Snow Job (16 page)

She just didn’t know anymore. The whole thing was so exhausting, keeping up the lie, losing whatever battle Karl was attempting to fight each night, feeling as though her moral compass was swinging wildly. Looking at the pictures, she saw Karl’s slightly devilish grin, her own amused half-smile at something Scott had been saying at the time, but mainly she saw that their body language was stil that of a couple. Completely aligned, angled into one another like it was the most natural thing in the world—

which Elyce supposed it must be, since she certainly hadn’t been conscious of doing it at the time. What was the camera catching that she couldn’t see? It was a cruel sort of optical il usion.

“I think I’m going to have this one blown up,” Karl said, leaning over and stopping her hand as she flipped through the pile. In the photo he’d selected, Elyce’s head was tilted slightly toward him and she was smiling outright, something she rarely liked to do in photos. Karl’s head angled a bit toward hers as wel , and this time it was he who wore the cocky half-grin, a look of supreme confidence but also of contentment.

A

lie, Elyce thought. They looked happy and comfortable, and it was a lie. “What are you going to blow it up with,” she asked, “high explosives? You could probably get ahold of some dynamite I guess, in your line of work.”

“Cute.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

He lowered his voice, glancing around. Nobody was watching them, removed at their little distance on the end of the long sectional farthest from the tree. “Tel me something, Elyce. You’ve been here every year, you’ve acted like you were a part of this family. Despite your original misgivings, you’ve come to love it here. Don’t pretend you don’t,” he threw in, when she seemed ready to protest. “And you’ve always known where the money behind al this comes from. So…why the difference now? And what do you see here that’s so bad? What do you see when you look at my family?”

“The difference…is that I wasn’t marrying
them
. I was married to you. I wouldn’t hold al of them accountable to my worldview, but I did hold you accountable. Because I thought it was something we shared. Only you chose to do something that didn’t fit into that worldview.”

“So what about the rest of my question? Because in a way, you did marry the whole family. You’re stil a part of this family right now, whether you like it or not. Those are your nieces and nephew over there; those are their parents you’ve gotten to be friends with. If you’re leaving, what are they to you?”

The question angered her, made her feel manipulated yet again, made her feel the sting of an underlying truth in Karl’s implication. She had tried to tel herself that being spiteful, being deliberately hurtful, was not going to help things in the long run. But this time her answer, fueled by emotion, sprang out before she could censor it.

“I see a bunch of baby robber barons in training,” she said. It was a lie, just like the picture. And she was aware that Karl knew it was a lie, but the fact that she would say it was meaningful in itself. “Learning that the rules don’t apply to them, that they can just…they can open their presents before it’s real y Christmas. That because they’re rich, the world is going to shape itself to suit their needs. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

Karl sat in stunned silence for several long, painful moments. Elyce, feeling lower than dirt but with no idea how to unsay what she’d said, sipped at her eggnog with a fierce concentration and tried with al her might not to cry.

“I know you don’t mean that,” Karl said at last, very quietly. “And I can tel you wish you hadn’t said it. I wish that too. I don’t want this to be that way, al right? I didn’t mean to bring that on. Whatever happens, just…let’s not do that to each other. Okay?”

She had told herself she wouldn’t cry, not in front of the family, not on Christmas Eve when her entire purpose for being there was to act as though everything were perfect.

Blinking back the tears that had started rol ing down her face, Elyce nearly spil ed the last of her eggnog as she pushed it into Karl’s hands and bolted from the couch, down the long hal way past the kitchen to the mudroom.

She knew he would fol ow her, but didn’t real y care.

Nobody else had noticed her exit, she was fairly certain, and that was the most important thing. Flinging on her parka and stomping her après-ski boots onto her feet, Elyce slipped out the mudroom door and into the blissful y serene yard where the moonlight was once again turning the world into a study in silhouette.

The backyard was silent, no little creatures venturing out into the frost to make night sounds. The raccoon, possibly sensing a potential shift in its fortunes, was nowhere to be seen. Snow had fal en that afternoon and if the burgling creature had been investigating the garage again earlier, its tracks would be fil ed in by now. It would be as if the raccoon had never been there, Elyce thought, scuffing at the snow with the toe of her hastily tied boot.

And would it be the same for
her
next year, or perhaps the year after? How long until the snow fil ed in her tracks after she was gone, for things to shift into a pattern that proceeded as if she had never been there? Not, she thought, the first year Karl brought somebody new to the cabin. That year would be marked by comparisons between old and new, between Elyce and the future player-to-be-named-later. But the next year, perhaps the one after that. Not very long, real y, in the grand scheme of things.

Elyce tried to think of it from a different perspective, to imagine what she might be doing next Christmas rather than focusing on what she would
not
be doing, but the images simply wouldn’t dissolve.

She heard the crunch of Karl’s boots on the snow before she saw his shadow, cast sharp and long by the moon against the crisp snow cover. Staring into the woods, she let him come up behind her and was faintly surprised that he didn’t put an arm around her shoulders or slip his hands around her waist.

“Come over to the ski shack with me. It’s too cold to stand out here like this.”

“I want to go home.” She hadn’t realized it until she’d said it. “I don’t want to be here anymore.”

“Come on. Let’s talk about it out of the wind, al right?

Getting frostbite isn’t going to help, either way.”

She had no basis to argue with that, not with her tears starting to form ice crystals on her cheeks. In resignation she fol owed him back around the corner of the house, to the little annex off the side of the garage where skis and other sporting equipment were kept in neat racks along the wal . There was a weight bench there, rarely used in winter, and after closing the door securely against the wind, Karl sat down on the cold black vinyl, slinging a blanket that he’d brought out with him over his shoulders and opening up an arm, inviting Elyce in. She went, but reluctantly. It was stil technical y freezing in the ski shack, but at least it was a little warmer and sheltered from the weather, and she couldn’t face the prospect of going back inside yet.

