine the two of us in the living room under my mother's afghan, our clothes strewn over the floor.

I did not tell Dr. Brady any of this.

I shouldn't have told Warren.

“She's a mess,” he said. “I don't know what you're thinking, man.”

“I'm not thinking,” I said. “This isn't something you can think about.”

“Hey, don't jump all over me. Ask her out or something.”

“I will.”

“Yeah right,” he said.

Two days later, Lila was waiting for me at the bottom of our stairs, alone.

“Hi,” I said, startled.

“Hey,” she said.

Lily was sick with the flu.

“Which means I'm going to get it next,” Lila said.

We walked along the road and into the woods. The drive had been spread with cinders and we crunched as we headed uphill. A pickup came up behind us and I followed Lila off to the left, stood on the crumbling edge of the road while the truck passed. Trudging up the hump again, neither of us said a thing, as if we needed Lily to speak to each other.

Finally I stopped. We were halfway up, in the middle
of the woods. Lila went on a few steps and stopped, looking back at me.

“Want to split a cigarette?” I asked.

“Okay.” She came back warily.

I handed it to her after the first hit, careful not to lip it. I put my hands in my pockets and blew out a cloud.

“What do you say we blow off school today?” I said.

“And do what?”

“I don't know, hang around.”

“Where?”

“Here.”

“I've got things I've got to do,” Lila said. “You know I don't get stoned.”

“We don't have to get stoned,” I said, but defensively; the moment had passed.

“You've got practice you can't miss.” She pointed the cigarette at my case as if it were incriminating.

“Yeah. It was a dumb idea.”

She didn't contradict me, just passed the cigarette back.

“You know what I'd like to see,” Lila said, as if we'd been discussing movies.
“The Godfather, Part Two.”

“Yeah,” I said bitterly, disconsolate, “it's downtown.”

“It's supposed to be really good but really violent.”

“That's what the paper said.”

“Your friend Warren said you might want to see it with me.”

I thought, simultaneously, that it was none of his business and that I could never repay him enough.

“He did,” I said, reeling. “Yes, I would. If you want to. It's supposed to be really good.”

“I'd like to.” Lila took the cigarette from my hand, took a last drag and flicked it high out over the snow. She turned and started walking again. I thought I should have tried to kiss her, and rushed to catch up.

“When?” I asked, completely at her mercy.

I caught Warren in the parking lot. I wrapped my arms around him from behind and lifted him off the ground.

“I knew you'd never ask her,” he explained.

“Not true,” I said, “that is un-fucking-true,” and like a hero told him the whole story.

“I don't know her family,” my mother admitted, slightly concerned that Lila was from Foxwood. “I'm sure she's very nice.” She thought it was wonderful but said until I got my permit I would not be allowed to drive her car. My father agreed.

“So who do you want to chauffeur you two on Saturday?” she said.

It was not a hard decision. I could clean our car; my aunt's old Nova was hopeless. My mother promised not to peek at us in the mirror.

After the slapping incident we had reached another truce. I knew she was trying to do too much; she knew I did not want to be consoled. She was demanding, while I was ungrateful. We relied on each other without giving much ground. We both wished Astrid were home with us. Both our jaws hardened when my father mentioned his girlfriend's name.

My mother saw Dr. Brady late after work on Thursdays. Sometimes I didn't see her until she picked me up at the Burger Hut, but as Christmas neared, I asked her to take me downtown to do my shopping while above the Hot Dog Shoppe she made sense of our new life. The streets were slushy and festooned with tinsel; in front of the Woolworth's a part-time Santa rang his bell tirelessly, badgering traffic. Butler had had a large blind school downtown years ago, and when the lights both ways went red and the white
WALK
sign came on, a steady ringing like a doorbell jimmied with a pin started so no one would get run over. I lingered by the black velvet—backed windows of Milo Williams jewelry, dreaming of what I'd give Lila. I could see myself kneeling on the sticky floor of the Penn, popping the box like an oyster. I had been working a lot this fall, and had more money in my
account than ever before. I just did not know what to get everyone.

Two were easy. My father I would get tools. Exactly what kind would be discussed the next time he called; there was never any surprise involved. Astrid was into photography. I'd bought her film the last few Christmases. The rest was guesswork. I had some ideas for my mother—an electric blanket, a toaster oven—but they seemed dumb, not personal enough. My grandparents and aunt were always hard. And Lila.

I had my eye on a simple 24-karat chain in Milo Williams, and went so far as to ask the man behind the counter if I could see it. He slid the glass door aside and fished it out, gave it to me daintily, draping it over my hand. It was cold and a little stiff. I thought of the gold warm against Lila's neck. I pictured her squinting, happy with it.

“How much?” I asked, and the man told me.

I handed the chain back, draped it over his hand. If the date went wrong I'd be stuck with it. And if it went well, did I have to get something for Lily too?

Saturday afternoon my father told me not to worry. We were in the Nova, practicing three-point turns. I'd do one and drive fifty feet and do another and come back.

“This is her date,” my father said. “Remember that, Arty. Be a gentleman and you'll both have a fine
time. Do not be an octopus. Kiss her goodnight if she wants to be kissed.”

I did not want any advice beyond “Don't worry,” and pointedly ignored the rest. We parallel-parked for a while, the rear hubcap scraping the curb.

“Okay,” he said, signaling that we were done for the day, and I started to undo my belt.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said. “How would you like to drive back to my place? Carefully.”

“Yes,” I said, trying not to blow it by being either too anxious or cool.

“I'll navigate,” he said.

I had never driven on a highway before, and now I was getting on the interstate. The speedometer said I was doing 50. The Nova purred under my foot. I felt light, high.

“Check your mirrors,” my father said. “Line up a point on the hood with the center line and keep it there. Feel how big the lane is.”

“This is great,” I said.

“Isn't it?” my father said. “You're doing great too.”

He pointed to an exit just outside town and I steered into the chute.

“Gently brake,” my father said. “Gently. Gently.”

His new place was in a small L-shaped complex
with wooden siding stained by runoff from the gutters.
MARYHAVEN
, a carved sign at the entrance said. My father had his own numbered parking space. I stopped the car, put it in park and turned it off.