In the light that filtered in a dim stream through the half window from the porch lamp, Elyce could just make out the ranks of skis and poles, the snowboards slotted next to them, hockey sticks and tennis rackets and even the croquet set that looked like an antique. And her breath, and Karl’s, puffing out in clouds before them, overlapping and mingling and then disappearing into the blackness on the other side of the shaft of light.

“If you leave now,” Karl said, “it would violate the terms of our agreement. But then, the agreement was pretty coercive anyway so I wouldn’t real y blame you.”

“I’m not going to leave,” Elyce sighed. “I don’t want to be remembered as the ex-wife who ruined Christmas.”

“You’re not—”

“I know.”

“My ex-wife yet.”

“I
know
.” She shifted the blanket, hitching it higher and tucking stray strands of hair back into the hood of her parka.

“I love you.”

His words hung in the air a second too long without being acknowledged. Final y, with another sigh, Elyce replied, “I know. And I love you too. I just can’t live with the choice you made. I sort of wish I could, but…”

For some reason, she thought suddenly of Andrew, pictured him in this situation. He would not have offered her the blanket, she realized. Even if he’d thought to bring one in the first place, he would probably be hogging it and making chil y, catty remarks. He would be manipulative, as Karl was being, but what would his motivation be?

What, indeed, was Karl’s motivation? Wel , he’d told her. He loved her, he wanted to work it out. But she couldn’t live with that sort of compromise.

Hard on the heels of that thought came the realization that at some point, if she and Andrew did become seriously involved, there would be a breakup and it would not be pleasant. Because, although Andrew’s commitment to the environment was as clear and constant as Karl’s was nebulous and transitory, that didn’t necessarily mean that Andrew was the better human being.

Thrown off balance by this unsought epiphany, Elyce was startled when her reverie was broken by Karl, shifting on the hard vinyl seat and tugging at the blanket to secure it more firmly around them both. She snuck a peek at him, seeing him as if for the first time, trying to remember her first impression of him.

The Hero. The Leading Man. The Good Guy. In the movie of her imagination, he was always cast in that type of role because he had always been so eminently likeable, so clearly possessed of a heart of gold, that those qualities shone through any particular undesirable thing he might occasional y do.

I married a Dudley Do-Right
, Elyce thought,
but then
he suddenly started acting like a Snidely Whiplash. And it
turns out that some weird part of me seems to prefer
Snidely. No wonder I’m confused.
When Karl started talking, she had to concentrate to focus her attention back on his words.

“You know that Emily has started taking the girls to volunteer at a toy and food drive in Oakland every Christmas? They go to the fire station and help the firemen put together packages for needy families, so every family has a turkey and trimmings for Christmas dinner, and some toys to give the kids. The girls love it, but this year Nash got to see some of the families. She went riding on the fire truck to pass out some toys in the neighborhoods a few days before they came up here, and she saw what they were living like. Em said she came back home that night and just cried her heart out for those people. She wanted her parents not to buy her any presents this year. She said she wanted them to just take the money they were planning to spend and give it to those kids instead.”

“What did Emily say?” Elyce sniffled, and was relieved to find that her coat pocket stil held the packet of tissues she’d recal ed stowing there earlier in the day on the slopes.

“Wel , once she stopped crying herself, she told Nash that she would make a matching contribution. That whatever was spent on presents for Nash, she’d donate that much to a charity they would pick out together.”

“I see Junior League in Nash’s future.”

“Honey, every adult female in both our families is in the Junior League.”

“I’m not.”

“Only because you haven’t been able to fit it into your work schedule. Yet. Especial y since you’re not living in the city these days.”

“Okay, that’s true.”

“You’re a robber baron too, sweetheart. Admit it. Our mothers know each other from Junior League, our fathers know each other from the Bohemian Grove. Just like Nash and Emily and both our moms, you were born and bred to attend charity bal s in fancy gowns and fundraise up a storm for whatever noble cause tugs hardest at your heartstrings.”

It was an apt enough assessment, if a bit harsh, of both their mothers’ modes of operation. But that didn’t mean Elyce had to like it or emulate it.

“So you think they just do it out of…what?
Noblesse
oblige
? Guilt about being wel -off?”

“No,” he said, looking slightly shocked. “I think they do it because they’re good people who appreciate what they have, and feel very fortunate, and want to help other people who aren’t as fortunate because they’re in a position to help.”

“But what got them to that position in the first place?” It was a sensitive point with Elyce, particularly as her own undergraduate and graduate education had been paid for by the money her father had made during a career of working for the petrochemical industry. It was an irony she felt she would spend the rest of her life outrunning.

“Pure, untarnished evil,” Karl said without missing a beat. He nudged her with his elbow. “That’s how al the good money gets made.”

Elyce snorted at the unexpected joke. This was the Karl she was used to, the one who could seem so serious but always had a deadpan line to lighten up a conversation that was headed nowhere healthy. Something in her, some anonymous muscle between her shoulder blades, some tiny coiled spring in her mind, relaxed suddenly, that one sliver of her tension melting away like spring ice.

“Don’t leave,” he said. “And don’t sleep on the couch, that’s just sil y. Your virtue wil be safe from me, if you want it to be.”

She turned toward him within their blanket cocoon, her knee cocking slightly and brushing against his leg in the dark. “You’ve said that before. But my virtue is never safe with you. That’s part of the problem. It’s very distracting.”